Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke Review

Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke by Anne Blankman

Title: Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke

Author: Anne Blankman

Series: Prisoner of Night and Fog #2

Publisher: Blazer + Bray

Publication Date: April 21, 2015

Genre: Fiction; Historical Fiction; Romance; Adventure; Mystery; Young Adult

Pages: 406

Format: ARC

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The girl known as Gretchen Whitestone has a secret: She used to be part of Adolf Hitler’s inner circle. More than a year after she made an enemy of her old family friend and fled Munich, she lives with a kindly English family, posing as an ordinary German immigrant, and is preparing to graduate from high school. Her love, Daniel Cohen, is a reporter in town. For the first time in her life, Gretchen is content.

But then, Daniel gets a telegram that sends him back to Germany, and Gretchen’s world turns upside-down. And when she receives word that Daniel is wanted for murder, she has to face the danger she thought she’d escaped-and return to her homeland.

Gretchen must do everything she can to avoid capture and recognition, even though saving Daniel will mean consorting with her former friends, the Nazi elite. And as they work to clear Daniel’s name, Gretchen and Daniel discover a deadly conspiracy stretching from the slums of Berlin to the Reichstag itself. Can they dig up the explosive truth and get out in time-or will Hitler discover them first?

*Sigh*Historical fiction is so great.

Gretchen Whitestone was once Adolf Hitler’s pet. She was the perfect niece, and she admired Hitler to the point of fault. After meeting Daniel Cohen, her world shattered, and she ended up in England, free from Hitler’s tight reign over her and Germany. She’s happy, and she sees the life she always wanted stretched out before her. However, when Daniel is captured in Germany, Gretchen must face her horrible past, and triumph over the once inescapable grasp of her Uncle Adolf.

Even though we all know how it ends (Hitler gains control of Germany and starts a war around the world), Anne Blankman still manages to keep me guessing. She writes like there’s a chance of Hitler’s defeat, even if there’s not. When I’m reading her work, I’m in Germany while the Nazis are rising. I’m watching the Nazi parade and seeing Hitler’s stupid little mustache. Her melding of history and fiction together is astounding and thoroughly entertaining. Her painstaking attention to detail is enough to send her novels over the moon.

I love how this book shines a totally new light on who Adolf Hitler was, and how his comrades in his quest for domination acted and thought. I love the historical value of Anne Blankman’s writing, and it totally makes this whole reading historical fiction thing worth it ten times over. Reading and learning are two of my favorite things, and both come in this 406 page package.

I maintain that the Prisoner of Night and Fog series is one of the best World War II novels written, among Code Name Verity and The Book Thief. If there is ever another book in this series, I would read in a heartbeat. 

The Girl At Midnight Review

The Girl at Midnight by Melissa Grey

Title: The Girl at Midnight

Author: Melissa Grey

Series: The Girl at Midnight #1

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Publication Date: April 28, 2015

Genre: Fiction; Fantasy; Romance; Young Adult

Pages: 357

Format: ARC

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Beneath the streets of New York City live the Avicen, an ancient race of people with feathers for hair and magic running through their veins. Age-old enchantments keep them hidden from humans. All but one. Echo is a runaway pickpocket who survives by selling stolen treasures on the black market, and the Avicen are the only family she's ever known.

Echo is clever and daring, and at times she can be brash, but above all else she's fiercely loyal. So when a centuries-old war crests on the borders of her home, she decides it's time to act.

Legend has it that there is a way to end the conflict once and for all: find the Firebird, a mythical entity believed to possess power the likes of which the world has never seen. It will be no easy task, though if life as a thief has taught Echo anything, it's how to hunt down what she wants . . . and how to take it.

But some jobs aren't as straightforward as they seem. And this one might just set the world on fire.

How to describe this book…A Mortal Instruments copycat? Sure. Honorable attempt turned epic failure? Yes. Boring? Definitely.

Echo is a self-taught thief adopted by the magical race of the Avicen, a.k.a. The Bird People. The Avicen has had a raging, violent war with their counterparts, the Drakharin, a.k.a. The Lizard People, for centuries. The only hope for either race’s survival is the Firebird, a mystical object with enough power to stop the war or destroy everyone in it, and Echo is tasked with finding it. Her seemingly impossible mission will bring unlikely enemies and allies alike, and Echo will have to decide who she can and cannot trust.

