(ARC) YA Book Review: The Assassin's Curse by Cassandra Rose Clarke

Release Date: 2 October 2012

Publisher: Strange Chemistry
Format: ARC
Source: Publisher

Pre-order a copy! B&N | Amazon

Description:

When Ananna of the Tanarau, the eldest daughter of a highly-ranked family in the Pirate's Confederation, runs away from an arranged marriage, the offended parents hire Naji the assassin to murder her.

Ananna accepts the magical help of a mysterious woman to save herself from her assassin. Unfortunately, the woman's magic fails, but Ananna inadvertently saves the assassin's life in the skirmish, thus activating a curse that had been placed on him, binding them together. Follow Ananna and Naji as they sail across the globe in their desperate effort to lift the curse. 

My Thoughts...

Blog Tour: On Writing Monument 14's Characters

Thanks for stopping by today! I'm excited to be hosting Emmy Laybourne today as part of the Monument 14 blog tour!  She's stopped by today to talk about one of my favorite things about a good book--characters!  Emmy's debut has a pretty good size cast, so I asked her to talk a little about how she went about developing them all.  Read on to find out more about her characters and Monument 14. :)

On Crafting Good Side Characters

My debut novel Monument 14 has a bunch of characters in it - fourteen kids and a couple of adults thrown in, too! I really needed to be sure that the characters stood out from each other, so the reader would know who was who. But in terms of my writing process, I didn't want to draw up some kind of chart and try to set them all apart from each other in some phony kind of way. Instead I worked in a number of ways to really bring the characters to life.

One technique I used was to look to specific people from my life when envisioning characters. Niko, for example, is absolutely based on the son of a friend of mine. He's this very serious boy with big brown eyes and straight brown hair. He's thin and quiet and moves like he's a part of the f. There is nothing about the kid that is wild or impulsive - even his hair is completely straight.

Chloe, one of the most loud and funny characters in the book, is also based on a kid I know. It helped me, when I was writing her, because I could just focus on this other little kid (actually a boy) and try to imagine what he would say.

There are some characters you need to create, like the ones I just mentioned - others seem to be waiting, right in your imagination. Max was one of those characters. He was just hanging around in my mind, waiting to "get borned," as he might say. To tell you the truth, Max is a character that could kind of take over. In fact, I think I could write a side-novel to Monument 14, written entirely in his voice. It would be one hell of a story. Max has had a more interesting life than most of us, I think!

Another tool I used when creating the characters in Monument 14 were my acting skills. Working on films like Superstar and Nancy Drew, I really had to go deep into character work. I would work on characters for a long time - I would focus on how they walk and talk. I'd do housework in character and go shopping for clothes in character (and boy, did I ever come home with some horrible outfits!)  I did the same type of work with my literary characters. Sometimes when I was writing I would speak the dialogue out loud. I'd imagine myself to be Sahalia and bam - something snarky and sarcastic would pop out of my mouth. Or I'd take on Jake's slow drawl to see what he had to say about a development in a scene.

I'll tell you, writing Monument 14 was hard for me, at times, because I came to really love my characters. They came to be real, living and breathing people in my imagination. I hated putting them in so much danger. And man, then I had to write the sequel! Talk about turmoil and despair!

Please read Monument 14 and let me know what you think of the characters! You can leave a message for me here or write to me at emmylaybourne.com. Thanks and safe reading!

Find out more about Monument 14, Emmy, and the Fierce Read tour!

Book Trailer: http://youtu.be/MfeyjuEMaOI

Author website: http://emmylaybourne.com/

Short Story Prequel: http://www.tor.com/stories/2012/05/dress-your-marines-in-white 

Fierce Reads Tour Info: https://www.facebook.com/FierceReads/events

Fourteen kids. One superstore. A million things that go wrong.

In Emmy Laybourne’s action-packed debut novel, six high school kids (some popular, some not), two eighth graders (one a tech genius), and six little kids trapped together in a chain superstore build a refuge for themselves inside. While outside, a series of escalating disasters, beginning with a monster hailstorm and ending with a chemical weapons spill, seems to be tearing the world—as they know it—apart.

Emmy began her writing career as a playwright. The first play she wrote and performed was called, The Miss Alphabet City Beauty Pageant and Spelling Bee. The New York Post said it, “restores faith in our country’s comedic future.” The Daily News called it, “hilariously clever.” Her next play, Smorgas-Bourne, landed Emmy a starring role in the Paramount feature film, Superstar, opposite Will Ferrel and Molly Shannon.

As an actress, Emmy went on to have featured roles in the films “Nancy Drew,” “The In-Laws,” and “Lucky Numbers.” She was a season regular on the NBC sitcom “DAG,” and performed original comedy on Comedy Central, MTV, and VH1. She has improvised with the Upright Citizens Brigade, Chicago City Limits and the Heartless Floozies.

Emmy has performed original comedy material throughout LA and New York, including the song she sang with her brother, Sam, “We Can’t Make Love Because We’re Related.” In addition to writing YA novels, Emmy is currently a Lyricist in the prestigious BMI Musical Theater Writer’s Advanced Workshop, writing a musical called "The Midnight Princess" with composer Paul Libman.

