Playing Catch Up! The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

Playing Catch Up has really been helping me through my ever growing TBR list. I'd like to welcome all other blogs to participate too! If you do, be sure to post your links in the comments section. I'd love to see your Playing Catch Up Reviews, and I'm sure others would too!! *wink*

Want to know more about Playing Catch Up? I'll tell you all about it here!

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer #1) by Michelle Hodkin 
Genre: Young Adult (Paranormal Romance)
Date Published: September 27, 2011
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

Mara Dyer believes life can't get any stranger than waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there.

It can.

She believes there must be more to the accident she can't remember that killed her friends and left her strangely unharmed. 

There is.

She doesn't believe that after everything she's been through, she can fall in love. 

She's wrong.

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer is the first book in the Mara Dyer Trilogy by Michelle Hodkin. I've been wanting to read this book for so long, and I can't believe I waited as long as I did. It's not what I was expecting, although I don't really know what I was expecting since the blurb gives you just enough to lure you in. Once I started, I couldn't stop though. Mara was such a fun and spunky character. I just loved her right away. Noah had to grow on me a bit, but he did.. in a big way. I liked how they teased, and taunted, and "hated" each other. I think Mara has more control than she thinks she does, and I don't think everything is her fault like she thinks they are. Unfortunately, I can't say what I do think about all that, because that'd be a spoiler. The story throws little teasers at you all throughout the book that give you hints to think about of whats to come as you read, and I think that's a big part of what makes it so hard to put down. I wanted to get to those parts. I couldn't sleep until I knew what was going to happen. I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning to finish this book, and I can't wait to get started on the next one.

WHEN I AWOKE, I FACED A WALL OF books. My eyes felt puffy and swollen with sleep and I rubbed them with my fists like a little girl. Lamplight from an alcove stretched across the room, reaching for my exposed legs at the foot of the bed.

Noah’s bed.

In Noah’s room.

Without any clothes on.

Holy shit.

I wrapped the flat sheet tighter around my chest. Lightning flashed, illuminating the roiling surface of the bay outside the window.

“Noah?” I asked, my voice shaky and hoarse with sleep. My last memory was the taste of that rank concoction Mr. Lukumi gave me to drink. The warm feel of it dribbling down my chin. The smell. And then I remembered cold, being cold. But nothing else. Nothing else. My sleep was dreamless.

“You’re up,” Noah said as he padded into view. He was limned in the light from his desk, his drawstring pants hanging low on his hips and his T-shirt hugging his lean frame. The light cast his elegant profile into relief; sharp and gorgeous, as if he’d been cut from glass. He moved to sit on the edge of his bed, about a foot away from my feet.

“What time is it?” I asked him. My voice was thick with sleep.

“About ten.”

I blinked. “It was almost two when the seminar ended, wasn’t it?” Noah nodded. “What happened?”

He shot me a loaded glance. “You don’t remember?”

I shook my head. Noah said nothing and looked away. His expression was even, but I saw the muscles working in his jaw. I grew increasingly uncomfortable. What was so bad he couldn’t—oh. Oh, no. My eyes flicked down to the sheet I’d wrapped around myself. “Did we—”

In an instant, Noah’s face was full of mischief. “No. You tore your clothes off and then ran through the house screaming ‘It burns! Take it off us!’”

My face flushed hot.

“Kidding,” Noah said, grinning wickedly.

He was too far away to smack.

“But you did jump in the pool with your clothes on.”

Fabulous.

“I was just glad you didn’t choose the bay. Not in this storm.”

“What happened to them?” I asked. Noah looked bemused. “My clothes, I mean?”

“They’re in the wash.”

“How did I—” I blushed deeper. Did I take them off in front of him?

Did he take them off?

“Nothing I haven’t seen before.”

I buried my face in my hands. God help me.

A soft chuckle escaped from Noah’s lips. “Fret not, you were actually very modest in your intoxicated state. You undressed in the bathroom, wrapped yourself in a towel, crawled between my sheets, and slept.” Noah shifted on the bed, and the oddest crunching came from underneath him. I looked, really looked, at the bed for the first time.

“What,” I asked slowly, as I eyed the animal crackers strewn all over it, “the hell?”

“You were convinced they were your pets,” Noah said, not even trying to suppress his laughter. “You wouldn’t let me touch them.”

Michelle Hodkin is the author of the Mara Dyer Trilogy, which was a New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestselling series. The trilogy, which includes The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer, The Evolution of Mara Dyer, and The Retribution of Mara Dyer, was described as “haunting and dreamlike” by Cassandra Clare and “darkly funny, deliciously creepy, and genuinely thoughtful” by Veronica Roth. Lev Grossman has called Hodkin “One of the greatest talents in Young Adult fiction.” The novels were praised by Romantic Times, MTV’s Hollywood Crush, and the Los Angeles Times, and books from the series appeared on several state reading lists. Additionally, The Retribution of Mara Dyer was selected as one of TIME.com’s Top 10 YA Books of 2014. Hodkin grew up in Florida, went to college in New York, and studied law in Michigan, before finally settling in Brooklyn last year.

To learn more about Michelle Hodkin and her books, visit her website.You can also find her on Goodreads, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter.

Book Review! Juliet Immortal by Stacey Jay

Juliet Immortal (Juliet Immortal #1) by Stacey Jay

Genre: Young Adult (Paranormal/Fantasy Romance/Retelling)
Date Published: August 9, 2011
Publisher: Delacorte Press

These violent delights have violent ends

And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,

Which as they kiss consume.

-William Shakespeare, ROMEO AND JULIET

Juliet Capulet didn't take her own life. She was murdered by the person she trusted most, her new husband, Romeo Montague, who made the sacrifice to ensure his own immortality. But Romeo didn't anticipate that Juliet would be granted eternal life as well, and would become an agent for the Ambassadors of Light.

For seven hundred years, Juliet has struggled to preserve romantic love and the lives of the innocent, while Romeo has fought for the dark side, seeking to destroy the human heart. Until now.

Now Juliet has found her own forbidden love, and Romeo, O Romeo, will do everything in his power to destroy their happiness.

Secrets unfold and surprises abound in Stacey Jay's powerfully dark romance, which reunites literature's most tragic couple.

Juliet Immortal is the first book in the Juliet Immortal duology by Stacey Jay. I can't say that I've ever thought of Romeo and Juliet in this way. Not even close, and I've certainly never thought of Romeo as the bad guy. What?! I loved it though. It was so unique and different. The characters were not the same ones we've known all these years, yet you could still feel that bit of original Romeo and Juliet spirit in there. 

It took place over a span of only three days. So, that was a little quick to fall as hopelessly in love as they did, so, I found that aspect of it to be a little bit of a reach, but the story itself was told so well. It was dark, and creepy, and it flawlessly brought that haunting Shakespeare feel to the present with it's drama, tragic circumstances, specters, and more. I knew this was a book I wanted to read when I first saw it, and I'm very impressed by it. It was such a crazy idea! And, it worked!

ONE

VERONA, ITALY, 1304

Tonight, he could have come through the door--the castello is quiet, even the servants asleep in their beds, and Nurse would have let him in--but he chooses the window, climbing through the tangle of night flowers, carrying petals in on his clothes.

He stumbles on a loose stone and falls to the floor, grinning as I rush to meet him.

He is a romantic, a dreamer, and never afraid to play the fool. He is fearless and reckless and brave and I love him for it. Desperately. Love for him steals my breath away, makes me feel I am dying and being reborn every time I look into his eyes or run trembling fingers through his brown curls.

I love him for the way he sprawls on the freshly scrubbed stones, strong legs flexing beneath his hose, as if there is no cause for worry, as if we have not broken every rule and do not face banishment from the only homes we have ever known. I love him for the way he finds my hand, presses it to his smooth cheek, inhaling as if my skin smells sweeter than the petals clinging to his coat. I love him for the way he whispers my name, "Juliet"--a prayer for deliverance, a promise of pleasure, a vow that all this sweet everything he is to me will be forever.

Forever and always.

Despite our parents, and our prince, and the blood spilled in the plaza. Despite the fact that we have little money and fewer friends and our once-shining futures are clouded and dim.

"Tell me that tomorrow will never come." He pulls me to the floor beside him, cradling me on his lap, hand curling over my hip in a way it has not before. Heat flares from the tips of his fingers, spreading through me, reminding me I will soon be his wife in every way. Every touch is sanctified. Everything we will do tonight is meant to be, a celebration of the vows we have made and the love that consumes us.

I drop my lips to his. Joy bleeds from his mouth to mine and I sigh the lie into the fire of him. "It will never come."

