BOOK REVIEW: FOLLOW ME BY TIFFANY SNOW

Title: Follow Me

Author: Tiffany Snow

Genre: Romance

Published on: October 4, 2016 by Montlake Romance

Brilliant, quirky twenty-three-year-old China Mack is totally satisfied with her carefully ordered, data-driven life. A computer prodigy who landed a coveted programming job at the cutting-edge tech company Cysnet before even graduating from MIT, China is happiest when following her routine: shower before coffee, pizza only on Mondays, bedtime at ten thirty sharp.

But then things start to get a little…unpredictable.

First Jackson Cooper—Cysnet’s rich, gorgeous, genius CEO—assigns China to a dangerous and highly classified project for a government defense contractor. Her sixteen-year-old runaway niece suddenly arrives in town, begging to move in with China. And then there’s her sexy but oddly unsettling new neighbor, Clark…

Quickly the Cysnet assignment becomes disconcerting—and then downright scary—as key staffers turn up dead. China suspects she’s being followed and isn’t sure whom she can trust. For the first time ever, she’ll have to follow her instincts, rather than logic, if she’s going to survive.

This book caught my interest because I’m a fan of the author’s Kathleen Turner series. The synopsis sounded compelling, so I bought a copy. Follow Me is the first book of the Corrupted Hearts series. The protagonist is China Mack, an extremely gifted programmer in her early twenties. She works for Cysnet, a tech company that apparently–according to China–runs circles around Apple. They hired China straight out of school because of how smart and talented she is. By now, she’s established a comfortable routine. And yes, China lives alone–for now.

China’s life changes when Jackson Cooper, Cysnet’s CEO himself, gives her an important assignment. The job’s a government contract, highly classified…and potentially dangerous. Jackson selected China because she’s the only employee at Cysnet with a particular skill. China, being shy and modest, downplays it as if it were as common as knowing HTML. Jackson seems to take it in stride, thinking nothing of China’s awkwardness. I think he might even find her endearing. China struggles to make a good impression, even though she might not need to try too hard. The thing that Jackson values most in China is her intelligence.

BOOK REVIEW: THE GIRL IN PLAIN SIGHT BY JUDITH BERENS

Title: The Girl in Plain Sight

Author: Judith Berens

Genre: Fantasy, Young Adult

Published on: July 15, 2019

New semester. New classes. New challenges. Can a 400-year-old teenage vampire learn to control her powers enough to manage the halls of public school? And not bite anyone of course…

Vickie is making friends with a new girl, someone Alexis doesn’t trust. Alexis is starting a romance with Will, and Vickie smells trouble. Are the girls worried about the wrong things or can they help each other out?

But new world, new problems. The girls end up on social media, and Vickie has been warned not to talk about vampires, but will she listen? Let’s hope she doesn’t overshare with her new friend trying to impress her with a few vampire tricks.

But Dad has a way to get the girls to focus. Vickie and Alexis have to get jobs if they want money to spend on hanging out with friends.

It’s all so normal until… it isn’t…

The family’s attention is divided until the Circle shows up at the house. It’s going to take a team effort to survive. Has Vicki made enough allies to stand next to her and fight? One wrong move and the Circle will finally kill the Last Vampire.

Join the battle in the halls of high school and the deadly streets with The Girl in Plain Sight.

 

It’s the start of Vickie Hewitt’s second semester at Clear Lake High. She’s a fourteen-year-old vampire who woke up after four hundred years asleep. Craig Watson and his daughter Alexis found Vickie during their trip to Austria. Months later, Vickie has assimilated to the modern world really well. Thanks to Alexis’s guidance, Vickie has managed to blend in among society. She likes her new life, even if her parents aren’t there for her anymore. They (along with all other vampires) were killed by a group called the Slayer Circle.

On the subject of the Circle, they are still around. Yes, it’s been four centuries and the group continues to operate. They believed they’d eliminated all vampires from the world. Only, they found out there’s a vampire living in Milwaukee. After a bit of investigation, the Circle has discovered Vickie. They’ve been keeping an eye to see how much of a danger she is. But Vickie’s living as a regular teenage girl. She hasn’t hurt anyone…at least not out of malice. All Vickie wants is to live her life and be left alone. Unfortunately, the Circle have other ideas.

BOOK REVIEW: GENESIS BY BRENDAN REICHS

Title: Genesis

Author: Brendan Reichs

Genre: Science Fiction, Young Adult

Published on: March 6, 2018 by G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers

“Reichs knows exactly how to mix action, suspense, and characters into a breathless read.” —Marie Lu, New York Times bestselling author of Warcross

The blistering sequel to the instant New York Times bestselling Nemesis by Brendan Reichs.

 

Noah Livingston knows he is destined to survive.

The 64 members of Fire Lake’s sophomore class are trapped in a place where morals have no meaning and zero rules apply. But Noah’s deaths have trained him-hardened him-to lead the strongest into the future … whatever that may be. And at any cost.

Min Wilder knows that survival alone isn’t enough.

In a violent world where brute force passes for leadership, it’s tempting to lay back and let everyone else battle it out. But Min’s instincts rebel against allowing others to decide who lives and who dies. She’s ready to fight for what she believes in. And against whomever might stand in her way.

Following a shocking cliffhanger, I was eager to read Genesis. It’s the second book in a sci-fi series following a high school sophomore class. The story takes place in Fire Lake, a tiny town somewhere in Idaho. If you’ve read Nemesis, you’d know this trilogy is also a post-apocalyptic story. The main character is Melinda Wilder, who prefers to go by Min. She’s a sixteen-year-old who got killed on her birthday every two years and somehow kept coming back. Nemesis revealed the truth: her killer was a man spearheading a black ops project aiming to save humanity.

The man, who now calls himself The Guardian, helped save Min’s entire sophomore class. In total they are sixty-four students. The Guardian told them all that Earth was ravaged following a stellar event that happens every certain million years. This event was unavoidable, as was the end of all life on Earth. Min and her class now live in a virtual recreation of Fire Lake. They have a task ahead of them now as part of Phase Two of Project Nemesis. The Guardian doesn’t give many details, though. Noah Livingston takes the virtual world’s objective to heart and betrays Min. He shot her twice, killing her.

THE TOP 10 BOOKS I READ IN 2023

Good morning, folks! It’s time again for my annual list of the 10 best books that I read. This year was my most prolific yet. I’ve finished 84 books as of the time I’m writing this post. It could increase slightly, but I’m pretty much done for the year. And though I read so many books, there weren’t that many to choose from to pick my top 10. It seems the…likability of the books I read this year wasn’t as high as usual. Despite that, there were still plenty of books that I greatly enjoyed.

One of my picks this year was a huge surprise. This book was so good I added it to this list at the very last minute. Usually, December is a wind-down month for me; I either read less books or pick only books that I’ve read before. But this last-minute book is part of a series I didn’t want to postpone until next year. And boy, was that a good choice. The book is Good Girl, Bad Blood by Holly Jackson. It was absolutely earth-shattering in my opinion. I liked it so much I couldn’t not include it in this list. And it damn near beat all my other picks. Here’s the full list:

STATUS UPDATE: END OF YEAR HIATUS AND NEW PROJECT

Good morning, everyone! I just wanted to pop in after going two consecutive weeks without any new posts. This isn’t the first time I take a break from my blog. I usually wait at least until late November, though. I admit I’ve been writing less book reviews than I used to, but I haven’t yet run out of new ones to post. I simply have been busy these past few weeks. There’s a project I decided to start, and it has all but consumed me.

Considering that I’m a very avid reader, it likely isn’t hard to guess what my project is. Yep, I’m writing a novel (or will be doing it soon). I guess what they say about “read enough books, eventually you'll want to write one” is true. I had what I think is an amazing idea recently, and I couldn’t stop the desire to develop it. I won’t say what it is yet, but I hope that I will sometime next year. I’ve already come up with a bunch of characters, and the protagonist has me completely invested. At the moment, I’m working on a plot outline. This means I can’t finish in time for NaNoWriMo, but I wasn’t aiming for that anyway. The event did give me the impetus to start now, though. I would like to have a completed first draft by year’s end. Even as I write this, ideas are cropping up in my head.

There are only a few weeks left in the year, so I’ll post no more book reviews while I work on my project. The exception is my annual “Top Ten Reads” list, which I’m already preparing. On another subject, I am still debating where to restart my social media presence. Twitter’s a no-go, of course, so I’ve pretty much abandoned that account. I’ll leave it as is instead of deleting it. Maybe I’ll move to Threads by Meta. Now that it’s possible to have more than one account (and to open one without needing Instagram), I may create a Threads profile soon. I’ll update my About Page when I do. For now, this is all. I’ll be back the second week of December with the ten best books I read this year.