Halloween read-a-thon

It's Halloween! (sorta) I have a thousand books to read! Thus, a Halloween read-a-thon is required. I haven't been able to find a single read-a-thon that runs the week of Halloween, possibly this is bad searching on my part, so I decided to make one.

This read-a-thon runs Monday 28th October to 3rd November, and literally anyone can do it, though I created this thing just for me and fully expect to be alone in my reading marathon. Fingers crossed I can cut my reading list down by at least 4 books because my pile is HUGE.

Oh, and because I like to abbreviate things, this will henceforth be known as the ass read-a-thon, or maybe ass-a-thon. It's a work in progress. I'll designate twitter and tumblr tags nearer the time so you can follow my progress if you so wish.

And now I'm going to make a list of ~spoooky~ books to read.

Cover reveal: Born of Deception

Born of Illusion: Born of Deception | Teri Brown

Expected 2014 from Balzer & Bray/Harperteen

Budding illusionist Anna Van Housen is on top of the world: after scoring a spot on a prestigious European vaudeville tour, she has moved to London to chase her dream and to join an underground society for people like her with psychic abilities. Along with her handsome beau, Cole Archer, Anna is prepared to take the city by storm.

But when Anna arrives in London, she finds the group in turmoil. Sensitives are disappearing and, without a suspect, the group’s members are turning on one another. Could the kidnapper be someone within the society itself—or has the nefarious Dr. Boyle followed them to London?

As Cole and Anna begin to unravel the case and secrets about the society are revealed, they find themselves at odds, their plans for romance in London having vanished. Her life in danger and her relationship fizzling, can Anna find a way to track down the killer before he makes her his next victim—or will she have to pay the ultimate price for her powers?

Set in Jazz-Age London, this alluring sequel to Born of Illusion comes alive with sparkling romance, deadly intrigue, and daring magic.

About the author:

I’m not sure who to tell you about here because I’m actually two people rolled into one. As a responsible mother of teens, I show one persona to the world. That person is driven, conservative and level headed. But the other part of me just never grew up. She is rebellious, impulsive and curious.

It’s hard being both these people. They’re often at odds.

The mother part of me knows I should put a cap on how many animals we take in. The teen part of me wants to save them all. We have five cats and two dogs. Who do you think is winning?

Even now. The mother part wants to make a meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and a tossed salad. The teen part wants to order a pizza, work on my website and check my Facebook.

Luckily, though my two halves don’t always agree, both of us live happily in Portland, Oregon, with a husband and too many animals. And we both love to write and write and write..

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Halloween recommendations.

It is three weeks until Halloween! This calls for some dark and spooky books to read to celebrate the season.

[1] - living Nightmare, magic

[2] - Sorcerers

[3] - Magic, curses

[4] - Vampires

[5] - Gargoyles

[6] - Voodoo

[7] - Demons

[8] - Ghosts, curses

And these three all feature witches and ~witchy magic~ because no Halloween is complete without witches:

Sadly I don't know any books that feature skeletons or pumpkins. Sad day for a fan of skeletons and pumpkins.

Altered (Review)

Altered: Altered | Jennifer Rush
YA, Science Fiction, Thriller

Characters ★★★★★

Setting ★★★★☆

Writing Style ★★★★★

When you can’t trust yourself, who can you believe?

Everything about Anna’s life is a secret. Her father works for the Branch at the helm of its latest project: monitoring and administering treatments to the four genetically altered boys in the lab below their farmhouse. There’s Nick, Cas, Trev . . . and Sam, who’s stolen Anna’s heart. When the Branch decides it’s time to take the boys, Sam stages an escape, killing the agents sent to retrieve them. 

Anna is torn between following Sam or staying behind in the safety of her everyday life. But her father pushes her to flee, making Sam promise to keep her away from the Branch, at all costs. There’s just one problem. Sam and the boys don’t remember anything before living in the lab—not even their true identities.

Now on the run, Anna soon discovers that she and Sam are connected in more ways than either of them expected. And if they’re both going to survive, they must piece together the clues of their past before the Branch catches up to them and steals it all away.

REVIEW

Altered blew me away. It had the same high stakes, fast paced feel to it as All Our Yesterdays and Reboot, but it had something else entirely. Reading it, I felt highly strung and on edge - Jennifer Rush just dragged me head first into the story and immersed me with terror, excitement, and the desperate desperate need to protect every one of the boys (especially Nick. Oh, how I love Nick.)

I loved Anna's isolation, how all she knew was the boys, and her whole life, her career, her everything revolved around them because she had nothing else. But what I loved most of all was her development, how she grew as a character from someone following her father's rules to breaking the Branch's to save her boys. I really think she found her own mind.

The plot was action packed, terrifying, thrilling and there was both too much and not enough of it. I need more of their story or I'm going to combust. I need to know that Sam and Anna are happy and together, that Cas isn't very badly injured and can recover, that Nick has someone who understands him and is patient with the walls he's built around himself, that Trev will redeem himself. But most of all I need to know about Anna, about her past, about the Branch and what they're keeping secret and what motivated Anna's 'father' to keep her in the dark.

I need to know everything! I devoured this book and it consumed me in return. God, I need book two right now.

★★★★★

The Nightmare Affair (Review)

The Nightmare Affair | Mindee Arnett
YA, Urban Fantasy, Mythology

Characters ★★★☆☆

Setting ★★★★☆

Writing Style ★★★☆☆

Sixteen-year-old Dusty Everhart breaks into houses late at night, but not because she’s a criminal. No, she’s a Nightmare.

Literally.

Being the only Nightmare at Arkwell Academy, a boarding school for magickind, and living in the shadow of her mother’s infamy, is hard enough. But when Dusty sneaks into Eli Booker’s house, things get a whole lot more complicated. He’s hot, which means sitting on his chest and invading his dreams couldn’t get much more embarrassing. But it does. Eli is dreaming of a murder.

Then Eli’s dream comes true.

Now Dusty has to follow the clues—both within Eli’s dreams and out of them—to stop the killer before more people turn up dead. And before the killer learns what she’s up to and marks her as the next target.

Initially I was excited about the concept of The Nightmare Affair but pretty nonplussed with the execution and the mundanity of the plot. And then somehow I'd read the whole book and my entire outlook had changed? How did that happen?

The Nightmare Affair tells the story of Dusty, a literal Nightmare who can enter people's dreams. Through an accident, it's revealed that she's part of a bonded Dream-Seer pair with Eli Booker, a boy whose dream she had just witnessed a murder in. Together, Eli and Dusty are tasked with predicting the killer's next moves and solving a murder.

Firstly, there's a lot more focus on school than I enjoy reading. Possibly this is because I am no longer in school, and cannot relate, or because I don't really care for lingering over the whole school thing. But classes and social hierachy and weird teachers aside, The Nightmare Affair is a fun and original story.

I loved the development of relationship between Dusty and Eli, the obvious villainousness of certain people (Dusty, how can you not see he's evil??), and the mechanics of magic and the whole world that encompasses it. The whole Nightmare thing was awesome, for one thing. And the weaving of Arthurian legend? I both saw and didn't see it coming. (the Nimue surname was a giant flashing exclamation mark, but it could have meant nothing.)

To say I started off not really fussed with this book, I ended up enjoying it.