Review for Angel by L.A. Weatherly

"In a world where angels are beyond redemption, Alex thinks he's found one that might deserve mercy. Alex is a ruthless assassin - of angels. Forget everything you've heard about them before. Angels are not benign celestial creatures, but fierce stalkers whose irresistible force allows them to feed off humans, draining them of their vitality until there is barely anything left. As far as Alex is concerned, the only good angel is a dead angel...until he meets Willow. She may look like a normal teenager but Willow is no ordinary girl. Half-angel, half-human, Willow may hold the key to defeating the evil angels. But as the hunter and the hunted embark on an epic and dangerous journey and Willow learns the dark and terrifying secrets of her past, Alex finds himself drawn to Willow...with devastating consequences." When Angel first landed on my door step a little over a week ago I’m pretty sure my shrieks of joy could be heard from the bottom of my street. To say I was excited is an understatement. I’ve been wanting to read this book ever since I first heard about it which was towards the beginning of the year and ever since then I’ve been counting down the weeks until it’s release date, so boy was I happy to receive this book a whole week before it hit the bookshops! Angels are my very favourite paranormal creature to read about, their my drug of choice and I buy and devour any books on angels I can find. These beings fascinate me and whilst I have read and loved pretty much every single angel book I’ve ever read Angel is by far the best book on these celestial beings on the young adult market. Angel is Usborne’s first book for teens and it solidly places a respected name amongst young adult books. This makes me very excited to see what else Usborne has for us readers in the future. Hold on to your halos fans of the paranormal because this book is going to be huge! A popular theme on the Teen book market at the moment is taking something bad whether that be vampires, werewolves etc; and reinventing it as something good. L.A Weatherly turns the tables with Angel and turns something heavenly into something deadly. This makes Angel a very much needed breath of fresh air in the young adult market and what is going to set it apart from other books like it. On top of the original concept its fast paced providing constant entertainment right from the very first chapter. I was sucked into this world and didn’t want to come out of it so much so that I thought at times I might be suffering from “angel burn” myself! L.A Weatherly’s writing has a very nice smooth flow to it that kept the story moving along nicely making it incredibly hard to put down and when I managed on the rare occasion to tear myself away from this book it was still constantly on my mind. Willow is an incredibly likeable character who has a very, sweet, kind personality. Unlike a lot of YA heroines she never once annoyed me. She’s the kind of person every girl wants as a best friend. Weatherly also gets it spot on with Alex who has just the right amount of vulnerability and bravery to him, making you want to look after him one minute and swoon over his kick ass-ness the next. Together they make a brilliant couple who you find yourself routing for throughout the book. As they fall in love with each other you fall in love with them more and more too. They develop and complete each other which makes their love feel very real to the reader. Angel is the first book in the trilogy and I can already hardly wait for books two and three with the second book Angel Fire coming out June 2011. I can not begin to recommend this book enough, if you only read one young adult angel book make sure it’s Angel! 5 shiny halos. Thanks go to Usborne for sending me this book to review. Angel will be available in all good bookshops October 1st 2010. Book description taken from goodreads. My Rating 5/5 stars *****

In My Mailbox! Maybe the last for a while?

In My Mailbox is hosted by Kristi at The Story Siren Hey guys, so about the title, I may not be able to participate in IMM for a while. My phone – which I use to take the pictures of the books I get – died on me this morning. Luckily I already took and sent the pictures of my books this week, but because of that this may be the last IMM for a while. If I have a smaller haul I might be able to share it with you guys but because I normally get so many books a week it would take far too long to hunt down individual pictures for each book and post them every weekend. So I guess we’ll see. Another thing I wanted to talk to you about this week is IMM and jealousy. This was brought to my attention in a brilliant post that I was a teenage book geek posted last night and I have to admit I agree with a lot of what she says. It does sometimes feel like bloggers are bragging about what they got and the greatness of their blog is determined on how many books for review they’ve been sent. I’ve been thinking about it and I guess sometimes it isn’t fair that some people get books to review and some don’t because at the end of the day we all write reviews and we all work damn hard on our blogs and you can have one blogger get books to review who has very few followers and doesn’t write that great of reviews and then another who has more followers, writes brilliant reviews on everything they read and still not get noticed by publishers. Because of this, to me sometimes IMM feels very much like a contest on who can get the most and best books and who is there for the most superior blogger. I for one don’t want to cause anybody to feel like that so I’m not sure if I’ll be continuing with IMM anyway. I’d love to know your thoughts on this to help me make my decision. Do you get frustrated that you work hard on your blog yet don’t get books to review? Does IMM turn you green with envy or do you feel happy for the blogger receiving the books and want to come back to find out their thoughts on them? I have mixed feelings about it and because I do this blog for you guys I ultimately want to know what you think. If you enjoy reading my IMM I’d be happy to continue but if you don’t for whatever reason let me know that too! This is in no way an attack on Kristi she does a great job and I love her blog this is just my feelings towards it and me just wanting to know what my followers would like to see from my blog. To check out I was a teenage book geek’s post click here. Now on to In My Mailbox as usual, I was actually pretty good this week and technically only bought 2 books as the books you’re about to see were in a buy one get one free offer. I think I’ve done enough chatting so I’m just going to bring out the books! Brought The Perfect Lie by Emily Barr You're the One That I Don't Want by Alexandra Potter The Happy Home for Broken Hearts by Rowan Coleman Second Hand Heart by Catherine Ryan Hyde For Review/ Won Out for Blood (Drake Chronicles) by Alyxandra Harvey Buffy the Vampire Slayer 1: Coyote Moon; Night of the Living Rerun; Portal Through Time by John Vornholt, Arthur Byron Cover, and Alice Henderson I’d like to say a big thank you to Bloomsbury for Out for Blood and funnily enough Lauren @ I Was a Teenage Book Geek for the Buffy volume. So that’s what I got this week. Opinions on how you feel about IMM would be very much appreciated and if you just want to comment on the books I got this week that’s fine too! I hope you’re all having a lovely weekend, happy reading! :-)

Book Bloggers Hop & Follow My Book Blog Friday!

