Review: Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu
From Hicklebee’s A stunning modern-day fairy tale from acclaimed author Anne Ursu.
Once upon a time, Hazel and Jack were best friends. But that was before he stopped talking to her and disappeared into a forest with a mysterious woman made of ice. Now it’s up to Hazel to go in after him. Inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen,” Breadcrumbs is a story of the struggle to hold on, and the things we leave behind.
Breadcrumbs is heartbreakingly beautiful. Ursu took one of my most favorite fairy tales and made it her own by adding themes that a lot of today’s children deal with. Hazel is adopted, she has brown skin and her parents have white skin. Her father left, and now it is just her mom and her trying to survive. Hazel had to stop going to her private school and enroll in the local middle school where she is bullied for being entirely too different. Her only friend is Jack, when he changes and stops being nice to her Hazel is shattered, when he disappears completely Hazel is devastated. She does what any heroine would, she sets off to find Jack and set her whole world back to right, because with her dad leaving and not paying for her school or dance lessons and Jack not speaking to her nothing is right.
Jack has his reasons for leaving. His mother is severely depressed and it has been hard on him. Hazel moved to his school instead of going to her private one and now all the boys in his grade give him a hard time for being the friend of the weirdo. He is always walking on eggshells at home and in school. When a piece of an enchanted mirror flies into his eye and a beautiful woman in white offers to whisk him away he agrees to go. He is so over everything.
In the woods on her quest to find Jack, Hazel learns a lot about life, love, right and wrong. She learns that you can’t always trust the things you think you should, and sometimes you have to trust the things you shouldn’t. She learns that taking control of her own situation is empowering and she has to go for what she wants in life.
Hazel is a strong role model, a good girl and a fabulous protagonist. I loved every minute I spent reading Breadcrumbs and I can’t wait to see what Ursu does next.
Please be sure to check my guest post with Anne for original art and more, and also Walden Pond Press is letting me host a giveaway of Breadcrumbs as well.
Review: Bloody Valentine by Melissa de la Cruz
Goodreads: Vampires have powers beyond human comprehension: strength that defies logic, speed that cannot be captured on film, the ability to shapeshift and more. But in matters of the heart, no one, not even the strikingly beautiful and outrageously wealthy Blue Bloods, has total control. In Bloody Valentine, bestselling author Melissa de la Cruz offers readers a new story about the love lives of their favorite vamps – the passion and heartache, the hope and devastation, the lust and longing. Combined with all the glitz, glamour, and mystery fans have come to expect, this is sure to be another huge hit in the Blue Bloods series.
Also, witness the bonding of Jack and Schuyler.
Holy novella Batman! Bloody Valentine is a fantastic tie in novella to the already much loved by me Blue Bloods Series. This is one of the few series I have been reading even before I became a book blogger and my love for all things Van Alen has yet to diminish one bit.
What I freaking love about this book is the fact that we get to see so much about Allegra, so many mysteries are laid to rest as we learn more about the early life of Charles and Allegra van Alen. We even find out who Schuyler’s human dad is!
We also see Oliver make some bad decisions while trying to overcome his addiction to being bitten, and his love for Schuyler. During this time we are introduced to one of the Witches of de la Cruz’s new adult title coming soon The Witches of East End.
The bonding, oh my the bonding. Of course with Jack and Schuyler it couldn’t come off without some hitches but it was beautiful. I feel like a mother who’s baby is all grown up and is getting married as I read these two lovers exchange important life long vows.
I seriously cannot wait for the next book Lost in Time slated to come out in October of this year!
FTC Disclosure: I bought this book on my Nook.
Review: Room by Emma Donoghue
From Goodreads: To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it’s where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.
Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. …more To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it’s where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.
Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it’s not enough…not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son’s bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.
Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, ROOM is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.
Emma Donoghue has created such a fascinating and provocative story inside the pages of her latest book Room that I am loathe to try to review it. Seeing everything from Jack’s eyes, I am almost certain I have never truly fallen in love with character until now. Jack is brave and strong and he is scared and this is the most amazing chance for any reader to get lost in rediscovering the world from the eyes of a child.
I found myself angry with Jack’s Ma in the last third of the book. All he has ever known is her and Room and she becomes increasingly selfish through-out the novel. However I can’t say that I would do anything differently if I was in her shoes. So the fact that I was angry with her made me angry at myself and I began to think about the ways I interact with my own children. Am I setting them up for some kind of mental fall out later in life? Those impossible questions that can’t be answered until you are slapped with the therapy bills I suppose.
Jack is a fantastic narrator, growing up in Room with little to do but read and count he is fantastically ahead with his mental capability for learning. I love his voice, and the way he explains everything in his world to his reader. I love that Dora is his friend inside of Room just like she is the friend of so many children outside of Room.
At 8:30 I press the button on TV and try between the three. I find Dora the Explorer, yippee. Ma moves Bunny around and real slow to better the picture with his ears and head. One day when I was four TV died and I cried, but in the night Old Nick brung a magic converter box to make TV back to life. The other channels after the three are totally fuzzy so we don’t watch them because of hurting our eyes, only if there’s music we put Blanket over and just listen through the gray of her and shake our booties.
Today I put my fingers on Dora’s head for a hug and tell her about my superpowers now I’m five, she smiles. She has the most huge hair that’s really like a brown helmet with pointy bits cutted out, it’s as big as the rest of her. I sit back on Bed in Ma’s lap to watch, I wriggle till I’m not on her pointy bones. She doesn’t have many soft bits but they’re super soft.
So there you can get a great sense of Jack and his narration skills from that quote from early on in the book. As the story progresses and we see the ‘games’ that Ma and Jack play are really Ma trying to get the neighbors to notice them and escape the book becomes a bit harder to read. I have shed many a tear during the reading of Room and it is not a book that I am going to forget any time soon.
Thank you Emma Donoghue and Jack for giving me such an amazing gift of a book that will stay with me as time progresses and that made me feel so much.
This story is beautiful and haunting and many other adjectives that I could continue piling onto this sentence. Pick up a copy and read I promise you will not be disappointed.
Review: Tempted (House of Night Novel) by P.C. Cast
So we all know by my review of Hunted that I have a love / hate relationship with the House of Night novels. I felt that book five spent too much time rehashing books one through four and the amount of relationships Zoey holds onto became annoying. When other characters though she was a ho, I tended to agree. Book six however was a major improvement.
Cast begins Tempted right where Hunted left off. Kalona and Neferet are banished from Tulsa and the fledglings red and blue are looking to Zoey to lead them back to the House of Night. Zoey although she still has the major boy problems and too many relationships does grow up a bit in this book and her character becomes mildly likable for me again. I was going to rail against this book also. Although it wasn’t just a rehash of the other novels, I felt it dragged quite a bit. If you aren’t a fan of the series or haven’t read any of the other books, I do not recommend you start, but if you are vampire crazy and reading House of Night then Tempted is not to be missed! The last three chapters brings so much together and a major event happens that I still cannot believe happened, and I never saw it coming! Let me know if you have read it and what you think.
