This coming Monday kicks off the MM's blog tour I'm hosting for Joy Preble's Haunted, and there's some fabulous TX bloggers who will be helping spread the word about this sequel. If you're a fan of Russian lore, I highly recommend picking up this series. The Haunted blog tour will include a series of reviews, interviews, excerpts and guest posts on the following blogs:
If you're not familiar with Haunted, this is the sequel to Joy's Dreaming Anastasia. Here's a little bit more about the book:
By: Joy Preble
Published by: Sourcebooks Fire
Released on: February 1st, 2011
"Anne Michaelson "is trying to forget everything that happened last year. But it's hard to do when her heart aches for Ethan "and there's a wild-haired woman stalking her..."
"Ethan Kosinsky "is embracing his newfound mortality. But something is drawing him back to the girl he left behind-"back to Anne and back to the magic..."
A mysterious stranger is hunting Anne wherever she goes. No one sees her but Anne. When she searches for the woman's identity, Anne exposes secrets about her own life- things that will change her life forever. And when the gorgeous Ethan returns, her life gets a lot more complicated.
Anne thought her journey with the Romanov family had ended, "but it was just the beginning..." - quoted from Goodreads
After her boyfriend is killed in a car accident, high school student Wren Darby uses her hidden powers to bring him back from the dead, never imagining the consequences that will result from her decision.-quoted from Goodreads
I was surprised by how much I really like this book in the beginning, because it doesn't have all the elements I normally love in a YA book. While there is bits of paranormal elements in the story, I liked that Wren's story focuses more on the emotional side of being a teen with first love, loss, grief, family life, friendship and getting through that awkward stage where you're not a young teen any more, but you're not yet an adult. I liked that realistic aspect of the story. Added to these emotions is the paranormal side of the story, an ability that Wren has inherited that runs in her family. That ability is what allowed her to bring back her first love, Danny. We all know that when you bring someone back from the dead they're not the same person they were before.... I loved being able to read about Danny before his tragic accident. He seemed like an all around great guy, great boyfriend and someone everyone loved. Being able to read about Danny and Wren being together before things changed made it easier for me to sympathize with her as the story goes on.
I really enjoyed having that emotional connection with Wren and her story. Wren is one of those complex characters who's layers get peeled back little by little as the story goes on. She's someone who surprised me through out the story and I love that she does thing that I didn't except. She's someone who looks out for those she cares about, even though it's done in an unexpected way. She's a character who has a lot to deal with, has to learn to make do with the powers she has and knows little about, mend her broken relationship with her two best friends, pick up the pieces of her broken heart, and figure out what to do with the new guy Gabriel that knows more about her than she would like him too. It's through this process I felt more drawn to Wren and her story. I liked feeling like I was able to get those glimpses into her life and she what shaped her into the character she is now.
Once the story line started to explore Wren's worries and some what abandonment of Danny I felt like I lost some of the emotional connection that I felt with the first part of the book. Don't get me wrong, I understood Wren's fears and the reasoning behind her actions, but I felt like it took something away from the story for me during this time. This wasn't necessarily a horrible thing, because this allowed Gabriel to become more involved in the story. I like the support he offers to Wren and the way their relationship is developed during the second half of the book. I just missed being able to witness Wren's growth emotionally like I had been seeing for the first half of the book. I felt like the second half of the book shifted gears a bit and went into a direction I wasn't expecting it to. By the end of the book I was left wanting a little more from both the romance, and the slight paranormal elements in the story, as well as from Wren. Not that wanting more is bad a thing. Over all I think Cold Kiss was a good read, and it's one I think YA readers will like. There is a few f-bombs mentioned through out the story.
The human race is all but extinct after a war with Partials—engineered organic beings identical to humans—has decimated the population. Reduced to only tens of thousands by RM, a weaponized virus to which only a fraction of humanity is immune, the survivors in North America have huddled together on Long Island while the Partials have mysteriously retreated. The threat of the Partials is still imminent, but, worse, no baby has been born immune to RM in more than a decade. Our time is running out.
Kira, a sixteen-year-old medic-in-training, is on the front lines of this battle, seeing RM ravage the community while mandatory pregnancy laws have pushed what's left of humanity to the brink of civil war, and she's not content to stand by and watch. But as she makes a desperate decision to save the last of her race, she will find that the survival of humans and Partials alike rests in her attempts to uncover the connections between them—connections that humanity has forgotten, or perhaps never even knew were there.
Dan Wells, acclaimed author of I Am Not a Serial Killer, takes readers on a pulsepounding journey into a world where the very concept of what it means to be human is in question—one where our humanity is both our greatest liability and our only hope for survival. -quoted from Harper Teen's site
This book is sitting here waiting for me to read it and it's one I'm planning on reading hopefully before the weekend as I've heard so many awesome things about this new series. I'm excited for this book to hit book store shelves next week. What book are you waiting on?
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