Contest for all you readers and writers....

Chanelle Gray, the author of the soon to be released My Heart Be Damned, is doing a big contest on her blog to promote the release of MHBD on September 15! There are quite a few cool prize packs that I encourage everyone to check out.
Info is all here!

As you all know I was vying for an ARC but wasn't able to quite get my hands on one. Expect a review shortly after September 15th :) For those of you who don't know what MHBD is about, here's the Goodreads synopsis:

If you're a Hunter, there are only three things you must know about the Damned. The Damned can't lie, can't live without a body, and can't leave you alone.

Amerie Carter has the blood of a Hunter, unfortunately. She is one of a rare line of women who, upon her sixteenth birthday, will come into extraordinary powers used to hunt the Damned; escaped souls from Hell who take up residence in human bodies. It's supposed to be her sweet sixteen, but Amerie has never dreaded a day more, and her worst fears are confirmed as the celebration turns tragic when her mother is killed.

Grief-stricken, Amerie vows to never hunt a day in her life. She's determined to hide behind normalcy, attending school, hanging out with her friends and working an after-school job at The Hut. All Amerie wants is to be left alone. But try telling the Damned that. The harder Amerie tries to ignore her powers, the more the Damned come looking for her.

When an attack leaves one of Amerie's friends in the hospital, and endangers the lives of her fellow students, she knows she has no choice: Hunt or Be Hunted. Thankfully, the gorgeous, secretive, and so-off-limits Marshall offers to train Amerie to take out her supernatural enemies. But training with Marshall means lying to her friends, her family, and confronting the mysterious circumstances surrounding her mother’s death.

Amerie soon discovers she’s not the only one with something to hide, Marshall's secrets might kill her before the Damned get the chance.

Sounds pretty cool, right? Such a kickass sounding book also has a very awesome cover! One of my favorites so far this year:

REVIEW: Rift by Andrea Cremer

RIFT by Andrea Cremer

This book is...

For fans of the Nightshade series

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

On the List of "Amazing Prequels"

****Side note: Isn't the cover just awesome? Talk about fierce!

Synopsis:
Sixteen-year-old Ember Morrow is promised to a group called Conatus after one of their healers saves her mother's life. Once she arrives, Ember finds joy in wielding swords, learning magic, and fighting the encroaching darkness loose in the world. She also finds herself falling in love with her mentor, the dashing, brooding, and powerful Barrow Hess. When the knights realize Eira, one of their leaders, is dabbling in dark magic, Ember and Barrow must choose whether to follow Eira into the nether realm or to pledge their lives to destroying her and her kind.

With action, adventure, magic, and tantalizing sensuality, this book is as fast-paced and breathtaking as the Nightshade novels.

Review: 

So as I'm sure you all know, Andrea Cremer is not only the author of RIFT but of the Nightshade series, which is on my list of My Favorite All Time Paranormal Series. When I went to Comic Con this past July I was hoping to get my hands on an ARC, but alas I failed and waited until it was officially released.

I have one word to describe RIFT and that is BRILLIANT. "Brilliant" is not a compliment I bestow lightly, so I have broken down why RIFT was brilliant in a VERY orderly fashion, if I do say so myself:

Reason 1: World Building

World building is a particularly important aspect for me to consider in a book, and Cremer has certainly become a master at it. In the Nightshade series, I felt that, while the world Cremer created was great, she didn't explain it in the best way; sometimes facts and conversations were inserted awkwardly, etc. In Rift, this is not an issue whatsoever; everything was weaved together perfectly. I actually felt like I could have been in the stable with Ember and her horse or fighting that disgusting water horse, and I learned about the world in the same way Ember did. All Hail Andrea Cremer, World Weaving Queen!

Reason 2: Strong but Not Annoying Female Lead

Ember is a great example of a heroine who is strong but not without fault and also not annoying. That is a very jumbled and poorly worded description, but basically she is likable and relatable. Despite the fact that she is noble born and that she lives in a time hundreds of years before us, she still struggles with things people, especially women, struggle with today. One thing I've always loved about Nightshade was how Andrea Cremer highlighted the sexism that exists and has existed for years. In Rift, Cremer is still able to provide an enticing story  with a serious emphasis on serious issues. Essentially, it's nice reading about a character who does all this cool badass stuff in a world that doesn't really exist (to our own eyes at least) but still suffers what normal people go through.

The side characters are also very intriguing; I look forward to hearing especially more about Kael and Morag

Reason 3: Love Interest yeeee!

Oh Barrow, Barrow, Barrow. I like him. I like him A LOT. It was clear from the start that he was going to be the love interest, and I love that there weren't any love triangle games going on, at least on the side of Ember. While I appreciate a good love triangle, they are becoming a little cliche. Ember knows what she wants, in more than just her love life, and I like that! There is one scene (I won't get specific because I don't want to spoil it) where Ember really takes the lead in her relationship with Barrow. It is awesome because she doesn't wait around for him to push her into it, she does it because she wants to. I also really enjoyed the fact that there wasn't too much of a "Oh I can't want him, he's my mentor, I must resist my desire!"line going on with Ember. You go for it Ember!

Reason 4: Ties to Nightshade

While RIFT is a stand alone novel, it was still nice to make connections to Nightshade. In Rift, you basically learn the origins of the Keepers (well, not the full story) and the older version of the Searchers.  Personally, I really enjoyed learning more about the Searcher/Conatus side of things. In Nightshade series, I don't think this was the main focus, which is totally fine, but I'm glad Cremer wrote Rift to give more of a background

In all, RIFT is great, even better than any Nightshade book. I am anxiously awaiting for RISE, the sequel to Rift, to see just how things end up!

REVIEW: Bloodlines by Richelle Mead

I know I said I was going to post my Bloodlines review and my Golden Lily review a while ago, but better late than never. 

Now, if there's one thing you should know before reading this, it's how much I LOVED the Vampire Academy series. The world was interesting, the characters were interesting, everything worked. Even when I was disappointed in a character's decision, I at least never thought it was out of character.

Bloodlines.... not so much. I think you can see where I'm going with this.

And I really don't like giving negative reviews, but unfortunately this book deserved it :(

I was disappointed for a number of reasons:

First off, I just didn't like Sydney. I thought she was very annoying and quite frankly infuriating with all this nonsense over her fear of using magic, vampires, etc. I get that characters need time to develop, but Sydney's spinelessness and inability to break free of the Alchemist teachings were too much to handle for an ENTIRE book. I started reading The Golden Lily (aka book 2,) and while she may not be as spineless, Sydney is still struggling with this idea of magic and vampires as friends and it's getting REALLY old.

At the end of the day, I just kept thinking that Rose from VA was a much better narrator than Sydney. Rose is fierce, and the things she struggled with were just more enthralling than the boring and annoying issues in Sydney's life that Mead keeps rehashing over and over and over.

The only redeeming quality about Bloodlines, besides getting to see how Rose and Dimitri are doing, was Adrian. It was nice to have more focus on him; I just love his character. His snarkiness and vices make him seem so relatable and not to mention swoon worthy. However, once I started reading The Golden Lily, I also grew annoyed with him because I felt some of his actions were very out of character! His developing relationship with Sydney literally made me stop reading the book because I couldn't stand a lame character like Sydney getting together with such a fascinating character like Adrian. 

Bloodlines was a decent book but unfortunately it fell short of a lot of my expectations. Mead set the bar very high with the Vampire Academy series, especially with characters like Rose, Dimitri, Christian and Adrian, and I just found Bloodlines really hard to like. It didn't help that Bloodlines does not stand on its own. Mead might as well have just called it the 7th VA novel but with a different, weaker, narrator. This was another reason it was hard for me to not make comparisons with VA- Bloodlines itsn't really a different series!  Do yourself a favor and don't bother reading Bloodlines, and ESPECIALLY The Golden Lily if you want the good stuff from Vampire Academy to remain intact.

