Review: The Calling by Kelley Armstrong

The Calling by Kelley Armstrong

Series: Darkness Rising, Book #1

Published: April 5th, 2012

Publisher: HarperTeen

326 pages (hardcover)

Genre: Young adult paranormal/urban fantasy

Acquired this book: From the library

Warning: May contain spoilers

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{Read my review of The Gathering}

Maya Delaney's paw-print birthmark is the mark of what she truly is -a skin-walker. She can run faster, climb higher, and see better than nearly everyone else. Experiencing intense connections with the animals that roam the woods outside her home, Maya knows it's only a matter of time before she's able to Shift and become one of them. And she believes there may be others in her small town with surprising talents.

Now Maya and her friends have been forced to flee from their homes during a forest fire they suspect was deliberately set. Then they're kidnapped, and after a chilling helicopter crash, they find themselves in the Vancouver Island wilderness with nothing but their extraordinary abilities to help them get back home.

In THE CALLING, the sizzling second book in the Darkness Rising trilogy, New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong pumps up the romance, danger, and suspense that left readers of THE GATHERING clamoring for more.

 

I’ve been a fan of Kelley Armstrong’s books since before I started blogging, and I continue to love her books more and more. The Calling is the second installment in Armstrong’s Darkness Rising trilogy, and it picks up right after where we left off with The Gathering. In the first book, things ended in the midst of a seriously stressful situation, and the tension, fear, and worry are not only carried over into the second book, it feels like the stakes are even higher somehow.

Armstrong has a real knack for pulling you into the story and making you feel like you’re right there. I was able to feel Maya’s apprehension, anger, worry, confusion. I felt like I was right there with her and her friends, trekking through the forest, trying to figure things out, trying to escape, trying to make it to safety. The book was mostly fast-paced, but it did have a lot of Maya’s internal dialogue as she tried to figure things out. While this would usually detract from my overall enjoyment, the story never failed to hold my interest, and I devoured this book, unable to put it down until I found out what was going to happen.

I loved the supernatural aspect of the book, and getting to see the teens’ powers coming to the surface, and how they dealt with them, especially Maya. I also loved how the book was subtly tied into the Darkest Powers trilogy; it makes me even more excited for the final book in the trilogy, because it seems like there’s a lot yet to happen. 

Intense and action-packed, with plenty of suspense as well as twists, turns, and surprises, The Calling is a fantastic middle book in a thrilling trilogy. I have no doubt the final installment in this trilogy, The Rising, is going to be incredible, and I can’t wait to find out what happens to Maya and her friends.

 

  

Have you read The Calling? What did you think? Are you a fan of Kelley Armstrong's books?

 

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Review: Friday Night Bites by Chloe Neill

Friday Night Bites by Chloe Neill

Series: Chicagoland Vampires, Book #2

Published: September 2nd, 2009

Publisher: NAL Trade

357 pages (paperback)

Genre: Adult paranormal/urban fantasy

Acquired this book: From the library

Warning: May contain spoilers

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 {Read my review of Some Girls Bite}

You’d think headlines like that would have provoked the fine citizens of the Windy City to take up arms against us bloodsucking fiends. Instead, ten months later, we’re enjoying a celebrity status reserved for the Hollywood elite—fending off paparazzi only slightly less dangerous than cross and stake-wielding slayers. Don’t get me wrong, Joe Public isn’t exactly thrilled to be living side-by-side with the undead, but at least they haven’t stormed the castle yet.

But all that will change once they learn about the Raves—mass feeding parties where vampires round up humans like cattle and drink themselves silly. Most civilized vampires frown on this behavior, putting mere mortals at ease with their policy of asking a person’s consent before taking a big gulp of the red stuff. However, that doesn’t make good copy for a first time reporter looking to impress his high society family.

So now my “master,” the centuries old, yet gorgeously well-preserved Ethan Sullivan, wants me to reconnect with my own upper class family and act as liaison between humans and vampires—and keep the more unsavory aspects of our existence out of the media. But someone doesn’t want people and vamps to play nicey-nice—someone with an ancient grudge.

I loved Some Girls Bite, the first book in the Chicagoland Vampires series. I thought it was original, funny, and action-packed, and I was eager to see where the series went. I never thought this would be a series that would suffer from second book syndrome, but it was. Friday Night Bites was…meh. It was slow (it took me almost two weeks to read) and lacked so many of the things that made Some Girls Bite so fantastic. I wanted to love this book so badly, but it really fell short.

