Eve of Samhain by Lisa Sanchez Review

Five Stars!

I absolutely loved this story, which was told brilliantly by Lisa Sanchez. I couldn't stop reading this book until the end, and I didn't really want to stop then. I wanted more!

Ryann is a college student who works at a bar as a server and has a crazy busy life. She lives in an apartment with her best friend Jessica, and soon after the book starts a new roommate moves in with them. Her name is Martha and she dresses in black and has all kinds of crazy stuff in her room. Witch books and Jessica soon gets freaked out by her. Martha's attitude doesn't help matters much, either.

>One night while Ryann is at work she meets a man she can't take her eyes off of. Of course he has a date, though. And she only liked him until he opened his mouth. He was a pigheaded jerk, conceited and just plain rude. Until she gets to know him and finds out his real story.

Quinn quickly becomes her friend, even though she longs for more from him. They become inseparable. But there's one twist, they can never touch each other because of Quinn's curse. Frustration surrounds them wherever they go because they both feel the pull toward each other, but can never act on it. I don't want to give away too much, but I just love how their story unfolds. Quinn is such a jerk when they meet, but soon becomes everything any woman would want. Protective, loyal and kind, he treats Ryann like he never has treated any other woman. What girl wouldn't love that? And as they grow together, I just love how their love develops and changes each of them because ultimately that is what true love should do.

This story was beautifully told and I would highly recommend it. The characters are definitely well developed and to me that is what makes a good story. Lisa Sanchez brought a great story to life, full of imagination and action-packed to boot.

Review for Zarconian Island by Aja Hannah

Aja Hannah really did a great job with Zarconian Island! When I read the synopsis I thought it seemed like a really interesting idea, and it was brilliantly executed. Attie was a wonderful main character.

This book started with Attie and some of her friends from her school winning a trip to Hawaii on a cruise ship. She was hesitant about going, but decided to go. She continued to get strange sensations while on the ship and even overheard two deckhands talking about how they were off course. This all led to the boat being attacked and sunk by some giant whales, whales she hadn't ever seen before except for on documentaries. Five of them made it off the boat and onto an island, an abandoned island with strange prehistoric type animals on it.

Attie and Doug became close and soon learned they were both Zarconian. Their relationship developed quickly, but I assumed that is how it worked when you were of another world. Michelle, another of their classmates, became their healer and Kate and Bryan helped out whenever they could. Another survivor, Jack, was soon found when they were being attacked by giant ostrich type birds. He joined their group and together they trekked through this strange island, changing camp sites often due to predator animals and finding food and such.

There was a lot going on in this book and I loved all the action thrown in with the romance. It really kept my interest throughout. I couldn't wait to finish this one. I don't want to give too much away, but I would definitely put this in my must read category.

I hope you all enjoy Zarconian Island as much as I did!

Review for Once Upon a Changeling by V.J. Chambers

Let me start by saying Once Upon a Changeling was a good read. I can't say that it was a great read, but it was good. It started out kind of slow for me; was kind of hard to get into but the end caught me and it was exciting so I was glad that I finished it.

Russ Knight is a teenage boy who's girlfriend, Cindi, cheated on him and got pregnant, then had a baby in the bathroom on prom night and tried to get rid of said baby by disposing of it in the garbage after trying to suffocate it. After this happened, she went on as usual and even went back to dance with her boyfriend. Sounds a little crazy, right? That was before she started rambling about how her baby was a changeling and they took the real baby and she was supposed to kill the changeling in order to get her real baby back. Interesting idea and very creative writing from V.J. Chambers, but even with all that going on I just thought Russ was kind of annoying. Here he has this beautiful, popular girlfriend who is just using him for appearance but she's sleeping with half the school behind his back. She gets pregnant by another guy and doesn't even know, goes to the bathroom during the school dance and delivers the baby, tries to kill it and Russ takes responsibility for this child even though he never even slept with his own girlfriend. My sentiments went out to him, but how could someone be so incredibly blind?

