Grace Foley is a seventeen-year-old prankster and risk-taker. The only thing she's afraid of is losing. One night she accepts a challenge as part of a feud between the two local schools, but things don't go as planned. Something she can't explain happens and now she's haunted by voices and visions. She's drawn into a twenty-year-old mystery surrounding a missing girl named Hannah Holt, and she's having trouble figuring out what's real and what's imagined. Grace is losing herself and she doesn't know if she's uncovering the truth or if she's going mad.  I don't know what made me request this book. Reading the blurb now it doesn't interest me at all. I found this book extremely hard to get in to. The writing was disjointed, it was hard to follow along. I did not like any of the characters. I just don't care. DNF @ 43. Thank you to Netgalley and Text Publishing for a copy of this book. 1/5.

Box of Terror contains four stories. The first one immediately drew me in. I liked the writing and the content was interesting - a man finds himself inside a supermarket that sells a different assortment of food than other supermarkets and it was too late to escape the second he entered the store but he will stop at nothing to return to his family. Then I found the story dragged on and I wasn't as invested as I was at the first, but overall this one was good.  The second story started off good, I liked the concept - a family has just moved to the middle of nowhere and they keep losing their power and the man stays and waits for the repairman while his wife and child go to stay with her mother before it gets dark. But then the author started to lose me with those made up words and I also found this one too long.  I did not like the third story - a man hides himself away from the world and is obsessed with numbers. In no way did this one interest me.  I did like the fourth ...

Zen Starling and Nova have travelled all over the Network Empire, but they've never passed through a new gate - one that should not exist at all. They've been through a lot and can't go back so their only option is to go through.  There is a new Empress of the Great Network who has just chosen to take a criminal named Chandni Hansa out of the freezer and into her world to help find Zen Starling. But railwar erupts and they're running for their lives.  Everyone ends up at the mysterious Black Light Zone - a world no longer in use with secrets to uncover. This is the sequel to Railhead and it picks up where book one left off. The creativity is still strong and we have some of the same characters we saw in the first book. This is action-packed as Zen and Nova race through new worlds, avoiding bad trains and bad people, and hoping to make it home alive. I found this book just a teensy bit long, but overall it was really good. And like the first book there is a glossary in t...

Zen Starling is a petty thief. He thinks he has just been caught stealing but instead he has been chosen for a mission by a mysterious stranger named Raven. Zen has to infiltrate the Emperor's train and steal something Raven desperately wants. He has always wanted to traverse the Great Network - a vast place of a thousand gates leading to very different places, of Station Angels, drones, maintenance spiders and many different trains all with their own personalities. Zen Starling jumps at the chance to see the worlds and steal something big. I'm not really into made up worlds and stuff like that but this book sounded interesting enough to give it a go. And I must say it was really good! There is a very helpful glossary at the back. I really enjoyed going into these weird new worlds and meeting different types of creatures and trains. I was fond of Uncle Bugs. He is a Hive Monk which is a million bugs clinging together to form a human-shaped skeleton by using old junk like a cloa...

Sixteen-year-old Ellie Baum and her classmates are visiting Germany. When she spots a red balloon, she tells her best friend to take a picture so she can show her grandfather when she returns to the United States. But by grabbing that red balloon Ellie is taken back in time to East Berlin in 1988. There she meets members of an organization who use balloons and magic to help people escape over the wall to West Berlin. But to the balloon makers, Ellie’s time travel is a mystery. Eventually it becomes clear that someone is using dark magic to change history and Ellie wants to do everything she can to stop them, even if it means never returning home again. There are three points-of-view: Ellie's when she briefly travels to Germany in present time then travels back to 1988 where the rest of her story is told, Kai's who is a Runner, someone who helps people get over the wall, and Benno's back in the 1940's in a Polish ghetto. This is such an interesting concept - using balloo...

Olive Gagmuehler is tired of getting picked on because of her name. While she's waiting for her best friend at the Castaway Carnival she runs into the trio of mean girls from school. She runs away into the infamous cornmaze, where kids go missing. She wakes up on an isolated island where a war between two teams of rival teens has been going on for many years. She's taken in by the Lions where she develops a strong bond with each of them and will do whatever it takes to protect them and help them win the war. Then hopefully find her way back home. Poor Olive, not only does she hate her name, but she seems to always have a knot in her throat. Ouch. I liked the concept of this book - a Pirate Carnival with a cornmaze where kids disappear, an island of lost teens. It did kinda drag in parts, was a bit repetitious, full of clichés. And I didn't care for the ending because I just don't understand how that could happen. But overall it was a fun read. A big thank you to Net...

Not only was Flora 717 born into the lowest class of her society, she was also born bigger and darker than the best of them. As a sanitation bee, she is only fit to clean the hive while living to accept, obey and serve which means to do whatever is necessary for the good of the hive and the holy mother. It is discovered that Flora has many talents that are not typical of her kin and while most mutant bees are instantly destroyed, Flora is reassigned to feed the newborns. Then she is reassigned to become a forager, flying around gathering food for the hive. Flora eventually finds herself in the Queen's inner sanctum where she discovers secrets - some good, some bad. And Flora has a secret of her own, breaking the most sacred law of all. This started off so bad for me that I wanted to give up and I hate DNFing a book! There were so many smells that it became monotonous and irritating. But I kept at it and while there were still quite a few smells throughout the rest of the book the o...

