Giveaway: Endure by Carrie Jones

It’s all-out war (and no-holds-barred romance) in the climactic conclusion to Carrie Jones’s bestselling series.

Zara is at the center of an impending apocalypse. True, she’s successfully rescued Nick from Valhalla, but it simply isn’t enough. Evil pixies are ravaging Bedford, and they need much more than one great warrior; they need an army. Zara isn’t sure what her role is anymore. She’s not just fighting for her friends; she’s also a pixie queen. And to align her team of pixies with the humans she loves will be one of her greatest battles yet. Especially since she can’t even reconcile her growing feelings for her pixie king...

Unexpected turns, surprising revelations, and one utterly satisfying romantic finale make Endure a thrilling end to this series of bestsellers.

Teen Book Scene: Summer Life Began (This or That List)

Introducing the author of The Summer My Life Began, Shannon Greenland...

You name it. Shannon Greenland’s done it. Hiking, rafting, swimming, snorkeling, sailing, surfing, mountain biking, spelunking, canoeing, power lifting, running, camping, para sailing . . . well, you get the drift. She’s traveled the world extensively and is thrilled to be living in northern Virginia, looking for her new adventure. Believe it or not, Shannon dreaded reading and writing when she was a kid. How ironic that she’s now an award winning author.

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Onto the author's This or That List...

Writing: Computer program or Pen and paper?

PEN AND PAPER

Inner-city noise or rural quiet?

QUIET. AHHHH....

Cover art: Color or design?

I'VE HAD BOTH AND LIKED BOTH. SUPPOSE IT DEPENDS ON THE DESIGNER. I'VE BEEN FORTUNATE TO HAVE SOME GREAT ONES.

Dream car or Dream vacation?

I WOULD LOVE TO TAKE A RV ACROSS AMERICA AND EXPLORE EVERY STATE PARK.

Fruit smoothie or milkshake?

FRUIT SMOOTHIE.

Pizza or Burgers?

PIZZA, PEPPERONI.

Winter or Summer?

SUMMER MOST DEFINITELY!

Long hair or Short hair?

I'M IN THAT GROWING PHASE RIGHT NOW SO I'LL SAY LONG.

CDs or iPod/MP3?

FUNNY ENOUGH, I'M STILL WAY INTO CD'S.

Books or ebooks?

I KNOW E-VERSIONS HAVE TAKEN OFF, BUT THERE'S NOTHING LIKE HOLDING A BOOK AND READING.

A fabulous romance with a very unexpected guy...

The opportunity to explore her love of cooking...

The freedom to be whoever she wants...

This is what seventeen-year-old Em gets when she goes to spend a month at her aunt's island resort. It's a dream come true—and exactly the break Em needed from her strict family and their high expectations of her.

But when Em uncovers a long-buried secret about her family, everything changes. And suddenly, Em finds herself making some big choices about her future—choices she never dreamed she'd have the chance to make...

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Thanks to Shannon and Teen Book Scene!

LiLi

Endure (Need, #4) by Carrie Jones

Endure

Carrie Jones

Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Childrens; (May 8, 2012)
ISBN-10: 159990554X
ISBN-13: 978-1599905549

It’s all-out war (and no-holds-barred romance) in the climactic conclusion to Carrie Jones’s bestselling series.

Zara is at the center of an impending apocalypse. True, she’s successfully rescued Nick from Valhalla, but it simply isn’t enough. Evil pixies are ravaging Bedford, and they need much more than one great warrior; they need an army. Zara isn’t sure what her role is anymore. She’s not just fighting for her friends; she’s also a pixie queen. And to align her team of pixies with the humans she loves will be one of her greatest battles yet. Especially since she can’t even reconcile her growing feelings for her pixie king . . .

Unexpected turns, surprising revelations, and one utterly satisfying romantic finale make Endure a thrilling end to this series of bestsellers.

