Soulless by Gail Carriger

First off, I love the way this author writes. It is so fun and witty. I also like how she just plops you down in the middle of a already formed relationship. I hate all the relationships that I have been reading about where it starts right when the book starts and 12 hours later they are in love forever. Soulless you get a peek of the relationship before the book starts, that it has been around for awhile, but things do progress faster during the book.

Alexia is a soulless spinster. She has dark skin, is Italian, has a big nose, a sharp tongue, and is very curvy. She attributes those characteristics to why she is a spinster, and she really doesn't mind. The beginning of the book has Alexia squared off with a vampire that doesn't seem to understand her soulless traits and Alexia must use her trusty parasol to ward off this vampire.

As the book progresses, you get to see what being soulless means and what it means to vampires and werewolves. Also, a mystery occurs in the book that the main character and the BUR have to figure out.

This is a great book and I can't wait to finish the series.

Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger

This book reminds me a lot of Harry potter the younger years, little bit of a Flavia de Luce Novel and a big chunk of Leviathan all rolled up into one. So, if you like anyone of those books you will probably like this one.

This book is about a 14 year old Sophronia Temminnick, who is constantly getting into trouble. So much so that her mother has decided to send her to a finishing school to learn some proper manners. But, what her and her mother doesn't know is that this finishing school is not only about etiquette but espionage as well! To top it off, Sophronia is the only covert recruit. Meaning everyone else that goes to this school families have been going for ages and knows exactly what the school is about. Sophronia comes into it clueless and learns alot about the world that she thought was only of myth.

I haven't read any of the authors other books, but now that I have read this one I really want to read her other series in the same world. I love how she writes. It is so witty the way she plays with words. I don't normally laugh when I read books but this one got me a couple times.

I really love this book, it was a great young adult book. And, I can't wait for the next one to come out to read more about Sophronia's adventures.

Divergent

The book is called Divergent, but I finish reading the book not quite sure what Divergent really means. All I know is that it is really really bad to be one, but I am not given much more description on it. It felt that way about a lot of things in this book. Like the factionless, it is very poorly described except it is a bad bad thing to be. But, there is really no reason why it is so bad to be factionless. Over and over it says factionless is so bad, and it is "living in complete isolation" and "worse than death" but it seems like there are a bunch of factionless since half the transfers from dauntless go there. And it seems like the Agnegation people take care of them by feeding them, and it sounds like they even have jobs too. So there is a bit of confusion there for me.

But, let me back up a bit. Divergent is based in a dystopian Chicago and split into five factions: Agnegation the selfless, Dauntless the brave, Candor the honest, Amity the kind and Erudite the smart. If you are in the Agnegation faction you can only be selfless, you can't be brave or honest or kind or smart, and if you have more than one trait than you are supposed to be Divergent, at least that is what I got from it. At sixteen you have the option of staying in your faction or transferring to another. So, if you transfer, won't you have two traits? The one you are leaving behind and the one you are transferring to? So why are not all transfers Divergent? But that isn't how it is. Although, that is how it is for Tris the main character.

Tris grew up being a Agneagtion, but after her aptitude test and finding out she is Divergent (which is really bad and she should tell no one), she decides to transfer and be Dauntless. Which means, she will leave her family and won't get to see them very much after that. Then she has to train to be brave and not a coward by jumping on and off trains, fighting and taking fear tests.

The book is a bit gruesome. Lots of Fight club fights, shootings, and killings. This dystopian is pretty grisly. But it is very action pack and had me on the edge of my seat at the end of it. Even though the world building is a little lack luster I guess I can overlook it for this being the first book in the series. I hope more is answered in the next book and there is more world building.

The Rising

After the first two book in this series, this one fell short. It was anti-climatic, there were so many ways this book could have went, but the ending was just okay. It doesn't even feel like the last book in the series. There is so much I would like answered. It really feels like we were teased with their abilities but never were given a real good description of anything. What is exactly Corey's ability? Why does he get headaches? Will they be able to help him? What exactly does a Xana do? And Daniels ability. Everything is just briefly touched upon but doesn't give you anything at all. All we mostly were given was what we already saw in the first two books: running, captured, escaped, running, running, running. Nothing really new or exciting in this book.

