Sweet Release (Blakewell/Kenleigh Family Trilogy #1) by Pamela Clare

For five pounds in cash, the convict was hers. Though Cassie hated the slave trade, her Virginia plantation demanded the labor, and she knew this fevered man would surely die if she left him. But as his wounds healed and his muscled chest bronzed in the sun, Cassie realized Cole Braden was far more dangerous than his papers had indicated—for he could steal her breath with a glance and lay siege to her senses with a touch.

Abducted, beaten, and given a new name, Alec went from master of an English shipbuilding empire to fourteen years of indentured servitude in the American colonies. There, he was known as Cole Braden, a convicted ravisher and defiler of women. And while he longed to ravish the auburn-haired beauty who owned him, he knew his one hope of earning her love—and his freedom—was to prove his true identity. Only then could he turn the tables and attain his ... Sweet Release.

• Genre:Historical, Romance, Suspense
• Age: adult
• Source: owned ebook
• Read from July 13 to 14, 2013

  FINAL RATING: ★★★★/★★★★★

On the Island (On the Island #1) by Tracey Garvis-Graves

When thirty-year-old English teacher Anna Emerson is offered a job tutoring T.J. Callahan at his family's summer rental in the Maldives, she accepts without hesitation; a working vacation on a tropical island trumps the library any day.

T.J. Callahan has no desire to leave town, not that anyone asked him. He's almost seventeen and if having cancer wasn't bad enough, now he has to spend his first summer in remission with his family - and a stack of overdue assignments - instead of his friends.

Anna and T.J. are en route to join T.J.'s family in the Maldives when the pilot of their seaplane suffers a fatal heart attack and crash-lands in the Indian Ocean. Adrift in shark-infested waters, their life jackets keep them afloat until they make it to the shore of an uninhabited island. Now Anna and T.J. just want to survive and they must work together to obtain water, food, fire, and shelter.

Their basic needs might be met but as the days turn to weeks, and then months, the castaways encounter plenty of other obstacles, including violent tropical storms, the many dangers lurking in the sea, and the possibility that T.J.'s cancer could return. As T.J. celebrates yet another birthday on the island, Anna begins to wonder if the biggest challenge of all might be living with a boy who is gradually becoming a man.

• Genre: Romance, Contemporary, Survival, Drama
• Age: New adult
• Source: owned ebook 
• Read from July 09 to 10, 2013
• Buddy read with my darlings Nab & Basuhi & Pavlina, Jerry aka 9 3/4 and Monisha (click on names to see their reviews)

FINAL RATING: ★★★★/★★★★★

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Jay Gatsby is the man who has everything. But one thing will always be out of his reach ...

Everybody who is anybody is seen at his glittering parties. Day and night his Long Island mansion buzzes with bright young things drinking, dancing and debating his mysterious character.

For Gatsby - young, handsome, fabulously rich - always seems alone in the crowd, watching and waiting, though no one knows what for.

Beneath the shimmering surface of his life he is hiding a secret: a silent longing that can never be fulfilled. And soon this destructive obsession will force his world to unravel.

• Genre: Romance, Drama, Historical
• Age: Mature Young adult
• Source: owned ebook and borrowed translated hardcover
• Read from July 06 to 07, 2013

FINAL RATING: ★★★☆/★★★★★

Incursion by Aleksandr Voinov

When the local authorities ask Kyle Juenger to hunt a shape-shifting Glyrinny spy, he can't refuse. After all, he can use the reward to replace his paralyzed legs with cyberware, and maybe even to return to his home planet. Besides, he hates the morphs-those invasive, brain-eating monstrosities whose weapons cost him his legs.

Kyle's best lead is the Scorpion, a mercenary ship armed to the teeth. Grimm, the "Scorpion's" pilot and captain, fascinates Kyle. He's everything Kyle lost with his legs, and he's from the same home world. He's also of the warrior caste-half priest, half savior. But Grimm's been twisted by life as a merc, and Kyle's stuck undercover as a criminal on the run.

