ARC Review: Starcrossed (By Josephine Angelini)

Title: Starcrossed
Author: Josephine Angelini
Rating: 5/5
Dimensions: 400 Pages, 6.6 x 9.03 x 1.4 in
ISBN - 10: 0062011995
ISBN - 13: 978006201199

HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS | May 31, 2011 | Hardcover

How do you defy destiny?

Helen Hamilton has spent her entire sixteen years trying to hide how different she is –– no easy task on an island as small and sheltered as Nantucket. And it's getting harder. Nightmares of a desperate desert journey have Helen waking parched, only to find her sheets damaged by dirt and dust. At school she's haunted by hallucinations of three women weeping tears of blood . . . and when Helen first crosses paths with Lucas Delos, she has no way of knowing they're destined to play the leading roles in a tragedy the Fates insist on repeating throughout history.

As Helen unlocks the secrets of her ancestry, she realizes that some myths are more than just legend. But even demigod powers might not be enough to defy the forces that are both drawing her and Lucas together and trying to tear them apart.

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I was fortunate to get a chance to read Josephine Angelini’s debut novel Starcrossed before the actual date of publication. I was so thrilled when I received the book that I immediately began reading. Starcrossed is a novel that takes the reader and transports them into a world filled with Greek Mythology. Nothing is at it seems. Everything, at its surface level, is veiled by something more magical and mythical. The story follows Helen Hamilton, a girl who has never really fit into the world she has been apart of her whole life. She always feels out of place, slightly off balance from those around her. The only people in her life who understand Helen’s differences are her father, best friend, Lucas –– the new boy in town who shakes up Helen’s entire existence.

Starcrossed definitely had a Romeo and Juliet feel to it, hence the title Starcrossed. Josephine paints a hauntingly beautiful world in which Greek gods are real and the idea of the ultimate love being held within our grasps, finger tips barely touching. Lucas and Helen make the most perfect pairing. They are both independently strongly written characters who can hold their own, but together they turn into a tour de force. The sexual tension between the two jumps off the pages. You can feel their pain, their excitement and their ultimate frustration. Helen was a fantastic female lead! She exudes power, empathy, strength, courage, love, and determination. Even when she is down she doesn’t let her weakness define her. Lucas is her perfect pair. Not only is he super gorgeous, but he has willpower and fortitude that equals Helen.

Not only does Josephine give us two amazing romantic leads in Lucas and Helen, she has also written a superbly exciting and exhilarating supporting cast. It would be amazing to get some short stories or a separate novel altogether, that focuses on some of the supporting characters. They are interesting all on their own and round out the story in epic fashion. All of them bring something very different to the story tying the plot together nicely.

As a debut novel and a novel in general, Josephine Angelini is able to suck you into her world of Nantucket and ancient Greece. This was one of those novels you better make sure you have time to read because once you start you won’t be able to stop. When I put the book down I felt as if a piece of myself, an extension of my person, was missing. I didn’t want it to end. Thankfully this is going to be a series! I can’t contain my excitement. The plot of the novel was intricately woven and pieced together wonderfully. When the first page is able to grab your complete attention, you know the book is going to be just as intense and magical. As a lover of both Greek Mythology and the idea of fate, destiny, and free choice, I ate this book up. I highly recommend this novel for lovers of mythology, magic, the unseen, and love. You don’t even have to be a lover of paranormal fiction to love this novel. You simply need to be a lover of reading and this is the next book you should read!

TRAILER LOVE

Thank you to HarperCollins Canada for this advanced copy. :) For more information about the book you can visit the HarperCollins Canada website, read their Blog: The Savvy Reader, follow them on Twitter or Browse inside Starcrossed . Happy reading!

ARC Review: Entwined (By Heather Dixon)

Title: Entwined

Author: Heather Dixon

Rating: 5/5 
Published: Greenwillow Books (imprint of HarperCollins)

Format Reviewed: ARC copy provided by the publisher 
Dimensions: 480 Pages, 5.83 x 8.53 x 1.52 in
ISBN - 10: 0062001035
ISBN - 13: 9780062001030

HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS | March 21, 2011 | Hardcover

Azalea is trapped. Just when she should feel that everything is before her . . . beautiful gowns, dashing suitors, balls filled with dancing . . . it's taken away. All of it.

The Keeper understands. He's trapped, too, held for centuries within the walls of the palace. And so he extends an invitation.

