BLOG TOUR: All That Glows by Ryan Graudin

Title: All That Glows

Author: Ryan Graudin
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy/Paranormal
Publisher: Harper Teen

Release Date: February 11/2014

Adquired: E-ARC provided by publisher

Goodreads: ADD

Purchase: Amazon/Indigo/Book Depository

Emrys—a fiery, red-headed Fae—always embraced her life in the Highlands, far from the city’s draining technology, until she’s sent to London to rejoin the Faery Guard. But this isn’t any normal assignment—she’s sent to guard Prince Richard: Britain’s notorious, partying bad boy and soon-to-be King. The prince’s careless ways and royal blood make him the irresistible for the dark spirits that feed on mortals. Sweet, disheveled, and alive with adventure—Richard is one charge who will put Emrys’s magic and heart to the test.

When an ancient force begins preying on the monarchy, Emrys must hunt through the London’s magical underworld, facing down Banshees, Black Dogs and Green Women to find the one who threatens Richard’s life. In this chaos of dark magic, palace murders and paparazzi, Emrys finds herself facing an impossible choice. For despite all her powers, Emrys has discovered a force that burns brighter than magic: love.

SHE READS BOOK CLUB-JANUARY: Love Water Memory by Jennie Shortridge

Title: Love Water Memory

Author: Jennie Shortridge
Genre: Adult Contemporary Fiction
Publisher: Gallery Books

Release Date: January 14/2014

Acquired: Print copy provided by publisher

Goodreads: ADD

Purchase: Amazon/Indigo/Book Depository

If you could do it all over again, would you still choose him?

At age thirty-nine, Lucie Walker has no choice but to start her life over when she comes to, up to her knees in the chilly San Francisco Bay, with no idea how she got there or who she is. Her memory loss is caused by an emotional trauma she knows nothing about, and only when handsome, quiet Grady Goodall arrives at the hospital does she learn she has a home, a career, and a wedding just two months away. What went wrong? Grady seems to care for her, but Lucie is no more sure of him than she is of anything. As she collects the clues of her past self, she unlocks the mystery of what happened to her. The painful secrets she uncovers could hold the key to her future—if she trusts her heart enough to guide her.

REVIEW: The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Andersen

For the past five years, Hayley Kincaid and her father, Andy, have been on the road, never staying long in one place as he struggles to escape the demons that have tortured him since his return from Iraq. Now they are back in the town where he grew up so Hayley can attend school. Perhaps, for the first time, Hayley can have a normal life, put aside her own painful memories, even have a relationship with Finn, the hot guy who obviously likes her but is hiding secrets of his own.

Will being back home help Andy’s PTSD, or will his terrible memories drag him to the edge of hell, and drugs push him over? The Impossible Knife of Memory is Laurie Halse Anderson at her finest: compelling, surprising, and impossible to put down.

BLOG TOUR: The House on the Cliff by Charlotte Williams

Title: The House on the Cliff

Author: Charlotte Williams
Genre: Adult Psychological Thriller/Fiction
Publisher: Bourbon Street Books

Release Date: January 7/2014

Adquired: Print copy provided by publisher

Goodreads: ADD

Purchase: Amazon/Indigo/Book Depository

One woman's quest to discover the dark secret at the heart of a family Actor Gwydion Morgan's dramatic appearance at Jessica Mayhew's psychotherapy practice coincides with a turbulent time in her own life - her husband has just revealed that he's spent the night with a much younger woman. Gwydion, son of the famous Evan Morgan, is good looking and talented but mentally fragile, tormented by an intriguing phobia. Jessica is determined to trace the cause of his distress. So when his mother phones to say he is suicidal, Jessica decides to make a house call. The Morgans live in a grand cliff-top mansion overlooking a rocky bay with its own private jetty. It's a remote and somewhat sinister place.

On her visit, Jessica finds out that an au pair who looked after Gwydion as a child drowned in the bay in mysterious circumstances. Could it be that Gwydion witnessed her death? In her quest to help her client, Jessica finds herself becoming embroiled in the Morgans' poisonous family dynamic. At the same time, she has to deal with the demands of her own domestic life: her struggle to keep her marriage intact, as well as her older daughter's increasingly defiant behaviour. And then, of course, there is the growing attraction she feels towards her new client . . .

BLOG TOUR: Taking What I Like by Linda Bamber

Title: Taking What I Like

Author: Linda Bamber
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Publisher: Black Sparrow Press

Release Date: October 31/2012

Adquired: Print copy provided by publisher

Goodreads: ADD

Purchase: Amazon/Kobo/Book Depository

Linda Bamber has combined her love of fiction from the past with her propensity to shake things up, taking what she likes and gleefully sharing it with us. As entertaining and contemporary as these stories are, they also remind us what we, too, love about the classic texts she takes apart and reassembles. Bamber's tales, like the best translations, exist independently while reminding us not to forget the plays and novels they treat.

Alternating between admiration and attitude, the stories layer their plots with commentary, history, and politics, pausing as they build only to make room for the sanity and wit of the authorial voice. Emotional and genuine, these stories are also playful, inventive, and hilariously funny. From her long study of the Bard, Bamber has absorbed some of Shakespeare's own empathy, understanding, and expressive flair. It is not too much to say that her work takes its place in the same literary sphere as the works it engages.

BLOG TOUR: The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

Title: The Golem and the Jinni

Author: Helene Wecker
Genre: Fantasy/Magic Realism/Mythology
Publisher: Harper Collins

Release Date: January 1/2013

Adquired: Print copy provided by publisher

Goodreads: ADD

Purchase: Amazon/Indigo/Book Depository

Chava is a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life by a disgraced rabbi who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic. When her master, the husband who commissioned her, dies at sea on the voyage from Poland, she is unmoored and adrift as the ship arrives in New York in 1899.

Ahmad is a jinni, a being of fire, born in the ancient Syrian desert. Trapped in an old copper flask by a Bedouin wizard centuries ago, he is released accidentally by a tinsmith in a Lower Manhattan shop. Though he is no longer imprisoned, Ahmad is not entirely free – an unbreakable band of iron binds him to the physical world.

The Golem and the Jinni is their magical, unforgettable story; unlikely friends whose tenuous attachment challenges their opposing natures – until the night a terrifying incident drives them back into their separate worlds. But a powerful threat will soon bring Chava and Ahmad together again, challenging their existence and forcing them to make a fateful choice.

GIVEAWAY: January New Release Giveaway Hop (Win a Book of Your Choice!)

BLOG TOUR: The End and The Long Road by G. Michael Hopf

Title: The End (The New World Series #1)

Author: G. Michael Hopf
Genre: Post-Apocalyptic Fiction
Publisher: Plume (Penguin Imprint)

Release Date: January 7/2014

Adquired: Print copy provided by publisher

Goodreads: ADD

Purchase: Amazon/Indigo/Book Depository

What would you do to survive?

Young Gordon Van Zandt valued duty and loyalty to country above all, so after 9/11, he dropped out of college and joined the Marine Corps. This idealism vanished one fateful day in a war-torn city in Iraq. Ten years later, he is still struggling with the ghosts of his past when a new reality is thrust upon him and his family: North America, Europe and the Far East have all suffered a devastating Super-EMP attack, which causes catastrophic damage to the nation’s power grid and essential infrastructures. Everything from cell phones to cars to computers cease to function, putting society at a standstill. With civilization in chaos, Gordon must fight for the limited and fast dwindling resources. He knows survival requires action and cooperation with his neighbors, but as the days wear on, so does all sense of civility within his community—and so he must make some of the most difficult decisions of his life in order to ensure his family’s safety.

BLOG TOUR: Starter House by Sonja Condit

Title: Starter House

Author: Sonja Condit
Genre: Paranormal/Adult Fiction
Publisher: William Morrow

Release Date: January 7/2014

Adquired: Print copy provided by publisher

Goodreads: ADD

Purchase: Amazon/Indigo/Book Depository

In the vein of Heart-Shaped Box and The Thirteenth Tale, Starter House is a haunting and skillfully told debut novel about a newlywed couple and their first home-a home that seems to be haunted by a very malicious ghost.

Lacey Miszlak grew up homeless; her crazy mother dragged her from one terrible living situation to the next. But now she thinks the pieces of her life have finally come together. She's pregnant with her first child and she and her husband Eric have moved into the home of their dreams. She knows soon its beautiful sunlit rooms will be filled with the joy of the new family she will build there.

But there's a strange darkness on the stairway and an odd little boy who won't leave Lacey alone and soon she's forced to realize that a danger she never suspected is lurking in the hallways of her beautiful new home. She's going to have to solve a decades-old mystery to save her family from an evil that has lingered in wait for them for years.

Most Anticipated Books of 2014: Adult, Young Adult, & Middle Grade

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

I hope you all had an amazing holiday, and for those that celebrated Christmas, I hope it was one filled with endless love, happiness, and joy. I swear to you that I'm still full of turkey, STILL. My Christmas holiday was quiet this year, which was exactly what I needed. The weather has been pretty outrageous in Toronto lately (ice storms, and 6-day power outages!), so all I wanted to do was sit inside with a good book, and my favourite warm things.

I thought I'd start 2014 with a post that is filled with OH many kinds of excitement. It's my most anticipated books for 2014! and I have many..MANY (so many that, for the sake of our sanity, I only listed a FEW). Here they are, broken down by genre: