The Kari AnnAlysis

Posts Tagged ‘rebecca maizel’

Wow! First of all, Happy New Year bloggy buddies! I hope that 2010 was all you had hoped for and I hope you have big dreams for 2011. I do, but that will come in a later post. This one, is to recap my year in reading.

My goal for this year, set by my husband was 67 books. Well, I did it and I surpassed it. I actually read 94 books this year! I have no clue how, but I did and I feel like a major book nerd

This year was not only a big reading year for me, I also started writing a couple of books. I got the first draft done of the first one and started going back through and reworking some parts. I haven’t finished it yet because I took part in NaNoWriMo and actually started writing the sequel to it! I’m about 3/4 the way done with the first draft of it. I can’t believe I’ve started writing books. Even though I have them saved and can open them and read them anytime, it still doesn’t seem real! Hoping for big things in 2011 with this.

I also made some cool changes to my reading habits this year. I started taking part in some YA Book Tours. I was concerned about this for a few months, before I started. I was worried about the deadlines and not being able to finish the books. But that hasn’t been a problem at all and I’ve read some really good books through these tours. I also signed up for NetGalley and BookMooch this year. They are both amazing in their very different ways. NetGalley has offered me a bunch of amazing books, that I probably wouldn’t have picked up off the book store shelf. Plus, most of them are ARCs. A couple of my 2010 faves are from there. Now BookMooch has helped me with my space issue. I, reluctantly at first, did some major book purging. I went through my two full bookshelves and chose the books that I didn’t absolutely loved and put them on BookMooch. I got some pretty good books back in return for them as well. What a cool little nerdy book world we live in.

One of the most significant changes I made this year was finally getting a Nook. It tooks me months to decide what I wanted and ended up with the Nook as a birthday present from my parents. I can’t believe I lived a life without it! Especially on NetGalley. I started the year reading the books on my computer and ended reading them on my Nook. It is so convenient, and a space saver. I didn’t want one at first because I love the feeling of the book, but I do a good job of going back and forth between real books and Nook books, so I am getting the Best of Both Worlds as Hannah Montana would say.

Now, to my faves of 2010! Not all of these were published in 2010, just ones I read in 2010 and loved. I have chosen my Top 10 – in no particular order. Hopefully, by the time I am done writing this post, I’ll be able to narrow it down and tell you what my favorite of the year was. I’m still undecided!

1. Infinite Days by Rebecca Maizel

In a time where vampires are all the rage, Maizel takes the beautiful blood sucking creature to a whole new level – back to life!

Lenah is 529 years old. After 400+ years, she gave up her vampire love to become a human. The only catch, she had to sleep for 100 years for this to happen.

When she finally wakes up, she’s a 16-year-old girl, so to speak, at a ritzy private school.

I can’t wait for the second book in this series to come out. It focuses on Lenah’s love, who has also become one of my many book love!

2. Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah

My cousin lent me this book this summer. I had never heard of it and was a little leery before I started. Surely if the book was good, someone would have mentioned it to me and it’s a pretty decent sized book. I always get anxiety with long books. I like quick, easy, fun reads.

I wish someone told me about this book before! Holy Moly! It is one of my all-time faves. I cried as much in this book as I did reading any Nicholas Sparks book!

Firefly Lane follows the lives of Tully and Kate from the time they are teens, all the way through adulthood. This book is different than most I have read because mainly, I am a series girl. I haven’t read many books lately where you live a whole life with someone. And that’s what I think made me love this book so much! I was so close to them, it felt like I knew them and everything about them. The fact that they were both in journalism brought me closer to them as well. I highly suggest this, but make sure you have a box of tissues.

3. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

This is one of those series that I stayed away from. I had heard about it, but didn’t know much about it. The first year and a half that I read, I went and bought cheap books, not really caring what they were about, as long as they had pretty covers. After reading The Hunger Games, way late in the game, I won’t make that mistake again!

I am not going to even offer an explainer for this one. If you haven’t read it, go spend your Borders/Barnes and Noble gift cards and go buy it!

Suzanne Collins has become one of my idols. I love J.K. Rowling because she was able to make up an entirely new world. And although it is fiction, it’s believable. It’s so intense and descriptive. Collins was able to do the same thing for me. She made up a world, that is very believable, to the point where you hope that no one else reads the book because you don’t want someone to get the idea that this is how we should live one day.

The Hunger Games and Catching Fire were both terrific reads for me this year. I still have Mockingjay on my shelf. But I am nervous to read it. 1. I don’t want it to be over. 2. I’m afraid I am going to be disappointed with the ending. I have no idea what it is, but I’ve heard it doesn’t live up to the first two.

4. Dead Politician Society by Robin Spano

Clare is a rookie cop who gets her first undercover gig, trying to figure out who is poisoning politicians. She enrolls as a student at a local university to get the scoop from some poli-sci students and finds herself in the mix of a poisoning mess.

I didn’t get this book on NetGalley when I first saw it because I am a cover snob. I like pink and pretty and this didn’t do it for me. But Robin Spano saw on Twitter that I was a NetGalley nerd and emailed me asking me to read her book. I appreciated her tracking me down, so I gave it a shot and I absolutely loved it, and her! Robin has an amazing writing style. She wrote this book through the eyes of five different people. A different chapter came from a different point of view. It was never confusing and it flowed amazingly! Robin has also become an awesome support system for my writing, but that’s another story for another time and place!

Now, Robin did send me a couple of cover options for her second book, and you better believe it’s pink

5. Wildthorn by Jane Eagland

This was another NetGalley find and a fantastic one at that!

17-year-old Louisa Cosgrove wants to be a doctor. In this day and age, that is a normal choice. In the 1800′s however, it lands her in a mental hospital. Louisa knows she’s not mental, and now she has to figure out who put her there and how to get out.

I normally try to stay away from books that are period written. Let’s face it, we all know I like light and easy. When it comes to deep books with words I have to look up in the dictionary, I don’t want to strain my brain, I get enough of that at work. But Eagland didn’t do that. She wrote a book about the 1800′s but made it hip enough to be in the now. This is one of those books where you can’t quit turning the pages because you have to know what’s going to happen next with Louisa and you are just hoping that she didn’t do something that she’s not telling us to get in the institution. Oh, and there’s a love interest that definitely wouldn’t have been publicized in the 1800′s. That’s all I’m saying!

6. Father of Lies by Ann Turner.

In this book, Turner takes history and adds a little flare of fiction! This book is based at the time of the Salem Witch Trials. Turner uses the timeline and history of this crazy event and adds a new character, a fictional one to really live and tell the story from an outsiders view.

When I first signed up to read this book, I knew it took place in that era, but didn’t realize until I was done and started doing some research that it was based on the true story. That made this book so much more awesome for me.

7. Matched by Ally Condie

Who would have ever pictured me as a dystopia lover? Well, I guess I am after this year.

In Matched, everything is chosen for you. What you eat, where you work, when you die and even who you marry. They match you with someone you will be compatible with. Most people have never met their matches before, but for Cassia, the slim odds become a reality. She’s matched with her best friend. But when she’s watching a little chip about him, to see if it can tell her anything she doesn’t already know, there’s a glitch, and another boy’s face pops up. Eerily enough, this boy is also someone she knows. But now she’s not sure who she should love and if there was a mistake.

This was a remarkable book and somewhat of a sad love story. Cassia has to live a life of secrecy to find out what will truly make her happy. It’s something we don’t have to live, but something that unfortunately could very likely happen in the future, our great-great-grandchildren’s future, if not further out.

I cannot wait for the next book to come out in this series. It’s one I will definitely buy the hardback in. And I got this book from a tour, so I don’t physically still have it. I will have to buy this one as well, just because I love to have all of them in a series!

Speaking of series, we all know I’m a junkie! Stephanie Plum, True Blood, Private, Pretty Little Liars. You name it, I loved it! This year, I read books in all of these series. I tried to go through and pick out one I loved from each one, but I couldn’t. And I read way too many to put them all down here. If you click here, you can go to my Books 2010 page and scroll throuh and see how I reviewed all of my series books this year.

Ok, so I guess I’ve had enough time to dwell on my books this year and just pick one already. Honestly, I’ve narrowed it down to two and am having a hard time choosing between the two of them. So, I’m not going to. I thought after writing about them both in this post, it would help me make my decision, but it actually made it harder. So, drumroll please. My TWO favorite books I read in 2010 were The Hunger Games and Matched! Looking back on my little summaries of all of my books, you could probably have guessed. When I love something, I love it and I can’t hide my feelings. That’s why I started my book reviews in the first place. I loved me some Jane Eyre and wanted to whole world to know it!

I hope you had as great a reading year as I did, and I hope you’ll help me this coming year in picking out some awesome reads!

Lenah Beaudonte is 529 years old. She was turned into a vampire at the age of 16 and soon became the Queen Bee of her coven. After 400+ years, she decided what she really wanted to was to feel. She wanted to be human again. To do that, she had to take a nap for 100 years and lose the love of her vampire life.

When Lenah wakes up, she’s in the states, at one of the most privileged prep schools in the country. She can feel, her heart beats and she finally learns what it means to really be a 16 year old, and care about others more than you care about yourself. And of course, there’s a cute boy and a BFF that help make this possible.