The book starts off where the last one left off. Maya, Daniel and Corey are still on the run trying to find out away to rescue there friend that have been captured and how to get in contact with their parents. There is a new character introduced in this one, Maya's brother. And also this book ties into with the other series from Kelly Armstrong, The Darkest Powers. So, if you haven't read that series yet you might want to, to better understand the last half of this book.

Overall, a bit repetitive, boring and anti-climatic :(

The Elite by Kiera Cass

Not sure what to say! First of all, I am not much of a fan of love triangles. This one was like a tennis match and America being the tennis ball. I felt like she kept going back and forth between Aspen and Maxon. Back and forth and back and forth. The only thing that kept me reading was I desperately wanted to know who she would pick at the end. You never get a grasp of who she is going to pick. And she is constantly getting angry at Maxon spending time with other girls while she is sneaking off to be with Aspen. She felt twofaced to me a bit and I started not like the main character, America, and actually started rooting for another of the Elite to win Maxon's heart.

I did like some of the plot points and didn't see a couple thing come. I enjoy being surprised in a book and this one did that. I never knew what direction this book was heading. Just when I thought it would go one way something else would happen. But the same storyline is getting dragged out into the third book and I have a feeling it is going to be yet another tennis match but hopefully this one will end it and answer the question of who she chooses!

The world building his the book does seem a bit flimsy to me but maybe because it isn't all fleshed out yet with one more book on the way. There is one point where America has to do a presentation and there is a big following up to it and then it didn't feel as big as the author was trying to make it out to be. And the angry and emotion didn't seemed to go another with exactly what happened.

Overall I will probably read the next book because I do ultimately want to know who ends up with who. But if it more of the back and forth love triangle thing the whole entire book I might have to skip the inbetween.

Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare

I think out of the three this was my least favorite of the infernal devices series. I like action more than romance books and this one had a lot of Tessa swooning over both Jem and Will, Harry and Charlotte, Sophie and Gideon, Cecily and Gabriel. Very mushy gushy romantic, so if you like that kind of thing you will like this book a lot I think.

What I really like is how the two series (Internal Devices and Mortal Instruments) Interweave with each other. Things that you have read in the present with mortal instruments are more chiseled out and understood more in Internal Devices. Like how Church came to be in the New York institute. And, how the Herondales got the star like birthmark on their shoulders. It is like you are reading about the great great grandparents of the kids of the Mortal Instrument series looking into the past of the families and finding out more about stuff that you were familiar with in the present.

Clockwork Princess starts out with Tessa getting ready to get married to Jem. Getting her dress fitted, but then things start to come apart when Gideon and Gabriels father is found to be a worm. And one thing leads to another with there search to find The Magister. The book is sad, people die but then people also fall in love in this book as well. This book does have it all, romance (alot), action(a little), death, destruction, plots revealed and everything ties up nicely at the end.

But all in all it felt the same as the two books before. I guess I am not a love triangle type of gal.

School Spirits by Rachel Hawkins

This is a spinoff of the Hex Hall series. The Brannick family is really shown in the last book of the Hex Hall Series when Sophie and her mom find themselves at the Brannick place. School Spirit follows around Izzie Brannick who has recently lost her sister. Trying for something new, her and her mom move to a little town called Ideal Mississippi where Izzie is tasked with the chore of ridding the school of a ghost.

This is almost a flip from the Hex Hall series. In the Hex Hall series Sophie was used to living in the regular world with high school and what not and didn't know anything about the paranormal world when she was shipped off to Hex Hall. In School Spirits, Izzie has lived her entire life in the paranormal world and never has participated in the High School life which is all new to her. So to learn about the life of a Highschooler her mother buys her a whole bunch of Highschool tv shows which are ironical far from real high school life as well.

The watching a tv show to get an understanding of real life, feels a bit like the series Paranormalcy where the main character got all her information about real life from her favorite tv show. And then this one also has a misspelled Dairy Queen where the character go to meet, like the book Beautiful Creatures, which I have never seen Diary Queen spelled incorrectly in my entire life but just finished reading two books back to back that had misspelling of Dairy Queen.

But, all in all I like the book. I kept trying to guess who summoned the ghost and never had the right guess until it was shown. It has a great plot and it flowed well. I can't wait for the next one in the series to find out what Izzie and Dex will do next. There isn't a cliff hanger but there is a couple things left hanging for the next book to pick up on.