Every night, Azalea and her eleven sisters may step through the enchanted passage in their room to dance in his silver forest.

But there is a cost.

The Keeper likes to keep things.

Azalea may not realize how tangled she is in his web until it is too late.

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Where to begin with this book? I LOVED it, ADORED it, CRAVED it... to simply state my thoughts on Heather Dixon's debut novel. From the moment the first chapter began, I found myself failing at being successful in the Entwine. I was trapped, with no hope of escaping the tangled web of story telling Dixon was emitting from the page. I didn't want to escape the confines of the entwine. I wanted to stay trapped, in hopes that this story would never end. From what I gathered from Heather Dixon's blog, Entwined is a story that builds off of The 12 Dancing Princesses Fairy Tale.  This fairty tale was written by the Brothers Grimm in 1812. I have a collection of Grimm Fairy Tales, however, this is one I was unfamiliar with. So I google searched it and upon reading a quick blurb on the story I was definitely able to see this fairy tale brought to fruition in a beyond magical way by Dixon. 

The story finds us following Azalea, the eldest child in a family of 12 daughters. As the eldest, not only does she find herself responsible for the care of her sisters, she is also bound to be Queen soon and must find a husband to become King. On top of everything, Azalea must overcome a family tragedy, keep things in order and not only find love, but keep dancing. 

The dancing imagery is this novel was absolutely breathtaking. You were transported into a ballroom full of happy men and women twirling around in complete rapture. The folds of the dress are easily imagined as Azalea dances with the Keeper, or simply with her sisters. The silver gleamed off of the pages bringing the reader into magic.  There is passion, raw emotion, and intensity that is woven into Dixon's language. As each girl is named after a flower, there is a definite sense of a poetic flowery language. Everything flows effortlessly, which is no easy task, but makes for an iridescent book you can't put down. 

Azalea is a girl that I envy to be. She is strong, determined, smart having not only the weight of her family upon her shoulders, but the weight of her kingdom. She takes care of her sisters as a motherly figure, but will she have time to find love with all her worrying? Or has she grown up too fast, trying to escape through a magical maelstrom of dancing? Each sister also brings in a new dimension to the story. Let us also not forget the amazing Mr. Bradford. I fell in love with his character the moment we Azalea meets him. He is utterly handsome but completely disheveled, just as Azalea's sisters tend to be. He also has a heart of gold. It would be shocking if girls didn't fall for Mr. Bradford straightaway. There was a Mr. Darcy demure about him, but less pretentious and pompous. 

This story captures the essence of both familial and romantic love. More than anything, I found this to be a book about the importance of family and love; the importance of choice and respect. Near the end of the novel, I was constantly getting the image of the ballroom scene from Labyrinth. The part in the movie where Sarah is being drawn into the elegance of mystery of the dance by Jareth. Instead, Dixon paints Azalea in the Sarah role constantly being drawn in my the allure of the Keeper (Jareth). Minus the look of Jareth which is all wrong for the Keeper, the dance scene is perfect in terms of visualization. I've included a Youtube clip of said scene:

To sum up, Entwined was a novel that will transport its reader into a mystical and magical world of a kingdom where dancing is one of the most important qualities a person can have, and where love has the ability to conquer all. This is an amazing debut novel by Heather Dixon that will capture the readers heart in an entwine of its own, never letting go. 

A couple passages I loved:

"His voice reminded Azalea of rich, thick cream, the sort one could add to any recipe to make it taste better."


"She wondered if she would be able to give the soul's courtsy, with all her hear and soul, to anyone [...] Around her, the leaves of the rose bush ivies rustled, then curled and entwined through the lattice. Their buds bloomed into fat, silver blossoms, revealing pearls for middles." 

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Thank you to HarperCollins Canada for this advanced copy. :) For more information about the book you can visit the HarperCollins Canada website,read their Blog: The Savvy Reader,  follow them on Twitter or visit their Facebook page.  Happy reading!

-Ashley 

ARC Review: STEEL (By Carrie Vaughn)

Title: Steel

Author: Carrie Vaughn

Rating: 3/5 

Format Reviewed: ARC copy provided by the publisher

Dimensions: 304 Pages, 6 x 8.75 x 0.97 in

ISBN - 10: 0061547913

ISBN - 13: 9780061547911

Harpercollins Publishers | March 7, 2011 | Hardcover

It was a slender length of rusted steel, tapered to a point at one end and jagged at the other, as if it had broken. A thousand people would step over it and think it trash, but not her.

