Review: Ink by Amanda Sun

Title: Ink
Author: Amanda Sun
Release Date: 25th June 2013
Publisher: Harlequine Teen
Find on: Goodreads

Quick Review: On the heels of a family tragedy, the last thing Katie Greene wants to do is move halfway across the world. Stuck with her aunt in Shizuoka, Japan, Katie feels lost. Alone. She doesn’t know the language, she can barely hold a pair of chopsticks, and she can’t seem to get the hang of taking her shoes off whenever she enters a building.

Then there’s gorgeous but aloof Tomohiro, star of the school’s kendo team. How did he really get the scar on his arm? Katie isn’t prepared for the answer. But when she sees the things he draws start moving, there’s no denying the truth: Tomo has a connection to the ancient gods of Japan, and being near Katie is causing his abilities to spiral out of control. If the wrong people notice, they'll both be targets.

Katie never wanted to move to Japan—now she may not make it out of the country alive.


Detailed Review: I felt so amazed and awed after reading Ink. It felt like I was on a roller-coaster ride the whole time with it's own set of slopes and loop-the-loops. It was so exhilarating the whole time I was reading the book.

What I loved most about the book was it's setting. It's actually the first time I read a book set somewhere in Japan and I wondered if this would influence the fact on how much I would like the book. True, it did feel foreign at first with all the Japanese words and background but then you'll get used to it and move along with the flow. I love books like this. 

Also the characters had depth, which always contributes to the amazingness level of the book. Katie is forced to go to a place where she's considered a foreigner but she is brave enough to face the difficulties and also uncover Tomohiro's true facade. Tomohiro is selfless as he tries to keep his ex-girlfriend and Katie away so his powers won't harm the people his love and yet he needs them more than they need him. I think these two main characters will be hard to forget in a long time.

The story also took my breath away, because of it's complex simplicity, since all the author did was took a key idea and story and developed it into something more.

This book was a new experience, with it's setting, characters, culture and events and I also really like Amanda's ability to involve both the mythological and fantasy world together with our world. She relates them together so well. Her debut novel will certainly win lots of hearts, not excluding mine.

AND I THANK THE PERSON WHO DESIGNED THE COVER AND DID THE SKETCHES IN THE BOOK. THEY'RE BEAUTIFUL. I loved the art. They're just so miraculously perfect.

Brief Review: Against a beautiful and cultural setting, Amanda Sun creates a story that exudes originality and creativity. And the characters are ones that wouldn't be easily forgotten. The author manages to weave in reality and the fantasy world so well into Katie's life that you would find yourself amazed by the skills wielded by the author.

Final Rating: 5/5 'Totally Amazing!'

QUOTE: 

What Tomohiro thinks about his powers,

What lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.---Aristotle

Your Reviewer:

Waiting on Wednesday: This Side of Salvation by Jeri-Smith Ready

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by us, that highlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication 'can't-wait-to-read' selection is:

Title: This Side of Salvation
Author: Jeri-Smith Ready
Release Date: 1st April 2014
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Find on: Goodreads

Everyone mourns differently. When his older brother was killed, David got angry. As in, fist-meets-someone-else’s-face furious. But his parents? They got religious. David’s still figuring out his relationship with a higher power, bu
t there’s one thing he does know for sure: The closer he gets to new-girl Bailey, the better, brighter, happier, more he feels.

Then his parents start cutting all their worldly ties in to prepare for the Rush, the divine moment when the faithful will be whisked off to Heaven…and they want David to do the same. David’s torn. There’s a big difference between living in the moment and giving up his best friend, varsity baseball, and Bailey—especially Bailey—in hope of salvation.

But when he comes home late from prom, and late for the Rush, to find that his parents have vanished, David is in more trouble than he ever could have imagined...

It was the title that made me want to read the book and also the cover. They just make me so curious. And then add in  the story and BOOM. I WANT TO READ THE BOOK. I really want to see how this author can write about death... I know creepy, right?

Review: A Veil of Glass and Rain by Petra F. Bagnardi

Title: A Veil of Glass and Rain
Author: Petra F. Bagnardi
Release Date 20th April 2013: 
Publisher: Self-published
Find on: Goodreads

Quick Review: Brina and Eagan meet for the first time when she's nine and he's fourteen. They like each other from the very beginning, although their bond isn't immediate, but it grows over the years. What links them is the fact that their parents are photographers and are extremely devoted to their work and to each other; so much so that both Brina and Eagan have to learn how to take care of themselves from a very young age. Despite their differences, age, gender, nationality, Brina is Italian and Eagan is American, they find comfort in their growing friendship. 
Then Brina becomes a teenager, and her feelings for her friend start changing and deepening. New desires stir within her. As soon as Brina realizes how those feelings complicate her friendship with Eagan, she runs away from him.
A few years later, Brina is twenty and Eagan is twenty-five, they find one another once again. Brina is studying cinema in Rome and she's also trying to become a musician. Eagan begins to work as an architect in the same city. Eagan wants to be a part of Brina's life anew. Brina, however, is still in love with him; she finds it difficult to act merely as a friend and she keeps pulling away.