Macmillan has been kind enough to provide a copy of Monument 14 for giveaway to one lucky reader!  Use the Rafflecopter form below to enter for your chance.  US/Canada addresses only, please.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

YA Book Review: Of Poseidon by Anna Banks

Release Date: 22 May 2012

Publisher: Feiwel & friends
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher via NetGalley

Get a copy! Amazon | B&N

Goodreads description:

Galen, a Syrena prince, searches land for a girl he's heard can communicate with fish. It’s while Emma is on vacation at the beach that she meets Galen. Although their connection is immediate and powerful, Galen's not fully convinced that Emma's the one he's been looking for. That is, until a deadly encounter with a shark proves that Emma and her Gift may be the only thing that can save his kingdom. He needs her help--no matter what the risk.

My Thoughts...

YA Book Review: Pretty Crooked by Elisa Ludwig

Release Date: 13 March 2012

Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher via NetGalley

Goodreads description:

Willa’s secret plan seems all too simple: take from the rich kids at Valley Prep and give to the poor ones.

Yet Willa’s turn as Robin Hood at her ultra-exclusive high school is anything but. Bilking her “friends”-known to everyone as the Glitterati-without them suspecting a thing, is far from easy. Learning how to pick pockets and break into lockers is as difficult as she’d thought it’d be. Delivering care packages to the scholarship girls, who are ostracized just for being from the “wrong” side of town, is way more fun than she’d expected.

The complication Willa didn’t expect, though, is Aidan Murphy, Valley Prep’s most notorious (and gorgeous) ace-degenerate. His mere existence is distracting Willa from what matters most to her-evening the social playing field between the have and have-nots. There’s no time for crushes and flirting with boys, especially conceited and obnoxious trust-funders like Aidan.

But when the cops start investigating the string of burglaries at Valley Prep and the Glitterati begin to seek revenge, could he wind up being the person that Willa trusts most

My Thoughts...

(ARC) YA Book Review: The Secret Sisterhood of Hearbreakers by Lynn Weingarten

Release Date: 27 December 2011
Publisher: HarperTeen
Source: Around the World ARC Tours

Buy It! Amazon | B&N

Goodreads description:

When her boyfriend breaks up with her on the first day of sophomore year, Lucy has no idea how she’s going to make it through homeroom, let alone the rest of her life. Enter three stunning girls with a magical offer Lucy can’t refuse. All she has to do is get a guy to fall in love with her in the next seven days, and then…break his heart and collect one of his brokenhearted tears. As the girls teach Lucy how to hook a guy (with the help of a little magic), she quickly discovers how far she is willing to go—and who she is willing to cross—to get what she wants.

My Thoughts...

The Secret Sisterhood of Heartbreakers was a surprisingly fun and moving story of a high school girl, romance, friendship, and magic.  Ms. Weingarten continually threw surprises my way and I found that I could NOT stop reading! It was one of those books that you pick up and all of the sudden, hours later, you find yourself turning the last page (and realizing that you're actually quite hungry...).

If there's an upside to having a broken heart, it's this: a broken heart makes you brave.

-p23, ARC

Lucy is a remarkably real young woman who I connected with over and over again throughout the book.  From the moment where she gets dumped, I felt a kinship with her.  Her pain felt so real and I think that it's the kind of first-love heartbreak that any girl can relate to on some level. When she's offered a chance at magic to help heal her heart forever, who could blame her for hoping to use it to get back the boy she loves?  The lessons that she learns along the way are priceless in every sense.

It's natural. Nature is dark and light, birth and death. Everything and its opposite. And in nature, there are predators and prey. The hunters and the hunted.  The heartbreakers and the heartbroken. The beautiful thing is that Nature lets us choose which we want to be. Most people never make the choice though because they don't even know they have it.

-p35, ARC

When Lucy meets the girls of the sisterhood, things really start to get going. The girls who recruit Lucy into their "sisterhood" took me on a roller coaster of emotions.  I would alternately love and hate them from page to page.  They really put Lucy through the ringer! Gil was my clear favorite, if for no other reason than she tried to really be there for Lucy throughout her tests.  Liza and Olivia were both incredibly intriguing characters throughout because you really felt like you were only getting surface glimpses of who they truly are.

The magical element of this story is incredibly well-done. The magic is a bigger part of the story than I expected but it flows into the storyline seamlessly. I also really liked how the magic was both readily and frequently used but it was balanced with the ideas of responsible and practical use. There were still points when I questioned how I personally felt about the ways that they used magic, but it didn't overall affect my enjoyment of the story. The magic combined with the budding friendships really help Lucy to grow-up throughout the book. I think I already said it, but I really enjoyed watching this process with her.  It was a joy.

The problem wasn't that she loved him too much; it was that she hadn't loved herself enough.

-p186, ARC

The Secret Sisterhood of Heartbreakers is a book that I truly enjoyed. The focus is on the sisterhood, not the ex-boyfriend or the friend-who-wants-more.  The ending was not at all what I was expecting when I started the book, and I liked that. It's always nice for a book to go for the slightly-less-predictable resolution.  I started thinking I knew how this book was going to "go" but I was wrong at so many turns.  Ms. Weingarten has written a wonderful book that I would definitely recommend to many readers of contemporary fantasy who lean more towards the contemporary (i.e. this is "fantasy-lite).