"Tell me that I will always be here in this room. Alone with you. And that you will always be the most beautiful girl in the world." His hands are at the ties on the back of my dress, slow and patient, slipping each ribbon through its loop with a deliberate flick of his fingers.

No urgent, shame-filled fumbling in the dark for us. He is steady and sure, and every candle shines bright, the better to see the tenderness in his eyes, to be more certain with every passing moment that this is no youthful mistake. This is love. Real. Magnificent. Eternal.

"Always," I whisper, so full of adoration the emotion borders on worship. A part of me feels that to love so is sacrilege, but I do not care. There is nothing in the world but Romeo. For the rest of my life, he is the god at whose feet I will kneel.

His cheek presses to mine, his warm breath in my ear making mine come faster. "Juliet . . . you are . . ."

I am his goddess. I can feel it in the way he shudders as my fingers come to the buttons of his cotehardie and pluck them from their holes, one by one, revealing the thin linen of the shirt beneath.

"You are everything," he says, eyes shining. "Everything."

And I know that I am. I am his moon, and his brightly shining star. I am his life, his heart. I am all that and the answer to every unspoken question, the comfort for every hurt, the companion who will walk beside him from now until the end of our lives, reveling in the bliss of each simple chore done in his name, overflowing with beauty because I am blessed to spend my life with my love.

My love, my love, my love. I could hear the words a thousand times and never grow tired of them. Not ever.

"Forever," I whisper into the hot skin at his neck, sighing as the last tie holding my dress to my body falls away.



TWO

SOLVANG, CALIFORNIA, PRESENT DAY

Dying is easy. It's coming back that hurts like hell.

"Oh . . ." I press my hands to my forehead, where hot, tacky liquid pours from a cut above my eyebrow.

There is a lot of blood this time. Blood on my hands, smeared onto the dashboard, dripping through my fingers onto my jeans, leaving black spots I can see in the dim moonlight shining through the car's glass sunroof. It's messy, frightening, but, amazingly, the accident hasn't killed her. Killed me.

Me, now. Her, sometime again soon, depending on how long it takes to ensure the safety of the soul mates I've been sent to protect. Or how long it takes Romeo to convince one lover to sacrifice the other for the boon of eternal life.

It might not be long. He excels at his work.

Either way, Ariel Dragland will wear this shell again. Until then she'll wait in the realm where I've spent most of my eternity, in the mists of forgetting, that place outside of time where the gray stretches on forever.

I've been assured by my contact in the Ambassadors of Light that there are worse places, realms of torment where the boy who bartered our love for immortality will suffer someday. Nurse never uses the word hell, but I like to imagine that Romeo will number among hell's inhabitants. Of course, she never mentions heaven, either, or whether I might go there when my work is finished . . . if it is ever finished.

There are a lot of things Nurse sees fit not to mention. Including the exact workings of the magic that pulls me from the mist again and again, now more than thirty times in seven centuries. All I know is life comes suddenly. One moment I'm numb and bodiless, the next I'm slipping into another's skin, another's life--the ultimate, dreadful disguise.

I shiver as the memory of Ariel's last moments sweeps through me. I watch her snatch the wheel from the driver's hands before a deadly turn in the road and pull hard to the right, hoping the dive into the ravine will kill them both--her and the boy who hurt her. My eyes flick to the driver's seat. The boy--Dylan--slumps forward, the downward tilt of the car making his limp body curl around the wheel. He is still, not a puff of breath escaping his parted lips.

It seems one half of Ariel's wish has been granted.

I shiver again, but I can't say I'm sorry. I know what he did, can feel Ariel's shame and rage rush inside me as the rest of her life pours in to fill the empty corners in my mind.

Behind my eyes flash images from her eighteen years. I focus, sucking in every detail, taking her memories as my own.



Tiptoe, tiptoe, always on tiptoe. Up the stairs, across the kitchen, down the hall to the room where the crayons live and I can breathe. Where she isn't watching. My mother, with her sad, sad eyes.

Seven, ten, fifteen, eighteen years old and still there is nothing finer than a blank sheet of paper, the white promise that the world can be what I make it. A magical place, an adventurous place, a possible place. Erasers take away the mistakes. Another coat of paint to cover them up. Black and red and purple and blue. Always blue.

Mom sees in blue. She sees the scars she made. I was six. She sees Gemma, my one friend, as a mistake, not a lifeline. She sees my hours alone and feels more powerfully every hour she's wasted. I am the waste, the thing that's eaten her youth alive. Refused to cough up the bones.

