The Keeper of the Mist

 
 

The Keeper of the Mist
by Rachel Neumeier
 
Book: Stand Alone 
Publisher: Knopf Books
Pub Date: March 8, 2016
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Magic
Format: Print
Source: Bought
Book Links: Goodreads  Amazon  Bookshop
 
Keri has been struggling to run her family bakery since her mother passed away.  Now the father she barely knew—the Lord of Nimmira—has died, and ancient magic has decreed that she will take his place as the new Lady. The position has never been so dangerous: the mists that hide Nimmira from its vicious, land-hungry neighbors have failed, and Keri's people are visible to strangers for the first time since the mists were put in place generations ago.

At the same time, three half-brothers with their own eyes on the crown make life within the House just as dangerous as the world outside. But Keri has three people to guide her: her mysterious Timekeeper, clever Bookkeeper, and steadfast Doorkeeper. Together they must find a way to repair the boundary before her neighbors realize just how vulnerable Nimmira is.

 
My Review: This book just wasn't it. Ended up leaving it a DNF just a few chapters in. 

I really didn't like the writing at all. There was so much going on that I have no idea why an editor didn't step in and catch all the issues going on. 

Keri to me wasn't a good character at all, especially for a main character. Was done with her pretty much right off the bat. She talks to herself too much, had little to no confidence and she just doesn't make sense in a lot of parts of the book. I even tried to skip ahead to see if she or writing got any better and it didn't.

Also, the book was BORING. I was begging for ANYTHING to happen. Give me just a morsel if anything, but nope. Which is so disappointing because this book sounded really good, the cover is beautiful and had the potential but the entire book just fell apart in nearly every way. 

I wanted to like this book but ultimately, I'll have to leave it here before I continue ripping the book apart. It really was just that bad.  

 

My Rating:

✪

Two Thousand Hours of Us

 

Two Thousand Hours of Us
by Gayle Forman
 
Book: Stand Alone
Publisher: Quill Tree Books
Pub Date: March 23, 2027 
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Format: ARC
Source: Publisher
Book Links: Goodreads  Amazon  Bookshop 

How long must love last in order to change your life? In this swoony, emotional YA romance from Gayle Forman, #1 New York Times bestselling author of If I Stay, what begins as a spark of attraction becomes an unforgettable first love, one filled with irresistible chemistry, tender intimacy, and the electric feeling of finally being understood.

Maybe I loved you from the moment I met you...

Nicolette feels like she's stuck in the waiting room of life, but that ends this summer. Instead of heading off to college, she takes a job at a quirky health food store and bonds quickly with the hippies, punks, and oddballs that work there.

For the first time, it feels like she's building a life that's actually her own, and experiencing the kind of acceptance from her found family that she can't always count on at home. There's even a possible romance on the horizon with the motorcycle boy she's been crushing on for weeks.

So why can't she stop thinking about her coworker Gideon? Mysterious, charming, and deeply kind, Gideon sees Nicolette in a way no one else ever has. Unlike most people, Gideon doesn't hide how he feels--especially how he feels for her--and with him Nicolette is understood, wanted, and completely herself. Their chemistry is undeniable, and every hour they spend together only makes it harder to imagine being apart.

But as the summer unfolds, Nicolette discovers that loving someone doesn't always mean knowing everything about them. Even the most powerful connection can be tested by the truths people hide, the burdens they carry, and the realities they can't escape. When the life she thought they were building together suddenly begins to slip away, she must decide what it really means to love someone, and how to move forward when everything seems lost.

This is Gayle Forman at her most tender and true: a dreamy, bittersweet YA romance about first love, first heartbreak, and the unforgettable people who shape us forever. 

 

My Review:  I love Gayle's books and was excited to dive into this one.

I have a love/hate with this book. There man moments that I liked the book and many others where I was ready to call it quits. 

Nicolette is just trying to figure out what her life is going to be. Now that she decided college isn't in the cards. Meat is now off the table. Then she gets a job. Pretty much just trying to figure it out all while constantly on egg shells at home. She isn't perfect enough, isn't going to school, doesn't eat meat, etc. Anything and everything becomes something for her parents to scrutinize over and her how her older sister is the golden child. 

I feel for Nicolette and get it. Life is rough, especially at 17. 

