Review: Sweet Evil

Sweet Evil
By Wendy Higgins
Published: Mary 1st, 2012 by HarperTeen

What if there were teens whose lives literally depended on being bad influences?

This is the reality for sons and daughters of fallen angels.

Tenderhearted Southern girl Anna Whitt was born with the sixth sense to see and feel emotions of other people. She’s aware of a struggle within herself, an inexplicable pull toward danger, but Anna, the ultimate good girl, has always had the advantage of her angel side to balance the darkness within. It isn’t until she turns sixteen and meets the alluring Kaidan Rowe that she discovers her terrifying heritage and her willpower is put to the test. He’s the boy your daddy warned you about. If only someone had warned Anna.

Forced to face her destiny, will Anna embrace her halo or her horns?

(Goodreads)

I'm going to start off by saying that I loved this book.  Devoured it in only a few days.  It was a real surprise.

At first, I was pretty skeptical.  Anna wasn't my favorite main character, at least, not at the beginning.  But as I kept reading, I started to like her voice a lot more.

I enjoyed all of the characters.  I think Kaidan was the man reason why I liked this book so much.  It'd been a while since I had read about some sexy boy like him.  So, that's probably one of the major things that had attracted me and made me read it so much.

The dark side was really nice too.  Anna going all bad-girl wasn't very interesting to me, but I liked how all of the others worked.  They were all pretty good.  Well, all of the characters were good.  They were developed.

The take on angels and demons was interesting too.  Along with all of the history with the Dukes.  I didn't really like Kaidan's father, but that could have been because I didn't really see his motives.  Maybe there wasn't really a motive, or it could've been because of his nature, or whatever you want to call it.  But he was hated, which I'm sure was the intention.

I can't really think about what it was that had bothered me, if anything. (Okay, that's a lie.  I don't remember what I was saying just know.)

Overall, I like the book, and am interested in what will happen next.  One thing I would have liked better is if Anna had really just given up on Kaidan and had gotten together with what's his name (is it really bad that I can't remember his name?).  Anna and Kaidan have a thing, but she's a little too obsessed with him and it really really annoys me.

Right now, I'd rather this between 3 to 4 stars.

Review: Dark Eyes

Dark Eyes
by William Richter
Published: March 15, 2012 by Razorbill

Get ready for the vigilante girl detective of the next generation.

Wally was adopted from a Russian orphanage as a child and grew up in a wealthy New York City family. At fifteen, her obsessive need to rebel led her to life on the streets.

Now the sixteen-year-old is beautiful and hardened, and she's just stumbled across the possibility of discovering who she really is. She’ll stop at nothing to find her birth mother before Klesko—her dark eyed father—finds her. Because Klesko will stop at nothing to reclaim the fortune Wally’s mother stole from him long ago. Even if that means murdering his own blood. But Wallys had her own killer training, and she's hungry for justice.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for teens, this debut thriller introduces our next big series heroine!

(Goodreads)

I will start by saying that yes, I really enjoyed this book, but it confused me at some points.  Oh, and I vow to never look ahead in a book again.  If you look ahead in this book (a.k.a last 100 pages), you will ruin the story.

Moving on.  Wally is a tough girl who doesn't let much of her feelings show.  She is the leader of her little gang, and once lived a life everyone would want.  The reason why she abandons that is because she isn't comfortable with her life--that's what I got from it, at least.  What really nags me is the thing about her mom, which I can't really talk about 'cause that'd ruin the whole book.  Let's just say that I didn't understand everything about her mother's reasonings.

The story does flow a lot like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (I know I'm horrible for basing my views on the movie) in that it switches from different important characters.

Richter did a good job at keeping the reader guessing--even down to the point that, after I formed a question, it was answered within pages.  I found that rather cool.  As for the writing, it wasn't too spectacular.  It fit well for the story, though, but it didn't really wow me.

