The Crown by Kiera Cass

Series: The Selection (bk. 4)

Genera(s): Dystopian sci-fi/Romance

Subjects: contests, love, royalty, politics, princes and princesses, kings and queens

Setting: Los Angeles, California (Angeles now)

POV/Tense: 1st person POV, past tense: Eadlyn Schreave

Age/Grade Level: Teen

Length: 278 pgs.

HC/PB: Hardcover

List Price: $19.99

Publisher: HarperTeen

Summary/ product description: “When Eadlyn became the first princess of Illéa to hold her own Selection, she didn’t think she would fall in love with any of her thirty-five suitors. She spent the first few weeks of the competition counting down the days until she could send them all home. But as events at the palace force Eadlyn even further into the spotlight, she realizes that she might not be content remaining alone.

Eadlyn still isn’t sure she’ll find the fairytale ending her parents did twenty years ago. But sometimes the heart has a way of surprising you…and soon Eadlyn must make a choice that feels more impossible—and more important—than she ever imagined.

My Review:  The Crown is the 5^th and final book in the Selection series, or the 2^nd and final book of this Selection spinoff duology, depending on how you look at it. If you don’t recall, in The Heir, Maxon decides that holding the Selection would be a way to distract the people from other troubles. Getting rid of the caste system did not solve all the problem in Ilea. People are having trouble finding jobs because of post-caste discrimination, or skill level. The 35 suitors are anonymously picked and Eadlyn was making history being in the first female-ran selection. Eadlyn was highly against the Selection and tried to sabotage it from the start, sending boys home as quick as she could, but some were charming enough that she kept them for a while, dating some, doing things as a group sometimes.

Now in The Crown, Eadlyn has narrowed her Selection down to 6 Elites. The ones staying are Ean, Henri, Fox, Hale, Gunner, and Kile. Under the circumstances of her mother’s condition, she thought it was best to let everyone else go. Her mother’s heart attack is hard on her, but America is still alive and the doctors are doing what they can. Out of all the Elite boys, Kile’s the only one she truly loved, but he dreams of being an architect and she’s not sure if she want to put him in a royal position. She grew up with him, and they used to not like each other.

There’s also Henri’s translator, Erik, who Eadlyn starting to fall for, although he’s not part of the Selection. Erik’s family was from Swendway, like Henri is. Erik’s real first name is Eikko. He has dark hair and blue eye and is camera shy. Eadlyn really does love him, but she feels obligated to go though with the rules of the Selection. Also there’s Marid Illéa who want her to marry him to secure the royal blood line.

This was a really great finale. It was cute and enjoyable. I’m happy how it ended and kind of don’t want to spoil it for everyone else. I enjoyed all the romance, humor and drama in these books. If you looking for action, this is not that kind of book. It’s full of romance. It’s like a soap opera. I would not suggest reading this without having read all three of The Selection books before it.

Cover Art Review: I love this cover more than any other Selection covers. That dress is the most gorgeous cover dress yet. Those sparkles look like stars. I just love everything and wish it were metallic or glittery.

Cover Art Review: So gorgeous. I love the purple! The lavender dress is so pretty!

Shallow Graves by Kali Wallace

Series: Standalone

Genera(s): Paranormal/Horror

Subjects: monsters, supernatural, revenants, mystery, death, murderers, magic

Setting: Nebraska, Wyoming and Boulder, Colorado, Chicago, Illinois

POV/Tense: 1^st person POV, past tense: Breezy Lin

Age/Grade Level: Teen

Length: 358 pgs.

HC/PB: Hardcover

List Price: $17.99

Publisher: HarperTeen: Katherine Tegen

Summary/ product description: “Breezy remembers leaving the party: the warm, wet grass under her feet, her cheek still stinging from a slap to her face. But when she wakes up, scared and pulling dirt from her mouth, a year has passed and she can’t explain how.

Nor can she explain the man lying at her grave, dead from her touch, or why her heartbeat comes and goes. She doesn’t remember who killed her or why. All she knows is that she’s somehow conscious—and not only that, she’s able to sense who around her is hiding a murderous past.

Haunted by happy memories from her life, Breezy sets out to find answers in the gritty, threatening world to which she now belongs—where killers hide in plain sight, and a sinister cult is hunting for strange creatures like her. What she discovers is at once empowering, redemptive, and dangerous.”

