Gypsy by Lesley Pearse

I got this book as part of a buy 1 get 1 of a certain selection of titles free deal. If I’m honest, I was attracted to the cover. That girl in that gorgeous red dress drew me in, and the synopsis seemed interested enough, so I went for it!

Author:  Apparently Lesley Pearce is one of the UK’s best-loved authors. Well, I’m from the UK and I’d never heard of her before I got this book. It could be that she’s best-loved by a different generation; that would not surprise me. She’s got a large number of published works under her belt. She writes in British English.

Presentation: Paperback. About average size but quite thick as it is rather long at 516 pages. There are 37 chapters of roughly the same length.

Story: when 15-year-old Beth’s father commits suicide she finds her life turned upside down. Her older brother, Sam, is not yet skilled enough in the family trade to take over the business, leaving the family with very little income. Her mother turns out to be pregnant with her lover’s baby (the father’s suicide was so that the mother and her lover could be together but the lover high-tailed it). Unfortunately, the birth is not an easy one and their mother dies soon after, burdening her children with a new-born and her dark secrets. Tragedy after tragedy strikes the brother and sister, and eventually they find themselves giving their younger sister, Molly, to adoptive parents and they set out for a new life in the New World. Sam is convinced that he will be able to make his fortune in America, but the duo get off to a bumpy start with Beth paving the way because of her skill playing the fiddle. After some more tragic events, Beth, Sam, Theo (an upper-class gambling man whom Beth is in love with) and Jack (from the lowest classes in London, but knowledgeable and in love with Beth) find themselves moving from city to city, always looking for a new home. Eventually they hear tell of a new gold strike up in Alaska. But the way there is fraught with dangers and they must survive a demanding trek through the Alaskan mountains and a dangerous trip down the floodwater rivers. Despite this, Theo and Sam are convinced that they can make their fortune in this new gold rush town. But who can Beth really trust? Is her heart safe in Theo’s hands? Is Sam living with his head in the clouds? Will Jack be able to keep her safe?

Thoughts and impressions:  Unfortunately, the story didn’t really live up to the prettiness of the cover. It was good, don’t get me wrong, but I think that the scope was far too large.

The pace was a bit all over the place. Sometimes we’d get stuck in the endless drivel of some character’s thoughts that seemed to go on and on forever. At other times the really important points were just rushed through. *mini spoiler* At one point in the story, Beth ends up pregnant. But between the reader learning that she’s pregnant and an accident that causes the loss of the baby, about a month and the event and its aftermath all flick by in the space of about ten pages. And we're not really given the chance to feel what Beth is feeling about it, to feel what Jack is feeling about discovering that she'd been pregnant and hadn't told him and that she's now in hospital, to feel what Theo is feeling about having lost the child he didn't even know was coming, to feel Sam's dispair at almost losing his sister... As such, I found I was unable to feel Beth’s, or anyone else's, loss. I was unable to even feel sympathy for her.

I was never really affected by any of the story’s big tragedies because the narrative doesn’t dwell on them for long enough to make these events as shattering for me as they are for the characters. I feel rather disappointed by this, as had the characters been brought closer to me, I think that this would have been an excellent read. Maybe it should have been split into a two book mini-series. That would have allowed the author to make all her comments on society, but also bring us closer to Beth. As it is, the book takes place over about 8 or 9 years crammed into 500 pages and it’s just too much. Things whizz past before you even have the time to realise they’re happening and I didn’t like that.

It must be said that the author obviously did a lot of research for this book. She even went up to Alaska and walked the trail that the characters would be walking in the book. Her passion for history can be seen in every page, it is very clear and I liked that I learnt little bits from the book.

The author set up a foundation for ‘strong women’, or something of the sort, and she writes books about such women. I just wish she’d given Beth the strength to give Theo the boot rather than putting up with all the horrible stuff her puts her through.

Style: The author is a storyteller and not a weaver of the craft. The style often tells rather than shows, I think to increase the speed of the narrative, to get everything in there. In all honesty, the style didn’t really appeal to me. The author sticks almost exclusively to one tense, even when she moves further back in her time of narration, using this one tense to describe ‘present’ events as well as ‘past’ ones. There’s also an overdose of the adverb ‘suddenly’. I don’t like this adverb being used in literature as it shows the author’s opinion and not the narrator’s.

Final verdict: I’m torn. I really wanted to like this book and I think that in the hands of an author with a different style this could well have become one of my favourite books. As it is, I enjoyed it but I didn’t overly like it. 3 stars (lower end of the spectrum)

Extra notes: Sex happens, though it is not described in great detail. Some minor language if memory serves, but it didn’t stick out for me so there probably wasn’t that much of it. Aimed at adults more than young adults.

Murder on Waverly Place by Victoria Thompson

This is the eleventh book in the Gaslight Mysteries series by Victoria Thompson. As such, there may be spoilers pertaining to earlier books in the series. Considering that each book’s plot is fairly independent of events in previous books, there shouldn’t be any major give aways, though.

Author: Victoria Thompson started out writing historical romances. In the late 90’s she turned her attention to cosy mystery instead. Now she writes about midwife, Sarah Brandt, and her policeman friend, Frank Malloy. In each book they team up to solve a different murder. I was attracted to this series because it is set in late 19^th century New York, which is a new setting for me.

Presentation: Mass market paperback. The print is quite small but spaced in this book (editions of earlier books in the series are not spaced, I prefer this look.) There are 294 pages broken down into 16 chapters.

