Seduction: A Novel of Suspense (The Reincarnationist #5)
by M.J. Rose
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Format: ARC, ebook
Published: May 7th, 2013 by Atria Books
Genre: Fiction, Historical/ Suspense

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In 1843, novelist Victor Hugo’s beloved nineteen-year-old daughter drowned. Ten years later, Hugo began participating in hundreds of séances to reestablish contact with her. In the process, he claimed to have communed with the likes of Plato, Galileo, Shakespeare, Dante, Jesus—and even the Devil himself. Hugo’s transcriptions of these conversations have all been published. Or so it was believed.

Recovering from her own losses, mythologist Jac L’Etoile arrives on the Isle of Jersey—where Hugo conducted the séances—hoping to uncover a secret about the island’s Celtic roots. But the man who’s invited her there, a troubled soul named Theo Gaspard, has hopes she’ll help him discover something quite different—Hugo’s lost conversations with someone called the Shadow of the Sepulcher. -Goodreads

Review:
Originally posted at Novel Reveries

A novel of past lives, love, loss, history and understanding; a novel of sinister seduction. I’d probably give this book more of a 3.5 rating. I don’t feel like the book lived up to it’s claim as a suspense novel, although I love it as a part historical fiction. I absolutely love the author’s writing style and ability to transport us in time with it, but I feel like the plot was lacking substance in value. At the end of the book I was left disappointed because, considering everything that happened in the book, nothing really happened at all. I suppose the purpose of this book was to get Jac to change, and perhaps provide an ending to this series, but that’s really all I took in.

“Jac knew she hadn’t yet confronted all her shadows. And that one day she’d need to.” (loc.246)

 It took me a while to get through this book, not because it was hard to get through, but more like it didn’t grasp my interest long enough for me to want to keep reading more than one chapter at a time. There wasn’t much pulling me through the book, but I must say I was greatly interested more with the Victor Hugo accounts of events than the present and B.C. tense. I enjoyed his aspects very much as he struggled to overcome the grief of losing his daughter, Didine, and finding life’s purpose in Fantine. I understand how the entire situation with The Seduction (the devil’s allure in times of grief) turned Jac’s life around and changed her for the better, but after the final throes every once else in the story just dissipated with a flip of the hand, as if they never had any real importance in the book at all. In the end, this story is meant to symbolize people dealing with their demons and how they struggle to overcome them.

First Line: “Every story begins with a tremble of anticipation.” (loc.46)

Last Line: “At the starting point we may have an idea of our point of arrival, but what lies before us and makes us shudder is the journey, for that is all discovery.” (loc.4716)
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Galley provided by NetGalley via Atria Books (an imprint of Simon & Schuster)

*Quotes are from uncorrected advanced galleys and may change before going to press. Please refer to the final printed book for official quotes.

The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Format: Hardback (collection), 1456 pgs.
Published: March 1st, 2013  by Wordsworth Editions
Originally published:  April 10th, 1925 by Scribner & Sons
Genre: Literature, Novel

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A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author’s generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald’s—and his country’s—most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and the promise of new beginnings. “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And one fine morning—” Gatsby’s rise to glory and eventual fall from grace becomes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream.

It’s also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby’s quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying, but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means—and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. “Her voice is full of money,” Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel’s more famous descriptions. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy’s patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties, and waits for her to appear. When she does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbor Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout. Spare, elegantly plotted, and written in crystalline prose, The Great Gatsby is as perfectly satisfying as the best kind of poem. -Goodreads

Review: Originally posted at Novel Reveries

Growing up, it has been instilled upon me that The Great Gatsby is an allegory for The American Dream. Of course, this may be true, but reading it again (this time for unbiased pleasure rather than have it forced upon me by an over-analytical teacher) I’ve realized that it’s more than this. This is a story of power, wealth, corruption and love. Now you may yell at me, “Isn’t that proof of the American Dream?” Well, yes and no. Contrary to popular media beliefs, wealth does not directly lead to corruption (and vice-versa.) As with everything, life outcomes are different person to person, as we are not some standardized machine walking about the earth. The Declaration of Independence (in which The American Dream is derived from,) says that all men are created equal; although we may have been created equal, we grow into individualized personalities. This could probably open a whole nature vs. nurture debate, but I won’t get into that. The Great Gatsby is also an example of the Marxist views on materialism and morality. In this case, a little farm boy named Jimmy Gatz works himself up the society ladder to become Jay Gatsby, and through his wealth, he obtained power. Through corruption, he reached for love.

