Review: Last Kiss in Venice

Title: Last Kiss in Venice

Author: Martin Chu Shui

Illustrator: Stephanie Mooney

Genre: Romance, Fantasy

Age: 14+

Pages: 190 (Kindle)

Publisher: Martin Chu Shui

Review: The Do-Over

Title: The Do-Over

Author: Andrew Hessel

Illustrator: Liz Kingslien

Genre: Crime thriller-love story with a dash of fantasy and a sprinkle of Sci-Fi?

Age: 14+

Pages: 288 (paperback)

Publisher: Old Dog Publishing LLC

       
        Kiki Kingsler could never have been prepared for the events that unravelled themselves when she arrived home. Finding her parents and sister dead and barely escaping with her life felt like she had been through hell and back. Things like this only happened to other people not yourself! But they did, and soon she is offered a second chance. A Do-Over if you will... With the help of a few friends, Kiki is prepared to go back 31 years in the past and fix the problem at it's root!

        The Do-Over was very well written. The story started off focusing on the characters. This gave us a good idea of what we were getting into and who would lead the adventure. It then distributed the plot and jumped right into the details. Andrew Hessel did a marvelous job with his pace. he wasn't a step too late nor a step too fast! His ideas we're clearly stated and shown, they were well explained and given!

        Okay guys, I just want to explain real quick how great the plot was! So from the summary I believe you caught on that Kiki Kinsler (the main character) was given a second chance to go back and do what's right to save her family and others. I'd like to point a few things here. While conflicts between two characters are good, Inner-conflicts are great! It's always refreshing to have those types of stories. Secondly, the whole second chance, go back in time and do what's right theme gave off an air of contradictions. Some people may believe in that stuff while others may not. the protagonist argued and debated with herself if she believed in that stuff. I think that a conflict, which makes the reader question and/or reflect afterwards are always top notch!

        The author must have done some serious researching for his novel because the Oregon history was very well explained. I'm not fascinated by history in the slightest, but those who are will be overjoyed. It's also not to the point where you are bored out of your mind reading about it, but it gives you some background information on the environment. It also helps out since our protagonist must go back in the past, if you do not know about the past and the present then it might be a bit confusing!

        The only negative aspect of this book is the romance. I'll try not to spoil anything here but I hated it. It was very awkward, and maybe it's just me but it really changed my perspective of the characters. Honestly, I would rather had replaced the romance sections with some fast pace action! Of course I've hated pretty much every relationships in every novel I have read of late. Maybe it's just I'm in a bad mood, who knows!

Available on Amazon

Rating: 4/5



My First Blogger Award!

The Versatile Blogger Award!

I would like to thank the following blogs, who have all nominated me for my first award!

Book-O-Matic, Insomnia Of Books, The YA Bookworm

Go check out their blogs!

The Rules:

• Each person who is nominated must nominate another 15 people to accept this award

• Remember to let the people know that they have been tagged

• Tell us 7 facts about yourself

• Remember to let them know that they have been tagged

• Thank the blogger who has nominated you

• Add the Award picture to the post

• You CANNOT tag people back!

7 Facts About Myself:



• My favorite reading spot is in my bed

• I have a younger brother and three older sisters

• My younger brother is actually my twin

• I have a total of 49 novels on my bookshelves!

• My favorite sport is football

• When I grow up I want to be an accountant

• I've started my first job a few weeks ago

15 Bloggers I've Nominated:
(I could only think of 7... I know I suck)

Daniellewam
Framed In Words
Jade Varden
Kelly Walker Writes
The Life of Fiction
L Darby Gibbs
Dahl's Doll


 

The Kill Order: Pre-Order it Now!

        Hey guys, a few days ago I heard of James Dashner Prequel! Yes when I say Prequel I mean the Maze Runner series is sadly 100% over, but that doesn't mean we can't have some juicy information on what happened before the maze can't we?

Divergent Review

Title: Divergent

Author: Veronica Roth

Illustrator: -------

Genre: Dystopian

Age: 14+

Pages: 496 (hardcover)

Publisher: Harper Collins

        Choosing day is just around the corner and Beatrice could never have been so uncertain. At 16 years old, Beatrice must choose her path in life and staying with her faction is not the right one. Plunging into a world with people who are totally different and with totally different lifestyles, Beatrice soon makes a few friends she never knew possible and a good amount of enemies as well. With a secret that could kill her she must pass dauntless initiation without revealing her deepest secret!

        Divergent was a very good read! I enjoyed how the society was set up into five different factions. The idea of having each faction represent a human characteristic was very neat. It was also a brilliant idea since having those factions created a very easy and simple driving plot for the story. From the beginning you knew that a type of society like this could never work out and so the story line developed around that.

        As for the characters, they were quite something! I enjoyed many of them including Tris (Beatrice). They had many flaws, especially Al. If I haven't mentioned it enough throughout my reviews I will mention it again. Working your character can only lead to a great novel! To work your characters you must make them as realistic as possible, which means flaws are one of the best to make your characters realistic! The flaws could be seen throughout the novel from the times Al cried at night to the fears they saw in the stimulations.

        For some reason I found the relationships a bit awkward. In the sense of, Tris and Four didn't seem right together. I doubted that Tris was the kind of character to get involved in relationships, especially during the dauntless training. I mean come on! You're working your but off to be able to actually become dauntless. Then you have this secret that can kill you, and you're telling me you still have time to think about Four? I can see why Veronica Roth added this to her novel and it easily made fans more anxious for book two but for me it turned me off.

        I loved Divergent a lot because I didn't overestimate it like a lot of people did. With all the hype that the book community had with divergent it made people think this was the best novel of the decade. I'm not saying it isn't. Don't get me wrong, Divergent tells a great story, but if you overestimate it then you will be disappointed. If you are a skeptical reader like me, then you might just add it somewhere in your top 20 favorite books.

Available on Amazon

Rating: 4.5/5

The Sword and The Prophet

Title: The Sword and The Prophet

Author: Missy LaRae

Illustrator: Nathalia Suellen

Genre: Science Fiction

Age: 12 +

Pages: 260 (kindle)

Publisher: Pretty Wycked Designs

       Lily and Tyler once felt loved, happy, and safe, but that was a long time ago The inseparable twins realize that this is their only chance to escape their abusive mother so they storm off in the dead of the night, seeking relatives in Charleston.. They soon find out that their mother was the least of their worries. The twins must look for each other’s trust in order to unravel the mystery behind their own identities, in order to stay safe and fulfill their destinies.
       
        I enjoyed the first half of this novel. The author did a great job to captivate her audience in the first few chapters, as well as keeping the storyline smooth and intriguing. I enjoyed how she focused a lot on the characters and kept the readers on edge. I thought that the pace might have needed a bit of tuning but that was fine as I liked getting to know the characters and their surroundings thoroughly.
       
        One of Missy's strong points was that she used a lot of emotions to get the storyline going. Throughout the novel we knew what the characters were feeling and what caused this. I thought she did a nice job adding that aspect to the book but in a very discrete manner. It didn't stand out much or bothered me in any way but helped drive the story along very well.
      
         The universe in The Sword and The Prophetwas fascinating. I liked how the author made it simple yet it still had that taste of fantasy/sci-fi world, where you want to discover every region and aspect of it. It was also nice to see a glimpse of powers that go along with this strange world, but I would have liked to see the full extent of those powers. Some fangs and super strength is nice but it's not that original.
     
        The second half of the novel was what pushed the novel from a great book to a meh.. Ok novel. The author didn't seem to have a hard time bringing that alienish world into scene and it did seem very out of the blue. It did not work well with the first half and there weren't many clues leading up to this.
     
        Finally, what really disappointed me was that as we headed off to part two of the novel, the author focused too much on the science fiction part and not the basics. The characters lacked the feel they had in part one and I lost the bond they had. The flow of the story was very unsteady and it looked like the author was trying to get some action in the novel when it wasn't necessary. Everything in part two was dull in comparison to part one and if the author would have kept focusing on the basics the novel would have been excellent. There is a lot of room for improvement but this doesn't mean that book two can't be extraordinary. The series has a lot of potential and I am looking forward for book two!

Available on Amazon for free (cost may change over time.)

Rating: 4/5