Review: The Dark Divine

Title: The Dark Divine
Author: Bree Despain
Publisher: Egmont
Pages: 372
Series: Dark Divine #1
Rating: 4.5 stars
From the book jacket: 
A prodigal son.
A dangerous love.
A deadly secret.

Grace Divine - daughter of the local pastor - always knew something terrible happened the night Daniel Kalbi disappeared and her brother Jude came home covered in his own blood.

Now that Daniel's returned, Grace must choose between her growing attraction to him and her loyalty to her brother.

As Grace gets closer to Daniel, she learns the truth about that mysterious night and how to save the ones she loves, but it might cost her the one thing she cherishes  most: her soul.

When I started the book, I really loved the story but I kept getting distracted by the print. The font seemed to be in all bold, which I thought was weird, and honestly, that was the only thing that kept me from getting into this book from the very beginning. But once I got used to that...wow. Awesome book.

Grace is the daughter of a pastor, and her family is almost obnoxiously religious and saintly. On the surface, anyway - but they go out of their way to not talk about anything that creates a real problem. So they don't talk about Daniel Kalbi, Grace's one-time childhood crush and a friend who used to be so close he was like an extra brother to Grace and her older brother Jude. Three years ago, he disappeared, and something happened between him and Jude that Jude still won't talk about. So when Daniel turns up in her AP art class and starts flirting with her, Grace has no one to turn to.

It quickly becomes clear that something is up with Daniel, who is demonstrating abilities bordering on superpowers, and there are almost too many clues lying around (I figured out the secret well before the end of the book). Something's up with Jude, too: he's not acting like himself at all. Grace wants to find out the secret about what happened that night, but it might put her in more danger than she can imagine. And as she works to find out what's going on and how to fix it, her once-perfect family life is falling apart around her.

I really loved The Dark Divine. Grace was such a relatable character, and even though her family was kind of unnaturally nice, I felt like all of those characters could have been real (Jude probably least of all, but even him). And Daniel was the ultimate bad-boy, unlovable-and-yet-totally-lovable character, and I really related to him, too. I also loved the characters of Don Mooney and Grace's father, especially. And the plot had just the right mix of action and romance and mystery...it was great.

Also, Bree Despain did an awesome job with the mythology in this. It was a very interesting new approach to a very familiar paranormal topic (and no, it's not vampires). I'm not going to say anything else about that because I don't want to spoil anything...but, yes, it was awesome.

So, the one-sentence summary of that review: The Dark Divine is an excellent paranormal romance with an interesting twist on the legends that I would absolutely recommend.

Links:
Bree Despain's website

Waiting on, um, Saturday

Waiting on Wednesday is a meme hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine, but I was traveling this week so I kind of missed it. Instead, I have my WoW pick up today:

The review that went up on Wednesday was of The Body Finder by Kimberly Derting. I absolutely loved it - it was completely fantastic. So, naturally, the news that there's a sequel, Desires of the Dead, was very exciting to me.

Very, very excited for this one to come out. I need more Violet and Jay. *happy squeak*

Desires of the Dead comes out March 15, 2011. I'll definitely be reading it ASAP.

Two Giveaway Links at Once!

I'm still working on getting a giveaway of my own set up, but in the meantime you should check out these two:

Pop Culture Junkie, who is giving away several ARCs, and

La Femme Readers, where there is a giveaway of six preordered 2011 YA releases.

~Becky

Review: The Body Finder

Title: The Body Finder
Author: Kimberly Derting
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pages: 327
Series: The Body Finder #1
Rating: 5 stars
Description from Goodreads:
Violet Ambrose is grappling with two major issues: Jay Heaton and her morbid secret ability. While the sixteen-year-old is confused by her new feelings for her best friend since childhood, she is more disturbed by her “power” to sense dead bodies—or at least those that have been murdered. Since she was a little girl, she has felt the echoes the dead leave behind in the world . . . and the imprints that attach to their killers.


Violet has never considered her strange talent to be a gift; it mostly just led her to find dead birds her cat had tired of playing with. But now that a serial killer has begun terrorizing her small town, and the echoes of the local girls he’s claimed haunt her daily, she realizes she might be the only person who can stop him.


Despite his fierce protectiveness over her, Jay reluctantly agrees to help Violet on her quest to find the murderer—and Violet is unnerved to find herself hoping that Jay’s intentions are much more than friendly. But even as she’s falling intensely in love, Violet is getting closer and closer to discovering a killer . . . and becoming his prey herself.


I fell in love with this book from the first chapter. I couldn't tell you what about it made me love it, but once I started reading, I just couldn't put it down. At the very beginning, I was concerned that it might not live up to my expectations (which were very high, from all of the positive reviews I've read), because I felt like it was doing more telling and less showing...but then...it was just amazing.


Violet is such a relatable character. She's got a few friends but she's not super-popular, she has a hard time coming up with clever comebacks, she's trying to hide a crush on her best friend, she's scared but she's trying to do something about it. She has her flaws, but they're just a part of her - she could be real. And Jay. Oh my goodness, Jay. He has definitely earned a place in the top few Crush-worthy Fictional Guys. I wish the side characters had been developed more (I need more Chelsea and Claire, please!) but I think their role in the story worked.


