Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

Her Fearful Symmetry is a dark and haunting story following mirror twins Julia and Valentina. Their mother Edie is also a twin but has been estranged from her sister Elspeth for 20 years. Now Julia and Valentina are 20 yrs old and have just found out that their aunt, that they never knew, has died and left everything to them with a few stipulations that are mystifying. They must be 21 yrs old before accepting any of it and live in her flat in London for 1 yr before they are permitted to sell it, plus, their parents must never be allowed to stay there in that flat.

Niffenegger is a literary artist in the way she paints a visual canvas using only words. The story was well written and the characters are well developed and very easy to like. She has woven a tale that keeps you interested in every aspect of the many characters without being confusing and gives a glimpse of London to those of us that may never make it over there. I fell in love with the people and never found a point in the book that was lagging where I felt a need to skim through just to get by.

Towards the end the story takes many unexpected turns (and I'm usually great at predicting twists) and some of them made me *gasp* while others left me frustrated. The book was already at 400 pages but I didn't care for the abrupt and odd ending, I wished she would have stretched it a little longer to give it an end that matched the rest of this fantastic book.

Ending aside, this was an absolutely wonderful book that kept me turning pages for hours on end, I finished it in one day because I couldn't put it down. I recommend this book as long as you are not a person that gets bent out of shape when a book doesn't end your way with the perfect happy ending. This one is far from that and definitely borders on odd and disjointed in the last 1/4 of the book, but still was an outstanding novel.

Deadly Little Lies by Laurie Faria Stolarz

Deadly Little Lies is book 2 in the Touch Series. If you haven't read Deadly Little Secrets, check that one out first...

Camelia is back at school for the second semester of her Junior year. It would seem that things couldn't get much worse than they were in the first semester, with being kidnapped and held in a secluded trailer by a psychotic ex-boyfriend and all, but things suddenly take a strange turn once again. Photos and strange messages begins showing up in her life again at the same time that Ben returns to school and tells her that he wants space and doesn't think they should be together. Camelia is heartbroken but Spencer hires a new college student at Knead that happens to be a good looking guy who's very interested in her and his name's Adam. Will Ben become jealous and decide he made a mistake? What will happen with the threatening messages and phone calls she's suddenly receiving again?

Deadly Little Lies held my attention from the beginning, I am always wondering what is going on in Ben's head and why he continues to avoid Camelia. Camelia has discovered that her new psychometric ability to sculpt objects of future (or past) relevance is with her to stay but she would like nothing more than to share this with Ben.

The overall story isn't all that different from Deadly Little Secrets. Ben tries to avoid Camelia and ignore the chemistry that pulls them together. Another boy enters in and tries to take her attention away but fails at which point Ben makes himself more present and weird things begin to happen making him look all too guilty.

Good for a lazy day that you want a quick book that requires no concentration to read. A simple story with suspense and mystery. Fairly predictable, and as I said before, very similar to the first book. But, if you liked Deadly Little Secrets then you will like 'Lies'. I enjoyed it enough that I plan to read book 3, Deadly Little Games (Dec 2010).

Don't think about anything else

Micah's 5th birthday is on Monday, but I'm going to be in Maine on vacation... HOW DARE I DO THAT!! Anyway... he has been wanting to go to Toys R Us to spend his birthday money like it's burning a hole in his pockets. (a whopping $10 so far that doesn't get you much at Toys R Us, but he doesn't know this yet) Today I gathered up all 3 of our $5 eGift cards, courtesy of babies R us on Facebook simply for becoming a fan, and his $3 Birthday gift card from the toys r us birthday club and off we went now with a grand total of $28 in his hands (in my purse actually).

This boy likes to shop about as much as any man likes to meander through the hallways of the mall. Not at all. Not even at Toys R Us. We were ALL business. He wanted to blow his money and get outta there! LOL We walked in and he grabbed a jump rope, threw it in the cart, said "That's what I want, can we go now?". Like I was the one that begged for a week to be there. I said "But Micah, that only costs $2 and you have $26 left, do you want to save it?". "Ummmm, No, I'll find more stuff. I want a soccer ball"

We grab the soccer ball, and a football while we're at it. He throws in a water gun, then pulls it back out stating that "it's still too cold for playing with water right now". We go to the back of the store to the area that is considered hallowed ground by many male creatures... The video game section. This caught his attention, even at not-quite 5 yrs old. He picked Star Wars Lego Wii and threw it in the cart. Glanced over the numerous titles one more time then grabbed the front of the cart and began pulling it along as he walked away saying "Ok Mom, that's enough, it's time to go now", and I agreed.

