Harper's Dark Days Tour

If you're not one of those lucky ducks who gets to go to the Dark Days of Winter tour in person, never fear: you can watch it the Livestream on Facebook right from the comfort of your own sofa

(You won't be able to touch/physically poke the authors, sure, but that last part would likely be frowned upon, anyway. And if you're missing the Chicago/Anderson's in Naperville one you won't get to see the Chicago River be green for St Patrick's Day--but I didn't either, so we'll mourn that together.)

Here are the authors (and the books they wrote)

Friday, March 18 (tonight)

7:00 PM (central) with

Claudia Gray (Afterlife-most recent in the Evernight series)

Kimberly Derting (The Body Finder & Desires of the Dead)

Courtney Allison Moulton (Angelfire)
Ellen Schreiber (Once in a Full Moon)

if you can't make the one tonight, there's one tomorrow at Books & Books in Miami Beach, Florida--see, there's a lot of geography covered! (and still on Facebook if you can't physically make it)

Saturday, March 19

7:00 PM (eastern) with

Claudia Gray (Afterlife-most recent in the Evernight series)

Kimberly Derting (The Body Finder & Desires of the Dead)

Courtney Allison Moulton (Angelfire)

More info on both tour stops is available either on the Facebook page or @PitchDarkBooks on Twitter.

Dark Days Events page on Facebook

I have it in the links, etc: but the Livestream will be here: http://www.facebook.com/PitchDarkBooks

Angelfire ~ Courtney Allison Moulton ARC review

Angelfire (Angelfire #1)
Katherine Tegan Books
February 15, 2011
464 pages
Buy/info @ Amazon

Ellie is having nightmares every night. Nightmares she pretends to her parents have gone away. Nightmares of monsters, terrifying creatures attacking her.

Now, with the appearance of 'just call me Will," a mysterious boy who seems to show up out of nowhere, Ellie's nightmares seems to be coming to life. At first she's able to convince herself the nightmares are sill just that, dreams but soon she has to face that fact that they're actually happening.

Will hasn't started appearing in her nightmares, her nightmares have become real. Will, a teen boy she feels like she already knows awakens an ancient power inside Ellie.

Ellie is more than just a wealthy teenage girl shopping for designer dresses for her seventeenth birthday party and anxiously awaiting the new car she's going to get for said birthday. The car isn't the only thing Ellie's going to get on her birthday--Will is also going to return her powers on her birthday. Powers that will awaken lifetimes of memories reminding her how she's the one powerful enough to kill the creatures lurking in the dark lately, the same ones from her nightmares. The ones that happen to be very, very real.


Angelfire has a lot of lore in it (think season five and six of Supernatural, maybe) which--for whatever reason-is making it hard for me to summarize . . .

It's really kind of great because of that, though, because it takes an average girl, a la Buffy, who enjoys being popular and spending time with her friends, throws in this mysterious, kind of enchanting supernatural-y guy with big news of 'you're not exactly average.'

Then now-not-so-average-girl has to figure out being the one girl who can fight these big nasty things with being the fun teenage girl with friends and things to do. All this while trying to learn this ins and outs of the world no one else knows exists, who's the biggest bad and how to stop them from killing her and Mr Mysterious Guy . . . who just might present romance potential.

See, kind of like Buffy in the big points. But really different when reading/watching :)

I really liked that Ellie was a fun girl who loved her pretty dresses and parties while this was a supernatural book. It might just be my reading choices but a lot of books seem to have girls that are able to fight (even with powers given to them) hate fashion or anything girly.

The evil beings having hierarchy and names, etc. reminded me of Supernatural here, but I loved it because a) I love Supernatural (hey, I do!) and b) it helped me keep some of it straight--I'm really hoping some of this is recapped in book two because I don't know if I'll remember all of it!

One aspect of the story also had me really wanting to rewatch a certain season of Angel!

While I have compared this book (or at least parts of it) to Buffy, Supernatural, and Angel, don't think that Angelfire is only a mash-up of existent paranormal TV shows put into book form. Angelfire is still very original and highly creative. In fact, if you enjoy any of those TV shows, you've lucked out because now there's a book series you'll enjoy!

Really looking forward to book 2 in this series!

8/10

(won an ARC from PitchDarkBooks on Twitter!)

Desires of the Dead ~ Kimberly Derting ARC review

synopsis, review and (obviously) book have mega spoilers for the first book, The Body Finder, so just read that one if you haven't yet!! (my review is here)

Desires of the Dead (Body Finder #2)
Harper
February 15, 2011
368 pages
buy/info @ Amazon


Violet and her town are finally safe from the serial killer abducting and killing teenage girls--who even tried to kill Violet. But she's not safe from her 'gift,' her ability to sense and locate dead beings and match their killers to them.

On a day with one of her friends, a day just trying to be a normal teenage girl--as Jay is still the only one of her friends who knows what she can do--she comes across another echo, another body calling to her.

It's her discovery of this body that brings Violet under the notice of the FBI and threatens to make what she does not so secret anymore.

Violet has no idea who to go to with this new development--she would have gone to Jay, but now that they're dating things seem different and anyway, he's always spending time with his new best friend Mike.

With everything seemingly coming apart around her, Violet starts looking into Mike's more than tragic family past--and wondering how and when everything went so wrong. And how to fix it.


