On My Wishlist: YA Version, 6/25/11

On My Wishlist is a fun weekly event hosted by Book Chick City and runs every Saturday. It's where I list all the books I desperately want but haven't actually bought yet. They can be old, new or forthcoming. It's also an event that you can join in with too!

This week I'm going to focus on some YA titles.  There are so many good ones coming out in the next few months and some great ones that have just been released.

*****Possession by Elana Johnson (Possession #1)  June 7, 2011; Simon & Schuster

  Vi knows the Rule: Girls don't walk with boys, and they never even think about kissing them. But no one makes Vi want to break the Rules more than Zenn...and since the Thinkers have chosen him as Vi's future match, how much trouble can one kiss cause? The Thinkers may have brainwashed the rest of the population, but Vi is determined to think for herself.

But the Thinkers are unusually persuasive, and they're set on convincing Vi to become one of them...starting by brainwashing Zenn. Vi can't leave Zenn in the Thinkers' hands, but she's wary of joining the rebellion, especially since that means teaming up with Jag. Jag is egotistical, charismatic, and dangerous--everything Zenn's not. Vi can't quite trust Jag and can't quite resist him, but she also can't give up on Zenn.

This is a game of control or be controlled. And Vi has no choice but to play.

*****Divergent by Veronica Roth (Divergent #1)  May 3, 2011; Katherine Tegen Books
  
In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is—she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles to determine who her friends really are—and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes infuriating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers a growing conflict that threatens to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves . . . or it might destroy her.

Debut author Veronica Roth bursts onto the literary scene with the first book in the Divergent series—dystopian thrillers filled with electrifying decisions, heartbreaking betrayals, stunning consequences, and unexpected romance.

*****Moonglass by Jessi Kirby  May 3, 2011; Simon & Schuster

From Jessi Kirby, a debut novel about confronting the past in order to move ahead.

I read once that water is a symbol for emotions. And for a while now, I've thought maybe my mother drowned in both.

Anna's life is upended when her father accepts a job transfer the summer before her junior year. It's bad enough that she has to leave her friends and her life behind, but her dad is moving them to the beach where her parents first met and fell in love- a place awash in memories that Anna would just as soon leave under the surface.

While life on the beach is pretty great, with ocean views and one adorable lifeguard in particular, there are also family secrets that were buried along the shore years ago. And the ebb and flow of the ocean's tide means that nothing- not the sea glass that she collects on the sand and not the truths behind Anna's mother's death- stays buried forever.

*****Winter's Shadow by M.J. Hearle  June 1, 2011; Pan McMillian, Australia

Blake Duchamp...

He's all that Winter Adams can think of. Ever since their fateful meeting at Pilgrim's Lament. Ever since he looked at her with those emerald eyes. Ever since he saved her life.

But Blake isn't all that he seems. There is a strangeness about him, something dark and otherworldly. Something dangerous. In his attic is a secret he would kill to defend, but Winter seems to have a special ability to make him forget his duty. And he is her only protection against the gathering darkness.

The only problem is, to protect Winter, Blake must risk exposing her to an even greater danger. Himself.

What are YOU wishing for this week??

Book Excerpt: The Day the Flowers Died & Give Away

The Day the Flowers Died written by Ami Blackwelder is a gently narrated historical romance novel. Set in 1930 Munich, Germany two strangers fall in love in the midst of a crumbling country. Eli Levin was raised in a strict orthodox Jewish home while Rebecca Baum grew up in an affluent Catholic family. Despite their differences, they stay true to each other and form a bond that lasts well after the war. Through-out family disapproval, social prejudice and a growing Nazi party, they struggle and overcome; but when identity becomes the difference between life and death, the two must make decisions that will change their lives forever.

Here's an excerpt: 

Saturday, October 1, 1932

Rosh Hashanah, Jewish New Year: Eli told Rebecca a week in advance about the upcoming Jewish holiday Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of their New Year.  He invited her to participate in it with him at his family’s home.

Ezekiel, though disapproving of their relationship, was proud to see his son remember his heritage and invite Rebecca.  Ezekiel was also glad to see Rebecca willing to observe and learn a new tradition.

Last year on Rosh Hashanah after synagogue, groups of Nazis waited outside to brutalize the Jewish fellowship.  Brawls broke out, wounding many.  This year, Eli and Ezekiel worried something like that would also occur.

Rebecca rode with Eli to the Levin home on Saturday afternoon after they ate in Munich.

Ada opened the door, welcoming both Eli and Rebecca inside and then, out of social decorum, guided them to the living room where Eli’s family awaited.

When Rebecca turned the corner after a long walk through the corridor, she saw Miriam’s bright eyes shine out from under her mama’s arm where they sat on the sofa.  Sarah sat on the far sofa with her posture upright as Rebecca had been shown many times by her own mother.

“Welcome Eli and Rebecca,” Deborah said with warm affection and rose to hug her son and then Rebecca. The hospitality surprised Rebecca since their last visit ended after an argument between Eli and his father.  Rebecca accepted the hug and followed Eli to the sofa across from Deborah.  After Leah’s big brown eyes became bored of staring at the new guest, she returned her focus to the game on the floor.

“How was your trip, Eli?” Deborah asked in a curt tone, her attention divided between him and Miriam.  The girl put her fingers inside her mouth and wiggled them around until Deborah pulled her hand away from her face and held it down on her lap.

“It was good, Mama, always a pleasant journey.  Rebecca enjoys the scenery too.  It’s quite different from the busy city of Munich.”

“Which is why your father and I chose to live in this house, away from all the hustle.” Deborah’s words carried an air of sagacity.

Eli told Rebecca a couple months back that his mama was a soft hearted woman and did not much disapprove of him with her, but that his father, the strict center of the family, would rather Eli date a Jewish woman.  This soothed Rebecca’s nerves while she sat in the room with Deborah.  In fact, Rebecca began to feel more acquainted with Eli’s family than with her own.

Compared to this, her own home felt quite barren and, besides Mildred, who mostly raised her, and Rueben the chef, she did not have much of a childhood.  The time spent with her mother involved formal classes and direction, teaching her to be a lady, a German woman of sophistication. On occasion, she could steal a few laughs from her father when she managed to escape her mother’s rigid grip.

Rebecca rose from the sofa and sat on the floor with Leah, familiar with the game, one of the few she played as a young girl.  Leah looked up with her short bob swaying and smiled.

Rebecca reached her hand towards the jacks. “May I play?” At Leah’s nod, Rebecca lifted the jacks up high and then released them, letting them dribble to the wood floor.  Leah bounced the ball once and lifted one of the scattered jacks into her hands before the ball hit the floor again. They played this game for a few moments with concentrated efforts while Sarah, Eli and Deborah watched in amusement. Eli even saw Sarah sneak a smile at Rebecca and her childlike demeanor.

Buy this book:  Amazon  or Barnes & Noble

About the author: 

Ami Blackwelder is a prolific writer whose short stories and poems have been published in magazines and newspapers across the globe. She won a Best Fiction Award while getting her Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Central Florida. She placed as a semi-finalist in the Laurel Hemingway short story contest and her work was subsequently published.
http://www.amiblackwelder.com

The next stop on the tour is: 

June 22 @ Adventures of the Cautionary Tale

Top Ten Tuesday 6/21/11

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.  The topics are different each week.  Be sure to stop by and check it out and join in!

This weeks topic is: Top Ten Reasons Why We Love Book Blogging!

1. I have been able to correspond with so many people that I may never had the chance to otherwise.  I have corresponded with other blogger, authors, and publishers that if it had not been for blogging, I never would have had that chance. 

2. Not many people in my real life (none that I can sit here and think immediately of), read as much as I do and they don't understand my love of reading.  Book blogging has given me the opportunity to share my love of reading with those just like me. 

3. Book blogging has expanded the types of books that I read.  Now I read more than I used to, if that is possible and I read just about any type of book.

4. I love that I can read others views and opinions on books. I may look at a book one way, but someone else down the blog road can read the same book and get something totally different out of it that I didn't think about. 

5. The book recommendations!!!!  I don't think that I would have picked up Delirium by Lauren Oliver had it not been for some of the reviews that I read.  And I am soooo glad that I did.  It's one of the best books I have read this year!

6. I get to learn or hear about books that are not yet published well ahead of time.  With things like GoodReads,  BEA, NetGalley, ALA, etc I have found some wonderful books that I am so looking forward to that are coming out.

7. I don't feel alone when I read a book.  I know that when I finish a book, I can come hear and post a review and know that I can actually have a discussion about the book with other people who love to read.

8. I get to recommend books to others!!!!

9. I can follow authors on their blogs, twitter and facebook. Before I started blogging... that was non-existent. 

10.  This is probably the main reason I love book blogging........the other bloggers!!  Book blogging has a sense of community (Anyone remember #YAsaves??)  In the real world, it doesn't seem that people stick together or stand up for one another.  In the blogging world, there are so many people that I follow and who follow me that I have no doubt would be some of my best friends in the real life simply because of their passion, dependability and their "gotcha covered" attitudes.

In My Mailbox 6/19/11

"In My Mailbox" is a fun weekly meme hosted by Kristi @ The Story Siren where we get to see what goodies everyone has gotten the past week.  The books shared can be ones that were bought, borrowed, won, or received to review.

From NetGalley:

Heart of Iron

My Journey from Transplant Patient to Ironman Triathlete; November 2011

Kyle Garlett (Author)

Throughout his life, there was nothing Kyle Garlett hated more than losing, and he knew early on that four diagnoses of cancer could not match his spirit of competition. His appetite for victory and success and his love of life pushed him over his health hurdles—including a bone marrow transplant, hip replacement, and a heart transplant—and into the greatest challenge of his life: the Ironman Triathlon World Championship. Kyle tells his amazing life story, beginning with his diagnosis of lymphoma and continuing through years of chemotherapy that destroyed his joints and weakened his heart, leading up to his journey to the Ironman Triathlon, in which he competed not once but twice. His miraculous recovery and athleticism are recounted, along with his becoming an Olympic torch bearer, a Leukemia and Lymphoma Society spokesperson, and a motivational speaker.

Shards; October 2011

Ismet Prcic

Ismet Prcic’s brilliant, provocative, and propulsory energetic debut is about a young Bosnian, also named Ismet Prcic, who has fled his war-torn homeland and is now struggling to reconcile his past with his present life in California. He is advised that in order to make peace with the corrosive guilt he harbors over leaving behind his family behind, he must “write everything.” The result is a great rattlebag of memories, confessions, and fictions: sweetly humorous recollections of Ismet’s childhood in Tuzla appear alongside anguished letters to his mother about the challenges of life in this new world. As Ismet’s foothold in the present falls away, his writings are further complicated by stories from the point of view of another young man—real or imagined—named Mustafa, who joined a troop of elite soldiers and stayed in Bosnia to fight. When Mustafa’s story begins to overshadow Ismet’s new-world identity, the reader is charged with piecing together the fragments of a life that has become eerily unrecognizable, even to the one living it. Shards is a thrilling read—a harrowing war story, a stunningly inventive coming of age, and a heartbreaking saga of a splintered family.

Smuggled; July 2011
Christina Shea

Sweeping from WWII rural Romania to the cosmopolitan Budapest of 1990, Smuggled is the story of Eva Farkas, who loses her identity, quite literally, as a young child when she is smuggled in a flour sack across the Hungarian border to escape the Nazis. Five-year-old Eva is trafficked from Hungary to Romania at the end of the war, arriving in the fictional border town of Crisu, given the name Anca Balaj by her aunt and uncle and instructed never to speak another word of Hungarian again. Eva is dead, she is told. As the years pass, Anca proves an unquenchable spirit, with a lust for life even when political forces threaten to derail her at every turn. Time is layered in this quest for self, culminating in the end of the Iron Curtain and Anca's reclaiming of the name her mother gave her. When Eva returns to Hungary in 1990, a country changing as fast as the price of bread, she meets Martin, an American teacher, and Eva's lifelong search for family and identity comes full circle as her cross-cultural relationship with Martin deepens through their endeavor to rescue the boy downstairs from abuse. An intimate look at the effects of history on an individual life, Smuggled is a raw and fearless account of transformation, and a viscerally reflective tale about the basic need for love without claims.

For upcoming book tour:

In Leah's Wake; October 2010
Terri Giuliano Long 

The Tyler family had the perfect life – until sixteen-year-old Leah decided she didn’t want to be perfect anymore.

While Zoe and Will fight to save their daughter from destroying her brilliant future, Leah’s younger sister, Justine, must cope with the damage her out-of-control sibling leaves in her wake.

Will this family survive? What happens when love just isn’t enough? 

From the author:

Between the Land and the Sea (Marina's Tales #1); March 2011
Derrolyn Anderson

Something extraordinary is lurking in the deep ocean waters off the coast of Aptos, California. In just a few weeks after moving to the small beach town, sixteen year old Marina has nearly drowned twice, enchanted the hottest guy in high school, and discovered a supernatural creature. If she can only manage to survive her increasingly dangerous encounters with unpredictable mermaids, she might just be able to unlock the mystery of her past to learn how to appease the mysterious forces that seem to want something from her...and maybe even find true love along the way.
Between The Land And The Sea is the first book in the series "Marina's Tales". Her story continues on in book two, The Moon And The Tide. 

The Moon and the Tide (Marina's Tales #2); March 2011
Derrolyn Anderson

The Moon And The Tide is book # 2 in the Marina's Tales series.
Just when things seem to be all figured out, Marina discovers that there's a lot more going on behind the scenes than she ever imagined. When a terrible accident exposes her secret, she discovers that her whole life has been one big lie, and has to cope with more than one kind of betrayal.
A dangerous enemy arrives on the scene, putting her bravery to the test and forcing her to use all of her new-found talents to protect her family. Will good win out over evil? Can love triumph over jealousy?

On My Wishlist 6/18/11

On My Wishlist is a fun weekly event hosted by Book Chick City and runs every Saturday. It's where I list all the books I desperately want but haven't actually bought yet. They can be old, new or forthcoming. It's also an event that you can join in with too -

All synopsis from Goodreads:

Coming Up For Air by Patti Callahan Henry

On the coast of Alabama, there is a house cloaked in mystery, a place that reveals the truth and changes lives... Ellie is in a dying marriage. She knows this. After her controlling mother, Lillian, passes away, Ellie's world is turned upside down when she discovers that her ex-boyfriend, Hutch, is in charge of a documentary that involved Lillian before her death. When Hutch shows up at her mother's funeral, Ellie's closed heart opens to the past. Fighting their feelings, Ellie and Hutch set out together to dig into Lillian's history. Using both a diary Ellie finds and a trip to the Summer House, a mysterious and seductive bayside home, Hutch and Ellie gamble that they can work together and not fall in love again. But in piecing together Lillian's unrequited-love story, they just might uncover the secrets in their own hearts.


The Lantern: A Novel by Deborah Lawrenson
 
When Eve falls for the secretive, charming Dom, their whirlwind relationship leads them to purchase Les Genevriers, an abandoned house in a rural hamlet in the south of France. As the beautiful Provence summer turns to autumn, Eve finds it impossible to ignore the mysteries that haunt both her lover and the run-down old house, in particular the mysterious disappearance of his beautiful first wife, Rachel. Whilst Eve tries to untangle the secrets surrounding Rachel's last recorded days, Les Genevriers itself seems to come alive. As strange events begin to occur with frightening regularity, Eve's voice becomes intertwined with that of Benedicte Lincel, a girl who lived in the house decades before. As the tangled skeins of the house's history begin to unravel, the tension grows between Dom and Eve. In a page-turning race, Eve must fight to discover the fates of both Benedicte and Rachel, before Les Genevriers' dark history has a chance to repeat itself.


 
Graveminder by Melissa Marr

Melissa Mar is known to young adult readers as the author of the popular faery series Wicked Lovely. Her debut leap into adult fiction lands her in the small community of Claysville, a town where the dead walk free unless there their graves are not properly tended. Into this eerie maelstrom, Rebekkah Barrow descends as she returns to a place that she once believed she knew. Kelley Armstrong justly described Graveminder as "a deliciously creepy tale that is as skillfully wrought as it is spellbindingly imagined." A new genre author to watch.




Reign of Madness by Lynn Cullen
 
One of the most famous figures in all of Spanish history is Juana de Castile, who would come to be known as Juana the Mad. She was a fiercely intelligent princess who inherited Queen Isabel's throne and married a man so beautiful he was called Philippe the Handsome. But what began seeming like a fairy tale ended quite differently.
After Queen Juana's husband died, she was accused of insanity and locked away in a palace, unseen by her people for the next forty-six years. What happened between her fairy-tale beginning and a locked tower room? Sweeping, page-turning, and wholly entertaining, Reign of Madness is historical fiction at its richly satisfying best.

What's on YOUR wishlist this week?

Calling all Harry Potter fans!!!!

According to Deadline.com the second part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be released on July 15.

Here's the trailer for Part II to get you even more excited!!!  I must say, it looks pretty good!

Follow Friday 6/17/11

It's time for Follow Friday!!!!  Hosted by the lovely Rachel @ Parajunkee's View.  This week she is doing a give-a-way to win one of her blog designs as this is her #50 Follow Friday!

This weeks question is:

Q. Genre Wars! What's your favorite genre and which book in that genre made it your favorite?

   My answer would have to be Historical Fiction.  I love that you can "travel" to all parts and times in the world by reading this genre.  While you travel, you can also pick up bits of history in the process.  I was by no means a history buff in school... I was more of a science geek.... but now.... I love "going to" places like Russian, England, Asia, Africa and all places in between.  Not to mention the Knights, Kings, Queens, Roman Emperors & Gladiators... Or, I can go to WWII, War of the Roses, etc. 

As for the book that made it my favorite..... I would have to say that I have always loved it, but not as much as I do now... and that is thanks to two books:

So, what's your favorite?