We start walking through the store finding our way back to the registers to check out and the whole time Micah is firmly pulling the cart at a pretty decent pace saying (quite loudly) "Don't think about anything else, Mom. Don't think about anything else. We're all done now. Don't think about anything else" Is this a 5 yr old's attempt at hypnosis? Or repetitive chanting hoping he can be saved from endless hours shopping because he knows his mother well enough to know that it COULD go on for endless hours. Micah always cracks me up. :)

Lost in Translation??

So... I borrowed this book from my library and couldn't get past page 3 because it was not in the least bit interesting and nothing grabbed my attention. Then I decided to borrow the eMedia copy and download it to my iPod so I can listen to it and maybe it would be more interesting. I'm just on Chapter 2.... 46 minutes into the iPod recording! Ugh... I'm a fairly patient person and will give any book a chance, but this has got to be the most boring story I've ever attempted to go through. Knowing that I've JUST completed Chapter one and the audio book is 19 hrs long.... I am going to stop now before I lose days out of my life. Not sure what all of the hype is about this series, is it because the guy is no longer alive?

Love Your Heart by Tim McGraw and Tom Douglas

I give this book a whole hearted 5 out of 5 stars!

Let me start with the illustrations, one word, GORGEOUS! Abigail Marble did a fantastic job with capturing this story in picture that had my kids sitting all around me (I have 4) completely enthralled and asking for an encore when I was done.

The story is completely heart warming and such a wonderful message for out children to hear. Doing something nice for someone else is always a wonderful gift in life and it doesn't have to cost you anything more than your time and your talent. God equips each one of us to do a job He calls us to do we just need to keep our eyes open for the opportunities! LOVE this book!

I received an advanced copy of this book through Thomas Nelson Publishings Book Blogger program at www.booksneeze.com. I am not required in any way to give a good review. This is my honest review.

Gone by Lisa McMann

I give this book 2.5 stars out of 5

Gone is the continuing story of Janie and her struggles as a dream catcher. She is faced with some serious decisions in this third and final book of the Wake series. She has learned that if she continues to work in other people's dreams she will end up blind within a few short years and will lose the use of her hands and feet within the next decade. But the other option would mean leaving Cabel behind and starting a life completely isolated from the world. What would you choose? Physical health but mentally and emotionally cut off from all the people you love or Continue the life that you know also knowing that you will be rendered almost completely handicapped by the age of 30? Here lies Janie's dilemma...

So I have read this trilogy over the past 4 days. The first book started out strong, loved it and couldn't wait to continue on. Book 2 had major language issues for me, but I finished it and still enjoyed the story. Book 3 just started to get boring for me and I'm sorry to say that I'm glad there isn't a book 4 to follow. I don't think I will recommend this series to my friends, I'll probably be donating my copies to my library since I don't think I'll ever re-read them.

If you're reading this review I will assume you have already read Wake and Fade, if not... see my reviews for those first. This final book is written in the same choppy style but is a little harder to follow than the first two books. I found myself having to read some of the "sentences" (fragments is the real word to use) multiple times to figure out what she meant. The same thing goes for Gone as went with the previous two books... the language was bad. A lot of using the Lord's name and a lot of *F* words thrown in. Not as much as in Fade, but still quite a bit.

I think she wraps up the series nicely and gives good closure to the characters leaving nothing hanging. I never really got emotionally invested in this series because the characters are never really completely developed. Each book is quite short and are broken down in a timeline, like a schedule. Not very personal.

Fade by Lisa McMann

3.5 stars

Janie and Cabel are joined together again in the next installment of the Wake series by Lisa McMann. Janie has agreed to sign on as a secret informant with the police working along side Cabe. There is a lead that came to them from the school hotline that makes them believe a teacher at the high school is having inappropriate relationships with students. Cabel tries to get information from students through random conversations but much of the investigation lies on Janies shoulders in the way of searching out dreams and interpretting them. Will they find the teacher before any more young girls are harmed, before Janie is harmed.

I will start this with a HUGE warning to any parents out there thinking of letting their child read this series. LANGUAGE, Language, language. The F*** word seems to be a favorite word of these teens and is used A LOT. A LOT! I just wanted to get that out there in case your scoping this out for your teen.

