Release Day Review: Hipstopia (The Uprising) by R.A. Desilets

Published: July 22, 2013 CreateSpace Independent Publishing
Genre: YA (semi-comedic) Dystopian
Format: Kindle

Source: sent by author for honest review

Goodreads Summary 

It's been three years since Murphy led the Hipster uprising. For three years, Jay has been by his side. All that's about to change. It starts with the beautifully intense Prisoner Forty-Seven... and a loaded gun.

Hipstopia is the first book in Young Adult Dystopian duet, The Uprising.

"Because it's fashionable"

Charismatic Murphy inspired a bunch of hipsters from Silverlake to stand against 'corporate personhood', and they chased out everyone who believed in it. With his biggest glasses, he created his own little pocket of hipsters built on being fashionable, changed their names to end in a more lyrical 'y' and have no televisions. This story is about Jay, his right-hand man. Jay smokes all day instead of eating, loves that everything is done locally and that he doesn't have to make decisions, and at the age of 18 he has never had a girlfriend. In this novelette, I watched him grow, questioning everything he'd known, and finally become a man.

The Good

I'm not a huge fan of novelettes in general. There just aren't enough pages in my opinion. However, I absorb Desilets writing like a sponge and love every minute of it. Do I pine for more when it's over? Yes! She is able to create a well-wrapped up story in a novelette. When I'm finished reading, I feel like I've gotten all the facts that I needed, even while I wish the story would continue. Thankfully, this one has a second, full-length book coming to follow it up in this series.

I'm amazed at how Desilets can take this concept and turn it into a mixture of absurdity and honesty, thoughtfulness and comedy. I'm giggling at these kids saying they won't do something because 'it's not fashionable', but at the same time there are poignant moments where true emotion comes out in the characters. It's a dystopain built on a unique and silly world with real characters and feelings. Also, even though it's not categorized as New Adult, I feel that it could easily be classed as that since it's a coming of age story about Jay and his growth. I love everything about how the mixtures came together to create a great story.

The Bad

There is insta-love, or rather insta-crush. Given that this is a novelette, there's not a lot of pages to get the romance going, so I understand the need to have it develop rather quickly.

The Romance

Jay is immediately drawn to Prisoner Forty-Seven. Never having had a girlfriend, it's easy to see why he would become quickly attached to her. Prisoner Forty-Seven is the catalyst that turns Jay on his head. She's fierce, smart, and beautiful, and he needs to be close to her. I love this character! She is exactly what he needs and he didn't even know he was missing anything.

Conclusion

I really hope you give this one a shot. With the follow-up full length book, this series is one to add to your too-read shelf. It's incredibly unique, very well-written, funny, honest, and enjoyable.

Excerpts

If anyone asked why Murphy was the ruler, I would say it was because he had the thickest glasses of us all.

We didn't hit people to kill them; killing them wasn't fashionable.

I ran back to Los Angeles. I ran away from Corpo Country, because I hated the idea that my own flesh and blood would force me into living a certain way, that they would take away my choice.

I ashed the end of my cigarette, which had already burned halfway through. I inhaled, wishing for real food to magically appear out of thin air. My stomach growled at the thought. What was wrong with me?

Forty-Seven, the girl with fierce, cutting eyes that would make me forget today ever happened. As soon as I got to the cells and started to handout meals to the other prisoners, I realized I didn't want to forget today.

Harry Potter Moment of the Week [5] - Catching Up 2 Week's Worth

This is a meme hosted by Uncorked Thoughts.The aim of this meme is to share with fellow bloggers a character, spell, chapter, object or quote from the books/ films/ J. K. Rowling herself or anything Potter related! She is picking a topic within HP for us to focus on each week and then if anyone wants to take part feel free! All she asks is to link back to her blog :). There is now a full list of the topics to come here.

I'm catching up for 2 week's worth so there are two questions I'm answering. The first is for what is my favorite odd thing in the Harry Potter Universe and the other is a free Harry Potter topic of my choosing.

Thestral Picture Created by Jaclyn Canada

My favorite odd thing in the Harry Potter Universe besides a person, is the thestral.

They aren't necessarily my favorite creature overall, but as far as being odd, and such a work of Rowling's creativity, I LOVE them! I've never read about a creature like them before. Harry and crew ride to the school on horseless carriages and then one day, Harry suddenly sees these scary looking horses pulling them instead. No one else can see them so he believes he has gone a bit crazy, and really doesn't feel much better when he finds out that Luna is one of the only people that can see them as well. She believes in all manner of wild animals that most of the crew believe don't exist so he doesn't have much hope that what he's seeing are really there. However, the thestrals are only seen by a select few that have seen death in their past, making them scarier and misunderstood. I really enjoyed how much they kept appearing as transportation for the characters due to their stealth and ability to find places so well.

