Review: All Our Yesterdays, by Cristin Terrill (5 stars)

ALL OUR YESTERDAYS
by Cristin Terrill
Publication: September 3, 2013
Genre: Young Adult Science Fiction
My Rating: 5 of 5 stars

Imprisoned in the heart of a secret military base, Em has nothing except the voice of the boy in the cell next door and the list of instructions she finds taped inside the drain.

Only Em can complete the final instruction. She’s tried everything to prevent the creation of a time machine that will tear the world apart. She holds the proof: a list she has never seen before, written in her own hand. Each failed attempt in the past has led her to the same terrible present–imprisoned and tortured by a sadistic man called the doctor while war rages outside.

Marina has loved her best friend, James, since they were children. A gorgeous, introverted science prodigy from one of America’s most famous families, James finally seems to be seeing Marina in a new way, too. But on one disastrous night, James’s life crumbles, and with it, Marina’s hopes for their future. Marina will protect James no matter what, even if it means opening her eyes to a truth so terrible that she may not survive it… at least, not as the girl she once was. Em and Marina are in a race against time and each other, and only one of them can win.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

When the story opens, we find the main character, Em, held captive in a cell, staring at a drain. This may sound dull, but I found the tension to be wonderfully done. As captive, held in a dark room, Em found something to obsess about. It was dark and psychological, and I was immediately hooked. Then she finds a message that a prior version of herself left for her, saying she has to kill him.

Em goes back in time to do as the note says. I figured out pretty much right away who Em goes back in time to kill, but that's fine. I don't think it was meant to be a big secret. I was still invested in the story and in watching it unravel.

You won't find any Mary Sues here. Em was conflicted every step of the way. She was a good person, on a mission to do a bad thing. I found her struggle with her task to be both believable and compelling.

This book had just the right amount of romance—enough that I could latch onto it and root for it, but not so much that I got frustrated with the emphasis on romance as opposed to important, world-saving tasks. I found Em's love interest, Finn, to be likable in both his past and future selves. He was loyal and considerate, but tough enough to give Em a kick in the pants when she needed it.

I will admit though: On a couple occasions, I referred to Finn in my head as "cool Peeta." He has some similarities to Peeta from The Hunger Games, but I liked Finn better. Finn and Peeta are both blond, and both play sidekick to their love interests. But Finn was plenty kick-ass on his own, hence the "cool" label even though I found myself comparing him to a character in a different book.

I think it's a given with a serious time travel story that there will be paradoxes. All Our Yesterdays does a solid job of laying the groundwork with respect to how paradoxes are handled. And this groundwork starts early in the story, which adds some credibility to the resolution of paradoxes after the book's conclusion. I appreciate that.


An excellent book. One of my favorite reads of 2013! I'll be looking for more work by Cristin Terrill.

My thanks to Disney Hyperion for the free review copy.

Blog Tour: Destiny Gift by Juliana Haygert

We're happy to be blogger hosts in Juliana Haygert's tour for her new adult paranormal romance novel, Destiny Gift.
There's a generous giveaway at the bottom of this post!

DESTINY GIFT
by Juliana Haygert
Series: Everlast, #1
Publication: April 9, 2013
Genre: New Adult Paranormal Romance
My Rating: 3 of 5 stars

Thirty years in the future, a sinister New York City exists in permanent darkness.

A student at the secured NYU, nineteen-year-old Nadine has visions of Victor Gianni, an imaginary guy she has real feelings for. Afraid of being truly insane, she explains the visions away as simple daydreams, but she can no longer deny them when she bumps into Victor in real life. But this Victor doesn’t know her, and turns her away. After the encounter, Nadine’s visions change to those of eerie fates, gods she’s never heard of, demons with sharp claws they are not too timid to use...and instructions.

To discover if she’s losing her mind, Nadine follows the vague directions—with the real, rude and reluctant Victor—leading to a man who knows it all: Nadine can restore an ancient creed by unveiling the clues on her visions, and bring sunlight and peace to the world again. But that’s only if the demons and the other evil forces behind the darkness don’t stop her first.

