Recommendations

I'm four for four, you guys. So far. What does that mean? Of the four books I've read (out of nine that I checked out) I've enjoyed all four. How rare is that? It's especially gratifying after the disappointment of my last library venture. Here are the titles of those books, in case you want to pick them up yourself.

Possess by Gretchen McNeil.
Fifteen-year-old Bridget Liu just wants to be left alone: by her mom, by the cute son of a local police sergeant, and by the eerie voices she can suddenly and inexplicably hear. Unfortunately for Bridget, it turns out the voices are demons – and Bridget has the rare ability to banish them back to whatever hell they came from.

Terrified to tell people about her new power, Bridget confides in a local priest who enlists her help in increasingly dangerous cases of demonic possession. But just as she is starting to come to terms with her new power, Bridget receives a startling message from one of the demons. Now Bridget must unlock the secret to the demons' plan before someone close to her winds up dead – or worse, the human vessel of a demon king.

I was in the mood for something creepy. I love a good scary book and this sounded perfect. Even though it wasn't as creeptastic as a Stephen King novel, it definitely had its moments. There were scenes that made me chuckle, and there was romance for those romantics at heart.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan
In Mary's world, there are simple truths.

The Sisterhood always knows best.

The Guardians will protect and serve.

The Unconsecrated will never relent.

And you must always mind the fence that surrounds the village. The fence that protects the village from the Forest of Hands and Teeth.

But slowly, Mary's truths are failing her. She's learning things she never wanted to know about the Sisterhood and its secrets, and the Guardians and their power. And, when the fence is breached and her world is thrown into chaos, about the Unconsecrated and their relentlessness.

Now she must choose between her village and her future, between the one she loves and the one who loves her. And she must face the truth about the Forest of Hands and Teeth. Could there be life outside a world surrounded by so much death?

I know, I'm so behind the times. Even though this book has been out for some time (the trilogy is over) I've never been that interested in it for some reason. I guess my fear of a zombie apocolypse kept me from picking it up. But curiousity got the best of me. This book is beautifully written, poetic with that sense of looming doom in every word. And great for those looking for another good scare. I will say this, I struggled with liking the MC, Mary. She wasn't my favorite. There were times I wanted to hand her over to the consecrated myself, but I think that's what makes this book so great, a flawed MC that you don't always root for. And despite my annoyance, I still enjoyed the story and world building.

Wither by Lauren DeStefano

By age sixteen, Rhine Ellery has four years left to live. She can thank modern science for this genetic time bomb. A botched effort to create a perfect race has left all males with a lifespan of 25 years, and females with a lifespan of 20 years. Geneticists are seeking a miracle antidote to restore the human race, desperate orphans crowd the population, crime and poverty have skyrocketed, and young girls are being kidnapped and sold as polygamous brides to bear more children. When Rhine is kidnapped and sold as a bride, she vows to do all she can to escape. Her husband, Linden, is hopelessly in love with her, and Rhine can’t bring herself to hate him as much as she’d like to. He opens her to a magical world of wealth and illusion she never thought existed, and it almost makes it possible to ignore the clock ticking away her short life. But Rhine quickly learns that not everything in her new husband’s strange world is what it seems. Her father-in-law, an eccentric doctor bent on finding the antidote, is hoarding corpses in the basement. Her fellow sister wives are to be trusted one day and feared the next, and Rhine is desperate to communicate to her twin brother that she is safe and alive. Will Rhine be able to escape--before her time runs out?Together with one of Linden's servants, Gabriel, Rhine attempts to escape just before her seventeenth birthday. But in a world that continues to spiral into anarchy, is there any hope for freedom?

This book is dystopian, a genre I've never been all that interested in until The Hunger Games. Since then I've read and enjoyed several books categorized as dystopian. Rhine's existence is one of difficulty. I can't imagine being put in a situation like hers. The whole sister wife, polygamous lifestyle is... disturbing. And the antagonist is thoroughly villan worthy. I'm looking forward to thesequel because there were a lot of unanswered questions.

Rampant by Diana Peterfreund
Forget everything you ever knew about unicorns...

Real unicorns are venomous, man-eating monsters with huge fangs and razor-sharp horns. Fortunately, they've been extinct for a hundred and fifty years.

Or not.

Astrid had always scoffed at her eccentric mother's stories about killer unicorns. But when one of the monsters attacks her boyfriend—thereby ruining any chance of him taking her to the prom—Astrid finds herself headed to Rome to train as a unicorn hunter at the ancient cloisters the hunters have used for centuries.

However, at the cloisters all is not what it seems. Outside, the unicorns wait to attack. And within, Astrid faces other, unexpected threats: from the crumbling, bone-covered walls that vibrate with a terrible power to the hidden agendas of her fellow hunters to—perhaps most dangerously of all—her growing attraction to a handsome art student ... an attraction that could jeopardize everything.

Killer unicorns? Count me in. Another successful world building story. I loved the whole idea of a group of female warriors training to kill some bad-a unicorns. Everyone thinks Astrid's mom is a wack job, and sure she sounds crazy with her unicorn stories, but then it all comes true. I loved Astrid's cousin, Phil. Yeah she got on my nerves a few times, but for the most part she made me laugh. And Astrid's mom, Lilith, is a piece of work. I can't imagine sending my child to a foreign country with perfect strangers in order fulfill my own selfish desires. There was romance and quite a bit of action. A great read for those looking for something different.