That doesn't stop Grimm from coming on to Kyle, or from insisting he's more than the sum of his past and his useless legs. But Kyle has other concerns-like tracking a dangerous morph who could be wearing anyone's face. And as if things weren't complicated enough, Kyle can't tell if Grimm is part of the solution . . . or part of the problem.

• Genre: Mystery, Suspense, Romance, Science Fiction (Space)
• Creatures: shapeshifters 
• Age: adult, Glbt
• Source: owned ebook
• Read on February 23, 2013

FINAL RATING: ★★★★/★★★★★

Charm & Strange by Stephanie Kuehn

When you’ve been kept caged in the dark, it’s impossible to see the forest for the trees. It’s impossible to see anything, really. Not without bars . . .

Andrew Winston Winters is at war with himself.

He’s part Win, the lonely teenager exiled to a remote Vermont boarding school in the wake of a family tragedy. The guy who shuts all his classmates out, no matter the cost.

He’s part Drew, the angry young boy with violent impulses that control him. The boy who spent a fateful, long-ago summer with his brother and teenage cousins, only to endure a secret so monstrous it led three children to do the unthinkable.

Over the course of one night, while stuck at a party deep in the New England woods, Andrew battles both the pain of his past and the isolation of his present.

Before the sun rises, he’ll either surrender his sanity to the wild darkness inside his mind or make peace with the most elemental of truths—that choosing to live can mean so much more than not dying.

• Genre: Mystery, Paranormal, Contemporary, Drama, Dark
• Creatures:  werewolves
• Age: mature young adult
• Source: owned ebook
• Read from June 29 to 30, 2013

  Buddy read with Nab & Vilda ♥

FINAL RATING: ★★★★☆/★★★★★

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick.

What Lou doesn't know is she's about to lose her job or that knowing what's coming is what keeps her sane.

Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels very small and rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he's going to put a stop to that.

What Will doesn't know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they're going to change the other for all time.

• Genre: Contemporary, Romance, Drama
• Age: adult
• Source: paperback & ebook
• Read from June 18 to 21, 2013

FINAL RATING: ★★★★★/★★★★★

Stolen by Lucy Christopher

It happened like this. I was stolen from an airport. Taken from everything I knew, everything I was used to. Taken to sand and heat, dirt and danger. And he expected me to love him.

This is my story.

A letter from nowhere.

Sixteen year old Gemma is kidnapped from Bangkok airport and taken to the Australian Outback. This wild and desolate landscape becomes almost a character in the book, so vividly is it described. Ty, her captor, is no stereotype. He is young, fit and completely gorgeous. This new life in the wilderness has been years in the planning. He loves only her, wants only her. Under the hot glare of the Australian sun, cut off from the world outside, can the force of his love make Gemma love him back?

The story takes the form of a letter, written by Gemma to Ty, reflecting on those strange and disturbing months in the outback. Months when the lines between love and obsession, and love and dependency, blur until they don't exist - almost.

• Genre: Contemporary, Realistic Fiction, Drama, Art, Suspense
• Age: young adult
• Source: owned ebook 
• Read from May 23 to 25, 2013

FINAL RATING: ★★★★★/★★★★★

Full Tilt by Neal Shusterman

Sixteen-year-old Blake and his younger brother, Quinn, are exact opposites. Blake is the responsible member of the family. He constantly has to keep an eye on the fearless Quinn, whose thrill-seeking sometimes goes too far.

 But the stakes get higher when Blake has to chase Quinn into a bizarre phantom carnival that traps its customers forever.In order to escape, Blake must survive seven deadly rides by dawn, each of which represents a deep, personal fear -- from a carousel of stampeding animals to a hall of mirrors that changes people into their deformed reflections.

 Blake ultimately has to face up to a horrible secret from his own past to save himself and his brother -- that is, if the carnival doesn't claim their souls first!

• Genre: Fantasy, Horror, Dark, Suspense,Mystery
• Age: Young Adult
• Source: owned ebook
• Read on November 29, 2012

FINAL RATING: ★★★★/★★★★★

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

 

After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

Tom, whose records as a lighthouse keeper are meticulous and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby to her breast. Against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.