Desires of the Dead is interesting because it both expands the story from what The Body Finder focused on (moving out from just Jay, the girls and Violet, her family and the murders to more characters and more locales) but also becoming more focused. Desires of the Dead, logically looks more at Violet and her ability and what that would logically mean for someone in more of the long run. What it would mean if you found bodies, if someone found out, how someone would try to leverage that or you.

Because neither of those things loses anything or is weak so that the other can be strong, I think that Desires of the Dead might even be a stronger book than The Body Finder. The characters are still great. The new characters add a lot to the story; and there's depth to them that adds to the plot as well.

Violet and Jay aren't left in flux nor are they just coasting along so that everything else can be developed. Things aren't given conflict for conflicts sake, either.

The fact that Violet and her 'ability' were taken to another level really made this story realistic even when in one sense it's not.


10/10 for this . . . and when oh when can I find out about more either from Kimberly Derting and/or in this series!!!

won this from PitchDark books on Twitter!


(also I know there's something in my summary that's off from the first book but I didn't want people just glancing at it to see it and spoil themselves for the first book . . . even if I did have a warning!)

Unearthly ~ Cynthia Hand review

Unearthly
HarperTeen
January 4, 2011
448 pages
Buy/info at Amazon


Clara is not only a teenage girl dealing with the usual teenage girl struggles, she's also a Quartarius--one quarter angel. Thankfully for Clara her mother is a half angel and there to help her through coming into her angel-yness (her father's not around or any part angel).

Clara has started to have visions--well a vision, multiple times. The vision is there to tell her her 'purpose'. Every angel or angel-blood has a 'purpose', something they were put on Earth to do. After a while Clara is able to piece together the clues in her vision and knows where the event is going to take place.

Soon, the family-Clara, her mother and her brother Jeffrey are moving to Jackson Hole, Wyoming to help Clara fulfill her purpose.

On the first day of school she meets Christian--the boy at the center of her vision and their lives become linked. There's also Angela, the girl who possibly gives Clara a strange look during the classes' '3 Unique Facts About Me' exercise, Wendy--one of the self professed Invisibles who pretty much instantly becomes Clara's friend, and Tucker, Wendy's infuriating twin brother.

And, of course, there's Clara's need to learn how to be a Quartarius, to learn what being an angel-blood entails and just how she's meant to fulfill her purpose. All while being the New Girl at the same time.


Unearthly being about angels automatically made it different than the other, current paranormal stories, but Cynthia Hand's writing and imagination made it a different worth reading. Each of the characters had their own thing (or things) going on that made them interesting to read about and great additions to the story. I really loved that the setting was so fully utilized in this story, they didn't just live in some town because, the location inspired events in the story and was used almost as a character itself.

And I can't say enough for my love of the romance in this book. It was not solely a romance but the romantic relationship in Unearthly was better written than most I've read in books where there was no supernatural element or other plotline. Hand created two characters I was rooting for from the beginning all the way through to the end. I loved both of them and I loved them together.

The first few chapters of the book had me thinking it was just a really good book, but then when I picked it up again and it really got going, the story sucked me in and I couldn't put it down. (I had a cold and I kept thinking, 'Just a few more pages,' until I got up to take my cold medicine but the only getting up I did until the ending was to turn on a light!

The development, pacing, characters, plot, and mythos of Uneartlhy are all brilliant. I really can't wait to read more from Cynthia Hand and I applaud her for this fantastic debut.

a glorious 10/10


(read this both via NetGalley egalley and a print ARC I won from PitchDarkBooks)

Once in a Full Moon ~ Ellen Schreiber

Once in a Full Moon (Full Moon #1)
Katherine Tegen Books
December 28, 2010
288 pages
Buy/info @ Amazon

Ellen Schreiber, the author of The Vampire Kisses series, has a new series starting, this one about werewolves. This, the first in the series, introduces Celeste Parker who lives in Legend's Run, a town with it's very own werewolf legend. A legend no one gets much use out of, save for telling scary stories around camp fires.

Celeste has a great life, big house on the 'right' side of town, two best friends--and they're all dating best friends. But things change when the new boy, Brandon Maddox shows starts school. Celeste finds herself drawn to him, unable to sate her curiosity in the new boy from the wrong side of town.

Throw in more than one close encounter with a pack of wolves, a strange visit to a psychic for fortune telling and a right/wrong side of town school division and things get even more difficult and confusing.


Once in a Full Moon was a very light paranormal romance, werewolf story. There was the story line about about Celeste not being happy with the division in the school among the rich kids and the not rich kids (the Eastsiders and the Westsiders) and kind of trying to do something about it. Then there was the story line about Brandon and who/what he was. Then there was the storyline about the werewolf legend. And then there was the part about Celeste and her friends and their friendship. For me, they didn't all quite work together great nor did any of them really stand out.

It was sort of a popular-girl-trying-to-be-better story meets a werewolf story but one of the two needed to be stronger or more developed for it to really work. It was like the Celeste at school stuff took away from the paranormal side of the story without adding to it.

I do think I will read more of the series, though, to see if Celeste develops into a stronger character (I think she was)--I didn't connect with her much in this book--and because I found the 'legend' interesting.

For the competing story lines and the fact that I didn't connect with the character:

Rating: 6/10


(read via NetGalley)