Review: Hex Hall by Rachel Hakwins

Hex Hall

Rachel Hawkins

My Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Back of the Book:

Three years ago, Sophie Mercer discovered that she was a witch. It's gotten her into a few scrapes. Her non-gifted mother has been as supportive as possible, consulting Sophie's estranged father - an elusive European warlock - only when necessary. But when Sophie attracts too much human attention for a prom-night spell gone horribly wrong, it's her dad who decides her punishment: exile to Hex Hall, an isolated reform school for wayward Prodigium, a.k.a. witches, faeries, and shapeshifters.

By the end of the her first day among fellow freak-teens, Sophie has quite a scorecard: three powerful enemies who look like supermodels, a futile crush on a gorgeous warlock, a creepy tagalong ghost, and a new roommate who happens to be the most hated person and only vampire on campus. Worse, Sophie soon learns that a mysterious predator has been attacking students, and her only friend is the number-one suspect.

As a series of blood-curdling mysteries starts to converge, Sophie prepares for the biggest threat of all; an ancient secret society determined to destroy all Prodigium, especially her.

My Review:

Due to the drama of my real life since the end of last month it's been about two weeks since I've done one of these reviews, and finished Hex Hall, so bare with me as I find my sea legs again. The waters may be a bit choppy at first.

Hex Hall was one of those books that I was excited about the moment I heard of it. It's a magical school with witches, faeries and werewolves and I was a crazy Harry Potter fan back in the day. I had high expectations going into this book, especially after all the amazing reviews for it surfaced.

And this book didn't disappoint. The story revolves around Sophie, a teenage witch being raised by her muggle....sorry, human (old habits die hard)...mother. Between her mother's job and Sophie's tendency to expose her powers to humans she's been bounced from one part of the country to the next. Finally, after doing a love spell for another student that goes horribly wrong, she's sent to Hex Hall.

Which is kinda like a reform school for magical beings.

While most of the students have been sentenced there since they came into their power, Sophie is new and works well as our introduction to this world (because, despite her own powers, she had never known anyone else who wasn't human due to her warlock father's estrangement).

Hijinx, in the form of witches being drained of all their blood, occurs and it's up to Sophie to clear her vampire roommate of the charges.

There's also a subplot where Sophie learns about her own history and place in this new world, which ties in nicely.

Overall, the story works well and Sophie is an excellent character. She's not perfect, a trait I'm sure you've all figured out I look for in leads, but she has a good heart and is likable. Even when she is making a decision or two which leave you with the overwhelming urge to shake her and shock her back to her senses.

Despite the five star rating I gave it, Hex Hall isn't completely perfect. The pacing isn't even, the last 1/3 of the book feels slightly rushed in the amount of time and events occur opposed to the first 2/3's which kept a steady rhythm. I think the book would have benefited with a few extra chapters to flesh out the ending more.

But I am very much looking forward to the second in this series.

Review: Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

Dead Until Dark
(A Sookie Stackhouse Novel, #1)
Charlaine Harris

My Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Back of the Book:

Sookie Stackhouse is a small-time cocktail waitress in a small-town Louisiana. She's quiet, keeps to herself, and doesn't get out much. Not because she's not pretty. She is. It's just that, well, Sookie has this sort of "disability." She can read minds. And that doesn't make her too dateable. And then along comes Bill. He's tall, dark, handsome - and Sookie can't hear a word he's thinking. He's exactly the type of guy she's been waiting for all her life...

But Bill has a disability of his own: He's a vampire with a bad reputation. He hangs with a seriously creepy crowd, all suspected of - big surprise - murder. And when one of Sookie's coworkers is killed, she fears she's next...

My Review:

I am sure all of you have figured out now that the vampire genre is one of my favorites and makes up a huge percentage of what I do read. So when I say that Dead Until Dark is one of my all time favorite vampire novels ever? You know I'm not messing around.

This book pretty much has everything that I want and expect from the genre: vampire politics and social structure, lots of smutty sex scenes and proper mythology of vampires not being able to come out during the day.

On top of all that it takes place in the backwoods of the South and the setting is fabulous. Charlaine Harris has this ability to just make the entire town of Bon Temps come alive and seem real in every aspect. Even the smallest characters have personalities to them and are definable. Plus I'm a little bit in love with her style of writing.

I don't want to go to much into the plot details because it is a mystery, a well-down one at that involving girl's who get "friendly" with vampires being strangled to death and raped (disturbingly in that order). The murderer isn't obvious but makes sense upon being revealed.

Finally, I used the original cover for the series here for this review and normally I am not a fan at all of TV/Movie cover changes but True Blood cover is also beautiful, imo:




If we're being completely honest here, Dead Until Dark was a book I started almost a year ago and it took an irrationally long time for me to finish it. I had originally picked it up to read on my flight out to San Diego for Comic-Con because I was a fan of True Blood and had learned that Charlaine Harris was going to be at the panel. I managed to get probably 80% of the book finished by the time I arrived in California however it got thrown into my bag and forgotten in the chaos that followed. By the time I got back home, it was lost in my bag of swag and not necessarily forgotten as much as it was misplaced. I finally ended up buying the box set of the first eight books during last year's Day After Thanksgiving Sale.