Needless to say Cindi ends up in a mental hospital and Russ loses all his friends while everyone continually ridicules him. He befriends a strange new girl, Puck. And Marcos, a guy from his shop class.

Puck turns out to be a faerie. She ends up helping Russ and Marcos in their endeavors to get the real baby back. The story picked up for me as it went along, but it never really popped.

I think the reason I had a hard time getting into this book was because it just fell a little flat. Russ was supposed to be brave, and he was at certain times, but he didn't seem like a hero to me. At least until the end. All in all I give the book 3 stars. It was well written and descriptive which was nice. A good read, but not a book I would read over and over again.

Review for Real Vampires Don't Sparkle by Amy Fecteau

Amy Fecteau did a great job bringing this book to life. It is exciting, adventurous and it's action packed. Throw in some romance and it was everything I love in a book. Unfortunately, when I signed up to review this book I chose it because of its title, thinking it was going to be a quirky read and lots of fun. I really had no idea this book was about gay vampires. Nevertheless, after the initial shock in finding this out, I rather enjoyed the read.

Matheus is funny. He is definitely a Debbie-downer in a lot of ways, but he is definitely funny. I kind of fell in love with him, as well as Quin, even though I kind of didn't like him very much at the beginning when he made Matheus into a vampire without his consent. That is definitely a no-no in my book. You don't just go around turning people because you feel like it. Not cool at all.

I thoroughly enjoyed the way Quin and Matheus interacted with each other. Their witty repertoire had me completely entertained and I kept turning the pages. It wasn't long into it that I realized Matheus had a whole lot of denial going on in his life, with a whole lot of things. Add in the mess with his father and how he grew up. Yikes. Poor Matheus didn't need all the crazy in his life. But crazy is what he got.

Getting turned into a vampire was, mostly, the last thing on Matheus' mind most of the time. After it happened he has only a short amount of time to adjust until he is thrown into a hunt, which was only the start of his initiation into the undead world he was thrust into. I enjoyed the way these characters were written. Amy Fecteau brought them to life for me, and it felt as if I had known them all for years.

I don't want to spoil too much about this book, but I would definitely recommend this to my friends. I enjoyed this author's writing style. The only thing I didn't like was the ending, which I didn't even see coming when I turned to the last page holding only a couple of sentences. To me, I didn't feel like it was an ending. I didn't even feel like it was a cliffhanger, which would have made me a little less frustrated than I was. But all in all, I give Real Vampires Don't Sparkle 3 stars because the ending didn't satisfy me enough to bump it up to 4, however I would recommend this book for people to read.

Review for Buried by Gerily Marin

Cadence McKenna lives in a town called Fane's Cove. In this town, all kinds of crazy ghostly happening occur, quite frequently, and everyone who lives there knows their town is haunted. I have the give credit to the author, I just loved this story from beginning to end. It was well written, minus a few typos here and there, but I'm talking more about the quality of the writing. It was descriptive, I loved the characters and felt like they could be my friends.

So Cadence starts out rather openly glaring at a boy in school who she thinks has something to hide. And she doesn't just do it once or twice, she goes on and on just glaring and scowling at him at every opportunity. That is, until her friend gives her a brilliant idea. She should just ask him out on a date, that way she can get to know him better and find out the answers to the questions she has about him. Well, why didn't she think of that herself.

And that is where it all starts, the story unfolds after Grey Addison and Cadence go on their first, fake, date. There were so many things that I liked about this book it would be too hard to list them all, but I will list a few. The plot was very interesting and developed to where there was always something exciting happening to keep my attention fully engrossed in this book. I even took it with me to work and read on my breaks, which is something I generally don't do because I only have fifteen minutes, or a half hour. That just doesn't seem like enough time and I am not someone who likes to put a book down if it is good. But I did, even though I didn't want to. The characters were developed and very believable. And I just loved the ending, which I really didn't see coming at all.

