Goodreads: Many have read and loved Bram Stoker’s Dracula. But questions remain. What is the true story of Dracula’s origin? What if Mina could not bring herself to record the true story of their scandalous affair—until now?

In Dracula, My Love: The Secret Journals of Mina Harker, Syrie James explores these questions and more. A vibrant dramatization, told from Mina’s point of view, brings to life the crucial parts of Stoker’s story while showcasing Mina’s sexual awakening and evolution as a woman, and revealing a secret that could destroy her life. Torn between two men—a loving husband and a dangerous lover—Mina struggles to hang on to the deep love she’s found within her marriage, even as she is inexorably drawn to Dracula himself—the vampire that everyone she knows is determined to destroy.

I read Dracula at a young age. Probably younger than I should have. Bram Stoker instilled a love of the paranormal in me at this tender young age and for that I am very thankful. I moved on to Frankenstein, then Let the Right One In, and I have always enjoyed a good vampire horror over sparkly emo vampires any day.

James takes us back to the simplicity of horror from Mina’s point of view. The story follows closely to the original novel while giving us new info to work with. New explanations to things that Stoker never gave us. I fell in love with Dracula instead of fearing him but a slight bit of unease was always present.

The only criticism I can offer is the use of van Helsing’s foreignness. James wanted to show that since he was Dutch he would not speak English correctly and I applaud her for that, however the broken English she had him speak through-out the novel was not equivalent to how a Dutch person would speak English. It was more Eastern European, like how a Romanian would speak the language.

James made me feel sympathy for Dracula even in the end. If you have loved Dracula, or any of the horror classics you should read Syrie James. She breathed new life into a favorite book. It was like reading it again for the first time.

FTC Disclosure (lame): I received this book for review from the publisher.

Abandoning her worldly life, traveling to a remote Wisconsin town in the dead of winter, trusting her future to a man she had never met – such was Catherine Land’s new beginning. But there was an ending in sight as well, an ending that would redeem the treachery ahead, justify the sacrifice, and allow her to start over yet again. That was her plan.” “For Ralph Truitt, the wealthy businessman who had advertised for “a reliable wife,” this was also to be a new beginning. Years of solitude, denial, and remorse would be erased, and Catherine Land, whoever she might be, would be the vessel of his desires, the keeper of his secrets, the means to recover what was lost. That was his plan.” Set just after the turn of the twentieth century, A Reliable Wife is the story of these two people, each plagued by a heart filled with anger and guilt, each with a destiny in mind. But neither anticipates what develops between them – the pent-up longings that Catherine discovers in this enigmatic man and the depth of her own emotional response; the joy Ralph experiences in giving Catherine the luxuries she has never known, his growing need for her, and a desire that he thought was long buried.

Every once in a while a book comes along. You start to read it and realize that the synopsis doesn’t exactly convey what you think you will find in the pages. You read on feeling a tad bit disappointed until the moment of epiphany when you realize it is more than you could ever have hoped it would be. That your illusions and forethought’s on the book are nothing compared to the actual book itself.

A Reliable Wife is a darkly woven tale of murder, grief, the most horrible things that we as humans do to each other on a daily basis and how that affects our world in small ways. I want to read this book all over again just to feel what Catherine, Ralph, and Antonio must have felt. I want to live in this book.

If you ever choose to read one book that I have reviewed on my blog, then please let it be this one. Goolrick is a modern master. He depicted the time he wrote in perfectly. His characters though flawed in their own right were written with perfection. The side characters had stories so bitter and amazing that even the smallest in this book moves you to feel.

Goolrick is pure genius and you will be overwhelmed with the amount of debauchery these people commit upon each other. Ralph Truitt is an amazing man and I wanted so badly for him to be real so that I could walk up to him, shake his hand and thank him for allowing me to read the most delicate secrets of his life.

If you haven’t read the book do it. If you have please tell me what you think as I am dying to talk about this book!

Other Reviews:
S. Krishna’s Books
My Friend Amy
Devourer of Books

Something strange is happening in Ellerton High. Phoenix is the fourth teenager to die within a year. His street fight stabbing follows the deaths of Jonas, Summer and Arizona in equally strange and sudden circumstances.
Rumours of ghosts and strange happenings rip through the small community as it comes to terms with shock and loss. Darina,Phoenix’s grief-stricken girlfriend, is on the verge. She can’t escape her intense heartache, or the impossible apparitions of those that are meant to be dead. And all the while the sound of beating wings echo inside her head! And then one day Phoenix appears to Darina.
Ecstatic to be reunited, he tells her about the Beautiful Dead. Souls in limbo, they have been chosen to return to the world to set right a wrong linked to their deaths and bring about justice. Beautiful, superhuman and powerful, they are marked by a ‘death mark’ – a small tattoo of angel’s wings. Phoenix tells her that the sound of invisible wings beating are the millions of souls in limbo, desperate to return to earth.Darina’s mission is clear: she must help Jonas, Summer, Arizona, and impossibly, her beloved Phoenix, right the wrong linked to their deaths to set them free from limbo so that they can finally rest in peace. Will love conquer death? And if it does, can Darina set it free?

