Follow the rules and everybody gets hurt . . .

One Sunday morning after a long night of partying, Henrik “HP” Pettersson, a slacker with a lot of ego and very little impulse control, finds a cell phone of an unfamiliar make on a commuter train. Through insisting and slightly uncanny messages that refer to him by name, the phone invites him to play a game. HP accepts without hesitation.

The rules are that HP must complete tasks that range from childish pranks to criminal acts, as allocated by the mysterious Game Master. HP is the perfect contender; alienated from society, devoid of morals, and desperate for fame. His completion of the assignments are filmed and uploaded onto a protected server where viewers rate the Players performances.

The Game starts out innocently enough and then becomes increasingly risky, threatening the safety of someone close to HP. He is determined to become a superstar, but when the dark and tragic secrets of his family’s past are at stake, HP must make a choice. Will he suffer the humiliation of defeat, or will the need to win push him to the limit no matter the cost?

First in a fast-paced and riveting trilogy, Game will leave you guessing. Follow the rules, and everybody gets hurt . . .

Paperback, 400 pages

Published December 3rd 2013 by Atria/Emily Bestler Books

Henrik finds an abandoned phone on a train that begins to receive personally addressed messages for him.  He is intrigued and decides to take the phone up on it’s offer, to play a game. The game begins with easy tasks, like to steal an umbrella, and real money can be won. But the games soon grow more dangerous and more money is offered. Henrik really has nothing better to do and finds the challenges a good way to pass the time and make money, along with the bonus high of getting away with illegal acts.

Henrik lets the game get to him; he loves the online attention he gets when his scores are posted. His ego takes hold and he thinks he can do no wrong. But then something does go wrong, and leaving the game is not as easy as starting it. Now he is going to need the help of others to leave and go up against more than just other gamers to win.

Rebecca is a more balanced and rounded character. The book is written from both her and Henrik’s perspectives and she fills in the gaps of the storyline we don’t see through Henrik’s fast-paced game sections, though we get as much excitement out of Rebecca’s story. Rebecca helps to coordinate security guards for personal  protection and it’s not long before Rebecca and Henrik get involved in the same mess.

The Game is a tech-crime thriller. It has yin and yang characters in Henrik and Rebecca; one you will like getting to know and one that will make you want to slap them. The writing jumps from different perspectives, sometimes within the same chapters, and this keeps the story moving and adds excitement.

What I loved about The Game is the energy that came with reading it. It was action-packed and featured moments that made me gasp, giggle, and shake my head. It was an enjoyable read that I could lose myself in and I wanted to continue reading. It is the first book in the series.

Growing up, there was hardly a single day that went by where I wasn’t watching Lion King or Beauty and the Beast over and over again. These two Disney movies were my absolute favourites. Looking back, I don’t know how my parents put up with them constantly playing! So, when I heard that Cruel Beauty was a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, I knew I had no choice but to get my hands on a copy and read it.

The Beast is actually a Demon Lord who grants peoples’ wishes, but not like the tooth fairy. Instead, he twists people’s words, and the wish always comes back to haunt them. (He is a Demon Lord after all. What did you expect?)

Before Nyx was born, her father asked the Demon Lord for a wish. It came true, and he had to repay the lord by giving him one of his two twin daughters once they turn seventeen.

Nyx has been trained to kill her soon-to-be-husband and is willing to take any risk to do so. But even after years and years spent preparing for the day when she will be married off to the Demon lord, Nyx can’t help but feel anger and hatred toward her sister who wasn’t chosen, and seems to be the apple of her father’s eye, and towards her maternal aunt who is now slipping in between her father’s sheets.

But as many of you Beauty and the Beast fans may know, the Demon Lord isn’t much like he is claimed to be. Yes, he grants people’s wishes and causes them harm, but nobody knows that he is forced to do it by a greater power. He is a prisoner and Nyx is the first person in hundreds of years to truly see him for himself, and not as an evil king.

Nyx knows what she had to do, but she is no longer sure if it’s the right thing to do. She’s caught and doesn’t know which way to go: Do as her father taught her, or help the Demon Lord escape his own imprisonment?

Cruel Beauty was an interesting read. If I got the chance I would definitely visit the mansion, just to see all of these crazy rooms, especially the one that mimics nature.

While I absolutely loved Nyx and her odd relationship with Shade and the Demon lord, I was disgusted by her father. I understand that he made this crappy deal, and that it was a huge mistake, but treating the twin sister differently and loving one much more than the other wasn’t right. Besides the way Nyx’s father treated her, I also disliked her aunt. She was sleeping around with her dead sister’s husband. How did she not feeling horrible?

Overall, the story was good! It was an amazing retelling that kept most of the original details, but didn’t follow the entire story directly. If you get the chance to pick this one up, I recommend doing so!

It’s her first day of Grade Nine and Clementine Darcy is struggling. Her brother, Fergus, disappeared into his room a year ago, dropping his family, job, and life behind him. Her sister, Sophie, is always angry, and her friends at school seem to moving in a different direction and leaving her behind.

The one hope she has of understanding how her previously charmed life has fallen apart so entirely is to take the philosophy class that had helped her sister so much when she was in school. Perhaps, the great thinkers of their age can make more sense of Clementine’s life than she can. However, Ms Hiller is not an average teacher. Rather than expounding upon the complexities of Foucault or discussing the ideas of Alain de Botton, she asks her class to write.

