Read By Diesel

What’s it all about - Here. 

The Thoughts - 

Whats it all about - She’s more gunpowder than girl—and the fate of the desert lies in her hands. Mortals rule the desert nation of Miraji, but mystical beasts still roam the wild and barren wastes, and rumor has it that somewhere, djinni still practice their magic. But there's nothing mystical or magical about Dustwalk, the dead-end town that Amani can't wait to escape from. Destined to wind up "wed or dead," Amani’s counting on her sharpshooting skills to get her out of Dustwalk. When she meets Jin, a mysterious and devastatingly handsome foreigner, in a shooting contest, she figures he’s the perfect escape route. But in all her years spent dreaming of leaving home, she never imagined she'd gallop away on a mythical horse, fleeing the murderous Sultan's army, with a fugitive who's wanted for treason. And she'd never have predicted she'd fall in love with him...or that he'd help her unlock the powerful truth of who she really is.

The Thoughts - 

Hi Gang, Let’s get right to it, What’s it all about? - A girl with a past she tries to forget, and a future she can’t even imagine. Leonie Woodville wants to live an unremarkable life. She wants routine, she wants repetition, she wants predictability. So when she explodes in a blaze of light one morning on the way to her college, it’s enough to put a real crimp in her day. And things only get weirder… Leonie learns from her father that she is last of the Pulsar, a phenomenally powerful member of a magical species called the Chosen. It will be her sole duty to protect the Imperium, a governing hierarchy, from all enemies, and to exceed the reputation of the Pulsar before her. So – no pressure there, then. Leonie is swept away from her rigorous normality and taken to a world of magic. There, she is forced into a ceremony to join her soul to a guardian, Korren, who is both incredibly handsome and intensely troubled, a relationship for which ‘it’s complicated’ just really doesn’t cut it. But Leonie is soon to learn that this ancient world is no paradise. With violent dissidents intent to overthrow the Imperium, and dark entities with their own agenda, she and Korren find themselves caught in a war where they will have to overcome their differences if they are to survive. Dare to dream. Dare to hope. Dare to be a legend 

The Thoughts - So here is the thing, I am totally torn when it comes to this book. (Continued after the break)

Hello friends! Happy Holidays to all. Let’s get right to it. What’s it all about?:  For hundreds of years, the peaceful country of Haven has remained isolated from the rest of the world. But for adventurous seventeen-year-old Katelyn Kestrel, Haven’s calm has always been a little, well, boring. She can’t help but wonder what lay outside Haven’s seemingly impassible borders, but no one will talk about the mysterious catastrophic event that separated Haven from the outside world. Katelyn has a strange knack for finding things, and when she miraculously finds a passage into the outside world, she thinks she’s solved a longstanding mystery. Instead, she discovers that some things should never be found . The outside world is more treacherous than Katelyn ever imagined, full of monsters, magic, and two princes locked in a bloody, centuries-long battle. The moment she arrives, she is kidnapped and held captive in a nearby keep, accused of being a northern spy. With the help of a hardened young soldier and a handsome lord, Katelyn must try to escape and find her way back to Haven. But there are dark forces at work that Katelyn can’t begin to understand, and she’ll be lucky to make it out of the fortress alive. The Thoughts:  This book had strong potential, it had a strong base story line. However it’s deliverance was it’s down fall. The characters are run of the mill stereotypical YA characters. Protagonist with a victim complex, silent moody boy, obligatory douche bag love triangle add in, twirly mustache bad guy.  There is also a crap tonne of unnecessary story line and detail. So much so that without it, the book would be a 100 pages shorter. The first few chapters are babble, page filler in an attempt to get the ball rolling. There are frequent detailed descriptions  of characters who barely appear again, making the whole story confusing to read and filled to the brim with time wasted trying to remember the relevance of anyone who isn’t a main character.  The political layout is again confusing, with to many tiers, badly explained and hardly revisited. Supernatural powers are written without clarity and therefore are hard to imagine and some times missed completely, once again leaving you confused AF when they come around the next time. If edits had taken out all the junk, it might have been more straight forward.

The Basics - A story about a troubled girl and her effed up, going-nowhere life.Quick witted, sharp-tongued, eighteen-year-old Righteous Andrews is a troubled teen. At the start of her senior year of high school she doesn’t have any friends, she lives in a trailer park with her emotionally deranged mother, and the only person she can confide in is a seventy-five-year old woman with dementia who can’t remember a thing she says. And because of her mediocre grades, Righteous’ future is just as bleak; she is pretty much guaranteed to get into the University of Nowhere.Through it all she maintains a strong demeanor, but inside she struggles to get over her past - a father who deserted her before she was even born and the friends who turned their backs on her when she needed them most. Everything that has happened has left her with questions, it’s made her guarded, untrusting, and it’s ruined every new relationship she has.Just when she thinks her life cannot possibly get any worse, on the first day of her senior year, she gets in trouble and lands in the principal’s office… again. There she meets Colt Jackson, the new kid. He seems to start showing up everywhere she doesn’t want him to be. Soon her crazy life is no longer just crazy… it’s perpetually doomed. At least, that’s what she thinks.

The Basics -  Eila Walker knows luck is not a friend, so she is downright shocked to inherit a million-dollar Cape Cod home. And yeah, her new town isn't perfect: the cheerleaders are heinous clones, the local undertow can kill ya, and her Great Grams was supposedly fried by lightning in the harbor square. Still, Eila is hopeful her luckless days are in the past . . . until history decides to repeat itself.When Raef O’Reilly becomes her friendly, yet weirdly protective shadow, Eila thinks life is pretty darn perfect – until she is hauled beneath the waves by an unnatural undertow. Revealing coal-black eyes and iron-like strength as he rescues her, Raef can no longer hide what he is . . . or what she can do. Eila, last of her kind, can supposedly channel the power of human souls, while Raef is more adept at stealing them. Even worse, the legend about her ancestor isn't such a myth, since Eila’s grandmother was one heck of a warrior until her lightning-like power backfired.A power that is written all over Eila's DNA.Determined to stay one step ahead of a dangerous clan that is hunting her, Raef, along with a motley crew of high school rejects, will do all they can to protect her. But as hidden pieces of their brutal histories unravel, Eila begins to understand just what went down in the harbor square. She soon realizes that following in her grandmother’s fearless footsteps may be the only way to save those she loves . . . including Raef.

The Thoughts - 

The Basics -  The boy who shot seven people in the school library is dead. But did his secrets die with him? Something terrible happened at Hamilton High last year, and those who survived don't want to relive the past. But Paul has just arrived, and gets the same locker that the shooter used. He wants to know what really happened...and you know what curiosity did to the cat. The Thoughts -  Come Sit By Me is a new take on the world of school shooting literature. There is a story to be told and a mystery to be solved.

The Basics - 

In a future London, Concentr8 is a prescription drug intended to help kids with ADD. Soon every troubled teen is on it. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Keep the undesirable elements in line. Keep people like us safe from people like them. What’s good for society is good for everyone. Troy, Femi, Lee, Karen and Blaze have been taking Concentr8 as long as they can remember. They’re not exactly a gang, but Blaze is their leader, and Troy has always been his quiet, watchful sidekick – the only one Blaze really trusts. They’re not looking for trouble, but one hot summer day, when riots break out across the city, they find it. What makes five kids pick a man seemingly at random – a nobody, he works in the housing department, doesn’t even have a good phone – hold a knife to his side, take him to a warehouse and chain him to a radiator? They’ve got a hostage, but don’t really know what they want, or why they’ve done it. And across the course of five tense days, with a journalist, a floppy-haired mayor, a police negotiator, and the sinister face of the pharmaceutical industry, they – and we – begin to understand why.

The Thoughts - 

When I first read what this book was about, I was really excited by the concept.  It’s marketed as a book about how we label teenagers and how they are failed by their governments when let slip through the cracks.

The Basics -

The people need Justice, but she’s not listening. One hundred years before, the Great Sickness reduced the world to three cities. Now the community of Asphodel is trapped underground, waiting for the prophesied maiden of Justice to return and save them from their Fates. Sixteen-year-old Astrea is supposed to be this savior – but how could she save anyone when she doesn't believe it herself? Astrea fights against her false destiny until she learns her life is in danger, and she discovers a power she never knew she had. As betrayal closes every door, Astrea decides she must submit to her stars and accept her fate. Then a handsome stranger offers her an unexpected escape and the chance to create her own destiny.

The Thoughts - 

Justice Buried is one I really found it hard to get through. In fact I didn’t get to home base in the end. The story started off with promise, but quickly falls into a shambles of confusing plot line, and a mash of characters that are unlikable and untrustworthy. There are so many characters deemed untrustworthy in this book, I was left wondering if the author even knew what the heck was going on as she was writing it. The plot is overly complicated and tiresome to read, with to many characters with to much to say. The “love” story between Astrea and Lexan is frustrating and seems just thrown together for the sake of a love triangle, and it got to the point where if I had to listen to how she didn’t trust him or his family one more time, I’d have slapped her. The appearance of the outsider left me with many questions, one of which being how the hell has Astrea been hanging out in this cave for yonks and not bloody noticed you can get in and out of it at all? I found the writing to be agitating and the characters were all around bad journey mates. I can’t even remember how far I got before throwing in the towel, but it was an endless stream of nothing new happening, with the same old “don’t tell, don’t trust” troupe coming back page after page.  I would not recommend this book nor would I continue on with the series.

The Basics -  Sonny Ardmore is an excellent liar. She lies about her dad being in prison. She lies about her mom kicking her out. And she lies about sneaking into her best friend's house every night because she has nowhere else to go.Amy Rush might be the only person Sonny shares everything with - secrets, clothes, even a nemesis named Ryder Cross. Ryder's the new kid at Hamilton High and everything Sonny and Amy can't stand - a prep-school snob. But Ryder has a weakness: Amy. So when Ryder emails Amy asking her out, the friends see it as a prank opportunity not to be missed. But without meaning to, Sonny ends up talking to Ryder all night online. And to her horror, she realizes that she might actually 'like' him. Only there's one small catch: he thinks he's been talking to Amy. So Sonny comes up with an elaborate scheme to help Ryder realize that she's the girl he's really wanted all along. Can Sonny lie her way to the truth, or will all her lies end up costing her both Ryder and Amy? 

The Thoughts -  This book is no where near as good as the Duff and was a real step down for Keplinger. The characters feel like rehashes of The Duff characters, just with added lying. Sonny, to me, was a baby Bianca - The same style, the same sass, the same attitude, with added habitual lying.

Amy was a smushed together sandwich of Bianca’s friends - sweet, kind, heart of gold, there to feel Sonny inadequate about her own self. The main boy Ryder is a out and out jerk. While Sonny isn’t much better, it’s hard to see why any reader would want to fall in love with Ryder.  At least Wesley was an enjoyable jerk. Ryder is just annoying and stand offish. Once again Keplinger’s large plot points are to do with parental issues which was a deep disappointment. I wanted something original but it was not to be had.