Sometimes it seems all I have are bones, scraps, a frame with nothing to fill in the empty space. Sometimes I hate her for it, sometimes I hate myself, sometimes I hate everyone and everything and imagine the world melting the way the grease melted my skin.

Skin and bones. Mom and I are both so thin. Hugs hurt, but there aren't many. Not for years. There are surgeries and pain and bright lights and then days trapped in the house with the shades drawn on our shame. There is the darkness inside, that baleful intruder that comes just when I dare to believe I might one day be whole.

There is school and the misery of being a person unseen, the jealousy that I can't be wild and beautiful like Gemma, that I am always an audience, never a player. There is the frustration of words that won't come out of my mouth no matter how hard I try. A D in public speaking. The one step up to the podium is an impossible climb. Everest. Higher. I hate Mr. Stark for his frustrated sighs, hate the class for their muffled laughter. I want to hurt them, to show them how it feels to have your insides twisted into knots you can't unravel.

Gemma doesn't care, tells me to get over it, stops sharing her adventures, closes the window into her vibrant world, forgets to pick me up for school at least twice a week. I'm losing everything. My only friend, my perfect GPA, my mind. How much longer can I live like this? Can I make it four more years, sleeping in that room, commuting to the nursing college in Santa Barbara, learning to live with more sickness and pain, when all I want to do is escape?

But then . . . there is him. His smile, his voice singing so strong, cutting through the curtains where I hide with my paints, curling into my ear, spinning dreams I want to come true.

They don't.

It's a joke.

We're kissing--slow, perfect kisses that make my heart race--when the text comes, asking if he's taken the Freak's virginity yet. He tries to hide the phone, but I see it. I start to cry, even though I'm not sad. I'm angry, so angry. He offers me fifty dollars--a piece of the bet--if I let him have what he's come for. I explode. I try to run from the car, but he grabs my hand, squeezing as he pulls back onto the road, telling me to "chill the hell out," promising to take me to a better place.

But there is no better place. I know that by now. There are only mirrors reflecting disappointment, shattering it in a million different directions, filling the world until there is no way out. It will always be this way. Always, even when I finally leave the house on El Camino Road.

The road, the road is . . . impossible. I won't let him drive it a second longer. I won't let him steer through the hole in the mountain down to the beach, where the cold, dark ocean waits like a nightmare creeping. I won't let him.

Not now. Not ever again.

Check out my review of another book by Stacey Jay!

Stacey Jay is a recovering workaholic (or at least working hard at recovering) with three pen names, two small children, and a passion for playing pretend for a living. She’s been a full time mom-writer since 2005 and can't think of anything she'd rather be doing. Her former careers include theatre performer, professional dancer, poorly paid C-movie actress, bartender, waiter, math tutor (for real) and yoga instructor.

To learn more about Stacey Jay and her books on Goodreads.

Book Reviews! Plus One & Noma Girl by Elizabeth Fama

Plus One (Plus One #1) by Elizabeth Fama 

Genre: Young Adult (Dystopian Romance)
Date Published: April 8, 2014
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

A dying wish. A family divided. A love that defies the law.

Sol Le Coeur is a Smudge--a night dweller in an America rigidly divided between people who wake, live, and work during the hours of darkness and those known as Rays, who live and work during daylight. Impulsive, passionate, and brave, Sol concocts a plan to kidnap her newborn niece--a Ray--in order to bring the baby to visit her dying grandfather. Sol's violation of the day/night curfew is already a serious crime, but when her kidnap attempt goes awry, she stumbles on a government conspiracy to manipulate the Smudge population. Sol escapes the authorities with an unexpected ally: a Ray who gets in her way, a boy she might have hated if fate hadn't forced them on the run together--a boy the world now tells her she can't love.

Set in a vivid alternate reality and peopled with complex, deeply human characters on both sides of the day/night divide, Elizabeth Fama's Plus One is a brilliantly imagined drama of individual liberty and civil rights, and a fast-paced romantic adventure story. 

