REVIEW: The Dazzling Heights (#2) - Katharine McGee

The Dazzling Heights (#2) - Katharine McGee
Series: The Thousandth Floor
Publisher: HaperCollins Publishers
Format: Paperback
Pages: 320 Pages
Rating: ★★★★

Goodreads Blurb

New York City, 2118. Manhattan is home to a thousand-story supertower, a breathtaking marvel that touches the sky. But amid high-tech luxury and futuristic glamour, five teenagers are keeping dangerous secrets…

Leda is haunted by memories of what happened on the worst night of her life. She’ll do anything to make sure the truth stays hidden—even if it means trusting her enemy.

Watt just wants to put everything behind him…until Leda forces him to start hacking again. Will he do what it takes to be free of her for good?

When Rylin wins a scholarship to an upper-floor school, her life transforms overnight. But being there also means seeing the boy whose heart she broke, and who broke hers in return.

Avery is tormented by her love for the one person in the world she can never have. She’s desperate to be with him…no matter the cost.

And then there’s Calliope, the mysterious, bohemian beauty who arrives in New York determined to cause a stir. And she knows exactly where to begin.

But unbeknownst to them all, someone is watching their every move, someone with revenge in mind. After all, in a world of such dazzling heights, just one wrong step can mean a devastating fall.

REVIEW: Just Like Heaven (#1) - Julia Quinn

Just Like Heaven (#1) - Julia Quinn
Series: Smith-Smythe Quartet
Publisher:  Little Brown Book Group
Format: Paperback
Pages: 384 Pages
Rating: ★★★★

Goodreads Blurb

Honoria Smythe-Smith is a bad violinist in a traditional family performance she does not look forward to but will smile through for kinship. She trailed around after her brother and Marcus his best friend since childhood. Now the Earl of Chatteris, Marcus sprains his ankle in Honoria's own carefully dug hole. After they tease, they may fall in love.

REVIEW: Crown of Midnight (#2) - Sarah J. Maas

Crown of Midnight (#2) - Sarah J. Maas
Series: Throne of Glass
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Format: Paperback
Pages: 432 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★

Goodreads Blurb

From the throne of glass rules a king with a fist of iron and a soul as black as pitch. Assassin Celaena Sardothien won a brutal contest to become his Champion. Yet Celaena is far from loyal to the crown. She hides her secret vigilantly; she knows that the man she serves is bent on evil.

Keeping up the deadly charade becomes increasingly difficult when Celaena realizes she is not the only one seeking justice. As she tries to untangle the mysteries buried deep within the glass castle, her closest relationships suffer. It seems no one is above questioning her allegiances—not the Crown Prince Dorian; not Chaol, the Captain of the Guard; not even her best friend, Nehemia, a foreign princess with a rebel heart.

Then one terrible night, the secrets they have all been keeping lead to an unspeakable tragedy. As Celaena's world shatters, she will be forced to give up the very thing most precious to her and decide once and for all where her true loyalties lie... and whom she is ultimately willing to fight for.

REVIEW: City of Ashes (#2) - Cassandra Clare

City of Ashes (#2) - Cassandra Clare
Series: The Mortal Instruments
Publisher: Walker
Format: Kindle
Pages: 476 Pages
Rating: ★★★

Goodreads Blurb

Clary Fray just wishes that her life would go back to normal. But what's normal when you're a demon-slaying Shadowhunter, your mother is in a magically induced coma, and you can suddenly see Downworlders like werewolves, vampires, and faeries? If Clary left the world of the Shadowhunters behind, it would mean more time with her best friend, Simon, who's becoming more than a friend. But the Shadowhunting world isn't ready to let her go — especially her handsome, infuriating, newfound brother, Jace. And Clary's only chance to help her mother is to track down rogue Shadowhunter Valentine, who is probably insane, certainly evil — and also her father.

To complicate matters, someone in New York City is murdering Downworlder children. Is Valentine behind the killings — and if he is, what is he trying to do? When the second of the Mortal Instruments, the Soul-Sword, is stolen, the terrifying Inquisitor arrives to investigate and zooms right in on Jace. How can Clary stop Valentine if Jace is willing to betray everything he believes in to help their father?