There wasn’t a whole lot of development in Friday Night Bites. There were some issues with Merit and Mallory’s friendship, and Merit learned a little bit about her vampire side, but it all felt kind of superficial. It could have been fleshed out more and added to the plot, but it felt like it was thrown in halfheartedly, and as a result I was bored and found it hard to get invested in the characters. The romances were also really disappointing. Merit got nowhere with Ethan (who I felt we could have learned a bit more about), and I was beginning to like where things were going with Morgan until he turned into a possessive, jealous, untrusting jerk...mind you, I guess Merit was leading him on, but still. The way he started treating her just didn't sit right with me. At this point I don’t know who Merit should end up with, nor do I particularly care because nothing made me care in this book. 

I found Merit hard to like at times, when I absolutely adored her in Some Girls Bite and thought she was this strong, kickass heroine who was easy to admire and respect. Where did that girl go? I only saw very small glimpses of her in Friday Night Bites.

The plot - what there was of it - was fairly interesting, although similar to the first book. I’m curious to learn more about the Breckinridges, and see how Merit fits back into her family now that she’s a vampire.

Overall, I found Friday Night Bites to be a big disappointment. It lacked in action, romance, and character development, and left me unable to connect with the characters or the story. However, I’m not quite ready to say goodbye to Merit and the gang just yet. Because I loved Some Girls Bite so much, I’m hopeful that Friday Night Bites was just a bump in the road and that the series will pick up. I feel like this series has a lot of potential, and I’m looking forward to reading the third book and hopefully falling back in love with the Chicagoland Vampires.

2.5 stars

Have you read Friday Night Bites or any of the other Chicagoland Vampires series? What did you think?

 

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Review: A Shade of Vampire by Bella Forrest

A Shade of Vampire by Bella Forrest

Series: A Shade of Vampire, Book #1

Published: December 14th, 2012

Publisher: Self-published

149 pages (ebook)

Genre: Young adult paranormal

Acquired this book: From the author in exchange for an honest review

Warning: May contain spoilers

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On the evening of Sofia Claremont's seventeenth birthday, she is sucked into a nightmare from which she cannot wake.

A quiet evening walk along a beach brings her face to face with a dangerous pale creature that craves much more than her blood.
She is kidnapped to an island where the sun is eternally forbidden to shine.
An island uncharted by any map and ruled by the most powerful vampire coven on the planet. She wakes here as a slave, a captive in chains.
Sofia's life takes a thrilling and terrifying turn when she is the one selected out of hundreds of girls to join the harem of Derek Novak, the dark royal Prince.
Despite his addiction to power and obsessive thirst for her blood, Sofia soon realizes that the safest place on the island is within his quarters, and she must do all within her power to win him over if she is to survive even one more night.
Will she succeed? ...or is she destined to the same fate that all other girls have met at the hands of the Novaks?

I’ll be honest: I wasn’t expecting much from A Shade of Vampire. I thought the premise sounded interesting, but between the length of the book and the fact that vampire books these days are often very similar, I didn’t have the highest of hopes. I’m pleased to say  this book was a pleasant surprise. Not only was the premise interesting, it was different from anything I’ve read, and despite how short the book was, the characters were well fleshed out.

When Sofia is kidnapped and taken to the island of a powerful vampire coven, she is intended to be part of Derek Novak’s harem when he awakes from a magically-induced 400-year slumber. Derek hates the fact that he’s a vampire, which is why he had a witch put him to sleep...only it was supposed to be forever rather than just four centuries. When he awakes in a completely different world than the one he knew, he takes an immediate interest in Sofia and wants her to be more than just his blood slave.

I liked that Sofia was tough but also compassionate. She was afraid of what would happen to her, and yet that didn’t stop her from being kind to Derek and eventually accepting her fate by trying to get to know him. The romance happened a bit quickly, but I enjoyed watching it unfold. Derek struggled to retain some of his humanity, and fought against the darker nature of the vampire, yet he still had some of the classic traits most people associate with vampires: commanding, possessive, etc. There was nice contrast between the two characters.

Forrest did a great job with the world building. Most vampire books are set in modern society, but A Shade of Vampire takes place on a secret vampire island, the Shade, where the sun never shines and vampires have their own society with rules and a hierarchy that’s similar to ours but with their own vampire politics. It was a fascinating place that was described in a way that was easy to picture.

If you enjoy books about vampires and you’re looking for a unique, fast-paced story with plenty of action and romance, I’d definitely recommend A Shade of Vampire. I was hooked from beginning to end, and read this in one day (which, despite only being 149 pages is pretty good for me since I’m a slow reader). I’m really eager to read A Shade of Blood, and find out what happens to Sofia and Derek next. 

 

Have you read A Shade of Vampire? What did you think? If you haven't read it, does it sound like something you'd be interested in? Do you like vampire books, or are you tired of them?