The writing style is very scattered but I think it fits well with Janie and the way her brain works... very fragmented, here one minute, gone the next. The style can be a turn off for some people but I thought it fit the story well.

There are sexual scenes in this one since it does have to do with a teacher/student sexual relationship, as well as the relationship between Janie and Cabe progressing.

I have pre-ordered Gone, the third and final book in the trilogy, and am expecting it from UPS tomorrow (release date is tomorrow Feb, 9). I am excited to read it and think it's a very interesting story with the dream catchers. Doesn't require much thought and definitely isn't a deep story, pretty shallow actually, but it makes for a fun afternoon read. I finished each of the first 2 books in under 5 hrs.

Wake by Lisa McMann

4 stars

Janie realizes at age 8 that there is something different about her and she doesn't know why or how but she does know from a young age that sleepovers are a bad idea. Janie gets sucked into other people's dreams and can't get back out until that person wakes up, it makes her an unwilling voyeur in their most private images. As she gets into high school it becomes much harder to avoid sleeping people so she must learn to control this part of her life before it controls her.

Janie is a sweet lead character and the relationship she has with her best friend Carrie is very nice. There is no "ownership" of the other, or exclusivity in their friendship, they aren't glued to the hip BFFs. The maturity that Janie shows is very nice, she shows empathy for other people knowing there are probably bigger reasons to explain why a person looks or acts the way they do instead of passing blind judgement as other teens may. I also enjoyed the mystery that surrounded Cabel, who is he and why does he seem to be one way but is completely different while away from Janie?

All in all I thought this was a very good book and a fast read. There are a lot of language issues with this book, F-words used freely along with many other words. There is a lot of usage of the Lord's name in this series too. Jesus and God are the most common exclamations in the book besides the F-word. I tried to breeze past all of that knowing that most of the teenage population speaks this way. There are some dreams that Janie is sucked into that are sexual in nature, but there is never more than a broad description, enough so you know what's going. There is a LOT of teenage drinking and drug use. In the end Janie isn't drinking anymore and her friends all get arrested and the kids are all so scared and upset that it shows it as a definite bad consequence, not something to laugh about.

I'm excited to start reading Fade (Wake book 2) today and hopefully get to start Gone (book 3) on Monday! A very engaging series to help you pass a few hours away.

The Long Way Home by Andrew Klavan

I give this book 3 stars

*****

Charlie is a teenager that awakened one day with no memory of an entire year of his life, a year that was very pivotal in his safety and well-being. He woke up to find that he, Charlie West, all American good boy, was convicted of murdering his once best friend, had escaped from prison, somehow joined a terrorist sect in the US and was on the run from both that sect and the police.


In The Long Way Home we join Charlie while he is on his way back to his hometown to clear his name. He runs into "the good guys" (the police) trying to stop him and arrest him, he runs into "the bad guys" (the Homelanders, terrorists) trying to kill him for a reason he doesn't know. He fights his way back home and begins his quest to clear himself before the police can find him and take him back to continue his life sentence, most likely with time added.

**********

This review is going to be very similar to my review of "The Last Thing I Remember", Book one of the Homelanders series. It took a lot to force myself to make it through the first half of this book. The conversations are juvenile and simplistic, the characters are shallow and Charlie, at age 18, is a little odd to follow with all of his thinking about "good guys" and "bad guys". His thought process makes me think more of an 11 year old than an 18 year old.


That being said, once you make it past the first half of the book the action picks up and makes it a more interesting read. I found that there was quite a bit that could have been editted out. There are a few too many paragraphs of Charlie describing the a fight by explaining that he knows exactly what move the guy is going to make and exactly how he's going to counter that move and so on. It continued for at least a couple of pages like that instead of simply narrating the fight itself Klavan was almost over doing it with trying to prove that Charlie was a black belt and wonderful fighter. We already know that from the fact that he's escaped twice from the police and has managed to stay alive while tons of "bad guys" have gone after him.


So, in the end I read the book and liked it enough to finish the entire thing. Will I read Book 3 in November? Probably. Will I recommend this book to my friends? Probably not. If you really enjoyed the first book in the series then chances are you will also enjoy this one. If you haven't read the first book try that one out if you must and come to your own conclusions.


I received a copy of this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 <http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html> : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”