However, I do have some major issues with her at times. There are moments where she is 'out of touch' and despite having how her parents are, she really is a lot like them and takes until the end to finally seem some real growth from her. 

Then when it comes to her and boys... well I could've done with that. She likes one boy and then ends up falling for another who once he goes MIA she acts like the world is over in a way. Looking for him, going to his home state, 24/7 thinking about him. It's one thing for it to be a first teenage love thing but this was more obsessive and too much. 

Now, I have rarely ever not loved something by Gayle, but this one just wasn't the biggest hit compared to the others. While I didn't hate it, it had more issues that I couldn't get past to love it. The book was still okay, but for me, I was ready for it to be done when the ending finally came. 

My Rating:

✪✪✪

Weekly Spotlight - Rise of the Vicious Princess

 

Rise of the Vicious Princess

The first in a YA political fantasy duology about a fierce princess determined to bring lasting peace to her kingdom regardless of the cost to her heart.

Princess Charis Willowthorn is the dutiful sword of Calera. Raised to be ruthless and cunning, her only goal is to hold her war-torn kingdom together long enough to find a path toward peace with their ancient foe, Montevallo, even if the cost is her own heart.

When violence erupts in the castle itself and an unseen enemy begins sinking Calera’s ships, Charis realizes a threat much greater than Montevallo is coming for her people. So she forms a plan. By day, she is Calera’s formidable princess intent on forging an alliance with Montevallo. By night, she disguises herself as a smuggler and roams the sea with a trusted group of loyalists, hunting for their new enemies. And through it all, there’s the one boy she can’t have—who guards her life but steals her heart.

But her enemies are much closer than Charis realizes, and her heart isn’t the only thing she has left to lose.

My Review

 

 

Return of the Vengeful Queen

Charis Willowthorn is a queen without a throne. A Rakuuna invader holds Charis's kingdom of Calera captive, leaving her desperate—and ruthlessly committed to vengeance. But with her allies reluctant to intervene and her enemies hunting her across the open sea, Charis is left with only one forge a temporary alliance with Tal Penbyrn, the boy who betrayed her—and, at all costs, keep him out of her heart.

Tal is imprisoned, both by the Rakuuna's isolated castle and the weight of his guilt. Though he once betrayed his love, he knows that he can help turn the tide in Charis’s favor, if only he can regain her trust. But the Rakuuna have an ally of their own—one who knows Charis’s every move and will stop at nothing to see her destroyed.

With threats closing in and every allegiance in doubt, Charis must be stronger, faster, and more vicious than her enemies to reclaim her kingdom—and her future.

My Review

Book Spotlight - The Long Way I Came

 
 

The Long Way I Came
Some stories are about triumph. Others are about survival. The Long Way I Came is about becoming.

In this reflective memoir, Andrea Haney Poole traces the often invisible path of learning who you are when life refuses to follow a straight line. Moving through the landscape that shaped a life—family, loss, ambition, responsibility, and the quiet pressure to become who the world expects—she explores what it means to remain yourself when circumstances try to rewrite you.

This is not a story about having everything figured out. It is about what happens when you begin to trust your own voice, carry what life has given you with honesty, and move forward without abandoning yourself.

Part of the Radical Optimism series, The Long Way I Came reflects the quiet courage of staying open to life, even after it asks more of you than you expected. Through lived experience rather than instruction, Andrea invites readers to consider their own path, the conditions that shaped them, and the person they have become along the way.

For readers drawn to reflective memoirs about identity, resilience, personal growth, and self-discovery, this book offers companionship rather than answers.

Sometimes the long way is the way.


Book Links

Goodreads

Amazon

Bookshop


Author Interview

What inspired you to write The Long Way I Came?
I have always been a pretty happy, shiny person, and people have often asked me why I am that way, especially once they learn some of what I have been through.

My answer is usually the same: “When you have seen the worst that it gets, you get a new perspective on how bad things really are right now.”

That perspective was really the beginning of The Long Way I Came. I had reached a point in my life where I could look back at the person I had been, the choices I had made, and the things I had lived through with more curiosity than judgment. I became interested in the distance between who we were and who we are becoming.

Eventually, I realized there was a book in that distance.
I did not want to turn my life into a neat transformation story because that is not how I experienced it. The path was winding, sometimes funny, and rarely obvious while I was living it. The Long Way I Came became a way of looking honestly at all of those experiences and recognizing that every version of me had a hand in becoming the person I am now.
 