 

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2013 Spooktacular Paranormal Challenge Review Link-Up

Welcome to the 3rd Annual Spooktacular Paranormal Reading Challenge! I hope you're all as excited about the challenge as I am. I love paranormal books and I've been looking for an excuse to read a whole bunch of them, and October seems like the perfect time.

If you need a refresher on the rules or if you haven't signed up yet (you can sign up all month long), check out this post.  

Here's how this is going to work: first, you link up your review in the Linky - for example, Friday Night Bites (SweetMarie83) - then you enter the Rafflecopter with the name of your review. You do this every time you link up a review, and each review is an entry in the giveaway. Just remember that all reviews must be posted for the first time between October 1st and 31st, 2013.

If you're on Twitter, be sure to tweet about what you're reading, your progress, creepy quotes, links to your reviews, etc, using the hashtag #SPRC. All month long, I'll be randomly retweeting people who use the hashtag. If you'd like to follow me and/or chat with me on Twitter, I'm @SweetMarie83.

Any questions? You can email me at irishstar_83(at)hotmail(dot)com or tweet me.

a Rafflecopter giveaway
Now go read some creepy, spooky books!

 

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3rd Annual Spooktacular Paranormal Reading Challenge

Welcome to the sign-ups for the third annual Spooktacular Paranormal Reading Challenge! I can't believe this is the third year, you guys. The first year was a huge success, and last year was decent, but I'm hoping to get a turn-out like we did in 2011 because I was blown away by the number of people who participated. This year I'm going to make the rules a bit simpler, so hopefully more people will want to participate. 

Here’s the deal: since Halloween is my favourite holiday, I decided the entire month of October should be dedicated to all things paranormal, and I also decided I wanted to include the blogosphere. For the last two years, the challenge has been to read a minimum of three books between October 1st and 31st, and I think maybe that's where things went wrong last year. Most bloggers have so many review books and such a tight reading schedule that fitting three books in, especially if it's not a genre you normally read, can be hard. So this year, I'm mixing things up a bit...

Challenge Details:

• Read and review at least one (1) paranormal** book. Reviews must be posted for the first time between October 1st and 31st, 2013. Something else that's different this year: since the sign-ups go up September 1st, you can start reading any time you want, as long as the reviews you submit are posted after October 1st. So go ahead and get a head start! This means the challenge technically runs for 2 months, but only reviews posted between October 1st and 31st will count toward the challenge giveaway.

• You don’t have to have a blog to participate, as long as you can post your reviews somewhere (GoodReads, Amazon, etc) and link to them.

• For every paranormal book you read, review, and link up in the month of October, you’ll be entered in a giveaway to win the paranormal book of your choice up to $15 USD (or if you can find two books that come to $15 or less, that's fine too!). To be eligible for the giveaway, you must review at least one book during October. Each review is an entry in the giveaway, so the more you read, the more chances you have to win.

• The link-up in this post is just for sign ups. I’ll be posting a separate link-up for reviews on the 1st of October.

• Ebooks and audiobooks count. Adult and young adult books count. If this challenge crosses over into other challenges you're doing, that’s fine with me.

**PARANORMAL: Same as the last two years, I’m using a very loose interpretation of ‘paranormal’. It can be paranormal, fantasy, urban fantasy - basically any ‘creature’ or ‘otherworldly’ book counts - vampires, werewolves, faeries, shape shifters, zombies, angels, demons, mermaids, dragons, witches/wizards/sorcerers, trolls, sirens, banshees, etc.

Do you want to participate? Here's what you need to do:

• Follow Ramblings of a Daydreamer through BlogLovin' or email (right sidebar)

• Grab the button and place it on your blog. This way, not only will people know you’re participating in the challenge, but they can come back to my blog and find out how to join in on the fun!

 

**Blogger's not letting me do the grab button code for some reason, so if you want to just save the button and link it back to http://sweetmarie-83.blogspot.ca that'll work!** 

• Optional, but recommended: create a post or a page on your blog with the challenge graphic to help spread the word, and keep track of your progress once the challenge starts. If you decide to do that, make sure to either post a link back here, or have the linked graphic on your post so that. You don't need to decide beforehand what books you're reading.

• On October 1st, I'll start a new post with a new link-up where you can add links to your reviews. Don’t forget to add your reviews to be included in the giveaway!

• To sign up, leave your name and blog URL in the linky below (for example, Marie @ Ramblings of a Daydreamer).

• The giveaway at the end is open internationally as long as Book Depository ships to your country. 

• If you're on Twitter, you can connect with other participants, share updates, etc, using the hashtag #SPRC. 

 

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