Veronica Roth - Divergent

Divergent is an imaginative, exciting, fast-paced, adrenaline-driven, and honest-to-God amazing read . The world Miss Roth created is very interesting and a real possibility for the future of our society. I also loved her characters because I felt I was reading about real people; Roth didn't try to romanticize her characters and give them only happy feelings. 

I found Tris to be a very human character. I know that sounds weird, but what I mean is that a lot of authors like to make their characters be nice and compassionate and just overall good people; but Tris wasn't compassionate and she really didn't care about others, all she wanted to do was survive the Dauntless training and not get close to anyone. I have to admit that I didn't particularly like the fact that she wasn't compassionate and didn't care about her friends, but it's real . People have ugly sides to them and I think it's good that Roth didn't hide that from the reader. 

Divergent is also not your typical YA read. It is gritty, dark, and no-holds-barred; no light and fluffy feelings here. There is a good deal of violence and death, and the good people aren't spared from it. 

Overall, an incredible start to a series, and I look forward to reading the rest in the Divergent trilogy.

Book Love,

Lena

Rachel Higginson - Hopeless Magic

Holy mother-cracking hell that was freakin INTENSE!! Like habanero peppers mixed with tabasco sauce intense. Just wha--why--how--who--what? What the hell did I just read!!Oh my god I seriously can't believe the book ended how it did. HOW COULD KIRAN DO THAT!!!!! I never really liked Kiran because he's been an asshole to Eden since the first book, but I really wanted to believe the best of him and give him the benefit of the doubt despite having a bastard of a father and being a bit--or a lot--of a prick himself. But no, he just had to prove that he was just like his father. 

I felt so so so so soooooooo terrible for Eden. She absolutely loved Kiran and then he goes and betrays her in the worst way possible. He totally killed their love, and I can't understand how he could think that Eden would forgive him for that. For a second I thought he was insane, like literally psycho, acting like everything was fine and telling Eden they had to leave like nothing had happened. He was totally unreasonable in believing Eden would keep loving him after what he did.

This is the first book I've read where two people are soul mates and absolutely love each other and one of them betrays the other in such an atrocious and horrible way. I have absolutely no idea how Eden and Kiran could possibly come back from this. How do you even forgive something like that? I would find it impossible to do. I'm on the edge of my seat because I desperately want to know what happens next. Is Eden going to hook up with Jericho? Will she meet someone else? Will she forgive Kiran? Or will she stay by herself? The possibilities are endless. 

I do think she will get back with Kiran because, hello, they ARE soul mates, but that kind of betrayal leaves a lasting scar on a relationship; I don't see how things could ever be the same between them. I'll be excited to see how Ms Higginson handles this situation.

On a positive note, because of what Kiran did, Eden turned into a total badass, and I hope she stays that way, because I'm not really a fan of wimpy, whiny, cry-baby, woe-is-me heroines. I was really getting tired of her being this helpless girl who everyone had to protect and who was always being submissive. I have high hopes that all that is over and that she is now more mature and tough.

On another note, I love how the plot of the series is developing, with all the drama of Eden being the only hope of saving the Immortal race. I'm super excited to see how much stronger Eden's magic is going to get and how she is going to bring down the Kendrick line. If it weren't for the awesome plot full of magic, intrigue, action and mystery, I would have stopped reading a long time ago, because the romance is DEFINITELY not up to par. I find Kiran to be cowardly, wimpy and totally lacking as the hero, but well, that's just my opinion, you might not think so. To be honest, throughout most of this book, I actually liked Kiran and wanted his relationship with Eden to succeed. But now, not so much. 

There are so many more things that happened but I'm not going to reveal anything specific; you'll have to read the book and find out for yourself!!! Rarely do I give a book five stars, so believe me when I say this book is AMAZING.

Book Love,

Lena

Mary McCall - Highland Treasure

I was kind of skeptical about reading this book because though it has a lot of stars, it hasn't been reviewed by many people (see Goodreads.com), which made me think the rating would not be very reliable, and it wasn't. I would probably give this book between 2-2.5 stars. What is sad is that this book had a lot of potential, but an extremely fast-paced story line, a lack of depth, and unrealistic situations/characters made it just an ok read. 

For one thing, everything happened extremely fast in this book, from Leonce and Hope getting married to them falling in love. This all happened in just a couple of days, and it just wasn't realistic and didn't allow the reader to enjoy the buildup of emotions between the H/h. It also was not believable that Hope, who had been abused by her father for years, could trust a man within days of meeting him. It was disappointing that Hope didn't make Leonce fight for her love. Instead of reacting like a normal woman who has been tricked into marriage by a man she has known for mere days and trying to escape or make his life impossible, Hope just randomly decides that she will give her heart to him and she will make him fall in love with her, WHEN THEY BARELY KNOW EACH OTHER!!!! Ugh it was just so unbelievable and annoying. And seriously, what was up with Hope? Was she bipolar or something? because she would be exuberant one moment and completely defeated the next, I swear it gave me emotional whiplash; I couldn't keep up with her mood swings. 

The lack of buildup also contributed to a lack of depth in the book. Because the author didn't give the characters time for their feelings to develop, it all felt very fake and cheesy. It would have been nice if Hope and Leonce had both had to work at cracking the other's shell and gradually falling in love, rather than how it played out. 

I'm also not sure whether to call Leonce an alpha male; I'm leaning more towards NOT. He just didn't make me feel like he was dominant and in control; most of the time he felt more like a petulant child rather than a grown man. Mind you, I'm not saying he should have exerted more control over Hope, but rather exuded more confidence and manliness than he did in the book. It just did not seem realistic that a Highland chieftain in the 11th century would have acted how he did.

I also felt like there was little plot in the book. It mostly consisted of Hope playing games, angering people, fighting with Leonce, and discovering she had family pretty much everywhere, which was also highly unrealistic and cheesy. I felt like the matter of her abusive father was not given much thought and was resolved much too quickly. There was basically nothing to make this book exciting, like mystery or intrigue. The magical aspect of the book (view spoiler) totally fell flat and was way too downplayed for my tastes. When people found out she was the Gifted One, they were in awe for like two seconds and then everyone forgot about it -__- . If it had been made a bigger part of the book, it would have made it so much better. It would have been cool if, say, her abusive father and his men were after Hope for being the Gifted One but this was a secret from Leonce and everyone else, and they had to figure out why she was hunted or something like that. Just anything to make it more exciting!!! *Sigh* oh well.

Overall, it's an ok read if you're looking for something without too much depth. But if you're looking for something a little deeper, steer clear of this one.

Book Love,

Lena

Sylvain Reynard - Gabriel's Inferno

**Spoiler Alert** 

Wow. What can I say to do this review justice. It has been a very long time since I read such an emotional and well written romance. I noticed a resemblance between Gabriel's Inferno and Fifty Shades of Grey, but this book was so good not even the similarities spoiled it. 

It was unique and amazingly well written; I can't stress that enough. I would go so far as to say it was even more emotional than FSOG, maybe even better. I would have to say that what makes this book better than FSOG is the focus on the emotional aspect of a relationship rather than the sexual. Reynard waited until the very end to write their love scene, and I really appreciated the time the couple took to get there, rather than having sex early on which would have been on the basis of mindless passion rather than love. And please, I am not putting FSOG down, the trilogy was just as amazing. I only wish to point out the different focal points/themes of the two books.

The characters were entirely believable; The tormented professor with a dark and heavy past and the innocent graduate student who has deep emotional scarring and self-esteem issues. Of course, no book is completely without its annoyances or flaws, and one of the few things that bothered me was Julia's constant reticence to accept gifts from other people. However, it is such a small thing that it doesn't really take away from the greatness of the book.

I also have to say that I have not enjoyed a love scene, or even a love, as sweet and patient and kind and passionate as that between Gabriel and Julia. Yes, he starts out as an asshole, but he more than makes up for it later. 

I just have to once again give props to the writing style of Reynard, because of how much thought and research must have gone towards this book. The special lecture that Gabriel gave on Dante in the book must have taken a lot of thought, patience, and time to complete. So cheers to you Sylvain Reynard. A wonderful story with a wonderful message of redemption, healing, destiny, and renewed love. 

Book Love

Lena

Vi Keeland - Belong to You

First of all: daaaamn the guy in the cover is freaking hot. I can't even see his whole face but he looks totally swoon-worthy, haha.

Anyways, Belong to You, the first in the Cole Series, was a very likable read. It was fast-paced, exciting, and the characters weren't too bad. However, at several points it felt like more should have been written into the story, because I felt like in the beginning it jumped right into Sydney and Jack's relationship with no build up, and Jack was a little creepy in the beginning too. If you place this in real life, I'd be pretty freaked out by Jack's possessiveness only 5 minutes after meeting him, not to mention his intense staring and instant violation of spacial boundaries. I'm going to spoil just a tiny bit of the book so you can see what I'm saying. 

In the beginning, when Jack and Syd first meet, Syd is shocked by Jack's green eyes and feels all attracted to him and whatnot. Then a couple hours later after meeting him, Syd is at the bar after a performance and he approaches her and just stands behind her like a creeper, not saying anything and invading her personal space and just staring down at her all stalkery in my opinion. But Syd seemed to love it so I was like meh, whatever, but I would have been like: *uncomfortable laugh* "Could you like, back off?". 

I did appreciate that they gave the relationship a couple months before saying I love you, because the whole "I love you after only one day" doesn't really work for me. 

Jack wasn't overly restraining either and didn't creepily track his girlfriend's every move like Christian did with Ana in FSOG.

All in all, I thought it was a fairly fast and light read. It could have had a more intriguing plot with more twists than just the (somewhat shallow) problems between Jack and Sydney as their relationship developed. I gave it 4 stars because 3 is too low in my opinion, but 3.75 would be more accurate. 

Book Love

Lena 

Heather Killough-Walden - The Goblin King

Warning! This review contains spoilers

Ok, so obviously there's a pattern here for the King books: 1) the male lead has been alone for thousands of years and really wants to find his queen. 2) He finds her and instantly gets tunnel vision. 3) The respective queen is really apprehensive about the king and doesn't want anything to do with his world of supernatural creatures. 4) She eventually gives in because her desire for the king is overwhelming. 5) There's some significant battle involving the king and queen. 6) The king and queen end up getting together and having their (kind of) HEA. 

Yea, let's just say these books are becoming predictable. I'm only continuing to read them because I already started the series and have to finish it. It's a curse that I always have to finish what I start. 

Once again, we have a book with a bland romance but at least a better overarching plot. I just don't feel the love!!! There are so many other books where I can say "Wow, now that's what I call love", and this isn't one of them. 

And once again, you guessed it, f***ing Evie stole the spotlight. Ugh! Can someone please give that girl her HEA? Honestly, it's torturing the reader and her. 

There's just no creativity to the series, no imagination, and nothing tying the books or the characters together except that they're all kings and queens. And it also sucks that there's nothing special about each queen. All we know is that they are more powerful than the kings, but none of them have their own unique power. Well, Diana can heal and is a seer, which is progress, but the books before that did not make the queens seem like anything special. It would be great if each queen had a special power that was needed in the final battle to defeat the great evil plaguing the world. 

Seriously, I can see these books going so many more interesting and diverse ways, but I guess HKW doesn't. For example, HKW didn't make anything of the fact that Diana is the goddess of the moon in Roman mythology and that Artemis is the Greek version of the goddess. I mean, it was important in that the Fae kings all consider the moon sacred and thus their queens would somehow be related to the moon, but that's all; no cool powers, no cool ancestry connections, etc. For example, Diana could have had some special power over the moon, the tides, and gravity, since that is all related. And Chloe, from the previous book, could have had control over space, the stars, the planets, and all that comes with it. 

So overall, an OK read. I'm going to keep reading the series only because I'm in too deep and have to know what happens regarding the Egyptian gods and the evil power that is rising.

Book Love

Lena

Nicole Christie - Falling for the Ghost of You

Falling for the Ghost of You was a really cute and light read, though it didn't have much depth in my opinion. While I did like Violet because she was just hilarious and spontaneous (you never knew what she was going to say), I did get tired of her constant jealousy. It got pretty annoying and almost bordered on psycho. 

Zane was a nice guy, but I felt he was just, like, blah. There was nothing super special about him besides his secret, which is really not a terrible secret at all, even though the author made it seem like it was going to be. I don't know why, but my first thought was that it would be that Zane is the president of some porn company. I know, I know, you're probably thinking"why would you think that?" but really it's not that much of a stretch: He had a (different) girl over almost every night and flirted or was "friendly" with other girls while he was with Violet...ok so maybe that's not much evidence, but my mind still went that way. I also like my males to be more intense and dominant, but Zane was just very care free and honestly not too interesting besides being super good looking. Meh.

And the big secret came out of no where. There were absolutely no hints dropped about what it could be, so when we find out what the big secret is, all I could think of was that it was completely out of left field. I felt like I was all of a sudden reading a different book.

Also, I have to agree with the reviewer who said that she would have liked a little more explicitness during sexy time. It's just that on top of the whole book being kind of bland, the sex scenes (or rather lack thereof) were also very obscure and not at all descriptive. So yea, I guess that sums up my feelings about the book: it was pretty bland

If you're looking for a light, quick read, this might be the book for you. But if you're looking for something more thrilling or perhaps with a little more depth, I would look somewhere else.

Book Love

Lena