Was there anything you originally planned to include that ultimately didn't make it into the book? 
Absolutely. There are plenty of things about my journey that I still have not told.

As I was writing, I realized that including everything would change what the book was. The Long Way I Came was never meant to be an accounting of everything that has happened to me. There is an air of possibility in the book that was very important for me to preserve.

I also wanted people to find pieces of themselves in my story. We may not have lived the same lives, but we have probably felt some of the same things. Sometimes adding more detail about my particular experiences actually created more distance between me and the reader rather than less.

There are more stories I could tell, and perhaps someday I will. But this book is less about everything that happened to me and more about what we might recognize in one another.
 
Did you ever find yourself seeing an event differently once you began putting it into words?
Absolutely. I am a different person now than I was when I lived those experiences. When you are in the middle of something, you can only see what is directly in front of you. When I returned to those moments to write about them, I had the benefit of already knowing what came next.

That distance gave me perspective and clarity. I could see the experiences again through the eyes of the people who lived them, including the person I was then, while also bringing everything I have learned since.

One of the more interesting challenges was finding the words that would allow someone else to experience those moments with me. I had to think beyond what happened and remember what it felt like to be there, what mattered to me then, and what I could and could not see from where I stood.

In trying to make those moments real for someone else, I found myself appreciating many of them differently, too.
 
What was the most important story or message you wanted readers to take away from the book? 
More than anything, I wanted readers to come away with a sense of hope and curiosity about themselves and the people around them.
Our lives rarely make sense while we are living them. We make choices, change direction, get things right, get things spectacularly wrong, meet people who change us, begin again, and become different versions of ourselves along the way.

When we take the time to observe our lives, though, we begin to see more. We notice patterns. We recognize moments that mattered in ways we could not have known at the time. We can look at who we were with the perspective of who we are now. And when we bring that same curiosity to other people, we remember that they have entire journeys behind them that we may know nothing about.
That is why I called the book The Long Way I Came. We all have a road behind us, and there is value in turning around occasionally and noticing how far we have traveled.

I hope the book leaves readers a little more curious about their own stories and the stories unfolding around them, and hopeful about all that has not happened yet.

LET’S ADD SOME FUN!
 
Where is your favorite place to write?
I spent a lot of time writing The Long Way I Came either curled up in bed or sitting on our back porch with cozy blankets and good music. Apparently, my ideal writing environment is just being as comfortable as humanly possible while listening to something that helps me get in the zone. 
 
Tea or coffee? 
Both! I love apple cinnamon herbal tea in the fall, preferably somewhere cozy with a blanket, but I will happily drink a good cup of coffee just about any time of year.  
 
What is one thing on your bucket list? 
I would love to visit Prince Edward Island in Canada. I have loved Anne of Green Gables for as long as I can remember, and I would love to see the places that inspired L. M. Montgomery and experience that landscape for myself. I fully intend to have an Anne (with an E) Shirley moment while I am there.
And someday, I would love to give a talk on a really big stage, too. But perhaps I am allowed more than one thing on my bucket list!

 
LAST, BUT NOT LEAST
 
Where can readers find out more about you and your books?
The best place to find me is andreahaneypoole.com. You can find my books there, along with the How Very Human podcast, my Field Notes, and whatever I happen to be creating next. You can also find me on Instagram, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn as Andrea Haney Poole.  

Book Excerpt

Excerpt from The Long Way I Came, Chapter 10, “The First Mile”

There are moments in life when something shifts inside you before the world around you catches up. One of mine began on a winding road up a small Tennessee mountain, my car packed tight with boxes and bedding. My mother drove ahead as we made our way toward the college dorms where I would live for the next two years. I followed at a distance that felt steady and strange at the same time.

I was nineteen and trying to hold myself together. Leaving my hometown carried a sense of openness I had long wished for, yet it felt larger up close than it had in my imagination. As the trees closed around the road and the dorm buildings appeared through the branches, the reality of it pressed deeper into me. The separation, the shift, the start of a life beyond the one I had known—it all rose faster than I could manage.