For a lot of the plot, I didn't completely understand why stuff was happening, but I think those were the instances where my question was answered after a few pages.  And the pace wasn't too slow.  I guess you can say I devoured the book in about a week, I think.

I will definitely be getting the next book.  I can't wait to see what will happen with Wally now that so many things have happened.

Overall, I'd say this would be 4 stars.

White Cat by Holly Black

Cassel comes from a family of curse workers — people who have the power to change your emotions, your memories, your luck, by the slightest touch of their hands. And since curse work is illegal, they're all mobsters, or con artists. Except for Cassel. He hasn't got the magic touch, so he's an outsider, the straight kid in a crooked family. You just have to ignore one small detail — he killed his best friend, Lila, three years ago.

Ever since, Cassel has carefully built up a façade of normalcy, blending into the crowd. But his façade starts crumbling when he starts sleepwalking, propelled into the night by terrifying dreams about a white cat that wants to tell him something. He's noticing other disturbing things, too, including the strange behavior of his two brothers. They are keeping secrets from him, caught up in a mysterious plot. As Cassel begins to suspect he's part of a huge con game, he also wonders what really happened to Lila. Could she still be alive? To find that out, Cassel will have to out-con the conmen.

Pitches and image provided by goodreads.

The reason I read this was because I'd forgotten my book one day, and knew I'd get some reading done at school.  Plus, I'd been interested in this book for a while and finally got to reading it.

I really enjoyed this book. I liked the idea of people able to do different things through touch, and that there was a limited variety of different powers. And that it appears to be genetic.  But what I didn't like was the fact that it was hard to follow.  I forgot the drawbacks for the powers, especially the ones that were brought up a lot.  I felt that those points need to have been brought out more, instead of random glimpses of it.

Cassel himself ... well, it was obvious after a while that he had powers too.  But it's one of those things that an author can't really hide--not unless they're some sort of master.  Black didn't do so good at the secrets; they weren't well hidden, but that may or may not have been the point.  Really, it didn't bother me.


What did bother me was his brothers.  They were so uncaring!  Black definitely made sure that I didn't like them, but I did feel sorry for Barron at the end.  I wished that Cassel would feel more toward him, considering what had happened.  


I enjoyed the relationship between Lila and Cassel.  I just wished that Cassel's relationship with his previous girlfriend had been brought out.  Give them more depth, because his previous girlfriend (I forgot her name) was mentioned, but not really used.  One of those characters that wasn't really important.


Overall, I did like the plot, and the characters, no matter how evil they were to each other.  I didn't find any really noticeable flaws (none that kept with me, at least). I'd give this 4 stars.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern review

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.

But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus per­formers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.

I'm going to start off by saying that the pitch is a lie. It isn't a duel; it is a super long ... game, really.  The pace is slow, and really, I'd suggest not reading the pitches.  I didn't, or, at least, I don't remember them. Consider me lucky: my expectations weren't so high.

I did enjoy reading this. My only complaint is that the pace was way too slow.  It dragged a lot of the time, and there were scenes that I wanted to skip.  A lot of the chapters, though, do tie in to everything.  But I have a strong feeling that there are chapters that could be skipped, and the reader would still understand the ending.

Oh, and speaking of the ending: have you heard of The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton?  Well, the ending is similar to that.  I found a lot of things I could compare this to, like an anime I've been watching, and a movie I recently watched.  They were little aspects of the stories.

And now I go back to the story.  The main characters' father figures were rather ... odd.  I did, however, love Celia's relationship with her father.  Rather inspiring to my writer's side.  All of the relationships were well crafted, and the characters all distinct and interesting. The backgrounds to a good majority of the major characters were pretty cool, too.

The plot was very, very slow.  The writing weighed it down a lot; the descriptions were elaborate.  All of the pictures painted were beautiful, and a lot of the scenes were great.  But when those dull scenes popped up every few chapters, I would end up thinking about other things.  Which happened quite a lot.

Then there's the ending (actually talking about it now). It tied up everything rather nicely, in my opinion. Kind of sweet, too, at some places.

Overall, I would definitely recommend this to other people, but warn them about the slow pace. I'd give this a 4.0 rating. The pace was too slow for me, and some scenes were too boring, but I'd say everything else was great.

Blood Red Road by Moira Young review

Saba has spent her whole life in Silverlake, a dried-up wasteland ravaged by constant sandstorms. The Wrecker civilization has long been destroyed, leaving only landfills for Saba and her family to scavenge from. That's fine by her, as long as her beloved twin brother Lugh is around. But when a monster sandstorm arrives, along with four cloaked horsemen, Saba's world is shattered. Lugh is captured, and Saba embarks on an epic quest to get him back.

Suddenly thrown into the lawless, ugly reality of the world outside of desolate Silverlake, Saba is lost without Lugh to guide her. So perhaps the most surprising thing of all is what Saba learns about herself: she's a fierce fighter, an unbeatable survivor, and a cunning opponent. And she has the power to take down a corrupt society from the inside. Teamed up with a handsome daredevil named Jack and a gang of girl revolutionaries called the Free Hawks, Saba stages a showdown that will change the course of her own civilization. 

Let me start off with the writing. It took me about twenty pages to get into the Western-type style. Then, there were some areas where the “Carin fer somebody that much means you cain’t think straight”-type writing dropped. Everything’s written in this way—or at least should be—but there were a few long-ish sentences that were written “properly.” But, everything was really easy to follow. There’s a lack of dialogue quotations, but, again, real easy to follow. I applaud Young for that.

Otherwise, the story sucked me in. Everything’s short—the sentences and sentences—which definitely kept my pushing through the story. I enjoyed it quite a lot.

The beginning of the story was amazing. Saba and her family live in the middle of nowhere, a storm comes, and Lugh is kidnapped. Took a few pages to get that bit rolling, but it helped show the characters’ relationships. Saba and her brother? Closer than anything. Saba and her little sister? Not so much. What I liked was that, after their brother was kidnapped and Emmi (Saba’s sister) disobeyed Saba and decided to tag along, the relationship between Emmi and Saba grew. Saba wasn’t so mean, and they became more like sisters.

But their relationship seemed to change a lot. At least, that’s what happened when Jack came in. He caused a lot of problems with Saba and Emmi’s relationship, along with his own relationship with Saba. I won’t go into my Jack ordeal just yet.

One of my favorite places was when Saba was change fighting. Best part of the book. Saba’s the best of the change fighters and needs to find a way out so she can continue on her journey to find Lugh. Then Jack comes along, which I believe is where the story starts to fall.

There’s something about Jack that draws Saba. She obviously is in love with him just after a few sentences. A lot of the scenes with Jack and Saba reminded me of a lot of paranormal romances. The main character is in love with the hot guy, yet she doesn’t want to admit it. Then there’s the dialogue between the characters. Again, reminded me a lot of paranormal romances. This killed my joy of reading the book.

Then there’s the whole Lugh-prophecy type thing. Yeah, he’s part of a prophecy—that was before my Jack problem, which probably started my not-so-happy-with-this-book thing. But, the prophecy thing was real small. The start of the quest cage fighting took up a good majority of the beginning, then Saba and the other fighters’ freedom took up another chunk, and the last chunk was some development of Saba and Jack’s relationship while off to go save Lugh.

The ending, though, is redeeming. Characters' relationships get a lot better, and except for the large amounts of predictable dialogue and events, closes the story rather well.

Overall, I enjoyed the beginning, which is really saving the book for me. I’ll probably look into the next book, but otherwise, I’m disappointed. I thought it’d be a lot better. Loved the beginning. The ending went downhill, a bit. One thing I would have liked to see, though, was the background history of this dystopia and where exactly this takes place. As an American, I’m guessing some form of the US in the mid-west.

After some contemplation, I’d say this is 4.0 in rating. I'd still recommend this, but warn people of the not-so-good character relationship.