Story: Sarah Brandt’s sister, Maggie, died many years ago, giving birth to her son in a filthy fifth floor tenement apartment after their father disowned her and ruined her husband’s chances of getting a job that could support them. Mrs Decker, Sarah’s mother, has never forgiven herself for the role she played in her daughter’s death. Now, one of her friends has introduced her to the world of séances. Unwilling to go without moral support, she asks Sarah to join her and Sarah reluctantly agrees. There are some strange goings-on at the séance: the smell of roses, the sound of a baby crying… but all of those present do not get any real answers to their questions. Sarah in unconvinced and asks her mother not to return. Mrs Decker, though, is desperate to contact Maggie, to ask for her forgiveness, and so she returns. This time, however, something a little more sinister happens: one of the guests will not leave the house alive. Unwilling to give her own name to the police lest it be leaked to the media, thus potentially getting back to her husband (who does not know of her attempts to contact their dead daughter), Mrs Decker calls herself by her daughter’s name and asks for Frank Malloy to come and investigate. Malloy, realising that he’s going to need Sarah’s help in this matter, has her sent for, too, even though he knows that this will mean her getting embroiled in yet another murder investigation – something he’s not too happy about. But in a world where the rich are paying to contact the dead, nothing is as simple as it seems.

Thoughts and impressions:  The book was rather good fun. I’ve read certain reviews claiming that it wasn’t as good as previous books, but I enjoyed it more than Little Italy, Chinatown and Bank Street. The séances were portrayed very well, with just enough spooky. The obsession of those attending for answers from the dead (that they would likely never receive) was very realistic, including the lengths they were all willing to go to to keep getting their vague lack of answers.

As per usual when the killer is introduced early on in the book, I’d figured out who the murderer was, but I couldn’t figure out how they’d been able to commit the crime.

Sarah’s mother, always a delightful character, was once again an interesting addition to the story – caught between the delights of doing something she shouldn’t be doing and her upbringing that tells her not to do it. And towards the start of the story, was that the setting of a potential future romance for Maeve? It could be an interesting match. And Sarah’s palm reading telling her she’ll marry again? A good bit of info to ruminate on – though I wonder how many books we’ll have to get through before they even really begin their courtship, let alone marry. I wish Sarah and Frank would get over the “two different worlds” thing and advance in their relationship already. Sarah and Tom were two different worlds too, but that didn’t stop her!

I miss Brian, Malloy’s son. He hasn’t had any on-page time for the past couple of books now. It’s a shame because he’s a fun little thing. I prefer him to Catherine. I’m fact, I’m getting fed up with Sarah tearing up whenever Catherine hugs her or her mother or whoever in the books. The girl’s been living with her for months, and she’s always very affectionate. Sarah should get over it already.

We’re back to only the two POVs now, Maeve has lost hers again, which makes me question whether it was a good idea to introduce it in book 10.

Style: In this book, Thompson returns to her obsession for {adjective} eyes. I noticed it in early books, too. Thankfully it has evolved a bit since then. In an earlier book, one character’s eyes were frequently described and they were always described as “lovely eyes”. In this book, Serafina’s eyes are described as being lovely / wonderful / amazing no less than four times in two chapters! A bit overkill on the eye description front.

Final verdict: I enjoyed this one. I felt that advances were made in all the places that were important and I quite liked the romp into the world of séances and spiritualism! 4 stars.

Extra notes: No sex, no swearing. More aimed at an adult market than anything else.

Murder on Bank Street by Victoria Thompson

This is the tenth book in the Gaslight Mysteries series by Victoria Thompson. As such, there may be spoilers pertaining to earlier books in the series. Considering that each book’s plot is fairly independent of events in previous books, there shouldn’t be any major give aways, though.

Author: Victoria Thompson started out writing historical romances. In the late 90’s she turned her attention to cosy mystery instead. Now she writes about midwife, Sarah Brandt, and her policeman friend, Frank Malloy. In each book they team up to solve a different murder. I was attracted to this series because it is set in late 19^th century New York, which is a new setting for me.

Presentation: Mass market paperback. The print is quite small but spaced in this book (editions of earlier books in the series are not spaced, I prefer this look.) There are 324 pages broken down into 16 chapters.

Story: Sarah Brandt is a widow. 4 years ago her husband, Doctor Tom Brandt, was murdered. The police never launched a proper investigation into the murder as they did not receive a “reward” (the police back then were, apparently, corrupt and would only investigate if they were paid to do so as their salary was so low that they could not afford to do otherwise) from Sarah or her parents, the Deckers (members of the elite New York society). Since he met her, Malloy has found himself indebted to Mrs Brandt: she has not only helped him with numerous murder investigations, but more importantly she brought him to understand that his son, Brian, was deaf with a club foot that could be fixed by surgery (permitting him to walk) and not both a physical and mental cripple doomed to a life depends on others. And Malloy wants to return the favour by finding the man responsible for Doctor Tom’s death. Now, Frank Malloy, widower himself, has received permission from police commissioner Roosevelt himself to reopen this cold case in light of new evidence. But Roosevelt is due to leave office to accept a role in the government within just a few short weeks. No new commissioner would ever allow Malloy to continue to investigate a murder that happened four years ago, so he finds himself having to rush an investigation he would rather not rush. And that means having to get extra help on board.

Thoughts and impressions: I put off reading this book for about a month. I’m not sure why as I devoured the previous 9 books in the series very quickly. Maybe I’d just given myself an overload of it, but no matter the reason, I got back on track and polished off this book within an afternoon.

It was interesting to finally look into Tom Brandt’s murder, to learn more about these women who were forming romantic attachments to men who’d shown them nothing more than common courtesy. Tom Brandt’s death has been looming over the series since… well, really since three years before the events in the first book even took place! Maybe with that out of the way we’ll finally be able to see some real advances in the relationship between Sarah and Frank, though I am beginning to believe nothing will happen until Felix Decker gives Frank his permission to court his daughter. At least that the start of this book Sarah admitted to herself that she loves Frank, which I think was the first time she’s ever put it so plainly!

