The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa Review

Title: The Immortal Rules (Blood of Eden #1)

Author: Julie Kagawa @Jkagawa

Genre: Young Adult, Vampire, Dystopian, Post Apocalyptic

Page Count: 480 pages

Publish Date: April 24, 2012

Book Type: Kindle galley from Netgalley, Signed Hardcover

Publisher: Harlequin Teen @HarlequinTeen

ISBN: 9780373210510

From Goodreads: In a future world, Vampires reign. Humans are blood cattle. And one girl will search for the key to save humanity.        Allison Sekemoto survives in the Fringe, the outermost circle of a vampire city. By day, she and her crew scavenge for food. By night, any one of them could be eaten. Some days, all that drives Allie is her hatred of them. The vampires who keep humans as blood cattle. Until the night Allie herself is attacked—and given the ultimate choice. Die or become one of the monsters. Faced with her own mortality, Allie becomes what she despises most. To survive, she must learn the rules of being immortal, including the most important: go long enough without human blood, and you will go mad. Then Allie is forced to flee into the unknown, outside her city walls. There she joins a ragged band of humans who are seeking a legend—a possible cure to the disease that killed off most of humankind and created the rabids, the mindless creatures who threaten humans and vampires alike. But it isn’t easy to pass for human. Especially not around Zeke, who might see past the monster inside her. And Allie soon must decide what—and who—is worth dying for.

My Review: The cover model isn’t exactly how I pictured Allison Sekemoto to look, but I like how it’s essentially black and white with only the red accent. Plus, I read this book in two days--which for a 480 page book is pretty good for me. It was a pretty hard book to put down!

Julie Kagawa did something really smart here. She combined two of the most popular Young Adult genres: dystopian and vampires. This may seem like overkill, but it actually worked really well. I was starting to get sick of vampire books because they all seem to have a very similar Twilight-esque formula. This is why I absolutely adored the addition of the dystopian society.

The registered and unregistered humans in The Immortal Rules reminded me a lot of my favorite Young Adult vampire series, The Morganville Vampires, by Rachel Caine. This made me really excited and added an extra element of danger to the world Kagawa created. Kagawa is an amazing world builder and a master of character development. In all of her books, I can picture everything vividly. It makes the reading experience that much more enjoyable.

I really enjoyed the characters in The Immortal Rules. Allie was an excellent protagonist and pretty badass. Zeke was a complex character who made some very interesting choices. I want to get to know Kanin more because of his extremely rich history. I have a feeling we will get to know more about him in future books and that makes me so excited. The rabids in the book were pretty genuinely terrifying. I definitely wouldn’t want to face them.  

Overall, this is one of the best Young Adult vampire novels I have read in a long time. I’m impatiently waiting for the sequel!

Side note: The excerpt from the next Iron Fey novel was kind of awesome! 

Thanks to Harlequin Teen, NetGalley, and Julie Kagawa for this review copy. Also, a special thanks to Harlequin Teen and Julie Kagawa for the signed copy and Immortal Rules hoodie I won on Twitter! 

Tempted by PC and Kristin Cast Review

Title: Tempted
Author: PC and Kristin Cast
Genre: YA
Page Count: 319
Book Type: Hardcover (Owned)
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 9780312567484

*This synopsis will contain spoilers; however, my review will not.

From Goodreads: So…you’d think after banishing an immortal being and a fallen High Priestess, saving Stark’s life, biting Heath, getting a headache from Erik, and almost dying, Zoey Redbird would catch a break.  Sadly, a break is not in the House of Night school forecast for the High Priestess in training and her gang.  Juggling three guys is anything but a stress reliever, especially when one of them is a sexy Warrior who is so into protecting Zoey that he can sense her emotions.  Speaking of stress, the dark force lurking in the tunnels under the Tulsa Depot is spreading, and Zoey is beginning to believe Stevie Rae could be responsible for a lot more than a group of misfit red fledglings.  Aphrodite’s visions warn Zoey to stay away from Kalona and his dark allure, but they also show that it is Zoey who has the power to stop the evil immortal.  Soon it becomes obvious that Zoey has no choice: if she doesn’t go to Kalona he will exact a fiery vengeance on those closest to her.  Will Zoey have the courage to chance losing her life, her heart, and her soul?  Find out in the next spectacular installment in the House of Night Series,Tempted. 