Hello to all my wonderful followers and to hopefully some potential new ones! This Friday I’m participating in The Book Bloggers hop which is hosted by Jennifer at Crazy for Books and Follow my Book Blog Friday that’s hosted over at Parajunkee's View if you wish to take part please stop by there and sign the Mr Linky. This week’s question from the hop is... “When you write reviews, do you write them as you are reading or wait until you have read the entire book?” My answer: Before I write a review I always, always make notes on the book whilst and straight after I’m done reading it in a notebook. I have categories set up and I write my thoughts on them underneath like plot, characters, writing etc; then when I’m done filling in my thoughts on those I’ll jot down any random thoughts I have about the book. Then when I’m next online I’ll cobble together all of my opinions and turn it into a review. I’ve only been doing this for a couple of weeks now before I’d just sit down at the computer and write whatever came to mind but I’ve found doing this so much better so I don’t forget anything I want to include. So in short I guess I do both! Brilliant question this week. I look forward to finding out how everybody else writes their reviews! I hope your all enjoying my blog and if you like what you see follows and comments would be much appreciated, Hope you all have a great weekend :-)

Booking Through Thursday

Current “What are you reading right now? What made you choose it? Are you enjoying it? Would you recommend it? (And, by all means, discuss everything, if you’re reading more than one thing!)” I just started reading Angel by L.A. Weatherly that I got sent for review. I’ve wanted to read this book ever since I very first heard about it with it being about Angels. I love the whole Angel theme that’s going on in YA literature at the moment and Angel has its own unique twist with the Angels in this book actually being bad. I’m 71 pages in and I adore it! The plots really fresh and I’m excited to get back to it later on tonight. So far I’d definitely recommend it. Angel will be available to buy on October 1st this year to learn more about it visit the official website here. If you have any questions about Angel feel free to ask me in the comments bellow or leave me a link to your answer for this week!

Review for Rules of Attraction by Simone Elkeles

People who know me will know that I love, love, love a good romantic story and when I read Simone Elkeles’ first book in this series Perfect Chemistry at the beginning of the year it quickly became one of my favourite books ever. I adore the Fuentes brothers so when I found out that Rules of Attraction would be about brother number two Carlos I was desperate to get it. It’s not out in the UK until next year and I of course couldn’t wait that long so I snatched up the US version but for some reason didn’t get around to reading it until last weekend. The airs starting to get that crisp autumn feel and I definitely needed me some Fuentes lovin’ to heat things up and this book didn’t let me down I loved it! Let me start off by saying that I didn’t love this book quiet as much as Perfect Chemistry. I didn’t feel that Carlos and Kiara had as much up against them as Alex and Brittany so the plot wasn’t as intense but I thought that in it’s own right it’s a good book. I didn’t think I could love a male character as much as I loved Alex Fuentes but Carlos actually knocked him off the top spot! I loved Kiara but not quiet as much as I loved Brittany. Where Brittany’s kind, sweet and girly Kiara’s her opposite being a complete tomboy and she could definitely hold her own against Carlos. I was pleasantly surprised by how much Alex and Brittany were actually in Rules of Attraction it was so good to see how they were getting on two years later after Perfect Chemistry finished. When I started this book I was a little worried that this might just be Perfect Chemistry repeating itself but it definitely wasn’t. Whilst there are similarities a lot was different and Kiara and Carlos were definitely not another Alex and Brittany they had their own distinct personalities and their own problems to face. Simone Elkeles has a brilliant talent for really knowing her characters, their really well developed and they feel so real which I love about Simone’s writing. Even the secondary characters you can’t help but fall in love with and in Rules of Attraction I especially loved Kiara’s little brother and dad. Where Simone Elkeles really excels is the romance. You can practically feel the heat between Kiara and Carlos radiating off the pages. The romantic, fiery, passionate banter between the couple leaves you in no doubt that their love and attraction to each other is strong. At one point when Carlos tells Kiara how much he loves her I found myself tearing up because it was just so real and convincing I could literally feel how Carlos felt and that is what makes this book so brilliant. It’s a die hard romance but not in a girly way at all. I’d definitely recommend this book for both genders as unlike a lot of romances I think it has a lot to offer everyone. It’s funny, fast paced, witty and sexy and I don’t think I’ve read a bad review for Perfect Chemistry or Rules of Attraction yet. Everyone will enjoy this book simply because Simone Elkeles is one of the best writers of YA realism fiction out there and if you don’t read her books you are seriously, seriously missing out. I can’t wait to read the last Fuentes brother Luis’s book Chain Reaction in 2011 and don’t know where I’m going to get my spicy Latino lovin’ until then. Highly, highly recommended to everyone. 4.5 stars. My Rating 4.5/5 stars ****1/2