Title: Unraveling (Unraveling #1)
Author: Elizabeth Norris
Published: April, 2012 by Balzer & Bray
Pages: 445
Rating:  
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pSixteen-year-old Janelle Tenner is used to having a lot of responsibility. She balances working as a lifeguard in San Diego with an intense academic schedule. Janelle’s mother is bipolar, and her dad is a workaholic FBI agent, which means Janelle also has to look out for her younger brother, Jared.

And that was before she died… and is brought back to life by Ben Michaels, a mysterious, alluring loner from her high school. When she discovers a strange clock that seems to be counting down to the earth’s destruction, Janelle learns she has twenty-four days to figure out how to stop the clock and save the planet.

Final Thoughts:
Coming off the back of a not-so-riveting read, I jumped right into this and got hooked. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line things soured a bit for me and all of the promise I had seen in the earlier chapters started to fade away. Plus, certain things irritated me like the instaluv, and main character, Janelle’s constant use of the saying ‘because I’m like that’. Yes, I got that she was like that, but I got to a point where enough was enough and I just couldn’t go on agreeing with her blindly simply because she was the main character.

Title: All Our Yesterdays (All Our Yesterdays #1)
Author: Cristin Terrill
Published: August, 2013 by Bloomsbury
Pages: 362
Rating:  
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Em is locked in a bare, cold cell with no comforts. Finn is in the cell next door. The Doctor is keeping them there until they tell him what he wants to know. Trouble is, what he wants to know hasn’t happened yet.

Em and Finn have a shared past, but no future unless they can find a way out. The present is torture – being kept apart, overhearing each other’s anguish as the Doctor relentlessly seeks answers. There’s no way back from here, to what they used to be, the world they used to know. Then Em finds a note in her cell which changes everything. It’s from her future self and contains some simple but very clear instructions. Em must travel back in time to avert a tragedy that’s about to unfold. Worse, she has to pursue and kill the boy she loves to change the future.

Final Thoughts:
Un-put-down-able, that’s what this book would have been had I not needed to work, eat or sleep. Every chance I got, I had this book in my hands, frantically trying to see how things would play out. The first page had me hooked, which was certainly a good sign. Some books you just trudge through, but this one had me actually wanting to read, just for the enjoyment of reading. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of time travel YA out there, so I usually jump on them whenever I spot one. And unlike Julie Cross’ Tempest, which was ‘Boy loves girl. Girl dies. Boy goes back to save her’, All Our Yesterdays shook things up with ‘Boy tortures girl. Girl hates boy. Girl goes back to kill him’.

Title: Zero At The Bone
Author: Jane Seville
Published: April, 2009 by Dreamspinner Press
Pages: 308
Rating:  
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After witnessing a mob hit, surgeon Jack Francisco is put into protective custody to keep him safe until he can testify. A hitman known only as D is blackmailed into killing Jack, but when he tracks him down, his weary conscience won’t allow him to murder an innocent man. Finding in each other an unlikely ally, Jack and D are soon on the run from shadowy enemies.

Forced to work together to survive, the two men forge a bond that ripens into unexpected passion. Jack sees the wounded soul beneath D’s cold, detached exterior, and D finds in Jack the person who can help him reclaim the man he once was. As the day of Jack’s testimony approaches, he and D find themselves not only fighting for their lives… but also fighting for their future. A future together.

Final Thoughts:
A hitman falling for his target—it doesn’t sound too original, but it ended up being a completely addictive read. Alternating POVs, we get to see inside the closed off mind of a killer as he tries to come to grips with his warring emotions, as well as the mind of the target—a surgeon-turned-highly sought after witness. It’s a very long book, or at least it felt like it. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, spreading things out, giving them time to build, while still packing in oodles of plot. Once this thriller infused the romance, it became very hard to put down—I stayed up well past 4am on this one.

Title: Hushed
Author: Kelley York
Published: December, 2011 by Entangled Publishing
Pages: 229
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

He’s saved her. He’s loved her. He’s killed for her.

Eighteen-year-old Archer couldn’t protect his best friend, Vivian, from what happened when they were kids, so he’s never stopped trying to protect her from everything else. It doesn’t matter that Vivian only uses him when hopping from one toxic relationship to another—Archer is always there, waiting to be noticed.

Then along comes Evan, the only person who’s ever cared about Archer without a single string attached. The harder he falls for Evan, the more Archer sees Vivian for the manipulative hot-mess she really is.

But Viv has her hooks in deep, and when she finds out about the murders Archer’s committed and his relationship with Evan, she threatens to turn him in if she doesn’t get what she wants… And what she wants is Evan’s death, and for Archer to forfeit his last chance at redemption.

Final Thoughts:
I love broken boys—they tear you up inside, but you can’t help but want to see them happy. Archer, faced with a horrible upbringing, is quiet, withdrawn, basically living only to please his childhood friend, turned obsession–Vivian. Beyond frustrating, she’s the kind of person you don’t need in your life anymore, but can’t seem to get rid of—a heavily one sided relationship. Setting it apart from the other contemporary romances, Hushed takes on a surprisingly gripping serial killer plot, where Archer—the protagonist—is the one knocking people off. While it could be compared to Dexter, I think Archer comes across more likeable, with a desire to protect the ones he cares for, rather than getting off on killing people.