Title: The Fault In Our Stars
Author: John Green
Published: January, 2012 by Penguin
Thanks: Penguin, AU
Pages: 313
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

Diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer at 12, Hazel was prepared to die until, at 14, a medical miracle shrunk the tumours in her lungs… for now.

Two years post-miracle, sixteen-year-old Hazel is post-everything else, too; post-high school, post-friends and post-normalcy. And even though she could live for a long time (whatever that means), Hazel lives tethered to an oxygen tank, the tumours tenuously kept at bay with a constant chemical assault.

Enter Augustus Waters. A match made at cancer kid support group, Augustus is gorgeous, in remission, and shockingly to her, interested in Hazel. Being with Augustus is both an unexpected destination and a long-needed journey, pushing Hazel to re-examine how sickness and health, life and death, will define her and the legacy that everyone leaves behind.

Final Thoughts:
Oh my…this was the book I needed to read. I’ve been in a slump lately, taking a while to read books that were okay, but that really didn’t do a whole lot for me. The Fault In Our Stars draws you out of whatever little crook you’ve been hiding in and shoves you head first into a world of feeling. I got this one a couple months back, but I’ve been avoiding picking it up mainly because I’d just read another amazing book that dealt with teen cancer and needed the break to prepare myself. On a whim, I snatched this one off my shelf and took it with me to pass the time in a waiting room and ended up almost finishing the book. Albeit the wait was 4+ hours, but it flew by. I was engrossed. I had to eventually stop myself and put it away—the tears were struggling against my flickering eyelids. Sure I could have continued struggling against a break down in public, pausing every now and again—but I wanted to give this book the attention—and the release—it deserved, so I waited, and dove back in as soon as I got home and utterly adored every second of it.

Title: September (Conspiracy 365 #9)
Author: Gabrielle Lord
Published: September, 2010 by Scholastic
Pages: 181
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

On New Year’s Eve, Cal is chased down the street by a staggering, sick man with a deadly warning…”They killed your father. They’ll kill you. You must survive the next 365 days. Hurled into a life on the run the 15-year-old fugitive is isolated and alone.

Final Thoughts:
These books are so short, so I thought I’d leave the reviewing until I got through a chunk of them. I’ve just read June through September over the past week, diving into them, hoping for some new discoveries, understanding the clues that have been dropped so far, and finally getting some closure. Being the middle of the series, we didn’t get too much of that. Instead, these books sought to develop the friendship between Cal, Boges and the mysterious girl, Winter. There are trust issues brought into it, and lots of betrayals that definitely warranted that scepticism. Reading them back to back like this, it’s easy to see how formulaic these books are. Each one begins with a quick resolution of whatever cliffhanger had proceeded it, leaving Callum scrambling to pull things back together, then another month of running around, looking for clues, leading up to another catastrophe that just happens to fall on the final day of each month.

Title: Execution (Escape From Furnace #5)
Author: Alexander Gordon Smith
Published: March, 2011 by Faber and Faber
Pages: 336
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

Alex Sawyer has escaped his underground nightmare to discover the whole world has become a prison, and Alfred Furnace is its master. Monsters rule the streets, leaving nothing but murder in their wake. Those who do not die become slaves to Furnace’s reign of cruelty. Alex is a monster too. He is the only one who can stop Furnace but in doing so he could destroy everything. Is he the executed or the executioner? Who will die? All Alex knows is that one way or another, it all ends now.

Final Thoughts:
It took me two weeks to get through—that should tell you something. Being the final book in the series, I pushed through to the end, just because I needed them to find peach—I mean peace—some sort of resolution. The series as whole has been hit and miss for me. The first book took me a while to get into, but then the second and third had me gripping the pages tightly, unable to stop. Book four—the actual escape, or rather fleeing—was the turning point, but unfortunately lost a bit of steam, the same happened with this one. Alex became very much a loner, taking away the fun, brotherhood aspects I’d come to love in the previous instalments. There were still bits of humour, bits of that camaraderie laced throughout, but it was few and far between, instead focussing on the final battle that Alex needed to face with Furnace, the one the whole series had been leading to.

Title: The Goddess Test (Goddess Test #1)
Author: Aimee Carter
Published: April, 2011 by Harlequin Teen
Thanks: Harlequin Teen, AU
Pages: 293
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

It’s always been just Kate and her mom—and her mother is dying. Her last wish? To move back to her childhood home. So Kate’s going to start at a new school with no friends, no other family and the fear her mother won’t live past the fall.Then she meets Henry. Dark. Tortured. And mesmerizing. He claims to be Hades, god of the Underworld—and if she accepts his bargain, he’ll keep her mother alive while Kate tries to pass seven tests.Kate is sure he’s crazy—until she sees him bring a girl back from the dead. Now saving her mother seems crazily possible. If she succeeds, she’ll become Henry’s future bride, and a goddess.

