Splintered by A.G. Howard

Title: Splintered (Splintered #1)

Author: A.G. Howard

Page #: 371

My Rating: 3.5 Stars

Alyssa Gardner hears the whispers of bugs and flowers—precisely the affliction that landed her mother in a mental hospital years before. This family curse stretches back to her ancestor Alice Liddell, the real-life inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Alyssa might be crazy, but she manages to keep it together. For now.

When her mother’s mental health takes a turn for the worse, Alyssa learns that what she thought was fiction is based in terrifying reality. The real Wonderland is a place far darker and more twisted than Lewis Carroll ever let on. There, Alyssa must pass a series of tests, including draining an ocean of Alice’s tears, waking the slumbering tea party, and subduing a vicious bandersnatch, to fix Alice’s mistakes and save her family. She must also decide whom to trust: Jeb, her gorgeous best friend and secret crush, or the sexy but suspicious Morpheus, her guide through Wonderland, who may have dark motives of his own. -Summary from Goodreads

            Splintered is an intoxicating world of Wonderland whimsy. We see that Lewis Carroll’s innocent yet maddening world is a lot darker and more terrifying than we’d been led to believe… and full of a lot more bugs. Normally that would wig me out too much to read this book, but the dark, seductiveness of the story kept me entranced and made the whole bug thing less creepy.

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            Alyssa is an artist/skateboarder who has a secret: she can hear bugs and plants talk. It is an ability that all the women in her family have shared. One that has gotten them locked up in the loony bin generations upon generations, leading back to her great-great-great-grandmother Alice (who was Lewis Carroll’s inspiration). One day she discovers that her family is not insane but cursed. From the prompting of a mysterious moth, and reemerging memories, she follows the clues that lead her to the rabbit hole and down into the real Wonderland.

I liked Alyssa well enough, but I felt that she was over shadowed a bit too much by her best friend Jeb, who can be an over-protective control freak. When she wanted to take a chance, he pulled her back. When she was brave and selfless he admonished her for it saying that she was reckless. It got downright irritating and I was so rooting for her to slap some sense into him. Alas, while she did get mad at him on occasion she forgave him way to easily for my taste and still fell into his arms whenever he justified himself enough. Okay, I think my rant is over… maybe.

With all that said I suppose I’m team Morpheus though perhaps not in the way others are. I don’t ship either of the guys in this story with Alyssa, however Morpheus is “Mysterious. Rebellious. Troubled” and very hot. I can’t say I fully trusted him but he was encouraging and knew that Alyssa had a strength about her and could accomplish anything she set out to do and he would help her if she needed it. That endeared him into my good graces and, along with everything else, made him one of my favorite characters in the book. (Though my dislike of Jeb may have something to do with it as well.)

           

            I definitely didn’t expect that ending and what an ending it was! It was a mixture of bittersweet and adorableness. I will certainly continue this series but I’m hoping that Jeb backs off a little because he was the reason my ratings dropped a star and I don’t want that because I absolutely love this world. 

         -Sarah

The Blood of Olympus by Rick Riordan

Title: The Blood of Olympus (Heroes of Olympus #5)

Author: Rick Riordan

Release Date: October 7th

Rating: 3 Stars

Though the Greek and Roman crewmembers of the Argo II have made progress in their many quests, they still seem no closer to defeating the earth mother, Gaea. Her giants have risen—all of them—and they're stronger than ever. They must be stopped before the Feast of Spes, when Gaea plans to have two demigods sacrificed in Athens. She needs their blood—the blood of Olympus—in order to wake.

The demigods are having more frequent visions of a terrible battle at Camp Half-Blood. The Roman legion from Camp Jupiter, led by Octavian, is almost within striking distance. Though it is tempting to take the Athena Parthenos to Athens to use as a secret weapon, the friends know that the huge statue belongs back on Long Island, where it "might" be able to stop a war between the two camps.

The Athena Parthenos will go west; the Argo II will go east. The gods, still suffering from multiple personality disorder, are useless. How can a handful of young demigods hope to persevere against Gaea's army of powerful giants? As dangerous as it is to head to Athens, they have no other option. They have sacrificed too much already. And if Gaea wakes, it is game over. - Summary from Goodreads

           Once again we have to say goodbye to another Rick Riordan series and awesome characters, especially Percy Jackson. Like me, many of you have been waiting a long time to see how this series would end and have been really excited about it. Sadly, I was disappointed and unimpressed with Blood of Olympus. I really wanted to love it, but I had to face the fact that this series was just not very well done. Blood of Olympus was definitely my least favorite of the series.

