I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga

As you should know by now, I like creepy books, the creepier, the better!  Therefore, when I saw this book, I definitely had to check it out.  While parts of the book didn't quite live up to my expectations, I thought this was a great first book in a series. 
Jasper "Jazz" Dent is introduced to us at the scene of a brutal murder.  He is watching the investigators as they go about their investigative process.  If you didn't know the premise of the book, you might suppose at this point that Jazz is a murderer who has come back to the scene of the crime.  However, that is not the case.  Jazz has been trained by the most prolific serial killer of all time....his dad.  He was supposed to follow in his dad's footsteps, but instead, his dad was caught and sent to prison.  Jazz has since developed a friendship with the detective who caught his father.  All he wants is to be a normal teenager; however, throughout the book the reader can see that damage that his dad has done to his mind.  Jazz constantly has to remind himself that people matter.  It is easy to see that things could have taken a very different turn for Jazz, and he could be the one killing instead of hunting the killers. 
I really enjoyed this book, though it was predictable in places.  For instance, I figured out the killer's identity early in the book.  However, there were enough surprises at the end to make up for that.  I am looking forward to the sequel to this book, Game, which I have heard is even better than the first book. 

52 Reasons to Hate My Father by Jessica Brody

52 Reasons to Hate My Father was a fun, quick read.  Lexington Larrabee is the typical spoiled, rich kid.  She has everything she wants, but all she really craves is attention from her father.  She spends her life going from party to party and bad decisions to worse decisions.  She is really just marking time until she turns eighteen and receives her twenty-five million dollar trust fund.  She knows that then her life will really begin.  However, after her latest big mistake, she is informed that her trust fund will be put on hold until she completes a different job each week for the next year. To make matters worse, her father assigns his intern as her babysitter.  How can she succeed when everyone expects her to fail?

I really enjoyed reading this book.  It was very funny and entertaining, eventhough parts of the plot were somewhat predictable.

Loki's Wolves by K.L. Armstrong and M.A. Marr

In Loki's Wolves, the characters, Matt, Fen, Laurie, must prevent the end of the world, also known as Ragnarok.  Each main character is a descendant of the Viking gods.  Matt is a descendant of Thor, while Fen and Laurie are descendants of Loki.  They have to work together to locate descendants of the other gods to fight the monsters that will be released at the beginning of Ragnarok. I received an ARC of this book and decided to give it a try. I must admit that the beginning was slow for me and I almost stopped reading it. It took me awhile to get familiar with the characters, and I didn't find them to be very interesting in the beginning. However, once Matt, Fen, and Laurie began their journey to find the other descendants of the gods, the story picked up considerably for me. By the end of the book, I was wishing I had the next book in the series!

Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

 



Beautiful Darkness is the second book in the Beautiful Creatures series.  At first, I was not impressed with this book.  During the first part of the book, Ethan spends most of this time trying to drag Lena out of a very dark depression.  She believes that she is going dark, because she feels so much guilt over the death of her uncle, Macon.  She believes that by saving Ethan with The Book of Moons, she killed her uncle.  However, just when Lena's darkness was really starting to bore me, the book got more interesting.  Lena pushes Ethan away and runs off with John Breed, an "incubus/caster creature."  Ethan, along with Link, and his new friend Liv embark on a chase through the Caster Tunnels to try to save Lena from herself and her mother before it is too late.

Parts of this book were predictable, and parts seemed to drag on longer than they should, but I did enjoy this book once I got into it.  However, there isn't a whole lot that I can go into without giving away some major spoilers.  I am looking forward to reading the next book in the series, but after this emotional rollercoaster, I feel like I need to step back and read something else first, so I'm going to take a short break from it. 

The Book of Blood and Shadow by Robin Wasserman

The Book of Blood and Shadow is a hard book to describe.  On one hand, it is full of action, intrigue, mystery, and betrayal.  On the other hand, it has parts that are slow and might put some readers off.  I have to say, I did not have any problems with the slow parts, because they were fascinating to me.  Nora is working with her best friend, Chris, and his college roommate, Max, to help translate 400 year old letters from Latin to English for high school credit.  These letters hold the secret to an alchemical creation that shadowy groups have sought for hundreds of years.  Nora's work on the project puts both her and her friends in terrible danger.  Nora begins her story after Chris has been murdered, and Max, the prime suspect, disappears.  She and her friend Adrianne must travel to Prague to help clear his name and find the real murderer. 

Breaking Point by Kristen Simmons

Breaking Point is the sequel to Article 5.  I enjoyed Article 5, mostly because I feel that it has a very plausible premise.  The only thing that disappointed me about the first book is that the reader gets very little background on how society evolved to this point. (Read my Article 5 review here.)  Breaking Point  began filling in many of those gaps that the first book left for us.  Like the first book, this was a fast-paced, action-packed read that was difficult to put down.  Breaking Point picks up shortly after the end of Article 5.  Ember and Chase are working with the resistance against the Moral Miltia and the government's Moral Statutes.  They are also helping Sean in his search to find Rebecca, the girl who tried to help Ember escape from the reform school early in the first book.  The government believes that Chase is dead, but they have put Ember on their most wanted list.  They suspect that she is a sniper who has been killing off soldiers.  This book leaves a lot of unanswered questions, which I hope will be answered in the final book of the trilogy.

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

So, I have been wanting to read this series for awhile, since it is one of the most popular series that the library has.  Now that the movie is coming out for the first book this month, I finally decided I'd better get with it and read the book.  Unfortunately, the book is always better than the movie, but I am still looking forward to seeing it. 

Ethan Wate has always dreamed of escaping his small hometown of Gatlin, but lately his dreams have taken a new turn, when he dreams of saving a mysterious girl.  As if that isn't weird enough, things get even stranger when Lena Duchannes moves in with her uncle in the town's "haunted mansion."  Ethan is strangely drawn to the new "weird" girl who doesn't seem to fit in with anyone.  He is even more intrigued when he realizes that she is the mystery girl from  his dreams.  As forces in their families try to drive the pair apart, they find that there is a darker force that is trying to destroy them both.

I really enjoyed the book and I am looking forward to reading the rest of this series.  I can definitely see why it has been so popular.