book review - My Shelf Confessions

Review: Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews

January 15, 2013 by April · 10 Comments

Flowers in the Attic

Such wonderful children. Such a beautiful mother. Such a lovely house. Such endless terror!

It wasn’t that she didn’t love her children. She did. But there was a fortune at stake–a fortune that would assure their later happiness if she could keep the children a secret from her dying father.

So she and her mother hid her darlings away in an unused attic.

Just for a little while.

But the brutal days swelled into agonizing years. Now Cathy, Chris, and the twins wait in their cramped and helpless world, stirred by adult dreams, adult desires, served a meager sustenance by an angry, superstitious grandmother who knows that the Devil works in dark and devious ways. Sometimes he sends children to do his work–children who–one by one–must be destroyed….

‘Way upstairs there are
four secrets hidden.
Blond, beautiful, innocent
struggling to stay alive….

It’s been a very long time since I first discovered Flowers in the Attic on a Meijer’s shelf in the book and magazine aisle. I remember being intrigued with the cover, it spoke of secrets – as did the title. Back then I was ALL about the mysteries, I read nothing BUT. If it wasn’t a mystery or a horror novel with a creeptastic element to it, I was not going to read it. I’m so glad I ended up buying the book and I read it in a a day or two, totally enthralled. It’s ironic that Flowers in the Attic, a book about 4 children imprisoned in an attic with no freedom, is the very book that opened up my world to more than just straight mysteries and also onto more adult books.

So, I was a little bit nervous to re-read Flowers in the Attic. What if I didn’t like it as much now that I’m older? Would I end up spoiling how I felt about it back then in the process? That is always my fear when I decide to re-read a book I loved. I never want to ruin that first feeling I felt. I’m really glad to say that for this time, my fears were completely unfounded.

I loved Flowers this time just as much as I did when I was a young almost-teen. I’m especially glad that even though I remembered all the key details, I didn’t remember a lot of the little things, so there were still surprises and enough suspense to keep me on the edge of my seat. I really think Flowers is a timeless tale.

I do have to mention that I positively HATE the new cover that’s on the paperback and Kindle edition of the book. It’s a cover that’s fit for a “fluffy contemporary” book, as Bex put so well. It does NOT fit Flowers in the Attic at ALL in my opinion. My favorite cover I’ve found is the one I added to my Mailbox Madness post. Although, the cover that my first copy of Flowers had was pretty fitting as well, even if it wasn’t quite as appealing, at least it portrayed the right feeling of the book. The Kindle cover makes you think flowers and roses and happy ever afters. Anyone who has ever read V.C Andrews knows there are rarely perfect happy ever afters. It’s part of why I love her novels so much, there’s a grim reality there that appeals to me.

I think my favorite aspect of Flowers is the relationships between the four children. As they spend more time with each other in the attic, with nothing to do but entertain each other and try to make their space a bit happier, they become so close to each other. The two oldest siblings, Cathy and Chris end up having to grow up fast as they become parents for the youngest twins, Cory and Carrie. Their time alone in that attic will forever shape their lives.

Flowers in the Attic is a very emotional book. I felt so much sympathy for the children of course, locked away. I grew increasingly angry at the mother for her lack of concern and the choices she makes in the end just make me want to strangle her with my bare hands! The grandmother, she deserves a whipping or two. One thing is for sure: I couldn’t walk away from this without the characters and the setting on my mind. And as before, I had to get my hands on the second book in the series as soon as I finished it. I’m addicted once again, and completely loving it!

Flowers in the Attic

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More Info on V.C. Andrews: Complete V.C. Andrews website

Filed Under: 5 stars, book review Tagged With: book review

Review: Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble by H.P. Mallory

July 16, 2012 by Tabitha the Pabkins · 8 Comments

Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble (Jolie Wilkins #1) by H.P Mallory

Life isn’t bad for psychic Jolie Wilkins. True, she doesn’t have a love life to speak of, but she has a cute house in the suburbs of Los Angeles, a cat and a quirky best friend.

