Read For Your Future: February 2013

February 27, 2013

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Summary-

Sixteen year old Julia Phillips buries herself in guilt after killing her best friend Monica in a car accident. Julia awoke in the hospital with a broken leg, a new talent for drawing and false memories of the accident, in which she dies and Monica lives. The doctors attribute this to her head injury, but no one can explain how a bracelet engraved with her name ended up at the scene of the accident. A bracelet no one has ever seen before.
Classmate Evan Whittaker paid Julia no attention before the accident, let alone after. Now suddenly he’s volunteering to tutor her and offering to drive her home. She can't ignore that his new obsession started after his two-day disappearance last week and that he wears a pendant she’s been drawing for months. When the police show up one night looking for Evan, he begs Julia to run with him, convincing her that Monica is still alive. Julia agrees to go, never guessing where he’s really from.

Review-

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Here because I'm the type of person who really loves trying to figure out mysteries before the end of the book. Julia, the main character, wakes from a coma to find herself wearing a strange bracelet, with new artistic talent, and memories of herself dying in the car accident that took the life of her best friend, Monica. The reader is thrown one mystery after another as everything Julia believes in is now topsy-turvy and it only gets more mysterious when two boys from school take a sudden interest in Julia at the same time. Boys she has never talked to or been friends with before. Oddly, the two young men seem to know a lot more about Julia then they should. As Julia states, ʺMy life is a literal nightmare and I'm kissing boys.ʺ But what else can a poor girl do when her father walks out on the family, her little sister blames her for his defection, and she is sent to an alternative school because she can't seem to focus on schoolwork anymore. The AMAZING and very unexpected conclusion to Here makes you want to run right out and purchase the next book in the series, There, to find out what happens next. Luckily, I have the next book right here in my grubby hands so keep an eye out for the second installment.

Publisher- Createspace

Reviewer Rating: 4.5 Stars

Reviewed by~Cindi

Thank you to the author for the donation of this book to the Read for Your Future book program.

Summary-

My name is Darius Arthur Heisenberg, but most people call me Dare. If my last name sounds familiar, it's probably because of my great-great uncle Werner Heisenberg. He was a physicist who came up with something called the Uncertainty Principle. But listen, Uncle Werner had no idea how uncertain things really are. I work for a group, called the Keepers, that label themselves the custodians of time. And, believe me, time is a mess. It needs all the custodians it can get. Which is, of course, why the Keepers selected me, a nineteen-year-old high school dropout, to join them. I recently worked as a janitor for a couple months. Perfect fit, right? Okay, it didn't make much sense to me either, but I wasn't in a position to turn down a steady job and a roof over my head. Besides, all I'm supposed to do is travel through time and save the universe as we know it, how hard could it be? Yeah, better hold on. This could get ugly.

Review-

Dare, the main character of Knot In Time, and his female Martian sidekick, Lauri, make a great team in this highly enjoyable young adult sci-fi/fantasy story. Now sci-fi/fantasy is my favorite genre of all time so I really dove into this story hoping not to be disappointed. I was FAR from let down. Alan Tucker has created in Dare a reluctant, self-deprecating hero who is intelligent enough to keep the action coming non-stop. From Earth to an all gray facility back to Earth and up to Mars, the thread of the plot takes the reader throughout the universe and never gets boring. Tucker also assumes that the reader is smart enough to understand basic science so we are regaled with time travel, genetically engineered children, an indestructible enormous spider, a wide variety of spy tools, and giant hamsters

This book is a four and a half star because I thoroughly loved the plot and characters but would have liked to have seen a little more as far as relationships go. Dare was adopted and his adoptive parents eventually let him go because of his reckless antics. If he can travel anywhere, wouldn't he want to find his birth parents? Or try to understand why he acts so irresponsible and immature? At nineteen, kids are questioning life, both their past and present. Dare just allows life to carry him on its current. In future episodes of this Tales Of Uncertainty series, I would like to see more of a personal nature from Dare. After all, Lauri's unusual creation and traumatic childhood are scrutinized and discussed. Tucker needs to do the same with Dare. Overall, a great read and the beginning of what looks like a riveting series. Enjoy!!

Publisher- Mad Design Inc.

Reviewer Rating: 4.5 Stars

Reviewed by~Cindi

Thank you to the author for the donation of this book to the Read for your Future book program in exchange for a honest review!

Summary-

Book One of the STRIKE Trilogy
Tobin Lloyd's life is perfect: he's a senior at Bridgton High, he's one of the funniest kids in school, and his only worry is whether or not his latest prank is going to result in yet another detention.
But when he wakes up in the world of Capricious, a place where superheroes are real and attacks by super-villains are just another hassle of living in the city, all of that changes. Suddenly, Tobin's last year of high school is not going as he expected.
Far from home and pretty sure he's gone insane, Tobin must join a strange group of companions (including a beer-drinking dog and a genius, three-foot-tall robot) as he desperately tries to find a way back to Earth. However, that may be even harder than Tobin knows: a mysterious super-villain named Vincent Harris has big plans for the planet Earth...and Tobin is the only person standing in his way.
A carefree, C-student class clown is the world's last hope? Yikes.