M. L. Stedman’s mesmerizing, beautifully written novel seduces us into accommodating Isabel’s decision to keep this “gift from God.” And we are swept into a story about extraordinarily compelling characters seeking to find their North Star in a world where there is no right answer, where justice for one person is another’s tragic loss.

The Light Between Oceans is exquisite and unforgettable, a deeply moving novel.

• Genre: Contemporary romance, Drama
• Age: Adult
• Source: owned paperback
• Read from May 05 to 08, 2013

 FINAL RATING: ★★★★★/★★★★★

The Child Thief by Brom

Peter is quick, daring, and full of mischief--and like all boys, he loves to play, though his games often end in blood. His eyes are sparkling gold, and when he graces you with his smile you are his friend for life, but his promised land is not Neverland.

Fourteen-year-old Nick would have been murdered by the drug dealers preying on his family had Peter not saved him. Now the irresistibly charismatic wild boy wants Nick to follow him to a secret place of great adventure, where magic is alive and you never grow old. Even though he is wary of Peter's crazy talk of faeries and monsters, Nick agrees. After all, New York City is no longer safe for him, and what more could he possibly lose?

There is always more to lose.

Accompanying Peter to a gray and ravished island that was once a lush, enchanted paradise, Nick finds himself unwittingly recruited for a war that has raged for centuries--one where he must learn to fight or die among the "Devils," Peter's savage tribe of lost and stolen children.

There, Peter's dark past is revealed: left to wolves as an infant, despised and hunted, Peter moves restlessly between the worlds of faerie and man. The Child Thief is a leader of bloodthirsty children, a brave friend, and a creature driven to do whatever he must to stop the "Flesh-eaters" and save the last, wild magic in this dying land.

• Genre: Fantasy, Horror, Dark Fantasy, Urban fantasy, Magic, Fairy Tales
• Creatures: faeries, Zombies (?)
• Age: mature young adult/adult
• Source: owned ebook 
• Read from January 08 to 09, 2013

 FINAL RATING: ★★★★★★/★★★★★

Going Under by S. Walden

Brooke Wright has only two goals her senior year at Charity Run High School: stay out of trouble and learn to forgive herself for the past. Forgiveness proves elusive, and trouble finds her anyway when she discovers a secret club at school connected to the death of her best friend. She learns that swim team members participate in a “Fantasy Slut League,” scoring points for their sexual acts with unsuspecting girls.

Brooke, wracked with guilt over her friend’s death, decides to infiltrate the league by becoming one of the “unsuspecting girls,” and exact revenge on the boys who stole away her best friend. An unexpected romance complicates her plans, and her dogged pursuit of justice turns her reckless as she underestimates just how far the boys will go to keep their sex club a secret.

(This is a New Adult fiction book with mature themes. It contains graphic sex and language and a description of sexual violence.)

• Genre: Contemporary romance, suspense, dark
• Age: New adult
• Source: owned ebook
• Read from May 01 to 03, 2013

 Buddy read with my darlings: ♥ Nabk11 ♥ & ♥ Basuhi ♥ click on their names for their reviews!

FINAL RATING: ★★★★☆/★★★★★

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer at 13, Hazel was prepared to die until, at 14, a medical miracle shrunk the tumours in her lungs... for now.

Two years post-miracle, sixteen-year-old Hazel is post-everything else, too; post-high school, post-friends and post-normalcy. And even though she could live for a long time (whatever that means), Hazel lives tethered to an oxygen tank, the tumours tenuously kept at bay with a constant chemical assault.

Enter Augustus Waters. A match made at cancer kid support group, Augustus is gorgeous, in remission, and shockingly to her, interested in Hazel. Being with Augustus is both an unexpected destination and a long-needed journey, pushing Hazel to re-examine how sickness and health, life and death, will define her and the legacy that everyone leaves behind.

• Genre: Contemporary Romance, Realistic Fiction,  Death, Humor, Drama
• Age: mature young adult
• Source: owned ebook
• Read on February 19, 2013

FINAL RATING: ★★★★★★/★★★★★

Looking for Alaska by John Green

 

 A deeply affecting coming-of-age story, Looking for Alaska traces the journey of Miles Halter, a misfit Florida teenager who leaves the safety of home for a boarding school in Alabama and a chance to explore the "Great Perhaps." Debut novelist and NPR commentator Green perfectly captures the intensity of feeling and despair that defines adolescence in this hip, shocking, and emotionally charged work of fiction.

Miles has a quirky interest in famous people's last words, especially François Rabelais's final statement, "I go to seek a Great Perhaps." Determined not to wait for death to begin a similar quest, Miles convinces his parents to let him leave home. Once settled at Culver Creek Preparatory School, he befriends a couple of equally gifted outcasts: his roommate Chip―commonly known as the Colonel—who has a predilection for memorizing long, alphabetical lists for fun; and the beautiful and unpredictable Alaska, whom Miles comes to adore.

The kids grow closer as they make their way through a school year filled with contraband, tests, pranks, breakups, and revelations about family and life. But as the story hurtles toward its shattering climax, chapter headings like "forty-six days before" and "the last day" portend a tragic event―one that will change Miles forever and lead him to new conclusions about the value of his cherished "Great Perhaps."

• Genre: Contemporary romance, Coming of Age, Realistic fiction, Death, Drama
• Age: mature young adult
• Source: owned ebook & paperback
• Read on April 06 to 10, 2013 
  BUDDY READ WITH MORGAN!

FINAL RATING: ★★★★☆/★★★★★

Graffiti Moon by Cath Crowley

Senior year is over, and Lucy has the perfect way to celebrate: tonight, she's going to find Shadow, the mysterious graffiti artist whose work appears all over the city. 

He's out there somewhere—spraying color, spraying birds and blue sky on the night—and Lucy knows a guy who paints like Shadow is someone she could fall for. Really fall for. 

Instead, Lucy's stuck at a party with Ed, the guy she's managed to avoid since the most awkward date of her life. But when Ed tells her he knows where to find Shadow, they're suddenly on an all-night search around the city.

 And what Lucy can't see is the one thing that's right before her eyes.

• Genre: Contemporary romance, Realistic Fiction, Drama, Art, Chick Lit
• Age: young adult
• Source: owned ebook 
• Read from October 03 to 04, 2012

FINAL RATING: ★★★★★/★★★★★

Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma

She is pretty and talented - sweet sixteen and never been kissed. He is seventeen; gorgeous and on the brink of a bright future. And now they have fallen in love. But... they are brother and sister.

Seventeen-year-old Lochan and sixteen-year-old Maya have always felt more like friends than siblings. Together they have stepped in for their alcoholic, wayward mother to take care of their three younger siblings. As defacto parents to the little ones, Lochan and Maya have had to grow up fast. And the stress of their lives—and the way they understand each other so completely—has also also brought them closer than two siblings would ordinarily be. So close, in fact, that they have fallen in love. Their clandestine romance quickly blooms into deep, desperate love. They know their relationship is wrong and cannot possibly continue. And yet, they cannot stop what feels so incredibly right. As the novel careens toward an explosive and shocking finale, only one thing is certain: a love this devastating has no happy ending.

• Genre: Contemporary romance, Realistic Fiction, Drama
• Age: Mature Young Adult, new adult
• Source: owned ebook 
• Note: incest
• Read from September 11 to 13, 2012

FINAL RATING: ★★★★★/★★★★★

Kiss a Falling Star by Barbara Elsborg

  

How far can you fall? Caspar had once shone brighter than any star in the sky. He led an exciting life, had a good job and the love of his family. Now he barely survives in a village where he's shunned by everyone, even his parents. Unemployed, unemployable, he consoles himself with stringless sex-lots of it.

How hard can you land? Ally escapes death by a whisker when she falls in front of a train. Not an accident, someone pushed her, and she doesn't hang around to give them another shot. But she finds herself falling in a different way when she meets Caspar, and she plummets hard and fast. He's dark, he's brooding, he's hotter than any man she's ever met, and she wants him-bad.

How high can they soar? With Ally's adversary closing in, plus Caspar's tendency to screw things up, if they don't open their arms and catch each other, they'll burn up in an atmosphere determined to keep them apart.

• Genre: Contemporary romance, Romantic Suspense
• Age: adult
• Source: owned ebook 
• Read from March 31 to April 02, 2013

FINAL RATING: ★★★★★/★★★★★

Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

1987. There’s only one person who has ever truly understood fourteen-year-old June Elbus, and that’s her uncle, the renowned painter Finn Weiss. Shy at school and distant from her older sister, June can only be herself in Finn’s company; he is her godfather, confidant, and best friend. So when he dies, far too young, of a mysterious illness her mother can barely speak about, June’s world is turned upside down. But Finn’s death brings a surprise acquaintance into June’s life—someone who will help her to heal, and to question what she thinks she knows about Finn, her family, and even her own heart.

At Finn’s funeral, June notices a strange man lingering just beyond the crowd. A few days later, she receives a package in the mail. Inside is a beautiful teapot she recognizes from Finn’s apartment, and a note from Toby, the stranger, asking for an opportunity to meet. As the two begin to spend time together, June realizes she’s not the only one who misses Finn, and if she can bring herself to trust this unexpected friend, he just might be the one she needs the most.

• Genre: Historical Fiction
• Age: mature young adult, Secondary glbt
• Source: owned ebook 
• Read from February 17 to 19, 2013
   

FINAL RATING: ★★★★★/★★★★★

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. 

The next morning the snow child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. 

As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.

• Genre:Historical fiction, Magical realism, Fairy Tales, Mystery
• Age: adult
• Source: owned paperback and ebook
• Read from March 15 to 31, 2013

FINAL RATING: ★★★★/★★★★★

Warrior's Cross by Abigail Roux and Madeleine Urban

Cameron Jacobs is an open book. He considers himself a common waiter with normal friends, boring hobbies, harmless dogs, and nothing even resembling a secret...

except a crush on a tall, dark, devastatingly handsome man who dines alone at his restaurant on Tuesday nights. All it takes is one passionate night with Julian Cross to turn Cameron’s world on its head.

Julian's love and devotion are all Cameron could have hoped for and more. But when his ordinary life meets and clashes with Julian's extraordinary lifestyle,

Cameron discovers that trust and fear can go hand in hand, and love is just a step away from danger.

• Note: it's stand alone novel, but can be read as "Cut & Run #4.5"
• Genre: Mystery, Romance, Suspense, Contemporary Romance
• Age: adult, Glbt
• Source: owned ebook 
• Read from March 25 to 26, 2013
   

FINAL RATING: ★★★☆/★★★★★

The Storyteller by Antonia Michaelis

Anna and Abel couldn’t be more different. They are both seventeen and in their last year of school, but while Anna lives in a nice old town house and comes from a well-to-do family, Abel, the school drug dealer, lives in a big, prisonlike tower block at the edge of town. Anna is afraid of him until she realizes that he is caring for his six-year-old sister on his own. Fascinated, Anna follows the two and listens as Abel tells little Micha the story of a tiny queen assailed by dark forces. It’s a beautiful fairy tale that Anna comes to see has a basis in reality. Abel is in real danger of losing Micha to their abusive father and to his own inability to make ends meet. Anna gradually falls in love with Abel, but when his “enemies” begin to turn up dead, she fears she has fallen for a murderer. Has she?

Award-winning author Antonia Michaelis moves in a bold new direction with her latest novel: a dark, haunting, contemporary story that is part mystery, part romance, and part melodrama.

• Genre: Mystery, Fairy Tales, Contemporary, Drama
• Age: mature young adult/new adult
• Source: owned ebook 
• Read from March 13 to 15, 2013
   

FINAL RATING: ★★★★★/★★★★★