Book Review: The Diviners

                                                             The Diviners Review 

The Diviners is set in 1926 New York and the book starts off with an upper class girls birthday party which was a bit of a bore until she pulled out a ouija board and the group calls forth a ghost named naughty John and the fail to properly send his spirit away which will lead to trouble for our actually main characters later down the line. Evie O'Neil has been sent to live in New York after she uses her special ability to see memories of an objects owner when she holds it at a party a reveals that a son of an important figure in her home town got a girl pregnant out of wedlock and since Evie refuses to take back what she said since she knows what she said was true her parents send her to New York to live with her uncle. Evie's Uncle runs a museum that is about the occult as well as teaches classes about the subject which is why later on in the book he is brought in as a consultant about a series of murder and Evie ends up nosing her way into the investigation as well. 

Another main character we are introduced to early on in the book is Memphis Campbell  a young African American man who currently works for a man that runs a lot of speakeasies in Harlem as well as other forms of crime as the one who collects the money but what he's really passionate about is writing although he has never been satisfied enough with any of his writings to show it to anyone else. Memphis use to have the ability to heal people but he hasn't been able or rather refuses to even try to since he failed to save his mother's life after she fell ill. while Memphis himself isn't involved in the supernatural anymore he is still very aware of it and since it seems that his younger brother is psychic it doesn't seem like he can just live a normal life no matter how much he wants to. 

There are a number of other important characters that are introduced as the story goes on such as Sam Lloyd  a boy that around Evie's age who she meets right after she gets to New York when he kisses her and steals twenty dollars from her which leads her to disliking him and really wanting him to repay her. Sam very much seems like he will end up being Evie's love interest since the two of them often banter together, Evie is forced to work with him later on in the story and they both end up being vulnerable with each other later on. Another character is Mabel Rose  who is a friend that Evie has mostly interacted with as a pen pal before the story starts since Mabel lives in the same building as Evie's uncle. Mabel is a lot less bold and more well behaved than Evie and she has parents who are more interested in their causes than their daughter and all these things end up causing friction in their friendship later on. Theta Knight a dancer for the Ziegfeld Follies and Henry De Bois who is her roommate and pianist that she has a sibling like relationship are two more important characters. A young man named Jericho who was taken in by Evie's uncle and works with him is one of the few people who seems to dislike Evie from the start. 

Overall I loved this book, it had an interesting murder mystery plot as well as an interesting set of characters to follow and it also had an interesting mythology with the diviners being people who were just given some sort of power and all the rituals involving ghosts. Please tell me your thoughts on this book or series overall in the comment section below. 

Book Review: Vampire Academy: Blood Promise

                                                          Blood Promise Review 

Blood Promise is the fourth book in the Vampire Academy series and this book starts off several months after the events of the last book with Rose looking to find Dimitri who has recently turned into a strigoi(an evil vampire) since they promised each other that they kill the other if either of them were ever turned. Rose has decided that keeping her promise to Dimitri is more important than her future and Lissa so she has dropped out of school and given up her chance to be Lissa guardian in the future. The only lead that Rose has about where Dimitri is, is that he was in Russia which leads Rose to believe that he will go back to the village he grew up in but the only trouble is she can't remember it's name so this leads to Rose killing a lot of strigois but being nowhere near catching up with Dimitri. 

The first real break Rose gets in her mission to find Dimitri is when she encounters an alchemist(person that cleans up after guardians and have some small amount of power that they must use to help the guardians and the moroi) named Sydney who has been cleaning the strigoi bodies Rose had been leaving around the city. Sydney doesn't really want to help Rose find Dimitri's village but her bosses thinks it's a good idea so she has to help Rose out anyway. Once Rose gets to the village she tells Dimitri's family that he's dead and then spends a good amount of time deciding whether she just wants to mourn him or if she wants to still find and try to kill the strigoi version of him and probably die herself in the process. 

In this book we also get to see how Lissa is doing with Rose missing and she is understandably not doing so well with having no idea were her best friend who is currently on a suicide mission and refuses to contact anyone at the academy is and rather dislikes that their bond only goes one way since she's unable to sense whether or not Rose is alive or not. Lissa ends up making friends with a new girl named Avery who encourages Lissa to be a party girl which is what she was like before her and Rose ran away but it doesn't quite seem like the character we have known for the last three books. 

Overall I liked this book although I will admit that I preferred Lissa's storyline to Rose's since I don't ship Rose and Dimitri and her whole storyline this book was being consumed by that relationship which only made me dislike it more. I thought it was a bit strange how many scenes from the past they add in this book about Rose and Dimitri's relationship that don't feel like they have a place in the first three book because while I don't like Rose and Dimitri's relationship I know that most of the fandom does so I was surprised by the level of insecurity this showed an the author's behalf about how underwritten this relationship really was in the previous books. Please tell me your thoughts about this book or series as a whole in the comment section below. 

Book Review: Hello, Goodbye and Everything In Between

                                  Hello, Goodbye and Everything In Between Review 

Hello, Goodbye and Everything In Between is about the last night before Clare and Aidan a couple of high school sweethearts head off to college on opposites sides of the country. The couple hasn't broken up yet since they still love each other although Clare has never said it but Clare thinks that the practical thing to do is to break up since she believes that it's what's going to happen in the end anyways and Aidan on the other hand thinks that even though it will take hard work that their love is strong enough to survive a long distance relationship. The night starts off as lighthearted trip down memory lane of their relationship and high school life in general with the two of them trying to get the other to agree to their point of view. 

As the night goes on and the reality that starting tomorrow that they'll be living entirely separate lives come tomorrow tensions began to rise when Clare finds out that Aidan has kept a secret from her and Aidan begins to think that reason that Clare is so eager to break up with him isn't to save them both pain but because she never saw him as anything but her high school boyfriend. As the night goes on the nostalgia begins to have a bitter hint to it as it becomes clearer that the relationship is on it's last legs whether it's what either of them wants or not. 

Overall I thought this was an interesting idea for a story and one I'm sure many people could relate to. I thought that are main characters were well fleshed out and I also enjoyed their friends and their story as well even though it was given much less page time than the main romance story. Please tell me your thoughts on this book in the comment section down below. 

Book Review: The Similars

                                                            The Similars Review

The Similars is about how Emmaline Chance who is returning for a new year at prestigious high school boarding school after her best friend Oliver committed suicide over the summer, there is a group of new students coming to the school who are clones that were created without the consent from the people whose DNA was used or the family of those people. The group of clones are referred to as the Similars and most of the the similars originals are also students at this school which makes the group somewhat of an unwelcome addition to the school. Emmaline at first is accepting of the similars since it's not their faults that they were created but then she meets Levi who is a clone of Oliver and it's just too much for her to handle having to deal with someone who looks just like her best friend but who acts entirely differently and shares none of the memories of the life she had with Oliver. 

Emmaline wants nothing to do with Levi and after she gets mad at Levi for stealing Oliver's face, a matter he had no say in, he doesn't want anything to do with her either but circumstance forces the two of them together. After getting to know Levi more as his own person she starts to care for him in a way that is different from the way in which she cared for Oliver. Throughout this time Emmaline is also learning that the similars are different from ordinary clones and that the school seems to have a lot of secrets of their own that leaves Emmaline wary of who she can and can't trust. 

Overall this was a good book that had an interesting premise, world and character conflict that were all set up well from the start. The book does a good job at making you care about the characters and at setting up mysteries in the world around the characters. Please tell me your thoughts about this book in the comment section down below. 

Book Review: Love From A to Z

                                                     Love From A To Z Review 

Love From A To Z is about two teenagers named Zayneb and Adam who both keep journals that record the marvels and oddities that they encounter in their lives despite the two of them living on opposite sides of the world. Zayneb is a Muslim American girl who was suspended because she drew a picture of her islamophobic teacher that her school thought was threatening. Zayneb ends up getting sent on her spring break trip stay with aunt in Doha a week early. Adam is a Chinese Canadian boy who has been living in Doha since elementary school since his dad works at an international school and Adam is returning home for spring break from England where he was going  for his first year of college. Zayneb and Adam first see each other on the plane and both of them feel attracted to each other from the start but Zayneb doesn't think that it can go anywhere since she assumes that Adam isn't Muslim but it turns out that he actually is Muslim since he convert to the religion years ago. Through out the story Zayneb and Adam end up running into each other and finding more reasons to spend time together as their feelings for each other grows. 

In terms of personal journeys Zayneb deals with trying not to get angry about all the injustices in the world but finds it hard since she feels like she can't just stand by and do nothing when she sees that something is wrong she wants to do something to make things right. Zayneb's journey is more about finding a constructive way to deal with her angry that will help get her point across rather than make people view as an angry destructive person. For Adam his story deals with how he has recently been diagnosis with MS and while that is an illness people can live with for years it's one that sees as a death sentence because it was what killed his mom. Adam spends most of the book putting off telling his dad because he doesn't want his dad to fall apart like he did after his mom died which leads to Adam spending far too long dealing with his illness on his own. 

Overall I really loved this book the characters and the relationship that they had with each other were really great and I loved seeing it develop over the course of the book. Please tell me your thoughts on this book in the comment section below. 

Book Review: Rated

                                                                     Rated Review 

Rated is about a group of high schoolers who live in a society were everything you do is rated on a scale from 1 to 100 and the quality of your life is determined by these ratings. The characters that we follow through out this story are Bex Johnson who is an overachieving student who gets great grades and is super involved in extracurricular activities and volunteering leaving her with little to no time to anything for herself yet this still isn't good enough for her wealthy successful parents. The next character we follow is Noah Rainier who is a photographer who mostly keeps to himself until he catches the eye of Javi Lucero a charismatic gamer who is another character whose story we follow. Tamsin Moore is someone who has a low rating mostly because she doesn't put value in system and she spends the time she should be in class running a fake fortune telling business but her rating starts going down a rapid rate that can't be explained by her behavior that only confirms to her that the system is rigged. The next character we follow is Hana Sakamoto who has dedicated her life to figure skating but she seemed to hit a wall when it comes to her performance which leads Hana's coach to telling her that she should work on gain weight in muscle so that she can make her jumps but Hana would rather loose weight so that she can fly higher. The last character's story we follow is Chase Donovan who is a star baseball player who is struggling with his grades and worries that his father's low rating might lead to them loosing their house. 

The story starts with some unknown person vandalizing the school and making statements about the rating system being a scam and the unknown person ends up sending some sort of message to all of her main characters which ends up bring them together in the end. The characters start getting to know each other in pairs with Bex being set up to tutor Chase which leads to the two of them become friends and developing feelings for each other, Noah and Javi fall for each other fairly quickly and circumstance leads to them being able to start a relationship and Tamsin and Hana end up developing an odd friendship since neither girl really has any friends and Tamsin is the only one that sees Hana is destroying herself with her eating disorder. 

Overall I loved this book it had an interesting concept and interesting and likable characters as well. This book was one that worked largely because of how much I enjoyed the characters and their relationships with each other. Please tell me your thoughts on this book in the comment section below.

Book Review: Symptoms of Being Human

 

                                                 Symptoms of Being Human Review

 

Symptoms of Being Human is about a gender fluid teenager named Riley Cavanaugh who is struggling with deciding whether to come out as gender fluid. Riley's father is also a politician who is running for reelection and Riley has recently started at a new high school as junior as well. Riley is encouraged by a therapist to start a blog to get her feelings on what it means to be gender fluid and Riley ends up starting a blog on a site that basically tumblr but isn't called that and after like five text posts venting about personal about gender fluid Riley somehow ended up becoming super popular with the blog having over ten thousand followers within a week or two of her starting.

The story follows Riley going about life at a new school and dealing with sudden illogical internet fame, Riley at school has to deal with people rudely asking about gender Riley identifies as which is something brothers Riley. Riley ends up getting an anonymous message on the blog that calls Riley a freak and claims to go to the same school and threatens to out Riley if the blog doesn't stop. Riley instantly believes that person goes to the same school despite their being literally no information on the blog to reveal Riley identity.

Overall this book was pretty bad, it had little to no plot and Riley isn't a likable character with how hypocritical Riley was with being offended whenever Riley someone had assumptions about Riley's gender identity despite not being out but Riley multiple times through out the book in correctly genders other people. This book also didn't feel believable with the whole Riley becomes internet famous off of off brand tumblr and the whole literally no one including Riley parents ever  pronouns to address Riley despite Riley not even being out, this just isn't how the English language works not gendering someone is something that is conscious choice. Please tell me your thoughts on this  book in comment section below.