Plus One is the first book in the Plus One series by Elizabeth Fama. This is an alternate reality that goes in a very different direction from ours after the Flu Pandemic of 1918. The population is divided by those who are only allowed out during the day and those who are only allowed out at night, and of course they have prejudices against each other because people have to hate even when they don't know why they hate or who or what they are hating. So, you can really relate this world to our own history. There was action, romance, humor, and even a little suspense at times. I thought the characters and the world around them were well built and well thought out. The characters felt real. You got to know them as they got to know each other. They had strengths and weaknesses. They definitely weren't perfect. I enjoyed them quite a bit, and I loved watching what was a strong dislike between D'arcy and Sol grow into friendship and strengthen to more. They are characters worth rooting for. 

Note: I know I already used that quote in my Teaser Tuesday post, but I can't help it. It makes my belly flip.

Wednesday
4:30 a.m.

It takes guts to deliberately mutilate your hand while operating a blister-pack sealing machine, but all I had going for me was guts. It seemed like a fair trade: lose maybe a week’s wages and possibly the tip of my right middle finger, and in exchange Poppu would get to hold his great-granddaughter before he died.

I wasn’t into babies, but Poppu’s unseeing eyes filled to spilling when he spoke of Ciel’s daughter, and that was more than I could bear. It was absurd to me that the dying should grieve the living when the living in this case was only ten kilometers away. Poppu needed to hold that baby, and I was going to bring her to him, even if Ciel wouldn’t.

The machine was programmed to drop daily doses of CircaDiem and vitamin D into the thirty slots of a blister tray. My job was mind-numbingly boring, and I’d done it maybe a hundred thousand times before without messing up: align a perforated prescription card on the conveyor, slip the PVC blister tray into the card, slide the conveyor to the right under the pill dispenser, inspect the pills after the tray has been filled, fold the foil half of the card over, and slide the conveyor to the left under the heat-sealing plate. Over and over I’d gone through these motions for hours after school, with the rhythmic swooshing, whirring, and stamping of the factory’s powder compresses, laser inscribers, and motors penetrating my wax earplugs no matter how well I molded them to my ear canal.

I should have had a concrete plan for stealing my brother’s baby, with backups and contingencies, but that’s not how my brain works. I only knew for sure how I was going to get into the hospital. There were possible complications that I pushed to the periphery of my mind because they were too overwhelming to think about: I didn’t know how I’d return my niece when I was done with her; I’d be navigating the city during the day with only a Smudge ID; if I was detained by an Hour Guard, there was a chance I’d never see Poppu again.

I thought Poppu was asleep as I kissed him goodbye that night. His skin was cool crepe paper draped over sharp cheekbones. I whispered, “Je t’aime,” and he surprised me by croaking, “Je t’adore, Soleil,” as if he sensed the weight of this departure over all the others.

I slogged through school; I dragged myself to work. An hour before my shift ended, I allowed a prescription card to go askew in the tray, and I poked my right middle finger in to straighten it before the hot plate lowered to seal the foil backing to the card. I closed my eyes as the press came down.

Even though I had only mangled one centimeter of a single finger, my whole body felt like it had been turned inside out and I’d been punched in the heart for good measure. My fingernail had split in two, blood was pooling through the crack, and I smelled burned flesh. It turns out the nerves in your fingertip are ridiculously sensitive, and all at once I realized mine might be screaming for days. Had I thought through this step at all? Would I even be able to hold a baby?

I collapsed, and I might have fainted if the new girl at the machine next to mine hadn’t run to the first-aid station for a blanket, a gauze tourniquet strip, and an ice pack. She used the gauze to wrap the bleeding fingertip tightly—I think I may have punched her with my left fist—eased me onto my back, and covered me with a blanket. I stopped hyperventilating. I let tears stream down the sides of my cheeks onto the cement floor. But I did not cry out loud.

“I’m not calling an ambulance,” the jerk supervisor said, when my finger was numb from the cold and I was able to sit up again. “That would make it a Code Three on the accident report, and this is a Code One at best. We’re seven and a half blocks from the hospital, and you’ve got an hour before curfew. You could crawl and you’d make it before sunrise.”

So I walked to the emergency room. I held my right arm above my head the whole way, to keep the pounding heartbeat in my finger from making my entire hand feel like it would explode. And I thought about how before he turned his back on us, Ciel used to brag that I could think on my feet better than anyone he knew.

Screw you, Ciel.