            To start off, and I know this is just a little thing for some, but there was no Percy or Annabeth narration. Now I can deal without Annabeth because she’s almost always with Percy or one of the others, but Percy is Riordan’s strongest and most loved character and he doesn’t give him a narrative, or even a lot of page time? And when they did bring him up, it seemed like half of the time they were picking on him. Suffice to say, once I found out that he wasn’t a narrator I lost a lot of my interest. Thankfully we still had Leo, and the Reyna and Nico narratives weren’t bad. I had been wanting to hear from Nico for years, but I will admit I was disappointed with that as well. Riordan kind of ruined his character for me in the last book for many reason, but that would take longer than this post should be. I will say though that he had one scene in here that was so bad-ass it was awesome. It finally felt like the Nico I had come to know from all the other books (other meaning before House of Hades) had returned.

            There wasn’t much of a spark to make this a page turner and it lacked the humor that I was use to with this series. Most of the book seemed to deal with all of the characters issues and everyone giving these Hallmark encouraging speeches and it got really annoying. I know Riordan is probably trying to diversify his book and make them for everyone with every type of problem, but he just overdid it. I realized this with HoH and it just became more and more noticeable as I read this book. He needs to go back to trying to write a good story instead of trying to cover every issue he thinks kids are dealing with.

            The only parts I really enjoyed were when old characters would make cameo appearances and when they showed Camp Half-Blood. For me, those brought back all the memories of what I liked about this world. But even through everything that I didn't like about this book the ending was very satisfying and everything that I wanted for these lovely characters. A warm feeling spread through my chest and I was smiling with joy to know that these characters will do alright no matter what trails come their way, they will persevere.

            In a way I’m glad this series is ending now where it is, I think perhaps it might have even gone on too long, but I still will miss a lot of the characters like Percy, Annabeth, Leo, Nico, etc. This world has always been fun to escape in and I look forward to rereading my favorites. Goodbye Percy Jackson and goodbye Heroes of Olympus.

           

           -Sarah

Obsidian by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Title: Obsidian (Lux #1)
Author: Jennifer L. Armentrout
Publish Date: May 2012
Rating: 3 Stars

Starting over sucks.

When we moved to West Virginia right before my senior year, I'd pretty much resigned myself to thick accents, dodgy internet access, and a whole lot of boring... until I spotted my hot neighbor, with his looming height and eerie green eyes. Things were looking up.

And then he opened his mouth.

Daemon is infuriating. Arrogant. Stab-worthy. We do not get along. At all. But when a stranger attacks me and Daemon literally freezes time with a wave of his hand, well, something... unexpected happens.

The hot alien living next door marks me.

You heard me. Alien. Turns out Daemon and his sister have a galaxy of enemies wanting to steal their abilities, and Daemon's touch has me lit up like the Vegas Strip. The only way I'm getting out of this alive is by sticking close to Daemon until my alien mojo fades.

If I don't kill him first, that is.

-Summary from Goodreads

            First reaction after I finished this book: “YAY! I finally read it!” I have been trying to get around to this book for a long time (especially since I picked up the second one at a booksale last year) and I’m happy to say that I enjoyed it. It wasn’t a 5 star book and I didn’t love it but it was a fun read and I will most definitely continue the series.

            I thought that Katy was a great heroine who didn’t let a smokin’ hot guy cloud her judgment TOO much and stuck with her friend even when other people were trying to drive her away. I love her friendship with Dee and I love how she refuses to run away when Dee’s brother (Daemon) and friends don’t approve of her. Friendship and loyalty are two things that I really love to read about and I was just as happy for Dee as I was for Katy that they hit it off and became so close.

When Katy first meets Daemon she is understandably stunned by his divine hotness, what girl wouldn’t be, but then he started speaking and you start to wish she didn’t have so much restraint and would haul off and slug him. Sadly that doesn’t happen (although she does do something later that is just awesome) but she refuses to let him treat her badly without returning some of it. I can’t count how many times she gives him the finger but that seemed to end a lot of their conversations.

On one hand I love this type of couple with all the bickering and fighting, but I did have some mixed feelings about Daemon at the beginning. He was all hot and cold, would say “stay away” and then later ask her to take a walk with him. I mean, yes he had his reasons for wanting to keep his distance and sometimes you can’t fight attraction, but it really annoyed me at times. Thankfully though, that wasn’t the whole book and about halfway through he stopped bugging me as much, mostly because of how Katy handled it. They did have some sweet moments together and the bickering was still fun.

Besides Daemon’s hot and cold routine, the only thing that kind of brought me out of the story was the realness. Now stick with me, I don’t mean the believability of the story, that was fine but it’s kind of a… I won’t say pet peeve but I’m not really a fan of reading stories where the main character does stuff like write a blog and types of a “Waiting on Wednesday” post or spends a lot of time of the internet or gets excited about books in the mail that has no importance to the story. I know it’s supposed to make her more relatable but for me it pulls me out of the story.

I don’t read many alien books but I though the world that Armentrout created was very well done and the backstory she gave them was interesting. The “bad aliens” were cool and quite a formidable villain. The action/fight scenes were intense and totally kept my attention. I see a lot of potential for the rest of the series and can’t wait to see what’s going to happen next.

So, while I only gave this book three stars I definitely enjoyed it and can’t wait to read more about Katy’s adventure in small town West Virginia.

-Sarah