LA LA IN THE LIBRARY: August 2014

Monday, August 18, 2014

REVIEW: Gates of Thread and Stone by Lori M. Lee

"In a city of walls and secrets, where only one man is supposed to possess magic, seventeen-year-old Kai struggles to keep hidden her own secret... When Kai was eight, she was found by Reev on the riverbank, and her “brother” has taken care of her ever since... Kai’s only friend is Avan, the shopkeeper’s son with the scandalous reputation that both frightens and intrigues her... Kai must unravel the threads of her past and face shocking truths about her brother, her friendship with Avan, and her unique power."

MY GOODREADS REVIEW

This novel has everything I look for in a YA Fantasy story. The author gives a solid history base for the world, no-nonsense physics rules for the environment, original images, just the right amount of description for the setting to light the reader's own imagination, undercurrents of social and moral statements, tears from my own eyes, some lighthearted laughable moments, intrigue, and well fashioned flirt and tease romantic scenes (quiet and sensual, no grunting and groping). The ending of the story will rip you up more than once, and you will also say, "I didn't see that coming!", multiple times. I do not like books where I have to go back and search for descriptions of characters to remember who, or what, they were. Lee's secondary characters were so well written I didn't have to re-read once. I was also amazed at the number of twists she was able to weave into the last few chapters. I am going to have a giant-sized book hangover for days. I was happy to stumble upon a pre-release ebook copy from Amazon's Read It First program. This is my honest review. FAVE THINGS: The Grays, and Lee's make you tingle romance scenes, and I'm not a romance person.

*I told one of my blogging buddies, when I couldn't put the book down and finished ahead of her on our buddy read, "The ending is going to make your head EXPLODE!!!!"

* Ms. Lee managed to make me full on snot cry, twice.

* Semi-spoiler... I do not like stories about certain types of immortals (no not vampires), but I was a fair way into the book when she dropped them on me and made me like them, I mean REALLY like them.

♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦

THE LABYRINTH

"In the Labyrinth, we had a saying: keep silent, keep still, keep safe."

THE GRAYS

THE VOID

THE FOG

THE ROOMS

"My house is a place of forgotten things."

THE BLOOD

THE THREADS

*Animated cheetah gif credited to CHASE STUDIOS*

Saturday, August 16, 2014

ARC AUGUST Week #two...

I am doing far better than my outside number of six ARCs in a month because I am at 5 and a half at the end of two weeks. This just goes to show what can be done when I am not fooling around on Twitter!

After I finished Nest, I started Dash by Kirby Larsen. I have been wanting to read it ever since I read the book blurb on Netgalley. I requested it right away, but it just sat there forever (it is still sitting there pending). A blogger tweeted the link to her review of Dash and I told her about my request problem, so she asked for my address and sent me her ARC!! Thank-you Celeste!

My one surprise was Words in Time and Place. It is a book about word and phrase origins set up like a thesaurus. I opened the Netgalley document only to take a quick look and ended up devouring the book in two sittings, so I am up to five ARCs!