As for Tom Brandt… well, I’d begun to believe that maybe he had been hiding his true nature from his wife. Even the author herself said that when asked about it, she wasn’t sure whether Tom was a good guy or not, and events in previous books pointed to the possibility that he wasn’t.

Maeve came into her own in this book. She even got a POV. That was the first time in ten books that any character other than Sarah and Frank was given a POV. I’m not sure how I feel about this, though I did enjoy her story with little Iris. She was certainly more interesting than Sarah, who regressed in this book. She seemed to spend her whole time upset with everyone and everything because her husband might not have been the saint she’d believed him to be and her father didn’t pay for the investigation.

Style: Nothing much to say about it. I like it, it draws me in.

Final verdict: Not as good as some of the earlier books, but better than others. I enjoyed the read. It reminded me of why I like Sarah Brandt and Frank Malloy so much! 3 stars.

Extra notes: No sex, no swearing. More aimed at an adult market than anything else.

Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison

This is the first book in the Georgia Nicholson series. I’ve had the book for about ten years now and have reread it multiple times. It is a favourite of mine. I am now embarking on a reread of the whole series as a buddy read with Charmaine Elaine over at From the Shadows I Review.

Author: Louise Rennison is a British author. She uses a lot a fabulous British slang in her books. Apparently her research consisted of hanging out with teenage girls so she could represent their language correctly. Cool research!

Presentation: The book is presented as a diary. It is broken down into months – this book in particular spans over just under a year – and the months are broken down into days and times. Sometimes there will be entries that are set only minutes apart. My copy was 201 pages long, but it is an old version and I believe the new editions are longer.

Story: Georgia’s summer is coming to an end. She’s preparing to go back to Stalag 14 (school) and she and her friends are determined to make the most of the year. As she is 14 and on the brink of womanhood (she wears a bra!), she’s also fishing for a boy. The world of boys is confusing, though. There are whelks, big gobs and sex gods abound. It doesn’t help that her nose is too big and whenever she smiles it spreads all over her face. Georgia and her friends, the Ace Gang, go through many short, but hilarious, adventures. They all have a natural talent for making fools of themselves, which leads to many laughs.

Thoughts and impressions: It took me a little while to get back into the book this time around. I first read it when I was 13, and that was the perfect age for it. Georgia is 14 so I could relate to all her thoughts and actions, which is a bit harder now that I’m 23. I didn’t laugh quite so much as I did when I was younger, but I still found myself gigglesnorting a dime a dozen. There was even the odd occasion when I had to stop reading to wipe the tears of laughter from my eyes!

That’s not really that much else that I can say about it. I love Georgia, even though she’s pretty narcissistic, occasionally treats her friends (especially bestie Jas) like dirt, and has a hard time seeing past the end of her nose. My favourite character is definitely Angus, the half Scottish wildcat cat. He’s always there to traumatise the neighbours and their poodles.

A film version of this and the second book does exist, but I didn't really like it. Lots of things were wrong (the actor who played Robbie, Dave the Laugh's lack of screen time, the cat that plays Angus looks like an expensive indoor breed and not a Scottish wildcat, as well as various changes to the storyline, not to mention the title.) I recommend the book(s) over the film.

Style: Extremely colloquial, but considering the format this is to be expected. I love the random foreign words that get inserted from time to time.

Final verdict: I love the humour in this book! Very British! It is certainly aimed at a female teenage market. My book even claims it to be rated ‘T for Teens’. I certainly recommend the whole series for young girls! 4 stars

Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

This book was chosen for a reading group. It was not one that I would have ordinarily picked for myself but I decided to give it a go anyway.

Author: In all honesty, I don’t know very much about the author. I just know that she’s American and that she’s written quite a number of books for younger readers.

Presentation: My book was a bit of a weird shape. It seemed wider than it should have been given the vertical length of it. It is written as diary entries broken down into 4 parts (the seasons of the year) and then chapters as well. It is 337 pages long.

Story: Miranda is your typical schoolgirl. She works hard to obtain her grades. She’s on the swim team. She has a couple of close friends. She’s a bit obsessed with the local celebrity. She lives at home with her and her little brother while her big brother is at uni and her dad has a new life with a new (newly pregnant) wife. But then disaster strikes the whole world. A meteor hits the moon, sending it out of its orbit and pushing it closer to Earth. Tsunamis wipe out all low-lying coastal areas. Earthquakes hit. Volcanoes all start erupting; including those that have been dormant for a long time… even some new ones start erupting. With so many volcanoes spewing out ash, the sun is soon blocked out by a thick cloud layer. Food becomes scarce, a wood stove is imperative. People start dying of diseases not local to their environment. Only the fittest will survive.

Thoughts and impressions: It took me a little while to really get into the book, but once I did I was completely sucked in by everything. It is not the story of the apocalypse. It is the story of one girl’s struggle for survival. It is a very personal story, even more so because of the form it takes (her personal diary, in case you forgot.) There’s a lot of small details about their daily comings and goings, but for me that just added to the personal story rather than making it a ‘disaster on a large scale’ story.

I found the book to be very thought provoking. I felt like I was going through everything that the character was going through. When I read it we had terrible weather here: the wind was going mad and it was constantly dull – this just added to the feeling that her world could well be my world. I felt guilty every time I ate a full meal instead of just a tin of mixed veg or something. I had an urge to go and stock up on tinned and jarred foods, to make sure my pantry was full, to make sure I had enough pet food for the animals…

At times I felt like the author deliberately wrote the character as dense rather than naïve. The scene where she learns about all the volcanoes in the world erupting being one such example. I would have thought that at 16, you’d know that every single one of the world’s volcanoes erupting at the same time spells big trouble, but Miranda seemed to be stuck in the belief that because there are no volcanoes near where she lives, she would not be affected.

There were some scenes that didn’t add to the story. They should either have been cut or expanded upon. One such scene was the one where Miranda met Brandon (her idol) at the lake and went ice skating with him. It is never touched upon again. Did Brandon really exist? Or did Miranda have one hell of a hallucination? We, as readers, do not know. It should either have been cut from the final version of the story or something should have happened later on to confirm that Miranda had dreamt it all up. Instead, we’re just left with that one random scene that never went anywhere.

Although at times she is annoying or exasperating, Miranda is a very relatable character. The way that she lashes out at her mother in particular is something I know I did myself at that age.

Style: Nothing in particular to say about the style. It worked well for the story. Not very detailed, but it didn’t need to be.

Final verdict: I think that this one will stay with me for a long time. I thoroughly enjoyed the read. 4 stars.

Extra notes: No sex. There may have been some swearing, but it didn’t stand out to me. There are two other books in this series, but after having researched their content, I’ve come to the conclusion that no message of hope can be offered in such a world and I’d rather remember the characters as they are now, rather than as their personalities will be shaped in the last book.

Last Sacrifice by Richelle Mead

This is the last book in the Vampire Academy series. As such there WILL be spoilers pertaining to events in previous books. Fair warning.

This review will contain spoilers for the ending of this book and series.

Author: Mead has known a lot of success in a relatively short period. She’s currently got three series on the go. Vampire Academy, certainly her most famous work to date, is riding the vampire wave created by Twilight. It also has to be said that her hair is an amazing shade of red, very pretty!

Presentation: Quite a large paperback. The font is a relatively large size with wide spacing. There are 594 pages broken down into 36 chapters.

Story: Rose is in prison, awaiting trial for the murder of Queen Tatiana. Having condemned herself even further at the end of book 5 by speaking before thinking, in typical Rose fashion, her friends take it into their own hands to break her out. They hope that once she is freed, without her imminent execution hanging over all their heads, they will be able to discover who really murdered the Moroi queen. But all of her friends need to look innocent in the matter, so none of them can join her in her escape. One person can though: Dimitri. Dimitri, who still considers Lissa a goddess and his personal saviour, would do anything for the Dragomir princess, including running away with Rose even though she reminds him too much of his past as one of the Strigoi. Joining them is Sydney the Alchemist, who owes Abe, Rose’s father, a favour for some unknown, but obviously big, reason. Rose doesn’t want to just lie low and hide, though. She received a message from the late Tatiana, telling her that there is another Dragomir child, an illegitimate child, whose appearance in court would give Lissa the power she needs to help sway politics (Lissa can’t take her rightful place as one of the ruling families because of a law stating that there must be at least one other family member.) So Rose manages to screw everything up for herself, Dimitri and Sydney, forcing them to flee, while Lissa runs for queen back at court and everyone tries to figure out who really killed Tatiana. On top of this, Rose and Dimitri try to figure out what they mean to each other (conveniently forgetting all about Adrian), someone seems to be trying to kill Lissa, Victor and Robert reappear to turn another Strigoi back to Moroi, and Rose is slowly losing her battle against the madness incurred by the use of spirit.

(I repeat now – this review DOES contain spoilers for the ending of this book. If you do not wish to read spoilers, do not continue reading.)

Thoughts and impressions: I’m torn about this book. It is certainly about on par with most of the other books in the series (for quality) but it has one big, big problem: it is not an ending! Sure, Rose and Dimitri have their happy ending, but they’re the only ones. Everything else, absolutely everything else!, is not rounded off. In fact, Mead spends more time introducing the premises for the spinoff series (Bloodlines) than she does wrapping up events for this series. This really, really annoys me. When you read a series, the last book should wrap up enough that you don’t need to read another series to get an actual ending. A series should be able to stand on its own two feet. This one can’t even kneel.

There are so many questions that don’t get answered.

- Who is Abe really? Why does he carry so much power? Why do the other vamps seem to revere him when he’s not a royal?

- What happened to Victor’s corpse? They just abandoned it. Did anyone find it? Does the vamp community, that considers him the biggest enemy of the state, realise that he’s even dead or are they still wasting energy looking for him?

- What happened to Robert? They just abandoned him. Did he pick himself up and go off to hide again? Wouldn’t he have come after Rose to revenge the death of his brother?

- What happened to Eddie? He played such an important role in the series, but we have no idea what’s happened to him. We get a cryptic clue that not all is well for him. Again, it should not be so at the end of a series!

- What happened to Sydney? Last we knew about her, she was being held hostage in a hotel…

- Was Sonya Karp accepted back into Moroi society with ease or did she have to undergo endless tests like Dimitri?

- Why was the Keeper community introduced? What was with Angeline begging Rose to take her away, into the real world? Why were these people introduced anyway? We spend about 100 pages with them then the characters leave and we never hear from them again! I suspect they’re for Bloodlines, but in that case they should not have been introduced in Vampire Academy.

- When Rose was last with Dimitri’s family, Viktoria accused her of betraying her. There is no resolution given to this.

- Did Dimitri even contact his family to let them know of his miraculous return to the living? We know he knows that they know he got turned into a Strigoi. He and Rose talk about it in book 4 when he’s holding her hostage. There is absolutely no mention of his family in books 5 and 6. Wouldn’t he have wanted to contact them? It would have been one of the first things I would have wanted to do!

- I really wanted to know what motives were behind Dimitri’s actions in book 4. Why did he kidnap Rose and not just kill her? Why did he torment her with the kisses? The bites? The withholding of sex? Why did he want her to turn Strigoi to be with him? Was it love that became warped into unnatural obsession? Was it just because he views her as a good soldier who would be able to help him reach the higher echelons of Strigoi society? Throughout the whole of the book I kept hoping that Mead would touch on this, would explain it a bit. But no. It was ignored, forgotten. That really annoyed me because I think it would have been fascinating to get inside Strigoi Dimitri’s mind.

-  What about Adrian? I’ve said it before, he’s a character with a lot of room for personal growth, and all this is ignored for Rose and Dimitri. He deserves better than Rose. She keeps telling herself she loves Adrian then she spends all her time thinking about Dimitri, kissing Dimitri, having sex with Dimitri… and she doesn’t have the balls to break it off with Adrian first. And he had to learn by walking in on a personal moment between the two of them. Even Dimitri is a useless lump of lard in this bit (as painful as it is for me to say so.) He’s all like “I’m not going to be the guy who steals another guy’s girl” and then about a page later he’s busy getting nakkie with Rose! Why did he even bother with the whole “I have honour” speech? Obviously he doesn’t and he’s willing to let Rose boss him around. Pussy.

I’ll stop now because I’m starting to feel annoyed. In case you can’t tell.

Style: As with every other book in this series, the style is extremely clunky. The editors needed to edit better. It’s very colloquial, and that’s fine, but the non-English syntax should not have got past them. I’ve got to the point where I ask myself whether they even edited it properly. Sigh.

Final verdict: I wanted to like this one. I really, really did. But all of the characters annoyed me. Even Dimitri, who I usually adore - even when he’s evil. On top of that, it’s the last book in the series but it offers little to no closure. I cannot, in all good conscience, give this book more than 2 stars.

Extra notes: Contains sex (not described in detail, but present), murder, and plenty of foul language.

Spirit Bound by Richelle Mead

This is the fifth book in the Vampire Academy series. As such there WILL be spoilers pertaining to events in previous books. Fair warning.

Author: Mead has known a lot of success in a relatively short period. She’s currently got three series on the go. Vampire Academy, certainly her most famous work to date, is riding the vampire wave created by Twilight. It also has to be said that her hair is an amazing shade of red, very pretty!

Presentation: Quite a large paperback. The font is a relatively large size with wide spacing. There are 489 pages broken down into 27 chapters. I'm not sure what's going on with the front cover here. It looks like Rose and Dimitri about to kiss, but that has nothing to do with this book and would have been more relevant to books 4 or 6, but certainly not book 5.

Story: True to her promise to her mother, Rose has stayed at school since returning to America. She is about to graduate now, but she knows that as soon as she steps out of the protection offered by the school, Dimitri will find her. And she knows that his offer to turn her into a Strigoi has long since expired. But more than that, she’s also convinced that if she finds this other spirit user, she will be able to save Dimitri from the undeath. The only slight problem there is that only Victor Dashkov knows where this Moroi is and he has already stated that there is nothing he can be offered that will tempt him to give up the information. Rose figures that freedom may be the answer to this problem. So along with Lissa, whom she’d promised to take along on her next adventure, and Eddie, her friend and fellow dhampir, she breaks into the high security prison, determined to get what she wants. Only, she’d never banked on Lissa being the only one to be able to return Dimitri’s soul to him, and Dimitri’s not going to make it easy.

Thoughts and impressions: The start of this book, breaking into a high security prison, was by far the most interesting first half of any of the other VA books so far. I admire her determination to get Dimitri back, going so far as to break the man she considers her enemy out of prison, and make a pact with the devil. But how did she not see that Dimitri would be profoundly changed by his experiences as a Strigoi? She is unable to see past the end of her nose half the time, with her selfish motivations. I got the impression that she expected Dimitri to just bounce back as though he hadn’t just spent the past few months as a killing machine.

I feel very sorry for Adrian, too. True to her word, she gives him a chance and is dating him as this book opens, but despite her inner voice protests that she really does love him, all she ever thinks of is Dimitri, Dimitri, Dimitri. Even when he asks her to leave her alone, she just cannot bring herself to honour his wishes, going so far as to corner him in a church service filled with others, risking him making a spectacle of himself in front of all these people who still don’t really know what to make of a Strigoi who’s been turned back into a dhampir. Even Adrian, shallow as he is, deserves better than that, better than Rose. He’s a character that has a lot of room for personal growth and this is ignored in favour of constant obsessing over Dimitri. It was low of Mead to already set up the basis for the Adrian – Sydney relationship that she’s hinted at in the spinoff. (It was one line, but it was still a blatant set up).

On top of that, Rose just cannot keep her mouth shut, even though she knows that it always gets her into trouble. She brings all the shit down on herself and I feel nothing but frustration towards her.

Style: A definite downhill slide in style. At least the book wasn’t just filler until the last 100 pages this time around. Again, syntax, especially when prepositions are involved, is not correct English. It’s frustrating that such blatant errors are not caught and corrected before publication. I don’t mind the odd typo, but when the various components of the sentence are not in their correct positions as often as you see it in Mead’s work, it is frustrating.

Final verdict: The best start to any of the books, but the ending didn’t even have those 100 pages of action that I’ve become accustomed to – possibly because they were at the start instead and Mead can’t bring herself to write 200 pages of action. That’d be asking too much. Bit frustrated by this one. 3 stars – closer to 2.

