Hunger Games- Suzanne Collins

Sixteen-year-old Katniss is smart, athletic, and fast. She can take down a rabbit with a bow and arrow, hitting it straight through the eye. Will these skills be enough to survive the Hunger Games?

A book filled with love, betrayal, desperation, and an extreme cliffhanger, it definitely left me hungering for the next book (pun intended). This is the story of a young girl, trying to save her sister, herself, having love, finding a new love, and most of all losing everything she ever had, all in the name of a Game. The Hunger Games.

Fire by Kristin Cashore

This is the sequel (prequel) to Graceling.

This is the story of Fire. She is the last of her kind...

It is not a peaceful time in the Dells. In King City, the young King Nash is clinging to the throne, while rebel lords in the north and south build armies to unseat him. War is coming. And the mountains and forest are filled with spies and thieves. This is where Fire lives, a girl whose beauty is impossibly irresistible and who can control the minds of everyone around her.

This book is romantic to the core. A spellbinding tale, definitely a must-read. I can't wait for the next installment "Bitterblue", no word of when that will be released...... soon, I hope!

Devil's Kiss

Perfect Good vs. Evil story line about a girl named Biliquis a.k.a. Billi who is the first and only girl in the Knight's Templar. The Knight's Templar was a group -normally of 9 knights- Templar knights, in their distinctive white mantles with a red cross, were among the most skilled fighting units of the Crusades. In this book, they continue the tradition of watching over the Temple of Solomon and also, they help rid the world of evil. Fighting the never-ending battle against the Unholy. Billi is a Templar, a fighter. Kay, the boy she grew up with, and her friend, is the Oracle, who sees visions, reads minds, and can predict the future. This follows their struggle, the characters are well written, Billi is believable - she is fearless, sad, rebellious, everything a main character should be. I had no idea where the story was taking me. My inital suspicions were wrong, and as the plot built it was definitely a page-turner, keeping me on the edge of my seat. I look forward to reading the next one, The Dark Goddess which comes out fall 2010.

Ash

This started off as a book about fairy tales and elves and was set in an earlier time period with kings, horse drawn carriages, and farming communities.

It skipped around quite a bit, jumping from early years to older, giving a story and then saying "then the year she turned 16" and then "when she turned 18", so it was really hard to get into her character. It was a spinoff of Cinderella, so not super imaginitive.

And to top it all off, the author is a lesbian and during the whole story the main character is having a romance with a handsome male fairy, the last three pages she jumps ship and ends up becoming a lesbian.... What the .... ?!?!
I will be returning this book to Barnes and Noble TODAY. Such a disappointment

The Lightening Thief

Percy Jackson and the Olympians is a series with 7 books so far. I've made it to book 5 and am still going strong. This is a many-layered story with Gods, Goddesses, and much more. Percy finds out, at age 12, that he is a demi-god- half-human and half-immortal. As the son of Poseidon (ruler of the sea) he is an extremely powerful half-blood, just as soon as he can get a handle on his powers. This is definitely a young adult read, but an excellent and fun take on Greek Mythology. Join Percy as he defends himself against a Minotaur, Ares, and many other mythological creatures in his quest to prove his innocence in the theft of Zeus' lightening bolt.

Rampant

Forget everything you ever knew about unicorns . . .
Real unicorns are venomous, man-eating monsters with huge fangs and razor-sharp horns. Fortunately, they've been extinct for a hundred and fifty years.
Or not.
This is about a girl, Astrid, who comes from a seemingly normal life, and ends up being sent to Rome during her junior year in high school to train as a unicorn huntress. Similar to the goddess Diana. Extremely intriguing, completely new spin on what I considered a white, precious, animal-- the Unicorn.
The characters are engaging and each one is integral to the story, very imaginitive.
I was hooked from the beginning, definitely a well-written story with plenty of adventure to keep you hooked from start to finish.

Vampire Kisses, The Beginning

Hands-down the most witty book I have read in a while. I love it, just read this excerpt and you will see why...

Halfway through kindergarten I tried to become a vampire. TrevorMitchell, a perfectly combed blond with weak amber eyes, was my nemesis from the moment I stared him down when he tried to cut in front of me on the slide.
He hated me because I was the only kid that wasn’t afraid of him. The kids and teachers kissed up to him because his father owned most of the land their houses sat on. Trevor was in a biting phase, not because he wanted to be a vampire like me, but just because he was mean. He had taken pieces of flesh out of everyone but me. And I was starting to get ticked off!
We were on the playground, standing by the basketball hoops, when I pinched the skin of his puny little arm so hard I thought blood would squirt out. His face turned beet red. I stood motionless and waited. Trevor’s body trembled with anger, and his eyes swelled with vengeance as I mischievously smiled back. Then he left his dental impressions in my expectant hand. Mrs. Peevish was forced to sit him against the school wall, and I happily danced around the playground, waiting to transform into a vampire bat.
“That Raven is an odd one,” I overhead Mrs. Peevish saying to another teacher as I skipped past the crying Trevor, who was now throwing a fit against the hard blacktop. I blew him a grateful kiss with my bitten hand.
I wore mywound proudly as I got on the school swing. I could fly now, right?