‘No good deed ever goes unpunished, Mellea…’

Mellea Wendorn hasn’t exactly had a normal life. Misfortune seems to follow her, and her family, wherever she goes.  However, when Mellea stops to assist a mysterious young man suddenly her prior hardships seem trivial. His name is Leo. He is a Successor, a child of the Guardians of Selestia. He is royalty.  He is handsome.  And he wants Mellea completely to himself.

Unable to escape the Guardian’s laws, Mellea must learn the ways of the royals. She is convinced her life can’t get much worse. But when a timeworn Guardian enemy arises from the shadows, Mellea must make a choice that will change her destiny forever.

Mellea is not rich and she has to work hard to help her parents make ends meet. One day, after leaving her job, she sees a man being chased and shot at. When he’s hit, he falls from his flying board and Mellea cannot help but stop to see if he is ok. It turns out that he is a pompous and rude Guardian who tells her that she is to be his wife. Not only is Mellea shocked, but also trapped. She is going against her father’s wishes by having any contact with the Guardians.

While Mellea is kept at the Guardian Tower, she meets others and begins to form friendships. The family is in turmoil as the political leaders see an uprising of Mech attacks and life outside their house as dangerous. The Mechs are people who’ve had body parts replaced with robotic/android parts to become partially mechanical and use their extra strength to try to bring down the Guardians. Now that Mellea is to be wed to the family, she also has to learn how to fight and protect herself from attack.

The writing style is non-stop action and movement. There is very little downtime and the characters are funny and fit into the story well. It has both science fiction and magic, as well as love, lives, and secrets.

I recommend this to readers who enjoy a feisty female lead, a little romance, and political uprisings. Fans of the Elite Series by Kiera Cass would enjoy this book. My favourite part of the story was the hot and cold relationship between Mellea and Leo, as well as Mellea and her parents. It was an enjoyable and fun read and I really loved it. 

Paperback, First Edition, 360 pages

Published January 21st 2014

ISBN13 9780992407407

MDP adds:

You can read more of M. J. Steven’s work on this blog in her cosplay article.

Be warned… this book WILL tug at your heart.

I get very excited when I know another Elementals book is due out. I think I jigged to the cashier this time around, mainly because it was a continuation of Nick Merrick’s story, Breathless (which I reviewed briefly here… Breathless is included in the Aussie release of Secret, woohoo!

**I need to let our younger readers, and or parents know, that this book does contain extremely strong themes of sexuality, violence and ‘romance’, so be aware  going in. If you (or your elder) think it is inappropriate at this time, know there is always time later on when the topics would be less shocking.**

Brigid handles these themes, (that really shouldn’t be so taboo, but unfortunately still are considered as such), in a respectful way; allowing the reader to feel the crushing tension and suffocating emotions that come into play. I was doing the ugly cry, and was almost in tears on public transport in another scene.

This is a gut wrenching tale of self discovery, love and loyalty. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I cannot wait for the next instalment, Sacrifice, comes out later this year.

Stick a fork in me I’m done… for now *grin*.

http://www.brigidkemmerer.com/

Paperback, 375 pages

Published January 28th 2014 by Allen & Unwin

original title

Secret

ISBN13

9781743318614

Embrace in MP3 Audio Book Format

Book written by Jessica Shirvington Read by Rebecca Macauley

The copy of the audio book I received from Bolinda Audio to review has a cover reminiscent of the US hard cover. Purple background with a pretty girl facing away from us with black feathers and beautiful wings in a sort of smoky impression, foretelling that the story is about Angels. The design by Andrea C. Uva is effective and pleasing to the eye.

The impression I got from reading Embrace in paperback, was that the story wasn’t necessarily set in Australia, though with this unabridged, 9 hour 57 minute, narration by Rebecca Macauley, it is firmly set somewhere on Aussie soil. It seems right that Violet has an Aussie accent.

I find some female narrators struggle with projecting their male voice in a convincing way, and after a while of hearing Rebecca my mind wasn’t sending warnings about all the voices being a girl. That takes serious vocal skill.

Rebecca beautifully picks up on the tensions between characters and I caught myself gnashing my teeth constantly in the awkward scenes. She possesses the clout and the innocence needed to convincingly read this series.

Lisa, Krista and I reviewed Embrace in the September 2012, Burn Bright Book Club.

 For information on the audio book from Bolinda, please follow the links.

EMBRACE CD

EMBRACE MP3: 

EMBRACE WEBCLIP 

Published by Bolinda Audio in April 2012

ISBN/ ISBN-13 and APN     9871743106648

BAB 120424

1 MP3 music 

Cath and Wren have been together their entire lives, mostly because they’re sisters! And twins! But also because when they were about eight years old, their mother packed her things and left them behind with their father. It’s been years since either of the three has talked to her, and no one truly knows the reason why she left.

Cath and Wren are all grown up and going to college. Cath isn’t too excited about the idea of going off to college far from home, and leaving their dad behind all alone. But Wren doesn’t make her feel any better about the whole situation when she tells her sister that she doesn’t want to dorm together; trying to convince her that they won’t get the FULL experience if they do! Instead Cath is left to share her room with a girl named Reagan, and partially with Reagan’s best friend/ex-boyfriend Levi; who is around all the time.

