Book Review - The Best of Me by Nicholas Sparks

The Best of Me by Nicholas Sparks

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Publication Date: 11 October 2011
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
My Copy: Library - hardback

In the spring of 1984, high school students Amanda Collier and Dawson Cole fell deeply, irrevocably in love. Though they were from opposite sides of the tracks, their love for one another seemed to defy the realities of life in the small town of Oriental, North Carolina. But as the summer of their senior year came to a close, unforeseen events would tear the young couple apart, setting them on radically divergent paths.

Now, twenty-five years later, Amanda and Dawson are summoned back to Oriental for the funeral of Tuck Hostetler, the mentor who once gave shelter to their high school romance. Neither has lived the life they imagined . . . and neither can forget the passionate first love that forever changed their lives. As Amanda and Dawson carry out the instructions Tuck left behind for them, they realize that everything they thought they knew -- about Tuck, about themselves, and about the dreams they held dear -- was not as it seemed. Forced to confront painful memories, the two former lovers will discover undeniable truths about the choices they have made. And in the course of a single, searing weekend, they will ask of the living, and the dead: Can love truly rewrite the past?

Review:

Nicholas Sparks is one of those authors that everyone has read, or at least seen a movie based off one of his books. I usually love his books. They're good for when you want a sad love story. They offer a hard dose of reality or give you a chance to cry if you haven't in awhile (okay, maybe that last one is just me). Readers can pretty well pick up one of his books and know what they're getting into. The Best of Me was much the same. 

Amanda is a wife and mother who has some martial problems following a family tragedy. Dawson is your rough-around-the-edges man who works on an oil rig and spends his time alone. He never married or even dated after Amanda. He was from a bad family, and she was from a good one. Tuck was a lonely man who let Dawson live with him, gave him a job, and provided a place for Dawson and Amanda to hang out. In the beginning of the book Dawson and Amanda have just found out that Tuck passed away. While Dawson had kept in touch via letters, Amanda had visited Tuck many times over the years after the tragedy. Tuck left special instructions upon his death to reconnect Dawson and Amanda. They meet at his house after years apart, and here's where you can expect a somewhat typical Nicholas Sparks love story. 

The ending kind of ruined the book for me. Everyone expects a sad ending to most Nicholas Sparks novels, but this one felt way too contrived. He tried too hard to make it work and make all the connections. I did love the characters, especially Tuck even though he was written more as a plot device than a character. It wasn't one of his best novels, not even really one of his good novels, but it is still Nicholas Sparks at the core.

Rating Breakdown:

 Plot: 3 stars

Pacing: 4 stars

Characters: 5 stars

Ending: 2 stars

Recommend: Maybe, if you like Nicholas Sparks

 

Book Review - Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Publication Date: 26 February 2013

Genre: YA Contemporary

My Copy: Library - hardback

Two misfits.
One extraordinary love.

Eleanor... Red hair, wrong clothes. Standing behind him until he turns his head. Lying beside him until he wakes up. Making everyone else seem drabber and flatter and never good enough...Eleanor.

Park... He knows she'll love a song before he plays it for her. He laughs at her jokes before she ever gets to the punch line. There's a place on his chest, just below his throat, that makes her want to keep promises...Park.

Set over the course of one school year, this is the story of two star-crossed sixteen-year-olds—smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try.

Review:

I have to admit I had kind of mixed feelings about this one. Eleanor has crazy curly hair like me, although mine isn't red. She doesn't care what other people think about how she looks, but it's more out of necessity than because she's a rebel. Not to say she doesn't have a little rebel going on as well. She's kind of a hard character to describe, very complex. She's quiet and prefers to keep to herself; however, in her new school, her classmates just won't let her go to class in peace. Park is a different kind of quiet. Whereas Eleanor is quiet so that she isn't noticed, Park is more introspectively quiet. He's kind of your average teenage boy who worries about what his classmates will think of himself and Eleanor, but through the book he gets over that some.

