Nevermore (Maximum Ride Book 8) by James Patterson

3.2 stars out of 5

If you haven't read this series, I apologize for this review not making much sense. I just need to vent.

So, in case the thousands of reminders all over the cover haven't informed you, this is the last book to the Maximum Ride series. As an avid fan of the characters, all I can say is finally! Don't get me wrong, I still liked the series (well, the first half of it anyways), but its seems like it was dragged out way too long. Like an old dog finally resting from exhaustion.

For me, this series started going downhill around book 4 or 5. I just had to finish, having some inkling of hope that it would get better. It did, but not by a whole lot. This installment to the series was sooo overly dramatic with all the ads and buildup and everything. There isn't even a description or anything on the flap of the book. It just says in big bold letters THIS IS THE END. Big-friggin-whoop. And James Patterson seemed to have gotten cocky when writing this, perhaps thinking, "Teehee! People will buy this no matter what crud I write! They're hooked!"
... You win this round, Patterson.

And now to actually talk about the book. The 99 Percenters are still looking to wipe out the Earth's population, and emotions run high between the flock, who are - wait what? They're at school? Again? Seriously, how many times have they tried this, like three? This time seems to be working better for them, though, having their identities as mutant freaks out in public. At least now they can fly wherever and whenever.

Fang's still gone with his own little mini-flock, leaving Max wiiide open for Dylan to creep himself into the picture. I didn't hate Dylan all that much, but he did have his moments of peculiarity, and later in this book, insanity. (You'll get to that later when reading). When attending a normal high school, Max seems to be the only one out of place. The rest of the flock adapts well, especially Nudge and Dylan. Every girl freaking swoons over Dylan, and while Max herself is blushing, she thinks, "Man, thank God I'm not affected." You can't sneak by me, Maxie ;) heehee.

Despite everything these guys have been through in the flock, some of the characters are still so one-dimensional! Gasman rarely said anything, and it seemed as if he were trying to stay in character. And Iggy got, like, NO lines!!! Just a one-liner here, a quick smooch with Ella there, and then poof, no more characterization. Did Patterson not think there were any Iggy fans out there? RIGHT HERE, BUDDY! (*cough, meanie-head, cough)

And Fang? Can I just say I find his thing going on with Maya is creepy? I mean, the chick is Max's clone. Talk about a replacement (eyeroll). I felt really bad for Maya that Fang saw Max at a first glance whenever he looked at her, no matter how hard he tried not to or how much she tried to change herself.

So back to the plot, before I get into rant-mode again. Fang eventually returns to the main flock after hearing the Voice, which now everyone can hear. (It says different things to everyone, though.) Oh and you do get to find out who the Voice is, though I can't say it's much of a surprise. Fang shows up at the door, incredibly bloodied and broken. And despite that, he still want to rip the vocal chords out of Dylan.

One quick thing (that will likely snowball into another rant), I never really got Fang's blog. It was kind of interesting to see how he was trying to connect with the other people of the world, but how is he supposed to be the classic badass going around saying "Check me out, I have a blog." Pssht, seriously, who reads blogs? (-eyes dart around -) Oh, riiiight. This is a blog, isn't it?

Once the flock is all reunited (and it feels so gooood), and after a massive fight scene, they're led by a small group of good-guy scientists to a literal paradise. Coconuts, palm trees, hammock tree houses, the whole shebang. I thought that was a tad weird, but at this point I just gave in, like, "meh, why not?" At least they managed to have some fun before the apocalypse.

And that's kind of where the book took a downturn. The apocalypse scene itself was just a little off, causing my eyebrows to knit together in complexity, like it couldn't be right. A sneak peek of it: the sky explodes. Yeah. Explodes. Harsh, much? That's just part of it, so don't get mad about spoilers or whatever. I'm trying to help you here.

When the book finally ended, I repeatedly blinked at the last page and flipped around, thinking I missed something. I couldn't help but utter, "That's it?"
Yeah, folks, that's it. It leaves off in a weird spot, just leaving the reader floundering for more explanations about what the heck happened to the world. Way to go, Patterson, you've officially pissed me off.