Enter Rand Balfour, a sinfully attractive warlock who insists she’s a witch and who just might turn her life upside down. Rand hires her to help him solve a mystery regarding the death of his client who also happens to be a ghost. Jolie not only uncovers the cause of the ghost’s demise but, in the process, she brings him back to life!

Word of Jolie’s incredible ability to bring back the dead spreads like wildfire, putting her at the top of the underworld’s most wanted list. Consequently, she finds herself at the center of a custody battle between a villainous witch, a dangerous but oh-so-sexy vampire, and her warlock boss, Rand.

Unfortunately, I had quite a few gripes about this book.

To begin – the characters – Jolie and Rand were well enough developed but I just couldn’t find anything about them that made me latch onto them and really care. Now, Christa (the best friend) had pretty much no character development at all. I saw her as just the token friend character thrown in there so that Jolie could have someone to fall back on now and then and be made to feel more secure or insecure in situations where that was needed. The fact that she followed her around the country, then out of the country was way too convenient.

Jolie herself – yeah she bugged me with her whole lusting after several men and acting as if she wants to do more with Rand in one scene but then fighting off her urges in another? A bit of a ploy to build more sexual tension in my opinion – wasn’t working for me.

Now as for bad guy development – so not there. Why should we be afraid of this Bella lady, how did she get all these other races to join her side in the first place? Lots left open, which in a series book is normal but still a little bit more info should be there.

Too many supernatural races too quickly. I don’t know why it bugged me so much, maybe it was that she put a bunch in there but they all essentially felt so shallow in the species dept. Like each wasn’t built up very well. Just put in the mix to be there.

It left me with an annoyed feeling and I didn’t like it at all. Heck, going back to my convenient comment at the beginning maybe that’s what ticked me off so much about this read – so much of it was just ‘way too convenient.’ The plots, the characters, the additional races, the convenient use of powers and easy wins.

*especially irritating convenient powers, changing to an animal shape when you’re a witch, instant clothes, changing your appearance, no spells, oh and just miraculously being able to bring people back from the dead without having any real concept of ever having any power beyond visions before that?* …erg

I hate to write negative reviews – but because I stuck it out and read through the entire thing – I’m going to put my opinion out there. Now of course you don’t have to take my word for it because I looked at the average rating for this book and it seems normal. So it likely just wasn’t my cup of tea.

Pabkins

Find Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble by H.P. Mallory: AMAZON | BD | GOODREADS

*ecopy provided by Author for an honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.

Filed Under: 1 star, book review, Pabkin's Reviews, series Tagged With: book review, H.P. Mallory, Jolie Wilkins, Pabkins, paranormal fiction

Buddy Review: Struck by Jennifer Bosworth

June 15, 2012 by April · 10 Comments

Bex and I ended up reading Struck at the same time, and while chatting one day we realized we both had real similar thoughts about the book! This made us thinking it would be fun to try doing a Buddy Review, so here we go!

Mia Price is a lightning addict. She’s survived countless strikes, but her craving to connect to the energy in storms endangers her life and the lives of those around her.

Los Angeles, where lightning rarely strikes, is one of the few places Mia feels safe from her addiction. But when an earthquake devastates the city, her haven is transformed into a minefield of chaos and danger. The beaches become massive tent cities. Downtown is a crumbling wasteland, where a traveling party moves to a different empty building each night, the revelers drawn to the destruction by a force they cannot deny. Two warring cults rise to power, and both see Mia as the key to their opposing doomsday prophecies. They believe she has a connection to the freak electrical storm that caused the quake, and to the far more devastating storm that is yet to come.

Mia wants to trust the enigmatic and alluring Jeremy when he promises to protect her, but she fears he isn’t who he claims to be. In the end, the passion and power that brought them together could be their downfall. When the final disaster strikes, Mia must risk unleashing the full horror of her strength to save the people she loves, or lose everything.

What we liked about Struck:

Rebecca: I liked the idea of the lightening in general and the part it played. It wasn’t quite as I thought it would be, but it was still interesting with the spark and how people collected it when getting struck. I also liked Jeremy a whole lot! A mysterious hottie that protects you? Not gonna say no to that.

April: For me it’s hard to pick out what I did like because honestly there were so few things that struck me as likeable [pun intended, haha.] However I’d have to say I liked Jeremy’s character a lot, the mysterious boy who we’re not quite sure can be trusted or not! I agree with Bex, I enjoyed the lightning aspect and how Mia and other people were able to harness it, I thought it could’ve been even more interesting though! It was cool how people were able to sense the Spark in other people through, touch that was fascinating to me.

I also need to mention how positively creeptastic I thought Prophet was. He is an awesome villain, although some may not like the religious message he preaches, it’s meant to be creepy and it worked for me!

[Read more...]

Filed Under: 2 stars Tagged With: book review

Review: The Girl in the Park by Mariah Fredericks

May 18, 2012 by April · 4 Comments

The Girl in the Park by Mariah Fredericks

When Wendy Geller’s body is found in Central Park after the night of a rager, newspaper headlines scream,”Death in the Park: Party Girl Found Strangled.” But shy Rain, once Wendy’s best friend, knows there was more to Wendy than just “party girl.” As she struggles to separate the friend she knew from the tangle of gossip and headlines, Rain becomes determined to discover the truth about the murder. Written in a voice at once immediate, riveting, and utterly convincing, Mariah Frederick’s mystery brilliantly exposes the cracks in this exclusive New York City world and the teenagers that move within it.

The Girl in the Park starts off on the right foot. I’m all about the murder mysteries and throw in a prep school setting and my mouth starts to water.

Through the eyes of our narrator and main character Rain, we learn about her friend Wendy. Wendy is the girl found in Central Park after a party, murdered. At the time of the murder Rain and Wendy are no longer the best of friends and slowly all the reasons why are revealed.

Rain is a very interesting character who I felt immediately drawn to. She’s a listener, someone people confide in. She’s been the outcast and she knows how it feels to feel less than adequate. I have a huge amount of respect for Rain. Even though they are not the friends they once were, when Wendy is found Rain is determined to figure out the truth.

Wendy reminded me quite a bit like New Girl’s, Becca. Except unlike Becca she had to work her way into the “in crowd.” Wendy craves attention; she’ll do almost anything to get it. She makes a habit of going after other girl’s boyfriends – and usually gets them. She’s made a lot of enemies and yet she’s not completely unlikeable. She doesn’t always bring out the worst in people, sometimes she brings out the best. She’s vulnerable – and in the end completely human, a person with flaws and cracks and yet also moments of sharing sunshine. A girl who didn’t deserve to be left to be found dead in a public park.

Overall, I thought the premise of The Girl in the Park was good. The execution of the premise was fairly average. There were definitely a few moments of suspense but I had the murderer pegged about halfway through. Maybe I’m just jaded and thus can smell the rat WAY too easily? I can’t say for sure.

The thing I loved the most was the end. I did have tears in my eyes. I think the ending was as beautiful as it could’ve been.

My final verdict: The Girl in the Park is a solid read, worth reading if you’re into young adult murder mysteries with a school setting.

Find The Girl in the Park: AMAZON | BD | GOODREADS

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*Review Copy provided free of charge by the publisher in exchange for a fair review. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Filed Under: 3 stars, book review Tagged With: book review, murder mystery, young adult