Set in the beautiful Rome, this is a sensual and romantic story of friendship and love.


Detailed Review: 

What I did like: The setting and the story. I think the author chose a really good setting and it isn't too cliched either, because people usually relate love to Paris but she has chosen Rome instead, which I think made the book stand out a little more. The story was simple but good. The author manages to put some twists into the story. The cover looks really nice as well. I don't judge a book by it's cover, but it definitely is a point-scorer. There were also some good characters in there, for example Eagan, whose cheerful and kind nature makes him likable immediately.

What I didn't like: Brina was too clingy and needy to me and I don't like main characters like that. If she could just grow up a little, then I would have liked her more. But she was simply too dependent on Eagan and her friends. Second point, too much sex. I found myself skipping some pages on that and to the more interesting parts. But I say this because I'm not a fan of erotica or New Adult. I mean it isn't THAT bad, I just didn't like it. I also think the author could add in more POVs besides Brina and Eagan's because I was really interested in their friends and family and what was happening to them.


The first time I saw Eagan, it was through a veil of glass and water. I was nine, and he was fourteen.


A Veil of Glass and Rain tells a story of a love so strong between two best friends, that they would do anything to solve the obstacles that are in their way. I liked how the author likes to mention the age difference because it reminds the reader that it is a problem, no matter how minor it seems. The love in this story is uncommon but possible. Petra paints a beautiful picture of love that will take the reader's breath away when they read it.      

Brief Review: I think this book was really good except that I would recommend it to adult readers. But the story was good and I liked the setting Petra picked because it set the story to a great start and ending. Her witting is sometimes powerful and can get whole sentences stuck in your head. The author did a good job though, of portraying a love that is passionate and unyielding that it really makes us yearn for it.

Final Rating: 4/5 'Really Liked It!'

QUOTE: 

 This describes Eagan's and Brina's love,

I cannot let you burn me up, nor can I resist you. No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.---A.S. Byatt

Your Reviewer:

Review: Altered by Shawnda Currie

Title: Altered
Author: Shawnda Currie
Publisher: Flea Circus Books
Release Date: September 2nd 2012
Find on: Amazon, Goodreads

Quick Review: Abandoned by her family, Lacey is sent to a juvenile detention center known as Clear Waters. Her teen years don't look promising until she is befriended by a mysterious stranger named Taylor, a gorgeous guy whose captivating eyes seem to stare into her soul. Convinced she is in danger at Clear Waters, Lacey joins Taylor in a daring escape. As she meets Taylor's group of friends, she discovers that they're more than they seem - they've been sent from the future to head off an evil corporate plot that will lead to a world war unless averted. With Lacey as their only hope to prevent a grim future, Taylor shows Lacey how to tap into her psychic abilities known in his time as evolved humans.

Travelling with her new friends, she discovers the magic of love while she grows into the powerful warrior chosen to make the difference to the world!

Detailed Review: I thought Altered was actually a really good book, entertaining and whatnot but some parts felt a little slow for me... and well, the characters themselves were quite creative and others just seriously uncertain where I actually had to reread the chapter again just to get it right, but I loved the main character unlike some of the other characters that I've read about, she's not annoying but stubborn at times... BUT (yes, the BIG 'but') you'll, as the reader will grow to love Lacey more. 

Love her name by the way :P 

The characters (well, the main ones anyway) have SUPER POWER, they're espers, ESP (in my term) people with extrasensory perception who have come from the future to convince Lacey that she's the key in saving the world! The story has a bit of romance hence the boy called Taylor who has just come into the picture after Lacey arrives at Clear Water, a juvenile detention center. 

There he teaches her well, tries to anyway, into using her powers... there she learns that she is not as normal as she thinks she is... Well, she already knew that. Including powerful friendships and findings deep beneath Clear Water facility, lies electric chairs and torture... it's for psychotic people a.k.a people who don't follow the rules. 

A slow relationship builds and then the escaping from Clear Water begins. 

I find Shawnda Currie's writing to be interesting and there's this certain twist that makes her book quite mysterious as well, as the budding romance between Lacey and Taylor. I really loved her book but like I said before, it felt kinda slow at some parts of the book where I had to stop and think about it. 