Noma Girl (Plus One #.5) by Elizabeth Fama 

Genre: Young Adult (Dystopian Romance)
Date Published: March 25, 2014
Publisher: Tor



Because of a quirk of history during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, present-day America is rigidly divided between people who live and work during the hours of darkness—Smudges—and those known as Rays, who populate the day. A group of Smudges called the Noma live on the fringes of society in loose tribes, preying on Smudges and Rays alike. Gigi is a ruthless Noma, but in this prequel companion story to Plus One, she is ordered to abduct a cell phone hacker named Ciel Le Coeur and reveals a surprisingly tender heart.

Noma Girl is a prequel to Plus One told from Gigi's perspective. Gigi is probably my favorite character from Plus One. She's got spunk and guts, talks like a sailor, will punch you as easily as look at you, and yet, she's got a little bit of a softy in there too. She's complicated. Getting her story and the whole background between her and Ciel was something we needed to know. This was a very short story, but added a lot more depth to her character. And... now we know. 

Check out my review of another book by this author!

Elizabeth Fama is the author of three young-adult novels: Plus One (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014), a RITA Award finalist; Monstrous Beauty (FSG, 2012), included on the 2013 YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults list, and winner of the 2013 Odyssey Honor Award; and Overboard (Cricket Books, 2002), an ALA 2003 Best Book for Young Adults.

Elizabeth is vastly overeducated, with a BA in Biology, an MBA, and a PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago. She enjoys running obsessively while downloading audiobooks into her brain, swimming, tennis, and cooking Sunday Dinners for her extended Italian-American family. She and her husband raised four creative children in Chicago before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area, where Elizabeth successfully pretends that she's living in Tuscany while she works on a manuscript set in sixteenth-century Florence.

To learn more about Elizabeth Fama and her books, visit her website.You can also find her on Goodreads and Twitter.

Book Review: Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick

Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick
Genre: Young Adult (Paranormal/Fantasy)
Date Published: April 22, 2014
Publisher: Square Fish

Seven stories of passion and love separated by centuries but mysteriously intertwined—this is a tale of horror and beauty, tenderness and sacrifice. 

An archaeologist who unearths a mysterious artifact, an airman who finds himself far from home, a painter, a ghost, a vampire, and a Viking: the seven stories in this compelling novel all take place on the remote Scandinavian island of Blessed where a curiously powerful plant that resembles a dragon grows. What binds these stories together? What secrets lurk beneath the surface of this idyllic countryside? And what might be powerful enough to break the cycle of midwinterblood? From award-winning author Marcus Sedgwick comes a book about passion and preservation and ultimately an exploration of the bounds of love. 

A Publishers Weekly Best Children's Book of 2013

A Kirkus Reviews Best Teen Book of 2013

Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick was eerily weird, and that's not a bad thing. I enjoy weird, but I have way to many unanswered questions with this one. The premise and the whole concept behind this book sounded great. It sounded like something different from anything I'd read in a while. I was so excited to read it, and there were times while I was reading it that felt very Twilight Zone. That really got my hopes up, because Twilight Zone always had weird twists, or made eerie futuristic predictions, or taught uncomfortable lessons. They all had a point or a message. With each story it built the anticipation that much more. I was hoping this book was leading me up to something epic. The writing is really haunting and beautiful too. I didn't want to stop reading. Along the way, all these plot holes and questions just kept piling up in my head, but I thought surely the answers were coming. Only they never did. So, now I'm left frustrated and wondering. Everything these characters went through. The hares. The deaths. The pattern. The cycle of it all. What was the point? I think I completely missed it somewhere.

One

The sun does not go down.

This is the first thing that Eric Seven notices about Blessed Island. There will be many other strange things that he will notice, before the forgetting takes hold of him, but that will come later.

For now, he checks his watch as he stands at the top of the island’s solitary hill, gazing to where the sun should set. It is midnight, but the sun still shines, barely dipping its heavy rim into the sea on the far horizon.

The island is so far north.

He shakes his head.

He’s thinking about Merle. How something seems to wait in her eyes. How he felt calm, just standing next to her.

“Well, so it is,” he says, smiling with wonder.

He’s tired. His journey has been a long one.



The strangeness began on the plane.

The flight to Skarpness was not full, maybe half the seats were empty, but there were nevertheless a good number of people. Mining company folk mostly, heading to the northern interior, Eric guessed.

He took his seat by the window and did what everyone does before the instruction to switch off communications; he selected OneDegree on his device, and bumped.

And then . . . nothing.

He rebooted the app, and bumped again.

Nothing.

He shook his head, unable to understand it.