My Review: I had no idea what to expect from this book. I went in kind of blindly. I only read this because the supernatural elements. It had this broody atmospheric feeling from the start, when Breezy’s at a gas station in Nebraska and there’s summer storm in the distance. She can sense killers. They have a dark aura. Some young guy named Danny tells her about a church that could help her. She thinks that he think’s she a drug addict and homeless.

Breezy hitches a ride with an older guy that’s definitely a murderer. She knowingly enters a car with a murderer, which is dumb, unless you can heal really fast and not die. Breezy was dead for a year and returned with these abilities. And also, she can pull the memories out of the murders she finds, rendering them in a coma or dead. Breezy ditches the murderer and takes to the road by skateboard in search of this church. Since she doesn’t have to eat of sleep, she’s got plenty of time and energy.

The church turns out to be a cover for some anti-monster folks trying to cure the monsters of their afflictions. They say Breezy is unnatural and she ends up in a room with blood on the wall and another girl named rain who’s some kind of a monster. Breezy is able to get some answers from her, but Breezy still doesn’t know what she became when she rose from the dead. Answers don’t come until later.

Shallow Grave is pretty intriquing and unique, but it’s not the most exciting paranormal story. I enjoyed this interesting setting and some of the humor. I think Breezy’s scientific curiosity and love of astronomy is pretty awesome. She turn “ways I can’t die” into a morbid experiment. Breezy also mixed racial, half-Chinese, half-Irish and has 2 sisters named Sunny and Meadow. Interesting name choices.

There is mystery, but it’s not delivered in the best way. There’s no anticipation and not much build up. This book is only a standalone. I recommend this to fans of book like the Outliers, the Soul Screamers series, and other book with dark mysteries or monsters.

Cover Art Review: I like the watercolor texture of the sky and the creepy underground roots. It’s a simple and creepy brooding cover.

The Outliers by Kimberly McCreight

Publication Date: May 3^rd, 2016

Series: The Outliers (bk. 1)

Genera(s): Suspense Thriller/Sci-fi

Subjects: mystery anxiety disorders, emotion, abilities, scientists,

Setting: Boston, Massachusetts and Seneca, Maine

POV/Tense: 1^st person POV, present tense: Wylie Lang

Age/Grade Level: Teen

Length: 334 pgs.

HC/PB: Hardcover

List Price: $17.99

Publisher: HarperTeen

Summary/ product description: “From the New York Times bestselling author of Reconstructing Amelia comes a fast-paced teen series where one girl learns that in a world of intrigue, betrayal, and deeply buried secrets, it is vital to trust your instincts.

It all starts with a text: Please, Wylie, I need your help. Wylie hasn’t heard from Cassie in over a week, not since their last fight. But that doesn’t matter. Cassie’s in trouble, so Wylie decides to do what she has done so many times before: save her best friend from herself.

This time it’s different, though. Instead of telling Wylie where she is, Cassie sends cryptic clues. And instead of having Wylie come by herself, Jasper shows up saying Cassie sent him to help. Trusting the guy who sent Cassie off the rails doesn’t feel right, but Wylie has no choice but to ignore her gut instinct and go with him.

But figuring out where Cassie is goes from difficult to dangerous, fast. As Wylie and Jasper head farther and farther north into the dense woods of Maine, Wylie struggles to control her growing sense that something is really wrong. What isn’t Cassie telling them? And could finding her be only the beginning?

In this breakneck tale, New York Times bestselling author Kimberly McCreight brilliantly chronicles a fateful journey that begins with a single decision—and ends up changing everything.”

My Review:  I won The Outliers as an ARC in a giveaway that I almost didn’t enter, so I was hesitant to even read this book. I wasn’t sure what the genera was. Realistic mystery? Sci-fi thriller? It’s a little bit of both. It’s very light on the sci-fi, which was okay. I really did enjoy the non-stop fast pace of this book. It made me feel a little anxious myself with all the crazy twists.

Wylie’s got an anxiety disorder. She panics, and sometimes even passes out when too stressed. Before this trip, she hadn’t left her house in three weeks. Her mom died a few months ago and she feels broken. Her brother Gideon seems to be the normal one, attending school, making jokes. Her father has almost become like a workaholic robot, so focused on her psychological research. Wylie’s best friend Cassie isn’t talking to her anymore. Cassie’s had serious binge drinking problems that only seemed to get worse.

Wylie’s friend Cassie is missing and suddenly starts sending her cryptic texts, one of which asks Wylie and Jasper to drive up north into Maine to rescue her. On the road, they run into trouble with the car, try hitch hiking, which also ends badly. A visit to the police only endangers them even more. It seems like every one is shady. Twist after twist and Wylie’s not sure who to trust except her own instincts. 