Eleanor and Park begin a relationship on the bus very quietly and almost by accident. He brings comic books to read on the bus, and eventually catches her reading over his shoulder. He starts bringing more onto the bus for her to take home and read, and the relationship slowly develops out of that. There's no insta-love if you're the type of reader who hates that. Everything isn't as it seems with Eleanor though, and through the book more and more of her private life is revealed.

Overall, I enjoyed the book, but it didn't flow well for me. It constantly changes from Eleanor's point of view to Park's point of view. It doesn't seem to do it with any rhyme or reason. It can be paragraph to paragraph or page to page. During important scenes it seems to do it more frequently, which takes away from the scene to me. Others might like that you see the scenes from both perspectives; it's just not for me. The book was fairly realistic and believable until the very end, which I can't say much about here, but a key point I was thinking, "Really? That wouldn't happen." If you like contemporary YA, then you'll probably love this one!

Quotes:

Holding Eleanor's hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete, and completely alive.

Disintegrated. Like something had gone wrong beaming her onto the Starship Enterprise. If you've ever wondered what that feels like, it's a lot like melting--but more violent.
...
Maybe Park had paralyzed her with his ninja magic, his Vulcan handhold, and now he was going to eat her.
That would be awesome.

Park rolled over onto his stomach and pressed his face into his pillow. He'd thought he was over caring what people thought about him. He'd thought that loving Eleanor proved that. But he kept finding new pockets of shallow inside himself. He kept finding new ways to betray her.

Sometimes, Park stood at the end of the sidewalk and hated everything the house stood for.

You think that holding someone hard will bring them closer. You think that you can hold them so hard that you'll still feel them, embossed on you, when you pull away. Every time Eleanor pulled away from Park, she felt the gasping loss of him.

Rating Breakdown:
Plot: 5 stars
Pacing: 3 stars
Characters: 5 stars
Ending: 4 stars
Recommend: Yes, particularly if you like YA contemp.

Review - The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
Publisher: Dutton
Publication Date: 10 January 2012
Genre: YA Contemporary
My Copy: hardcover - library

Diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer at 12, 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.

Review:
This was the first book I've read by John Green. I've only seen maybe two of the Vlogbrothers YouTube videos. It's not like I'm some crazed John Green fanatic. I'm almost too worried to read another book by him because now I have high expectations. I say this so you understand that this book really did blow me away, and it wasn't just because I was already biased to like the book.

I wish I could put into words how absolutely fantastic this book really is. My words, however, do the book no justice. I was in tears for last couple chapters of the book, which does make it difficult to read. It’s one of those books I just want to shove into everyone’s hands and tell them they must read it. When I finished the book, I immediately turned back to the beginning and reread it. I have never done that with any book before. This book ripped my heart apart and then somehow stitched it back together again. It’s a book that takes you awhile to recover from. I expect it will stick with me forever, and I think maybe it has changed something inside me. I know that sounds ridiculous and cheesy, but I’m not being dramatic.

This book had me laughing so hard I was in tears. Then I was in tears because of the overwhelming feelings the book inspires. The characters are amazing. They're teenagers, but they are going through things that most of us couldn't begin to imagine. Green does a wonderful job balancing the angst of teenagers with the maturity that comes with facing adversity. Hazel and Augustus are eccentric and yet still very grounded. The book is filled with their existential ponderings which add great depth to the story. Isaac behaves in a way which is a little closer to what most people might think the average teenager would react. There are parts in the novel, mostly with Kaitlyn, which make it seem like this is a book written by an adult with preconceived notions of how teenagers act, but overall I think it's believable that the characters could be real teenagers.

The plot is incredible with some unexpected twists and turns which ground the book in reality. The pacing is pretty solid throughout the book except perhaps towards the end where it speeds up. I wasn't prepared for the ending and then it was over. However, I hesitate to call that a weakness in this story because it really happens that fast sometimes. That feeling of imbalance in the world is completely realistic. I don't want to say more than that for fear of giving something away. But seriously, if I could put this book into the hands of everyone I met, I totally would.

Book Beginning:
Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death.