The set-up, basically, is that Violet gets these sensory stimulations when she's around a murder victim or a murderer. Mostly that means that her cat smells weird after he kills a bird and she can always find the bird, but then she finds a dead girl her age in a lake at a party. Soon other girls start disappearing, there's a serial killer on the loose, and Violet may be the only one who can find and identify him. I had worried that the premise of "I see dead things" might be too cliche, but it totally wasn't. The mystery is really well done and I just could not put the book down until I knew what had happened. It was fantastic. I also really liked that it occasionally flashed to the killer's point of view, telling us just enough to keep us sufficiently horrified by the crimes but not enough to ruin the mystery.


And the ending. No spoilers, I promise, but if you read it you'll know what I mean: the ending was very well done. It works as a stand-alone, I think, but I'm sooo glad there's going to be a sequel, because I need more Violet and Jay. And Chelsea. And Claire. And so on and so forth...you get the picture.


Anyway, long story short, definitely read this one, you guys. It was awesome.


Links:
Kimberly Derting's website

Tuesday Twins

I think the girl on these covers must be a stock photo: the original cover of Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment by James Patterson, and Kindred by Tammar Stein.

 

That aside, there's not a whole lot of similarity in the covers; the Maximum Ride book (the original cover, mind, not the new ones with Max & Co. in battle - this is the one I have) has a lightning-y cityscape that basically says "action!" while Kindred looks a little more laid-back and chill. But I'm pretty sure that is the same girl.

Personally, I'm partial to the Maximum Ride cover, but that may just be because I haven't read Kindred but I have read and loved the Max Ride books. What do you guys think?

Review: The Demon's Covenant

Title: The Demon's Covenant
Author: Sarah Rees Brennan
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Pages: 440
Series: Demon's Lexicon trilogy #2
Rating: 4.5 stars
**Warning** Review may contain SPOILERS from previous book.
From the book jacket: 
Mae always thought she was in control, but in the past few weeks, control has turned into chaos. She's learned that her brother, Jamie, has magical powers, and that Gerald, the new leader of the Obsidian Circle, is trying to persuade Jamie to join the magicians. The same magicians who tried to kill Mae and Jamie last month in London. The magicians who get their power by feeding people to demons.

Mae turns to brothers Nick and Alan to help her rescue Jamie, but they are in danger themselves. Every magician in England now knows what Nick really is -- and they all want him dead.

Nick's new power has also caused a rift between the brothers. In the weeks they were gone something terrible happened, something that haunts them both. With Nick as unreadable as ever and Alan making secret bargains with a demon, Mae finds herself attracted to both brothers -- though she knows she can't trust either of them. The magicians are closing in on one side, and the dangerous, seductive Goblin Market is tempting her on the other, and Mae has to form her own plan to save them all. She's going to find that the price she must pay is more than she ever imagined.

The covenant is binding. There is no escape.

Okay, so, I'm not really sure where to start with this book. I can't decide whether to rant and rave about the plot, the characters, or the actual writing. I guess I can go in that order. The plot was fantastic, it just kept me reading and reading (I went to bed at 3:30 a.m. last night - this morning? - because I was reading this book). The Demon's Covenant picks up about a month after the conclusion to The Demon's Lexicon, only this one is told from Mae's perspective rather than Nick's. Jamie's a magician, and suddenly he's hanging out with Gerald - the leader of the magicians who tried to kill them just a month ago. Mae calls Nick and Alan for help, and they set out to determine what exactly Gerald wants. Then there's the fact that something is clearly wrong between Nick and Alan, and although Mae doesn't know what, it's clear that she's going to have to save them both. And the Goblin Market has a huge role to play, although no one is quite sure what. There's also the fact that she's deeply attracted to both of them. That was really my only problem with the book - I got tired of Mae's attractions toward Nick and Alan and the tall-dark-and-handsome Seb from school. Even so, it was worked in really well and the book would not have been the same without it. Everything about the plot just kept me turning the pages, wanting to find out what happened next.

And the characters. I love the characters so much. It was really cool getting inside Mae's head instead of Nick's this time - I think they're both such dynamic characters that it's awesome to get to see both of them that way. Mae's struggles with her own emotions and with her relationship with her brother are very engaging, and Nick's development as he's trying to figure out what it means to be human and whether he can ever be that is just amazing to watch(/read about). I do wish we'd seen more of Jamie, he's one of my favorites, and his role in this book is also spectacular. I am glad that we got to see more of Sin in this one, and it's really neat watching her character come to life too.

Then there's the writing. It's the perfect blend of seriousness and lightness. There were bits that had me laughing out loud (I'd quote them, but there are a lot), and the characters' dialogue is so full of sarcasm and dark humor, and it was just fantastic; then there were the parts where everything was incredibly serious, and reading it you can just feel the atmosphere that the characters are in.

So, long story short: awesome, awesome book. If you haven't read The Demon's Lexicon, go pick that one up and read it right now. If you have, and you haven't read The Demon's Covenant yet, I dunno why you're still reading this, because you should be reading this book instead.

Links: 
Sarah Rees Brennan's website
Sarah Rees Brennan's blog

Giveaway Link!

Update to previous post: for the moment, my internet seems to be working. So you may be able to disregard that last post entirely.

Anyway, this post is to let you know that Carolina at Carol's Prints is giving away a lot of really awesome ARCs.  You can click here to visit her page and check out the contest!