Bravo to Gerilyn Marin, who does a fantastic job delivering us a well thought out book full of surprises. A definite must-read, if I say so myself!

I'm working on it!

You know those weeks that never seem to end? Well, I am completely stuck in one of those. It's driving me crazy, we have a big sale coming up at work this week and it's been extremely crazy trying to get everything ready for that. Plus, it's been lovely weather and that means busy circumstances at my job. It's only going to get worse. So wish me luck, I'm gonna definitely need it! Hopefully this week will end sooner, rather than later!

Iced by Karen Marie Moning *SPOILERS*

I'm going to just dive right into this review for this book. No beating around the bush. I LOVED this book soooooooo much! I can't even add enough o's to so that is how much I loved it. But I have found the fever series to be one of my absolute faves, so I am not at all surprised by how much I loved it. I was, however, just a little bit cautious about reading ICED, in fact I had in earlier in the year from the library and chose not to read it at the time. I think because I was so in love with the Mac and Barrons books that I was nervous at just how I would feel about the first book from Dani O'Malley's point of view. But I shouldn't have been worried, not one little bit.

This book is the first one as of late that I haven't wanted to put down and stayed up til 2 or 3 in the morning reading, making me wake up with red eyes. But it was so worth it. Dani is a breath of fresh air in the world that has fallen completely apart in Dublin AWC, which is after the wall crashed. If you haven't read the fever series, I would suggest doing that before you try to figure out Dani's book because the whole story just continues from the fifth fever book, only in Dani's and Christian Mackeltar's points of view.

Dani is young, fourteen and going through all the teenage hormones we all love remembering. Being emotional. Grumpy. Upset for no reason. All that and more are going through Dani's head all the time and she is really good at keeping her cool. At the beginning of the book she (literally) runs into Ryodan while she's freeze framing and Ryodan wants her to work for him. I suspect Ryodan wants more from her than that, but she is too young to see the things I as a reader saw. KMM does an amazing job at writing her character as a naive young teenager who is full of emotions she doesn't understand. She also does an amazing job at writing her other characters. I always fall in love with the characters.

Dani eventually gets corralled into working for Ryodan and trying to find out why people and places throughout Dublin are getting ICED. No warning, no nothing, things are just freezing over and randomly exploding. People are getting killed left and right and none of them have no way of knowing why. So they go to each scene and investigate.

But the whole while this is going on, Dani is being followed by Christian Mackeltar, whom wants to protect her at all costs. He was once a Highlander and now is turning into an Unseelie Prince from the outside in. His power is astonishing, but he won't hurt Dani. I think he's halfway to the moon and back about her. But she doesn't see that until he starts dropping more than subtle hints to her. All the while, you've got Ryodan fighting for her to stay by his side, (which is quite funny to see) and Dancer, her all too human friend who helps her out the most and understands her the most out of anyone.

One of my favorite things that happens throughout this book is the jealousy that occurs when Ryodan starts sleeping with Jo, Dani's sidhe-seer sister who is working at Chester's, Ryodan's club because she was weasled into it to get Dani to sign a contract to work for Ryodan. It makes Dani so angry and jealous because of her own feelings that she's developing for Ryodan, I suspect. But she doesn't even know that she's jealous and that is where KMM really nails it in her writing. I just love this author, will read anything she publishes. She's that good at her job.

Of course, Ryodan only has eyes for Dani, at least some kind of eyes even though we haven't quite figured it out yet. Right now he only wants her to work for him, but the jealousy that comes anytime she smells of Christian and the anger, it would suggest some kind of feelings. But he makes it clear he cares for her, way more than any others, when he sends the five star steak meal to her to make sure she eats.

All in all, Iced was an amazing read that will probably become one of my book that I read over and over when nothing else catches my attention. I can't wait for the next one to come out, and I know there is quite a long wait until that happens. But I bet it will be worth it!!