Showing posts with label flux. Show all posts
Showing posts with label flux. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Waiting on Wednesday

"Waiting on Wednesday" is a weekly meme hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine. It lets us all gush about what soon-to-be released books we are jumping-up-and-down excited for.
Of Scars and Stardust 
by Andrea Hannah
hitting shelves October 8th, 2014 from Flux Books
description: 
After her little sister mysteriously vanishes, seventeen-year-old Claire Graham has a choice to make: stay snug in her little corner of Manhattan with her dropout boyfriend, or go back to Ohio to face the hometown tragedy she's been dying to leave behind.

But the memories of that night still haunt her in the city, and as hard as she tries to forget what her psychiatrist calls her "delusions," Claire can't seem to escape the wolf's eyes or the blood-speckled snow. Delusion or reality, Claire knows she has to hold true to the most important promise she's ever made: to keep Ella safe. She must return to her sleepy hometown in order to find Ella and keep her hallucinations at bay before they strike again. But time is quickly running out, and as Ella's trail grows fainter, the wolves are becoming startlingly real.

Now Claire must deal with her attraction to Grant, the soft-spoken boy from her past that may hold the secret to solving her sister's disappearance, while following the clues that Ella left for only her to find. Through a series of cryptic diary entries, Claire must unlock the keys to Ella's past—and her own—in order to stop another tragedy in the making, while realizing that not all things that are lost are meant to be found.
My thoughts:  A sister story, a psychological thriller, a story involving wolves...all things that make me WANT THIS.

Friday, May 23, 2014

Cover Story


Lots of new cover eye-candy!




by Jay Kristoff
Thomas Dunne Books, September 23, 2014









In the Afterlight
by Alexandra Bracken
Disney-Hyperion, October 28, 2014








by Sarah Lynn Scheerger
Albert Whitman Teen, September 1, 2014









The Spiritglass Charade
by Colleen Gleeson
Chronicle Books, October 1, 2014









by Claudia Gray
HarperTeen, November 4, 2014










Whisper the Dead 
by Alyxandra Harvey
Bloomsbury Children's, October 9st, 2014









by Fiona Wood
Poppy, September 16, 2014









Dating Down
by Stefanie Lyons
Flux, 2015







What do you think? What's your favorite out of these?  The Lotus War books have had amazing covers all the way through the series. Love the handrawn/watercolor style of Dating Down. Love the exaggerated font on Wildlife. Spiritglass and Thousand Pieces are just so pretty.

Sunday, April 27, 2014

New Shelf Goodies & The Weekly Nutshell {86}

For New Shelf Goodies, I'll be showing you what lovely books I acquired this week, whether from publishers, or the library, or from whatever half-crazed book-buying binge I happened to go on. :D (Inspired by Tynga's Stacking the Shelves) The Weekly Nutshell will be just that...my week here at Stories & Sweeties, in a nutshell. (inspired by Ginger @ GReads and her recaps at the end of the TGIF posts)

The lovely haul this week: 
For review: 
Read this one last year, so I'll be giving this away close to the release of the next book in July!
Need to get cracking on this series, it looks really good!
YES, excited about this one!
One of my fave covers of the year! Plus, time travel, steampunk, clockwork dragons???
Girl who is half-dragon must reclaim her throne. This sounds awesome. 
Spies, pre-WWII, mistaken identities---sounds fun!


 I also won this awesome Violet Hour prize back with a copy of the book, a Vision Crest mug (which has to do with the story), hair chalk, a Sex Pistols tee, and a $25 BN gift card! 

Many thanks to HMH books, Flux, and Simon & Schuster for all this fun stuff!!

The Weekly Nutshell: 
{Monday} Cover Story

This week I'm reading Don't You Forget About Me and it is so bizarre from the get-go! Enjoying it now that I've wrapped my head around what's going on! LOL  I'm liking Kate Karyus Quinn's writing style, it reminds me a little of Alice Hoffman, whose books I love. Also planning to start Flights and Chimes this week---guys, I am SO excited to dive into this one. It looks so fun.
Hope everyone had a great week!
 

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Waiting on Wednesday

"Waiting on Wednesday" is a weekly meme hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine. It lets us all gush about what soon-to-be released books we are jumping-up-and-down excited for.
The Last Changeling
by Chelsea Pitcher
hitting shelves November 8th, 2014 from Flux Books
description:  
Seventeen-year-old Taylor’s given up on happiness. He’s just trying to survive. Haunted by his brother’s death and pushed around at school, he spends his days searching for a quiet moment of peace, until he meets Elora. The enigmatic runaway gives him a hope he’s never had—the hope of truly connecting with another human being.

But the daughter of the Unseelie Queen has different plans for Taylor. Born into a world of corruption and war, Elora is determined to free her people from her mother’s tyranny. If she can gain the allegiance of the Seelie Queen, her mother’s loathed enemy, she and her rebels can crush the Dark Court and bring equality to Faerie. But to do that, she’ll need a proper offering . . .

A human.

To steal a mortal, Elora must become a mortal—at least, by all appearances. And infiltrating Taylor’s high school is surprisingly easy. But as she becomes entangled in his world, Elora realizes something startling: inequality in the human world isn’t so different from inequality in Faerie. Students are bullied, ostracized and attacked for being different. And just like she did in Faerie, she begins gathering up the outcasts, encouraging them to take back the school. Now Elora has two rebellions on her hands: a quickly mounting mutiny in Faerie, and a mortal uprising inspired by the boy she’s destined to betray.
My thoughts: So a faery, while trying to start an uprising in her own world, comes to the human world to steal a human...and in the meantime starts an uprising in the chaotic world of high school, too?? This sounds FUN.  Love fairies. Love the whole "faery empathizing with the bullied kids" concept.   Can't wait for this.