Final Thoughts:
This one took a while to get through, but was enjoyable throughout the whole book. I think I’d been expecting something a little different going into it, but the end result was equally fun and intriguing. It does have a high school aspect that tries to bring in the angst, but thankfully it was shown the door quite quickly. It wasn’t grating though—I actually found Kate’s blasé attitude towards the social hierarchy refreshing. It helped give more weight to her feelings towards her tenuous home life, waiting for her mother to die.

Title: Galley Proof
Author: Eric Arvin
Published: January, 2012 by Dreamspinner Press
Thanks: Dreamspinner Press via NetGalley
Pages: 195
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

Fiction writer Logan Brandish is perfectly happy in his peaceful small-town routine with his best friend, his cat, and his boyfriend—until he meets the editor of his next book, the handsome Brock Kimble, and the lazy quiet of everyday living goes flying out the window. Faced with real passion for the first time, Logan becomes restless and agitated, and soon his life and his new manuscript—a work in progress he’d always thought would be completed—are in a shambles.

But as Logan is learning, you can’t always get what you want… at least not right away. To take his mind off the mess, he takes a trip, but even the beautiful Italian, um, scenery can’t keep his thoughts from his erstwhile editor for long. Logan just might have to admit there are some things you can’t run from.

Final Thoughts:
Short, but a lot of fun. I kept finding myself running back to my kindle whenever I had a spare bit of time after work—but even so, it only took me a day or so to get through. A book about a writer struggling to write because he’s caught up in his hot editor’s orbit—yeah, that was definitely fun. It wasn’t incredibly moving, and didn’t rock me with a slew of action, but I still enjoyed it immensely. Lately I’ve been reeled in with a few exciting blurbs that were accompanied by less than stellar insides, so I was glad that this one held my interest the way it did.

Title: Fated (Fated #1)
Author: Sarah Alderson
Published: February, 2012 by Simon & Schuster
Thanks: Simon & Schuster, AU
Pages: 310
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

What happens when you discover you aren’t who you thought you were? And that the person you love is the person who will betray you? If your fate is already determined, can you fight it?

When Evie Tremain discovers that she’s the last in a long line of Demon slayers and that she’s being hunted by an elite band of assassins –Shapeshifters, Vampires and Mixen demons amongst them – she knows she can’t run. They’ll find her wherever she goes. Instead she must learn to stand and fight.

But when the half-human, half-Shadow Warrior Lucas Gray – is sent to spy on Evie and then ordered to kill her before she can fulfil a dangerous prophecy, their fates become inextricably linked. The war that has raged for one thousand years between humans and demons is about to reach a devastating and inevitable conclusion. Either one or both of them will die before this war ends.

If your life becomes bound to another’s, what will it take to sever it?

Final Thoughts:
I’ve heard that Sarah’s other book Hunting Lila was amazing, so I was excited to start on her latest release. Unfortunately, it just didn’t wow me. I like demons, and I like demon hunters, so it should have been a perfect fit, but there was something about it, something that it lacked. I didn’t connect with Evie as the book progressed, and at one point I thought, “If they killed her, would I care?” The switching POVs did help it somewhat—Lucas’s life surrounding the Brotherhood brought more to the book—but towards the end, I thought it hindered it. When you know what the other character’s real intentions are, it takes away from the tension.

Title: The Alchemy Of Forever (Incarnation #1)
Author: Avery Williams
Published: April, 2012 by Simon & Schuster
Thanks: Simon & Schuster, AU
Pages: 245
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

After spending six hundred years on Earth, Seraphina Ames has seen it all. Eternal life provides her with the world’s riches but at a very high price: innocent lives. Centuries ago, her boyfriend, Cyrus, discovered a method of alchemy that allows them to take the bodies of other humans from jumping from one vessel to the next, ending the human’s life in the process. No longer able to bear the guilt of what she’s done, Sera escapes from Cyrus and vows to never kill again.

Then sixteen-year old Kailey Morgan gets into a horrific car accident right in front of her, and Sera accidentally takes over her body while trying to save her. For the first time, Sera finds herself enjoying the life of the person she’s inhabiting–and falling in love with the boy who lives next door. But Cyrus will stop at nothing until she’s his again, and every moment she stays, she’s putting herself and the people she’s grown to care about in danger. Will Sera have to give up the one thing that’s eluded her for centuries: true love?

Final Thoughts:
A different take on reincarnation is always welcome, and while this one is certainly unique, it didn’t feel substantial enough to grip me. That’s probably due in part to the short page count. Things don’t really get a lot of focus time, instead, giving us brief moments for each part that Sera comes to understand while living her new life as Kailey. I think the most time was actually spent on the setup. It felt like it took forever for the plot to get underway, and when you know what’s coming, based on the blurb, that’s when long beginnings can be a mistake. I did still enjoy the short time spent with fake-Kailey and Noah—friends falling for each other doesn’t happen enough. It’s normally the paranormal guy that gets the girl, leaving the best friend shafted.