Beware of the slowness! But love Shawnda Currie's creative writing!  

Surprisingly I liked the ending though it's NOT the ending, you, readers will be at the edge of your seats as you flip the next page to the next book. Don't miss the second and third installment of Afflictions of The Evolved, Broken and Choices!

Brief Review: 'Shawnda Currie has developed a story that takes us from the future to the present where time travelling and people with special powers exist to protect the world. The characters fused into the story has made me love the book... though the downside of the story was it's slowness. But the key of the story was it's plot...really liked it!'

My Rating: 4/5   "Really Liked it!"











Reviewer: 

Feature & Follow Friday #159

FEATURE & FOLLOW FRIDAY is a blog hop that is designed to provide as much exposure towards other bloggers as well as yourself, and to expand following. It's hosted by Parajunkee and Alison Can Read, each whom feature a chosen blog for a week, it's also an interesting way to get to know one another bloggers.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK: 

What do you do with your books after you're done reading them?

Well, after I read my books I put them on my shelf, carefully placing them (if it's series, together) and then I would stare at them... After a few minutes, I'd stroke the binders... yeah, I'm really creepy :P 

ahahhahaa that's how much I love my books ;)

Guest Post: The Vampire Noctuaries by Eric Muss-Barnes

Today, we welcome author Eric Muss-Barnes to our blog to talk about how actually designing covers doesn't seem as easy as it looks and that fact that people judge most books by covers.

*applause*

We're always told we shouldn't judge a book by the cover, but, let's face it, if we didn't make judgements and assumptions and find appeal in the covers, why have artwork on them in the first place? Would the lovely blokes of Spinal Tap have been upset about their "Smell the Glove" album cover if they were allowed to keep it sex(ist)y instead of solid black? No. Cover art is important.

 We all judge books by the cover. We shouldn't. But we do.

 Because of this undeniable fact, I knew I was taking a big risk with the two books in my duology,Vampire Noctuaries, The Gothic Rainbow and Annwn's Maelstrom Festival.

As you well know, hardcover books in ages past didn't have fancy pictures on their covers. Typically, most books were leatherbound or clothbound and merely had a title on the spine of the tome. Nothing more.

 The word "noctuary" is rather antiquated. In fact, most dictionaries don't even have it anymore. So, forgive me if I'm telling you something you already know, but, allow me to indulge the folks who might not know what the word means; A "noctuary" is a diary or a journal that is only kept in the evenings. Since the book is literally supposed to be a journal kept by the main character, I wanted the cover to be reflective of that. I didn't want the cover of The Gothic Rainbow to look like a novel, I wanted it to look like a leatherbound diary.

 Back when I first released The Gothic Rainbow in 1997, there was no such thing as on-demand printing. I had to purchase 1000 copies of the book and stuff them in my grandparents basement. At $5 per copy, printing a full-cover cover would had added about $2 to the cost of each book. At my wages, it was a struggle to be $5000 in debt, I simply couldn't afford to be $7000 in debt. Thus, the original printing of The Gothic Rainbow was not in color and instead has a solid black-and-white cover. That was all I could afford. But, that was never my vision. That was never the cover I had in my head.

 When it came time to release Annwn's Maelstrom Festival, the long-awaited sequel to The Gothic Rainbow, I was finally able to create the cover for both books, the way they were meant to be.

 Designing the leatherbound look was a mix of my photography and Photoshop work. I went to a used bookstore in Los Angeles, in search of any old book with a brown leather cover. Unfortunately, this proved to be much more difficult than I imagined it would be. I tended to find one extreme or the other - beautifully flawless leather books in every color but brown, or books that were utterly destroyed and missing covers, but I could tell from the coloring of the spine, it would have been awesome.

 Crap.

 Why was this so difficult? I couldn't find a cool old book in an old used bookstore? Auuuugh!

 Eventually, I settled for a 1820's paperbound book, that looked very much like leather. It had a wonderful tarnish and erosion and gold leaf splattered around the edges. When I got the book home, I set it up against some black posterboard and photographed a number of closeups with my Canon SLR digital camera. Then, I found some weathered leather images online and augmented my photographs with the leather texture, blending the two and thereby compositing an original piece of art for the cover, that was not a stock photo image, and couldn't be recreated by any ol' schmuck fumbling around an image database. I'm excited to think that both covers of The Vampire Noctuaries are truly based upon a real book that is nearly 200 years old. Makes the aura of the books feel that much more authentic; Like something you really did pick up and dust off from the catacombs of an ancient vampire mansion.

