Shining Bright

“They said that love was terrifying and tender, wild and sweet, and none of it made any sense. But now I knew that every mad word was true.”  Rosamund Hodge ,  Cruel Beauty Cruel Beauty is a wonderful retelling of a beauty-and-the-beast-esque story mixed with Greek mythology. This unlikely pairing actually makes for a wonderfully written fairytale. This book is about 17-year-old Nyx who has spent her whole life preparing to be married to and then to assasinate the immortal, evil ruler of her kingdom, the Gentle Lord, all because of a deal that her father made with the dark ruler. The day of her seventeenth birthday, Nyx is taken to the ruler's castle with the quest of finding the four Hearts that reside in his palace in order to kill her husband, who she calls Ignifex. Learning more about her husband, she begins to realize that she might have been wrong about him, and that he isn't the one with authority to rule over the kingdom. Apparently, even the Gentle Lord took ...

"Thinking something does not make it true. Wanting something does not make it real." Michelle Hodkin,  The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer "You're stronger than you believe. Don't let your fear own you. Own yourself." Michelle Hodkin,  The Evolution of Mara Dyer "Do not find peace. Find passion." Michelle Hodkin,  The Retribution of Mara Dyer Mara Dyer, 17, wakes up from a coma in a hospital and is greeted with news that her 2 friends and boyfriend are dead. She is then diagnosed with PTSD and swept up from her home in Laurelton, Rhode Island and rerooted to Miami, Florida to help her stay away from her traumatizing memories. The move isn't much help and Mara sees the faces of her dead friends all around her. This is a symptom of the PTSD, but she also begins to see people's deaths before they happen and this can't be explained. Despite her strange visions in Miami, she manages to make friends with Jamie and attracts the attention of th...

“Maybe it's like free-falling. You feel like you'd rather do anything than face it, but once you do it you realize it's the best feeling you've ever had.”  Mindi Scott, Freefall It seems like all the books that I have read lately include death. In Freefall , Seth McCoy is dealing with his friend Isaac's death which he blames himself for. Seth was the last person to see Isaac alive, and the first to see him dead. In the trailer park where he lives, Seth has been drowning his sorrows in alcohol and refusing to think about Isaac's death, which seems to have plagued no one else. One evening he finds himself at a house party in the richest part of town. There, as he was slipping through the cracks, he meets a beautiful and very different girl named Rosetta. She seems to be perfect, but she has secrets of her own and Seth soon learns that he isn't the only one that needs saving. Seth is a high school student who is seriously slipping, and the fall began b...

"I am crazy sad, and somewhere deep inside, all I want is to fly." - Jandy Nelson, The Sky is Everywhere "That's a misconception, Lennie. The sky is everywhere, it begins at your feet." Jandy Nelson, The Sky is Everywhere The Sky is Everywhere   is the story of a girl, recently sisterless, and forever trying to find her place is the world. Lennie Walker, 17, has just lost her out-going, dynamite sister, whose shadow she has always lived in. Now, left with her grandmother and crazy uncle, she is launched into a life where she can step out of the shadows and into the limelight. Her family and best friend support her, but she wants more. This is when her previously nonexistent love life changes completely. At this time, when she is supposed to be grieving, she finds herself torn and lusting after her sister's seductive ex-boyfriend Toby Shaw, and gorgeous, charismatic musician Joe Fontaine. This love triangle creates so much tension the sky itself may be ri...

"And maybe one day, when we realize that we all feel the same, we can all stop pretending we're something we're not. That would be awesome. But until that day, I'm going to keep it real on this blog and keep it unreal in 'real' life." - Zoe Sugg, Girl Online In  Girl Online , fairytale romance meets internet survival as 15-year-old Penelope (Penny for short) Porter struggles through the catastrophe that is teenagehood, anonymously blogging about it along the way. As if just surviving a regular day wasn't difficult, Penny has just experienced possibly the most embarrassing thing to happen to anyone ever: falling over onstage and flashing her 3-year-old, fraying, unicorn-printed underwear to the world. And now, Penny, her parents and her best friend Elliot are on their way to New York-- a world away from her hometown of Brighton, UK, a world away from her disaster. New York proves to be amazing, and she even meets a guy who seems to really like he...

"You always have to choose between the path of needles and the path of pins. When a dress is torn, you know, you can just pin it up, or you can take the time to sew it together. That's what it means. The quick and easy way or the painful way that works." - Rosamund Hodge, Crimson Bound Crimson Bound is a fantasy story that has the feel of a fairytale and the energy of an action novel. Set in the fictional country of Gevaudan, which was inspired by 17th-century France. The main character is 18-year-old Rachelle, a bloodbound and protector of the King. Three years earlier, the ferocious kiss of a forestborn -- a non-human creature that has incredible strength and fighting ability -- had turned her into a bloodbound, half-human and half-forestborn and since then, she had killed her aunt and joined the King's bloodbound army in which she quickly climbed the ranks. Now, at the top of the army alongside her friend and pursuer, Erec D'Anjou, she has almost forgotte...

"Bloodlines and last names didn't make a man extraordinary — the extraordinary existed in what we did in life, not in who we were." -    Courtney Alameda ,  Shutter Shutter  provides a peek into what the world would be like if ghosts and monsters were common and ghost hunters were heroes. The heroine in this story is Micheline, heir to Helsing Corps, her family's famous monster hunting company and tetrachromat -- a girl who sees the auras of the undead in a prismatic spectrum. Being the only possible heir -- due to the traumatic death of her mother and two brothers -- puts a lot of pressure on Micheline, particurlary from her father, the current Commander-in-Chief of the company. This being said, Micheline and her father don't have the best relationship especially since the death of her mother, so it's no surprise that Mr. Helsing doesn't react well after a routine ghost hunt goes terribly wrong, endangering Micheline and her 3 crew members. After fa...