The OneDegree app is based on the principle of six degrees of separation. Eric knows all about it. As a journalist, it is his job to know about communication in its many forms. Since its invention, when some clever soul realized that it often takes not six, but merely one step to connect you to most other people in the world, the app, or its current version, sits in the palm of everyone’s hand. When going on a journey, or arriving in a new place, the easiest way to make friends quickly is to bump the air around you with OneDegree. Maybe no one you know is on the same plane, but someone who knows someone you know is likely to be. Or someone who went to school with a friend of yours. Or who works where you worked ten years ago. And so on and so on. Then you have someone to pass the journey with, at the least, and maybe a new friend for life. And although that’s never happened to Eric, in all his years of using OneDegree on so many solitary journeys around the world, he has never failed to find some kind of link among a group of a hundred or more who would otherwise have remained total strangers.

So that is why he stared a moment longer at his device, wondering if the new version had a bug.

As if something sinister had happened, he leaned out of his seat and a little furtively studied his fellow passengers.

They were a tough lot.

Miners, he thought. Tough.

Work and worry were drawn on their faces, in skin aged by the cold. They were silent, merely nodding at the smiling attendants who floated down the aisle, proffering drinks.

“You’ll have to switch that off now, Mr. Seven,” said a voice, and he turned to see one of them looking down at him. She checked her device, making sure she’d gotten his name right.

He scratched the back of his head, pushed a badly behaved strand of dark brown hair out of his eyes.

“Yes. Sorry, right. Only . . .”

He looked at his device.

“Yes, Mr. Seven?”

He shook his head. How could he have managed not to bump anyone on the flight? Not even at the weakest level of connection.

“Nothing.”

The attendant smiled.

“Very good. Have a nice flight, Mr. Seven.”



He did have a nice flight.

The plane arrowed due north, clinging to the coast almost the whole way. It was spectacularly beautiful.

The coastline was a broken fractal, the sea was deep blue, the rocks of the shore gentle mottled grays and browns. Inland, the ground climbed steadily into forests, which eventually gave way to treeless mountaintops.

About noon the plane landed at Skarpness, and as Eric predicted, most of the passengers picked up transport heading for the big mine.

For the hundredth time, he pulled out the instructions the desk editor’s assistant had given him, and then made his way on foot to the ferry terminal, where he boarded the steamboat for the short trip to Blessed Island.

He knows little about the place.

Just the rumors. But then, that’s all anyone knows, and that, after all, is the whole point of his trip, to find out something about the island.

There is nothing much about it on the Net. Nothing beyond the times of the steamboat, the hours of sun-fall and moon-up, a brief history of the old fishing trade, now gone.

As for the rumors . . .

No firsthand accounts, no original source material. The pages that do mention them are simply rehashes of each other, leaving very few original hits to glean anything from.

So little to be read on the Net; that’s another strange thing about the place.

All he’s heard are the rumors, stories, the speculation, and the swiftly lost words of whispered secrets, about the island where people have started to live forever.

Marcus Sedgwick was born in Kent, England. Marcus is a British author and illustrator as well as a musician. He is the author of several books, including Witch Hill and The Book of Dead Days, both of which were nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award. The most recent of these nominations rekindled a fascination with Poe that has borne fruit here in (in The Restless Dead, 2007) the form of "The Heart of Another" - inspired by Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart." Of his story, Sedgwick says, "This was one of those stories that I thought might be a novel originally but actually was much better suited to the tight form of the short story. I had the initial idea some years ago but was just waiting for the right ingredient to come along. Poe's story, as well as his own fascination with technique, provided that final piece of the puzzle."


He used to play for two bands namely playing the drums for Garrett and as the guitarist in an ABBA tribute group. He has published novels such as Floodland (winner of the Branford Boase Award in 2001) and The Dark Horse (shortlisted for The Guardian Children's Book Award 2002).

To learn more about Marcus Sedgwick and his books, visit his website & blog.You can also find him on Goodreads, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Book Review! The Careful Undressing of Love by Corey Ann Haydu

The Careful Undressing of Love by Corey Ann Haydu
Genre: Young Adult (Fantasy Romance)
Date Published: January 31, 2017
Publisher: Dutton Books for Young Readers

Everyone who really knows Brooklyn knows Devonairre Street girls are different. They’re the ones you shouldn’t fall in love with. The ones with the curse. The ones who can get you killed.

