Something About You by Julie James

Something About You by Julie James
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fate has thrown two sworn enemies...

Of all the hotel rooms rented by all the adulterous politicians in Chicago, female Assistant U.S. Attorney Cameron Lynde had to choose the one next to 1308, where some hot-and-heavy lovemaking ends with a death. And of all the FBI agents in Illinois, it had to be Special Agent Jack Pallas who gets assigned to this high-profile homicide. The same Jack Pallas who still blames Cameron for a botched crackdown three years ago—and for nearly ruining his career.

Into each other's arms...

Work with Cameron Lynde? Are they kidding? Maybe, Jack thinks, this is some kind of welcome-back prank after his stint away from Chicago. But it's no joke; the pair is going to have to put their rocky past behind them and focus on the case at hand. That is, if they can cut back on the razor-sharp jibes—and smother the flame of their sizzling-hot sexual tension.

This is my first book by author Julie James. Honestly, the title and the cover was too cheesy for me and I was ready to disappointed by this book... I was expecting worse. But well, I was wrong. This book is funny, suspenseful, sarcastic, witty and such an enjoyable quick read. I enjoyed the author's writing style, and characters were likable. I would like to solve the mystery with Cameron and Jack, but the author choose to tell it to her readers first. Other than that, I really enjoyed this book and will definitely read more books written by this author.

The Sea of Tranquility by Katja Millay

 The Sea of Tranquility by Katja Millay
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I live in a world without magic or miracles. A place where there are no clairvoyants or shapeshifters, no angels or superhuman boys to save you. A place where people die and music disintegrates and things suck. I am pressed so hard against the earth by the weight of reality that some days I wonder how I am still able to lift my feet to walk.

Full of rage and without a purpose, former pianist Nastya Kashnikov wants two things: to get through high school without anyone learning about her past and to make the boy who took everything from her pay.

All 17 year-old Josh Bennett wants is to build furniture and be left alone and everyone allows it, because it’s easier to pretend he doesn’t exist. When your name is synonymous with death, everyone tends to give you your space.

Everyone except Nastya, a hot mess of a girl who starts showing up and won’t go away until she’s insinuated herself into every aspect of his life. The more he gets to know her, the more of a mystery she becomes. As their relationship intensifies and the unanswered questions begin to pile up, he starts to wonder if he may ever learn the secrets she’s been hiding or if he even wants to.

The Sea of Tranquility is a slow-building, character-driven romance about a lonely boy, an emotionally fragile girl, and the miracle of second chances.  

Kesinlikle 2012'de okuduğum en iyi kitaplardan biri The Sea of Tranquility.

Prologue
I hate my left hand. I hate to look at it. I hate it when it stutters and trembles and reminds me that my identity is gone. But I look at it anyway; because it also reminds me that I’m going to find the boy who took everything from me. I’m going to kill the boy who killed me, and when I kill him, I’m going to do it with my left hand.

Kısa bir özet geçmek gerekirse...
Nastya, 2 sene kadar evde eğitim gördükten sonra teyzesinin yanına taşınıyor ve liseye başlıyor. Ancak giriş bölümünde de söylediği gibi bazı sorunları var. Yüzünde dikiş izleri var, sol elinden defalarca ameliyat olmak zorunda kalmış, "artık" biraz daha el gibi görünür hale gelmiş. Ve konuşamıyor...
Josh ise, okulda pek kimsenin bulaşmak istemediği biri. Ailesi ölmüş ve artık adı ölümle eş anlamlı hale gelmiş. Kimse kendisiyle samimiyeti ilerletmek istemezken peşinden de ayrılmayan bir kişi var; Nastya...

Ben light, fluffy hikayelerden, konulu gözüksün diye etrafa serpiştirilen sahte dramalardan hiç hoşlanmam. Ama aynı şekilde pembe dizi gibi entrikalar, sürekli bitmek tükenmek bitmeyen dramlardan da pek haz ettiğim söylenemez. Genel olarak ciddi, dengeli ve gerçek hikayelerden hoşlanırım -ki The Sea of Tranquility'de tam olarak aradığımı buldum diyebilirim.

Young Adult kitaplarla da bazı sıkıntılarım var... YA kitaplardaki "Aşkından ölüyorum" arabeskliği beni geriyor. The Sea of Tranquility ile alakalı özellikle bu konu üzerinde durmak istiyorum. Herhalde daha evvel hiçbir YA kitap okumadım ki önce arkadaşlık, sonra romantik ilişki bu kadar dengeli anlatılmış olsun. Gerçekçi bulmadığım yerler oldu, ama yine de saçma bulduğum ya da "ne çabuk" dediğim bir şey de olmadı.

Natsya'nın hikayesi tahmin edilebilir olmasına rağmen oldukça vurucu anlatılmış.
Hikayede "bu da olmaz ki" denilebilecek bir açık bırakılmamış, zaten anlatımı sürükleyici, dengeli ve gerçek olduğundan da yukarıda bahsettim ancak kitapla ilgili hoşuma gitmeyen bir nokta da vardı. YA kitaplarda bu bir kural mı bilemiyorum ama artık görmekten sıkıldım.

Platonik olarak her gece aynı yatakta uyumak. Her gece sevişsinler, oooh sabahlar olmasın demiyorum, yanlış anlaşılmasın. Lise öğrencisi 2 kişinin her gece birinin evinde birlikte uyumaları bir tek bana saçma ve (artık o kadar çok okuduk ki) klişe geliyor olamaz.

Ama bu bahsettiğim küçük klişe dışında kitapta beğenmediğim hiçbir şey olmadı. Zaten bir oturuşta bitirdim, sonraki gün elime kitap alamadım, konsantre olmadım. Başka da hakkında ne söylemeli, bilmiyorum. Kesinlikle tavsiye ederim...


I received an e-galley from the publisher.
 

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

 The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called "Le Cirque des Reves," and it is only open at night. 

But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway--a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love--a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands. 

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus per-formers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.

Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart.

I really wanted to like this book but it wasn't quite what I was expecting. What a slow ride that was! The story was interesting first and I enjoyed the descriptions of the fashions and illusions. But I hated the third person voice. And the ending was disappointing.

Shadow Woman by Linda Howard

Shadow Woman by Linda Howard
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Lizette Henry wakes up one morning and makes a terrifying discovery: She doesn’t recognize the face she sees in the mirror. She remembers what she looks like, but her reflection is someone else’s. To add to the shock, two years seem to have disappeared from her life. Someone has gone to great and inexplicable lengths to keep those missing years hidden forever. But the past always finds a way to return.

Strange memories soon begin to surface and, along with them, some unusual skills and talents that Lizette hasn’t a clue about acquiring. Sensing that she’s being monitored, Lizette suddenly knows how to search for bugs in her house and tracking devices in her car. What’s more, she can elude surveillance—like a trained agent.

Enter a mysterious and seductive stranger named Xavier, who claims he wants to help—but who triggers disturbing images of an unspeakable crime of which Lizette may or may not be the perpetrator. With memories returning, she suddenly becomes a target of anonymous assassins. On the run with nowhere to hide, Lizette has no choice but to rely on Xavier, a strong and magnetic man she doesn’t trust, with a powerful attraction she cannot resist. As murky waters become clear, Lizette confronts a conspiracy that is treacherous and far-reaching and a truth that, once revealed, may silence her and Xavier once and for all.

I have a real love-hate relationship with Linda Howard and Shadow Woman definitely different than other LH books I've read.

Shadow Woman is about Lizette Henry, who has a little dull and normal life. When she wakes up one day and doesn't recognize herself in the mirror and she became aware of the missing 2 years of her memory. She had a feeling she was being watched and she discovers she has the capability to defend herself...

Shadow Women has really slow pacing. The slow beginning took away most of my enthusiasm and the romance in the book was way too shallow, I felt no connection with the characters at all. It was an okay read but I can't say I really liked it. I would recommend it for Linda Howard fans but I don't think it was a good romantic suspense.



I received an e-galley from the publisher.

Quote

Çıplak Şölen - William S. Burroughs

Çıplak Şölen by William S. Burroughs
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Beat kuşağının kutsal kitabı…

“Başlığı Jack Kerouac önermişti: Çıplak Şölen

Herkesin her çatalın ucunda ne olduğunu gördüğü, donmuş bir an.”

Asla unutamayacağınız bir ziyafet…

1998 yılında keşfedilen bugüne dek yayınlanmamış yeni metinlerin eklenmesiyle zenginleştirilmiş 50. Yıl baskısı…

Okuduğum en enteresan kitaplardan biriydi. Belki de en enteresanıydı, aklıma başka bir kitap gelmiyor çünkü. Kolay kolay insanları yargılamayan, her şeye alınmayan, insanların tercihlerini "normal" ya da "anormal" olarak değerlendirmeyen biri olarak bazı yerler benim için bile fazlaydı. Demem o ki; beat kuşağıyla az çok ilgili değilseniz, eşcinsellik sizin için tabuysa, inançlarınız eleştiriyi kaldırmıyorsa ve hassas bir mideniz varsa (anlatım fazlaca ayrıntılı) bu kitaba yanaşmayın. Komikti ama okurken kahkahalar atmadım. Benim için değişik bir konuyu işliyordu (uyuşturucu kullanımı ve sonucundaki deneyimler) ama konu bana uzak olduğu için çok da merak duymadım. Yazımı iyiydi ama ortada keskin hatları olan bir plot yok, dolayısıyla takibi zordu. Başta da dediğim gibi, belki de okuduğum en enteresan kitaptı ama diğer konularda benim için biraz ortalama bir kaldı.

Ayrıca kitabın çevirmeni Algan Sezgintüredi'ye hakkını teslim etmek lazım. İnsanları çok çabuk kendinden uzaklaştırabilecek bir kitap. Bu tür kitapların Türkçe çevirileri daha da itici oluyor genelde konulara ve dile çok da vakıf olmadığımız için. Ama kitabın sayfalarını çevirmeye devam ediyorsunuz ki, bu tabii ki başta yazarın daha sonra da kendisinin başarısıdır gözümde.

Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful, #1) by Jamie McGuire

Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Abby Abernathy is a good girl. She doesn’t drink or swear, and she has the appropriate number of cardigans in her wardrobe. Abby believes she has enough distance from the darkness of her past, but when she arrives at college with her best friend, her path to a new beginning is quickly challenged by Eastern University’s Walking One-Night Stand.

Travis Maddox, lean, cut, and covered in tattoos, is exactly what Abby wants—and needs—to avoid. He spends his nights winning money in a floating fight ring, and his days as the ultimate college campus charmer. Intrigued by Abby’s resistance to his appeal, Travis tricks her into his daily life with a simple bet. If he loses, he must remain abstinent for a month. If Abby loses, she must live in Travis’s apartment for the same amount of time. Either way, Travis has no idea that he has met his match.

I don't know how to rate this book. Characters are real and I liked the first half of the book. But the second half was very cheesy. Even though it's a page turner, I think the book is way too long. It basically about the two main characters fighting and making up over and over again. At some point, it was too much for me.

Beneath the Shadows - Sara Foster

Beneath the Shadows by Sara Foster
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When Grace’s husband, Adam, inherits an isolated North Yorkshire cottage, they leave the bustle of London behind to try a new life. A week later, Adam vanishes without a trace, leaving their baby daughter, Millie, in her stroller on the doorstep. The following year, Grace returns to the tiny village on the untamed heath.  Everyone—the police, her parents, even her best friend and younger sister—is convinced that Adam left her. But Grace, unable to let go of her memories of their love and life together, cannot accept this explanation.  She is desperate for answers, but the slumbering, deeply superstitious hamlet is unwilling to give up its secrets. As Grace hunts through forgotten corners of the cottage searching for clues, and digs deeper into the lives of the locals, strange dreams begin to haunt her. Are the villagers hiding something, or is she becoming increasingly paranoid? Only as snowfall threatens to cut her and Millie off from the rest of the world does Grace make a terrible discovery. She has been looking in the wrong place for answers all along, and she and her daughter will be in terrible danger if she cannot get them away in time.

This story is about Grace, who leaves her city life behind and moves to North Yorkshire with her husband and baby daughter. After a week from their transportation, her husband vanishes without a trace and Grace leaves the North Yorkshire with her daughter... A year later, Grace decides to go back to the cottage once again and while she's trying to figure what she should do with the cottage, she's looking for some answers for the reason why her husband left too. And she's starting to hear some local ghost stories...

Despite the modern outlook, Beneath the Shadows has a gothic atmosphere. I liked the setting of the book (isolated English moors), characters were rich and nicely developed. The story itself was very intriguing. It was tense and eerie. But there are some things that really bother me with this book:

- There was so many unanswered questions.

- I was expecting to see stronger paranormal elements.

- The end was a bit unbelievable for me.

But I found this book to be very well written and almost impossible to put down. It was a good read but could have been much better. I enjoyed this book, and will probably read more by this author.


I received an e-galley from the publisher.

12.21.12 by Killian McRae

12.21.12 by Killian McRae
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The only way to save the future is to decode the past. The only way to decode the past is to save the future.

Archeaologist Sheppard Smyth has staked his career and the honorable memory of his wife and partner on proving his widely panned theory: Cleopatra VII, the last sovereign pharaoh of Egypt, was not a victim of suicide as history suggests, but of a well-concealed murder. When a statue of the doomed Queen is unearthed in a pre-Columbian excavation site in Mexico, Shep rushes to investigate and, hopefully, find the proof that has evaded him for so long. The statue, however, is only the first clue suggesting a mysterious connection between Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica, and possibly - beyond. Suddenly thrust into the heated rivalry between sexy and enigmatic antiquities thief Victoria Kent and the infamous Russian mofiosa Dmitri Kronastia, Shep finds himself a common pawn played by forces working to see out a quest older than the pyramids and cloaked in the Mayan Doomsday prophecy of 12.21.12.

What can I say about it, this book has Mayan and Egyptian mythologies, Cleo, the Russian Mafia, adventure and lots of unexpected things I didn't see coming... It's well written and has a creative plot. Characters are rich and the story is very intriguing. The plot kept me guessing till the end and I loved the twists and turns. This book is a must-read!

Magic Study by Maria V. Snyder

Magic Study by Maria V. Snyder
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

You know your life is bad when you miss your days as a poison taster...

With her greatest enemy dead, and on her way to be reunited with the family she'd been stolen from long ago, Yelena should be pleased. But though she has gained her freedom, she can't help feeling isolated in Sitia. Her Ixian background has changed her in many ways—and her newfound friends and relatives don't think it's for the better...

Despite the turmoil, she's eager to start her magic training—especially as she's been given one year to harness her power or be put to death. But her plans take a radical turn when she becomes involved with a plot to reclaim Ixia's throne for a lost prince—and gets entangled in powerful rivalries with her fellow magicians.

If that wasn't bad enough, it appears her brother would love to see her dead. Luckily, Yelena has some old friends to help her with all her new enemies...

I don't want to compare this book with the first one, but I can't help it! Poison Study was an amazing book but I can't say the same about Magic Study. I didn't like that Yelena's being best of everything, I didn't like that how often Yelena was injured and captured... I'm completely disappointed with this book and I don't think I will start reading Fire Study any time soon.