Looking back on it now, it even sounds ridiculous.

From page one, I’ve felt as if I’d read it all before. Nothing was new, including the characters. Take the Mortal Instruments: one female human, several non-human friends, one guy in love with another guy in love with another guy in love with the female human, and one non-human sister-brother pair. The Girl at Midnight was exactly the same. Exactly. No difference what-so-ever. If I wanted to read another Mortal Instruments novel, I would’ve just read the original. I would’ve been more entertained the second time around than I was with the first time of The Girl at Midnight.

The romance desperately needed something. A lot of something. I could see the potential, but it was never realized and all around just made me sad. The “snark” and “wit” of the main character was rudimentary and unoriginal. The setting was uninteresting, as was the plot. I was never totally clear on the exact plot/goal of the characters. I lost focus about mid-way and never found it again. Overall, a whole-heartedly one star disappointment. 

The Shadow Hour

April 7, 2016

Top Ten Tuesday: Fairytale Retellings

Top Ten Tuesday is a fantastic meme hosted by the Broke and Bookish.

This Week's Topic: Fairytale Retellings

A fairytale retelling is considered classic in the realm of young adult novels. The Queens of the fairy tales (and of this list) have to be Alex Finn, Marissa Meyer, and Gail Carson Levine, all of which seem to specialize in retelling the favorites. Most of the books that I've chosen for this list are from my childhood, give or take one or two, because, I'll be honest, I'm growing out of the retellings. However, that in no way denies the fact that these book are some of the best I've ever read. Here are my top ten choices:

1. Ink Heart by Cornelia Funke: As a kid, I loved both this book and its movie. Ink Heart is, in my mind, the quintessential retelling. It is literally about having the power to bring fairytale book characters to life by reading aloud. It perfectly captures the essence of imagination and storytelling and is a great read for middle grades and up.
2. Beastly by Alex Finn: As I said before, Alex Finn is a Queen of fairytale retellings. Along with Beastly, I also love A Kiss in Time. (Towering, however, I was not a fan of. At all.) Beastly was inspired by Beauty and the Beast, and A Kiss in Time was inspired by Sleeping Beauty. Alex Finn has also written stories derived from Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, and The Frog Prince. 
3. Stitching Snow by R.C. Lewis: When it was released, Stitching Snow got a lot of YA hype surrounding it. In this novel, R.C. Lewis retold the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
4. Cinder (Lunar Chronicles #1) by Marissa Meyer: Meyer was the first person I thought of when I saw that the prompt for this week. In the Lunar Chronicles, Meyer has retold Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, and Rapunzel. Everyone who is anyone in the YA book world knows about Meyer and her wildly popular Lunar Chronicles series.
5. Alias Hook by Lisa Jensen: This is my favorite book out of the entire list. Lisa Jensen spins Peter Pan (which I consider a fairy tale) into a rich and exciting story told from Captain Hook's point of view.

6. Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige: I haven't seen many retelling of The Wizard of Oz, and this is the only one I've actually read. Edgy and strangle and inexplicably good, it was hard to forget this book even after I'd finished.
7. The Selection by Kiera Cass: Even if this whole series is obviously a spin-off of the Bachelor, it does have some traces of Cinderella, which apparently has earned it a spot on this list. It makes me mad how addictive this series really is. Impossible to put down is an understatement.
8. East by Edith Pattou: I read this a long time ago, but I still remember. It has to be one of the best Beauty and the Beast retellings out there today.
9. Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson: If I included one Peter Pan retelling, I had to include another. Peter Pan, the story, is amazing, but this take on the briefly mentioned minor character Tiger Lily was so perfect.
10. Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine: When I was younger, Gail Carson Levine was my whole world. In my elementary school's library, there was an entire shelf dedicated to her books. Every time we went in there, I was drawn to that shelf like the impressionable magnet I was. She was my idol, and my childhood love of reading was pretty much built around her. Plus, it's pretty much impossible to dislike Ella Enchanted. 

Some fairytale retellings that I desperately want to get my hands on:

1. A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
2. Crimson Bound by Rosamund Hodge
3. Wicked by Gregory Maguire
4. Egg & Spoon by Gregory Maguire

I'll Meet You There Review

I’ll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios

Title: I’ll Meet You There

Author: Heather Demetrios

Series: None

Publisher: Henry Holt & Co.

Publication Date: February 3, 2015

Genre: Fiction; Realistic Fiction; Contemporary; Romance; Young Adult

Pages: 388

Format: Hardcover

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If seventeen-year-old Skylar Evans were a typical Creek View girl, her future would involve a double-wide trailer, a baby on her hip, and the graveyard shift at Taco Bell. But after graduation, the only thing standing between straightedge Skylar and art school are three minimum-wage months of summer. Skylar can taste the freedom—that is, until her mother loses her job and everything starts coming apart. Torn between her dreams and the people she loves, Skylar realizes everything she’s ever worked for is on the line.

Nineteen-year-old Josh Mitchell had a different ticket out of Creek View: the Marines. But after his leg is blown off in Afghanistan, he returns home, a shell of the cocksure boy he used to be. What brings Skylar and Josh together is working at the Paradise—a quirky motel off California’s dusty Highway 99. Despite their differences, their shared isolation turns into an unexpected friendship and soon, something deeper.

On some level, I always knew this book was going to be good. My book compass is rarely this right. To my delight, I’ll Meet You There started out good and kept getting better from there.

Skylar Evans is trapped in her rusty nowhere town of Creek View. If she followed the unspoken rules of all other Creek View residents, she’d stay there for the rest of her life, living pay check-to-paycheck on a GED education or less. She’d marry a good-for-nothing furniture occupier and be pregnant by the time she was getting her high school diploma. And she’d be happy about it. But passionately artistic Skylar sticks to her own Plan. But when art school and the escape from her dead beat town starts slipping through her outstretched fingers, she starts to think the Plan is just another dream. Then, Josh Mitchell, town legend turned Marine, returns from Afghanistan with only one leg. Skylar and Josh’s path coincidentally collide at Paradise, and years of loneliness and hopeless dreaming come together and form a relationship deeper in meaning than either of them had ever hoped they deserved.

This book is about a lot of things: overcoming socioeconomic status, the tragic aftermath of fighting in a war, loss, betrayal, hope, and love. It was a statement of the intricate traps set by a person’s external environment, and the trying attempts one has to make in order to break free of such prisons.

Skylar Evans has always been subject to the life of trailer parks and working two jobs to support a static life that becomes neither better nor worse. Success and comfortability is unforeseeable from her and her family’s impoverished position. Her mother, throughout the story, is vulnerable to bouts of depression and the draw of a man whose only attractive feature is his ability to finance her and Skylar’s lives.

Josh’s reckless reputation has kept his old self alive in his old home town of Creek View. His return after joining the Marines was unexpected yet quickly accepted. After all, a life in Creek View was like quicksand; you could try to escape and may even almost succeed for a moment, but sooner or later, you’re bound to be sucked back in again. Josh not only returns as a shell of the charismatic and rash boy he once was but also as a wounded veteran with the bags upon bags of suppressed learned instincts and emotions.

What’s so different about this book compared to all the other tributes to our veterans is Demetrios’ unapologetic take on the wounded veteran. Held in such high esteem, it’s not uncommon for authors to tip-toe around their characters, afraid to break their perfect warrior specimen, to flaw them in places they should be polished. Demetrios, exposed to the life of veterans and soldiers her entire life, was fearless yet respectful with her imperfect portrayal of Josh, the image of a war vet riddled with guilt, regret, fear, and post-traumatic stress. Not only was she brutally honest with the way she built Josh so ragged and bruised, but also with the means in which she formed the harsh realities of loving someone such as Josh.

Neither Josh nor Skylar can be considered unique or original. As mere representations of the millions of people living in their positions, their main purpose is to instill a special kind of compassion and respect for those they embody. Demetrios’ mastery in storytelling was hypnotic and hard to look away from, as was all the elements in her story. From the characters to the setting to the heartbreak, this novel was breathtakingly real.