 Even the title font is original - created by hand, by me, using Fontographer, back in 1996. I've never uploaded it online or made it available on any font sharing sites or anything. That way, it has always been unique to The Vampire Noctuaries and has never appeared anywhere else.

 The logo on the front of The Gothic Rainbow is actually a tribute to Skinny Puppy. Not many people notice that. However, if you look at the stylized ankh and the curves, you see it's actually the initials "G.R." which are a homage to the S.P. initials used on Skinny Puppy albums, as Skinny Puppy is also the first band to make an appearance in the musical references of the story.

 As I said before, I knew this was a risk. There's no text on the back cover of The Gothic Rainbow. No summary to entice the potential readers. Just the symbol of an ankh, stamped as gold leaf into antique leather. Even the back of Annwn's Maelstrom Festival contains an emotional bit of poetry, not a book description. Would I be intrigued to read such books myself? Honestly? Yes. I'd at least flip it open to the beginning. Anyone with the audacity to print a modern day book with an 1800's style cover would be worth 30 seconds of my attention. I don't know if others would agree with me or not, but I think it works.

 Risky, but worth it.

 Despite a lack of a story summary, I think the simple and stark cover gives a good impression of the kind of characters and tale to expect. The main narrator of The Gothic Rainbow is a young male vampire who is the cliche of cocky, smug and powerful jerks. However, we learn of his mortal life through flashbacks and slowly come to realize, he has turned cruel and arrogant as a way to cope with his loss of humanity. Once upon a time, he was a genuinely good kid. Deep inside, he has a decent heart, he was just thrown onto the wrong path by a horrible twist of fate and circumstance. I like to think that shows in the book cover - a sense of nobility in decay.

 The second book, Annwn's Maelstrom Festival, is told from the point of view from an even younger female vampire, who becomes lovers with the vampire boy from the first book. She too is a broken soul, but in a much different way. Instead of living a happy life that was taken away from her by being made a vampire, she had an awful family life and becoming a vampire was her salvation from an abusive home. The front cover of the second book is identical to the back cover of the first book, symbolizing the connection and the full-circle of the redemption both characters find in each other.

 These are facts no one would know when they see the book covers for the first time, but after you read them, an astute observer could find those connections.

 The purpose of this article isn't to give advice on designing a book cover. After all, I'm not so sure what I did is effective. But, I hope this article does show the kind of thought and work and effort that can go into even the most simplistic of covers.

 Judge a book by the cover. Go right ahead. 

 Just remember, a lot more may go into creating a cover than you ever realized.

Review: The Dreamwalker by Constance Williams and Lillian Bishop

Title: The Dreamwalker
Authors: Constance Williams and Lillian Bishop
Release Date: 17th May 2013
Publisher: --
Find on: Goodreads


Quick Review: Everyone loves a good mystery – and Sam Gardener is certainly one of those. Abruptly pulled from school years before, nobody has seen or heard from him since – until now. Returning to high school for his senior year, he is not the same friendly boy his classmates remember, and the rumors are flying. None, however, come close to the truth. The bearer of a strange and frightening supernatural ability, Sam strives to regain control of his life.

Along with some unlikely new friends with secrets of their own, Sam learns that his own mystery is only the tip of the iceberg in the quaint town of Witch Lake. With their help, he must learn the strength of his own gift, and lose the fear that comes with it. With their help, he can stand against the gathering darkness. Together, they can face the truth of Witch Lake, but alone? They will be lost beneath the surface, drowning in depths none could foresee.

Detailed Review: First off, I thought this book was quite original and not too cliche like other books. But maybe what it lacked was a bit more pace. Overall though, the book fetched a quite high rating. 

Sam Gardener has an ability he never wanted and thinks of it as a curse. When he returns to high school, he is changed. He is a loner and doesn't make the effort to make friends. Instead, he stays cut off from the real world. His only friends are the ghost of a long-dead witch and a werewolf. In order to uncover the mystery that is unfolding between two of his teachers, he explores his ability and ultimately finds him in dangerous situations. 

Beware, the ending has a twist in it. And I really am curious to know how the two authors managed to pull off such an interesting story. It is truly well-written and well-planned but just needs a bit more excitement to really get the adrenaline pumping and heart racing. Overall, this is a good start for both authors. I would really love to see what they have in store for their next book!

Brief Review: I really thought this book was well-written and the story was really interesting and fascinating as well. If the authors could just make the story more exciting with more twists, I would be more than happy to give it a high rating. This is a must-read for fantasy, paranormal and mystery lovers!

Final Rating: 4.5/5 'Really Liked It!'

QUOTE: 

To Sam, who really feared his talents  and powers,

Always do what you are afraid to do---Ralph Waldo Emerson

Your Reviewer: