Illuminate book review

I have just finished Illuminate A Gilded Wings Novel: Book One by Aimee Agresti. It is 531 pages long. It is published by Harcount. It has a beautiful cover with the lead character in a red dress with shadowed wings behind her. I really enjoyed this book. Here is the summary from the back of the book and then I will give mine.
 'Haven Terra is a brainy, shy high school outcast. But everything changes when she is awarded a prestigious internship at a posh Chicago hotel in the watchful eyes of a group of gorgeous strangers: powerful and alluring hotel owner Aurelia Brown; her second-in-command, the dashing young Lucian Grove; and their stunning but aloof staff of glamazons called the Outfit.
As Haven begins falling for Lucian, she discovers that these beautiful people are not quite what they seem. With the help of a mysterious book, she uncovers the evil agenda of Aurelia and company: they're in the business of buying souls. Will they succeed in wooing Haven to join them in their recruitment efforts, or will she be able to thwart this devilish set's plans to take the souls of her classmates on prom night at the hotel?'
There are three main characters. There is Haven from who's voice we the readers follow the story from. There is Dante Dennis her gay best friend and then there is
Lance who makes the third of their group. The story is told in three parts. A major part of Haven's character is that she has three big scars. One over her heart and two on her back. She is embarrassed about them and tries to hide them.
The first part is about the group setting in to the Lexington Hotel and Haven learning that something is odd about the people who work there. The hotel opens with a bang as someone dies in public but of course it is swept up and forgotten. Lucian is wooing Haven and she wants to believe that a cool guy like him would be interested in her. Haven's first job for the hotel is too take pictures of all the Outfit, her fellow interns and herself. The pictures are important to the story and to Haven's powers in particular.
In the second part Haven learns more and more about the group that she is working for. Lance and her team up to learn about the world they are now in. Lucian's begins to court her in earnest and Haven is having trouble not falling for him. Haven has been exploring and she finds tunnels that lead her to eavesdropping areas around the hotel. That is where and when she learns that she is a pawn that Aurelia is trying to get on her side. The reader learns that the pictures are showing what the people really look like. So Haven can see who has sold their soul and who has not. Most of the plot happens in part two.
In part three Haven faces her death and all the evil that Aurelia has been working towards. The reader also learns why Dante and Lance are part of the plan at the hotel. Haven is not the only special one in this book. In the end good does win over evil. The pictures are used to help stop the evil in a way that only Haven could use. Haven finds someone who understands her in all ways and with the promise of a second book the author leaves the reader.
I liked the writing style it was easy to read. The beginning is a little slow but if you get to the second chapter when Haven and co get to the hotel things really pick up. The descriptions are very good, you feel like you are seeing the hotel or the pictures that Haven takes. I am looking forward to the next book. One of things that I really liked about this book is that Haven accepts herself pretty quickly. She has some moments of 'oh I am not that special' or 'No they can not be talking about me it must be someone else'. But she gets the idea that Aurelia and Lucian are really after her. I found that to be a breath of fresh air from girls who never believe that they are special at all. Haven does not get a big head about it, she just knows that she is more than most people. All in all good story.

Phoenix Rising

Phoenix Rising  is a novel of The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences by Pip Baalantine & Tee Morris.  It is published by Harper Voyager an imprint of HarperCollins and it is 402 pages long. A brief summary is that England is under attack from a malevolent brotherhood known only as the Phoenix Society. Eliza Braun is a hot tempered agent assigned to Wellington Books to learn to cool off and to make sure he is not a double agent. Books is a gentleman in every sense of the word and is horrified to have Ms. Braun down in his archives. They get involved because Braun is trying to find out who killed her previous partner and Books because he thinks the same people are the ones who kidnapped him, now the reason that he is suspected of being a double agent. The chapter titles are just delightful for example: Chapter Thirteen Wherein Agent Braun Causes a Bit of a Ruckus while Making Friends. The humor in this is based on the gender basis that people have and the authors play that up with Ms. Braun being the violent one with dynamite on her and Mr. Books is the one who loves quiet and opera. The sub-plots are interesting, I did not feel like I was wasting my time by having them in the book. The ending is good with just enough questions for the next novel. I am looking forward to reading, hopefully before too long into the next year.

A Jane Austen Education

I loved this book. It is charming, funny and touching. It begins with the author William Dersiewicz taking a graduate course called 'Studies in the Novel' and he was introduced to Jane Austen for the first time. Deresiewicz is feeling honest about himself. He shows himself to the reader to be a high-minded modernist, with no interest in 19th century British literature and nothing to think about good for Austen or what she wrote. But Emma changed his mind. Over the course of the novel he begins to see himself in not too flattering light. Emma's faults he sees in himself and he begins to change. I am not a big non-fiction person. I like fiction, I like a clear narrative and I like an ending. Deresiwicz gives me this. He starts at one place in his life at the beginning of the book and in the end he is in a very different place. The book is broken up in chapters that are based on Austen's six books. He talks about where he was, what he was doing and what he thought about each of the books as he read and reread them. I found this to be very powerful and moving personally. He helped me to put into words what I liked about my favorite of her novels Persuasion. That it is about being honest with yourself and others around you, that loving someone means that you are willing to help them by pointing out mistakes, in a loving manner, but not about hiding who they really are. The book it 255 pages long, only in hardback at the moment, was published by Penguin Press this year.

Delirium

Today's post is going to be about 'Delirium' by Lauren Oliver. It is published by HarperCollins Publishing, it is 441 pages long and it has a beautiful cover. It is about Lena and is 95 days from getting 'cured'. 64 years ago scientists made a cure for amor deliria nervosa or what we would call love. All kinds of health problems are blamed on it from heart attacks to high blood pressure. When one is cured one no longer has to worry about anything, one is never going to have pain again or die from deliria. Lena wants nothing more than to be safe, to be cured and to not die the way her mother did. The day that she is going to have her final testing before she is scheduled to have her cure, the clinic is 'attacked'. By attacked I mean cows are herded into the build with things like mindless and not a cure written on them. She sees a boy on the roof looking down at this chaos and laughing. She meets him again and becomes friends with him but she thinks that he is safe, that he is cured. Of course he is not and he does not think that the cure is a good thing.It has some very tense moments, because the reader is experiencing the novel through Lena's eyes and the author does a great job in building the tension. I am expecting at least, a second novel, in the series and I am looking forward to where Ms. Oliver is going with this world. I would not have anyone under the age of about 13 read this because there are some scenes of how far humanity has fallen on that we have no emotions at all. But anyone older can handle the tale.

Possession

This review is going to be about Possession by Elana Johnson. It is about a 15, almost 16, year old girl named Violet Schoenfeld called Vi by her friends. It takes place in a future where 99% of people are controlled by the Thinkers. The Thinkers tell you where do, what job you are going to do and who you are matched with. Vi's mother can not wait for her to turn 16 so then she's an adult and then can get her own home. Vi does not understand why her mother dislikes her so but it is okay because her match Zenn loves her. Zenn loves her so much that he joined the Forces, police basically, and he used to protect Vi. But somethings as changed about him. Now he does not call, he does not break curfew with her and he is becoming someone who just believes in the rules, like so many people around her. Vi is arrested for walking the park with a boy after dark. That is really where the book starts. In prison Vi meets Jag a baddie. Everyone is a goodie if they lived the way they are told to, if not or if they are born in the badlands free of Thinkers control, then they are baddies. Jag is different but he is different like Vi. He can not be controlled by the thought-transmissions, he hates the Thinkers and he loves to 'bad'. He and Vi break out of the prison before they can be sent for training. They spent most of the book on the run from the Thinkers and their leader Thane Myers. The journey is an interesting read, it is interesting to watch Vi become an adult in her thinking, it is still a romance between her and Jag, but she is thinking about why people are willing to be controlled and what kind of person does the controlling. I liked it a lot, I hope that there is going to be a second one because I did not like where it ended. It is 405 pages long, it is published by Simon Pulse. My only real problem with it is I do not understand the title or the cover art. Maybe I am just thick but I do not. It is for older YA but if the kid can handle thinking about had issues then go for it.

Just a short review for now. I may add more to it later. But without further ado here it is.

Heat Wave review

 Heat wave is Richard Castle's first book about his character Nikki Heat. It is published by Hyperion Books in New York. It is 198 pages long, so it's a very slim book but if you're a fan of Castle Copyright of ABC the TV series then you want to pick this one up for a quick read. It starts with Detective Nikki Heat(Beckett) rolling up to a crime scene and it is a grisly one. A real-estate tycoon has been thrown to his death from his sixth floor condo. The city is in the grip of a heat wave (thus the title of the book) and murder just makes it hotter. Heat is being followed around by a hot-shot journalist named Jameson Rook(Castle) who has the hots for her. he is following her around to do a piece about the NYPD and how they really work. They interview the victim's wife, as they are leaving the site is assaulted by a mystery man. He runs from Heat/Rook, they give chase. After follows an amusing tale of affairs, more murders, some sex on the side and art theft. For not a long book very entertaining but I wouldn't buy it. It's just too thin on plot and characters for me. If you don't watch the show then you don't get much of the humor in the book. I will read the second and third in the series and I will, no doubt, enjoy them but if trashy murder mysteries aren't your thing then don't. But you love the cop language, the over-the-top everything then Heat Wave is for you.

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Testing...?

This is a test of the book talk by Lynn Rainey. I'm just seeing that I have this set up right. I will posted a blog about what new book I have just finished soon. I read just about everything so expect to see YA, hard sci-fi, mystery, fantasy and whatever else catches my eye. I will describe the book, the cover art, the way that the title is placed, who published it and is its in a series what (if I know) the other titles are. I hope to hear from people who read the posts and I hope to help people decide what to read next. Thanks!