I really though the scientific concept behind Wylie’s dad’s research was cool. It played a big role in the story. I’ve read a lot of book about teens with scientist parents that get their kids mixed up in their research, which did happen in this book kind of. Emotional intelligence sounds like a real thing. It’s like empathy, almost like ESP, but with emotions. The ones who could read emotion deaf and blind are called the Outliers in this book. I could totally read emotions, but doubt I could do it like an Outlier. Either way, it’s a really cool idea for a story. Makes me think of Shade Me by Jennifer Brown, but Nikki had synesthesia to read emotions.

I recommend this book to those that enjoyed Shade Me by Jennifer Brown, Revived and Originals by Cat Patrick, Dangerous Lies & Black Ice by Becca Fitzpatrick, Find Me by Romily Bernard, Black Bird by Anna Carey, Don’t Turn Around by Michelle Gagnon, or any other YA thriller that have action, mystery, or even a touch of science fiction.

Cover Art Review: I like the burnt match typography, but the cover itself is kind of boring with the cut off face.

Nil Unlocked by Lynne Matson

Series: Nil (bk. 2)

Genera(s): Dystopian Sci-fi/Romance

Subjects: survival, mystery, adventure, islands, animals, parallel worlds

Setting: The Island of Nil

POV/Tense: 1^st person POV, past tense, rotating between Skye and Rives

Age/Grade Level: Teen

Length: 418 pgs.

HC/PB: Hardcover

List Price: $17.99

Publisher: Macmillan: Henry Holt and Co.

Summary/ product description: “On the island of Nil, the rules are set. You have exactly 365 days to escape—or you die. Rives is now the undisputed Leader of Nil City, but keeping the City united is tougher than ever.

Raiders have grown bolder, supplies are dwindling, and non-human inhabitants have taken a turn toward the deadly. New arrivals cause rifts within the City, putting the Search system at risk, and calling everything Rives knows into question. Desperate for answers, he teams up with the only other person searching for them: Skye, a new arrival with a mysterious past of her own. Soon the duo find themselves locked in a desperate race to save all the residents of Nil—and possibly destroy the island forever. But at what cost? And  

My Review: Reading Nil was exciting because it was new and refreshing, but I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t some crazy twist that involved aliens or a government experiment. The island of Nil, which doesn’t exist just is. Teens are caught by moving portals and find themselves in Nil. They didn’t want to be there. They got 365 day to find a portal to take them back home. There are animals that appear on Nil. Dangerous animals like tigers and other big cats, predators, and angry hippos. And also, the occasional zebra or alpaca.

In the first Nil book, the main character were Charley and Thad. To my surprise, this sequel was told by two other people, Rives and Skye. Rives is the new leader since Thad left. Skye is girl with a father obsessed with finding the mysterious island that changed his twin brother’s life. Skye get the chance to read the post-Nil journal written by her uncle. I really enjoyed getting a peek into her uncle’s experience. Her uncle nicknamed Nil “Giraffe Land” because that’s the first animal he saw there.

Skye’s father has a lead on a possibly Nil survivor and that’s how Skye meets Charley. Skye speak with Charley and get more information. Skye’s father finds out about a place called Spirit Island in Micronesia. He thinks it may be the mysterious Nil, or at least connected to it. On December 21, Charley and her father go to a set of islands near this Spirit Island, and that where Charley reckless follows an island boy through a stationary portal in the middle of the night and finds herself on Nil.

On Nil, she wake up naked to two boy taking, one of the boy angry that Skye was there. Sky finds the island boy she followed is named Paolo, and he’s secretive about his reason for being there. On day 3, Skye meets Rives. She tells him how she got there and about her uncle. They develop a connection. I think Skye and Rives are more interesting protagonists than Charley and Thad were, but those two had more romance.

Skye wants to know about why Nil exists and when and where the stationary portal appears. Skye’s very curious and fierce. Dex, the British guy with the Mohawk from the first book, think Sky is a bloody badass. Much like Thad and Charley, Skye and Rives try to unlock the further secrets of how Nil works in hopes of getting the islanders home.

I recommend this to fans of shows like Lost, Naked and Afraid, Man vs Wild and other shows with survival and islands. Also fans of books like Madman’s Daughter, Lord of the Flies, Catching Fire, and The Forsaken by Lisa M. Stasse.

Cover Art Review: I like the cover, but not as much as the 1^st book’s cover. I do love the landscape on it though.