Title: Ballad (Books Of Faerie #2)
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Published: October, 2009 by Scholastic
Pages: 386
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

When his best friend, Dee, fell in love with a faerie, James realized she’d never feel the same way about him.

Trying to escape into music, James joins a private conservatory for musicians. James’ musical talent attracts Nuala, a soul-snatching faerie muse who fosters and feeds on the creative energies of exceptional humans until they die. Before he knows it, James is trapped in a dangerous game. One where the only way to win is to betray the one you love…

Final Thoughts:
Ballad feels more like a companion novel rather than a sequel. Sure it follows on from the aftermath of Lament, although it does so in a way that reinvents the world in which we’ve grown accustomed to. Dee is no longer in control as her best friend, James, takes the lead. In fact, Dee is barely visible now and when she is, she’s utterly frustrating. With James’s POV, we get to experience a witty character from the inside. Someone who was once an endless supply of one-liners is now full of struggles and emotion. Rest assured though that there is still enough romance going on, only in a different way.

In My Mailbox is a meme hosted by The Story Siren, which allows bloggers to share what books they’ve received in the past week. They can be from stores, contests, tours or publishers!

• Spellbound by Cara Lynn Shultz (won – thanks She Known As Jess)
• All These Things I’ve Done by Gabrielle Zevin (purchased)
• Perchance To Dream by Lisa Mantchev (purchased)
• Stray by Rachel Vincent (purchased)
• Rogue by Rachel Vincent (purchased)
• Prey by Rachel Vincent (purchased)
• Shift by Rachel Vincent (purchased)
• Awakened by Ednah Walters (purchased)
• The Marked Son by Shea Berkley (purchased)
• The Fallen: Vol 1 by Thomas E. Sniegoski (purchased)
• The Fallen: Vol 2 by Thomas E. Sniegoski (purchased)

I’ve been trying to find the Shifters series for a while now. I read them all a few months ago and was suprised by how much I came to love them. They’re almost impossible to find in store, and I’ve been looking. Finally, I found them insanely cheap second hand though, so now my collection is complete! I read the bound manuscript of All These Things I’ve Done two weeks ago and really got into it, so when I saw it in store, I decided to get myself a finished copy too. I love the covers for the Lisa Mantchev books, I still haven’t started them though. The bottom row are the guy covers. There’s a bit of an angel thing going on there. The guy on the front of Awakened looks disproportioned somehow, I really wish they would have changed the cover. I read the first chapter though and liked what I found. I wasn’t really planning on getting the Fallen books, but they were omnibuses and relatively cheap, plus Paul Wesley starred in the miniseries based on them so I thought why not.

Here are my reviews from the past two weeks:
Hilburn, Lynda Kismet Knight #1, The Vampire Shrink
Stiefvater, Maggie Books Of Faerie #1, Lament
Stiefvater, Maggie Wolves Of Mercy Falls #1, Shiver
Stiefvater, Maggie Wolves Of Mercy Falls #2, Linger
Stiefvater, Maggie Wolves Of Mercy Falls #3, Forever

Link up to your mailbox and I’ll be sure to check it out!

Title: Lament (Books Of Faerie #1)
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Published: October, 2008 by Scholastic
Pages: 356
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

Sixteen-year-old Dee is a cloverhand—someone who can see faeries. When she finds herself irresistibly drawn to beautiful, mysterious Luke, Dee senses that he wants something more dangerous than a summer romance.

But Dee doesn’t realise that Luke is an assassin from the faerie world.

And she is his next target.

Final Thoughts:
I haven’t read a lot of faerie based books yet, so I I’m not as well versed in the faerie lore. That being said, I did find the world of Lament easy enough to follow. It’s not a book centering on the fae politics, rather it takes to the characters on the fringe of that world, exploring the undeniable chemistry between a pair of, and I hate to phrase it like this but, ‘star-crossed’ individuals. A little cliché? Yes I suppose. Anyway, ignoring that fact, the romance here is addictive, and the characters tortured. Sounds like another bout of Maggie Stiefvater fun to me.

Title: The Vampire Shrink (Kismet Knight #1)
Author: Lynda Hilburn
Published: September, 2011 by Jo Fletcher Books
Thanks: Pan Macmillan, AU
Pages: 400
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

Kismet Knight, PhD, doesn’t believe in the paranormal. She especially doesn’t believe in vampires, but she begins to wise up when she is introduced to a handsome man named Devereux who claims to be 800 years old. Kismet doesn’t buy his vampire story, but she also can’t explain why she has such odd reactions and feelings when he is near. Then a client almost completely drained of blood staggers into her waiting room and two angry men force their way into her office, causing her to consider the possibility that she has run afoul of a vampire underworld. Enter FBI profiler Alan Stevens, who warns her that vampires are very real, and one is a murderer—a murderer who is after her.

Final Thoughts:
This was all over the place for me, but in a good way. What started out as a day in the life of a fairly closed off, thirty year old woman, stuck in a monotonous routine of her clients’ therapy sessions, ended up being something completely out of left field. With elements of fantasy, crime procedurals and erotic love triangles, I was flipping desperately through, even resorting to reading by candlelight for more of Kismet’s adventures when my power went out during a thunderstorm.

Title: Forever (Wolves Of Mercy Falls #3)
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Published: July, 2011 by Scholastic
Pages: 496
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

The thrilling conclusion to #1 bestselling Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy from Maggie Stiefvater.

In Maggie Stiefvater’s Shiver, Grace and Sam found each other. In Linger, they fought to be together. Now, in Forever, the stakes are even higher than before. Wolves are being hunted. Lives are being threatened. And love is harder and harder to hold on to as death comes closing in.

Final Thoughts:
I feel like I need to go snack on a block of chocolate after this one. My emotions are on shaky ground, like someone’s stomped on them, sewn them back together and then backed a car over them. I separated my reading into three sessions. The first quarter on Thursday night, the middle Saturday night and then finished off the last quarter Sunday morning. I think that was the right way to do it, this book is a giant ride where you need to pause and enjoy the scenery as so much happens that it could feel like a blur if you were to rush through. You also need to choose your resting points wisely or you could find yourself losing sleep worrying about what Sam and Grace were getting themselves into.

Title: Linger (Wolves Of Mercy Falls #2)
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Published: July, 2010 by Scholastic
Pages: 420
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

Grace and Sam found each other, and now, they must fight to be together. For Grace, this means defying her parents and keeping a very dangerous secret about her own well-being. For Sam, this means grappling with his werewolf past . . . and figuring out a way to survive into the future. Add into the mix a new wolf named Cole, whose own past has the potential to destroy the whole pack. And Isabelle, who already lost her brother to the wolves . . . and is nonetheless drawn to Cole.

At turns harrowing and euphoric, Linger is a spellbinding love story that explores both sides of love — the light and the dark, the warm and the cold — in a way you will never forget.

Final Thoughts:
Having just read Shiver two days ago, I feel like this one let me down slightly. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the book, it’s just that this time around Grace and her parents started to annoy me a little. I raced through Linger a lot quicker than I did with the first book. The on-edge style plot had me getting very little sleep as I kept on telling myself one more chapter, until 3am reared up on me and I just had to force myself into shutting the book.