REVIEW: Glass Sword (#2) - Victoria Aveyard

Glass Sword (#2) - Victoria Aveyard
Series: Red Queen
Publisher: Orion Publishing Co
Format: Paperback
Pages: 464 Pages
Rating: ★★★

Goodreads Blurb

Mare Barrow’s blood is red—the colour of common folk—but her Silver ability, the power to control lightning, has turned her into a weapon that the royal court tries to control.

The crown calls her an impossibility, a fake, but as she makes her escape from Maven, the prince—the friend—who betrayed her, Mare uncovers something startling: she is not the only one of her kind.

Pursued by Maven, now a vindictive king, Mare sets out to find and recruit other Red-and-Silver fighters to join in the struggle against her oppressors.

But Mare finds herself on a deadly path, at risk of becoming exactly the kind of monster she is trying to defeat.

REVIEW: A Husband's Regret (#2) - Natasha Anders

A Husband's Regret (#2) - Natasha Anders
Series: Unwanted
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Format: Kindle
Pages: 337 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★

Goodreads Blurb

Tall and thin, twenty-eight-year-old Bronwyn Palmer has become positively gaunt, a ghost of her former self. That self was? and still is? the wife of a rich, handsome executive with an ocean-view house and his own security staff.

It was in that house, two years ago, that Bryce Palmer learned Bronwyn was pregnant with their first child. But Bryce's rage over his impending fatherhood touched off a chain reaction of emotional and physical traumas that wounded them both. For Bronwyn, it meant fleeing the perfect marriage to start over with nothing but a precocious daughter named Kayla to care for. For Bryce, it meant a tortuous two years spent blaming his wife for deserting him, and living with the pain of not knowing his child. Now a chance encounter has brought Bronwyn back into Bryce's life, both bearing scars? and neither knowing the whole truth of that fateful night that drove them apart.

REVIEW: The Source (#2) - J.D. Horn

The Source (#2) - J. D. Horn
Series: Witching Savannah
Publisher:  Brillaince Audio
Format: Audiobook
Narrator: Shannon McManus
Time: 10hrs 56mins
Rating: ★★★★★

Goodreads Blurb

Savannah resident Mercy Taylor may now be in control of the South's most powerful family of witches, but she's struggling to master her newfound magic. Pregnant with her first child and still reeling from a heartbreaking betrayal, she just wants to be able to use her supernatural abilities without accidentally destroying dishes or blasting the doors off buildings.

But when Mercy's long-presumed-dead mother suddenly returns, begging Mercy to keep her presence under wraps, the witch wonders how many secrets her family is hiding...and who she can really trust. And when the danger around her intensifies to deadly levels, Mercy knows she must discover the truth behind her family's magic—before it destroys her.

REVIEW: Daughter of the Burning City - Amanda Foody*

Daughter of the Burning City - Amanda Foody*

*I received this book from NetGalley for an honest review

Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Format: EBook
Pages: 384 Pages
Rating: 3/5 (liked it) ★★★

Blurb from Amazon:

Even among the many unusual members of the travelling circus that has always been her home sixteen year old Sorina stands apart as the only illusion-worker born in hundreds of years.

This rare talent allows her to create illusions that others can see, feel and touch, with personalities all of their own. Her creations are her family, and together they make up the cast of the Festival's Freak Show.

But no matter how lifelike they may seem, her illusions are still just that—illusions, and not truly real.

Or so she always believed…until one of them is murdered.

Now she must unravel the horrifying truth before all her loved ones disappear.

REVIEW: James and the Giant Peach - Roald Dahl

James and the Giant Peach - Roald Dahl
Publisher: Puffin
Format: Paperback
Pages: 176 Pages
Rating: ★★★★

Goodreads Blurb

James Henry Trotter lives with two ghastly hags. Aunt Sponge is enormously fat with a face that looks boiled and Aunt Spiker is bony and screeching. He's very lonely until one day something peculiar happens. At the end of the garden a peach starts to grow and GROW AND GROW. Inside that peach are seven very unusual insects - all waiting to take James on a magical adventure. But where will they go in their GIANT PEACH and what will happen to the horrible aunts if they stand in their way? There's only one way to find out . .