Review-

Seventeen year old Tobin is a goofball, a blow-off who has no immediate thoughts about the future. He does have two best friends, a single mom, and a boring job stocking shelves at the local grocery store. Although it's the beginning of Senior year, Tobin's thoughts aren't focused on college, like his besties, Jennifer and Chad. Instead, he's thinking up lunchroom pranks and getting detentions. One fateful night, though, a stranger comes to town and changes everything. The typically laid-back and reckless teen is forced to step up when a six foot man/bat threatens one of the citizens of Tobin's town. Tobin's actions in protecting the innocent and helpless woman alter the formerly useless course of his life and send him careening towards destiny. With a flash of blue and an unplanned bit of planet-hopping, Tobin begins to learn that there are more things out in the cosmos than one can possibly imagine.

After the fight with the man/bat, Tobin unexpectedly finds himself transported to Capricious, his father's home planet. Befriended there by a walking, talking, beer-guzzling, blue-furred husky, an adorable and transformer-like robot boy and a secretive man who claims to have known his dead father, Tobin manages to absorb the uniqueness of planet Capricious and its denizens while learning to master super powers that he hadn't known he possessed. This book was highly entertaining with interesting characters scattered throughout the pages and unanticipated escapades keeping the reader captivated. However, this book can't be termed a young adult book. Charlie Wood is an excellent story-teller with a mind for the unusual but he writes in a manner more befitting tweens, tween boys in particular. There is no teen jargon, teen angst, romance, or contemplation of the deepest importance. Strike reads more like a comic book with colorful, bigger-than-life heroes and non-stop adventure but little introspection or soul-searching. Four stars though for a delightful and easy read.

Publisher-Createspace

Reviewers Rating: 4 Stars

Reviewed by~Cindi

Thank you to the auntor for donating this book to the Read for your future book program in exchange for a honest review!

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Review: Empty by K.M. Walton

Summary-

Dell is used to disappointment. Ever since her dad left, it’s been one let down after another. But no one—not even her best friend—gets all the pain she’s going through. So Dell hides behind self-deprecating jokes and forced smiles.

Then the one person she trusts betrays her. Dell is beyond devastated. Without anyone to turn to for comfort, her depression and self-loathing spin out of control. But just how far will she go to make all of the heartbreak and name-calling stop.

Review-

Life is pointless, desolate, and without hope. This is how Adele, or Dell, the main character of Empty by K.M. Walton, feels. Unfortunately, this is exactly how the reader will feel by the end of the book too. Dell is 273 pounds, has only one friend and lives a miserable existence. Her father deserted Dell and her mom when Dell's mom was pregnant with Baby Meggie and had become an absent and dead-beat dad who demands that Dell get over her grief and 'feel happy for him'. Dell's mom works two cashier jobs until she is fired from one of them for stealing prescription drugs. She needs pills to get through each day leaving Dell to raise Baby Meggie by herself.

The selfish actions and demands of Dell's parents causes Dell to begin binge eating. She is asked to leave the softball team when she can no longer run without great difficulty. The popular kids at her school make her perform a sumo-moo cow routine. Her best friend is starting to abandon her for the popular crowd, Dell is raped by her long-time crush at a party and then is called the rapist. Finally, FINALLY, however, Dell gets a break. She is accepted at talent night as a singer because of her amazing vocal performance.
Her talent night singing should have brought her applause but instead makes the crowd break out into moo'ing. It is at this point that Dell gives up. She had only two positive things in her life: her voice and her baby sister. She realizes that her weight will always prevent her from being taken seriously as a singer. Her sweet baby sister, who loves her unconditionally, will eventually make fun of her too. Our last contact with Dell is as she lies on stage thinking about her sweet baby sister's smell--she smells of love.

I won't spoil the ending although I'm sure you can guess where it leads. I CAN tell you that it is immensely disappointing. Two stars for this book. Walton writes in a blurb at the end of the story that she wants people to understand how bullied kids feel. She also wants bullied teens to know that there are options. She missed the mark with this story. Instead of educating and empowering teens on the dangers of being bullied, it offers loss of hope, a blanket of blackness and misery. Walton does an excellent job of getting into Dell's head and, for this, I'd love to upgrade her a couple of stars. The plot, however, was simply too bleak for me and, in my opinion, any impressionable teenager.

