The Garden of Eve by, K.L. Going ~~Review

The Garden of Eve by, K.L. Going
What a beautiful unsung hero in the YA genre it has everything a ghost story, coming of age, dealing with grief and some fairytale/fantasy/magical realism elements thrown in.
11 year-old Evie doesn’t believe in magic anymore not since her mother died. After all if magic were real her mother would still be alive. But when Evie moves to Beaumont, NY where her father has bought a withered apple orchard that the townspeople whisper is cursed, she learns about a lost girl, receives a mysterious seed, and meets a boy who claims to be dead. Before long Evie finds herself in the middle of a fairy tale. And this one is real.
I really enjoyed this book it’s beautifully written and is a very believable work of magical realism. I pretty much read this book straight through and can see why it won the Michael Printz Honor. This book is beautiful and haunting and I would say a must read!
4 Stars

Midnight Fires:A Mystery with Mary Wollstonecraft by,Nancy Means Wright

Midnight Fires:A Mystery with Mary Wollstonecraft by,Nancy Means Wright
Release Date 4/10/2010
Description from Publishers Weekly
At the start of this captivating historical set in 1786, Mary Wollstonecraft is on her way to Ireland to become a governess, “that most humiliating of occupations.” At Mitchelstown Castle in County Cork, headstrong Mary, the future mother of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, and future women's rights advocate, is determined to pen a novel and remain above the fray of castle politics while schooling Lord and Lady Kingsborough's daughters. Three suspicious deaths, however, compel Mary to seek justice for a poor young sailor, the family's troubled former governess, and even an aristocrat. It appears everyone from poet George Ogle, Lady K's new flirt, to a land tenant or two has a motive in one or more of these tangled deaths. As Mary snoops around in search of the culprit, she is bound not to lose herself to the mystery, her job, or the charms of any man. Wright (Mad Season and four other Ruth Wilmarth mysteries) deftly illuminates 18th-century class tensions.

My Review:
What a great cast of characters!

Mary is very interesting I really enjoyed her take on life

From page 168-
“Men, men, men, men,” she muttered aloud.” Would that I could be in a society made up of women.”
But How worrisome, her heart spoke back, how dull to live without them.

In this aristocratic society Mary saw people for what they were. Her ideas about women in society were far ahead of her time. That young women be taught to Think.How dare she?

This was a great historical mystery. It kept me reading I just had to find out what secret Mary would find out next. I will definitely be watching for more mysteries with Mary Wollenstonecraft!

Recommended to fans of historical fiction, historical mysteries and gothic fiction.
4 ½ Stars
I recieved this book through LibraryThing Early Reviewers program

Teaser Tuesday~~The Girl Who Chased The Moon by, Sarah Addison Allen

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

Grab your current read
Open to a random page
Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

I just started this book so didn't want to go too far into it for a Teaser.
The Girl Who Chased the Moon by, Sarah Addison Allen-
Page 7-"You can choose any room you want,but your mother's room was the last one on the right.Tell me what the wallpaper looks like when you walk in.I'd like to know."

Cold Sassy Tree, by Olive Ann Burns ~*Review*~

They say you should never judge a book by it's cover, and whoever "they" are, I guess they were right this time. When I first picked up Cold Sassy Tree, it looked like a moldy old classic, and that's what I thought the story would be like. However, this book surprised me and turned out to be very good.
The story starts out in the town of Cold Sassy, Georgia in 1906, where young Will Tweedy's grandmother has just died. Before she's even cold in the grave, his grandfather marries Miss Love Simpson, a woman at least 30 years younger than he is. All the residents of Cold Sassy, Will's family included, are scandalized and think Miss Love is out to get his grandfather's money. When he gets to know Miss Love, Will's opinion of her begins to change and he starts to accept her in his life after he realizes that his grandfather only married Miss Love so that he could have a housekeeper, and not to replace his grandmother. But as it usually goes, Will's grandfather and Miss Love do fall in love. After several mildly predictable twists at the end of the story, Will's learned some important life lessons and grown up some since the beginning of the book.
Once you get past the Southern jargon every time a character opens his or her mouth and the strange way Will's grandfather makes toast, Cold Sassy Tree was a very enjoyable story.
I give this book 3 1/2 stars.

The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig

The Secret History of the Pink Carnation begins with Eloise, an American girl who has traveled to England to complete her dissertation on a trio of English spies in the late 1700s and early 1800s. The spy that intrigues her the most is the Pink Carnation, an elusive and shifty fellow whose name is spattered throughout English newspapers, yet to this day hasn't been unmasked. Although she has searched through every archive and news article she can get her hands on, no clue to the Pink Carnation's identity is to be had. Fortunatly, she catches a break when Mrs. Arabella Selwick-Alderly, a descendant of the famed Purple Gentian, Lord Richard Selwick, responds to her desperate letter and agrees to let her read through some old family documents. Eloise quickly finds herself engrossed in the life of an enthusiastic young noblewoman and the dashing Purple Gentian on her search for the hidden identity of the Pink Carnation.
This book had me caught within its grasp in the first few pages. Willig creates vivid images in her readers' minds with her strong word choices. The personality of each character is portrayed in a way that is so believable it makes me want to reach out and slap them at times, and cheer for their victories at others. The novel is a mixture of adventure, mystery, romance, historical fiction, and just the right amount of humor that create a delightful read.
I gave The Secret History of the Pink Carnation 5 of 5 stars.

Teaser Tuesday~~ Mornings in Jenin by, Susan Abulhawa

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

Grab your current read
Open to a random page
Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!



Mornings In Jenin by, Susan Abulhawa-this is the first line of this book and it sets the tone-
Amal wanted a closer look at the soldier's eyes, but the muzzle of his automatic rifle,pressed against her forehead would not allow it.

The Poacher's Son by, Paul Diordon~Review

Release date:May 11,2010
Recieved from B&N First Look Program
Synopsis
Set in the wilds of Maine, this is an explosive tale of an estranged son thrust into the hunt for a murderous fugitive—-his own father.
Game warden Mike Bowditch returns home one evening to find an alarming voice from the past on his answering machine: his father, Jack, a hard-drinking womanizer who makes his living poaching illegal game. An even more frightening call comes the next morning from the police: They are searching for the man who killed a beloved local cop the night before—-and his father is their prime suspect. Jack has escaped from police custody, and only Mike believes that his tormented father might not be guilty.
Now, alienated from the woman he loves, shunned by colleagues who have no sympathy for the suspected cop killer, Mike must come to terms with his haunted past. He knows firsthand Jack’s brutality, but is the man capable of murder? Desperate and alone, Mike strikes up an uneasy alliance with a retired warden pilot, and together the two men journey deep into the Maine wilderness in search of a runaway fugitive. There they meet a beautiful woman who claims to be Jack’s mistress but who seems to be guarding a more dangerous secret. The only way for Mike to save his father now is to find the real killer—-which could mean putting everyone he loves in the line of fire.
The Poacher’s Son is a sterling debut of literary suspense. Taut and engrossing, it represents the first in a series featuring Mike Bowditch.




My Review:
I just finished this book and all I can say is WOW! Every quote on the cover of this book (Gripping, Compelling, Haunting, Original etc…) are spot on. Paul does an amazing job of drawing into this story with characters that are so compelling that you can’t put this book down. This is a story of a father and son estranged for years till Mike’s father is accused of murder and Mike sets out to prove his dad’s innocence.

I don’t want to say too much because I don’t want to spoil this story for anyone it is a Must Read for fans of thrillers, mysteries and character driven novels.

I think Paul Dioron has an amazing career ahead of him.

I got this book through B & N First Look and am so glad I did I have found an author I will definitely be following.

5 Stars

Mornings In Jenin by,Susan Abulhawa~Review

Mornings In Jenin by, Susan Abulhawa
Description:
Forcibly removed from the ancient village of Ein Hod by the newly formed state of Israel in 1948, the Abulhejas are moved into the Jenin refugee camp. There, exiled from his beloved olive groves, the family patriarch languishes of a broken heart, his eldest son fathers a family and falls victim to an Israeli bullet, and his grandchildren struggle against tragedy toward freedom, peace, and home. This is the Palestinian story, told as never before, through four generations of a single family.

The very precariousness of existence in the camps quickens life itself. Amal, the patriarch's bright granddaughter, feels this with certainty when she discovers the joys of young friendship and first love and especially when she loses her adored father, who read to her daily as a young girl in the quiet of the early dawn. Through Amal we get the stories of her twin brothers, one who is kidnapped by an Israeli soldier and raised Jewish; the other who sacrifices everything for the Palestinian cause. Amal’s own dramatic story threads between the major Palestinian-Israeli clashes of three decades; it is one of love and loss, of childhood, marriage, and parenthood, and finally of the need to share her history with her daughter, to preserve the greatest love she has.


My Review:

This was the first book I’ve read about the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict. I’ve read quite a few books about the Middle East but they have mostly been about the taliban, so this was new territory for me.

This story is about a Palestinian family spanning from 1941-2002. It is told from different viewpoints from people in the Abulheja family. It is a heartbreaking and powerful story from when they are forced from
their home and put into refugee camps in Jenin life gets worse and worse. They are terrorized and brutalized. This was a hard story to read, so many children, dead, beaten, shot, and orphaned.

The only thing I knew about this “Conflict”/War is what I’ve seen on the news and I have known for awhile that the news isn’t the whole story so it was good to see the other side of this story.

This book reads like non-fiction although its fiction it as made me curious enough to investigate further and read some of the books the author suggests at the end.

All in all a powerful very heartbreaking read I would recommend to anyone who likes the books written by Khaled Hosseini.

4 Stars

Teaser Tuesday~~The Lightning Thief by, Rick Riordan

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

Grab your current read
Open to a random page
Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!


The Lightning Thief by, Rick Riordan Page 45- "The less you knew, the fewer monsters you'd attract," Grover said,like that should be perfectly obvious.

Upcoming Classes @ The Library

March 9 & 11: Microsoft Excel II
Cost is $40 per person; 2 slots available
Designed for individuals who have basic knowledge of Excel or who are already using Excel
A Second Class is also available March 23 & 25

Bran Hambric The Farfierld Curse By:Kaleb Nation

So before i start I'm just gonna say this book is definitely for people with wild imaginations. I loved it but you kinda have to be in to magic stuff to like this book.

Bran has no memory of his life before he was six. He showed up in a locked vault in the town of Dunce. There is this rule in Dunce that says if you find an orphan you have to keep the child and raise it. When Bran is 14 his adoptive "family" gets a burglar. It doesn't steal anything, bit that's not saying it didn't try. Sewey (father) gets extremely paranoid by this and Bran ends up sitting on the roof watch for the burglar.

A few days later the family goes to a picnic. There is also a carnival going on at the time. Bran discovers he has magical powers. He also figures out he is part of The Farfield Curse.

I should tell you the rules of Dunce. They are as follows:
1)No Gnomes
2)No mages
3)No Etcetera

These rules put Bran in a bad position. He is a mage.There are great powers at work and he doesn't even know for sure how he is involved, but with the help of two other mages, a gnome and the dark dreams he may save the entire country and possibly the whole world from the unknown.

Join him to find out if he succeeds in The Farfield Curse.

Four stars: ****