Review: Strange Flesh by Michael Olsen

May 2, 2012 by April · 7 Comments

Strange Flesh by Michael Olsen

THIS IS A STORY ABOUT SEX AND GAMES.
“The only clue we have to our brother’s whereabouts is this place that doesn’t really exist.” Ten years ago, Blythe Randall broke James Pryce’s heart. Now she needs his help. Her enigmatic appeal lures the elite hacker into his most tantalizing, and most personal, assignment yet. A Harvard dropout employed by Manhattan-based RedRook Security, James makes a living finding people who don’t want to be found, pursuing their digital tracks around the globe, flushing out criminals, and exacting creative high-tech revenge on behalf of his clients. But this time he’s following his target—billionaire multimedia artist Billy Randall—into an exotic and treacherous world: a virtual one.
Capping off an erratic, increasingly violent series of stunts meant to plague his family’s media empire, black sheep Billy sends a video of his own suicide to his older siblings, aristocratic twins Blythe and Blake. In it, Billy “jacks out,” reanimating onscreen as an avatar in a decadent online world called NOD. The performance is pure Billy—he has always been obsessed with “the Bleed”: the moment when real and virtual selves intersect, where actions in one life breed consequences in another.
Blythe uses her influence to install James at GAME, a downtown media collective and one of Billy’s recent haunts. Posing as a documentarian, James gains access to a small band of artists and programmers—contemporaries, and in some cases enemies, of Billy Randall—whose top secret project represents the holy grail of virtual reality. Meanwhile, James learns that as part of his most recent scheme, Billy himself has designed a lavish alternate reality game, an escalating, high-stakes virtual landscape of strange flesh.
In order to find him, James must play along.

I need to start off my review with a stern warning that is review is probably more for the older folks, not young adults. This is a book that might disturb some people and is definitely an adult novel. There is sex, there is violence… and yet it is completely epic and I enjoyed every single last page, even when I was cringing.

Strange Flesh opens with a gruesome scene straight out of one of the Saw movies – one thing is clear to me, this book is NOT for the faint of heart. If you can make it through the prologue though I think you’ll enjoy the rest of the book! Even though the prologue had me completely mortified, much like James the main character, I was compelled to know more and continue the story.

Where do I even begin? Strange Flesh is the sort of book that you feel guilty about enjoying so much. It’s probably one of the most intelligent and witty books I’ve read all year – and I almost want to include last year, except I read the amazingtasticness that was Dominance by Will Lavender. You know it’s awesome when it ranks with my top favorite of all of 2011. For fans of hacker-noir, virtual gamers, and really anyone with a not-so-inner-nerd will be able to appreciate Strange Flesh.

It took me a little longer to read Strange Flesh just because I sometimes re-read passages to make sure I understood their full meaning and there are a lot of acronyms to wrap your mind around, but once you grab a hold of several of them they get used repeatedly so it’s not a deal-breaker.

Strange Flesh again is not for the faint of heart. There are several graphic scenes. Sex. Violence. It’s not really my normal “faire” but I was so intrigued with the premise I just HAD to read it. I’m really glad I did. Olsen is a master at leaving bread crumbs for readers to discover and a trail to follow – and follow we do through James our trusty, down-to-earth guide.

The other characters are also top notch and well drawn. My favorite was Olya, the Russian femme. She has style and spunk and knows exactly what she wants – and not afraid to do what she has to get it. I found myself wide jawed at some of her antics. James is such an awesome tour guide into this whole world, he’s so level headed and cool, even when faced with some of the most bizarre situations I’ve ever had the PLEASURE to read about.

I loved it on SO many levels – it’s a cat and mouse chase and thrill ride that leaves you constantly wondering who all the players are and the moves they’re making. I’d say normally that it’s unimaginable the scope and breadth of Olsen’s world created in Strange Flesh but the beauty and horror is that it’s all TOO imaginable.

The puzzle lover in me was fascinated by all the clues, puzzles, riddles etc that James has to work out. The concept of “The Bleed” that so fascinated Billy [the illusive avante-garde artist that James has been hired to find] also fascinated me and Strange Flesh provides a creeptastic setting and environ to explore the idea. “The Bleed” occurs when our virtual realities we’ve created “bleed’ into our everyday reality.

There are a lot of references to the Marquis de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom. Really this is probably considered a modern ode to 120 Days. I’ve never read the book [nor do I plan to after reading Strange Flesh] but Olsen provides more than enough detail, almost too where I feel like I’ve read parts of it. So I definitely wouldn’t consider reading it a prerequisite to Strange Flesh.

Really, Strange Flesh is such a FUN read. It’s definitely not for everyone, but I had a fantastic time reading it. I will be picking up anything Olsen ever writes hence and forever more.

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