I did like the romance scenes between Max and Fang, though, so that's a plus. Figured I should leave this review off on a good note.

Stay thirsty, my friends
- Julia

Truly, Madly (Lucy Valentine #1) by Heather Webber

Blurb: Lucy Valentine is as smart as can be, as single as you can get, and so notqualified to run a matchmaking service. But when her parents temporarily step down from the family business, Valentine, Inc., it’s Lucy’s turn to step up and help out—in the name of love.

Plus, her rent is due.

Here’s the problem: Lucy doesn’t have the knack for matchmaking. According to family legend, every Valentine has been blessed by Cupid with the ability to read “auras” and pair up perfect couples. But not Lucy. Her skills were zapped away years ago in an electrical surge, and now all she can do is find lost objects. What good is that in the matchmaking world? You’d be surprised. In a city like Boston, everyone’s looking forsomething. So when Lucy locates a missing wedding ring—on a dead body—she asks the sexy private eye who lives upstairs to help her solve the perfect crime. And who knows? Maybe she’ll find the perfect lovewhile she’s at it…

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Ok so this book (and the rest of the series) was to die for! It was humorous, with a great array of characters, and lots of good romance! Lucy Valentine is forced to take over her father's matchmaking business at the start of the book due to a scandalous picture of her dad in a newspaper, despite the fact that she lost her gift for matchmaking in a freak lightening storm when she was 14. With the lightening strike though, Lucy did gain a gift: the gift of being able to find anything a person is missing simply by touching their palm. Her first case as new head of Valentine Ink is actually what starts off a set of events that promise to test Lucy's unwanted ability.
Michael Unknown Last Name comes in looking for love and in the process spills the story about his first love Jennifer who disappeared 7 years earlier after she thought Michael had cheated on her. He also tells Lucy that Jen's engagement ring from him was lost when she left. As Michael goes to leave Lucy, without thinking, shakes his hand and sees a glimpse of the ring Michael has lost... on the finger of a corpse! Is Jen dead!? Well, to get the help she needs to solve this murder/mystery she enlists the help of Sean Donahue, the PI who works in the office about Lucy's. Together they work to bring justice to Jennifer, who might not even be dead. In the course of the investigation there are some serious twists that keep you hanging on as well as a great budding romance between Lucy and Sean. The ending will totally surprise you, I promise!


-Madison :)

<3 Lucy and Sean :D Such a cute couple! And <3 to Lucy's Grandma who is hysterical, crazy, and my favorite character next to Lucy! 

The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls by Julie Schumacher

Blurb (as from Goodreads.com): I'm Adrienne Haus, survivor of a mother-daughter book club. Most of us didn't want to join. My mother signed me up because I was stuck at home all summer, with my knee in a brace. CeeCee's parents forced her to join after cancelling her Paris trip because she bashed up their car. The members of "The Unbearable Book Club," CeeCee, Jill, Wallis, and I, were all going into eleventh grade A.P. English. But we weren't friends. We were literary prisoners, sweating, reading classics, and hanging out at the pool. If you want to find out how membership in a book club can end up with a person being dead, you can probably look us up under mother-daughter literary catastrophe. Or open this book and read my essay, which I'll turn in when I go back to school.
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The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls. Wow what a mouthful of a title! This is the story of four young teens and their forced drafting into the Unbearable Book Club. Adrienne Haus, our slightly depressed and very insightful (but only because she's bored) main character, is not in the least thrilled to be co-heading a mother daughter book this summer when she could have been enjoying the outside on a wilderness adventure camp with her BFF Liz. Instead due to an accident she's stuck at home or at the pool (when she can get a ride that is...) being forced to spend time with spoiled and rebellious CeeCee, a stuck up and extremely paranoid Jill, and a weird and secretive Wallis. 

Not one of these four, except for Wallis, wants to be here. CeeCee could have been living it up in Paris. That is before she took a little joy ride in her parents car... And Jill was forced both into working for the summer and joining this Unbearable Book Club. Wallis... Lets just says she's a mystery for now. 