Tears blurred my vision as I drove. I kept my pace behind my mother’s car, wiping my face whenever her taillights came into view so she wouldn’t worry. The tears came from the weight of entering a world where everything would be unfamiliar. My brother wasn’t beside me, making jokes to steady my nerves. My mother was ahead, carrying her own mix of hope and heartache. And the road forward felt wide enough to steady and unsettle me in equal measure.

By the time we parked, I had tried to smooth my face back into a neutral expression, but the blotchiness gave me away immediately. My mother read it the moment I stepped out—she always has a way of seeing what I’m carrying.

Guest Post

The Courage to Tell Your Own Story

By Andrea Haney Poole

For a long time, I thought telling your story meant knowing what the story was.

Beginning, middle, end. This happened, then this happened, and here is what it all meant.

Writing The Long Way I Came complicated that idea for me.

When I went back to write about things that had happened years earlier, I realized I was looking at them with information I did not have when I lived them. I knew what happened next. I knew which people stayed in my life and which ones did not. Some things I worried about endlessly turned out to matter very little. Moments I barely noticed at the time ended up changing me.

Of course I saw things differently.

But that made me wonder which version was the real one.

I think the answer might be all of them.

We make sense of things with whatever we have available to us at the time. Someone does not call, and we decide what the silence means. We make a mistake and decide what it says about us. Something does not work out the way we hoped, and we start building an explanation for why.

Sometimes we carry those explanations for years.

The person I was at nineteen understood her life with nineteen years of experience. I cannot go back and give her everything I know now. I can only look at her from here and recognize things she could not have known yet.

She certainly did not know, driving up a small Tennessee mountain toward her college dorm, what that road would eventually lead to. I know more of that story now.

More of it. Not all of it.

I am sure there are things about my life right now that I will understand differently ten years from now. There may even be things I never fully understand.

I used to think there would eventually be some point when all of it made sense. I am less convinced of that now.

We can only tell our stories from where we are standing.

You do not have to write a memoir to create stories about yourself. We all do. The stories show up without us thinking much about them: I have always been this way. I am terrible at that. I should have known better. I missed my chance.

Maybe you believed those things once. Maybe you still do.

But when was the last time you checked if they were still you?

There are parts of The Long Way I Came that surprised me as I wrote them. There are things I understand differently now than I did when I wrote the book. I expect that will keep happening. 

I like knowing that.

My story is still moving because I am.

Yours is, too.

Maybe telling your own story begins with being willing to turn around once in a while and notice the long way you came.

 

Author footer:
Andrea Haney Poole is the author of The Long Way I Came. Find her books, How Very Human podcast, Field Notes, and more at andreahaneypoole.com.  

About the Author
Andrea Haney Poole is an author, speaker, and human-centered strategist whose work explores what it means to be human in the systems we build and inhabit. She is the author of The Long Way I Came, a memoir of identity, resilience, and radical optimism, and serves as Awards Director for the Colorado Authors League.








Author Links
Website

Instagram 

Threads

Book Spotlight - Cages of the Heart

 
 

Cages of the Heart
Hampshire, England, 1914

Some secrets set you free

Charlotte and Richard are newly married with World War One raging on in France. As her husband is increasingly distant with her, Charlotte finds herself drawn into her young sister, Rose’s life as she begins to suspect her sister of receiving a mystery visitor to her home, while her husband is away fighting on the Western Front.

Attempting to uncover her sister’s secret and as her own health suffers, Charlotte, realises the danger they all face if the secret is revealed. But the mystery visitor holds the key to retrieving Charlotte’s memory temporarily lost. Should she accept such help or do her patriotic duty as her country expects of her?

In this heart warming tale, Kathryn Barnett masterfully captures the pull of sisterly ties, the intrigue of small-town speculation, and the nostalgia of times long past. Cages of the Heart is a poignant tale of marriage and resilience, set against the backdrop of World War One England.

 
Book Links
Goodreads

Amazon

Author Interview

What inspired you to write Cages of the heart?
I wanted to write a home front novel set during WW1 as I find that such an interesting period of history for women being involved in the war effort and still harbouring the hope of winning their right to vote. I also love the Regency town of Lymington, the setting of my novel, which is located near to my home and has so much history of its own, including one of its big houses having been converted into a Red Cross military hospital during the Great War.