My Free Topic is PotterMore:

 Zane and  I are on PotterMore in the Huffepuff house. I'll say that we both thought we would get in the Ravenclaw house more, but after some thought, we realized that being considered loyal and true really does fit our characters so we would take it. I enjoy reading through the books and collecting items. I think doing the potions are pretty fun as well. Zane likes to do the spells more. Are you a part of the Pottermore World? What house are you in? If you would like to friend me, my user name is DragonThorn23958.

Sunday Cover Scramble [26]

Let's have some fun! I am going to post covers on here every Sunday that are scrambled up graphically, making it hard to tell what cover it is. I would like your guesses on what cover you think I've posted. I won't answer you until the next day to let you know if you are right, allowing other to guess as well. Some will be hard, and others may be easy. If you need hints, I will only post covers of series talked about on my blog previously. Also, let me know in the comments if you'd like some more hints and I'll offer some more throughout the day if no one guesses it correctly. Here we go:

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Sidekick Showcase [32] - Mentor

Sidekick Showcase, previously known as Sidekick Saturday, is a weekly bookish meme, hosted here by Jaclyn at JC's Book Haven. There are many secondary characters that are as great as the primaries. In some cases, the sidekicks actually steal the show and you like them better than the heroine or hero. Maybe they didn't have enough page time for how great they were. Anyone can play along! I will post my Sidekicks on Saturday, then whichever day during the week that you would like to post yours, you can put your link in on my page. Just do the following:

• Choose a sidekick *or someone other than the hero or heroine* that you would like to put in the spotlight that fit's in the week's topic
• Share a picture (if you can) and information about the character
• Give the title and author of a book the character can be found in
• Please don't include too many spoilers when describing why the character is such a great sidekick
• The day of your post, put your link in below and grab the code for your post so you can see the others that post their's throughout the week as well

Here are the July Topics:
July 26th - Cowboy

This week is Mentor

My choice is Cinna
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Cinna Picture Created by Jaclyn Canada based on Lenny Kravitz's Portrayal

Katniss meets Cinna as her stylist for The Hunger Games. He is the first person that she meets from The Capitol that she finds endearing and she grows close to him and trusts him pretty quickly. Cinna truly doesn't get enough page time for how great a character he is. He is actually thought about by Katniss more often than he is in the books. She looks to him as a guide in her thoughts as to how she should act and what he would expect of her. Without giving too much away, he truly shapes her character and her growth throughout the series.

Quotes:

Catching Fire-
“Remember, girl on fire,” he says, “I'm still betting on you.”

---

The Hunger Games-
“Not exactly. You see, Portia and I think that the coal miner thing's very overdone. No one will remember you in that. And we both see it has our job to make District 12 tributes unforgettable," says Cinna.
I'll be naked for sure, I think.
"So rather than focus on the coal mining itself, we're going to focus on the coal," says Cinna.
Naked and covered in black dust, i think.
"And what do we do with coal? We burn it," says Cinna. "You're not afraid of fire, are you, Katniss?" He sees my expression and grins.

---

The Hunger Games-
My mouth has gone dry as sawdust. I desperately find Cinna in the crowd and lock eyes with him. I imagine the words coming from his lips. "What's impressed you most since you arrived here?" I rack my brain for something that made me happy here. Be honest, I think. Be honest.

---

The Hunger Games-
“That's right. Who am I thinking of? Oh, I know. It's Cinna who likes you. But that's mainly because you didn't try to run when he set you on fire," says Peeta. "On the other hand, Haymitch... well, if I were you, I'd avoid Haymitch completely. He hates you.”

---

Mockingjay-
"The question is, what are you going to do?"
It turns out the question that's been eating away at me has only ever had one possible answer. But it took Peeta's ploy for me to recognize it.
What am I going to do?
I take a deep breath. My arms rise slightly - as if recalling the black-and-white wings Cinna gave me - then come to rest at my sides.
"I'm going to be the Mockingjay.”

---

The Hunger Games -
“The pounding music, the cheers, the admiration work their way into my blood, and I can’t suppress my excitement. Cinna has given me a great advantage. No one will forget me. Not my look, not my name. Katniss. The girl who was on fire.”

