Wings by Aprilynne Pike

Laurel was mesmerized, staring at the pale things with wide eyes. 

They were terrifyingly beautiful--too beautiful for words.
Laurel turned to the mirror again, her eyes on the hovering petals that floated beside her head. 

They looked almost like wings.
In this extraordinary tale of magic and intrigue, romance and danger, everything you thought you knew about faeries will be changed forever.







This book series is about fairies and I just had to read it. It's been on my reading pile for while, and now I am going to read it.

The book series begins with a girl Laurel who moves to a new town and goes to a new school. Laurel sits in Biology class (another book copying Twilight) and gets tongue tie. Laurel soon discovers in the middle of her sophomore year that she is a fairy sent among humans to protect the gateway to Avalon. This book is about flower fairies, and it didn't even feel like a young adult book it's more like for middle grade genre. 

Most people picked up the book because of quote from Stephenie Meyer on the cover, but imagine my surprise that Pike got her agent through Meyer because they are best friends, and you can read about it on her blog. I get this was a New York Times bestseller, but if you reread over and over of a human girl finding out she's a fairy or the long lost daughter of the king of fairies after a while it really gets old. Another take from Twilight is where you can feel the meadow scene. Pike's books weren't so bad. The first book in the series I wasn't too crazy about. You have to give her some credit for a debut it didn't take me until 300 pages into the novel before the plot started picking up. After you read the first book the story gets better in book two, three, and four, but I think the best book in the series was the final book Destined. I'm giving this series a lukewarm rating. 

The Modern Tales of Faerie by Holly Black

Tithe


Sixteen-year-old Kaye is a modern nomad. Fierce and independent, she travels from city to city with her mother's rock band until an ominous attack forces Kaye back to her childhood home. There, amid the industrial, blue-collar New Jersey backdrop, Kaye soon finds herself an unwilling pawn in an ancient power struggle between two rival faerie kingdoms - a struggle that could very well mean her death

This was an amazing book to read! I love Holly's writing. Filled with so much imagery and descriptions! Book three in the series was just to tie up the loose ends left in book one and two, but it does make some things about fairies a little creepy for me. I enjoyed this series, it keeps you cautious with wanting to turn the pages as quickly as you can wanting to see what happens next! I highly recommend reading this series!

Graceling Realm Series by Kristin Cashore

This is a book series twitter has been fussing about so I decided to read it all straight through.

Graceling

Kristin Cashore’s best-selling, award-winning fantasy Graceling tells the story of the vulnerable yet strong Katsa, a smart, beautiful teenager who lives in a world where selected people are given a Grace, a special talent that can be anything from dancing to swimming. Katsa’s is killing. As the king’s niece, she is forced to use her extreme skills as his thug. Along the way, Katsa must learn to decipher the true nature of her Grace . . . and how to put it to good use. A thrilling, action-packed fantasy adventure (and steamy romance!) that will resonate deeply with adolescents trying to find their way in the world.

I did read all three books, Okay, Cashore's writing is really good, and the world building is fabulous. I did like the heroine, Katsa, she is so strong and fierce butt kicking warrior, reminds me a bit of Katniss from The Hunger Games but I find her to be just as annoying as Bella from Twilight. Katsa is the only strong heroine in the book, the other female characters are just weak. The beginning of the book just throws you into the action.  There are parts of the book that really bugged me. The author spends the majority of the book trying to sell these to the audience; dresses are the worst, femininity is wrong, men don't respect women, commitment ruins relationships, marriage is a tool of the devil. Katsa and Po, you really can't feel the love between them and the way Katsa treats her love interest is just horrible, like how she hits him then Katsa gives the cliche excuse how she's sorry? Don't abusers always say they are sorry and they won't ever do it again. You can't feel the romance between them, but then you also have the man hating feminist feeling when reading it. Po does change quite a bit in Fire and Bitterblue. This is suppose to be for young adults? This book series is not my genre.  

Matched Trilogy by Ally Condie

Matched 

Cassia has always trusted the Society to make the right choices for her: what to read, what to watch, what to believe. So when Xander's face appears on-screen at her Matching ceremony, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is her ideal mate... until she sees Ky Markham's face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black. The Society tells her it's a glitch, a rare malfunction, and that she should focus on the happy life she's destined to lead with Xander. But Cassia can't stop thinking about Ky, and as they slowly fall in love, Cassia begins to doubt the Society's infallibility and is faced with an impossible choice: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she's known and a path that no one else has dared to follow.






I decided to try reading another dystopian series. The Hunger Games was dark but showed an important lesson; the way our governments behave now, what makes you think we won't end up like that in the future, sending kids to fight to the death? I like the dystopian novels because it's not the same in every book, authors come up with such unique interesting plots. I prefer to wait to read a book series when the entire series is out.

This is not one of my favorite dystopian series mostly because it's pretty boring. Condie is a good writer but this story was so bland it took me ages to read.Condie's agent is also the agent of Meyer and Pike but this series did not have a good sales record compared to other dystopians. The government system decides who is paired with who. There was too much of the romance elements in this, and not enough of the dystopian of what it's like living in this government system. I felt like some elements in Matched were trying too hard to match up with the Hunger Games.