Goodreads / Amazon / Barnes & Noble

MY REVIEW
It took me a while to get into Destiny Gift. In fact, there were a few times in the first half of the book that I seriously considered putting it down for good. Eventually, though, it did begin to grab me, and I'm glad I finished it. I'll even admit that when my Kindle hit 100%, I was a tad disappointed that the story was over—and I mean that as a good thing. This wasn't a cliffhanger. It was more like a complete volume of a larger set of volumes. Some threads of the plot were concluded, but bigger issues remained. I may pick up the next book just to see how it all turns out.

Let's talk about things I disliked:

As I said above, the beginning was slow. Nadine is in college and has recurring dreams about a cute boy, who she suspects she might be in love with—even though he doesn't exist. She spends a good bit of time thinking about this imaginary boy. Then she meets another cute boy, a bad boy who's dark and intriguing and seems to like her. Nadine makes plans to go to a party; she goes to work; she goes to school events...You see where I'm going with this? I just wasn't interested in any of that.

The world-building was also a problem for me. Nadine's world is a mess of darkness, danger, and giant bats. Her school is enclosed with security guards around the border to keep the students safe. Only...I didn't see much of the danger. It was mostly talk and dreams and memories. I just wasn't convinced that the world had gone to crap. The one exception to this was that I experienced Nadine's being attacked by some bats—only the scene just left my wondering why the bats never followed her onto campus. Sure, there's a gate around the campus, but a gate can't keep out bats.

What I liked:

Nadine's visions aren't always about the boy she might be in love with. Sometimes, they're about gods and goddesses fighting. I guessed what this meant well before Nadine did, but I still enjoyed the journey as she figured it out. Toward the end of the book, the action really picks up with some chase scenes and torture. This was much more down my alley than going to school and work and dreaming about boys. I was intrigued.

There was solid sexual tension between Nadine and the bad boy. I liked him and wanted him and Nadine to get together.

Conclusion:

Overall, I ended up enjoying Destiny Gift. I recommend it for paranormal romance readers, especially those who are into young adult and new adult. There weren't any sexy times here, so even though it's labeled new adult, I wouldn't suggest going into it looking for all the hot sex usually associated with that genre.



GIVEAWAY
The paperback prizes will go only to U.S. winners, but all other prizes from this bundle are available internationally.

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MEET THE AUTHOR

Website / Goodreads / Facebook / Twitter

While Juliana Haygert dreams of being Wonder Woman, Buffy, or a blood elf shadow priest, she settles for the less exciting—but equally gratifying—life of a wife, mother, and author. Thousands of miles away from her former home in Brazil, she now resides in Connecticut and spends her days writing about kick-ass heroines and the heroes who drive them crazy.

Review: Parallel by Lauren Miller (5 stars)

PARALLEL
by Lauren Miller
Publication: May 14, 2013
My Rating: 5 of 5 stars

Abby Barnes had a plan. The Plan. She'd go to Northwestern, major in journalism, and land a job at a national newspaper, all before she turned twenty-two. But one tiny choice—taking a drama class her senior year of high school—changed all that. Now, on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, Abby is stuck on a Hollywood movie set, miles from where she wants to be, wishing she could rewind her life. The next morning, she's in a dorm room at Yale, with no memory of how she got there. Overnight, it's as if her past has been rewritten.

With the help of Caitlin, her science-savvy BFF, Abby discovers that this new reality is the result of a cosmic collision of parallel universes that has Abby living an alternate version of her life. And not only that: Abby's life changes every time her parallel self makes a new choice. Meanwhile, her parallel is living out Abby's senior year of high school and falling for someone Abby's never even met.

As she struggles to navigate her ever-shifting existence, forced to live out the consequences of a path she didn't choose, Abby must let go of the Plan and learn to focus on the present, without losing sight of who she is, the boy who might just be her soul mate, and the destiny that's finally within reach.

Parallel blew my mind.

I went into this book thinking it would be young adult science fiction, which is a genre I love. It was. But it was also a romance novel that was both heart-breaking and heart-mending. I stayed up all night to finish this book because I had to know that Abby would find her soulmate in the end.

The primary complication to Abby's love life is the fact that her world collided with a parallel one a year ago. As a result, her present state is determined by choices her parallel self made in the past. Unfortunately, Abby suspects that her parallel self isn't exactly like her, so her parallel's choices don't always land Abby where she wants to be. She fears that one day she'll wake up and her love life will have been rewritten, and she'll be the only one who remembers how things are supposed to be. In the end, will she find her soulmate regardless of the path she's on?

