BOOK REVIEW: THE GIRL IN THE BACK ROW BY JUDITH BERENS

Title: The Girl In the Back Row
Author: Judith Berens
Genre: Fantasy, Young Adult

Published on: June 4, 2019 by LMBPN Publishing

High school means classes, making friends, hanging out, cutting classes… and keeping your fangs to yourself. Watch out world, this teen’s bite is worse than her bark.

Welcome to public school Vampire teen. Keep an eye out for the ones who would rather put you back in a box, but this time forever.

Vicki is getting a crash course in teenage life, if she can just keep her true nature hidden.

Her new dad is still dealing with the loss of his wife and finding a new job. Now he’s got a 400-year-old teenager who can push over a car. Good luck setting a curfew.

Fortunately, she wants to make new friends more than mayhem. Too bad others aren’t going to make that so easy.

There’s a dark force looking for the last vampire, and all those paranormal powers are going to come in handy to keep herself and her new little family safe.

But how do you master your inner vampire when there’s no one left to teach you and suburbia just isn’t ready to find out, not everybody who gets put in a box stays there?

Can Vicki blend in and be a typical teenage girl? Will she be able fight the urge to use her smarts and speed?

Join Craig, Alexis and Vicki on the next part of their adventure, as they adjust to living with each other and keeping Vicki’s true nature a secret.

After reading The Girl Behind the Wall, I thought it was good enough to continue the series. It was a bit of a short read, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t entertaining. This sequel continues the story of Victoria Brommer. She’s a fourteen-year-old vampire who was in a deep sleep for 400 years. Victoria’s parents hid her in their castle in Austria to protect her from an evil group. Four centuries later, Craig and his daughter Alexis stumbled upon Victoria. They realized what she was right away. It took a few weeks for Craig and Alexis to warm up to Victoria. The two bring her back to the United States with them.

For safety reasons, Victoria now goes by Vickie Hewitt. Craig managed to enroll her at Clear Lake, the same private high school Alexis goes to. It wasn’t hard for Vickie to pass the entrance tests. Vampires in this series can learn stuff extremely fast. Vickie also doesn’t drink blood; her diet is just like a human’s. There does exist a vampire race that sucks blood, called Sanguinaries. It appears there are none left, though. Vickie is perhaps the only survivor of a crusade that claimed her parents’ lives. The evil group, known as the Slayer Circle, sought to eradicate all vampires. They are confident their mission was accomplished…for now.

BOOK REVIEW: THE GIRLFRIEND BY MICHELLE FRANCES

Title: The Girlfriend

Author: Michelle Frances

Genre: Thriller

Published on: January 30, 2018 by Kensington Books

A mother. A son. His girlfriend. And the lie they’ll wish had never been told.
 
Laura has it all. A successful career, a long marriage to a rich husband, and a twenty-three-year-old son, Daniel, who is kind, handsome, and talented. Then Daniel meets Cherry. Cherry is young, beautiful, and smart but hasn’t led Laura’s golden life. And she wants it.
 
When tragedy strikes, a decision is made and a lie is told. A lie so terrible it changes their lives forever…
 
The Girlfriend is a taut and wickedly twisted debut psychological thriller—a novel of subtle sabotage, retaliation, jealousy and fear, which pivots on an unforgivable lie, and examines the mother–son–daughter-in-law relationship in a chilling new light.

 

Once in a while, one comes across a book that surpasses expectations. I started reading The Girlfriend not knowing how good it may be. The synopsis seemed very compelling, though. And the book was part of Kindle Unlimited, so I checked it out. The Girlfriend is a psychological thriller set in contemporary England. The main character is Cherry Laine, a young woman with big dreams for her life. Her love interest is Daniel Cavendish, the 23-year-old son of a successful TV show producer.

Ever since she was young, Cherry knew she wanted more out of life. She had the misfortune (in her opinion) of being born in Croydon, one of the poorest neighborhoods in London. Growing up in a trailer park, Cherry's father was a loser who abandoned his family. Her mother, Wendy, is content with her job at a supermarket. Cherry is determined to penetrate high society and become wealthy. She's also extremely intelligent and has near-photographic memory. Cherry really hates when rich people look down on her just because they have more money.

In contrast, Daniel had more luck in life. He has a trust fund, a promising medical career, and parents who love him. They don't love each other anymore, but that's barely detrimental to his life. It's really common for parents to fall out of love anyway. Daniel meets Cherry at the real estate company where she works. They hit it off right away; it's pretty much love at first sight. This surprises Laura, Daniel's mother. She's very interested in knowing the girl who swept her son off his feet.

When Laura and Cherry meet, it seems like they will get along. Something happens that makes it start to go downhill, though. Cherry was nervous, but she also wanted Laura not to be like other rich people. As I mentioned, Cherry is super smart and believes that makes her better than people who are richer but less intelligent than she is. Cherry wants not only status, but respect. It's also obvious to the reader from the start that Cherry is with Daniel for his money. Laura eventually starts to suspect this as well. This drives a wedge between her and Cherry. Will it get bigger, or will their relationship improve somehow?

Though Cherry could well be a villain in The Girlfriend, I couldn't help but root for her. I wanted Cherry to succeed in her endeavors. What harm did it do that she wanted Daniel because of his money? She ended up falling in love anyway. Cherry wasn't all that bad. As the book progressed, though, you start to see the lengths Cherry will go to achieve her goals. Laura isn't much better (her suspicion borders and even surpasses callousness at one point). And then Cherry shows her true colors, going really far one day. Did she lose my loyalty? I think answering that may spoil the book a little. I'll just say that The Girlfriend was a phenomenal read. It's the definition of a page-turner, keeping you wanting to find out what happens next. I strongly recommend it to fans of mystery and psychological thrillers.

 

My rating: ★★★★ 1/2

4.5 stars - A fantastic page-turner!

 

BOOK REVIEW: CYTONIC BY BRANDON SANDERSON

Title: Cytonic

Author: Brandon Sanderson

Genre: Science Fiction, Young Adult

Published on: November 23, 2021 by Delacorte Press

Spensa’s life as a Defiant Defense Force pilot has been far from ordinary. She proved herself one of the best starfighters in the human enclave of Detritus and she saved her people from extermination at the hands of the Krell—the enigmatic alien species that has been holding them captive for decades. What’s more, she traveled light-years from home as an undercover spy to infiltrate the Superiority, where she learned of the galaxy beyond her small, desolate planet home.
 
Now, the Superiority—the governing galactic alliance bent on dominating all human life—has started a galaxy-wide war. And Spensa’s seen the weapons they plan to use to end it: the Delvers. Ancient, mysterious alien forces that can wipe out entire planetary systems in an instant. Spensa knows that no matter how many pilots the DDF has, there is no defeating this predator.
 
Except that Spensa is Cytonic. She faced down a Delver and saw something eerily familiar about it. And maybe, if she’s able to figure out what she is, she could be more than just another pilot in this unfolding war. She could save the galaxy.
 
The only way she can discover what she really is, though, is to leave behind all she knows and enter the Nowhere. A place from which few ever return.
 
To have courage means facing fear. And this mission is terrifying.

 

After a long year of anticipation, I was finally able to read Cytonic. This is the third book of Spensa Nightshade's story. For a little recap: in the previous entry, Spensa learned that the war her people have fought for decades is way bigger in scale than they thought. It turned out that a galactic coalition called the Superiority was the true enemy. They'd been keeping Spensa and her people imprisoned on their planet, called Detritus. At the end of Starsight, the Superiority tried to destroy the planet by harnessing delvers, which are entities from a dimension called the nowhere. Just one delver is so powerful that Spensa barely managed to send it away. She's cytonic, which means she has nowhere-derived dimensional powers.

Due to a surprising betrayal, Spensa was forced to escape from the Superiority. She had no choice but to flee through a nowhere portal. The Superiority takes to using these to banish their enemies, so you'd think it would be bad to go into one. Spensa took her trusty AI, M-Bot, with herself. M-Bot used to run on a top-of-the-line starfighter, but after the Superiority disassembled it, the AI uploaded itself to a small cleaning drone. Together, Spensa and M-Bot emerge into a way more normal-looking place than I expected. It's not long before you realize that the nowhere is anything but normal. And Spensa can't just warp away with her cytonic powers, so she's stuck for the meanwhile.

BOOK REVIEW: BE THE GIRL BY K.A. TUCKER

Title: Be The Girl

Author: K.A. Tucker

Genre: Young Adult, romance

Published on: January 21, 2019, self-published

From the internationally bestselling author of Ten Tiny Breaths and The Simple Wild comes a poignant novel about a girl trying to change her future while evading her past.

Aria Jones is starting over. New postal code, new last name, new rules. But she doesn’t mind, because it means she can leave her painful regrets behind. In the bustling town of Eastmonte, she can become someone else. Someone better.

With the Hartford family living next door, it seems she will succeed. Sure, Cassie Hartford may be the epitome of social awkwardness thanks to her autism, but she also offers an innocent and sincere friendship that Aria learns to appreciate. And Cassie’s older brother, Emmett—a popular hockey player with a bright future—well … Aria wishes that friendship could lead to something more. If he didn’t already have a girlfriend, maybe it would.

But Aria soon finds herself in a dicey moral predicament that could derail her attempt at a fresh start. It is her loyalty to Cassie and her growing crush on Emmett that leads her to make a risky move, one that earns her a vindictive enemy who is determined to splinter her happy new world.

 

Most of the books I read are part of a series. I slightly prefer those because it means you spend more time with the characters (it’s great when you like them). Still, there are times I feel like reading a standalone book, which is why I picked Be The Girl. This is a young adult romance from an author who has written great novels in the genre. The main protagonist is Aria Jones. At the start of the story, she and her mother Debra have just moved to Eastmonte in Canada. It’s obvious something bad happened that caused the move.

Part of the reason the Joneses moved is because Debra got divorced. She found out her husband had a secret family somewhere in the city. The jerk didn’t even love Aria anymore. She’s starting to move past it, though. Aria is ready to start a better life. Debra and Aria decide to stay with the latter’s elderly Uncle Merv. He’s been living alone ever since his wife passed away. Uncle Merv’s house needs a lot of TLC, which makes Debra get a little carried away. She spends tons of money renovating first one thing, then another. Debra can afford it--she used to be a successful lawyer.

REPOST: FAVORITE FICTIONAL CHARACTERS FROM BOOKS

Hello! Today's Friday, so I wanted to publish a non-book-related post. While thinking of ideas, I looked through my old posts and found this one. I decided to renew it, since most of the images it contained got lost. I am also planning a follow-up to this post, so that's why I'm re-publishing it. Apart from replacing the missing images, I left it just the way it was. Without further ado:

 

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Good morning, everyone! I’m back with the first blog post that’s not a book review. I’ve published a bunch of those in the time since my last status update post. That was back in June, a whopping four months ago. I can’t believe time flew by this fast! Today, I’m publishing a special blog post. I've shared lists of my favorite books, both from last decade and from previous years. This time I’m writing about my favorite characters. I’ve read so many books that quite a few characters have stuck with me. Some of these are popular, and others not well-known. This list is in no particular order. I am also including images for some of the characters, at least those that I could find. For others, I fan-cast an actor I think would portray them well. Here it goes:

 

BOOK REVIEW: THE VALIANT BY CHEYANNE YOUNG

Title: The Valiant

Author: Cheyanne Young

Genre: Science Fiction, Young Adult

Published on: August 1, 2014 (first edition); February 8, 2022 by Quinnova Press (latest edition)

After the most vicious villain attack in centuries, Maci Knight is struggling to put the shattered pieces of her life back together. She survived, but barely, and her family will never be the same. The only good thing to come out of the attack is that the Elders have granted her probationary Hero status. Now she’s desperate to prove that she has what it takes to shine in the field.

Maci gets her first chance when she’s called in to stop an illegal fighting ring where humans are battling to the death. But when she goes toe-to-toe with the fighters, she’s shocked to discover that even she can’t contain them. The humans are strong—supernaturally so. Maci knows that this is the work of the villain underground and is determined to put an end to it. But how do you fight an enemy who won’t show their face?

In the second installment of the City of Legends trilogy, Maci Knight will find out what she’s truly made of.

 

Even though I really liked City of Legends when I first read it in 2015, I didn’t continue with the series. I’m not sure why, but one element I was a bit “meh” about was the mechanics of the characters’ superpowers. In this series, the main characters are Supers. But instead of having different powers, they all have the same: super strength, speed, healing, and enhanced senses. All that sets them apart is that not all Supers have the same power levels. What gives them these abilities is an extra set of silver “power veins”. The power that flows through them seems to be metallic, because Supers are vulnerable to certain kinds of magnetic attacks and weapons.

The main protagonist of this story is Maci Knight, an 18-year-old Super. She’s also the daughter of the Super community’s President. Maci recently became a probationary member of the Hero Brigade, something she’s desired all her life. The Elders granted her this status after she helped defeat a villain. In the process, though, Maci lost the power in her right arm. She tried to save her father from the depowering machine, but almost got sucked in herself. Maci’s twin Nova, whom she believed dead, saved her. President Knight wasn’t so lucky. The depowering process is excruciating, so it’s almost lucky that he’s alive.