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Blog Tour Review: Bait by K.C. Blake

We had technical problems for some reason yesterday and this post mysteriously disappeared. Sorry to be a day late for the blog tour post, but most definitely better late than never!

Published:  April 25, 2013
Genre: Paranormal Mystery YA
Format: Kindle
Source: sent for review as part of a blog tour

Goodreads Summary

Ghosts, a reaper, and a rock star.

At sixteen Bay-Lee is not your typical girl. She doesn't even try to fit in at school. What's the point when she'll be moving to a new place within a few months?
She's lived her whole life on the run, hiding from monsters.

Then a reaper uses her closet to cross over from the Spirit Realm. It has a message for her. Just when she's about to join her father at his school for hunters she finds out they are dying on their birthdays. Something is killing them, slipping past locked doors, never leaving a trace of evidence, and her birthday is only two months away.

Becoming a hunter isn't exactly her dream come true. She's doing it for her mother, for revenge, for justice. Nothing is going to get in her way, least of all love. Then she looks up into a pair of jungle green eyes and everything changes.

Bait is also available in ebook form from all the usual suspects in online retailers.

“I break into the homes of random girls all the time… just to talk.  Being a rock star doesn't keep me busy enough.”

This book follows 16 year old Bay-Lee.   Most of her life she has been moving around, changing identities, and flying under the radar with her Uncle Conner.    Since she is Van Halsing's daughter, she has to live a life of hiding from the Order and other monsters.   Her life takes an odd turn when she is visited one night by 2 different people.  One being the spirit of Tyler Beck, the heart throb from the famous group Bad Rock.  He swears she ruined his life, even though she has never met the man before.  The other creature is a reaper with an ominous message about her death.  She soon finds herself in her father’s academy learning the ways of a hunter.   She is now faced with trying to figure out who Bay-Lee is after years of pretending to be someone else.   She also seems to stumble into a forbidden love.   Bay-Lee soon sees the reaper's warnings coming true of many hunters dying on their birthday.  Her new mission is to figure out what and who is behind these murders, and stop them before they kill her and the boy she loves.

This was a very good and interesting book to me.  It is set in a world where there are vampires, werewolves, spirits of all kinds, mermaids, and reapers.  Most of these creatures are talked about and mentioned but aren’t really a big part of this story.  In this book the main protagonist is actually from the spirit category.   Not much action with the others in this book.  I did absolutely love and adore this book though.  Bay-Lee is a very strong lead.  I fell in love with her character from the first page.  She is very multi-dimensional, she has a fun spunky attitude, a little hard-headed, and she reminds me a lot of me.  I love a character with so many layers.  Then there’s Tyler Beck, the rock God.  He is everything a heart throb should be.  When Bay-Lee first encounters him he is a jerk who swears she is the sole reason his whole life has been ruined.   Part of the fun of this book is trying to figure out why he has such hatred for poor Bay-Lee.   The big mystery in the book is why hunters keep dying on their birthdays.  And it just gets better from there.   I don’t want to say too much about it because when you read it, I want every surprise and twist and turn to hit you in the face like it did me.

Well there’s Van Halsing he’s the greatest legend around:

What did I love about this book?  The better question is what didn’t I love?    The characters were well fleshed out, the story line was well thought out and executed.  With so many different directions you can go in a setting with so many creatures, it would be easy to over complicate a story.   The author did a great job at balancing the story.  I personally fell in love with the characters from the beginning.   A good book comes from a good story and characters you can love.  I adored Bay-Lee.   I haven’t talked much about her father yet.  Van Halsing is one of those characters that the people in the book are almost afraid of because of his power and his great skills.  But you get to see a vulnerable side when it comes to his daughter it is very sweet.   It feels like an authentic strained father/daughter relationship.  Something a lot of people can relate to.   The main plot of course is about the hunters dying on their birthday.   With every new twist and turn, it had my mind going 90 to nothing.   I don’t want to go into detail about any of the story because it is just that good and I want everything to surprise you like it did me.   The subplot centers around a forbidden love and a prophecy of a doomed world.  This mystery also had me wanting to know more.  It had my full attention.  The other thing I ABSOLUTELY LOVED was the fact at the end of the book I was taken totally by surprised.  One of those surely I did not read what I thought I read moments. When a book does something totally unexpected it makes me all warm and tingly inside.  

There is no such thing as a good Border Monster:

I can’t really say there was much about this book I didn’t like.   The only thing I would say was kind of a letdown was I pegged the killer early on.   In all fairness I have read so many books I am pretty good at that.   It’s not often I can say I didn’t see the killer coming.  Even with that, not a big complaint.  I still loved the book!

Conclusion: I would love to be a Van Halsing

This is a great book, with a great foundation for a series.   I think no matter what genre you prefer you would like this book.  It is well written and easy to follow.  The story and the characters are all wonderful.   I highly recommend.    I will be reading the 2nd book without a doubt!!

“I thought this was every teen girl’s fantasy to have me in her bedroom.  Was I wrong?”

Author K.C. Blake

Born and raised in California, I fell in love with writing while reading The Outsiders. Then I fell in love with Stephen King's writing style. I enjoy reading many types of books, but YA Paranormal is my favorite. I used to write for Harlequin under a different name. So that's my background. Exciting, no?

Find the Author: Goodreads | Facebook | Website | Twitter

Cover Reveal: Shadowed Threads (A Rylee Adamson Novel #4) by Shannon Mayer

Shadowed Threads (A Rylee Adamson Novel #4) by Shannon Mayer

First, I need to apologize because I was supposed to have a review by Melody for you today for a blog tour for Bait. I have emailed the author, K.C. Blake, and will hopefully have that for you guys in a day or two because for some unknown reason, the post just disappeared. 

I am thrilled to bring this cover reveal to you while you wait for that one. I signed up last minute, and I'm glad they are having me be a part of it. I saw the Rylee Adamson series over on Bookworm Brandee's site and won the first in the series in a giveaway from her. I haven't gotten it yet, but I'm super excited to read it once I do!

Expected Publication: August 15, 2013

Genre: Paranormal Urban Fantasy Romance
Age Group: New Adult, 18+

Cover Design: Damon Za

Official Blurb:

"My name is Rylee, and I am a Tracker."

When children go missing, and the Humans have no leads, I'm the one they call. I am their last hope in bringing home the lost ones. I salvage what they cannot.

O’Shea is AWOL, and Tracking him is proving to be harder than I expected.

Not to mention the small fact that I have the Beast of Bodmin Moor chasing me across Europe, in a race against the odds, and my life as the prize.

But those things are minor compared to the secrets that finally come to light.

Secrets I wish had stayed hidden in the darkness . . . .

** 18+ for adult situations, sexual situations and language.

About Shannon Mayer:

Shannon Mayer lives in the southwestern tip of Canada with her husband, dog, cats, horse, and cows. When not writing she spends her time staring at immense amounts of rain, herding old people (similar to herding cats) and attempting to stay out of trouble. Especially that last is difficult for her.

She is the bestselling author of High Risk Love, The Nevermore Trilogy, The Rylee Adamson Novels and the Celtic Legacy series.

Find Shannon:
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

Cover Reveal: Unafraid (Beachwood Bay #2) by Melody Grace

Unafraid (Beachwood Bay #2) by Melody Grace

Expected Publication: August 27, 2013

Genre: New Adult Contemporary Romance

Official Blurb:

The first time I saw her, I knew this girl was wilder than any stallion I’d ever trained. She was headstrong, wounded, passionate and free. And I had to have her…”

Brittany Ray doesn’t care about her bad reputation. Growing up in a sleepy beach town with a junkie mom and a runaway dad, Brit’s learned the hard way that the people you love will only let you down. It’s no use hoping for love or happiness. Some dreams aren’t meant for girls like her.

Hunter Covington is one of those dreams.

Gorgeous, charming Hunter is damn near perfect—and it’s killing him. Son of Charleston royalty, he’s been trapped in a gilded cage since the day he was born. Now he’s breaking free. He’s quit law school to restore his grandpa’s old horse ranch, trying to soothe the demons in his soul. But Beachwood Bay is full of old ghosts, like the mysterious girl who spent an unforgettable night with him—and then slipped away before dawn. Brit.

Everything about her screams danger, but Hunter doesn’t care: he’s never felt a connection so deep. And try as she may, Brit can’t resist the desire consuming her —or the safety she finds in Hunter’s arms.

A reckless passion. An undeniable bond. Scarred by their pasts, Brit and Hunter fight to heal old wounds. But will dark secrets tear apart their new beginning? And when love is the biggest risk of all, can they find the courage to face the future unafraid?

About Melody Grace:

Melody Grace is the USA Today bestselling author of UNBROKEN and UNTOUCHED. A small-town girl turned SoCal beach-lover, she spent years with her nose in a book before deciding it was time to write them for herself. She loves bad boys, good books, and pistachio-flavored ice-cream.

Find Melody:
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads