The Graveyard Queen Series

The Graveyard Queen series by Amanda Stevens is the perfect storm of mystery, creepy encounters and heart-racing storyline.  Add in a dash of forbidden romance and you have a series that is meant to capture and keep the reader.  Stevens leaves out all the useless fluff and, because of this, her stories move at a heart-racing pace at times.  If you are looking for a book you can pick up and put back down, this is not the series for you.  Once you start, you are hooked, and these books move fast!  I have read the first two in the series (I'm working on #3) in 4 days!  Yes, 4 days! 

Amelia Gray is a graveyard restorer with a secret, she can see ghosts, but this isn't another "Ghost Whisperer."  Amelia does not want to help these ghosts, in fact she ignores their very presence because the possibilities that arise when you acknowledge the presence of a ghost could drain the very life from your body.  In her work as a cemetery restorer, Amelia has many opportunities to see the ghosts that come through the veil at night to wander with, and sometimes haunt, the living.  When she has her first sighting as a small child, her father gives her 4 simple rules to live by:   never acknowledge the dead, never stray too far from hallowed ground, stay away from those who are haunted, and never, ever, tempt fate.

In the first book, The Restorer, Amelia finds herself restoring a historical cemetery that is connected to a southern university with a strange past.  A body is found in this cemetery and Amelia is brought in to help with the investigation.  Her meticulous cataloguing of the cemetery with both notes and photographs makes her an invaluable asset for the investigators, as well as a target for the killer.  The lead detective on the case, John Devlin, unknowingly pulls Amelia into a twisted game of cat and mouse, and in the process their attraction, and his fierce need to protect her, draws them closer together.  There's only one problem, Devlin is haunted.  What will Amelia do?  She cannot break her father's rules, but she cannot stop her feelings for Devlin.  During the course of the investigation Amelia finds things that both chill her and pull her deeper into her internal struggle to keep her promise to her father.  We find out that Amelia is a natural investigator, and that she unknowingly seeks help from someone, or something, that she shouldn't.

Book two, The Kingdom, calls Amelia to a secluded town called Asher Falls to help restore an old family cemetery with a dark and sordid past.  Immediately Amelia feels a strong connection to this dark and secluded place, but she cannot figure out why.  This small town once had an ancient cemetery that was flooded by one of the towns higher-ups, but the bodies of those laid to rest at the old Thorngate Cemetery were not moved before the flooding.  To make up for this slight, the Asher family donated land adjacent to their family cemetery so that others could be buried.  This, the new Thorngate Cemetery, is what Amelia was called to restore.  Her benefactor is unknown, and the town seems reticent to have her around.  She discovers very quickly the evil that lurks around Asher Falls and what its inhabitants, living or dead, are capable of.  While in Asher Falls, Amelia finds out something about her past and begins to slowly understand why she has such a strong, guttural connection to this place.  The evils that lurk in this town try to stop Amelia from completing her work, because to do so will uncover a scandal that has been kept under wraps for more than 25 years.

I am currently reading the third book, The Prophet, and I can tell you that, so far, it is just as gripping as the others.  I couldn't help writing this review early, because I am reacting to a book about the supernatural, which is unusual for me.  Ghost stories are usually not my cup of tea, but the mystery and crime novel connections in this book make the ghost stories a seamless undercurrent story line that I have come to enjoy. 

When you read these books, I would love to know what you think!

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, by Jamie Ford, is a story of two children, who are first generation Americans, caught in the middle of the fear and hatred associated with Asian-Americans in World War II.  Unfortunately for these children, they are Chinese-American and Japanese-American in a time where the Asian population, especially the Japanese, were not to be trusted. 

Ford tells the story through a young Chinese-American boy, named Henry, whose father wants him to grow up American so he forces him into an all-white school, forces him to "speak his American" at home, and teaches him that the Japanese are the enemy.   We flip-flop between the Henry from 1942 and the Henry from 1986, seeing this story from both the impressionable eyes of a young boy, but also the life-hardened heart of an older man. 

In 1942, Henry's American school is filled with kids who hate him and the other Chinese-American kids going to another school shun him.  Throughout this ordeal, he meets a girl, whose experience is similar, the only problem, she's Japanese.  Henry and Keiko meet in the kitchen of the all white school where they are "scholarshipping" by working off their tuition preparing, serving, and cleaning up lunch for the other students at the school, among other jobs.  They are the only non-white students, so their relationship grows with every day that passes and they live with the fact that they are shunned and bullied by the other students in the school.  Their experiences bring them closer, until the unimaginable happens and their lives are changed forever.

As a man, Henry wrestles with the emotions and memories that come flooding back upon discovery of a treasure trove of artifacts left behind from a time long ago, a time when the country turned against its own citizens in fear and a time when a young boy was changed forever.

The story that is woven within the friendship of Henry and Keiko includes prejudice, not only from the whites, but also from Henry's family, as well as a love that tries against all odds to survive in a time when Americans were imprisoned on our own soil and hatred was an epidemic.

Divergent Series

The Divergent series is my first post about a "teen series."  If you are inclined to enjoy books like George Orwell's 1984, James Dashner's Maze Runner, Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games, or any other alternate government storyline, then Veronica Roth has inserted herself seamlessly into the category and created an interesting read.

Once again, like Hunger Games, we have a female heroine.  Beatrice Prior is coming of age in a controlled government who believes in dividing its citizens into factions based on personality traits.  Depending on your natural reaction to certain situations you could either be placed in Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Dauntless or Erudite.  If you look these words up in the dictionary they give a perfect description of the personality types that would fit best into each faction.  If you are an anomaly and do not distinctly fit into one of those 5 factions, you would be considered to be Divergent, hence the name of the book, and the officials of the government would consider you to be dangerous.  You mean a government might fear someone they can't put in a box or doesn't fit their definition of "normal?"  How uncanny!!!

In this series you will find strength, betrayal, competition, irrationality, over-rationality and the need for full disclosure in any relationship, whether it be personal or governmental.  As with many of the young adult series that are out in the world recently, and frankly with any book out there at all, there is a love story woven into the undercurrent of this series, but it adds to the struggle and the tension of the story.

It is a quick read, but one that should keep you interested the entire time.  Roth doesn't get bogged down in the mundane over-description of some other authors.  She gets to the point and keeps the adrenaline running throughout keeping you interested and the pages turning.

The Heretic Queen

The Heretic Queen by Michelle Moran is a wonderful example of historical fiction done right.  While the bones of the novel are based upon Egypt's 19th Dynasty and the rule of Ramesses II, with all of the possible political games that could've accompianied it, the story within is what makes you want to keep reading. 

Nefertari is the niece of the famed Heretic Queen, Nefertiti.  This family connection does not help her, but instead sullies her reputation among the people of Egypt.  When her royal father dies, her mother is forced into marriage while pregnant with Nefertari and is eventually killed.  Upon her mother's death, the Pharoah Seti takes care of Nefertari and allows her to continue living the life of a princess of Egypt under his protection, but she is never fully accepted by the court.

When the time comes for her friend, Ramesses II, to choose a wife, she is passed over because of a powerful priestess, Ramesses' aunt, Henuttawy, and has to claw her way to where she believes she belongs.

The Heretic Queen is about Nefertari's quest for the love of her life and the games that might have been played in that ancient Egyptian court to keep her from achieving her goal.  This novel is full of love, passion, betrayal, intrigue, war and power.  A must read for anyone who enjoys history with a little bit of fiction thrown in!

The All Souls Trilogy

Seriously one of my favorite writers right now: Deborah Harkness!

I really love these books because she seamlessly inserts the supernatural into the modern world and history without shoving it down our throats.  (Please remember that while there are elements of history here, this is still a work of fiction!)

Yes, these characters are supernatural, and yes, that is what the story is about, but don't start freaking out because you think it is "Twilight with Witches."  It isn't.

In Discovery of Witches, the first book in the All Souls Trilogy, Harkness introduces us to a witch who would rather forget her family history, so she stifles her witchy-ness and dives into her work.  Diana Bishop is a scholar who, during the course of research, pulls a manuscript from the belly of Oxford's Bodleian Library and starts a chain reaction she isn't ready for.  At the same time, she draws the eye of every other creature in her vicinity, (and by creature I mean: witches, daemons, and vampires), most especially a 1500 year old vampire named Matthew Clairmont.  These two creatures become locked in a complicated pas de deux while they try to figure out how to save the past and the future with the entire creature world watching, and trying to stop them.

I feel like telling you about Shadow of Night might ruin some of the intrigue of Discovery of Witches, so I will leave you with the notion that the interwoven lives of Diana and Matthew are further complicated and stressed by the events in this book.  Shadow opens a whole new world to the reader, as well as Diana, and sits us comfortably within that world while we watch our new favorite power couple battle those who go against the idea of knowledge and understanding, and how that knowledge might save them.

If you want to know more, you can go to:  http://deborahharkness.com/discovery-of-witches/

Christening the Blog

Welcome to the inaugural post of my new adventure!  My name is Katie, and I am a junior high teacher.  My husband would say I am an obsessive reader, or more accurately a reading addict.  Unfortunately for him there is no 12-step program for that, and even if there was, I would not go! 

I have often been told that I need to start a blog so that I can share and recount all of the books I have read.  I hope to keep this an honest representation of my opinions and the opinions of others.  My hope for this blog is for people to log in, comment and suggest!  I am always looking for new book suggestions, and some of my favorites have come from the people who share my passion.

I will caution you, this blog is not for those seeking highfalutin discussions and academic reads.  While I tend to read a lot, I will say that my book choices are not always adult and they are not always what is current.  This blog is meant for the leisurely reader and those with a fun spirit and sense of humor!  I am a junior high reading teacher, so keep that in mind when judging some of the books I've read!  If you're still reading and looking for more, here we go!

So, without further ado....let's pop the bubbly and get reading!