Summary: Before this all happened, the closest I’d ever come to getting physical with a guy was playing the board game Operation. Okay, so maybe that sounds pathetic, but it’s not like there were any guys at my high school who I cared to share more than three words with, let alone my body.

Then I met Wes, a track star senior from across town. Maybe it was his soulful blue eyes, or maybe my hormones just started raging. Either way, I was hooked. And after a while, he was too. I couldn’t believe how intense my feelings became, or the fact that I was seeing—and touching—parts of the body I’d only read about in my Gray’s Anatomy textbook. You could say Wes and I experienced a lot of firsts together that spring. It was scary. It was fun. It was love.

And then came the fall.

Very rarely do you see sex handled well in YA–at least, not in paranormal YA. Sometimes you do come across a contemporary novel that handles it, but it’s rarely ever the focal point of such a novel. I’ve always been a little disappointed about this, since, despite what people seem to believe, teens do have sex and do all kinds of things society tries to tell them not to do. To not acknowledge this in a novel focusing on teens continues to do them a disservice.

Read the rest of the review at On The Nightstand.

Summary: What if you killed someone and then fell in love with them?

In an alternate Renaissance world, somewhere in an imaginary “pocket” of Europe called the Kingdom of Lethe, Death comes, in the form of a grim Spaniard, to claim his Bride. Until she is found, in a single time-stopping moment all dying stops. There is no relief for the mortally wounded and the terminally ill….

Covered in white cobwebs of a thousand snow spiders she lies in the darkness… Her skin is cold as snow… Her eyes frozen… Her gaze, fiercely alive…

While kings and emperors send expeditions to search for a suitable Bride for Death, armies of the undead wage an endless war… A black knight roams the forest at the command of his undead father … Spies and political treacheries abound at the imperial Silver Court…. Murdered lovers find themselves locked in the realm of the living…

And one small village girl, Percy—an unwanted, ungainly middle daughter—is faced with the responsibility of granting her dying grandmother the desperate release she needs.

As a result, Percy joins the crowds of other young women of the land in a desperate quest to Death’s own mysterious holding in the deepest forests of the North…

And everyone is trying to stop her.

On the surface, Cobweb Bride has everything I should love in a book. A fairytale-esque setting, the focus on ladies being awesome, Death in love with a bride. I should have loved this book.

Read the review at On The Nightstand.

Summary for Twixt: You wake upon the cold ground. As you struggle to rise, as your breath exhales like a ghost, you know only two things: You can’t remember who you are. And you’re being hunted.

No one sleeps in Abeo City. The lost souls gather indoors at night as Snatchers tear through the sky on black-feathered wings, stalking them. But inside the rotting walls of the Safe Houses comes a quieter, creeping danger. The people of Abeo City have forgotten their pasts, and they can trade locks of their hair to sinister women known only as the Sixers for an addictive drug. Nox will give you back a single memory--for a price.

Like the other lost souls, Lottie wakens in this harsh landscape and runs in terror from the Snatchers. But she soon comes to realize that she is not at all like the people of Abeo City. When she takes Nox, her memories remain a mystery, and the monsters who fill the sky at night refuse to snatch her. Trying to understand who she is, and how she ended up in such a hopeless place, Lottie bands together with other outcasts, including a brave and lovely girl named Charlie. In the darkness, and despite the threat of a monstrous end, love begins to grow. But as Lottie and Charlie plot their escape from Abeo City, Lottie’s dark secrets begin to surface, along with the disturbing truth about Twixt: a truth that could cost her everything.

Read the review here at On The Nightstand.

Summary for Loki's Wolves: In Viking times, Norse myths predicted the end of the world, an event called Ragnarok, that only the gods can stop. When this apocalypse happens, the gods must battle the monsters--wolves the size of the sun, serpents that span the seabeds, all bent on destroying the world.

The gods died a long time ago.

Matt Thorsen knows every Norse myth, saga, and god as if it was family history--because it is family history. Most people in the modern-day town of Blackwell, South Dakota, in fact, are direct descendants of either Thor or Loki, including Matt's classmates Fen and Laurie Brekke.

However, knowing the legends and completely believing them are two different things. When the rune readers reveal that Ragnarok is coming and kids--led by Matt--will stand in for the gods in the final battle, he can hardly believe it. Matt, Laurie, and Fen's lives will never be the same as they race to put together an unstoppable team to prevent the end of the world.

Read the review here at On The Nightstand.

I wanted to share my review of this book because it really made an impact on me. Usually when I rate something a 5, I just base it on pure enjoyment, not necessarily on literary merit; but no, this is a good book, enjoyable and quality. It's a story that really makes you think.

Twixt is different from Diemer's first novel, which was more slow-moving and episodic. It's as beautifully written as The Dark Wife was, but this novel is heavily plot-driven and action-packed, filled with mystery, suspense, and intrigue. The world-building is stellar, taking us to a setting that reminded me of the modern-yet-old-fashioned version of Wonderland we encounter in the 2009 Syfy miniseries Alice (an all-time fave of mine), mixed with a little bit of the gritty Victorian world of Libba Bray's Gemma Doyle trilogy.

The romance is slow-building and gradual, giving the reader plenty of time to get invested in the characters and their love story. The characters themselves are also well-rounded and developed, and I grew very attached not only to Lottie and Charlie, but to their friends in the world of Twixt. As the suspense built and developed into a shocking twist (and this one was really a shocker; even though I thought I'd figured it out, I was still thrown for a total loop by the reveal), I grew really anxious for the characters I'd gotten so attached to.

Everything built up to a gripping climax and a moving, powerful ending. I got all emotional at the end, and I'm not usually someone who cries when I read.

I went into this book expecting a paranormal romance novel, and what I found was much more. (I'm trying to keep this vague to avoid spoilers, but I guarantee Twixt will surprise you. Nothing is what you expect.) Twixt was an absolutely beautiful book.

 What is interesting is Fors, who is debatably white (we know that he is at least light skinned) does not get this narrative.


Read this on Rena's Hub of Random.