Review: Seal of Honor by Tonya Burrows

SEAL of Honor
(HORNET 1)
Author: Tonya Burrows
Publisher: Entangled Select
Genre: Romance
Buy: Amazon ♥ B&N ♥ TBD

Overview

It’s a good thing Gabe Bristow lives and breathes the Navy SEAL credo, “the only easy day was yesterday,” because today, his life is unrecognizable. When his prestigious career comes to a crashing halt, he’s left with a bum leg and few prospects for employment that don’t include a desk.

That is, until he’s offered the chance to command a private hostage rescue team and free a wealthy American businessman from Colombian paramilitary rebels. It seems like a good deal—until he meets his new team: a drunk Cajun linguist, a boy-genius CIA threat analyst, an FBI negotiator with mob ties, a cowboy medic, and an EOD expert as volatile as the bombs he defuses. Oh, and who could forget the sexy, frustratingly impulsive Audrey Van Amee? She’s determined to help rescue her brother—or drive Gabe crazy. Whichever comes first.

As the death toll rises, Gabe’s team of delinquents must figure out how to work together long enough to save the day. Or, at least, not get themselves killed. Because Gabe’s finally found something worth living for, and God help him if he can’t bring her brother back alive.

Early Review: Magnificent Devices by Shelley Adina

Magnificent Devices

(Magnificent Devices 3)

Author: Shelley Adina

Publisher: Createspace, 2012

Genre: YA Steampunk

Buy: Amazon ♥ B&N

Overview

An air voyage to remember turns into a disaster no one may survive.

With her orphaned charges, Lady Claire Trevelyan joins the Earl of Dunsmuir’s family on an airship voyage to the Americas. If she can stay out of Lord James Selwyn’s way until her eighteenth birthday, she will be of age and cannot be forced into marriage. What she doesn’t know is that Lord James is in the Americas, too, with Andrew Malvern closing in on him—and the wonderful device he stole.

But when a storm cripples the airship and sky pirates swoop in like carrion birds, Claire and the children must live by their wits to make their way across a harsh landscape. Will Andrew ever see her again and right the wrong he believes he has done? Will Lord James succeed in his monumental thievery? And how exactly does Rosie the chicken evade the soup pot?

Tighten your goggles, pull on your gloves, and prepare yourself for stratagems and strangeness in the third book in the series, Magnificent Devices!

Early Review: Fang Girl by Helen Keeble

Fang Girl

Author: Helen Keeble

Publisher: Harper Teen, 2012

Genre: YA Paranormal

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Overview

Things That Are Destroying Jane Greene’s Undead Social Life Before It Can Even Begin:

1) A twelve-year-old brother who’s convinced she’s a zombie.
2) Parents who are begging her to turn them into vampires.
3) The pet goldfish she accidentally turns instead.
4) Weird superpowers that let her rip the heads off of every other vampire she meets.(Sounds cool, but it doesn’t win you many friends.)
5) A pyschotic vampire creator who’s using her to carry out a plan for world domination.

And finally:
6) A seriously ripped vampire hunter who either wants to stake her or make out with her. Not sure which.

Being an undead, eternally pasty fifteen-year-old isn’t quite the sexy, brooding, angst-fest Jane always imagined....

Early Review: The Waiting Sky by Lara Zielin

The Waiting Sky

Author: Lara Zielin

Publisher: Putnam, 2012

Genre: YA Contemporary

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Overview

One summer chasing tornadoes could finally change Jane's life for the better

Seventeen-year-old Jane McAllister can't quite admit her mother's alcoholism is spiraling dangerously out of control until she drives drunk, nearly killing them and Jane's best friend.

Jane has only one place to turn: her older brother Ethan, who left the problems at home years ago for college. A summer with him and his tornado-chasing buddies may just provide the time and space Jane needs to figure out her life and whether it still includes her mother. But she struggles with her anger at Ethan for leaving home and feels guilty--is she also abandoning her mom just when she needs Jane most? The carefree trip turned journey of self-discovery quickly becomes more than Jane bargained for, especially when the devilishly handsome Max steps into the picture.

