Book Reviews

The Vampire Diaries: The Awakening and The Struggle by L.J. Smith

 in Book Reviews / Books / Young Adult by

Summary

“Elena: the golden girl, the leader, the one who can have any boy she wants.

Stefan: brooding and mysterious, he seems to be the only one who can resist Elena, even as he struggles to protect her from the horrors that haunt his past.

Damon: sexy, dangerous, and driven by an urge for revenge against Stefan, the brother who betrayed him. Determined to have Elena, he’d kill to possess her.

Collected here in one volume for the first time, volumes one and two of The Vampire Diaries, the tale of two vampire brothers and the beautiful girl torn between them.”

-From Amazon.com

Cover of "The Vampire Diaries: The Awaken...

From Amazon.com

Review

Completely different than the TV show. I am one of those people who is in love with this show (team Damon all the way) but this book was quite different than the tv show. The characters were the same and the story line was the same but how some of the characters act is different than in the TV show.

Caroline in the TV show is just a little full of herself and is very popular. In the book she is second in command and quite bitchy (mind my french but there was no other way to put it.) Matt is as sweet as always and Stefan is the same still. He is haunted by his past. Then there is Damon who is exactly the same (thankfully.) But they met differently in the TV show (I liked that meeting better) but what can I do.

Tyler has a different last name in the book. His last name is Smallwood but in the TV show it is Lockwood. But he is sill extremely obnoxious and irritating as he was in the begging. Vicki is still the same but not much really happens with her.

There is also this difference between powers. Damon has a lot of powers but in the TV show he can only compel people and he is fast and stuff like that.

So far my opinion of this book may seem negative but it is a great book. It is just better if you read the book first. I personally enjoy the TV show more but the book is still a great thing to read so you can see where the TV show came from.

The entire book seems very Twilight-y to me. Stefan is Edward, Damon is Jacob, Elena is Bella, and everyone else is the friends in Forks. What an uncanny resemblance (must be a very common theme in books now.)

But still if you enjoy the TV show you should see where it came from so I do recommend you reading this book.

The setting of the book is still the same in this small town but one major difference for me is Elena. She seems a little more pushy in this book, a little more snotty and more popular. In the TV show she met Stefan and thought he was hot and then they became a thing. In the book Elena desires and has to have Stefan at any cost. That was one of the biggest differences which I found.

But overall this was a very enjoyable book and will be reading the other ones in the series.

So, who are my fellow Vampire Diaries fans?

Go Team Damon!!!!!!

The Dead of Winter by Chris Priestley

 in Book Reviews / Books / Young Adult by

Summary

“After Michael’s parents die, he is invited to stay with his guardian in a desolate country house. He begins to suspect something is not quite right on the day he arrives when he spots a mysterious woman out in the frozen mists. But little can prepare him for the solitude of the house itself. His guardian is rarely seen, and there’s a malevolent force lurking in an old hallway mirror. As the chilling suspense builds, Michael realizes that the house and its grounds harbor many more secrets-both dead and alive.”

-Amazon.com

Review

This was an extremely easy read. I read it in about an hour to an hour and a half. But for such a short book, it was extremely good. There was a lot going on in this book and it kept you entertained. This book was about 218 pages but the margins in this book made it really be less than that.

It was a really short story and boy was it to the point. I did enjoy it but I would have liked it to be a bit longer. That was my only complaint about the book. It just seemed to give the smallest amount of details and then it just ended.

There really is not much to say about this book due to the fact that nothing really happened. It was a good read and I would recommend it but there is nothing else to say about it.

I did like the cover though. It was in black and white and in the distance you can see a persons silhouette. Then there are trees which are not covered in leaves which means that it is winter and there is snow on the ground. Then at the front of the cover is a skull. I thought that the cover was quite interesting, but that is just my opinion. 🙂

Hope that you give it a try.

Outlaw by Stephen Davies

 in Adventure / Book Reviews / Books / Fiction / Older Readers / Young Adult by

Summary

“A high-tension, high-tech thriller with an African setting.

Jake and his sister, Kas, whose father is the British ambassador to Burkina Faso, are abducted, bundled into a van, and driven into the unknown. In smartphone contact with his father, Jake learns that the kidnapper with the spider web tattoo is the remorseless outlaw Yakuuba Sor, who is connected to an international terrorist organization. But is he the real Yakuuba Sor? And is Sor really a dangerous criminal? In this fast-paced tale laced with trickery and murder, Jake and Kas discover that with the corrupt local government and British Intelligence arrayed against them, survival in the African desert may be the least of their problems. Includes an afterword.”