Beautiful Dead has every element that I dislike seeing in a paranormal work. The book is about zombies but maybe I am missing the point. It seems like a lot of authors are taking from supernatural elements and renaming them into something they are not.

The teens die in a mysterious way and are reanimated by an overlord who gives them a year to the date of their death to solve the mystery of their murder. To me this feels more like necromancy especially with the supernatural elements that the author gives the said zombies. Time travel and magic over time. Each teen has a ‘death mark’ that is tattooed onto the spot of skin where they are killed.

I think I would have liked the book more if the author had left out the word zombie and had only called the characters the “Beautiful Dead”. I was not able to connect with the characters in any way and some of the character names seemed to pull me out of the story a bit. Such as having a boy named Phoenix and a girl named Arizona, I could only think of Phoenix, Arizona while I was reading.

Darina who is the main character you follow through the world is still alive. She helps the Beautiful Dead to find out from the living information that may be used to solve their murder before they pass on for good. I felt she was a very bad example for teens. She only cared for the boy who died, even more than caring for herself. I also disliked that yet again in a young adult novel the parents are lame, and hard, and on the point of being abusive. Not every kid has crap parents.

In the end I do not think I will be reading book two. I struggled over this review trying to find some silver lining to share with you but I am unable to do so. I suggest from the same publisher reading either Dreaming Anastasia by Joy Preble or Bran Hambric by Kaleb Nation. Both of these works are good examples of what Source is trying to convey with their Teen imprint.

“Will I never see you again either?” I asked, feeling as though I was about to jump off a high mountain peak and hope to land without hurting myself. That’s how impossible everything seemed at that moment, no matter what I did.
“Perhaps we will meet again,” Sasha said, softening his voice. “But you must see that it does not matter. You have so much ahead of you. It’s your choice now. Choose the future! Choose life!”

For Anastasia Romanov, life as the privileged daughter of Russia’s last tsar is about to be torn apart by the bloodshed of revolution. Ousted from the imperial palace when the Bolsheviks seize control of the government, Anastasia and her family are exiled to Siberia. But even while the rebels debate the family’s future with agonizing slowness and the threat to their lives grows more menacing, romance quietly blooms between Anastasia and Sasha, a sympathetic young guard she has known since childhood. But will the strength of their love be enough to save Anastasia from a violent death?

Inspired by the mysteries that have long surrounded the last days of the Romanov family, Susanne Dunlap’s new novel is a haunting vision of the life—and love story—of Russia’s last princess.

I started this book after reading first of Anastasia Romanov last year in Joy Preble’s Dreaming Anastasia. While Joy added a new element using the history but in a modern setting, Dunlap takes you back in a historical fiction novel. I was able to love Anastasia and all of her family immediately. I wanted to breeze through the pages, I had to physically pull myself out of the story and remind myself to slow down.

I am enamored and humbled by the story of this family and I felt like Dunlap has given me a secret knowledge of the family and their last days before the Bolshevik revolution. I have the same feeling at the end of this book as I did when I read Anne Frank’s Diary in the sixth grade. I felt that the 1900′s were a more modern time, Russia however despite the technologies available kept the ways of the 1800′s.

It had been said the princesses were spoiled but in fact they were raised not in decadence and richness. The girls had many duties and even had cold showers. The revolution in Russia is very comparable to the French revolution. Rumors and hunger seemed to be the start of the troubles.

The way the family was murdered was quite barbaric. I will not ruin that for you in case like me you are a bit fuzzy on the details of the Russian revolution.

This book is packaged as Young Adult but I didn’t feel as if I were reading YA. I think the hardest reviews to write are those of books you have dearly loved. This book will take a prized place in my favorite books list, I will be recommending it to teachers who are going over the Russian revolution. I cannot say enough that everyone should read this. I loved the writing style and the book was paced exactly right. The epilogue at the back explaining some more of the cruelties this family endured is also not to be missed.

Violet Ambrose is grappling with two major issues: Jay Heaton and her morbid secret ability. While the sixteen-year-old is confused by her new feelings for her best friend since childhood, she is more disturbed by her “power” to sense dead bodies—or at least those that have been murdered. Since she was a little girl, she has felt the echoes the dead leave behind in the world . . . and the imprints that attach to their killers.

Violet has never considered her strange talent to be a gift; it mostly just led her to find dead birds her cat left for her. But now that a serial killer is terrorizing her small town, and the echoes of the local girls he’s claimed haunt her daily, Violet realizes she might be the only person who can stop him.

Despite his fierce protectiveness over her, Jay reluctantly agrees to help Violet find the murderer—and Violet is unnerved by her hope that Jay’s intentions are much more than friendly. But even as she’s falling intensely in love, Violet is getting closer and closer to discovering a killer . . . and becoming his prey herself.

If I had to sum this review up in one word, that word would be ‘refreshing’. It was pretty awesome to read a new YA that implements a creative writing style and a very interesting plot and story line. I was sent this book last year from HarperTeen, and I devoured it in one day of reading and the story and characters have stuck with me all this while.

With the imminent release I today pre-ordered my hard copy to have on my shelf. The cover art is gorgeous, there is no person, place or thing there to distract me. I got to know the characters in the book in my own way. Kimberly gives you a basis to go on and your imagination can take you on the rest of the journey.

The two main characters Violet, and Jay are so fun. Through-out the book you are practically mentally screaming at them “HE LIKES YOU VIOLET” or “SHE LIKES YOU JAY”. Violet grew up a bit traumatized from finding a body of a girl her age in the woods when she was a small child. Her family and friends looked the other way as she went into the woods behind her house hearing echos of animals and bringing them home to bury properly.

Violet can also sense an echo on the murderer. Most people have some sort of echo attached to them, the more violent the death they caused (I assume even running over a squirrel would mark you) the louder the echo becomes. So when girls start going missing, Violet takes it upon herself to find the killer by looking for their fresh and distinct echos.

The book is fast paced, very fun, as I said refreshing. If you like mysteries, a little fun romance, and a good YA read then I urge you to pick this up.

I picked up this book after reading great reviews, not so great reviews, and more reviews on top of reviews. I in the end purchased it due to the awesome ad campaign the publisher had running during The Vampire Diaries on CW. I thought the book trailer fit perfect with the theme and feel of the show and I immediately ordered it from Amazon. I pushed it to the top of my to read pile and finished it up a couple of days ago.

In Fallen we follow Luce (Lucinda) who is a troubled teen. Something happened to a boy she was alone with in her Upper East Coast boarding school, and she has been seeing therapists for years. Luce sees shadows, especially when she is around nature. Her parents get fed up take her back down South to Georgia and throw her in a school for troubled teens. At Sword and Cross Luce is loathe to give up her cell phone but quickly gets over it as she has the attention of the two hottest guys on the campus. Supposedly she feels this incredible guilt for what happened when she was alone with the boy from her old school, but that guilt was lost on me when she started macking on these guys.

Cam is sweet and thoughtful, buys her presents and is always there for her. She leads him on through out the book. David is mean to the point of cruelty so of course that’s who she is in love with. At times she thinks he sparkles with a violet light but she can’t quite figure it out.

I read this book in two days. It’s pretty long. I am quite the evangelist for longer teen books (Beautiful Creatures), but this book was just page after page of nothingness. There is no crescendo just plotted out day to day to day life until in the last chapter or two BOOM here is the mystery solved when you solved it yourself before you read it due to the prologue, which in my opinion was the best part of this book. It was long and drawn out. I couldn’t connect to any character in any way. I will read the second one to see if any of these problems are solved for me. If you liked Hush, Hush then you probably will like Fallen.

The book starts off with Rose on her mission to find Dimitri. She is in Russia and we follow her through her ordeal of trying to find him and monitoring what is up with the Moroi in the area. She is now out of school and not finishing up a rouge dhampir probably never becoming a guardian, but you have to do what you have to do right?

Two of the things that bothered me most were the love story of Rose and Dimitri were kind of ruined for me, and the author kept stressing how McDonald’s in Russia is so different than McDonald’s in America. That really isn’t true. McDonald’s is the same all over the world, I have ate at McDonald’s in Holland, London, and other places. Sometimes there is an added cultural item or two but in the end the Big Mac is the Big Mac. This shouldn’t have bothered me greatly but as I said it was mentioned several times and I really dislike skewed information that is easily researched. To make sure I wasn’t in the wrong I checked with some Russian and Finnish web developer friends of mine and the menu’s are the same there.

I felt the friendships were not as looked after in this addition to the series, although secondary characters in previous books were fleshed out more. I do plan to read the next book and I am anticipating it. I hope to get a release date soon.

Graceling follows Katsa through a coming of age story. She find out at an early age she is graced. Gracelings are born with different color eyes, the king takes in all gracelings and when their grace is revealed usually around 9 or 10 the king then decides if the grace is beneficial to him. If not the child is sent home and lives a horrible life. People naturally fear the graced. Katsa is graced with fighting and killing she is unstoppable. Until she meets Po who is a prince of a strange kingdom, his grace is also fighting and while Katsa wins the battles she has to work hard to overcome. Po’s sister and niece Bitterblue live yet again in another kingdom with the kindest king in the realm but when things start going wrong, Po and Katsa set out to learn the truth. Maybe there is a grace out there that can overcome Katsa.

I gave this book three instead of four stars due to the fact that the language at times fit the setting. Other times it was way too modern and broke me from the story and it took a few pages to get back in. Other than that a delightful read.

I am not too crazy about the cover. I never really like when a person is on the cover of a book, I like to make my own decisions about the look based on the description the author gives. I think I would have imagined Sita differently if given the chance, and I think that took away a bit from my enjoyment of the book.

All in all if you love rebound 3 in 1 books, vampire stories, L.J. Smith, and fast tracked ancient past recounts then you will definitely enjoy parts of this novel. Worth picking it up for the fun value.