My Review: Is she with Stark or Heath on the cover (I'm guessing the other is lurking in the background). I do appreciate these covers with the tattoo like texture to them. I also enjoy how all of the ones in the series are black with a different color title. This helps when I get the urge to shelve my books by color but my OCD-ishness doesn't want to separate series books.

This is the sixth book in the series and I can 100% say that it was not my favorite. I stopped reading about halfway through and read roughly five books before picking it up to finish it. This installment and the previous just seemed to be lacking the appeal of the prior books. My favorite characters in the whole series are Aphrodite and Stark. I think they have the most dimension to them and I am glad that we got to see more of them in this book. Also, are we really expected to believe everything that happened in the six books occurred during Zoey's first year at school? It seems a little far-fetched to me (I know, these are vampire books, but I like a little believability). Even Harry Potter himself only really had one big event/nemesis per year. Oh well, I do have Burned on my waiting list for the library.

Have any of you read Burned? Is it any better?

Insatiable by Meg Cabot Review

Title: Insatiable
Author: Meg Cabot
Genre: Fiction, Paranormal Romance (Girl Gothic)
Page Count: 451
Book Type: ARC Paperback
Received From: Meg Cabot & William Morrow An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
Publisher: William Morrow
ISBN: 978-0-06-173506-6


*This post was first written by me for College Lifestyles*

Most of us know Meg Cabot for penning The Princess Diaries; now, she has stepped outside of her comfort zone with her new novel, Insatiable.  Insatiable falls into what Meg likes to call ‘Girl Gothic’ (think Buffy the Vampire Slayer).  The girls who are the main characters in these types of stories don’t see being changed into a supernatural being as a happy ending and don’t need a man to solve all of their problems.  Sure, having a man around wouldn’t make them unhappy, per se, but they don’t need one either.  Now we can explore the wonderful world of Insatiable.

My copy of 'Insatiable' by Meg Cabot! Photo by Kaitlyn Kline.

THE CHARACTERS:

Meena Harper: The main character is the cleverly named Meena Harper.  Don’t know why she is so cleverly named?  Check out this book for an idea.  Meena is sick and tired of the vampire craze that is taking over the world.  She is a dialogue writer for the long-running soap opera, ‘Insatiable,‘ and is being forced to incorporate vampires into the script due to the success of their rival, ‘Lust.‘  Meena isn’t your typical girl–she can tell how everyone will die.  As you can imagine, this makes her life just a bit difficult.     It becomes even more difficult when she meets Lucien Antonescu in quite an extraordinary way.

Lucien Antonescu: Lucien Antonescu is a modern-day prince who is visiting New York City to deal with a string of murders which are being committed by his people.  His people being the vampires, of course.  Lucien seems like the perfect boyfriend for Meena, but we should know by now that things aren’t always as they seem.  He has a tortured past and quite the temper.

Alaric Wulf: Meena also meets Alaric Wulf in an extremely interesting way.  He shows up at her door to find out where Lucien is or he will kill her.  Alaric Wulf is a vampire-hunter and he would prefer if all the vampires in the world would remain dead instead of becoming undead.  After many trials and tribulations, Meena comes to realize that things aren’t exactly what they seem with Alaric as well.  He even has a revelation, himself.

THE STORY: Insatiable isn’t vampires as we are seeing them in the media today.  Meg Cabot uses traditional vampire lore in a modern day setting and blends them beautifully.    Meena Harper could be any one of the College Lifestyles interns, or our Director, with her passion for writing, compassion toward others and great sense of style.  The storyline switches points of view which allows you to get into everyone’s heads.  Readers get to know the characters on a deeper level and can sympathize which each one at some point in the story. Insatiable provides it all: humor, romance, fantasy, suspense, history… we could go on and on.  I fell in love with the characters in this novel   (Meena’s neighbor, Mary Lou, and Meena’s dog, Jack Bauer, in particular).

THE VERDICT: Twilight who?  I would seriously recommend putting this novel on your summer reading list.  The chapters are short and it makes a great ‘beach read’!  

Letter from Meg Cabot!  Photo by Kaitlyn Kline.

You can follow Meg Cabot on Twitter or check out her website!  Her website contains a FAQ, some videos and other fun things–check it out!

*I have not received any compensation or gifts for reviewing this book, except for the book itself, of course.  I have expressed my sincere opinions in this post.*