Review:

With the escalation of missing-persons in Bedford, Maine, Zara White decides to take the duty of being the pixie queen of Astley's pixies seriously, especially since the world's about to end and all. She feels the weight of what it is going to take to fight all of Frank's pixies and find out what she has to do in order to keep the world intact. Help comes from her multitude of friends and family that she has accumulated since arriving in the tiny town of Bedford. In the middle of all the chaos, Zara soon comes to realize that the love she and Nick shared has been treading on a razor blade edge since she saved Nick in Valhalla. So many challenges face Zara as the pixie queen, as "the chosen one" in the mysterious prophecy, as Astley's partner. In the end she'll have to ask herself, "Is she willing to risk it all for the prosperous lives of the people and world she loves?"

As far as the romance that simultaneously lessens and grows in Endure, I'm super glad about the outcome. Nick is the same macho, bossy, brutish character he was in Entice and I wanted to slap him numerous times. And of course Astley's wonderfully sweet nature doesn't change and I wanted to kiss him numerous times. Pixie fate doesn't sound so bad, right? Back to Nick, though....There was one particular scene in Endure that some of the characters go back to Iceland--not going to say why--and Nick decides to tag along this time. There's a little respite from the chaos and Zara and him get to talk. Let's just say, if you were holding out for Team Nick to pull through, this scene will flush any chances of that happening down the drain. What's funny is that he thinks he hasn't done anything wrong by Zara till that point, and I'm like, "Seriously?"

Guess I should talk more about the gloom and doom climax since that's primarily what the book centers around. I don't think Ms. Jones could have down a better job at putting every piece of the puzzle in its place to cinch up the final book in the series. While I think she could have adjusted the execution of all the Norse mythology as things were heating up in the book more structurally, I liked how she re-introduced the important events that happened in previous books and made everything wrap up nicely. It was ironic how easily the whole pandemonium of the apocalypse was avoided but that didn't leave the book without its own fair share of battle scenes and war chaos. The challenges that Zara faces include standing up to multiple gods and goddesses, ruthless pixies, and acceptance that even when she thinks she's lost and there's no way they can win, it only takes the power of something she's had all along to stop the world from ending.

I sincerely loved and enjoyed reading the Need series. All the characters that I met throughout all the books develop into people with the strength to fight and endure till the very end. I would recommend the whole series to people not afraid of blue-tinted skin, razor-toothed mouths and shapeshifters who need an attitude check.

A-

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Source: Publisher via Netgalley

LiLi

Teen Book Scene: Tristan's This or That List

Introducing the author of THE VICIOUS DEEP, Zoraida Cordova...

Zoraida Córdova was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, where she learned to speak English by watching Disney’s The Little Mermaid and Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker on repeat. She made her way up north and now works in the glittering New York City nightlife. Her favorite things are sparkly like merdudes, Christmas, and New York City at night.

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Onto Tristan's This or That List...

Books or Movies?

Depends on my mood. Usually, movies.

Snickers or Sour patch kids?

Sour patch all the way.

Converse or Boots?

I prefer to be barefoot. But I love my Chucks. My mom keeps trying to WASH them. Can you believe that?

Call or Text?

I prefer to be textually active.

Laptop or PC?

I'm not really a computer guy.

Radio or Playlists?

Radio. It's the only way I find new songs.

Hair style: Gel or Natural?

Natural.

Winter or Summer?

Summer!

Cynic or Romantic?

Romantic. Don't tell anyone.

Movies: Thriller or Horror?

Neither. I'm more of a comedy kind of guy.

When an unnatural riptide sweeps lifeguard Tristan Hart out to sea for three days and then dumps him back on the shore of Coney Island, it’s the start of the Sea Court claiming its own. Suddenly, Tristan’s girlfriend dramas and swimming championship seem like distant worries as he discovers the truth: he’s a Merman. Now Tristan must fight for his life, the lives of his friends, and his humanity (if he still wants it), while competing in a race for a throne as ancient as the gods.

Seductive, duplicitous, and with an agenda of their own, these are not the mermaids you know.

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Thanks to Zoraida (& Tristan) and Teen Book Scene!

LiLi

The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson

The Girl of Fire and Thorns

Rae Carson

Hardcover: 432 pages
Publisher: Greenwillow Books (September 20, 2011)
ISBN-10: 0062026488
ISBN-13: 978-0062026484

Once a century, one person is chosen for greatness.

Elisa is the chosen one.

But she is also the younger of two princesses, the one who has never done anything remarkable. She can't see how she ever will.

Now, on her sixteenth birthday, she has become the secret wife of a handsome and worldly king—a king whose country is in turmoil. A king who needs the chosen one, not a failure of a princess.

And he's not the only one who seeks her. Savage enemies seething with dark magic are hunting her. A daring, determined revolutionary thinks she could be his people's savior. And he looks at her in a way that no man has ever looked at her before. Soon it is not just her life, but her very heart that is at stake.

Elisa could be everything to those who need her most. If the prophecy is fulfilled. If she finds the power deep within herself. If she doesn’t die young.

Most of the chosen do.

Review:

Ever since I caught a glimpse of this book at my local indie, I knew I would love it. And by glimpse, I mean reading the first chapter and absolutely dying that I couldn't buy it right then. I wanted to know more about this chubby princess who was soon to be known queen in a kingdom she'd never been before. I wanted to read about her new husband who's kind but a bit of a ditz when it comes to actual battles. And most of all, I want to warm to the history of the Godstone and all its previous bearers. All this is introduced in the very first chapter and it was this that kept me in the book's thrall till I could get a copy of my own.

Lucero-Elisa de Riqueza is a known princess in her country, Orovalle, for being chosen soon after birth by God, to fulfill an important service. Unfortunately, due to her country's beliefs, Elisa was kept in the dark of what exactly the service my entail and the true fatality that's more than likely to occur were she to fail completing the service. It's with the help of new friends that Elisa makes in her new home country that she realizes the complexity and enormity of her service unto God. While war is something Elisa enjoy reading about in her Belleza Guerra, she never thought she'd be asked to put her expertise into the real makings of war. The Girl of Fire and Thorns depicts a fantasy world where war is an all to real prospect, and where the identity of the Godstone-bearer is a fundamental element to both sides, where the power it represents could make or break a nation.

Characters: Of course, I must start with Elisa; for she is my favorite character and main heroine in all this. Even though I knew in the very beginning that she was a tad too immature to govern a whole nation because she's been mostly living on sweets and the Godstone to get her by, she had the potential makings for a magnificent ruler.With the help of her nurse, Ximena, and her lady-in-waiting, Aneaxi, Elisa was a well-rounded person capable of compassion and grace with a healthy level of insecurity that throughout the book flourishes into quite the polar opposite. Her development was in part due to the strength she constantly saw in the people making the decisions around her and her own belief that she could be an asset instead of a hindrance. Most of the other important characters had their individualistic roles to play, like Alejandro King of Joya d'Arena, Lord Hector his personal guard, both influential Priest that help guide Elisa, and of course the Malficio. Each person and group of people that Elisa meets, in some way make a difference and enhance the plot with presence. Even the evil dudes, the Invierne, have their own spotlight for a time that illuminates their cataclysmic tendencies.

Plot: The unpredictability of The Girl of Fire and Thorns was my favorite aspect of the whole book. Even more than the characters because I loved how it always kept me on edge and I honestly could not predict what was going to happen with the Godstone until it was all unveiled in the last stint of the book. The flow and pace as which the story progressed was suitable to the constant twists that the author liked to input every two chapters or so. I couldn't fully grasp some of the paths that Ms. Carson took the book in because it took my expectations and incinerated them with an Invierne amulet; I was riveted the whole way through. Unbelievably so, this book will have you thinking about it even after you've finished and have you guessing numerous times as to what book two could entail.

Originality: Seriously, who could up with this stuff? Ms. Carson, you're fan-flipping-amazing. Not only did the characters bring something new to the YA Genre but the settings and vivacity of the change in scenery every quarter of the book kept it alive and refreshing. One moment you're in a desert, the next you're deep in the forest and mountain ranges, and then you circle back to the monstrous palace. It's absolutely incredible what this author can do with words.

Overall: You could not prepare for how epic this book is, so I suggest you just enjoy the escape it provides and thrive in the experience.

A

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Source: Gifted ebook

LiLi