We watch as each of the books Adrienne reads relate to her everyday life as she makes new friends, does crazy and stupid things in the middle of the night, and spends all of her spare time at the community pool. 

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, a young poor spanish girl, and a locked up depressed woman, each influence Adrienne and her friends as they make their way through a sure to be horrific summer. But maybe, just maybe they might have a little more fun then they thought.

Madison! 

**PS: Sorry for being gone soooo long! I happen to be very lazy, but I knew Julia was getting a little aggravated... Hopefully you enjoy this book should you chose to read it! Glad to be back! Should be posting again in a few days! (But don't hold me too it or you might get disappointed...) 

Seraphina by Rachel Hartman

4.6 out of 5

Two amazing books in a row on this blog? We're on a roll!

I originally picked this at a quaint bookshop looking for something easy on the plane ride home. I didn't expect to get so hooked!

There have been forty years of peace between humans and dragons in the country of Gorredd. In this world, dragons can take on the form of a human, and these forms are called saarantrai. High titles in courts and army positions are held by dragons because, big surprise, they're better than humans in tactics and war. But a lot of people still don't like the dragons, feeling that they are among impostors who will stab them in the back at any minute. And little do the people know that an imminent war is brewing...

Seraphina, age sixteen, is born among two worlds; each seeing her as an abomination. She is half dragon. Keeping her lineage a secret, she conceals her scales that spread up her forearms and around her waist. It's not easy, though, for many reasons. Seraphina is an awesome protagonist to read about. She's not whiny, and you do not want to get into an argument with her - dragon's blood and your dad being a human lawyer means instant win. Also, she's funny, which can be hard to be in a formal setting book like this. I give the author major kudos for that. There's plenty of laugh-out-loud comedy strung throughout this book.

My favorite character in this is definitely Orma, Phina's uncle - a dragon. In their natural form, dragons are cold, calculating, and stoic. But when in their saarantrai, they begin to develop human emotions, which is a very bad thing in their eyes. In fact, too much emotion can lead to a dragon's arrest and memory excision. Orma finds some ways around it, though, as he raises Seraphina. The relationship between them is great, the way they tease each other. Orma can be really funny without realizing it, especially when he's learning what to do with his new emotions. Seraphina is constantly berated by his outlandish questions. And a good example of a scene is when Orma accentuates every other word as he speaks, and Phina is just sitting there, thinking "Ladies and gentlemen, the first ever attempt of a dragon being sarcastic."

Ah, one thing I feel I should inform you about. Seraphina has visions when she is young, most often of specific people she doesn't know. To keep the visions from overrunning her, she establishes a little mental thing to keep track of them all. My initial response to this was, "Okay... so she's a tad schizo." Not the case. You will find out the purpose of the people that she calls her "grotesques". Give it time, the story behind it is quite awesome ;)

All of the characters in this are so lifelike. Glissenda, Viridius, Prince Lucian, Lars, Abdo (Oh, Abdo!), Orma, Phina, each of them have their own story and I wanted to know more and more. And I find the names to be really cool, though the girl names are rather tedious. There's even a scene where they make fun of that between Glissenda and Phina. Everything that I've mentioned up to now in this post is just the preamble to the story, I haven't even reached the actual plot yet. And I'm not going to, because it's purely fascinating and touching that I want you readers to discover it for yourselves. Hate me if you will, (Ouch! Who threw that??) but it's worth it.

Another thing that's cool about this is the religion of the characters. The humans worship an array of Saints, all having different patron(esses). Each of the Saints have their own domain - truth, death, the conscience mind, etc. And there are these things called the Golden Plays where actors perform the tales behind the Saint, and I really wanted to see them!

Overall, this book is beautifully written. Everything came together perfectly. One thing about the author's style - she loves cliffhangers. At the end of a chapter, she would have you dangling off a cliffside by a rope, your heartbeat going a mile a minute, then only to find out on the next page that you're only a foot drop from the ground. It's a cheap trick, and an author has to have guts to try and pull that off without angering the readers, but I feel that Hartman did it just right. Exciting, magical, funny, heartwarming, fist pumping; these all describe this story. (I admit, when a certain character showed up in a battle scene, I did do a Freddie Mercury pose. I have no regrets.)