Extra notes: Bad language is quite frequently used the same way as most teens will use bad language. Sex is not present but two characters do get naked together.

Blood Promise by Richelle Mead

This book is the fourth book in the Vampire Academy series. As such there WILL be spoilers pertaining to earlier books in the series. Fair warning.

Author: Mead has known a lot of success in a relatively short period. She’s currently got three series on the go. Vampire Academy, certainly her most famous work to date, is riding the vampire wave created by Twilight. It also has to be said that her hair is an amazing shade of red, very pretty!

Presentation: Quite a large paperback. The font is a relatively large size with wide spacing. There are 503 pages broken down into a prologue and 30 chapters.

Story: Rose left St Vladimir’s Academy at the end of Shadow Kissed. She is now in Russia, hunting down Dimitri, fully intending on killing him. She thinks he’ll have headed back to the town where he grew up after he was turned into a Strigoi, but she doesn’t know the name of it. So she goes on a Strigoi killing spree, which, luckily for her, attracts the attention of Sydney, an Alchemist – the group of humans who clean up after the mess the vampires leave in their wake. Sydney, who thinks Rose is an evil creature because she is a dhampir, is able to take her to the small town. There, she lives with Dimitri’s family for a time, sharing their peaceful way of life. But the sinister Abe is trying to get her to leave Russia and return to America – Rose can only assume someone at the academy is behind his threats made to her. So she leaves, with a group of unpromised guardians who hunt Strigoi, heading instead to the largest city in Siberia where she nows believes Dimitri will be hiding. She’s right, but when she attracts his attention, can she bring herself to kill him? Especially considering he has a proposition for her.

Thoughts and impressions: The most annoying thing about this book is all the repetition. It was in books 2 and 3 as well, but not as much as here. The first four chapters – and certain later chapters to a lesser extent – seemed to be constant repetitions of events leading up to this book. Why do authors do this? Why don’t they trust their reader to remember that at the end of the previous book the guy our heroine loves got killed and turned into an evil undead vampire? Does she think that between books 3 and 4 we’ll have forgotten Dimitri and Rose made love? That Lissa is the last Dragomir? Precisely what dhampirs, Moroi and Strigoi are? Not only are points from the previous books constantly being summed up, but all the endless repetition about Dimitri was enough to have me pulling my hair out too.

Must kill him, the new Dimtiri looks like him but it’s not him, must find him, must resist him, want his bites and kisses, but cannot let him have his way, must kill him no matter the cost… on and on it goes. I get the point! You don’t need to repeat it several hundred times.

Moving on, I’d figured out who Abe was pretty quickly, but Rose, being Rose and thus dense, didn’t cotton on at all. I would have preferred some form of resolution with Dimtri’s family after she left Viktoria mad at her and just walked out on all the others. Maybe this will be returned to in future books, but I doubt it.

I didn’t like Lissa’s timeline in this book. Rather than following the same timeline as Rose, as it usually does, Read spent her time recounting Lissa’s past actions. A couple of days would go by for Rose but only a couple of hours for Lissa. She should have found a better way of showing Lissa’s story at the same time as Rose’s because I just don’t buy that Rose can “fish around in Lissa’s head” for whatever had led up to current events. I thought she was pretty much stuck with Lissa’s present thoughts and hadn’t even realised that she could access her memories of the past. I don’t like that development, I prefer the present thoughts.

Having said this, I did not suspect the truth about Avery. But that might have just been me being more concentrated on Strigoi Dimitri than Lissa going off the rails.

Style: As with in previous books, very colloquial. I think the style is actually going downhill somewhat. This could be to do with the speed Mead is churning out her books, preferring quantity over quality. Once again, it needed to be edited a lot better than it was.

Final verdict: Not entirely happy with this one. It lived up to the standard set by books 1 and 2 but not that set by the ending of book 3. Filled with filler, it lacked excitement, though it certainly contained a lot of emotional pain. 3 stars.

Extra notes: Bad language is quite frequently used the same way as most teens will use bad language. Sex is not present but it is mentioned several times and there are some scenes where the two characters become ‘close’.

Shadow Kiss by Richelle Mead

This is the third book in the Vampire Academy series. As such, there may be spoilers pertaining to earlier books in the series in this review.

Author: Mead has known a lot of success in a relatively short period. She’s currently got three series on the go. Vampire Academy, certainly her most famous work to date, is riding the vampire wave created by Twilight. It also has to be said that her hair is an amazing shade of red, very pretty!

Presentation: Quite a large paperback. The font is a relatively large size with wide spacing. There are 443 pages broken down into 29 chapters.

Story: Rose and her fellow dhampirs are being tested. They have to protect their Moroi charge from teachers pretending to be attacking Strigoi. Christian Ozera is assigned to Rose, much to her annoyance. Rose has a lot on her mind, though. These tests are only the start of her problems: Victor Dashkov, Lissa’s kidnapper, is going on trial and she and Lissa haven’t been invited to testify; she’s suffering from dark moods; and even worse, she keeps seeing Mason around school – but Mason is dead and Rose fears for her sanity.

Thoughts and impressions: Again, there was an awful lot of filler in this book. I don’t know whether Mead had a word quota or something, but I’m pretty sure that had this book been pruned, it would have been only 200 pages but it would have been an excellent read. There was too much lead up to the important parts.

The characters are incredibly dense at times, ignoring clues or little bits of information about Rose’s strange powers that are right under their noses only to get the light going off in their heads much later. Surely at least one of them would have thought of these things before they got that far. Rose keeps too much to herself, too many secrets, but expects others to spill all of theirs to her – this really frustrates me about her. She’s not a character that I can ever really see myself liking.

As I said, I didn’t like the first part of the book very much at all, but the last part – all the action - was excellent. I even found myself rushing to read those bits. It was a rollercoaster of emotions – it was the series at its strongest. The ending certainly opens up a lot of possibilities for the next book.

Style: Same as in the first two books. It is very colloquial, but this is understandable considering the narrator.  Again, I didn’t feel that it had been edited as well as it should have been. Read comes up with some very convoluted sentences and it plays havoc with her syntax. She should opt for shorter ones where she isn’t liable to end up with her prepositions all over the place.

Final verdict: The first half of the book was, frankly, boring. It was all filler. The second half of the book was the best the series has been so far (after having finished the series, it was the best part of the series). In the second half, Read was shining – she went through love, fear, heartbreak and determination. I was really feeling Rose’s joys and pains as I hadn’t before. But the mediocre first half lets it down. 2 star first half, 4 star ending – I’ll meet in the middle. 3 stars.

Extra notes: Bad language is quite frequently used the same way as most teens will use bad language. Sex is present but not described in detail.

Frostbite by Richelle Mead

The second book in the Vampire Academy series. I purchased this one after the first book caught my interest enough to make me want to find out what happens next.

Author: Mead has known a lot of success in a relatively short period. She’s currently got three series on the go. Vampire Academy, certainly her most famous work to date, is riding the vampire wave created by Twilight. It also has to be said that her hair is an amazing shade of red, very pretty!

Presentation: Quite a large paperback – my book 1 and book 2 are from different publishers (potentially the British version and the American version) and book 2 is a larger size than book 1. The font is a relatively large size with wide spacing. There are 327 pages broken down into a prologue and 23 chapters.

Story: Strigoi have found a way of getting past the magical wards that protect the Moroi royals. They’re banding together, something not very common in Strigoi culture, in order to take out these Moroi – using humans to help them do their dastardly deeds, again something out of the ordinary. These events have turned the Moroi world upside down. Now, rather than the students at the Academy returning to their family homes for the Christmas vacation, they’re all being shipped off to a warded ski resort along with some family members who have chosen to join them – including Rose’s mother, also a guardian. Rose finds herself conflicted – first about her mother whom she feels abandoned her, choosing her duty as a guardian over raising her daughter; about Mason, a good friend who is romantically interested in her; about Dimitri who might choose to become another vampire’s guardian, instead of joining her as Lissa guardian – another vampire who is romantically interested in him; about Lissa who seems to be ignoring her in favour of her new boyfriend. But when things go horribly wrong in the Moroi world and some of her classmates recklessly set out to fight Strigoi on their own, Rose finds herself having to save the day. But not without consequences.

Thoughts and impressions: In this book, the friendship with Lissa, which is what I liked most about the first book, takes a definite backseat. But then, the romance doesn’t become overpowering either, though she does get slutty with multiple men.

Once again, the plot took a very long time to decide where it really wanted to be going and there was far too much filler leading up to that point. Once it did get there, it was interesting seeing how the characters reacted to the situation they found themselves in.

I could understand Rose’s confusion about Dimitri, wanting him for herself even though she knew their relationship isn’t at all acceptable in the eyes of her peers. But at the same time I didn’t really like how she threw herself at both Mason and Adrian.

I’m looking forward to seeing the ramifications of the use of magic in future books. I suspect that the Moroi will realise that if they can help in the fight against an ever more organised enemy then they should do.

Again, I found Rose very difficult to like at times. She pulls through when needed, but she’s such an unlikeable character the rest of the time that I can’t really understand why everyone regards her so highly.

Style: Same as in the first book. It is very colloquial, but this is understandable considering the narrator.  There were times when the syntax used most definitely was not English and I had to stop and reread to figure out how the sentence should have been constructed. Again, I didn’t feel that it had been edited as well as it should have been.

Final verdict: It was interesting enough. Again, good but not great. I will be reading book 3 to see where this is all going, though. I think I’m most interested in what will finally happen to Dmitri rather than Rose. 3 stars.

Extra notes: Bad language is quite frequently used the same way as most teens will use bad language. No sex.

Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead

One of my best friends has been trying to get me to read this series for a long time now. Her persistence has finally paid off. I gave in and got the first book.

Author: Mead has known a lot of success in a relatively short period. She’s currently got three series on the go. Vampire Academy, certainly her most famous work to date, is riding the vampire wave created by Twilight. It also has to be said that her hair is an amazing shade of red, very pretty!

Presentation: Quite a large paperback. The font is a relatively large size with wide spacing. There are 332 pages broken down into 24 chapters.

Story: Rose is a dhampir, a half vampire, a guardian sworn to protect the living vampires (Moroi) from the undead vampires (Strigoi). She and her best friend, a vampire named Lissa, escaped from their school two years ago and having been living in the human world since. They evaded capture for two whole years but the vampires have finally caught up with them. They are forced to return to their school where they return to something similar to their old routines. Rose, blamed for the escape, is forced to do extra training with her very good looking, very intriguing mentor: a Russian guardian called Dimitri. Despite this and many other rules set for her specifically, she manages to return to some of her party girl ways. Lissa, meanwhile, is struggling to return to her role as the sole surviving member of one of the twelve Moroi royal families. She is prone to get bursts of depression and it doesn’t help that someone is leaving her gruesome gifts. Rose, determined to help her best friend in any way she can, sets out to solve the mystery of Lissa’s unwanted admirer.

Thoughts and impressions: The premises for this series are interesting. The vampires each master one of the four elements and are able to craft spells, but they are sworn to help others. The academy is a good setting, I could picture something similar to the descriptions in my mind. I really liked that Lissa and Rose’s friendship came before their budding romances – there are far too many YA novels today where it’s all about the romance and friendship is almost completely forgotten.