Early Review: Cold Fury by T.M. Gloeglein

Cold Fury

Author: T.M. Gloeglein

Publisher: Putnam, 2012

Genre: YA Paranormal

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Overview

Sara Jane Rispoli is a normal sixteen-year-old coping with school and a budding romance--until her parents and brother are kidnapped and she discovers her family is deeply embedded in the Chicago Outfit (aka the mob).

Now on the run from a masked assassin, rogue cops and her turncoat uncle, Sara Jane is chased and attacked at every turn, fighting back with cold fury as she searches for her family. It's a quest that takes her through concealed doors and forgotten speakeasies--a city hiding in plain sight. Though armed with a .45 and 96K in cash, an old tattered notebook might be her best defense--hidden in its pages the secret to "ultimate power." It's why she's being pursued, why her family was taken, and could be the key to saving all of their lives. 

Early Review: The Right & The Real by Joelle Anthony

The Right & the Real

Author: Joelle Anthony

Publisher: Putnam Juvenile (Penguin), 2012

Genre: YA Contemporary

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Overview

From the author of "Restoring Harmony." Kicked out for refusing to join a cult, 17-year-old Jamie must find a way to survive on her own.

Jamie should have known something was off about the church of the Right and the Real from the start, especially when the Teacher claimed he wasn’t just an ordinary spiritual leader, but Jesus Christ, himself. But she was too taken by Josh, the eldest son of one of the church’s disciples, and his all-American good looks. Josh is the most popular boy at school too, and the first boy outside the drama geeks to give Jamie a second look. But getting her Dad involved in a cult was not part of the plan when she started dating Josh. Neither was her dad’s marriage to the fanatic Mira, or getting kicked out, or seeing Josh in secret because the church has deemed her persona non grata.

Jamie’s life has completely fallen apart. Finding her way back won’t be easy, but when her Dad gets himself into serious trouble, will Jamie be ready to rescue him, and maybe even forgive him?

Early Review: Chosen Ones by Tiffany Truitt

Chosen Ones

(Lost Souls)

Author: Tiffany Truitt

Publisher: Entangled Publishing, 2012

Genre: YA Dystopia

Pre-Order: Amazon ♥ B&N ♥ TBD

Overview

What if you were mankind’s last chance at survival?

Sixteen-year-old Tess lives in a compound in what was once the Western United States, now decimated after a devastating fourth World War. But long before that, life as we knew it had been irrevocably changed, as women mysteriously lost the ability to bring forth life. Faced with the extinction of the human race, the government began the Council of Creators, meant to search out alternative methods of creating life. The resulting artificial human beings, or Chosen Ones, were extraordinarily beautiful, unbelievably strong, and unabashedly deadly.

Life is bleak, but uncomplicated for Tess as she follows the rigid rules of her dystopian society, until the day she begins work at Templeton, the training facility for newly created Chosen Ones. There, she meets James, a Chosen One whose odd love of music and reading rivals only her own. The attraction between the two is immediate in its intensity—and overwhelming in its danger.

But there is more to the goings-on at Templeton than Tess ever knew, and as the veil is lifted from her eyes, she uncovers a dark underground movement bent not on taking down the Chosen Ones, but the Council itself. Will Tess be able to stand up to those who would oppress her, even if it means giving up the only happiness in her life?

Early Review: Snow Spell by Sonia Pereira Murphy

Snow Spell

Author: Sonia Pereira Murphy

Publisher: Self-Published, (Coming soon!)

Genre: YA Fantasy (Fairy Tale)

Summary

Meet Neve…

She lives in Paris, France in a tiny old apartment where her parents pray for her safety.

But, she doesn’t tell them much. 

Not about the gorgeous apple boy she just met, or the ghosts floating on her walls.

And they haven’t told her that her long lost step-mother…wants her dead.