I want to tell so much more about this book, but I fear for spoiling things unintentionally. There's just something tucked away in every nook and cranny that fills one with wonderment, and you'll just have to read for yourselves.

Imagine my glee when I found out that a sequel will be out next year! I'm not going to spoil what it's about, but I do hope that we get to find out more about Jannoula. From what has been told, she's crazy!

Ta-ta for now,
Julia

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

 Wow. Just, wow. It has been a long time since I've read a book that was this good and well written.
Everything about this book was purely magical. It gave me a dark, whimsical feeling lingering in the back of my head, and I loved it. I loved how it kept me thinking about it even when I wasn't reading it. And the writing style was nearly perfect. The choice of dialect played such a big role, it gives the reader an inside look to what the character's can't see, like you get a peek behind the curtain.

Magic is real, and to those who have mastered it, it all depends on how you use it. Two magicians choose students to participate in a game of sorts. Now this isn't a game like fiery dodgeball or who can hover the longest. The game itself is a bit of a mystery, and I'm still not a hundred percent sure how it was meant to be played, I just know how one would win. Alexander, or more commonly known as the man in the grey suit, chose a boy from an orphanage, who later takes the name as Marco. Prospero the Enchanter, who uses real magic and stages it as illusions, undertakes his own daughter, Celia. The two children are trained in polar opposite ways. Marco was in a room for nearly his whole childhood, with loads of books, and Celia was put under pressure to use her magic, with her dad being a psycho. (Example: He slits her fingertips and she has to use healing magic. Ouch.)

Marco later takes an assistant job to a man named Chandresh. Chandresh is a man who loves projects, and he spends quite a while on some. His latest dream in hand: a circus. Not just any circus - the most amazing circus to ever cross a person's imagination. Dear god, I want to go to this circus.

At intervals in the book, there are some pages where it's written from your point of view, leading you through a few choice tents of the Cirque de Reves and helping you visualize how awesome it truly is. Some of these tents are just purely amazing, like how does one even think of these? The Ice Garden, the Cloud Maze, the Pool of Tears, the Wishing Tree, and so so so much more that I can't even describe. Widget's tent where he kept his stories? Oh, man I would love to visit that. To everyone, the Cirque is a place of fun and mystery, except for Celia and Marco. To them, it's a gameboard.

So anyway, the circus is built as becomes well-known everywhere. It travels like magic, and that may or may not be related to Celia working as the illusionist (hmm...). There are people who follow the circus wherever the go, and these people are known as reveurs. You'll learn more about how the group came about, and their story is actually pretty cool. I could totally be a reveur, I'd just have to keep reminding myself that it is not a cult-like thing. Because honestly, sometimes it comes across that way in my thoughts...

Every character in this was described well, and I especially loved the Murray twins. There is a sense of deep connection between everyone, and it's kind of like a big, twisted family. Not so surprising, Celia and Marco form a relationship kind of (not spoiling much). And to me, it came on kind of sudden. My reaction was kind of "well that escalated quickly", but then I realize that they've been working on this circus for around twenty years. They're old! I mean, they don't look it for some complicated, magical reason, but dang they're old...

There are two stories within different time periods in this book. There's a story about a kid named Bailey in 1902, and the story about those within the circus that goes on through the years. With each chapter you read you get a little more excited as the date increases, knowing that the stories will intertwine. And they do. And it is quite good.

I feel like I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of this book, but I have to hold back and let you guys find out for yourselves. Oh, and make sure you read to the very end. There's a thing where you learn about how the story itself is told, and I'm just like "Eeeee! That was awesome." This really is a book I could reread.

Not sure if this is necessary to say, but 5 stars out of 5.

Go ahead and comment if anyone else would be a reveur at heart.

Ciao!
- Julia :)