It was 1:00 in the morning, and I was just about to put this book down after promising myself I would do so an hour earlier. Then this happened:


Yep, Parallel ripped my heart out and crushed it. So I had to keep reading until I finished the book, fighting with myself not to flip to the end to make sure everything was going to be okay.

Luckily, at the the conclusion, I was here:


Otherwise . . . well, let's just say I had a plan to hunt down and harass author Lauren Miller until she rewrote the ending. Lucky for her, I was more than satisfied.

I don't think all readers will enjoy the science babble explaining the entanglement of two parallel worlds. Personally, I thought this was a pretty cool aspect of the book. But even those who get a giant headache from the science babble can still enjoy the intensity of feelings that Abby has for her boyfriend—and that Abby's parallel has for her boyfriend.

The one thing I didn't absolutely love love love about Parallel is that I think I found a small glitch in the rubber science. If Abby and everyone in her world are getting the memories of their parallels, as theorized, then their parallels shouldn't be able to affect their physical properties. Abby shouldn't have scars from her parallel's injuries, and she shouldn't be in Connecticut just because her parallel went there instead of moving to California. This little glitch bothered me a bit. But you know what, Parallel? I still love you.


Most of my favorite books are action-heavy fantasy and science fiction novels. Parallel is now added to my favorites as one of the few romance novels I absolutely adored. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to young adult science fiction readers who like romance, as well as to contemporary romance readers. Just be prepared to put your heart on the line.

Thanks to HarperCollins for the free ARC of this title, provided through Edelweiss.

Book Review: Taken by Erin Bowman

TAKEN
by Erin Bowman
Pub date: April 16, 2013
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

There are no men in Claysoot. There are boys—but every one of them vanishes at midnight on his eighteenth birthday. The ground shakes, the wind howls, a blinding light descends…and he’s gone.

They call it the Heist.

Gray Weathersby’s eighteenth birthday is mere months away, and he’s prepared to meet his fate–until he finds a strange note from his mother and starts to question everything he’s been raised to accept: the Council leaders and their obvious secrets. The Heist itself. And what lies beyond the Wall that surrounds Claysoot–a structure that no one can cross and survive.

Climbing the Wall is suicide, but what comes after the Heist could be worse. Should he sit back and wait to be taken–or risk everything on the hope of the other side?

First of all, thanks to Edelweiss and HarperCollins for sending us an Advance Reading Copy of this book.

This was a refreshing read for me, but it's not something I would recommend to my co-blogger, Kenya. One of the many (many) differences between our reading preferences is that I'm not a romance junkie. Sure, I like good alpha male as much as the next girl, and I'm sure as heck not going to turn away from a good sex scene . . . but I don't need a strong romantic plot or subplot to fall in love with a book.

If romance is your thing, this book may not be for you. The romance takes a back seat to the rest of the story, which was just fine by me.

Taken has some similarities to Mockingjay, except it was better executed. (Sorry, Suzanne Collins fans; Mockingjay was a huge disappointment for me!) At the beginning, boys disappear from Claysoot in a flash of light on their eighteenth birthdays. Pretty cool! And when the  circumstance behind the Heists is revealed, it makes sense. The author created a believable dystopia with a rational basis. Win!


The dystopian world begins to come apart at the seams, and there's a rebellion in the making. Only unlike in Mockingjay, where the protagonist is little more than  figurehead, we get to see the main character fully involved in making a change. There were hard choices that had to be made between loved ones and freedom.

Now let's talk about the romance: I was truly torn between the two love interests. On the one hand, sweet Emma is Gray's first love. She represents innocence. But Bree has more in common with Gray toward the end of the book. She represents fight and change. I liked both of them. I also liked how Gray kept his focus on the rebellion instead of fawning all over the girls. This just made sense to me; I bought it.

So why not five stars?

I just didn't love it. It was good.


It had all the right parts. But I can't recall ever being on the edge of my seat, or feeling like my heart was being ripped out, or itching to flip ahead and see what happens. In short, this is a good, solid book with all the right ingredients. And the Heist concept is just awesome. But it didn't blow me away.