Seeing how it had been so long since I read the book, I started over (it's a bit to easy for me to confuse certain events on the show with the book because the show actually runs parallel to book in a number of cases) and it did take me a bit longer cause re-reading is never quite as quick for me as reading for the first time. But honestly? The only thing this proved to me was how much this book is worth a second read through.

Review: The Dead Girl's Dance by Rachel Caine

The Dead Girl's Dance
(The Morganville Vampires - Book Two)
Rachel Caine

My Rating: ♥♥♥♥♥

Description:

Claire has her share of challenges. Like being a genius in a school that favors beauty over brains; homicidal girls in her dorm, and finding out that her college town is overrun with the living dead. On the up side, she has a new boyfriend with a vampire-hunting dad. But when a local fraternity throws the Dead Girls' Dance, hell is really going to break loose.

My Review:

I'm just going to start this review by coming out and admitting that by the time I finished the second book in the series I had completely and utterly fallen in love with The Morganville Vampires.

It's violent, dark and doesn't butcher the vampire mythology like so many other books and series do in this genre. In a lot of ways it also reminds me of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, not that they're vampire ~slayers~ but the political elements of the things that go bump in the night and the scooby-gang feel to Claire, Eve, Shawn and Michael's little group.

Despite the summary, and the title, this book actually has very little to do with the Dead Girl's dance hosted by the EEK frat. Claire's invited at the start of the book and the actual party only makes up less than two chapters and isn't exactly relevant to the main plot.

Which is Shawn's vampire slaying father showing up in town, which ultimately causes Shawn to get blamed for a vampire murder and sentenced to death by fire. We get filled in on Shawn's time outside of Morganville and what happened to his mother along with growth within his relationship with Claire.

The relationship between Shawn and Claire also continues to be one of my favorite elements of the series. They're slowly making their way to being one of my favorite couples in the ya genre. It's not 'omg-most-realistic-romance-ever!' but it doesn't sugarcoat the issues they have (especially with her jailbait status and the fact they want to have sex, yay for teens having hormones).

Like I mentioned earlier, the book also continues to be violent and dark. Which is obviously not everyone's cup of tea but I love it. I just personally believe any book that involves monsters should include at least some senseless blood and gore. I'm old fashioned like that.

I also like the fact that the book doesn't present a black-and-white depiction of who is good and who is evil. There are human's in the book who do evil things, for no real reason. Along with vampire's actions and morals, for a lack of a better word. For example, in terms of contracts the vampires have human's sign that make them their slaves? It's pointed out that most of them come from a time where "owning" slaves or you servants was extremely common. It doesn't make it right, but it weakens the wrong or evil element.

In conclusion: I'm in love with this book and it was a improvement over Glass Houses. I'm looking forward to the third book in the series.

If you want to read my review for the first book in the series, Glass Houses, click here.

Review: Pretty Little Liars by Sara Shepard

Title: Pretty Little Liars

Series: Pretty Little Liars #1

Author: Sara Shepard

Format: Book

My Rating:

Description:

Everyone has something to hide—especially high school juniors spencer, aria, emily, and hanna.

Spencer covets her sister's boyfriend. Aria's fantasizing about her English teacher. Emily's crushing on the new girl at school. Hanna uses some ugly tricks to stay beautiful.

But they've all kept an even bigger secret since their friend Alison vanished.

How do I know? Because I know everything about the bad girls they were, the naughty girls they are, and all the dirty secrets they've kept. And guess what? I'm telling.

My Review:

Pretty Little Liars is one of those books that once you pick it up, it's nearly impossible to put down. I easily lost most of my Sunday afternoon curled up, reading this book.

It's the kick off for the series, which shares it's namesake, and does an extremely excellent job pulling you in. We're introduced in the prologue to the five main characters of the series on the first night of the all important summer vacation between seventh and eighth grade. This is also the night that Alison disappears without a trace, leaving her four best friends to quickly fall apart from each other in the tragedies wake.

I include Alison as a main character because, despite not making another real appearance after the prologue, her character is just as important and fleshed out as Spencer, Aria, Emily and Hanna. Think Lily Kane of Veronica Mars. From there we flash forward to the girl's junior year of High School, when the four girls begin receiving messages from a mysterious '-A' who know secrets that they had only shared with Alison.

The focus of the book shifts between Aria, Spencer, Emily and Hanna. Normally I'm not a huge fan of this style but each girl has such a unique, distinctive quality to her personality that it's easy to tell them apart. This causes the shift in perspective to work in favor of the story, giving you a better overall feel of the events going on.

While each girl is enthralling in their own way, I'm particularly fond of Emily and Maya. It's not extremely common to find lgbt characters in YA literature so stumbling upon ones in this book was a pleasant surprise.

What I especially love about this book is it does an amazing job not giving anything away. It's one of the reasons this book is so difficult to put down, you get pulled into the girl's world and you need to know what happens next. I especially enjoyed the fact that the book did not try to wrap up any of the major mysteries at the end of the book.

Pretty Little Liars is not a stand alone, on any level, but you aren't left with a lack of fulfillment at the end. Instead just a desire to learn what comes in the next.

The book isn't perfect, certain behaviors of the characters are unrealistic but I personally fond those easy to overlook. Seeing how I plan to make my way to the book store on my break tomorrow to pick up the second in this series, I think it more than earns the five star rating. I recommend this book to pretty much anyone.