Review: Burnt Children, by R.E. Washington

A few weeks ago, I requested and received Burnt Children from the Read to Review (R2R) program hosted by the Paranormal Romance & Urban Fantasy Fanatics! group on Goodreads.

Title: Burnt Children
Author: R.E. Washington
Publisher: R.E Washington, via Smashwords | Amazon | iBooks
Pub. Date: December 13th, 2011
Rating:

Burnt Children is about a girl, Elaria, who was born with the wrong kind of magic. Because of this, her magic was torn from her, and she (and those like her are) is treated like a second-class citizen. Elaria is different from most of her Burnt Children peers, though: She can see magic. It this ability which sets Elaria's story in motion, for without she would never have been drawn to the magical pendant that causes her so much trouble without it.

Burnt Children are not allowed to handle magical artifacts. Knowing this, Elaria takes the pendant, anyway, and shortly after she is on the run, for freedom and her life. The Purifiers are on her tail, they know of the pendant, and they know what it being in Elaria's hands means. The pendant is the key, and the conspiracy surrounding Elaria's life, what happened fifty years earlier to make people so afraid of the Burnt Children, soon starts to unravel. Ultimately, Elaria is left with a choice: Will she follow through with her original plans and find herself a safe haven? Or, will she help save the world?

One of the things I absolutely loved about this book was how well the concept of magic, or Meli, and how it worked within the society was developed. It's not often that magic in books is explained in such depth. True, this could be a headache for some, but I found it rather refreshing since, oftentimes, magic in stories is taken just for what it is – it's magic, it doesn't need any rhyme or reason for how it works. Sure, sometimes you might learn how it can be wielded and who can wield it, but that's usually about it.

In  Burnt Children, though, R.E. Washington takes the time to explain to us why magic is so important in Elaria's society, and to the people who inhabit it. It's rather key for this story, I think.

If I'm being honest, then I would have to say that Meli wasn't the only thing that Washington had a clear picture of in her mind.

REVIEW: Adventures in Funeral Crashing, by Milda Harris

Title: Adventures in Funeral Crashing
Author: Milda Harris
Publisher: Milda Harris, via Smashwords
Pub. Date: June 16th, 2011

Rating:

Adventures in Funeral Crashing is the story of Kait Lennox, who enjoys crashing funerals in her spare time. It is at one of these funerals, that Kait runs into her long-time crush (and the most popular guy in school), Ethan Ripley. Not believing the (really, kind of lame, given the circumstances – got to forgive her for that one, though. The girl was kind of in shock.) excuse Kait supplied as her reason for attending, Ethan hunts her down for the truth. But he doesn't use it against her, like Kait thought he would. Instead, he needs her help. He's not so certain his sister's death is all that it seems...

I surprisingly really liked this book. I wasn't so certain that I would. The concept was intriguing, it's what drew me in in the first place, which is why I requested the title trough Read to Review (R2R), but upon reading it, it took me a little while to get a feel for this book. Once I did, though, I simply couldn't put the book down.

Teaser Tuesday (2)

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My Teaser:

"Tattoo Face's grip slackened. He dropped the knife, dropped me, and hurtled down the embarkment to the railway track."
- p. 185, Numbers by Rachel Ward.
[book c/o my local library]

Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My Teaser:


(eBook c/o NetGalley)

—The Marked Son, by Shea Berkley.

Released today, so go out and grab your copy now!

Review: Clean, by Amy Reed

Title: Clean
Author: Amy Reed
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Pub. Date: July, 2011
Rating:

Clean is the story of five teenagers thrown together into a month-long drug rehabilitation program when each has hit their own rock bottom. It is there they must face themselves—who they have let themselves become and why—for the first time completely sober.

Kelly is pretty, and popular, and addicted to alcohol and cocaine, trying to numb the pain away.

Olivia is a perfectionist to a fault. Anorexic, popping diet pills, and obsessively trying to order her life.

Jason is a tough guy. An alcoholic living under his oppressive, if not abusive, father, dealing with the guilt of what his addiction caused.

Christopher is a church boy and a meth addict, led astray by the need for something more than his meager existence offered.

And then there's Eva, distraught by her mother's death, she found comfort in the numbness of marijuana and painkillers.

When Zombies [Don't] Attack

For those of you who don't know, one of the books I am currently in the middle of reading is Carrie Ryan's The Forest of Hands and Teeth. It's a dystopian novel that takes place sometime after a zombie apocalypse.

The main character, Mary, lives in a fenced off village (think M. Night Shyamalan's The Village, they're kind of similar in feel, except, of course, M. Night had no zombies—er, Unconsecrated. Or fences, if I remember correctly.) that has survived for several generations since the Return (when the Unconcecrated started coming back from the dead).

Going into a book with zombies in it, one has some expectations. At some point, regardless of story, characters, etc., the zombies will attack. It happens. It's what keeps the fans coming back.

In Carrie Ryan's novel, after 89 pages the only real zombie incident (Excluding seeing them up close and personal in all their grisly glory from a very confined area of fence.) was when Mary's mother got a little too close to the perimiter and managed to get bit (which is fine—Zombie see flesh; Zombie reach flesh, Zombie eat flesh).

Inspiring Deadlines: A Fresh Start

This is me, trying again.

Trying again to blog. Trying again to keep deadlines. Trying again to prove I can be consistent, and that I can follow through with what I start. But, most of all, this is me trying again to write. Writer's block is a bitch, plain and simple.

This time though, I am committed. I have invested in this, I have more than one forgotten site that will be staring at me, judging me. Why haven't I written anything yet? Why haven't I updated?

But that's not going to happen. I have a new name. A new URL. I have Pretty in Fiction, and all its associated sites (Twitter, Facebook, GoodReads, etc.). And, of course, I have the deadlines—a schedule. Some of them self-imposed, others based on necessity, but the point is it's more than I had before.