How did you decide the personalities of your characters?
I had been sitting with Charlotte and Rose as the two sisters for a while, so I knew all about Charlotte’s assertive ways with her young sister, and Rose not afraid to stand up to Charlotte. But I also wanted to show the vulnerable side of Charlotte, when everything she has built around her starts to tumble and her mental health deteriorates as a consequence. I was genuinely surprised by the Charlotte that emerged and it was a joy to write her story and keep readers guessing how it would all end.

What themes do you most want readers to take away from your book?
How even the most put together person like Charlotte, struggles, saying she’s okay, when she’s not and how her breaking point shows how a community can go about supporting her and confirming it is all right to ask for help in difficult times.

Is there a character whose choices you especially wanted readers to understand?
Without revealing any spoilers Charlotte finds herself doing the unthinkable, but I wanted to show the confusion and memory loss associated with her behaviour during postpartum.

What was the most challenging part of writing the book?
Delving into the theme of memory loss, which my mum suffers from, I leaned heavily on her representation of the confusion and loss of own identity to get into Charlotte’s story arc which was empowering, but also traumatic for me at times.

Let’s add some fun!

What’s your favourite food?
I’m a bit of a chocolate addict.

What is your best part of the day?
Early mornings with the sun rising and all the hope of what the day will bring.

Would you rather live in a haunted mansion or live in an un-haunted cottage?
I would choose a cosy, un-haunted cottage.

Read by the fireplace or beach?
By the fireplace with a hot chocolate in hand!

Last, but not least

Where can readers find out more about you and your books?
Readers can connect with me on my website kathrynbarnettauthor.com and also on my social media handle @kittibarnett3 on Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and Threads and on TikTok at @kathrynbarnett620

 
Author Bio
I’m an indie author from Hampshire, England. I write historical fiction focusing at present on the 20th century. My books are thought-provoking stories about sisters, love and what it means to be a woman. I have one standalone novel published and with Cages of the Heart, I’m working on self-publishing my Three Sisters serial focusing on women’s lives during the Great War.

Aside from writing I am a full-time caregiver to my mum. I enjoy walks by the sea and time spent away from home in one of my local coffee shops.

Author Links

Website

Book Spotlight - Burnt Lungs and Bitter Sweets

 

Burnt Lungs and Bitter Sweets
In 1976, Hoagie, Toad, Toggie and Jonesy love the Sex Pistols, shopping trolleys and getting wasted. When boredom is a crime and sedation is the solution it's never likely to end well. Cue the music and roll back the decades through misadventures in Amsterdam, disorder on the dance floor, a dodgy portaloo at at Millennium and a couple of dead rats. Maybe if that thing with Kecks hadn't happened, life for Hoagie would have been different?
 
 

Book Links
Goodreads
Amazon
Bookshop

 

Author Interview

What inspired you to write Burnt Lungs and Bitter Sweets? 
I attended an author talk by local author, James Jenkins, who included a short creative exercise at the end of the workshop. The prompt was a photograph of a shopping trolley in a river. In about 10 minutes I had written a poem, ‘Shallow Grave in the River Gipping’, which was a poem about a punk who has drowned in the river, inspired by the skeletal look of the trolley. I included a lot of ‘70’s punk imagery. I then wrote a short story for an online call by Jenkins who had founded Ipswich-based ‘Urban Pigs Press’ – an indie publisher whose goal was to open doors, not charge authors extortionate amounts of money to produce good books. The story was based on the poem, where a punk drowns whilst running from the police (based on a true event) and I then kept writing and it formed chapter 1 of a full novel about the punk (Hoagie and his friends, Toggie, Toad and Jonsey) from teen hood to adulthood and eventual death (I tell the readers he dies right from the start but they then discover how). I think I was also inspired by my cousin, a former well-known punk who actually lived to 63 despite a lifelong addiction. He was a kind and funny person who was a bit hapless, and I definitely had him in mind. Most of the book is fiction – although I sometimes use real incidents which I have massively embellished. It was quite different in style and tone to my gothic story collection and some of my poetry, because the sweary and irreverent characters took on a life of their own. It’s very funny and you might not expect that in something so dark and tragic. Readers seem to love the characters and root for them – they are anti-heroes who make very poor choices and are sometimes criminals, but they are very human. I put a music soundtrack on Spotify and listed it at the back of the book; readers seem to like that too. You can find me as ‘Holly Smith’ on Spotify. The genre is one I call Brit Grit – I was definitely the first person to use this term, but I have seen it being used elsewhere since. It might sit alongside something like ‘Trainspotting’ on the bookshelves. Urban Pigs Press subsequently read it and then edited and published it and now I am part of the Urban Pigs editing team. 