Cath loves writing and has spent the last two years of her life writing Simon Snow fanfiction online. She writes and posts a chapter a day to feed her devoted fans’ addiction.  With school work and writing a chapter every night, Cath doesn’t get out much. She doesn’t mind either. She would much rather get lost in the world of Simon Snow than have to deal with the awkward feeling of meeting new people, or going places she’s never been before. Even when Reagan and Levi ask her to go out with them to parties or just to hangout, Cath always declines their offers, staying in the dorm room instead.

But Cath does make one friend in her advanced writing class; Nick. He’s cute, nice and also LOVES writing! Sounds like the perfect guy for Cath. She even has a few “dates” with him in the library, where the two stay until midnight working on a story together! Aside from Reagan, Levi and Nick, Cath hasn’t talked much to anyone else, not even her sister.

Wren doesn’t think to come home, when Cath is told that their dad was put into the hospital for exhaustion from working too hard. Not even when Cath pleads her to come.

Wren spends most of her time hanging out with her roomate, Courtney, usually partying and/or drinking. So when Cath receives an emergency text message saying she’s at a bar, she asks Levi for a ride, and heads there to make sure her sister is safe. It just so turns out that Wren wasn’t trying to reach Cath, but Courtney instead, and that her sister is drunk.

Not too long after that night, Cath receives a message from her, telling her that Wren is in the hospital. Cath ignores all the anger she has towards her mother and towards Wren (for talking to their mother), and gets there as soon as possible for Wren.

Her dad in the hospital, a phone call from her mom saying Wren was in the hospital, and Nick doing something unbelievable; everything in Cath’s life seemed to be breaking apart. And strangely, the person who is there to help catch everything and make her feel better is Levi.

Fangirl totally rocked my world, and I’m not sure if that’s because I felt this strong connection between myself and Cath or what! Cath was awesome, real, and I felt like she could be my best friend!

Wren and Nick added a whole crazy level to the story with all its twists and turns. Cath was amazing, and dealt with everything going on around her, in a way I don’t think I could have. I would have probably freaked out, had a good cry and then tried to figure something out.

But there was one thing that wasn’t cleared up, and that was Cath and Wren’s mom. The reader is never truly informed as to why she left when they were so young, or what happened after Cath ran to hospital for Wren.

Overall, Fangirl was as AWESOME as everyone kept telling me, and I’m so glad that it went to the top of my TBR pile as soon as I purchased it!

Tana Bach wakes up hung-over in a bathtub; the place she’d gone to avoid her ex-boyfriend, Aiden, at the party the night before. Upon re-emerging, she discovers the bodies of the school-friends with whom she’d been partying. It seems that she is the sole survivor until she finds Aiden trussed up in a bedroom with a chained up vampire.

Possibly infected and unable to go back home, Tana finds herself heading for the closest Coldtown, a walled city in which vampires and humans live side by side, but not often peacefully. A place that no one is allowed to leave.

The book The Coldest Girl in Coldtown is based on a short story of the same name that appeared in the anthology Eternal Kiss. Having read the short story a few years ago, I’d fallen in love with the world and was terribly disappointed that so much world-building had yielded such a short piece of fiction. Happily, it seems that Holly Black felt the same way.

For those of you who have read the short story already, the novel does not follow the same characters. For about two or three paragraphs this was a bitter disappointment to me. But then Tana happened and my fickle reader’s brain forgot all about Matilda.

Tana is young and dealing with the stress of a situation that is well beyond her. She won’t put the people that she loves at risk, which means that she’s relying on her own instincts and intelligence while at the same time trying to keep within her moral boundaries. Because of this, the plot isn’t as smooth as I’m used to for a Holly Black novel. It works though. Tana doesn’t always handle the situations she’s in well, but that’s what I like about Black’s writing. It’s messy and unreasonable in the way that humans are messy and unreasonable. Tana isn’t always in control of her emotions. Sometimes the horror of her situation puts her on emotional overload and she gets hysterical, or she blocks it out. Her reactions are real enough to pull you into the story and keep you there until the bitter end.

While Tana is by far the best part of Coldest Girl, the thing that makes the novel work is how real everything is. Black has a writing style that makes scenes palpable. You can taste the atmosphere, smell the blood and crawl into the characters’ heads to feel what they’re feeling. The plot unfolds around the way characters act; characters are not altered to suit the plot. And that creates a seamless chain reaction that is almost impossible to predict, but is wonderful to experience.

It’s safe to say that I’m biased when it comes to Holly Black. There is nothing about her novels that I don’t love to an unhealthy degree. I’ll reread pages for her writing style. I want to be friends with her characters and every single plot of hers feels like an adventure. Coldest Girl is no exception. It’s dark, the characters will not tolerate any sort of stereotype and it had me hooked from the start. 

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown – Holly Black

Orion Books (September 3, 2013)

ISBN: 9781780621296