REVIEW: Front Lines (#1) - Michael Grant

Front Lines (#1) - Michael Grant
Series: Front Lines
Publisher: Electric Monkey
Format: Paperback
Pages: 462 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★

Goodreads Blurb

1942. The fate of the world rests on a knife’s edge. And the soldiers who can tip the balance . . . are girls.

Set in an alternate World War II where young women are called up to fight alongside men, this is the story of Rio Richlin and her friends as they go into battle against Hitler’s forces. 

But not everyone believes that they should be on the front lines. Now Rio and her friends must fight not only to survive, but to prove their courage and ingenuity. Because the fate of the world is in the hands of the soldier girls.

REVIEW: Illuminae (#1) - Jay Kristoff & Amie Kaufman

Illuminae (#1) - Jay Kristoff & Amie Kaufman
Series: The Illuminae Files
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Format: Paperback
Pages: 608 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★

Goodreads Blurb

This morning, Kady thought breaking up with Ezra was the hardest thing she’d have to do. This afternoon, her planet was invaded.

The year is 2575, and two rival megacorporations are at war over a planet that’s little more than an ice-covered speck at the edge of the universe. Too bad nobody thought to warn the people living on it. With enemy fire raining down on them, Kady and Ezra—who are barely even talking to each other—are forced to fight their way onto an evacuating fleet, with an enemy warship in hot pursuit.

But their problems are just getting started. A deadly plague has broken out and is mutating, with terrifying results; the fleet's AI, which should be protecting them, may actually be their enemy; and nobody in charge will say what’s really going on. As Kady hacks into a tangled web of data to find the truth, it's clear only one person can help her bring it all to light: the ex-boyfriend she swore she'd never speak to again.

REVIEW: Bonfire - Krysten Ritter*

Bonfire - Krysten Ritter*
Publisher: Cornerstone
Format:  E-Book
Pages: 288 Pages
Rating: ★★★★

*Received from NetGalley for an honest review*

Goodreads Blurb

It has been ten years since Abby Williams left home and scrubbed away all visible evidence of her small town roots. Now working as an environmental lawyer in Chicago, she has a thriving career, a modern apartment, and her pick of meaningless one-night stands.

But when a new case takes her back home to Barrens, Indiana, the life Abby painstakingly created begins to crack. Tasked with investigating Optimal Plastics, the town's most high-profile company and economic heart, Abby begins to find strange connections to Barrens’ biggest scandal from more than a decade ago involving the popular Kaycee Mitchell and her closest friends—just before Kaycee disappeared for good.

Abby knows the key to solving any case lies in the weak spots, the unanswered questions. But as Abby tries to find out what really happened to Kaycee, she unearths an even more disturbing secret—a ritual called “The Game,” which will threaten the reputations, and lives, of the community and risk exposing a darkness that may consume her.

REVIEW: Tap (#1) - Georgia Cates

Tap (#1) - Georgia Cates
Series: Lovibond
Publisher: Georgia Cates Books
Format: Kindle
Pages: 294 Pages
Rating: ★★★★

Goodreads Blurb

A faceless name. That’s all she was when I agreed to play a part in deceiving her. But then the unplanned happened.

We met. And all I wanted from her was a dirty weekend . . . until that wasn’t enough and I longed for so much more.

Lawrence Thorn suddenly means the world to me. And that’s a problem. She’s my business partner’s sister. Forbidden fruit. Pursuing her can mean trouble for me at Lovibond Brewery. But I don’t care.

I yearn for her skin against mine.
I crave her smell on my body.
I want to make her laugh and then hear her moan my name.
And she does for a brief moment in time.

But Lawrence wants more than I’m able to give. And it’s a damn shame because there’s no one on earth I want more than her.