 

What do you hope readers take away from the book?
I hope they find it funny, although if you are offended by swearing and drug addiction you probably should avoid it. It is absolutely in context for the characters and could not be watered down or it would not sound realistic. I am not as sweary in real life! I also hope they feel a range of emotions – because it is certainly dark and tragic too. Prisoners read it for a book group and some of them admitted to crying at the end before asking when I was writing the next one! I think all readers relate to the antics of youth and love the cultural, local and musical references – even if they were better behaved when young. Everyone wants to believe they were once a rebel though. Maybe they might begin to empathise with the issues surrounding addiction and become less judgmental? I hope it provokes some deep thought. 

 

Was there anything that happened in the story that you didn't originally plan? 
All of it! Each chapter is a snapshot of a particular year for the characters and an incident in their lives. Even though I knew the protagonist would die and how, it was almost as if the journey was guided unpredictably by the characters themselves. I enjoyed making myself howl with laughter and feel absolutely despairing in equal measures. Hoagie, the main character, is always really likeable and he does some good things. Much of his life is shaped by a traumatic incident when he was 20, so he makes mistakes. Like all of us. When I edited the first draft, I changed the order of some chapters, and if I got a bit stuck on where a chapter was going, I used to go a wine bar with my husband and we would bounce ideas off each other. I think some of the other customers got very concerned – the main character smuggles drugs in his socks, goes to prison and falls in a canal in Amsterdam as well as there being some ambiguity over whether he kills a couple of ‘bad guys’. Imagine overhearing that conversation without context.

 

Is there a particular moment in the book that has stayed with you since you finished writing it? 
There are – a real sadness over the incident which haunts Hoagie and his mate, Toad and most people are also appalled by the lengths people might go to in order to feed their addictions – Hoagie himself has quite a solid moral compass in some ways – there are some behaviours he is disgusted by and at heart he is a good person who has done some bad things. The scene when he dies is heart-wrenching because it is avoidable and over something trivial in the end.

 

If you could write a short story about one character's life before the book, who would you choose? 
I would probably choose Hoagie’s girlfriend when he was young – Kecks. But although I have written the story of young men, because that was the story that simply grew, I will write another prequel book fore fronting the women in the book. It would be interesting to develop their stories.

 

 

LET’S ADD SOME FUN! 

How many bookshelves are in your house? 
9, each with 6 shelves, double-stacked! And a couple of smaller ones. My ‘office’ room, where I teach, doubles up as a library.
 
Tea or coffee? 
Diet Pepsi! I am obsessed with it. I loathe tea and I will occasionally drink coffee, but it sends me to sleep if I have too much!
 
Read in silence or with background music? 
Silence because I join in. I can sometimes have classical music on if I am working or reading, but I am very easily distracted.  

 

LAST, BUT NOT LEAST 

Where can readers find out more about you and your books?
My books are in local independent bookshops in Suffolk, and can be ordered online from them or major bookstores. You can also get them from Amazon including on kindle, and also from me directly. I am in the process of launching a new improved website but I think it will still be virginiabetts.com. This will include a shop for my books. But I am on all of the socials – mostly @ginnb900 for Instagram and virginia c betts on Facebook. If you look me up, I am easy to find because I am also a performer so there’s lots of information about me scattered about online. You can also find me if you search for Urban Pigs Press or Results Tutoring Ipswich. I post a regular monthly blog on Author’s Electric, which I also upload to Substack as Virginia Betts.

 

About the Author
I’m a multi-genre author, actor, performance poet and tutor of English. I was first published by an independent press in 2022 with a collection of Victorian pastiche Gothic stories and I won some notable prizes for writing. I then had two full poetry collections published and numerous articles and individual poems and stories published in journals and books. I had my novel published by a small press in 2024 and reached the finals of the Page Turner Awards in 2025. This year I’m nominated for the Best Indie Novel awards and I’m currently completing my second novel which is darkly funny story about friendship, love , fame and redemption, with Britpop soundtrack.

