The Maze Runner by James Dashner

Imagine waking up in complete darkness in a strange box and knowing nothing more than your name. Thomas awakened to that reality on page 1 of the Maze Runner. Where is he, why is this place filled with nothing but teenaged boys and why can he remember nothing specific about his life prior to the box? Once a month a new boy is sent up through the box where he is taken into the Glade and trained in several jobs to find each boys strong suit. Thomas shows up no different than any other 'Greenbean' or 'Greenie' (new kid) but less than 24 hrs later the alarm sounds again notifying the boys that another person is coming up in the box... only this time when it reaches the top, it's a teenage girl and she's in a coma. She has a message for the boys that Everything is going to change.

The days to follow the girl and the message lead to many strange occurances in a place where things are always in Order and on Schedule. They must solve the puzzle of their captivity in order to find the Creator of their locked up world and fight for their freedom. Is it worth fighting for anymore or is the world outside even worse than the maze they exist in now where you must avoid being stung by terrible animal/machine creatures that what nothing more than to steal them away and tear them apart? Without a memory of their life before the Glade, none of them truly know what they are fighting to get out to... just what they are fighting to get away from.

The Maze Runner is the first novel in what will be a trilogy written by James Dashner. It takes place in a dystopian society where teenage boys with a strange dialect seem to be in charge and running things pretty smoothly. Thomas shows up and wants to be a "Runner", the people that run the maze to find an exit. He doesn't know why he wants to do it because it's extremely dangerous, but deep in his gut he is driven to this job in particular. Thomas's character is not very well developed but since he has no memory of who he is prior to the box all we know is the integrity and strength we see as he performs his daily tasks and through his eyes we get a better glimpse of some of the other characters, like Minho, Chuck and Newt.

Unlike most YA genre books there were no romantic ties at all in this book, that was a good change for me. It moved along at an Ok pace and had enough action and drama, I suppose, but it seemed to lack something for me. I really had to force myself to finish the book so I could see how it ended and I found myself skimming the pages a lot just reading the dialogue. The story was different and new but not anywhere near the calibre of the Hunger Games trilogy, another dystopian series I very highly recommend. It was an entertaining enough read if you have nothing else on your TBR list.

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.