In My Mailbox

In My Mailbox is a weekly meme hosted every Sunday over at The Story Siren. A great meme which allows bloggers to share what they receive/buy/borrow each week. 

Evening everyone. It's 22:17 so I'm sorry this is so late, I have had a busy work day at the art gallery.

So lets get to it!!

In My Mailbox this week I got:~

Starcrossed

Josephine Angelini

Blood Magic

Tessa Gratton

Sky Hawk

Gill Lewis

Delirium

Lauren Oliver



Mercy

Rebecca Lim

I'll be sure to add more information on the books tomorrow and try to get a video up!

Happy reading everyone!!

Low Red Moon Review

low red moon

Ivy Devlin

September 2010

Opening Line: 'I was covered in blood when the police found me.'

Closing Line: '"I do now", he said, and then he kissed me again, his smiling mouth matching my own.'

Favourite Quote: "I've seen into the forest, way inside, back where people don't go. My mother loved to look at it, would sit outside and watch birds and look at the trees, look far back as she could. And she let me look too. There's something there. Something old and strong, and people won't ever - there will always be woods here. Woodlake isn't - it's different. There is something stronger than humans here."

~Avery~

I must say, this is one of the prettiest books I've ever had! I know we shouldn't judge a book by it's cover, but we all do it!! It has a metallic red cover with embossed lettering and as you open the book there is a beautiful red image spanning two pages. Each page number is red along with the book title and author's name. Each chapter has a red tree and moon and in the bottom corner of most pages is a little red tree scene. Just Beautiful!!

I think the title of this book speaks for itself, yes you guessed, moon = wolf!!
In Low Red Moon Devlin has created a perfect paranormal, murder mystery, romance and I totally loved it!!!!

Avery Hood's world is torn apart after she is found with her parents bodies in the forest she grew up in, but she can't remember what happened. All she can recall is the colour silver moving 'inhumanly' fast. The trauma of her parents murder has caused Avery to block out the details of that night, no matter what she does to remember she just can't. And she is forced to live with Renee, the grandmother she hardly knows away from the forest she knows and loves.

As she deals with the loss of her parents Avery meets the new boy in town who understands what she is going through. Ben, has moved into the forest to live with his uncle not far from where Avery use to live. The two are drawn to each other in a way that can't be explained, Avery knows there is something different about Ben after seeing a glint of silver in normally brown eyes. Ben is a wolf! But Avery isn't completely normal herself! She is tied to the forest, she even acquires a red streak in her hair and knows when the forest is hurting. I love how Devlin has included the forest as a character in this story and given it a voice through Avery Hood.

I love the relationship between Avery and Ben, their want and need for each other is so strong it pours off the pages and I hated it when they were apart! I also liked the fact that, although they could tell how the other felt, Avery still isn't fully sure what Ben is able to do in wolf form, it doesn't help that he can't remember what he does in wolf form which always seems to fall on the night of a murder.
I also really liked how the relationship grew between Avery and her grandmother, it gave me a real sense of now matter what has happened family is always family. It was clear Renee had her own secrets which became clear as the story went on.

I was totally hooked before I even got to the end of the first page of this book!! What a great opening!! I found myself dragged into the story and like Avery I desperately wanted to know what had happened and who was behind the killings! With only a hand full of characters in the book I had my suspicions, but boy was I wrong!! And I was totally shocked when I discovered who was behind the deaths!
With all the twists and secrets and shocks I can't wait for the next book, with the way this one ended there has to be another!

5/5 Stars. Why? Because Devlin has created a new paranormal romance with the right amount of mystery, suspense, and a love story like no other!! A must read and an author I'll be keeping both eyes on!!

Inside Out Review

                                                                                                                                                                                     
               Inside Out by Maria V. Snyder

Review by Ni_kii

                            My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Trella is a scrub. A scrub is a cleaner in the lower regions. In the lower regions live thousands of people who are basically slaves. They each have a job and a shift pattern where they work half the day and sleep half the day. Scrubs have no families or living quarters. They have an assigned bed, which they share with a person who works on the opposite shift pattern, and all babies are taken away from their parents, at birth, and put into care homes where they are trained for future jobs. Trella is known as Queen of the Pipes as she like to spend her spare time in the pipes which separate the lower and upper regions rather than spend it with her fellow scrubs. In the upper regions live the more privileged people who are allowed families and proper homes. It is the hope of every scrub to get to the upper regions or the mythical gateway that leads to Outside (no one actually knows what is on the outside..)
The story begins with the Broken man (a man in a wheelchair) trying to get Trella, through her friend Cog, to help him with his quest to find the Gateway. Of course such talk is not allowed by the "Pop-Cops" (Population Control police who run the lower regions and enforce the rules) and they try to arrest the Broken man. Knowing that he will be sent to the Chomper (literally a machine which minces up unruly scrubs) Trella and Cog hide him away in a forgotten place which has been discovered by Trella on her travels. The Pop-cops search the lower regions for the Broken man, suspecting Cob and Trella as his rescuers. After Cob is arrested, and scheduled for execution, is up to Trella to try to get to the Gateway and hopefully save her friend. Along the way she gains support in unexpected places, especially from an upper named Riley.

I enjoyed this book but it took a blooming long-time to even start liking it! I started the book treating it as a Young Adult. By the end of it I had decided that I wouldn't sort it as a Young Adult on my shelves. The lead character, Trella, is a young adult (don't ask me how old....I gave up trying to figure out how these people measure time about 2 chapters in. It would take a calculator to work out everyones age and I hate math...Im not going to start doing it for a book!) and the book is written from her POV. This does, at points, give a Young Adult flavour to the tale. However this is where the young adult aspects start and end. The writing is fabulous but incredibly detailed and elaborate. I suggest you treat this book like Inception the movie - you skip details and you will get lost! The world building is probably the best I have seen since Iones' Demonica series and I loved this dystopian world. The mild romance was lovely to see build and I liked the fact that you saw it coming before the characters did, it was sweet. However the unnderlying themes were DARK. First the segregation between the classes was horrible. Yes it turned out that life wasn't as hunky-dory as believed in the upper region, but there was still a massive difference. The torture that went on for information was just plain evil, as was the casual disregard for life that was shown by the feeding of the scrubs to the "Chomper." The separation of families from their children was heartbreaking and the consequences of this entire population essentially being orphans was unthinkable. The whole underlying strands to this world were disturbing and that, along with the complexity of the plot and language, are the reasons I cannot class this as a YA book.

Did I like it? I loved it. It wasn't poison study (which I adored) but it was just as well written. I don't think I truly managed to get my head around the structure of the world until the end, but the amount of creativity and thought that went into its creation is astounding. It took me a while to warm to Trella. Occaisionally she bordered on obnoxious bint rather than strong-female, but I began to see that as a product of her upbringing and accepted it. I loved Riley. He was so sweet and brave....I always think that if a book, written in first person, can make you love other characters then its a winner. The other characters were likeable enough. One thing I like about Snyders' writing is she doesn't waste space. Every person and scene written had a purpose in driving the plot forward, so the pace never let up.
I enjoyed the romance, I rooted for the cause, I was disturbed by the evilness of the plot and I read it in two sittings. I think that about sums-up how good this book is and I have put the next one on my future reads book....Can I say more than that? :)

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