Favorite Quotes:
“There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does.” -pg 12-13

Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. -pg 33

"All salvation is temporary," Augustus shot back. "I bought them a minute. Maybe that's the minute that buys them an hour, which is the hour that buys them a year. No one's gonna buy them forever, Hazel Grace, but my life bought them a minute. And that's not nothing." -pg 59

"But I believe in true love, you know? I don't believe that everybody gets to keep their eyes or not get sick or whatever, but everybody should have true love, and it should last at least as long as your life does." -pg 75

Wounded. Like Caroline Mathers had been a bomb and when she blew up everyone around her was left with embedded shrapnel. -pg 98
"I'm like. Like. I'm like a grenade, Mom. I'm a grenade and at some point I'm going to blow up and I would like to minimize the casualties, okay?"
My dad tilted his head a little to the side, like a scolded puppy.
"I'm a grenade," I said again. "I just want to stay away from people and read books and think and be with you guys because there's nothing I can do about hurting you; you're too invested, so just please let me do that, okay? I'm not depressed. I don't need to get out more. And I can't be a regular teenager, because I'm a grenade."
-pg 99

"You realize that trying to keep your distance from me will not lessen my affection for you." he said.
"I guess?" I said.
"All efforts to save me from you will fail," he said.
"Why? Why would you even like me? Haven't you put yourself through enough of this?" I asked, thinking of Caroline Mathers.
Gus didn't answer. He just held on to me, his fingers strong against my left arm. "We gotta do something about this frigging swing set," he said. "I'm telling you, it's ninety percent of the problem." -pg 122-123

As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once. -pg 124-125

"I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you." -pg 153

Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. -pg 189, 260

But that wasn't quite right. I called it a nine because I was saving my ten. And here it was, the great and terrible ten, slamming me again and again as I lay still and alone in my bed staring at the ceiling, the waves tossing me against the rocks then pulling me back out to sea so they could launch me again into the jagged face of the cliff, leaving me floating faceup on the water, undrowned. -pg 263 [referring to level of pain on a scale of 1 to 10]

My thoughts are stars I can't fathom into constellations. -pg 311

The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, "They'll remember me now," but (a) they don't remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion.
We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths.
We're as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we're not likely to do either. -pg 311-312



Rating Breakdown:
Plot: 5 hearts
Pacing: 5 hearts
Characters: 5 hearts
Character Relationships: 5 hearts
Ending: 5 hearts
Recommend: Absolutely! A must read for everyone!

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Review - Fracture by Megan Miranda

Fracture by Megan Miranda
*Debut Novel*
Publisher: Walker & Company
Publication Date: 17 January 2012
Genre: YA Contemporary (sorta)
My Copy: received for review from NetGalley - kindle

Eleven minutes passed before Delaney Maxwell was pulled from the icy waters of a Maine lake by her best friend Decker Phillips. By then her heart had stopped beating. Her brain had stopped working. She was dead. And yet she somehow defied medical precedent to come back seemingly fine

-despite the scans that showed significant brain damage. Everyone wants Delaney to be all right, but she knows she's far from normal. Pulled by strange sensations she can't control or explain, Delaney finds herself drawn to the dying. Is her altered brain now predicting death, or causing it?

Then Delaney meets Troy Varga, who recently emerged from a coma with similar abilities. At first she's reassured to find someone who understands the strangeness of her new existence, but Delaney soon discovers that Troy's motives aren't quite what she thought. Is their gift a miracle, a freak of nature-or something much more frightening?

For fans of best-sellers like Before I Fall and If I Stay, this is a fascinating and heart-rending story about love and friendship and the fine line between life and death.


Review:
I'm not sure where to start with this review. The book was intense, thought provoking, and enjoyable. I really loved Decker. You can tell from the very beginning just how much he cares for Delaney. The way he waits by her hospital bed and how upset he gets when the car spins out of control later. It's too bad that it took Delaney nearly dying for him to get it. I was annoyed with him and his fling with Tara. I was also annoyed that Delaney couldn't see how he felt when it seemed so clear. The part with Carson towards the middle of the book brought tears to my eyes.

