Grace has spent years watching the wolves in the woods behind her house. One yellow-eyed wolf—her wolf—watches back. He feels deeply familiar to her, but she doesn't know why.
the heat.
Sam has lived two lives. As a wolf, he keeps the silent company of the girl he loves. And then, for a short time each year, he is human, never daring to talk to Grace...until now.
the shiver.
For Grace and Sam, love has always been kept at a distance. But once it's spoken, it cannot be denied. Sam must fight to stay human—and Grace must fight to keep him—even if it means taking on the scars of the past, the fragility of the present, and the impossibility of the future.
before. Miles "Pudge" Halter's whole existence has been one big nonevent, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave the "Great Perhaps" (François Rabelais, poet) even more. He heads off to the sometimes crazy, possibly unstable, and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed-up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young, who is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart.
It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. . . .
Narrated by Death, Markus Zusak's groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a young foster girl living outside of Munich in Nazi Germany. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she discovers something she can't resist- books. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever they are to be found.
With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, Liesel learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids, as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement.
A most untraditional love story, this is the celebrated tale of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who involuntarily travels through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare's passionate affair endures across a sea of time and captures them in an impossibly romantic trap that tests the strength of fate and basks in the bonds of love.
Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small Southern town of Gatlin has ever seen, and she's struggling to conceal her power, and a curse that has haunted her family for generations. But even within the overgrown gardens, murky swamps and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten South, a secret cannot stay hidden forever.
Ethan Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape from Gatlin, is haunted by dreams of a beautiful girl he has never met. When Lena moves into the town's oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection between them.
In a town with no surprises, one secret could change everything.
Every April, when the wind blows from the sea and mingles with the scent of lilacs, Landon Carter remembers his last year at Beaufort High. It was 1958, and Landon had already dated a girl or two. He even swore that he had once been in love. Certainly the last person in town he thought he'd fall for was Jamie Sullivan, the daughter of the town's Baptist minister. A quiet girl who always carried a Bible with her schoolbooks, Jamie seemed content living in a world apart from the other teens. She took care of her widowed father, rescued hurt animals, and helped out at the local orphanage. No boy had ever asked her out. Landon would never have dreamed of it. Then a twist of fate made Jamie his partner for the homecoming dance, and Landon Carter's life would never be the same. Being with Jamie would show him the depths of the human heart and lead him to a decision so stunning it would send him irrevocably on the road to manhood...
A man with a faded, well-worn notebook open in his lap. A woman experiencing a morning ritual she doesn't understand. Until he begins to read to her. The Notebook is an achingly tender story about the enduring power of love, a story of miracles that will stay with you forever. Set amid the austere beauty of coastal North Carolina in 1946, The Notebook begins with the story of Noah Calhoun, a rural Southerner returned home from World War II. Noah, thirty-one, is restoring a plantation home to its former glory, and he is haunted by images of the beautiful girl he met fourteen years earlier, a girl he loved like no other. Unable to find her, yet unwilling to forget the summer they spent together, Noah is content to live with only memories. . until she unexpectedly returns to his town to see him once again. Allie Nelson, twenty-nine, is now engaged to another man, but realizes that the original passion she felt for Noah has not dimmed with the passage of time.
Still, the obstacles that once ended their previous relationship remain, and the gulf between their worlds is too vast to ignore. With her impending marriage only weeks away, Allie is forced to confront her hopes and dreams for the future, a future that only she can shape.
Like a puzzle within a puzzle, the story of Noah and Allie is just beginning. As it unfolds, their tale miraculously becomes something different, with much higher stakes. The result is a deeply moving portrait of love itself, the tender moments, and fundamental changes that affect us all. Shining with a beauty that is rarely found in current literature,
The Notebook establishes Nicholas Sparks as a classic storyteller with a unique insight into the only emotion that really matters.
At the eerily Gothic Evernight Academy, the other students are sleek, smart, and almost predatory. Bianca knows she doesn't fit in.
When she meets handsome, brooding Lucas, he warns her to be careful -- even when it comes to caring about him. But the connection between them can't be denied. Bianca will risk anything to be with Lucas, but dark secrets are fated to tear them apart...and to make Bianca question everything she's ever believed.
AMY is a cryogenically frozen passenger aboard the spaceship Godspeed. She has left her boyfriend, friends - and planet - behind to join her parents as a member of Project Ark Ship.
Amy and her parents believe they will wake on a new planet, Centauri-Earth, three hundred years in the future. But fifty years before Godspeed's scheduled landing, cryo chamber 42 is mysteriously unplugged, and Amy is violently woken from her frozen slumber.
Someone tried to murder her.
Now, Amy is caught inside a tiny world where nothing makes sense. Godspeed's 2,312 passengers have forfeited all control to Eldest, a tyrannical and frightening leader. And Elder, Eldest's rebellious teenage heir, is both fascinated with Amy and eager to discover whether he has what it takes to lead.
Amy desperately wants to trust Elder. But should she put her faith in a boy who has never seen life outside the ship's cold metal walls? All Amy knows is that she and Elder must race to unlock Godspeed's hidden secrets before whoever woke her tries to kill again.
My Review
When I saw this book on the bookstore I was really at awe on how gorgeous the cover is. Two faces. Of a boy and a girl. Almost touching. Almost kissing. And the background of the different hue of stars made a really fine touch that really killed it.
So when I started reading the book I really had no idea of what I got myself into. A book that later will put you questioning their morals and will leave you in the center of a perfectly plotted crime that you will never see even though how hard you look.
Reading this book made me claustrophobic even though I never really feared being in small and closed places. It also made me fear death. Death is scary. Yes. But dying in a place that even you yourself can't get out of and being aware of the process of dying scared the hell out of me. I've never been so scared of dying in my entire life until I read this book.
Amy is a strong female protagonist. At times she breaks down from all the burden she had. Knowing that she's all alone because her parents are still frozen under the ship. She is the only one who was mysteriously plugged. Someone tried to kill her. It happened to her it can happen again. The fear of losing her parents and being in a ship full of unusual strangers made her want to get out and away. But the thing is she can't. She has nowhere else to go. Unless she finds the killer who mysteriously unplugs the cryogenically frozen people under the ship. She and her frozen parents will be safe again.
The people in the ship are deprived of knowledge. They do things routinely. The abnormal kind of routine. They do things assigned to them and it's the only thing they do. So when Amy was woken from her frozen slumber and brought together with the people they were afraid and indifferent to her. There comes Elder the only person who is not afraid of her. Who wants to be near her and help her live the life in the ship. Elder is another strong character to watch out for. He is rebellious at times that made people around him question if he can be able to be a strong leader of the ship. To be a successor of Eldest. And if he can protect the people of the ship until Godspeed arrives in Centauri-Earth, the new planet where they were going.
Godspeed is a ship with cargoes of deadly secrets. A ship of deception and betrayal. It is truly a ship fueled by lies. Across the Universe is a book to read if you seek cracking mysteries and solving murderous plots. This book is terrifyingly good.
Published: August 24, 2010 Publisher: Scholastic Press
Synopsis
Young Katniss Everdeen has survived the dreaded Hunger Games not once, but twice, but even now she can find no relief. In fact, the dangers seem to be escalating: President Snow has declared an all-out war on Katniss, her family, her friends, and all the oppressed people of District 12. The thrill-packed final installment of Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy will keep young hearts pounding.
My Review It took me forever to finish this book. Not that I don't have much time. I can always make room for stuff like this but the problem was I hate to finish it off quickly. I wanted to cherish every moment I had on what is left of this trilogy. I was so afraid that as I reach the end, it will not satisfy my expectations. I didn't want to separate from this book entirely cause reading this series became a part of my life.
As I reach the final conclusion of this much talked about trilogy, I was moved to tears. Some lives where luckily spared. But innocent lives have been taken away by the cruelty of the people over power and glory. Each scene became a legend, became history. I was so emotionally attached to every characters that I keep holding on to. Literally, I frequently have to stop reading just to come up for air cause every scene was always something I didn't expect to turn out to be.I tore hungrily through the book. It only proved how I was so hungry for the hunger games.
MOCKINGJAY showed me the real aspects of life. How war and vengeance can never solve anything and will never be a good solution to conflicts. It opened my mind entirely to a world that could have been ours if we allow it to happen. It affected my life so much. It brought new perspective to me about friends and families, about war and peace, and about love and revenge. This is a book you will never be able forget. MOCKINGJAY is definitely a book of the century. Although the ending was a little bittersweet for me it showed how you should really end a series.
Published: September 1, 2009 Publisher: Scholastic Press
Synopsis
Sparks are igniting.
Flames are spreading.
And the Capitol wants revenge.
Against all odds, Katniss has won the Hunger Games. She and fellow District 12 tribute Peeta Mellark are miraculously still alive. Katniss should be relieved, happy even. After all, she has returned to her family and her longtime friend, Gale. Yet nothing is the way Katniss wishes it to be. Gale holds her at an icy distance. Peeta has turned his back on her completely. And there are whispers of a rebellion against the Capitol--a rebellion that Katniss and Peeta may have helped create.
Much to her shock, Katniss has fueled an unrest she's afraid she cannot stop. And what scares her even more is that she's not entirely convinced she should try. As time draws near for Katniss and Peeta to visit the districts on the Capitol's cruel Victory tour, the stakes are higher than ever. If they can't prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are lost in their love for each other, the consequences will be horrifying.
In Catching Fire, the second novel of the Hunger Games trilogy, Suzanne Collins continues the story of Katniss Everdeen, testing her more than ever before . . . and surprising readers at every turn.
