Review: Goddess Interrupted by Aimee Carter

Publication Info:
304 pages
Coming: March 27th 2012
HarlequinTeen
Source: ARC provided by publisher via NetGalley

Summary from Goodreads:

Kate Winters has won immortality.


But if she wants a life in the Underworld with Henry, she’ll have to fight for it.


Becoming immortal wasn’t supposed to be the easy part. Though Kate is about to be crowned Queen of the Underworld, she’s as isolated as ever. And despite her growing love for Henry, ruler of the Underworld, he’s becoming ever more distant and secretive. Then, in the midst of Kate’s coronation, Henry is abducted by the only being powerful enough to kill him: the King of the Titans.


As the other gods prepare for a war that could end them all, it is up to Kate to save Henry from the depths of Tartarus. But in order to navigate the endless caverns of the Underworld, Kate must enlist the help of the one person who is the greatest threat to her future.


Henry’s first wife, Persephone.

My Thoughts:

It took me a little bit to get into Goddess Interrupted for the fact that it’s been a long while since I read the ARC of The Goddess Test, which was one of my top 5 books of 2011. I couldn’t remember all the details but it wasn’t long before all of its sweetness and awesomeness came flooding back!

Goddess Interrupted was one giant race. A race to save Henry, a race to find answers. And it was one gigantic ball of frustration. Henry was… grrrrr….. Henry was still Henry, just not the good side of Henry we all want to see Kate live happily ever after with. There is reasoning but it’s frustrating. Yet it’s compelling in a way that makes you race through the pages to make sure everything is going to work out okay in the end.

The overall pacing of the book threw me a bit. I felt lost frequently, not sure I’d caught everything that had happened. That’s my only complaint about Goddess Interrupted.

If you loved The Goddess Test you’ll love this sequel. And if you haven’t read the first book I highly recommend you do so! I can’t wait for the third book! (my review of The Goddess Test)

4 out of 5 stars!

Review: Caleb + Kate

Summary from Goodreads:

When Kate's family purchases a hotel in the Pacific Northwest, she enters a world that is wholly unknown to her. She never has any privacy because of the constant flow of guests. And as the hotel owner's daughter, she struggles to make friends.


Then she meets Caleb, a strange combination of working-class, Hawaiian culture, and Christian bad boy. He talks about love in an all new way that she finds so alluring. But the two have nothing in common. He rarely smiles, rides a motorcycle with a rough crowd from town, and worst of all, he totally ignores Kate. But Kate has something that he needs and she resolves to prove to him that what she has doesn't define who she is.


My Thoughts:

What a fun spin on Romeo and Juliet! Meet the Monrovie’s and the Khalini’s. Their grandfathers have been feuding for years, over land, and over a woman. Kate and Caleb know they’re not supposed to like each other, and they sure try not to, but sometimes you just can’t help the one you love.

This really was a cute story. I really enjoyed the romance between Kate and Caleb. It was sweet, innocent, and with a touch of forbidden, I couldn’t resist. I also appreciated the cleanness this book held. There was no swearing, to threat of sex happening anywhere in it, and religion is actually a fairly big part of the book. It was just a nice, light read.

The setting kept throwing me just a bit, and that is my one complaint about the book. The mix of Hawaiian culture while being set in Oregon was a little weird for me, I just had a hard time grasping it. But I did appreciate the author’s ability to balance the contrast of Hawaiian families and the setting of the Pacific Northwest.

4 out of 5 stars.

Review: Blood Red Road by Moira Young

From Goodreads:

Saba has spent her whole life in Silverlake, a dried-up wasteland ravaged by constant sandstorms. The Wrecker civilization has long been destroyed, leaving only landfills for Saba and her family to scavenge from. That's fine by her, as long as her beloved twin brother Lugh is around. But when a monster sandstorm arrives, along with four cloaked horsemen, Saba's world is shattered. Lugh is captured, and Saba embarks on an epic quest to get him back.

