From Goodreads: My name is Meaghan Chase.

I thought it was over.That my time with the fey, the impossible choices I had to make, the sacrifices of those I loved, was behind me. But a storm is approaching, an army of Iron fey that will drag me back, kicking and screaming. Drag me away from the banished prince who’s sworn to stay by my side. Drag me into the core of a conflict so powerful, I’m not sure anyone can survive it.

This time, there will be no turning back.

This is the third book I have read and reviewed by Julie Kagawa. I recently learned that this series is continuing and I couldn’t be happier. With every book I read I am more entranced by the world that Kagawa has weaved with her unique look at technology and her stunning use of Fey lore.

Kagawa is a masterful story teller and I am so happy to have found her series. Meaghan has grown so much since the first book and I feel as I have watched her grow up and into the kind of heroine that deserves to win the fight and the boy. In this latest installment of the Iron Fey series all is decided but not without friendship, love and sacrifice.

Meaghan realizes that it might just be that even though her and Prince Ash are exiled from the Nevernever she still may never be able to go home to her human family. The False King is hunting Meaghan down, he wants what he believes she stole from him, the Iron Glamor, the power of The Iron King Machina that Meaghan battled and killed with the wooden arrow and her Summer magic.

I can’t go into very much detail without ruining the plot of the story so just rest assured fans of the Iron Fey series that you will be once again blown away by Kagawa’s plot and torn into a million pieces by Puck and Ash. Each book in this series continually shapes the characters and is even more impressive than it’s predecessor.

I am waiting on tenterhooks for the next book titled The Iron Knight and all Goodreads has as information on the book is two words “Ash’s story.”, and a release date of 2011.

If you enjoy Faerie lore or fantasy at all and haven’t picked up the first book in this series The Iron King, or the second The Iron Daughter do so now you will not be disappointed!

Bookalicio.us review of The Iron King and The Iron Daughter. Just like the content inside the books each cover for this series is continually more visually pleasing. I cannot wait to see the cover of The Iron Knight!

FTC Disclosure: I downloaded an egalley of this book from Netgalley.

From Goodreads: What if the only friend you could trust turned out to be dangerous? A new thriller from debut author Elizabeth Woods!

It is not very often that a book from the contemporary genre grabs me. I like the genre but it isn’t my favorite to read. I read Choker in three hours and I was so surprised at the ending that I guffawed so loudly my husband asked me what was wrong with me!

Choker follows Cara who is quiet and shy and not so well liked in school. When she was small she had a best friend Zoe who her parents didn’t really like because she was from a bad home and Cara’s parents were afraid of her playing there. In fifth grade Cara’s parents moved with her to a new city and Cara began to forget about Zoe until one night when Zoe shows up in her room dirty and needing a place to stay. She said her step dad was abusing her and she had to get away.

Cara lets Zoe hang out in her room and keeps her hidden from her parents. Cara continues being made fun of in school and it worsens after she chokes on a carrot. Then everyone starts calling her ‘Choker’ and mimicking her choking on a carrot.

The two worst tormentors wind up dead and Cara has to decide if she can trust Zoe or if Zoe is killing these girls, or it could be Ethan the guy she always wanted and never thought he would give her the time of day.

As the book progresses we see Zoe deteriorate through Cara’s eyes, her teeth yellow her hair becomes greasy, she smells like body odor. Then on the night everything comes to a head between Zoe and Cara and Ethan things will never be the same.

For any of you who have this book hurry up and read it so I can guffaw with you! This book is slated to release on January 4th and is already a great contender for my best books of 2011! A fantastic debut novel from new author Elizabeth Woods who I will be following on to the next book she writes!

FTC Disclosure: this book is an epub ARC given to me by the publisher.

Goodreads: What if love refused to die?

Haven Moore can’t control her visions of a past with a boy called Ethan, and a life in New York that ended in fiery tragedy. In our present, she designs beautiful dresses for her classmates with her best friend Beau. Dressmaking keeps her sane, since she lives with her widowed and heartbroken mother in her tyrannical grandmother’s house in Snope City, a tiny town in Tennessee. Then an impossible group of coincidences conspire to force her to flee to New York, to discover who she is, and who she was.

In New York, Haven meets Iain Morrow and is swept into an epic love affair that feels both deeply fated and terribly dangerous. Iain is suspected of murdering a rock star and Haven wonders, could he have murdered her in a past life? She visits the Ouroboros Society and discovers a murky world of reincarnation that stretches across millennia. Haven must discover the secrets hidden in her past lives, and loves¸ before all is lost and the cycle begins again.

Oh how I loved Haven, I felt such a connection with her. She is strange to her classmates and grew up in a horribly tiny town. I grew up an hour away from where Haven is located and I understand exactly what Miller describes in the first part of the book about how Haven is treated at school and in her community. If you think it is a bit far fetched that the preacher of the town is trying to exercise a demon from young Haven, think again. All things are possible in rural Northern Tennessee.

As Haven remembers more of her past lives and begins on her journey the book picks up pace quite a bit. I believe the first part while it reads slow is fundamental in understand Haven and how her mind works. We meet Iain and the great love affair begins. Haven is very mistrustful of Iain / Ethan due to her spotty past memories and events going on in the present and I as the reader was very distrustful of him as well. Iain seems a bit sneaky.

My only criticism of this book is that I think Iain could have been more, well for the lack of a better work swoon-worthy. He didn’t take my breath away, I didn’t feel like he was circling the eons continually coming back to love Haven. Maybe the distrust plays a part in that.

However, when I finished reading this book I ran to see what it was categorized as. It was like no young adult I had read before. The prose and use of wording and the sheer size of the ARC had me in complete disbelief it was YA. When I got over my momentary shock and realized this book was in fact YA lit, I became completely infatuated with the writing style. Here is someone not writing down for a level. Here is a book that defies the whole genre! Pick up the Eternal Ones, read it. I am sure you will be amazed at this top shelf, high concept literature.

The Eternal Ones Book Trailer:

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

Goodreads:
Half Summer faery princess, half human, Meghan has never fit in anywhere. Deserted by the Winter prince she thought loved her, she is prisoner to the …more Half Summer faery princess, half human, Meghan has never fit in anywhere. Deserted by the Winter prince she thought loved her, she is prisoner to the Winter faery queen. As war looms between Summer and Winter, Meghan knows that the real danger comes from the Iron Fey, iron-bound faeries that only she and her absent prince have seen. But no one believes her. Worse, Meghan’s own fey powers have been cut off. She’s alone in Faery with only her wits for help. Trusting anyone would be foolish. Trusting a seeming traitor could be deadly. But even as she grows a backbone of iron, Meghan can’t help but hear the whispers of longing in her all-too-human heart.

You are going to hear me say words that I have never said on this blog and in all probability never say again: “The second book was better than the first”. Yes that’s right folks you heard me correctly. I loved The Iron Daughter in so many ways. You were able to glean much more insight into the characters and even find out some dirt on the Puck / Ash situation. The Iron Fey are back and with a vengeance and the Iron Horse (Team Iron Horse FTW) is awesome as always.

Meghan grows up quite a bit and turns into quite the little kick-ass vixen. I enjoyed seeing her transitioning from girl to older girl.

A host of new characters to whet your appetites, and scores of old characters coming back for me. Such as Grim the most awesome cat ever.

If you like Holly Black or Maggie Stiefvater you will love Julie Kagawa!

Contrats to Spav for winning Gone!

Based on your votes this week’s giveaway is Gone by Lisa McMann. Comment to enter.

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For next week there will be no vote because I am going to an author event featuring Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl. I will buy a copy of the book and hopefully have it signed.

So who would you cast for:
Ethan
Lena
Amma
Macon
Ethan’s Dad
Link
Mrs. Lincoln
The Librarian
Ridley

For me so far:
Ethan: someone new completely new
Lena: someone new again anyone but Miley Cyrus
Amma: Whoopie Goldberg
Macon: Jude Law
Ethan’s Dad: A man who should be in every movie Nathan Fillion
Link: a new face
Mrs. Lincoln: undecided at the moment
The Librarian: Sandra Bullock
Ridley: Reece Witherspoon

Photo by: Alex Hoerner

1. Bookalicio.us: I have to say you have Southern people described to the letter. Are either of you Southern or have family that lives in the South? As I was reading I was fascinated with how much your book took me home to my teen years in Saltville Virginia (The Salt Capitol of the Confederacy).

   Kami: My family is originally from a small town in North Carolina, so I grew up with three generations of women (two Southern) living under one roof. I have a deep affection for the eccentricities of the South, and still go to see my mom in North Carolina every summer. Margie’s family is originally from a tiny town, though not in the South, and I think our shared stories from casserole counties are what made us want to set our story in Gatlin, SC. Even if it isn’t the Salt Capitol of the Confederacy!

2. Bookalicio.us: I often wondered through out the book why you chose Ethan as opposed to Lena as the main character. The more I read the more I was confused about that, but the more I read the more I loved the fact you did so. It was a breath of fresh air in the paranormal YA assortment.

   Margie: You have to remember, we originally wrote this story on a dare from seven teenagers, who read our pages nightly and weekly as we wrote them. So we weren’t really thinking about anything other than what they would want to read. They were powerful, strong, individualistic teenage girls – except for our one Caster Boy! – and we wanted to give them a story where the girl was the powerful, mysterious supernatural, and the boy had to unravel her mystery, find his way to her. Also, I think we also wanted to give them something they hadn’t read before.

3. Bookalicio.us: The Character of Lena’s Uncle was an amazingly thought out addition to the story. I can’t go into too much detail of how you as the authors used his character for some plot twists without giving spoilers, I wanted to ask how you fleshed him out the way you did.

   Kami: Lena’s Uncle Macon is one of our favorite characters, and an important counterpoint to some of the smaller-minded folks in town. He’s brilliant and sophisticated and worldly and unique, and he’s been living in Gatlin as long as the town folks who loathe him. He’s also a wonderfully loyal father figure to Lena. We love how he loves her.

4. Bookalicio.us:I like the different kinds of paranormal in the book and the way you handled the naming of things and persons with even a little Southern Voodoo thrown in for charm. How did you mesh so many different supernatural elements into one piece without making it over the top?

   Margie: We named our Casters from day one. It was important to us to create our own unique rule set for our own magical universe. We didn’t want to be generic, and we wanted to give our readers a kind of magic that was deeply regional, and tied to the Caster County our book lives in.

5. Bookalicio.us: What is your favorite place to write?

   Kami: In my comfy chair, in complete silence, with a Diet Coke. Extra ice.

   Margie: In the library or in my own comfy chair, also with a Diet Coke and my earphones blasting my mix of the day!

6. Bookalicio.us: Pen and paper? Mac or PC? Why?

   Kami: We’re both Mac girls, though we use more white boards with more complex color-coding that you could possibly imagine.

7. Bookalicio.us: Beautiful Creatures is a book that made it on my short list of favorites for 2009, it almost didn’t make it on there because I hadn’t heard about the book. Usually I get recommendations from literary blogs, and Amazon is always throwing stuff to me I devour. It is kind of hard for me to miss a young adult novel, and I am so glad I didn’t miss this one. How hard has it been marketing a YA book in a sea of others? Teens are statistically
   reading more now and there is so much to choose from. Publishers expect you to be able to market yourself effectively from the beginning now as well.

   Margie: Little, Brown has been incredibly supportive of our book from day one. Our editors, Jen Hunt and Julie Scheina, have always made us feel like a priority, and our publicist Jessica Kaufman is amazing. And the day Amazon picked us for their Top Ten of 2009 and their number one Teen Pick, we were thrown into a bit more of the spotlight than we had ever anticipated. The Warner Brothers movie announcement hitting the day before our book came out was another spotlight, and things just sort of kept rolling from there.

8. Bookalicio.us: How do you feel about book trailers? Have you ever watched one that made you want to buy a book?

   Kami: We love good book trailers. Vania Stoyanova, the photographer who made one of our BC trailers, is so talented that she makes you want to buy any title she makes a trailer for. That’s why we were so happy she made one for us! You can watch her trailer on the homepage of our site, under the reviews. www.BeautifulCreaturestheBook.com

9. Bookalicio.us: What has been the best part of reader reaction for you?

   Margie: It’s amazing to hear people talking about the characters, the town, the story – all of these things that only existed in our heads for so long. We also love love love our librarian readers, so the Morris Debut Award nomination from the YALSA was a special kind of “reader reaction” that we will never forget!

10. Bookalicio.us: Are you going to be a book tour? Release dates in other countries or movie deals (really it should be a movie)?

    Kami: Beautiful Creatures is being published in 25 countries, which is really wonderful. We are going to be on our Southern US book tour from January 18th until the 29th, and then on a more limited northern states book tour from February 20th until the 27th. The movie is going forward in development at Warner Brothers, and we couldn’t be happier about that. For more information on all of the above, be sure to check back at www.BeautifulCreaturestheBook.com – we will be updating the site the whole time we are touring, so you can see the latest BC happenings!