Troy was extremely intimidating and more than a little scary. I didn't like him at all. I kept wanting to yell at the book and tell Delaney to stay away from him. He was very controlling and had a very twisted view of the world and his circumstances. His part in the ending of the book did not surprise me. It fit with what I knew of his character. I actually think that particular part of the ending was well done.

The book brings up questions about surviving near death experiences, humanity, and morality. What should you do if you know someone is dying? Should you save them or help them die peacefully? What if they could survive like Delaney? I have to love Delaney's question to the dying - If you had one day left to live, what would you do?

It seems like Miranda might have left the book open for a sequel. I think that would be ill-advised, but the ending is somewhat ambiguous. The synopsis hints at a dark supernatural cause for her predictions, but there is never anything like that in the book. She never explains why Delaney survived without any complications considering her brain scan. Whether Delaney's "gift" will continue or not is never really determined. The ending of the book feels misplaced somehow.

Book Beginning:

"The first time I died, I didn't see God."

Favorite Quote:

"Funny how everything can change in an instant. From death to life. From empty to full. From darkness to light. Or maybe I just wasn't looking. I hadn't known that a light could be a feeling and a sound could be a color and a kiss could be both a question and an answer. And that heaven could be the ocean or a person or this moment or something else entirely." - Kindle location 2504






Rating Breakdown:
Plot: 4 hearts
Pacing: 4 hearts
Characters: 4 hearts
Character Relationships: 5 hearts
Ending: 3 hearts
Recommend: Yes

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Review - But I Love Him by Amanda Grace

But I Love Him by Amanda Grace (Mandy Hubbard)
Publisher: Flux
Publication Date: 8 May 2011
Genre: YA Contemporary
My Copy: library - paperback

Tonight was so much worse than anything before it. Tonight he didn't stop after the first slap.

At the beginning of senior year, Ann was a smiling, straight-A student and track star with friends and a future. Then she met a haunted young man named Connor. Only she can heal his emotional scars; only he could make her feel so loved — and needed. Ann can't recall the pivotal moment it all changed, when she surrendered everything to be with him, but by graduation, her life has become a dangerous high wire act. Just one mistake could trigger Connor's rage, a senseless storm of cruel words and violence damaging everything — and everyone — in its path.

This evocative slideshow of flashbacks reveals a heartbreaking story of love gone terribly wrong.

Review:
This is one of those books where I am having a hard time determining if I liked it or not. The story covers exactly one year of a relationship between Ann and Connor. It starts with a piece from the last day, August 30, and then works its way to the beginning of the relationship backwards while interspersing pieces of the last day. The book ends with the first day they meet. I'll be honest, I didn't read the book in the order it was written. I don't mind reading books knowing part of the ending first or in reverse chronological order, but with this book, I wanted to know all of the last day at once. So, first I went through and read all of the chapters that were dated August 30 One Year, then went back and read the rest from the front cover to the back.

The author wanted the reader to understand what it is like in an abusive relationship where the victim often doesn't see what is going on until it's too late. I think she does this well with the reverse order. The highs and lows of being in the relationship are wonderfully done. The uncertainty about how to react or what will set someone off. The devotion of a first love in which you think you can fix all the problems. Having to stay quiet and ride out the anger of the abuser. The abuser can be extremely sweet at times. These things in the book can easily be understood by the reader. Also, Ann seems like an intelligent girl. People always assume that abuse won't happen to them or that the victim must be stupid. But I Love Him shows that anyone can become a part of a bad relationship. Connor doesn't seem like he's a necessarily bad kid either. You can almost sympathize with him at points without condoning his behavior towards Ann.

I found very few things I disliked about the book. It is a little difficult to follow at times. The minor characters relationship to Ann is not really ever explained until later in the book. I felt like even though it makes sense that they wouldn't be in the story line much at the beginning (since it was a controlling/abusive relationship and often you avoid friends and family when you're the victim) that they should have been included more at the end/beginning of relationship. I felt that the ending could have been stronger. Then again, I did read the entire last day first, so I missed one of the major points of the last day when I read it. I can't really explain more than that without giving away the ending.

Book Beginning:
"I lie in pieces on the floor."





Rating Breakdown:
Pacing: 4 stars
Plot: 5 stars
Characters: 4 stars
Character relationships: 4 stars
Recommend: Yes

Read for these challenges:
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Review - Sometimes It Happens by Lauren Barnholdt (16)

 Sometimes It Happens by Lauren Barnholdt

Publisher: Simon Pulse

Publication Date: 12 July 2011

Genre: YA Contemporary

My Copy: received for review from publisher - Galley Grab

 On the last day of her junior year, Hannah's boyfriend Sebastian dumped her. Facing a summer of loneliness, Hannah turns to her best friend Ava for comfort. Ava does what BFFs do: she stays by Hannah's side...until it's time for Ava to head up to Maine for the summer. Also left behind is Ava's boyfriend, Noah, who's such a great guy he gets Hannah a job at the diner he waits tables at. Slowly, Hannah comes out of her funk thanks to Noah's good conversation and their fun times at the diner. But things get complicated when their friendship turns into attraction--and one night, into a passionate kiss.

The novel opens on the first day of senior year; the day Hannah is going to see Ava, Sebastian, and Noah all in one place. Over the course of the day secrets and betrayals are revealed, and alliances are broken and reformed. In the end, everyone is paired up once again, but not the way you might think...

Review:

I really kind of wanted to put off this review since this is my first one in a few months, and I really wanted the first one back to be a good book. However, this is the first book that I've actually finished in awhile, so this is the one I'm reviewing. The first thing to note about this book is that it is told in alternating chapters. The first chapter is set on the first day of her senior year followed by a chapter from her summer. This is the way the whole book is set up, but I didn't feel like it really worked in this book. The story is really what happened during the summer, while the first day of school is more like the consequences of that summer. This limited the books potential because Barnholdt couldn't give away too much in the beginning despite the fact that you're getting the ending throughout the book. The characters couldn't really grow which felt essential for this book to be successful. The story revolves mostly around a lot of drama; lots of boys cheating on girls and girls backstabbing friends. It made the book a bit repetitive. I did like the beginning of the book. It held my interest for the first 100 pages or so, but then it lost its hook. I became tempted to not finish it, but it was a pretty quick read, and I was already halfway through it (I think I finished the whole book in about two hours). The reader can figure out what's going to happen fairly early, but then the author tries to drag out the suspense which made me just want to say enough already. I never connected with any of the characters. The characters are realistic in that none of them are completely good or completely bad people, except for perhaps Lacey who might actually just be a good person. However, Lacey came off as kind of whiny and spineless in the beginning, so I had a hard time feeling bad for her. The characters do grow a bit, but not until the last 15 to 20 pages which hardly seemed worth it. One last oddity, the characters seem to just skip classes like it's no big deal. I don't know anywhere where the students can just keep running around the school and off campus at random. The bottom line? The book had potential, but failed largely due to the fact that all of the characters had the same problem and were not very rounded.

Rating breakdown:

Plot: 2 hearts

Pacing: 1 heart

Characters: 1 heart

Character relationships: 2 hearts

Recommend: No

Short Reviews - Hunger, Summer, and a Witch (9 - 11)

“Thou art the Black Rider. Go thee out unto the world.”

Lisabeth Lewis has a black steed, a set of scales, and a new job: she’s been appointed Famine. How will an anorexic seventeen-year-old girl from the suburbs fare as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?

Traveling the world on her steed gives Lisa freedom from her troubles at home: her constant battle with hunger, and her struggle to hide it from the people who care about her. But being Famine forces her to go places where hunger is a painful part of everyday life, and to face the horrifying effects of her phenomenal power. Can Lisa find a way to harness that power — and the courage to battle her own inner demons?

