Category Archives: Adventure

BOOK REVIEW: The Girl of Fire and Thorns (Fire and Thorns, #1), by Rae Carson

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18

Date(s) read: February 21 – 23, 2012
Genre: YA Historical Fantasy Romance

Series
The Shadow Cats (#0.5)
The Girl of Fire & Thorns (#1) Amazon | Goodreads
The Crown of Embers (#2)
The Bitter Kingdom (#3)

SYNOPSIS
Once a century, one person is chosen for greatness. 

Elisa is the chosen one. 

But she is also the younger of two princesses, the one who has never done anything remarkable. She can’t see how she ever will. 

Now, on her sixteenth birthday, she has become the secret wife of a handsome and worldly king—a king whose country is in turmoil. A king who needs the chosen one, not a failure of a princess. 

And he’s not the only one who seeks her. Savage enemies seething with dark magic are hunting her. A daring, determined revolutionary thinks she could be his people’s savior. And he looks at her in a way that no man has ever looked at her before. Soon it is not just her life, but her very heart that is at stake. 

Elisa could be everything to those who need her most. If the prophecy is fulfilled. If she finds the power deep within herself. If she doesn’t die young. 

Most of the chosen do.

My Thoughts
I think the sole reason I read this book is because I saw it on a few blogs and was interested by the cover alone. It sounded like an amazing read — one that I would really love — so I requested it. It seemed like one of those books that was utterly amazing, but just not getting enough attention.

I’m finding it really hard to put into words how much I loved this book. I had been in a bit of a reading slump, reading the odd book here and there, with only a few good ones and a lot of mediocre ones. When I eyed my pile of books that were due back at the library soon, I picked up Rae Carson’s The Girl of Fire and Thorns and started reading. By about page 13, I couldn’t put it down!

The Girl of Fire and Thorns tells the story of 16-year-old Elisa, a girl who is one of God’s chosen ones, who is about to marry a man she has never met. She’s not ready to marry, she’s overweight, and naive. The wedding was arranged by her father and Elisa is less than thrilled that it’s happening. Oh, and that guy she’s to marry? He’s a king. His country is in turmoil and Elisa isn’t sure how her being there will help. She can only hope that her gift from God, her being the chosen one, the bearer of the Godstone, will show her the way. Continue reading →

ARC REVIEW: After the Snow, by S. D. Crockett

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Released: March 27, 2012 (MacMillan Children’s Publishing Group)
Author Links: WEB / GOODREADS
Source: Netgalley, for review
Buy Now From: Amazon

Fifteen-year-old Willo was out hunting when the trucks came and took his family away. Left alone in the snow, Willo becomes determined to find and rescue his family, and he knows just who to talk with to learn where they are. He plans to head across the mountains and make Farmer Geraint tell him where his family has gone. 

But on the way across the mountain, he finds Mary, a refugee from the city, whose father is lost and who is starving to death. The smart thing to do would be to leave her alone — he doesn’t have enough supplies for two or the time to take care of a girl — but Willo just can’t do it. However, with the world trapped in an ice age, the odds of them surviving on their own are not good. And even if he does manage to keep Mary safe, what about finding his family?

My Thoughts

After the Snow was an odd book. It’s about a 15-year-old boy named Willo, who was out hunting when his family was taken away. He becomes determined to find them, despite being part of this new ice age. On his search, he finds a young girl, Mary, who also lost her dad. Even though it’s hard enough to fend for himself, Willo befriends her and they go on their journey together. Continue reading →

BOOK REVIEW: Holes, by Louis Sachar

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RELEASE DATE: September 2, 2000
AUTHOR LINKS: WEB / GOODREADS / FACEBOOK
PUBLISHER: Scholastic
FORMAT: Paperback
SOURCE: Borrowed
BUY NOW FROM: Amazon

And so, Stanley Yelnats seems set to serve an easy sentence, which is only fair because he is as innocent as you or me. But Stanley is not going where he thinks he is. Camp Green Lake is like no other camp anywhere. It is a bizarre, almost otherworldly place that has no lake and nothing that is green. Nor is it a camp, at least not the kind of camp kids look forward to in the summertime. It is a place that once held “the largest lake in Texas,” but today it is only a scorching desert wasteland, dotted with countless holes dug by the boys who live at the camp. 

The trouble started when Stanley was accused of stealing a pair of shoes donated by basketball great Clyde “Sweetfeet” Livingston to a celebrity auction. In court, the judge doesn’t believe Stanley’s claim that the shoes fell from the sky onto his head. And yet, that’s exactly what happened. Oddly, though, Stanley doesn’t blame the judge for falsely convicting him. Instead, he blames the whole misadventure on his “no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather.” Thanks to this benighted distant relative, the Yelnats family had been cursed for generations. For Stanley, his current troubles are just a natural part of being a Yelnats. 

At Camp Green Lake, the warden makes the boys “build character” by spending all day, every day, digging holes: five feet wide and five feet deep. It doesn’t take long for Stanley to realize there’s more than character improvement going on at Camp Green Lake. The boys are digging holes because the treacherous warden is searching for something, and before long Stanley begins his own search—for the truth. 

Fate conspires to resolve it all—the family curse, the mystery of the holes, the drought that destroyed Green Lake, and also, the legend of Kissing Kate Barlow, an infamous outlaw of the Wild West. The great wheel of justice has ground slowly for generations, but now it is about to reveal its verdict.

MY REVIEW

My brother isn’t a reader. He’s older than I am and just hasn’t been taken by the loveliness of books. That’s not to say he hasn’t read anything. There are a few books that he’s read and just loved and Holes, by Louis Sachar, was one of them. Continue reading →