Love did not reach back.

“So we drove on towards death through the cooling twilight.” (653)

Gatsby’s vainglory and vanity in his wealth became the deadly sin personified. He did everything to look important and to have his name attached to high society. Throwing lavish parties for people he didn’t even know, and doing dealings with people who didn’t care about him, all deconstructed to pride and materialism. Impressing Daisy was a major influence for him; a promiscuous woman who in all eventuality didn’t give a care in the world for him. Staring and dreaming upon that little green light across the bay; green which symbolizes rebirth (not to mention envy.) Gatsby changed for Daisy, back and forth, trying to recapture a beloved part of his past.

“He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy.” (636)

As for my reaction to The Great Gatsby, just as when I read it almost ten years ago, I love it. Well, I love the storyline aspect because it showed a prideful and vulnerable human being tarnished and destroyed by the very things he loved. I admit that by the time I was finished with the book I basically disliked everyone in the book; Daisy and Tom, because of the obvious; Nick Carraway (the narrator) because he reintroduced Daisy and Gatsby; and Gatsby because of his blissful ignorance. It is the reasons why I dislike the characters that made me love the story. I also found it interesting that Daisy and Gatsby, supposedly the only sober people in the book, were the most depraved, and somehow the mix of the two became a volatile piece of destruction. Gatsby surrounded himself with the false hope of friends and love, only to be left alone and unloved.

“No – Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.” (564)

I wholeheartedly recommend this book for those unhappy with life and needing an influential tale of human nature, high society disadvantages and love. Other works in which the same American Dream concept that I have more recently read are Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck and The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka.

——————-
First Line: “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.” (563)

Last Line: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” (683)
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Quotes:

“People disappeared, reappeared, made plans to go somewhere, and then lost each other, searched for each other, found each other a few feet away.” (586)

“In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.” (588)

“It’s a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people. You can hold your tongue, and, moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so blind that they don’t see or care.” (613)

Mila 2.0 (Mila 2.0 #1)
by Debra Driza
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Format: Hardback, 470 pgs.
Published: March 12th 2013 by Katherine Tegen Books/ Harper Collins
Genre: YA, Sci-Fi

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Mila 2.0 is the first book in an electrifying sci-fi thriller series about a teenage girl who discovers that she is an experiment in artificial intelligence.

Mila was never meant to learn the truth about her identity. She was a girl living with her mother in a small Minnesota town. She was supposed to forget her past—that she was built in a secret computer science lab and programmed to do things real people would never do.

Now she has no choice but to run—from the dangerous operatives who want her terminated because she knows too much and from a mysterious group that wants to capture her alive and unlock her advanced technology. However, what Mila’s becoming is beyond anyone’s imagination, including her own, and it just might save her life. -Goodreads.com

Review: (Originally posted at Novel Reveries)

“I didn’t have the luxury of hiding from my fears like a normal girl.” (313)

“They could tell me the truth, but they couldn’t force me to accept it.” (397)

Mom & Me & Mom

by Maya Angelou
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Format: ARC from publisher, 197 pgs.
Published: April 2nd, 2013 by Random House
Genre: Non-fiction, Autobiography

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The story of Maya Angelou’s extraordinary life has been chronicled in her multiple bestselling autobiographies. But now, at last, the legendary author shares the deepest personal story of her life: her relationship with her mother.

For the first time, Angelou reveals the triumphs and struggles of being the daughter of Vivian Baxter, an indomitable spirit whose petite size belied her larger-than-life presence—a presence absent during much of Angelou’s early life. When her marriage began to crumble, Vivian famously sent three-year-old Maya and her older brother away from their California home to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. The subsequent feelings of abandonment stayed with Angelou for years, but their reunion, a decade later, began a story that has never before been told. In Mom & Me & Mom, Angelou dramatizes her years reconciling with the mother she preferred to simply call “Lady,” revealing the profound moments that shifted the balance of love and respect between them.


Delving into one of her life’s most rich, rewarding, and fraught relationships, Mom & Me & Mom explores the healing and love that evolved between the two women over the course of their lives, the love that fostered Maya Angelou’s rise from immeasurable depths to reach impossible heights. -Goodreads

Review: (originally posted on Novel Reveries)

“Love heals. Heals and liberates.” (prologue, x)

Maya Angelou ventures down memory lane to show how her mother, Lady Vivian Baxter, shaped and molded her life from young adulthood and onward. Lady Baxter showed Maya how to stay tough and determined by exhibiting her own toughness and determination, showing that nobody can stop you if you set your mind towards achieving something.

Broken into two sections, Mom & Me discusses the life Maya endured while living under her mother’s roof and getting to know her; then there’s “Me & Mom” which shows how Maya lived independently, yet reliant of her mother. The evolution of her calling Vivian Baxter ‘Lady’, to ‘Mother’, to ‘Mom’ shows the leaps and developments in their relationship. Whenever Maya needed advice, her mother was there for her, whenever she needed a shoulder to cry on, her mother was there for her, and whenever she needed encouragement and love, her mother was there for her. There’s no doubt, from the content of Mom & Me & Mom, that Lady Baxter was one of the largest influences in Maya’s life.

“She liberated me from a society that would have had me think of myself as the lower of the low. She liberated me to life.” (72)

A particular part in the story I found very insightful was her marriage and divorce from her husband, Tosh Angelos. In her marriage she became unhappy; she snuck out to church because her husband was an atheist, she stopped attending dance class because her husband thought it was a waste of time, and she stopped going certain places & hanging out with friends all because her husband was jealous. Maya Angelou sought out her mother’s advice all throughout her marriage (even though her mother didn’t like her marrying a poor white man,) and Lady Baxter always comforted her to hopefully follow her heart. Maya finally followed her heart and after an amicable divorce, she picked up her friends, favorite places and dancing lessons again. Because she picked her dancing lessons, this led to successful stripless strip-tease performances, which led to singing at the Purple Onion, which led to her joining an operatic society and performing Porgy and Bess all over europe. This in turn led to Maya finding her love in writing lyrics, screenplays and poetry. Again, her mother’s understanding and love, liberated her, and she grew.

“I was to learn that whenever she had anything important to say, she would first ask us to sit down, and then say, ‘I have something to say.’” (30)

I loved both the raw intensity, and the poetic comfort that Maya invokes in the writing of this autobiographical section of her life. She knows she’s been through some violent and depressing periods in her life, but she writes it without shame or holding back. She wants people to feel emotionally connected to the events in the book, whether they are rough times, or the periods of pure elation. This helps us understand her thought processes, and the decisions she made, and also why she sought out the advice of her mother, who always had something to say.

“‘You are going far in this world, baby, because you dare to risk everything. That’s what you have to do. You are prepared to do the best you know to do. And if you don’t succeed, you also know all you have to do is try it again.’” (120)

Mom & Me & Mom shows how Maya learned to never stop trying, and how to prove people wrong when they say you can’t do this or that. Her mother, was a civil rights advocate through her achievements and ambitions and she taught Maya the importance in doing the same. This book goes through different trials and triumphs in which Maya learned from Lady Vivian Baxter and grew to genuinely love her not just in the respectful way of a Lady, but in the comforting way of a Mother. From Maya’s highs to her lows, Lady Baxter was there for her, and albeit she has made many mistakes herself, she planted a seed in Maya that grew to instill confidence, morality and love in her little girl.

“Imagine I might really become somebody. Someday.” (79)

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*Quotes:

“‘Don’t do anything you think is wrong. Just do what you think is right, and then be ready to back it up even with your life.’” (138)

“‘Sometimes people put people on pedestals so they can see them more clearly and knock them off more easily.’” (160)

Vivian to Maya: 

“‘Baby, I’ve been thinking and now I am sure. You are the greatest woman I’ve ever met.’” (78)

Galley provided by Random House Publishing Group via LibraryThing

*Quotes are from uncorrected advanced galleys and may change before going to press. Please refer to the final printed book for official quotes.

The Last Academy
by Anne Applegate
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Format: Kindle, Netgalley
Published: May 1st, 2013 by Point (Scholastic Inc.)
Genre: YA, thriller/suspense

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Camden Fisher arrives at boarding school haunted by a falling-out with her best friend back home. But the manicured grounds of Lethe Academy are like nothing Cam has ever known. There are gorgeous, preppy boys wielding tennis rackets, and circles of girls with secrets to spare. Only … something is not quite right. One of Cam’s new friends mysteriously disappears, but the teachers don’t seem too concerned. Cam wakes up to strangers in her room, who then melt into the night. She is suddenly plagued by odd memories, and senses there might be something dark and terrible brewing. But what? The answer will leave Cam—and readers—stunned and breathless, in this thrilling debut novel. -Goodreads.com

Review: (Originally posted at Novel Reveries)

Let me begin by saying, until the publisher changes the synopsis, do not read it as it has a spoiler that will ruin the book. I read the synopsis, and from the first chapter I knew what was going on, and further reading the book only proved it. I couldn’t help but wonder what reading the book would be like if I had not read the synopsis. I have omitted this supposed spoiler from the above synopsis. That one little sentence can change an entire outlook.

Camden is being sent away to go to a boarding school and she’s forced to make new friends… and enemies. She meets and learns of a man named Barnaby Charon who owns the school grounds, and when people end up missing, she’s set to investigate the creep. Strange things are happening at the academy, where it’s not only teaching class lessons, but life lessons as well.

The first couple of chapters were quick and created a good ambience of mystery, humor and made the book relatable. That said, after those initial chapters, the book declined a bit into confusion for me. It started getting a little off-kilter with the series of events and there were no smooth transitions, and no real sense of time. This is probably how the author wanted things to go (all things considering) but it panned out as confusing for me. The way and the rate of Camden making friends and enemies seemed unrealistic as well. After about the 60% mark, the plot was phrased better and I understood more of what the author was trying to get across. At this point, if I hadn’t have read the synopsis, I’m sure I would have understood what was happening, what with Camden’s constant flashbacks and hallucinations. The ending was beautiful and brought tears to my own eyes. I suppose different people would react different ways towards this part depending on what they’ve personally went though in their own lives. Tears was my reaction. Good tears.

The characters in The Last Academy are all relatable, I feel, towards someone everyone knows in their life. There’s the know-it-all Nora, the tortured-pretty-girl Bryn, the immature-stuck-up Tammy, and etc. The point is it represents different people and different personalities, and they all end up at The Last Academy with different reasons of being there.

“Everything broken was something important to that person, I guessed.” (loc. 2087)

In all, I really liked the concept of the book, and how things played out, what with Camden being able to move on in a new school and experience love, loss and forgiveness. It was clever, and I would recommend it to those who want an atypical Young Adult suspense.


First Line: “You couldn’t pick a better night for a pool party: fire-red sunset, a breeze so hot it practically sparked as it floated across the lawn, chips and hot dogs and watermelon lined up and ready to eat.” (loc. 13)

Last Line: “Considering.” (loc.2414)

——————
*Quotes

“I’d held on tight, I drifted off, wishing I could call him, and knowing because of the time change, it was too late.” (loc. 1407)

“Teachers here are like students, except they’ve made more mistakes. The sooner you understand, the wiser you will be.” (loc. 1714)

“‘Receiving a coin is the mark of understanding.’” (loc. 2146)
——————


Galley provided by NetGalley via Point (an imprint of Scholastic Inc.)

*Quotes are from uncorrected advanced galleys and may change before going to press. Please refer to the final printed book for official quotes.