Hunger by Jackie Morse Keller
Series: Horsemen of the Apocalypse #1
Publisher: Graphia
Publication Date: 18 October 2010
Genre: YA fantasy/supernatural
My Copy: library - paperback

Review:
The premise caught my attention awhile back because it sounded interesting. Unfortunately, the book didn't really live up to my expectations. I found it very difficult to connect with the main character. I grew increasingly frustrated with her attitude towards her real best friend, her boyfriend and her parents as well as her near worship of a bulimic girl. Don't get me wrong, I understand why she had the attitude, but it seemed like she should have shown more change in character earlier in the book since that sort of was the point of the story. Instead, everything happened in the end of the book, but by that point I was already too annoyed with Lisabeth. Then there's the ending which felt like it didn't fit with the rest of the story, or really even with the premise. I'm not sure yet if I'll read Rage.






Review breakdown:
Plot: 3 hearts
Pacing: 3 hearts
Characters: 2 hearts
Character relationships: 1 heart
Recommend: No

Anna is dreading another tourist-filled summer on Dune Island that follows the same routine: beach, ice cream, friends, repeat. That is, until she locks eyes with Will, the gorgeous and sweet guy visiting from New York. Soon, her summer is filled with flirtatious fun as Anna falls head over heels in love.

But with every perfect afternoon, sweet kiss, and walk on the beach, Anna can’t ignore that the days are quickly growing shorter, and Will has to leave at the end of August. Anna’s never felt anything like this before, but when forever isn’t even a possibility, one summer doesn’t feel worth the promise of her heart breaking...

Sixteenth Summer by Michelle Dalton
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Publication Date: 3 May 2011
Genre: YA contemporary
My Copy: received for review from publisher - e-book ARC

Review:
I loved this story! The relationship that builds over the course of the summer is so realistic. The book is surrounded in the bittersweet feeling of summer love. I loved Anna. She's very down-to-earth, and I instantly connected with her. Will is so swoon worthy. Plus, I would love to be a part of Anna's family (not to mention live on a beach). Anna's friends remained strong in the story line as well rather than dropping out of it when she meets Will which is an often heard complaint with YA novels. There are so many realistic aspects to this book that make it a perfect contemporary YA story. I laughed and cheered and then found myself crying my eyes out at the ending. This is a must read for your summer lists! Warning: This book will give you a sweet tooth! I'd recommend having ice cream nearby.






Rating breakdown:
Plot: 5 hearts
Pacing: 5 hearts
Characters: 5 hearts
Character relationships: 5 hearts
Recommend: Absolutely!

Freak. That's what her classmates call seventeen-year-old Donna Underwood. When she was seven, a horrific fey attack killed her father and drove her mother mad. Donna's own nearly fatal injuries from the assault were fixed by magic—the iron tattoos branding her hands and arms. The child of alchemists, Donna feels cursed by the magical heritage that destroyed her parents and any chance she had for a normal life. The only thing that keeps her sane and grounded is her relationship with her best friend, Navin Sharma.

When the darkest outcasts of Faerie—the vicious wood elves—abduct Navin, Donna finally has to accept her role in the centuries old war between the humans and the fey. Assisted by Xan, a gorgeous half-fey dropout with secrets of his own, Donna races to save her friend—even if it means betraying everything her parents and the alchemist community fought to the death to protect.

The Iron Witch by Karen Mahoney
Series: The Iron Witch #1
Publisher: Flux
Publication Date: 8 February 2011
Genre: YA fantasy/supernatural
My Copy: library - paperback

Review:
The book has a slow start, but definitely picks up the pace towards the end (which is why it only gets 4 hearts). Most of the action happens in the last few chapters. The slower parts are interesting though and gives the reader a chance to learn about the world created within the story. Donna is a dynamic character. In the beginning she seems afraid most of the time, but towards the end, she has much more confidence in herself. I was very intrigued by Xan. I want to know more about his history. I also want to know what the Wood Queen was talking about when she speaks with Donna. I will definitely be picking up the second book.






Rating breakdown:
Plot: 5 hearts
Pacing: 3 hearts
Characters: 5 hearts
Character relationships: 4 hearts
Recommend: Yes

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