WOW it's been a while, plus things to look forward too in September

Wow guys, sorry, summer just seemed to creep out from beneath me! I can promise that I WILL try and be updating more regularly. Anywho, I'm off to school in a few weeks time, the winner of the Strange and Deadly ARC has been emailed, and my birthday is in less than a week!

In addition to my birthday, September also marks the release of a few notable books. The one I've been wanting to get my hands on the most is MY HEART BE DAMNED by Chanelle Gray. The story, as you can read from the Goodreads description below, sounds AWESOME:

If you're a Hunter, there are only three things you must know about the Damned. The Damned can't lie, can't live without a body, and can't leave you alone.

Amerie Carter has the blood of a Hunter, unfortunately. She is one of a rare line of women who, upon her sixteenth birthday, will come into extraordinary powers used to hunt the Damned; escaped souls from Hell who take up residence in human bodies. It's supposed to be her sweet sixteen, but Amerie has never dreaded a day more, and her worst fears are confirmed as the celebration turns tragic when her mother is killed.

Grief-stricken, Amerie vows to never hunt a day in her life. She's determined to hide behind normalcy, attending school, hanging out with her friends and working an after-school job at The Hut. All Amerie wants is to be left alone. But try telling the Damned that. The harder Amerie tries to ignore her powers, the more the Damned come looking for her.

When an attack leaves one of Amerie's friends in the hospital, and endangers the lives of her fellow students, she knows she has no choice: Hunt or Be Hunted. Thankfully, the gorgeous, secretive, and so-off-limits Marshall offers to train Amerie to take out her supernatural enemies. But training with Marshall means lying to her friends, her family, and confronting the mysterious circumstances surrounding her mother’s death.

Amerie soon discovers she’s not the only one with something to hide, Marshall's secrets might kill her before the Damned get the chance.

Pretty cool right? So hopefully I'll be able to get my hands on a copy, in addition  to all the other work I've got going on! I'm pretty active on Goodreads, but I need to start transferring my reviews to over here, so that's my goal for the next week or so!
Cheers!

Something Strange and Deadly ARC Winner plus more review stuff

The contest for the ARC of SOMETHING STRANG AND DEADLY is over- thanks to all who participated! A winner will be announced in the next week.

BLOOD KEEPER review will FOR SURE be up tomorrow and a review of BLOODLINES is also coming. Let me warn you, the BLOODLINES and GOLDEN LILY (book 2 of Bloodlines) is going to be a fairly unpleasant review. I haven't had a series disappoint me this much in ages and I HATE when that happens...

Okay, off to bed now
xxx

Blood Keeper review coming shortly!

I'm hoping to get my BLOOD KEEPER review up later tonight.... In the meantime, make sure you checkout the new giveaway! I have a copy of BLOODLINES by Richelle Mead (Vampire Academy) that I'm giving out!

GIVEAWAY: "Bloodlines" by Richelle Mead

The Vampire Academy series is one of my favorite paranormal series ever. While I'm not normally a fan of spin offs (I usually like the original main characters better and want to hear more about THEM) Richelle Mead does such an amazing job building her vampire world that of course I had to read BLOODLINES. The sequel to Bloodlines, THE GOLDEN LILY just came out this June, so once you finish reading Bloodlines, you luckily have a second book to start, because, let's face it, everyone hates waiting for books to come out...

Anyway, down to the business portion:

I will be giving away one copy of BLOODLINES. 

Here's what you have to do to enter:

1. Follow @SliceOffShelf on Twitter (click here) (If you are already following, don't worry about this one)
2. RT this tweet here. Additionally, you can tweet about the giveaway once per day for extra entries, just make sure you tag @SliceOffShelf!

The contest ends 7/29/12 at 11:59pm PST