 

Author Links
Website
Instagram

Earthquake

  

Earthquake 
by Aprilynne Pike
 
Book: Earthbound #2
Publisher: Razorbill
Pub Date: July 14, 2014
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Romance, Paranormal
Format: Print
Source: Bought
Book Links: Goodreads  Amazon   

Tavia Michaels has discovered that she’s an Earthbound—a fallen goddess with the power to remake the Earth—and that a rival faction of Earthbounds, the Reduciata, has created a virus that is literally wiping swaths of the planet out of existence.

Tavia is captured and imprisoned before she can act on this information, along with her eternal lover, Logan. Huddled in a claustrophobic cell, they lose track of the days, their attempts to escape proving as ephemeral as Tavia’s newly gestating powers. But then Tavia and Logan are mysteriously rescued. . . .

They’re brought to the underground headquarters of the Curatoria, another group of Earthbounds that Tavia doesn’t fully trust. There, she’s told that she can save the Earth before it disappears. She agrees.

Tavia quickly realizes that she isn’t like other Earthbound, and as her abilities continue to awaken, they begin to threaten her centuries-long relationship with Logan. When Benson—Tavia’s former best friend and romantic interest—appears at Curatoria headquarters, Tavia will again have to make a choice about who to be with even as she tries to stop the virus that is destroying the world and uncover the truth about the two Earthbound organizations that have her tangled up in their webs.

 

My Review: DNF.

I'm slowly catching up on my older TBR books and I remember LOVING the first book, but this one fell short for me. 

Now, it very well could be the time between reading the first book to the second one or that my taste for YA just isn't the same anymore. But this book just didn't grab me like the first one did. 

We do go right where the last book left off. Tavia is learning more about herself and who she really is. Learning more about her powers and being able to use them. There is a lot that is going on for her and it's just barely started. Wait until she finds out she is even more abnormal than she already thought possible. 

When it came to her and Logan, I wanted to see them grow more, wanted to learn more about them and their past life, etc. Except somehow they seemed very immature to me at times and I ended up not liking them as much in this book. Didn't hate it but certainty wasn't rooting for it either. 

The whole plot of the book could have been done better. It was pretty slow pace at times. It seemed like the idea was there but didn't know how to bring out into the story. It got to a point where it was mind numbingly boring and I just had to give up.

Overall not the best in the series. The first book was amazing and then it somehow went down hill with this one. I probably won't end up finishing the series though.

 

My Rating:

✪✪

Book Spotlight - The Silver Luna's Awakening

 
 

The Silver Luna's Awakening
Every legend begins with a choice. Hers began with betrayal.

Teagan has always trusted her instincts. But when the full moon rises over Blackwood Forest and the sorcerers close in, the one person she loved most becomes the one who destroys everything.

Fleeing into the frozen night with nothing but fear and fury, Teagan stumbles upon a hidden sanctuary beneath the mountain roots—Thornhaven, a refuge for those the world has forgotten. There, she discovers the truth her blood has been guarding for generations: she is the heir to the Silver Luna, a power ancient enough to shatter the darkness—or die trying.

But the sorcerers are not hunting her by accident. A shadow called the Hollow Moon is rising, and it knows her name. To survive, Teagan must gather the scattered clans, face the ghosts of her past, and embrace a destiny she never asked for.

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Book Excerpt 

Every legend begins with a choice. Hers began with betrayal.

Teagan has always trusted her instincts. But when the full moon rises over Blackwood Forest and the sorcerers close in, the one person she loved most becomes the one who destroys everything.

Fleeing into the frozen night with nothing but fear and fury, Teagan stumbles upon a hidden sanctuary beneath the mountain roots—Thornhaven, a refuge for those the world has forgotten. There, she discovers the truth her blood has been guarding for generations: she is the heir to the Silver Luna, a power ancient enough to shatter the darkness—or die trying.

But the sorcerers are not hunting her by accident. A shadow called the Hollow Moon is rising, and it knows her name. To survive, Teagan must gather the scattered clans, face the ghosts of her past, and embrace a destiny she never asked for.

Because some lights don't awaken once.

They awaken twice—once beneath the moon, and once within the soul.

The Silver Luna's Awakening is Book One of The Silver Luna Chronicles—a sweeping fantasy of betrayal, found family, and the courage to howl back at the dark