Kate Gordon’s novel starts with quite a beautiful premise. Clementine is lost. She knows herself better than most girls her age do, and better than some people ever will. Who she doesn’t know are the people around her. Sophie seemingly has it all, but she’s nowhere near as happy as Clementine. Fergus, her wonderfully irrepressible brother, doesn’t talk anymore – or do much else for that matter. Her friends are suddenly all about the boys. With Ms Hiller’s philosophy class, Clementine is hoping to change all of that. While she wants someone to explain everything to her; however, the class teaches her that she needs to reach out and search for answers herself.

For a novel made up entirely of letters to a teacher, Ms Hiller is a curiously absent character. She steps in twice at pivotal points in Clementine’s life, but doesn’t change anything on either of those times. Despite the fact that Ms Hiller is the catalyst for Clementine to really examine her life, keeping her absent from the story emphasises that the only person who can affect change is Clementine herself.

Writing Clementine tackles that difficult teenage time when everything is changing so fast that it no longer makes sense. Anyone who has been through it will recognise some part of their younger selves in this inspirational novel; anyone who is going through it will probably relate to a lot of the emotions Clementine is feeling.

While this doesn’t read as an ‘issues’ novel, it does take a good, hard look at a lot of the problems affecting Australian teens. Ranging from trying to be yourself in this increasingly media-driven world, to sexual assault, and depression, Writing Clementine doesn’t baulk at the realities of life. It does tackle those truths with careful consideration, offering plenty of hope but never going with the easy way out.

Writing Clementine is a lovely, insightful coming-of-age novel that explores some difficult teen dilemmas but manages to stay light-hearted. With an array of lovely characters and a large dose of emotional truth, this is a sweet story that’s not too fluffy.

Writing Clementine – Kate Gordon

 Allen & Unwin (July 2014)

 ISBN: 9781743316634

Jade Barrera is having a bad day and it’s about to get worse. Nursing a hang-over and a black eye from the previous night’s MMA fight is nothing compared to breaking the nose of Hollywood action star Tommy Zhang. If Jade has any hope of redeeming herself, she’s going to have to pick up her training in Thailand and wait until things blow over.

Mya is used to escaping into her sanctuary, the spiritual forest, a place that she and other children alone could find. That was until her guardian, Mr Richard, discovers how to enter the mystical realm with Mya as his guide. His plans for her and the forest are becoming increasingly sinister and, when Mya is drawn into his attempt to kill a man, she knows that she has to escape.

Shadowboxer is the first young adult urban fantasy novel from acclaimed sci-fi author Tricia Sullivan. She has developed a richly layered dual world in which our reality lies alongside the mythical Himmapan forest of Thailand. Told alternately from Jade’s and Mya’s perspectives, Sullivan weaves these very different stories into one.

At first Shadowboxer has an incongruous feel to it. Jade is quick to anger and even quicker to turn that anger to violence. She’s a fighter both in and out of the ring, constantly on the defensive and looking for openings with anyone that upsets her. Mya is calm and less sure of herself. When confronted, she looks to escape, not to fight back. Rather than asserting herself in the physical world, her serenity allows her to open a doorway into a spiritual world. The differences in these stories complement one another; Jade’s world adds the action while Mya’s raises the questions that move the plot along. As the novel progresses, everything begins to balance out. Jade calms down, becoming more open to spirituality, and Mya realises that taking action is sometimes necessary.

The world building is wonderful. Not just the Himmapan forest but the atmosphere of the fights and MMA training, the oppressive heat and pollution of Bangkok, and the cultural richness of America. The story is told by those who usually stand in the margins. Jade is of Dominican Republic descent, Mya is Burmese, and both are female. They carry the story perfectly, neither conforming to any stereotype and both making decisions that push the plot forward.

Shadowboxer is a sumptuously layered novel with complexities that would appeal to fantasy aficionados. Never travelling the path most taken, Shadowboxer blazes its own trail. For a new take on a spectacular traditional myth, a wonderful set of characters, and brilliantly drawn insight into the world of MMA, this is a must-read.

The cover art for the second book in the Avena series is just as eye-catching as that of Hidden, book 1. Though it lacks the foiling that had me in a flap last year, this one is layered in such a way that your eye picks up different aspects of the picture with each glance. The girl staring through a broken pane of glass, and the swirly detail done in a glossy overlay, mean there are textures and emphasis that come to the forefront of the picture. It is quite an effective way of adding dimension.

We pick up the storyline from the end of Hidden. The situation is tense, and three is most certainly a crowd. Nathaniel is forced to face the consequences of his actions in the angel realm, as those who work against him move in to stake their claim.

My one and only qualm about this instalment is that I’m quite torn by how Ebony reacts and how she should react to the dynamic between the angel characters and herself. I lost track of how many times the words, ‘You have what I want,’ were uttered from one guy to the other, in her presence, and yet not once did she balk at the way they were speaking about her as if she were a possession and not even acknowledging her as a living being. It might have been my inner dialogue getting in the way, but once I thought about it, I couldn’t un-see it.

Putting that aside, the world building is beautiful; the use of high end supercars is completely unbelievable, but very cool. I love the evolution of the relationship between Ebony and Jordan, and if I could have Amber as my best friend, I’d be set for life.

Marianne really has the series teetering on the edge. I cannot wait for the next book to be released so we can all take the plunge and see where these crazy ass angels are taking us.

Will Ebony demand her place in Avena, or will Nathaniel be out of luck… and what of Jordan?

The waiting will be difficult to do patiently.

http://www.mariannecurley.com/

Paperback, First, 372 pages

Published March 1st 2014 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

ISBN13 9781408822708