Friday, July 19, 2013

Becky's View: Some Quiet Place by Kelsey Sutton


Some Quiet Place by Kelsey Sutton
♦publisher: Flux
♦release date: July 8th, 2013
♦paperback, 334 pages
♦intended audience: Young adult
♦stand-alone
♦source: from publisher for honest review
Elizabeth Caldwell doesn’t feel emotions . . . she sees them. Longing, Shame, and Courage materialize around her classmates. Fury and Resentment appear in her dysfunctional home. They’ve all given up on Elizabeth because she doesn’t succumb to their touch. All, that is, save one—Fear. He’s intrigued by her, as desperate to understand the accident that changed Elizabeth’s life as she is herself.

Elizabeth and Fear both sense that the key to her past is hidden in the dream paintings she hides in the family barn. But a shadowy menace has begun to stalk her, and try as she might, Elizabeth can barely avoid the brutality of her life long enough to uncover the truth about herself. When it matters most, will she be able to rely on Fear to save her?

Review: Simply put, there is nothing quite like Some Quiet Place.

How does one even begin to write a character that is so completely devoid of all emotion?  How does one begin to imagine what Fear would look like if you could literally face him?  What first drew me to this book was the incredibly unique concept and exactly how author Kelsey Sutton would pull such a thing off.  Well, pull it off she did, and beautifully.  While main character Elizabeth goes through her daily tasks with no emotion at all, I doubt any reader will read her story with the same indifference.

This story got my thoughts churning.  It had me asking myself what it would be like to really face a dramatic situation with no emotional reaction to it---how you could think something through with such incredible, harsh clarity without things getting muddled and clouded with feelings.  And would that truly be a power…or a curse?

Even though Elizabeth feels nothing, my heart broke several times over for her---in the abuse she faced at her father’s hands, in the daily torment she experiences at school, and watching the closest person she’d ever known as a friend waste away.  There’s an odd little love triangle here, but with one of the most unusual love interests I’ve ever come across.  Fear is always seeking her out, he is desperate to find out why she is the way she is, but in years of coming to her in frustration and testing her immunity in the most disturbing ways, he has also grown to care for her.  The first time he begged her to fight back against her father, my heart nearly melted right out of my chest.

The writing is fluid and lyrical, it still astounds me that this was Kelsey Sutton’s debut. The story unfolds with not even a hint of how it might end, and the explanation was something I never could have guessed.  I found myself unable to put this one down as Elizabeth finds herself facing scarier things that fear. This book had me being visited by many of the emotions it personifies: sadness, curiosity, wonder, and definitely fear.  I loved every minute of it.
  Find Kelsey Sutton online: Website  •  Twitter 

Purchase Some Quiet Place:  Amazon  •  BookDepository  •  Indiebound

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Waiting on Wednesday

"Waiting on Wednesday" is a weekly meme hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine. It lets us all gush about what soon-to-be released books we are jumping-up-and-down excited for.
Backward Glass 
by David Lomax 

hitting shelves from Flux in October 2013

description:
Crack your head, knock you dead, then Prince Harming's hunger's fed.

It's 1977, and Kenny Maxwell is dreading the move away from his friends. But then, behind the walls of his family's new falling-apart Victorian home, he finds something incredible--a mummified baby and a note: "Help me make it not happen, Kenny. Help me stop him."

Shortly afterwards, a beautiful girl named Luka shows up. She introduces Kenny to the backward glass, a mirror that allows them to travel through time. Meeting other "mirror kids" in the past and future is exciting, but there's also danger. The urban legend of Prince Harming, who kidnaps and kills children, is true--and he's hunting them. When Kenny gets stranded in the past, he must find the courage to answer a call for help, change the fate of a baby--and confront his own destiny.


My thoughts: This sounds creepy and amazing!! A time travel mirror, a creeper who uses it for dark deeds, and the hero who will stop him (fingers crossed!)  I am definitely looking forward to reading Backward Glass!

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Waiting on Wednesay

"Waiting on Wednesday" is a weekly meme hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine. It lets us all gush about what soon-to-be released books we are jumping-up-and-down excited for.
Some Quiet Place 
by Kelsey Sutton

hitting shelves July 8th, 2013 from Flux

description: Elizabeth Caldwell has perfected the art of pretending to feel emotion, but it’s always a lie. After a near-fatal car accident when she was a small child, Elizabeth lost the ability to feel any emotion, but along with that loss she gained bizarre abilities: she can see the personified Emotions she cannot feel. Fury, Resentment, Longing—they’ve all given up on her, because she doesn't succumb to their touch. All, that is, save one. Fear. He’s consumed by the mystery of Elizabeth’s past, consumed by her.

And then there are Elizabeth's cryptic, recurring dreams, in which there’s always love, and there’s always death. Haunted by these dreams, Elizabeth paints them, knowing that they somehow hold the key to the mystery of her past.

But a shadowy menace is stalking Elizabeth. Her survival depends on uncovering the truth about herself. And when it matters most, she won’t be able to rely on Fear to save her.
 


My thoughts: First off, I'm not even going to pretend that I wasn't initially drawn in by this gorgeous cover.  Love it so much.  But then I read the synopsis; personified emotions?? I can't wait to see how that is done.  And haunting dreams of love and death?  I'm sold.  Sounds like something I would love. 

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Thanksgiving-Away #11 -Win Silver (signed) and Glass Heart!

Here comes giveaway #11 in my Thanksgiving-Away event!! You can win these:

ARC of Glass Heart by Amy Garvey 
+
 SIGNED ARC of Silver by Talia Vance!

(see event kick-off post for more details!) 
•US mailing addresses only
• Must be 13 or older
• Last day to enter: December 4, 2012
Enter below:
a Rafflecopter giveaway