I got this ARC from the Early Reviewers Program onLibrarything.

We’ve all read the vampire books lately, the lust for vampires is CRAZY! We all know how they got there, but never really have heard anything about turning back into a human.Who even knew this was possible? Rebecca Maizel did an awesome job of bringing this to life. I love knowing what it would be like for a vampire to be thrown back into society.

There were some great parts of this story, some great quotes that I can’t quit running over in my head:

Pg178: “I had forgotten what it meant to be a daughter. I had been queen for so long.”

Pg276: “The instant the sun rises, it also begins to set. The moment we are born, we begin to die. all of life is a cycle, Tony.”

One of the things I like best about this book is the ending. I had an idea of how I thought it was going to end and as I continued to read, those ideas changed… and none of the ways I thought it would end really happened. I love when that happens. I love being surprised.

This book had it all. There was drama, suspense, love, teen angst, comedy. I was very impressed with all the emotions I felt. And I may… may have shed a tear or two. I can’t handle when men cry

I give Infinite Days 5 bookmarks.

Make sure you follow Rebecca Maizel on Twitter! She is awesome and always writes messages back to me

This week’s Teaser Tuesday comes to us from Rebecca Maizel’s ARC of Infinite Days. I normally don’t add a cover, but I love this one, so that’s why it’s here too.

Pg 5: “I didn’t look a day over sixteen, yet if someone had calculated on that particular day — I officially turned 592.”

I think this is the first time I have ever gone under the required two sentence tease! 

What are you reading?

On my bookshelf is my own little twist to In My Mailbox hosted by The Story Siren.

Take a look at what I scored this week:

Bought:
I had a coupon and $5 in Borders Bucks this past week, so I bought myself a couple of books I needed in the series’ I am reading.
Finger Lickin’ Fifteen by Janet Evanovich
Scandal by Kate Brian

Publicist:
I got contacted by Jamie Freveletti’s publicist, Kaye Publicity, about her new book Running Dark. It sounded great and i have heard a lot of goof things about it from other readers, but I wanted to read the first in the series first. They were awesome enough to send me both copies.

Running from the Devil: “A chemist for a cosmetics company and an ultramarathon runner, Emma Caldridge in en route from Miami to Bogota when her plane goes down int he mountains near the Venezuelan border. Thrown unhurt from the wreckage, she watches in horror as guerrillas drag the other passengers into the jungle. Stranded and alone in a deadly environment, Emma has no choice but to follow — and stumbles across Cameron Sumner, an injured government agent who was left behind to die.

As a Washington, D.C. , task force races to the crash site in hopes of finding survivors, Emma and Cameron creep closer to a nightmare they may be powerless to prevent. But Emma is no ordinary woman — and she guards a secret both powerful and deadly that her adversaries would gleefully kill to possess.

And now she must run…”

I am getting ready to start Running from the Devil, as fast as my little fingers can get this post typed out!

Running Dark: “Emma Caldridge is on mile thirty-six of the fifty-five-mile Comrades ultramarathon in South Africa when a roadside care bomb explodes. Dazed and disoriented, she regains consciousness after the blast to find a man standing over her with a white plastic injector. She feels the prick of a needle and the rush of the medication under her skin, but before she can make a sound, the man is gone.

Shaken by the event and unsure of what substance was pumped into her, Emma calls the one person who can help her figure things out: Edward Banner of the security company in Darkview. But Banner has his hands full with another emergency: Somali pirates int he Golf of Alden have attacked a cruise ship, and Darkview has been hired to assist with the rescue.

However, according to intelligence sources, the ship is carrying cargo far more valuable than wealthy passengers — something that could be a new weapon of unknown origin. Suspecting the weapon may be chemical in nature, Banner asks Emma to infiltrate the ship and use her professional expertise to identify it.

Emma konws it’s a risky job, one that she might not survive, But when she learns that special agent Cameron Sumner — a man who has saved her life in the past — is among the hostages, nothing will stop her from getting on board, no matter what the cost.”

Librarything:
And finally, I won an ARC of Infinite Days from the Early Reviewers Program

“After centuries of terrorizing Europe, Lenah Beaudonte, with the help of the handsome Rhode, has been able to realize the dream of all vampires — to be human again. Now, as a raven-haired, sixteen-year0ld, Lenah believes her greatest challenge is fitting in at her new school. But the challenges have only begun. The vicious coven Lenah once ruled is threatening the new found pleasures of her human life, including the one guy who makes her feel most alive, Justin. Can this ex-vamp survive in an alien time and place or will her past come back to haunt her…forever?

How fun does that sound? And I can’t wait to see what brings them back to life! Wonder if the Cullen’s would do it

What did you guys get this week?