Review: Once in a Full Moon by Ellen Shreiber

Once in a Full Moon
(Full Moon #1)

Author: Ellen Schreiber

Publication Date: December 28, 2010

Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books

Genre: Fantasy/Paranormal

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Synopsis:

Beware of a kiss under the full moon. It will change your life forever.

Celeste Parker is used to hearing scary stories about werewolves--Legend's Run is famous for them. She's used to everything in the small town until Brandon Maddox moves to Legend's Run and Celeste finds herself immediately drawn to the handsome new student. But when, after an unnerving visit with a psychic, she encounters a pack of wolves and gorgeous, enigmatic Brandon, she must discover whether his transformation is more than legend or just a trick of the shadows in the moonlight.

Her best friends may never forgive her if she gives up her perfect boyfriend, Nash, for Brandon, who's from the wrong side of town. But she can't deny her attraction or the strong pull he has on her. Brandon may be Celeste's hero, or he may be the most dangerous creature she could encounter in the woods of Legend's Run.

Psychic predictions, generations-old secrets, a town divided, and the possibility of falling in love with a hot and heroic werewolf are the perfect formula for what happens . . . once in a full moon.

My Thoughts: I really hoped that this would be an amazing werewolf story. I was really sad when it fell short of any expectations I had for it, especially since the beginning was good.

Celeste Parker is part of a sixome popular clique. Three best girlfriends dating three best guyfriends. What could possibly be more perfect? They did everything together. Until Brandon Maddox, a sexy new student at school catches Celeste’s attention. Celeste begins to reconsider everything in her life when Brandon heroically rescues her from a pack of wolves and unwittingly incites an ancient curse.

I really liked Celeste at the beginning of the book. She was refreshingly normal. However, as the book continued and Celeste failed to really adapt and grow she starting becoming really boring to me. The fact that she refuses to tell anyone she hangs out with Brandon, basically to save her and her friends’ popularity, really irked me too. She was lack-luster, self-absorbed and really cowardly in my opinion.

Celeste’s friends (and their boyfriends) were also self-absorbed and really self-entitled. They wanted Celeste to be with Nash (her former boyfriend and all-American athlete) just because it made sense and was the easiest for them all. The only person that seemed to stop and think about anyone else in this entire book was probably Brandon.

I also felt that once some of the side-characters told their story they disappeared off of the face of the universe - never to be mentioned, seen or heard from again.

There were a lot of things that really could have been done better in this book and I feel that it is a shame that the author didn’t go there. The overall feel was rushed, thrown together and a tad unfinished. If you are a fan of werewolf books, please stay away.

Waiting on Wednesday (16)

'Waiting on Wednesday' is a weekly event hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine that spotlights upcoming releases that we are eagerly awaiting.

Silver

By Rhiannon Held

Expected Publication: June 5th, 2012

Goodreads Synopsis: Andrew Dare is a werewolf. He’s the enforcer for the Roanoke pack, and responsible for capturing or killing any Were intruders in Roanoke’s territory. But the lone Were he’s tracking doesn’t smell or act like anyone he’s ever encountered. And when he catches her, it doesn’t get any better. She’s beautiful, she’s crazy, and someone has tortured her by injecting silver into her veins. She says her name is Silver, and that she’s lost her wild self and can’t shift any more.

The packs in North America have a live-and-let-live attitude, and try not to overlap with each other. But Silver represents a terrible threat to every Were on the continent. 

Andrew and Silver will join forces to track down this menace while discovering their own power and their passion for each other.

I'm a total sucker for paranormal romance! And I love werewolf stories, so this one sounds pretty awesome to me!

What are you 'Waiting On'?

Review: Linger by Maggie Stiefvater

Linger

Author: Maggie Stiefvater

Publication Date: July 13th, 2010

Publisher: Scholastic Press

Genre: YA/Romance/Paranormal

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Synopsis:

SYNOPSIS HERE!!In Maggie Stiefvater's Shiver, Grace and Sam found each other. Now, in Linger, they must fight to be together. For Grace, this means defying her parents and keeping a very dangerous secret about her own well-being. For Sam, this means grappling with his werewolf past . . . and figuring out a way to survive into the future. Add into the mix a new wolf named Cole, whose own past has the potential to destroy the whole pack. And Isabelle, who already lost her brother to the wolves . . . and is nonetheless drawn to Cole.

My Thoughts: If you've read my review on Shiver, you already know I'm going to tell you how much I love this book. Shiver was incredibly wonderful, and Linger was even better! In Shiver the narrating was switching between Grace and Sam, which was so wonderful, to see events from two different minds! In Linger we get to add to more views and insights. We get a deeper peek into the mind and life of Isabelle, and a brand new character Cole. I absolutely love reading the story from all their perspectives, and getting to see inside every character's head, the characters easily become real people, and they slip right into your heart and yank at it!

Now, I really can't go into to much here without giving away anything, so this may be a short and sweet review. In Linger Grace and Sam think the finally have what they wanted, but life is constantly throwing obstacles in their way. Grace's parents find out just how serious their relationship is and they decide now is the time to start being parents. This results in strict rules, and even stopping her from seeing Sam. This literally broke my heart. Her parents going on and on about how she is only 17 and she doesn't know what love is blah blah blah, she'll survive. I hate that. I really really hate when people decide for you how capable you are of being in love. No one knows how you feel but you! Besides, it kinda hits a soft spot for me I was 16 when I started dating my now Husband. He even proposed to me, and we moved in together. Ya, I was still in high school, but when it's the one, you really just know. and Here we are now, married, with 3 kids, and even more in love than we were back then! I'm not saying everyone in love at a young age is in real love, but I'm saying it does happen! Me and Jenn both met our now Husbands in high school.

Anyway, enough of that rant =P. Aside from that, Sam now has to assume the role as leader of the pack. As Beck's adopted son,  it's his place to start taking care of everyone now, and with a bunch of new wolves, that won't be so easy. Especially with one new wolf in particular, his name is Cole. Cole comes in with a whole lot of baggage and a very troubled past. All he wants is to just be a wolf full time and escape his life. That is until he meets Isabelle, she finds a way to get inside him like no one ever has, and just maybe, he can try to become the good person, that deep down inside, he really wants to be. It doesn't help though that he's carrying a secret that if discovered could expose the entire pack for what they are. Grace is also carrying her own little secret. Something is wrong with her, and getting worse all the time. She is trying to keep it secret because when her and Sam do get to see each other, she doesn't want to ruin their limited time together with her scared thoughts.  But things just keep propelling downward, and she may not be able to keep it secret for much longer. Will Sam find out what's going on before the worst imaginable happens? If he does find out, will he be able to help her?

This book is so jam packed with emotional story line. My emotions were all over the radar! I could not put this book down! when reading the last 30% my husband was trying to talk to me, and I told him whatever he had to say was going to have to wait because there was no way I could stop now! So I stayed buried in my book until the end. Then I closed it, hugged it, and I cried. I sat there and cried, and then my husband teased   me so I had to stop crying =P.

This is a love story you won't soon forget. These are books you are going to want to have on your shelf. They have easily made it into my top favorites. You'll want to own them not only because they are amazing, but they are so beautiful to! amazingly designed covers, and the font inside matches the color of the book! I got so excited when I opened Linger and found green font, how cool is that? I  might be easily entertained, but I thought that was just awesome!

Without a doubt, I recommend this book, go read it. right now! Add it to your TBR so you don't forget! If it's already on there, make it your next read, you won't regret it, you may even thank me :). This series is going to have a special place in my heart, that's for sure.

Review: Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

Shiver

Author: Maggie Stiefvater

Publication Date: August 1st, 2009

Publisher: Scholastic Press

Genre: YA/Romance/Paranormal

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Synopsis:

Grace and Sam share a kinship so close they could be lovers or siblings. But they also share a problem. When the temperature slips towards freezing, Sam reverts to his wolf identity and must retreat into the woods to protect his pack. He worries that eventually his human side will fade away and he will be left howling alone at the lonely moon. A stirring supernatural teen romance.

My Thoughts:  I love love love loved this book! There is this thing I do, that pretty much tells you on a scale what I thought of the book, I don't even do it consciously, but at the same time, I am aware that I do it. If I finish a book and just plop it down beside me, I didn't care for it much at all, or am even relieved to be done with it. If I hold it and look at it for a little while, I liked it - it was a good story. I always sit and think about a good book for a few minutes after I finish it. But here's what I did in this case, and this is what I do when I really, really love a book: I close it, and I hug it! Seriously, don't laugh, when I love a book, I hug it when it's done, like I am trying to absorb the awesomeness of the story into me, or bring myself even close to the characters I fell in love with. So here I was at 2am laying in my bed, clutching this book to my chest and re-imagining all my favorite parts of the book. This can last for a little while. Then I had to convince myself to go to sleep rather than go upstairs and grab the second book, Linger, off my shelf. If I didn't have three little munchkins that love to wake up early I assure you I would have proceeded to the next book without hesitation!

So as you know from reading the summary, it's a love story between a girl and a werewolf.  I really enjoyed the werewolves in this story. They are essentially the same as we commonly read of them, with their own few unique additions that make them stand out to you, along with the rest of the story.  These wolves only turn when it's cold, so they are only wolves in the winter time, and human the rest of the year. They only get so many years of changing back and forth before they stay wolves permanently. They are also unaffected by all that stuff from lore, like silver bullets and such, and they have rapid regeneration. And of course you are turned by being bitten.

The two characters in love are Sam and Grace, and I love both of them! Typically for me, in love stories, I tend to love either the male or female role more. But in this case, I loved them both in large equal amounts. Grace is  amazing, independent, strong, determined, and very compassionate about those she loves, mostly the wolves and namely, Sam. Sam shares these same qualities as Grace, but they are also almost opposites. Sam is artistic, creative, musical, all those things that go hand in hand, whereas Grace is very logical, straight-forward, put order into things type of person. Together they create this amazing pair that you  can't help but feel attached to. They have a connection that is so incredibly sweet you will get a toothache haha. Some of the times, I feel this can be overdone, and almost ruins the effect of how connected these people are supposed to be. In this case however, I felt it was done perfectly, with little touches here and there, wonderfully detailed, and  pieced together perfectly. Their love is really wonderful. They both have parental issues. Sam's is very much more intense than Graces, but they share this nonetheless and I think it plays a part in their bond. Grace's parents are just pretty much non-existent. They run around and do their own thing like they don't even have a child, which pretty much leaves Grace to raise and fend for herself. But it also leaves room for Grace and Sam to not be hindered by parental supervision ;). Then there's Sam's parents, when they discovered him shifting as a young boy, after being bit, they reacted in the most horrible way possible. They tried to kill him....You will have to read the story yourself for the details on that!

Of course, their relationship can't be easy! This is a YA paranormal romance after all, we all know it can't just be happiness all the time! So Sam's a werewolf, and he's pretty sure that this will be his last year and when he changes this winter, he will remain in that form forever. So the story is mostly about Grace and Sam and their struggle to spend as much time as possible together, to try and fight him becoming a wolf for as long as possible. They obviously have some real rough patches in trying to fight the inevitable and I found myself in tears three times while reading this.

But that is not all that happens in this story! A teenager is turned to a werewolf and doesn't handle the situation so well, and the entire pack is at risk of being exposed. Sam feels it's his duty to protect his pack, but how will he do so when he is trying to fight becoming his wolf self?  Sam also discovers the man who essentially raised him after he became a werewolf, may not be the amazing person he always thought he was. Grace's friends who are aware of her obsession with the wolves, begin to distance themselves when her obsession becomes even deeper than usual. And a female werewolf in the pack, who had already assumed Sam was going to be her mate, decides to put up a fight.

I absolutely recommend this book! If you are a fan at all of paranormal, YA, romance, get your hands on this book! I am so glad that I got the entire set at once so I don't have to wait to continue on. If you couldn't already tell, this book is being added to my favorites!
Also, I forgot to mention, I am in love with the cover of this book, as well as each one in the series, it's what drew me to them at first. Beautiful covers!!!

Teaser Tuesday (2)

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted my MizB at Should Be Reading.

To participate you:

-Grab your current read.

-Open to a random page.

-Share two 'teaser' sentences from somewhere on that page.

-BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS!

(make sure what you share doesn't give to much away, you don't want to ruin the book for others)

-Share the title and Author to, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR if they like your teasers :).

This week's teaser comes from:

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

"All the while, I could see his wolf's mind analyzing the situation. The tilt of his head told me what he was listening to, and the lift of his chin hinted the scents he was gathering.'

I am really really enjoying this book. It's a great little twist on the werewolves we all know so well. I'm definitely glad I bought the whole series at once so I won't have to wait to read the next two books!

Review: A Bite's Tale by Veronica Blade

A Bite's Tale

Author: Veronica Blade

Publication Date: January 4th, 2102

Genre: Paranormal / Fairy Tale Retelling

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Synopsis:

A Cinderella who spends her nights as a wolf. A prince with a taste for blood. Seventeen year old Cydney struggles against her werewolf nature, trying to keep everyone around her safe. No way will she risk exposing the beast at the prince’s ball, no matter how her two cousins try to persuade her. Even as she attempts to get on with her life, Cydney can’t forget the boy she loved three summers ago — or what she did to him after losing control. Turned into a vampire to save his life, the prince refuses to live up to his royal duties. He just wants to find the girl he loved and lost...the werewolf girl who bit him. But his father, the king, commands him to attend a ball where he must choose a wife. Can he find his Cinderella before he's forced to marry another? He doesn’t even have her real name, much less a glass slipper.