This was the tip of a rapier.

Sixteen-year-old Jill has fought in dozens of fencing tournaments, but she has never held a sharpened blade. When she finds a corroded sword piece on a Caribbean beach, she is instantly intrigued and pockets it as her own personal treasure.

The broken tip holds secrets, though, and it transports Jill through time to the deck of a pirate ship. Stranded in the past and surrounded by strangers, she is forced to sign on as crew. But a pirate's life is bloody and brief, and as Jill learns about the dark magic that brought her there, she forms a desperate scheme to get homeâ€"one that risks everything in a duel to the death with a villainous pirate captain.

Time travel, swordplay, and romance combine in an original high-seas adventure from New York Times bestseller Carrie Vaughn

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We were recently lucky enough to receive a few books from HarperCollins Canada to review and Steel by Carrie Vaughn was one of them. I had every intention of finishing this book, with the review up, by the publication date. My last year of undergrad has proved to be one full of presentations, mountains of essays it seems, and novel upon novel to read. This set me back a bit in the books I was able to read, so I apologize. Now that I have my little blurb out of the way, ARGH! on to the review matey....

This was my first Carrie Vaughn experience and I must say, it was a rather pleasant one. This story is about a teenager, Jill, who is a highly competitive fencer. She lives fencing; she breathes fencing; she is fencing. Or so that is the mantra she goes by when the novel first beings. Have you ever wanted something so badly, come within its grasp, only to lose it completely? Well, that is where we meet Jill. She is determined to win to the point where losing is all she can think about when it happens. And then, on a family vacation after Jill's entire fencing world has seemed to crash down upon her, she finds a piece of a rapier. On a trip a sixteen year old girl does not want to be on, after losing a fencing championship that would have placed her as a potential olympian, finding a piece of history seems to brighten up her mood. It is through this historical artifact that Jill's entire world is turned upside down. She ends up going back in time to a period where Pirates –– like Blackbeard –– still roamed the open waters in large quantities. 

Vaughn's writing transforms the reader from a hot tropical destination, the the high waters where swash buckling pirates still looted, raided, sailed by their own rules, and fought. History is fascinating; to be able to transport yourself into a different time period is an exhilarating idea. This book does that; it is able to grasp the reader by the collar and drag them into the water with Jill and resurface in a foreign time as a pirate. Honestly, who has never thought of how cool being a pirate would have been? 

What I really loved in Steel was the female empowerment that was interwoven into the text throughout. Jill, firstly, is a teenage girl with a love fencing. Although fencing is safe, it is a sport that allows women to pick up a sword and fight. Secondly, Jill has somehow traveled through a space time continuum that places her in the midst of a pirate battle. At first scared, Jill is able to overcome her fears and live life as a pirate would have. The third aspect of the book that was fantastic for enabling female empowerment was the fact the Jill's new captain is a woman. Marjory Cooper is Captain of the ship that finds Jill and well respect to boot. Filled with men, the few women aboard have had to disguise themselves, assert power, and show enormous bouts of strength in order to survive in a male dominated world. I feel like this statement of female strength and power is a comment on the social order as it stands today. Women need to stick up for what they want and infiltrate the patriarchy, rising to the top themselves and flipping the social order on its head.

Where the novel tended to falter for me was in the relationship between Jill and Henry. Henry is a fellow pirate who helps Jill acclimatize to life at sea on board a pirate vessel. Their relationship felt rushed, especially in how everything takes place during the novels climax and ending sequence. I really enjoyed Henry as a stand alone character, but as a companion for Jill it would have been nice to see a little more in terms of character development. The book also fell flat at the end. I sat there feeling incomplete, like I missed something. Since the middle of the book was so strong, you expect a strong ending. Sadly, I didn't see that strength carried through till the end.

Vaughn has brought back the fascination with Pirates that was reinstated into culture by way of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. No, there is no Johnny Depp, but there is a vividly painted picture of what being aboard a pirate ship was all about. Through Vaughn's attention to detail, clothing, and scenery –– with the addition of real life documented pirates in the book –– the novel was fascinating and creates a thrilling ride of action, strength, determination, and hope that all will enjoy.

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Thank you to HarperCollins Canada for this advanced copy. :) For more information about the book you can visit the HarperCollins Canada website,read their Blog: The Savvy Reader,  follow them on Twitter or visit their Facebook page.  Happy reading!

-Ashley