Lorna Ryder is a Devonairre Street girl, and for years, paying lip service to the curse has been the small price of living in a neighborhood full of memories of her father, one of the thousands killed five years earlier in the 2001 Times Square Bombing. Then her best friend’s boyfriend is killed, and suddenly a city paralyzed by dread of another terrorist attack is obsessed with Devonairre Street and the price of falling in love.

Set in an America where recent history has followed a different path. 

The Careful Undressing of Love by Corey Ann Haydu is definitely a different kind of book. There is so much mystery and intrigue surrounding the people of Devonairre Street. I was drawn in completely, and it fed you just enough as you read to keep you wanting more. On the other hand, these characters were quirky and flawed, which is normally something I appreciate in a book. It makes them seem real and human, but at times it took these things a little too far it seemed, which made a pretty believable story turn a bit unrealistic in many areas, especially during the second half or so. I had many issues with that second half. So, this just wasn't a book for me, but what do I know? Many love it! You might too. I did like the writer's style. 

Corey Ann Haydu is the author of YA novels, OCD LOVE STORY, LIFE BY COMMITTEE, MAKING PRETTY, the middle grade novel, RULES FOR STEALING STARS and the upcoming YA novel THE CAREFUL UNDRESSING OF LOVE. Her second middle grade novel, THE SOMEDAY SUITCASE comes out in June 2017. A graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and The New School’s Writing for Children MFA program, Corey has been working in children’s publishing since 2009.

In 2013, Corey was chosen as one of Publisher Weekly’s Flying Starts. Her books have been Junior Library Guild Selections, Indie Next Selections, and BCCB Blue Ribbon Selections.

Corey also teaches YA Novel Writing with Mediabistro and adapted her debut novel, OCD LOVE STORY into a high school play, which had its first run in Fall 2015.

Corey lives in Brooklyn with her dog, her fiance, and a wide selection of cheese.

To learn more about Corey Ann Haydu and her books, visit her website.You can also find her on Goodreads, Facebook, and Twitter.

Book Review! The Fairest Beauty by Melanie Dickerson

The Fairest Beauty (Hagenheim #3) by Melanie Dickerson
Genre: Young Adult  (Christian Fiction/Historical Fiction/Romance/Fractured Fairy Tale)
Date Published: January 8, 2013
Publisher: Zondervan

A daring rescue. 

A difficult choice. 

Sophie desperately wants to get away from her stepmother's jealousy, and believes escape is her only chance to be happy. Then a young man named Gabe arrives from Hagenheim Castle, claiming she is betrothed to his older brother, and everything twists upside down. This could be Sophie's one chance at freedom—but can she trust another person to keep her safe? 

Gabe defied his parents Rose and Wilhelm by going to find Sophie, and now he believes they had a right to worry: the girl's inner and outer beauty has enchanted him. Though romance is impossible—she is his brother's future wife, and Gabe himself is betrothed to someone else—he promises himself he will see the mission through, no matter what. 

When the pair flee to the Cottage of the Seven, they find help—but also find their feelings for each other have grown. Now both must not only protect each other from the dangers around them—they must also protect their hearts.

My Fairest Beauty is the third book in the Hagenheim series by Melanie Dickerson. This is a re-telling of Snow White, and while it clearly follows in the path of that fairy tale(at least as told by Disney), it's also it's own story. Sophie is a tough girl though. She's not sing-songing through the forest. She has some self preservation. Plus, she is humble. I enjoyed her character's personality. Gabe isn't your typical "prince" either. In fact, he wasn't looking for his "princess", so much as taking some sibling rivalry to a new level. 

It's easy to recognize the characters, even the dwarves, yet the author put her own spin on all of them as well. This was a cute story with action and romance that added a little more adventure and danger to the Snow White most of us grew up with. 

Have you read other books in this series?

Check out my review of another book by this author!

Melanie Dickerson is a two-time Christy Award finalist, two-time Maggie Award winner, Carol Award winner, two-time winner of the Christian Retailing's Best award, and her book, The Healer's Apprentice, won the National Readers Choice Award for Best First Book. She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) and Romance Writers of America (RWA). Melanie earned a bachelors degree in special education of the hearing impaired from The University of Alabama and has worked as a teacher in Georgia, Tennessee, and Ukraine. She lives with her husband and two children in Huntsville, Alabama.

To learn more about Melanie Dickerson and her books, visit her website.You can also find her on Goodreads, Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.