No. 26 for 2012

Title The Uglies
Author: Scott Westerfield
Rating: 4/5
Book: 26/50 (52% completed)
Pages: 425 pgs
Total Pages: 9,599/15,000 (63.99% completed)
Version: Book
Next up: 11th Hour by James Patterson & Maxine Paetro

My boss recommended this book to me. She told me that if I had enjoyed The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and was a fan of dystopian themes, I would enjoy this book. She was right. I loved the characters and the plot was interesting. I also love the message that this book delivered. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys the dystopian genre. I can’t wait to read the rest.

About the Book:

Tally is about to turn sixteen, and she can’t wait. Not for her license-for turning pretty. In Tally’s world, your sixteenth birthday brings an operation that turns you from a repellent ugly into a stunningly attractive pretty and catapults you into a high-tech paradise where your only job is to have a really great time. IN just a few weeks, Tally will be there.

But Tally’s new friend Shay isn’t sure she wants to be pretty. She’d rather risk like on the outside. When Shay runs away, Tally learns about a whole new side of the pretty world-and it isn’t very pretty. The authorities offer Tally the worst choice she can imagine: find her friend and turn her in, or never turn pretty at all. The choice Tally makes changes her world forever.

No. 25 for 2012

Title The Innocent
Author: David Baldacci
Rating: 4/5
Book: 25/50 (50% completed)
Pages: 422 pgs
Total Pages: 9,174/15,000 (61.16% completed)
Version: Book
Next up: Uglies by Scott Westerfield

I couldn’t put this book down! I loved it and I think it is one of Baldacci’s best. It was full of suspense and twists and turns, some that I didn’t even see coming. I definitely recommend this book to anybody who loves a good mystery.

About the Book:

America has enemies–ruthless people that the police, the FBI, even the military can’t stop. That’s when the U.S. government calls on Will Robie, a stone cold hitman who never questions orders and always nails his target. But Will Robie may have just made the first–and last–mistake of his career . . .

It begins with a hit gone wrong. Robie is dispatched to eliminate a target unusually close to home in Washington, D.C. But something about this mission doesn’t seem right to Robie, and he does the unthinkable. He refuses to kill. Now, Robie becomes a target himself and must escape from his own people.

Fleeing the scene, Robie crosses paths with a wayward teenage girl, a fourteen-year-old runaway from a foster home. But she isn’t an ordinary runaway-her parents were murdered, and her own life is in danger. Against all of his professional habits, Robie rescues her and finds he can’t walk away. He needs to help her.

Even worse, the more Robie learns about the girl, the more he’s convinced she is at the center of a vast cover-up, one that may explain her parents’ deaths and stretch to unimaginable levels of power.

Now, Robie may have to step out of the shadows in order to save this girl’s life . . . and perhaps his own.

No. 24 for 2012

Title Deadlocked
Author: Charlaine Harris
Rating: 3.5/5
Book: 24/50 (48% completed)
Pages: 327 pgs
Total Pages: 8,752/15,000 (58.35% completed)
Version: Book
Next up: The Innocent by David Baldacci

I found the majority of the book to be drawn out and dry. About 90% of the book was a play-by-play of Sookie’s life, i.e. “I went to pick up the mail. I went inside and put my mail on the table where I opened my electricity bill. Then I went upstairs and took a nap before getting up and putting on some make up so I could go out……etc.”

Sookie is still questioning her love for Eric and flipping between men again. Eric, Bill, Quinn and Alcide all made an appearance in this book.

The plot seemed to drag out for me. It seemed like very little was accomplished in this book, other than giving readers the low down on Sookie’s everyday life. That being said though, I still enjoyed the book, although not as much as I enjoyed the earlier books in the series. It’s obvious to me that Harris has run out of things to do with the series. To me, this book felt to me like Harris knows she’s under contract to write two more books and this book was just full of filler material. I worry that is what the last book is going to be like too.

While I have mixed reviews of this book, I’m always happy to return back to Sookie’s world.

About the Book:

It’s vampire politics as usual around the town of Bon Temps, but never before have they hit so close to Sookie’s heart. Growing up with telepathic abilities, Sookie Stackhouse realized early on that there are things she’d rather not know. And now that she’s an adult, she also realizes that some things she knows about, she’d rather not see–like Eric Northman feeding off another woman. A younger one. There’s a thing or two she’d like to say about that, but she has to keep quiet–Felipe de Castro, the vampire King of Louisiana (and Arkansas and Nevada), is in town. It’s the worst possible time for a human body to show up in Eric’s front yard–especially the body of the woman whose blood he just drank. Now it’s up to Sookie and Bill, the official Area Five investigator, to solve the murder. Sookie thinks that, at least this time, the dead girl’s fate has nothing to do with her. But she is wrong. She has an enemy, one far more devious than she would ever suspect, who’s set out to make Sookie’s world come crashing down.

No. 23 for 2012

Title Fifty Shades of Grey
Author: E.L. James
Rating: 4/5
Book: 22/50 (46% completed)
Pages: 514 pgs
Total Pages: 8,425/15,000 (56.17% completed)
Version: Book
Next up: Deadlocked by Charlaine Harris

The only reason that I gave this book 4 stars, is because for some reason, I was addicted to the book and couldn’t put it down. The writing style leaves much to be desired but the plot was intriguing and the characters were likeable enough.

Still, if I have to read “my inner goddess” again, I might scream.

About the Book:

When literature student Anastasia Steele is drafted to interview the successful young entrepreneur Christian Grey for her campus magazine, she finds him attractive, enigmatic and intimidating. Convinced their meeting went badly, she tries to put Grey out of her mind – until he happens to turn up at the out-of-town hardware store where she works part-time.

The unworldly, innocent Ana is shocked to realize she wants this man, and when he warns her to keep her distance it only makes her more desperate to get close to him. Unable to resist Ana’s quiet beauty, wit, and independent spirit, Grey admits he wants her – but on his own terms.

Shocked yet thrilled by Grey’s singular erotic tastes, Ana hesitates. For all the trappings of success – his multinational businesses, his vast wealth, his loving adoptive family – Grey is a man tormented by demons and consumed by the need to control. When the couple embarks on a passionate, physical and daring affair, Ana learns more about her own dark desires, as well as the Christian Grey hidden away from public scrutiny.

Can their relationship transcend physical passion? Will Ana find it in herself to submit to the self-indulgent Master? And if she does, will she still love what she finds?