My Review
Usually whenever I read a series I notice that some sequels don't establish the same intensity there is to the book which it followed. Not all authors are able to heighten up the quality and brilliance of the sequels. But with the sequel to THE HUNGER GAMES which was CATCHING FIRE I was hands-down with what the book offered me. I must say the intensity and momentum I had when I read its first book kept me going and back on track with the second. It picked me up right from where it took off.
The story goes about when Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark survived the annual Hunger Games. Now back and living a comfortable life in District 12 being unaware of new threats that are coming up ahead. The last act of Katniss and Peeta have caused several uprisings in different districts which they did not intend to do. What they did could ignite the fire of rebellion in all the districts. From there the story unfolds on how they will be the speculated leader of this rebellion. New characters, new connivance, new twists and turns and a whole new action-packed mind gripping scenes that will surely leave you begging for more.
The pacing is so good and it has a very intricate description of the places and sceneries. CATCHING FIRE is flawlessly orchestrated and definitely exceeded all my expectations. This book will keep your heart pounding with its ultimate revelation. Book Trailer
Stars: 6 Stars Published: October 31, 2008 Publisher: Scholastic Press
Synopsis
In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.
Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before—and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that will weigh survival against humanity and life against love.
My Review
Yes you are seeing right definitely 6 Stars! I know! My highest star rating is only up to 5 Stars but what can I do? I ultimately love love love this book. If only I could give this book all the stars in the world I would.
Book lovers are raving about this book. This book is in such hype lately so I decided why not as well give it a try. Basing on the cover of the book it definitely wouldn't attract my attention. I don't have anything against the cover. It is just too plain for me knowing what lies hidden inside the book is something that is so great and brilliant that you cannot put into words when it comes to the excellency of this book.
I totally admire the main heroine Katniss Everdeen. She is the pure epitome of a strong girl. She is strong-willed, determined, honest and fearless. Despite all the odds she has proven what she is capable of and for others to not underestimate her abilities. She lived up to her title "The Girl on Fire". She is the type of character where every girl will surely be envious about.
What I totally love about the book is that it offered me a very exquisite read. The book is so unique it is not your typical "YA Damsel in Distress" kind of book. I guess I'm all fed up with books usually having the female main character always making trouble and always ending up being saved by her "Knight in Shining Armor" blah blah blah end of story. With this book it offered a whole new sense to me of being a girl to be strong and not rely on others all the time to stand up and fight for what you think is right.
All praises for THE HUNGER GAMES! It is so brilliantly plotted and breathtakingly paced intermingling with the chain of action-packed and thrilling scenes. I was hooked from the very beginning until every last bit of it. I savored everything that the book offered me. This book never failed my expectations. It is surely a must-read before you die kind of book.
Grace Divine—daughter of the local pastor—always knew something terrible happened the night Daniel Kalbi disappeared and her brother Jude came home covered in his own blood.
Now that Daniel's returned, Grace must choose between her growing attraction to him and her loyalty to her brother.
As Grace gets closer to Daniel, she learns the truth about that mysterious night and how to save the ones she loves, but it might cost her the one thing she cherishes most: her soul.
My Review
Let me just begin about saying something about the cover of the book. Well, I totally love the cover I love how that purple cloth partly covered those perfectly shaped pale feet. Also with the toe nails having the same color with the cloth. I love how it blended so well with the black background giving off a gorgeous cover.
The storyline goes about Grace Divine daughter of the local pastor with everything in her life just to be under control and with her having the "Perfect Family". A family everyone wanted. Until her brother's ex-best friend and her childhood crush Daniel Kalbi reappears in the scene. With Grace seeking about what happened with Daniel and her brother Jude Divine just before the night Daniel disappeared. As the plot thickens Grace is torn between the urge to be with Daniel or to avoid him as it will be safer not just for her but for her family as well.
When I started reading this book I was just as well as curious as Grace Divine to the extent of being tempted skipping several chapters just to read on the part where the book will reveal how it all happened. How it all started. How Daniel Kalbi and Grace's brother Jude Divine got caught up in something that resulted with something terrible.
As what I have experienced in reading the first few chapters of the book Grace Divine the main protagonist of the story didn't give me such impact. She was just a normal girl with normal everyday routine just like everyone of us. I know for an instance that I will not be expecting a lot about her character because everything you will see is all there is to it. Just a plain character with nothing to expect. Nothing more nothing less. But as I read deeper through the book Grace revealed an unexpected courage. A courage that helped her and the people dear to her in fighting the inner darkness hidden within themselves and to not give up with the demands of the evil.
Other characters will let you laugh, cry and curse all at the same time. As I find myself reading the latter part of the book I was emotionally attached to everyone of them because I for one have seen how Grace valued the gift of friendship even to an untrustworthy person. She gives everyone a fair chance to change, to respect and to second chances.
THE DARK DIVINE is a book that will keep you wanting more, knowing more and seeking more. Surely will keep you on the edge of your seat throughout the whole book with its darkly thrilling twists and turns that you will never see coming.