Publisher-Simon Pulse

Reviewer Rating: 2 Stars

Reviewed by~Cindi

Thank you to the publisher for the donation of this book to the Read for your Future book program in exchange for an honest review.

Summary-

For Jane Jones, being a vampire is nothing like you read about in books. In fact, it kind of sucks. She's not beautiful, she's not rich, and she doesn't "sparkle." She's just an average, slightly nerdy girl from an ordinary suburban family (who happens to be vampires.) Jane's from the wrong side of the tracks (not to mention stuck in the world's longest awkward phase), so she doesn't fit in with the cool vampire kids at school or with the humans kids. To top it all off, she's battling an overprotective mom, a clique of high school mean girls (the kind who really do have fangs), and the most embarrassing allergy in the history of the undead, she's blood intolerant. So no one's more surprised than Jane when for the first time in her life, things start to heat up (as much as they can for a walking corpse, anyway) with not one, but two boys. Eli's a geeky, but cute real-live boy in her history class, and Timothy is a beautiful, brooding bloodsucker, who might just hold the key to a possible "cure" for vampirism. Facing an eternity of high school pressure, fumbling first dates, or a mere lifetime together with Timothy, what's a 90-something year-old teen vampire to do?

Review-

The Worst Vampire Ever is about Jane Jones, a 90 year old high school student who is blood intolerant. Unfortunately, her highly unusual allergy makes her life tough as a vampire, as does the fact that she's the typical nerdy girl trying to survive in high school. Because of the fact that Jane and her family don't age, they must move approximately every four years so that Jane and her brother Zachary can attend school without causing suspicion. Somehow, though, Jane's infinite life as a high school student hasn't taught her how to fit in. It's no surprise when Eli, another fellow nerd from her history class, is interested in Jane. It IS surprising that Timothy Hunt, a popular vampire in the junior class, also is attracted to thin, unfashionable Jane.
In typical Young Adult fashion, Caissie St. Onge entertains us with the teenage love triangle of vampire nerd-human nerd-vampire popular kid. She also throws in a lot of action and intrigue as well. Jane's new town has a fairly large vampire population, many of them still in high school and still tormenting nerdy new-comers. When an article starts circulating among this blood-thirsty community regarding the miracle cure for vampirism found by a Hungarian professor, Dr. Erdos, excitement and conjecture are the main topic with Astrid, the popular mean-girl vampire, Timothy Hunt, Jane, and their teen peers. Timothy decides to bring Dr. Almos Erdos to town to cure the vampires with disastrous results.

Publisher- Ember Books

Reviewer Rating: 4 Stars

Reviewed by~Cindi

Audio Book Review: Rebel Heart (Dust Lands #2) by Moira Young

Summary-

Nothing is certain and no one is safe in the second book in the highly praised Dust Lands trilogy, which MTV’s Hollywood Crush blog called “better than The Hunger Games.”It seemed so simple: Defeat the Tonton, rescue her kidnapped brother, Lugh, and then order would be restored to Saba’s world. Simplicity, however, has proved to be elusive. Now, Saba and her family travel west, headed for a better life and a longed-for reunion with Jack. But the fight for Lugh’s freedom has unleashed a new power in the dust lands, and a formidable new enemy is on the rise.
What is the truth about Jack? And how far will Saba go to get what she wants? In this much-anticipated follow-up to the riveting Blood Red Road, a fierce heroine finds herself at the crossroads of danger and destiny, betrayal and passion.

Review-

This was a good sequel. I was use to the language this time. My parents are from Kentucky so I understand the language. I did like the book. I thought it was slow in some spots. The storyline was good and well executed. The main character Samba is brave but sometimes I thought she made some Rash decisions. The Reunion between her and Jack took a long time. But all in all it was a good sequel. I will be reading the third part. If you haven't read this series you really should.

Publisher-Simon & Schuster Audio

Reviewer Rating- 3.5 Stars

Reviewed by~Lora

Thank You to Lauren Pires of Simon & Schuster Audio for the donation of this audio book for review.

Summary-

The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Enter Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, the result of decades of genetic experimentation.
Is Ender the general Earth so desperately needs? The only way to find out is to throw him into ever-harsher training at Battle School, to chip away and find the diamond inside, or destroy him utterly. Ender Wiggin is six years old when his training begins. He will grow up fast.
But Ender is not the only result of the experiment. His two older siblings, Peter and Valentine, are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Among the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives.
This Special 20th Anniversary Edition of the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning classic is now digitally remastered with a full cast production. It also contains an exclusive bonus: an original postscript written and recorded by the author himself, Orson Scott Card!

Review-

This book was an OK book. I expected more from an Orson Card book. A lot of it was unbelievable. The story is an OK story. The narrators were excellent. It wasn't that. I just couldn't get into it like i was hoping I would. This book is good for Science fiction fans of fantasy. It plots Kids against adults. Give it a read and tell me what you think about it.

Publisher-Macmillian Audio

Reviewers Rating: 3 Stars

Reviewed by~Lora

Thank you to Esther Bochner of Macmillian Audio for the donation of this book to the Read for your future book program in exchange for a honest review!

Summary-

Fall under the spell of Wake—the first book in an achingly beautiful new series by celebrated author Amanda Hocking—and lose yourself to the Watersong.Gorgeous. Fearless. Dangerous. They're the kind of girls you envy; the kind of girls you want to hate. Strangers in town for the summer, Penn, Lexi and Thea have caught everyone's attention—but it’s Gemma who’s attracted theirs. She’s the one they’ve chosen to be part of their group.

Gemma seems to have it all—she’s carefree, pretty, and falling in love with Alex, the boy next door. He’s always been just a friend, but this summer they’ve taken their relationship to the next level, and now there’s no going back. Then one night, Gemma’s ordinary life changes forever. She’s taking a late night swim under the stars when she finds Penn, Lexi and Thea partying on the cove. They invite her to join them, and the next morning she wakes up on the beach feeling groggy and sick, knowing something is different.
Suddenly Gemma is stronger, faster, and more beautiful than ever. But her new powers come with a terrifying price. And as she uncovers the truth, she’s is forced to choose between staying with those she loves—or entering a new world brimming with dark hungers and unimaginable secrets.

Review-

This book is a really good beginning to the watersong series. I really like the characters in this story. This is a story about a girl changing into something. This is a well written story. I had no problem paying attention to it. The narrator is really good. Its a smooth voice. She definitely made me feel like part of the story. The characters are easy to like and I had no problem understanding who the characters are. I highly recommend this series if you love mermaid stories. Its definitely worth owning.

Publisher- Macmillian audio

Reviewers Rating: 4 Stars

Reviewed by~Lora

Thank you to Esther Bochner of Macmillian Audio for the donation of this audio book to the Read for your future book program in exchange for an honest review!

Summary-

From wonderful storyteller and author of the bestselling phenomenon The Christmas Box, a new holiday novel based on the story of Joseph and the coat of many colors.Joe is forced out of the family business by his jealous siblings. Moving on to another company, he soon becomes chief advisor to the CEO. But when the economy turns, Joe’s siblings need his help to save the family business.
Based on the Old Testament story about Joseph and the coat of many colors and including a love story, A Winter Dream can be embraced for its message of forgiveness by believers and nonbelievers alike.

Review-

This is a story with a moral that you wont soon forget: Forgiveness. This book moved me. It is as moving as Jacob and the coat of many colors. Its inspirational. Ive had this for a while but my ipod was out of commission. I wish now i had gotten it fixed sooner. This is a well written story that is well executed. The main character JJ had my full attention. The narrator s easy to listen to. He has a soothing voice that was really warm. I would recommend this book to anyone who needs a lift in life. it is well worth the read. Its not just a Christmas story. It is an all around good story.

Publisher- Simon & Schuster Audio

Reviewer Rating: 4 Stars

Reviewed by~Lora

Thank you to Lauren Pires from Simon & Schuster audio for the donation of this audio book to the Read for your Future book program in exchange for a honest review!

Summary-

New York Times bestseller T.D. Jakes pens a compelling story that unites love, suspense, and faith into one heart-wrenching package.Based on the film, Woman Thou Art Loosed: On the Seventh Day, executive-produced by T.D. Jakes, a novel that follows the lives of a couple whose love and commitment are tested when their only child is kidnapped right from under them in their gated community in New Orleans.

David, a respected college professor and his wife, Kari, appear to be the perfect church-going prosperous couple when their young daughter is abducted. The police immediately launch an investigation and set out to find the child of this high-profile couple. Reports surface of a serial child-kidnapper on the loose with a pattern of killing his victims on the seventh day, so there’s no time to waste. In pursuit of information relevant to the case, they uncover information about Kari whose past threatens their marriage and challenges their capacity to forgive.

Review-

This book is a compelling book. It centers around a couple whose child has been kidnapped. This is an awesome story. I learned alot from this book. God has a way of working things out when you need him to.And he will do it in his time not ours. That definitely happens in this book. Secrets come out and the price is paid for those secrets. If you are a christian or you just want a good inspirational read I highly recommend this book. The narrator is awesome. I didn't have any difficulty listening to the narrator. The story line is well written and executed and the characters seem strong to me. Its slow in a couple spots but I had no problem getting through it. Oh and the movie is out!

Publisher-Simon & Schuster Audio

Reviewer Rating: 4 Stars

Reviewed by~Lora

Thank you to Lauren Pires from Simon Schuster Audio for the donation of this audio book to the Read for your future book program in Exchange for a honest review!