{Review} This Shattered World – A Soldier and a Rebel and SECRETS

Posted January 28, 2016 in Reading, Review / 2 Comments

{Review} This Shattered World – A Soldier and a Rebel and SECRETSThis Shattered World by Amie Kaufman, Meagan Spooner
Series: Starbound #2
Publisher: Disney Hyperion (2014)
Hardcover (390 pages)
Via: Library
Rating:
Also by this author: These Broken Stars, Illuminae, Their Fractured Light
Also in this series: These Broken Stars, Their Fractured Light
Reading Challenges: 2016 Backlist Books, Read 2016

Synopsis

Jubilee Chase and Flynn Cormac should never have met.
Lee is captain of the forces sent to Avon to crush the terraformed planet's rebellious colonists, but she has her own reasons for hating the insurgents.
Rebellion is in Flynn's blood. Terraforming corporations make their fortune by recruiting colonists to make the inhospitable planets livable, with the promise of a better life for their children. But they never fulfilled their promise on Avon, and decades later, Flynn is leading the rebellion.
Desperate for any advantage in a bloody and unrelentingly war, Flynn does the only thing that makes sense when he and Lee cross paths: he returns to base with her as prisoner. But as his fellow rebels prepare to execute this tough-talking girl with nerves of steel, Flynn makes another choice that will change him forever. He and Lee escape the rebel base together, caught between two sides of a senseless war.

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{TTT} Things I Do Besides Read

Posted January 26, 2016 in Faith, Life / 6 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly link-up hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

This week’s list is a freebie so I have decided to share with you the Top Ten Things I Do Besides Read. I hope that I can get to ten or else my life isn’t all that exciting.

1. Blog

I obviously blog or you wouldn’t be reading this right now. I would say that this takes up a fair share of my time.

2. Work

As I have mentioned before, I am a teacher. I teach in my school’s fifth and sixth grade special education and resource room. I love what I do but it is a lot of work. Some days are better than others and no day is ever like the day before. Everyday is definitely a new surprise… and sometimes I would rather the “surprise” went away.

3. Prayer

The first thing I do in the morning is pray Morning Prayer and prayer is one of the last things I do before bed at night. Prayer is a rather important part of my daily life. I think you could probably, maybe tell this from looking at my blog. The url is CATHOLICamanda. The title (Orandi et Legendi) is Latin. The tagline is “just a girl praying and reading.” Yep, prayer is pretty important to me.
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{Review} Winterspell – What Did I Just Read? Really?

Posted January 25, 2016 in Reading, Review / 2 Comments

{Review} Winterspell – What Did I Just Read? Really?Winterspell by Claire Legrand
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (2014)
Hardcover (454 pages)
Rating:
Reading Challenges: 2016 Backlist Books, 2016 Retelling Challenge, 2016 Royal Challenge, Read 2016

Synopsis

The clock chimes midnight, a curse breaks, and a girl meets a prince…but what follows is not all sweetness and sugarplums.
New York City, 1899. Clara Stole, the mayor’s ever-proper daughter, leads a double life. Since her mother’s murder, she has secretly trained in self-defense with the mysterious Drosselmeyer.
Then, on Christmas Eve, disaster strikes.
Her home is destroyed, her father abducted—by beings distinctly
not human. To find him, Clara journeys to the war-ravaged land of Cane. Her only companion is the dethroned prince Nicholas, bound by a wicked curse. If they’re to survive, Clara has no choice but to trust him, but his haunted eyes burn with secrets—and a need she can’t define. With the dangerous, seductive faery queen Anise hunting them, Clara soon realizes she won’t leave Cane unscathed—if she leaves at all.
Inspired by
The Nutcracker, Winterspell is a dark, timeless fairy tale about love and war, longing and loneliness, and a girl who must learn to live without fear.

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{Review} Library of Souls – Conclusion to Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children

Posted January 21, 2016 in Reading, Review / 0 Comments

{Review} Library of Souls – Conclusion to Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar ChildrenLibrary of Souls by Ransom Riggs
Series: Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children #3
Publisher: Quirk Books (2015)
Hardcover (458 pages)
Rating:
Also by this author: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, Hollow City
Also in this series: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, Hollow City
Reading Challenges: Read 2016

Synopsis

A boy with extraordinary powers. An army of deadly monsters. An epic battle for the future of peculiardom.
The adventure that began with Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children and continued in Hollow City comes to a thrilling conclusion with Library of Souls. As the story opens, sixteen-year-old Jacob discovers a powerful new ability, and soon he’s diving through history to rescue his peculiar companions from a heavily guarded fortress. Accompanying Jacob on his journey are Emma Bloom, a girl with fire at her fingertips, and Addison MacHenry, a dog with a nose for sniffing out lost children.
They’ll travel from modern-day London to the labyrinthine alleys of Devil’s Acre, the most wretched slum in all of Victorian England. It’s a place where the fate of peculiar children everywhere will be decided once and for all. Like its predecessors,
Library of Souls blends thrilling fantasy with never-before-published vintage photography to create a one-of-a-kind reading experience.

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{Review} Illuminae – A Unique Sci-Fi

Posted January 18, 2016 in Reading, Review / 0 Comments

{Review} Illuminae – A Unique Sci-FiIlluminae by Amie Kaufman, Jay Kristoff
Series: The Illuminae Files #1
Publisher: Knopf (2015)
Hardcover (599 pages)
Rating:
Also by this author: These Broken Stars, This Shattered World, Their Fractured Light
Reading Challenges: Read 2016

Synopsis

This morning, Kady thought breaking up with Ezra was the hardest thing she’d have to do.
This afternoon, her planet was invaded.
The year is 2575, and two rival megacorporations are at war over a planet that’s little more than an ice-covered speck at the edge of the universe. Too bad nobody thought to warn the people living on it. With enemy fire raining down on them, Kady and Ezra—who are barely even talking to each other—are forced to fight their way onto an evacuating fleet, with an enemy warship in hot pursuit.
But their problems are just getting started. A deadly plague has broken out and is mutating, with terrifying results; the fleet's AI, which should be protecting them, may actually be their enemy; and nobody in charge will say what’s really going on. As Kady hacks into a tangled web of data to find the truth, it's clear only one person can help her bring it all to light: the ex-boyfriend she swore she'd never speak to again.
Told through a fascinating dossier of hacked documents—including emails, schematics, military files, IMs, medical reports, interviews, and more—Illuminae is the first book in a heart-stopping, high-octane trilogy about lives interrupted, the price of truth, and the courage of everyday heroes.

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