Unfortunately, the plot got a little lost in itself. There was far too much meandering about and not enough actual tension to it all. I did, however, like how she worked the bits about Lissa alone into the plot while not breaking the first person narrative. It was a bit of a cheap way of doing it, but I suspect that this bond will have a more important role in the future.

Rose got on my nerves at times. I suppose that you should never like any character all of the time, but she just went too far from time to time. That said, she’s not really a very likeable character. She’s one of those self-important bitches who know they look good and use it to try to get their way in everything.
My biggest qualm, though: I did not like how Dimitri was immediately introduced as being "hot". She's trying to run away from him. Most of the time people don't stop to check out those who want to capture them to consider their hotness. I would have preferred to get a description of him a bit later in the book when she's stuck with him as her mentor.

Style: Very colloquial. Everything is told in Rose’s voice, so this is understandable as she’s a 17 year old. There are some problems with syntax at times, and some passages are very clunky. I didn’t feel that it was edited as well as it could have been.

Final verdict: It was on okay opening to the series, not great, but it has piqued my attention enough for me to purchase the second book. 3 stars

Extra notes: Bad language abound. There is no sex (though it does come close a couple of times) but there are some “naughtier” scenes.

Wolves Among Us: A Novel by Ginger Garrett

This is a title that I came across by pure chance a few weeks ago. I was intrigued by the synopsis and the idea of the witch hunts in Germany and so decided to purchase it.

Author: Ginger Garrett is an author that I hadn't heard of before. It would seem that she is moderately well known on the American market for a series called The Chronicles of the Scribe. The book was relatively expensive, $15 or €16 but I decided to go for it anyway. She writes in American English.

Presentation: This is a large paperback with good quality paper. The writing is a moderate size, the lines well-spaced. There are 283 pages - plus an after words section - broken down into 28 chapters mostly of more or less the same length.

Story: The quite village of Dinfoil is thrown into turmoil following the double murder of one of the villagers and his wife. Father Stefan, the long-standing village priest, wants to call for an Inquisitor to give an ending to this horrible event; Bjorn, the sheriff, has his own reasons for not wanting to bring an Inquisitor to their little village. Father Stefan calls for him anyway and Bjorn soon finds the answers to all his worries in one concept: witchcraft.
Mia is struggling to be a good wife to Bjorn: she is caring for his disabled mother and their sick child, she keeps their house clean when his work keeps him away at all hours, and she defers to him in all matters. She is also trying to hide her past from the other villagers, scared that if they know about it they will shun her even more than they already do. She tries desperately to be a good Christian, to gain God's favour in the hopes that he will heal her daughter - her reason for being. Father Stefan cruelly informs her that God does not heal her child because she is guilty of the sin of pride. So Mia redoubles her efforts to be a good wife to a man who does not care about her.
Soon, the Inquisitor Bastion arrives, a caged witch in tow, and informs the villagers that their little village is overrun with witches, women who cast spells on the men to make them sin, or cast curses on the other women. Mass hysteria ensues as numerous women are accused of, and then trailed for, witchcraft.
Note: The synopsis is a little misleading. It says that they "discover the power of love over fear" but it is not romantic love, it is God's love.

Thoughts and impressions: At times Mia frustrated me because of her meekness, the way she'd just present herself as a doormat for the men to walk all over, but at the same time I am fully aware that this was a woman's lot in that day and age. I felt sorry for her, with all that she had to put up with. It was refreshing to have a German setting as most of the books I've read about the witch trials tend to be set in Salem. There was quite a claustrophobic feel to the story, with it never leaving the village and the story did, of course, have quite a dark feel to it, but how could it have been light considering its subject?
At various points throughout the story it is obvious that the author is a devout Christian and that she is putting her own thoughts and beliefs into the mouths of her characters. This led to some points in the story that I believe I was just supposed to take on faith. As I am not Christian and I look for a scientific explanation wherever I can, that left the story wanting at certain points. Why is Alma (the daughter) suddenly healed by a man with a glowing face who appears in Mia's dream? Why does Alma not suffer again after that? Why does God supposedly come to help Mia but he ignores all the other abused women in the village? Why does he talk to Stefan? Why does he appear before Bjorn? While some of these are just points in passing, others are not. Especially Alma's sickness. For the first half of the book she has difficulty breathing, then she seems to be on the point of dying, Mia dreams of a man whose face is so bright she cannot look upon it, and then when she wakes up Alma is suddenly better and no longer suffers from any breathing problems. There is no explanation given beyond that it was God's work. That is not an explanation that I accept. Alma had a medical problem and medical problems do not suddenly cure themselves, no matter how hard you pray.
Stefan was very possibly my favourite character. At first I didn't like him very much, but he realised that he was the one who invited disaster to their village and that he was the one who needed to fix the situation. He stepped up to the mark, overcoming fear, and did what had to be done. I admire the courage of the character for that.
The ending, or rather the post-ending, was something of a let down. Mia finds someone else, which is good for her, but that person is someone she had no contact with during the story. I would have preferred a better lead-in to that situation.

Style: Nothing in particular to say about the style. It was well-written and the wording flowed very well. It was able to draw me in with very little effort after the first couple of chapters.

Final verdict: I am hesitating between 3 and 4 stars with this one. I'm tempted to go for 4 but all of the questions that I'm just supposed to take on faith were a let down for me. 3 stars but closer to 4.


Extra notes: There is no sex in this story and only one scene with a kiss. No strong language is used. However, there are darker themes present such as burning women at the stake. In my opinion, this is a book aimed more at an adult audience.