-From Amazon, Book Description

Review

This book was exciting and really kept you entertained. It was definitely a page turner and a couldn’t put it down book. This book was by Stephen Davies who also wrote Hacking Timbuktu which was also a really great book.

The cover of this book was very similar to Hacking Timbuktu which was why I thought it may be a series, but unfortunately this was a completely different story. There were some similar story lines in a sense because there were the gadgets and there was some parkour in this book but that was the only similarity.

This book was set in modern-day as there were cell phones and some unmanned flying machine. I thought that this book portrayed life in Africa, where they was going back to visit his parents, was quite accurate and it showed what the life was like there. You also got to see both sides of life. The life of a diplomat and the life of eating gold leaf and then the life of an outlaw, hence the title.

The book is a definite read and I recommend you reading the other one of his books too.

Hope that you enjoy.

Zahra’s Paradise by Amir and Khalil

 in Book Reviews / Books by

Summary

“Set in the aftermath of Iran’s fraudulent elections of 2009, Zahra’s Paradise is the fictional story of the search for Mehdi, a young protestor who has vanished into an extrajudicial twilight zone. What’s keeping his memory from being obliterated is not the law. It is the grit and guts of his mother, who refuses to surrender her son to fate, and the tenacity of his brother, a blogger, who fuses tradition and technology to explore and explode the void in which Mehdi has vanished.
Zahra’s Paradise weaves together fiction and real people and events. As the world witnessed the aftermath of Iran’s fraudulent elections, through YouTube videos, on Twitter, and in blogs, this story came into being. The global response to this gripping tale has been passionate—an echo of the global outcry during the political upheaval of the summer of 2009.
Zahra’s Paradise is a first on the internet, a first for graphic novels, and a first in the history of political dissidence. Zahra’s Paradise is being serialized online at zahrasparadise.com.”
-Amazon.com
Review
I really disliked this book. I could not get past the first 5 pages of the book. Yes I know that I should have given the book a chance but I just couldn’t. Puppies were killed in the beginning of the book and I really did not like it and since it was a graphic novel, it was graphic.
Maybe I will pick this book up again another day but I just could not deal with these puppies being killed. I am fine with violence and people dying in books, but I just could not deal with these puppies.
I cannot say anything about this book but I just wanted to let you know what I thought about the beginning of it.
The drawings in the book though were quite good.
You may be interested but I was not. But if you do read this book, please let me know what it was like.

She’s So Dead to Us by Kieran Scott

 in Book Reviews / Books / Young Adult by

Summary

“Perfect, picturesque Orchard Hill. It was the last thing Ally Ryan saw in the rearview mirror as her mother drove them out of town and away from the shame of the scandal her father caused when his hedge fund went south and practically bankrupted all their friends. Now, two years later, Ally’s mother has landed a job back at the site of their downfall, and they’re not exactly receiving a warm welcome. One bright spot, however, is gorgeous, intense Jake Graydon. But it won’t be easy for Ally to be with him—not if his friends (her former friends) have anything to say about it. Ally was hoping to have left all the drama in the past, but some things just can’t be forgotten….”

– Amazon.com

Review

This book was completely different from I thought it would be. I thought it would be more mushy mushy and more romance, but there was a whole lot more then that. The author, Kieran Scott, made the reader feel many different emotions. My main emotion was anger because of everything which Ally had to go though and how her friends were such jerks. But this book was so good. I finished it in less than a week and I am about to start the next one in the series, He’s So Not Worth It.

This was definitely a YA book because there was drinking and some bad language, but that is expected. I would recommend this book for anyone over the age of 14 because of some of the things which happened. This was definitely not a good role model book though because of everything happening due to Ally’s father, but this book was good anyway so it is still a definite read.

The story was set in modern-day and the sentences were not what I would call challenging so it was what I would consider an easy read – 304 pgs with quite big print. Nothing which a teen could not handle.

Kieran Scott does have pen names so you may have read other books by her. She ask goes by Kate Brian and Emma Harrison. She wrote the Cheerleader Trilogy and the He’s So/She’s So Trilogy which this book is the first one of.

This was a great book and I will be checking out some other books by this author under all of her pen names. Hope that you check out some of her pieces of writing.