Suddenly thrown into the lawless, ugly reality of the world outside of desolate Silverlake, Saba is lost without Lugh to guide her. So perhaps the most surprising thing of all is what Saba learns about herself: she's a fierce fighter, an unbeatable survivor, and a cunning opponent. And she has the power to take down a corrupt society from the inside. Teamed up with a handsome daredevil named Jack and a gang of girl revolutionaries called the Free Hawks, Saba stages a showdown that will change the course of her own civilization.

My Thoughts:

You know those books that you find and after you read them you keep thinking about them and find that you’re really anxious for the next one to come out?  Thankfully, thankfully, Blood Red Road was like that for me.

Saba comes from a dysfunctional yet close family.  Her mom passed away giving birth to her little sister and Saba hates the sister for it.  The dad’s gone a little loopy since the mom passed.  The sister is a pretty normal winey little kid.  But Lugh is perfect in Saba’s eyes.  He means everything to her.  So when he’s taken away, it pushes Saba to grow up and go after him.

In the reviews I’ve seen of Blood Red Road, people talked about the rough way Saba talks.  And it is rough, jarring, and now what you’re used to reading in a novel.  But I LOVED it!  I found myself thinking in the language Saba used for days after I finished.  It was just a raw, no nonsense way of thinking. 

Saba’s growth in the book was wonderful.  In the beginning she wasn’t much more than her twin brother’s shadow, always looking to him to do the right thing.  And as she goes after him, she becomes a tough, quick thinking warrior.  I have to say, I loved how she became known as “The Angel of Death” without giving away any spoilers.  It was just great.

I did have a few hang-ups with this book.  The fact that there were no quotation marks around any of the dialogue drove me CRAZY!  It made me pay very close attention but when I’m reading I don’t want it to have to be work.  There were a few twists that seemed predictable to me.  And I was having really high hopes that this might be a standalone novel but the last three pages made that not possible.  Now I have to wait for the next one… sigh.

Overall, I really did like Blood Red Road.  I would place it in my top 5 favorite books I’ve read in 2011 so far.  I give it 4 out of 5 stars!

Review: Thirteen Reason's Why by Jay Asher

Summary from Goodreads:

Jay Asher's brilliant first novel is a moving, highly original story that focuses on a set of audiotapes made by a girl before she committed suicide, and which explain to 13 people the reasons why she decided to end her life. Told in a highly effective duel narrative -- alternating between the girl s voice and the thoughts of a boy who is listening -- this honest, poignant story reveals how other people's actions shape, and by extension can ruin, an individual's faith in people. Intensely powerful and painfully real, Thirteen Reasons Why reveals how brutal high school can be, the consequences of spreading rumors, and the lasting effects of suicide on those left behind


My Thoughts:

As I sit to write a review on Thirteen Reason’s Why I’m honestly not that sure on what to say about it. I really don’t know how I feel.


I will start off first by saying that this is a book that will be sticking with me, for a very long time I’m sure. With the book being about a girl who commits suicide and leaving these tapes telling why, how could it not? The format of the book is chilling and after listening to the short clips on the website, the effect was even more so. I felt like I could feel everything Clay was feeling as he listened to Hannah tell about her slow spiral down.

The biggest thing I don’t know what to think of though is Hannah herself. She recounts all the terrible things that have happened to her since her freshman year of high school, all the boys who thought she was someone she wasn’t because of what someone said about her, or because of a hot or not list she landed on because of a joke. I’m just going to say it, rip the Band-Aid off though: My problem with this book was that I didn’t like Hannah herself. I feel terrible saying this about a character who kills herself in the end but I just couldn’t connect with her and I had a hard time feeling that everything that happened to her was terrible enough to warrant ending her life.

Alright, take a deep breath all. *In and out*

That being said, this book hits hard on emotional levels. It makes you really, really think about the way you’ve treated people and what you’ve said about them in the past. As the book says: everything affects everything. I know that I will watch everything I say and think about people. You never know how it is going to affect them and you never know what they’re going through.

4 out of 5 stars.

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