REVIEW: Wolf by Wolf (#1) - Ryan Graudin

Wolf by Wolf (#1) - Ryan Graudin
Series: Wolf by Wolf
Publisher: Hachette Children's Group
Format: Paperback
Pages: 400 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★

Goodreads Blurb

The year is 1956, and the Axis powers of the Third Reich and Imperial Japan rule. To commemorate their Great Victory, Hitler and Emperor Hirohito host the Axis Tour: an annual motorcycle race across their conjoined continents. The victor is awarded an audience with the highly reclusive Adolf Hitler at the Victor’s Ball in Tokyo.

Yael, a former death camp prisoner, has witnessed too much suffering, and the five wolves tattooed on her arm are a constant reminder of the loved ones she lost. The resistance has given Yael one goal: Win the race and kill Hitler. A survivor of painful human experimentation, Yael has the power to skinshift and must complete her mission by impersonating last year’s only female racer, Adele Wolfe. This deception becomes more difficult when Felix, Adele twin’s brother, and Luka, her former love interest, enter the race and watch Yael’s every move.

But as Yael grows closer to the other competitors, can she bring herself to be as ruthless as she needs to be to avoid discovery and complete her mission?

REVIEW: Passenger (#1) - Alexandra Bracken

Passenger (#1) - Alexandra Bracken
Series: Passenger
Publisher: Hachette Children's Group
Format: Paperback
Pages: 496 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★

Goodreads Blurb

In one devastating night, violin prodigy Etta Spencer loses everything she knows and loves. Thrust into an unfamiliar world by a stranger with a dangerous agenda, Etta is certain of only one thing: she has traveled not just miles but years from home. And she’s inherited a legacy she knows nothing about from a family whose existence she’s never heard of. Until now.

Nicholas Carter is content with his life at sea, free from the Ironwoods—a powerful family in the colonies—and the servitude he’s known at their hands. But with the arrival of an unusual passenger on his ship comes the insistent pull of the past that he can’t escape and the family that won’t let him go so easily. Now the Ironwoods are searching for a stolen object of untold value, one they believe only Etta, Nicholas’ passenger, can find. In order to protect her, he must ensure she brings it back to them—whether she wants to or not.

Together, Etta and Nicholas embark on a perilous journey across centuries and continents, piecing together clues left behind by the traveler who will do anything to keep the object out of the Ironwoods’ grasp. But as they get closer to the truth of their search, and the deadly game the Ironwoods are playing, treacherous forces threaten to separate Etta not only from Nicholas but from her path home... forever.

REVIEW: Gnomon - Nick Harkaway*

Gnomon - Nick Harkaway*
Publisher:  Cornerstone
Format: E-Book
Pages: 704 Pages
Rating: DNF

*Received from NetGalley for an honest review*

Goodreads Blurb

Gnomon, which took Harkaway more than three years to complete, is set in a world of ubiquitous surveillance. Pitched as "a mind-bending Borgesian puzzle box of identity, meaning and reality in which the solution steps sideways as you approach it", it features: a detective who finds herself investigating the very society she believes in, urged on by a suspect who may be an assassin or an ally, hunting through the dreams of a torture victim in search of the key to something she does not yet understand; a banker who is pursued by a shark that swallows Fortune 500 companies; Saint Augustine’s jilted mistress who reshapes the world with miracles; a refugee grandfather turned games designer who must remember how to walk through walls or be burned alive by fascists; and a sociopath who falls backwards through time in order to commit a murder.

REVIEW: The New Dark (#1) - Lorraine Thomson*

The New Dark (#1) - Lorraine Thomson*
Series: The Dark Times
Publisher: Bastei Entertainment
Format: E-Book
Pages: 221 Pages
Rating: ★★★

*Received from NetGalley for an honest review*

Goodreads Blurb

There is no "Before", there is only "Now". Because now there’s no internet, no TV, no power grid. Food is scarce, and the world’s a hostile place. But Sorrel lives a quiet life in the tiny settlement of Amat. It’s all she’s ever known ...

Until a gang of marauding mutants destroys the village, snatching her brother Eli, and David, her boyfriend. Sorrel sets out after them, embarking on a journey fraught with danger. Can she survive? The only thing that keeps her going is Eli and David. They are out there somewhere. They must be alive. And if she has her way, she will find them.