A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. The house is long gone but he finds himself drawn to the old farmhouse at the end of the road where his childhood friend lived. Lettie Hempstock wasn't an ordinary little girl and her mother and grandmother weren't ordinary women. He hasn't thought of Lettie in many, many years but as he sits by the pond, the pond Lettie claimed was an ocean, he's taken back to the past. A past so strange it's hard to believe. I don't honestly know what to say. It took me a while to get into but even so it's still a great book from start to finish. It's creative and magical and weird and real.

Elisa has just visited a beautiful and strange place called Duskland. She finds all its inhabitants interesting and falls in love with Leonhard after just a short time. She is pulled from Duskland to rejoin the living, but she is still not safe here. Her husband wants her dead and will do anything in his power to find her. With the help of new friends Elisa has the strength to fight back and in the end she must choose between living and the afterlife. The book started off slow but once it picked up it was really enjoyable. Duskland was unique and had that eerie/dreamlike quality to it. I loved the Victorian Gothic vibe throughout the whole story. The illustrations are gorgeous. The author has a great imagination!

This book is told from three different perspectives: Isabel's - a geneticist, Diego's - a software engineer, and Matt's - a physicist.  Isabel runs into Diego fifteen years after their relationship ended. Now she must travel back in time to make sure they stay together. It's the only way to save the world. After writing a review about only winning a part of the book in a giveaway instead of the whole book like I thought it would be, the author was kind enough to get in touch and send me all of book one, so a big thank you to her! I've never really read any time travel or dystopian books, but this one intrigued me. " Be prepared to encounter a finicky time machine, a mysterious seashell and a very clever dog.  The prologue drew me in. I liked Matt's perspective the most. I did like that Isabel made it to the other world. But when Isabel and Diego were together they annoyed me to no end. Despite that, though, I did enjoy the book and am curious as to what wil...

Debbie de La Fontaine is unhappy with her sex life, so when she meets a witch who can spice up her sex life for her she reluctantly agrees to do what the witch wants her to do - give her her African Violet. The only problem is that she wanted this to work with her boyfriend. Now Debbie is destined to have amazing sex in a place called Sex Hell - a place where she can act out her fantasies no matter how absurd they are, with a "sleazy" man who is not her boyfriend. The only way she can escape Sex Hell is to keep returning there again and again until she can gather enough clues from Carl the demon - a floating head who shows up after the deed is done - to break the spell. This was original and funny. The writing was really good. I found it did drag on a bit towards the end though. I loved Debbie's sarcastic comments. This is the kind of book I wouldn't normally read but I decided to try it anyway and I'm happy I did!

A disjointed (and sometimes confusing) story about a young woman who has just awakened from an attack and discovers she has lost her memory. She takes a trip to visit a clerical healer in hopes of getting some answers to her past and who she is. The amount of spelling errors and grammatical errors really took away from the story. Atrocious.

Nicole Tepper can't remember what happened at the party she was at last night, but it must've been bad because her mother and her friends are giving her the silent treatment. Or so she thinks. Nicole is trapped between life and death. Her body is down a steep embankment in the woods but in her ghost-like state she is wandering the school searching for answers. Only one person can hear her and that's Dale Finnegan - the guy she has relentlessly bullied. He goes to great lengths to help Nicole. This was a quick, suspenseful page-turner! I love this: "Hard for you?" My sarcasm drips off every syllable, like melted caramel on a sundae - thick and delicious.

Eleanor Rosette is the sole survivor of a horse and carriage accident that leaves her with mysterious marks on her neck. Not long after Lord Welton brings her into his home to recuperate strange things begin to happen. I enjoyed the author's writing as well as her gorgeous illustrations!  

Some of these stories were okay but I found most of them lacking and confusing.

Miranda's wrists gush out blood. She doesn't know why or when it will happen. As if that isn't bad enough she has just enrolled at a new school which has been nicknamed "Suicide High" thanks to the increasing amount of suicides happening lately. It's here she bumps into a cute boy named Jake and learns that he has the power to predict the immediate future. Jake's friend, Sam, eats the sins of the dead. Two of their classmates also have special powers. Topher can heal by touch. Xyan can speak and understand all languages. When it becomes apparent that something or someone is behind the suicides, these five team up to destroy the evil that's running through their school. This isn't the kind of book I usually read but it sounded interesting. Definite points for originality. Xyan got on my nerves. I hate when I don't know what the characters are saying because of different languages. I didn't care for the last few chapters but overall the book ...

I won a copy of this book through Goodreads First Reads :-) This book is: a page-turner, suspenseful, creative, complex, creepy, amazing. It's five short stories, set nine years apart beginning in 1979 and they're all connected by a haunted house.  Great writing. I didn't like the last story as much as the others, but still a great read.

Delilah is in high school and obsessed with a fairy tale she finds in the school library. While reading the book one day she notices something drawn onto the sand on Everafter Beach, something that was never there before. Delilah's observation gives Oliver the courage to carve a plea for help into the cliff he's climbing on a page in the fairy tale where he's all alone. He wants out of the book and needs Delilah's help. Together they brainstorm ways to get him out of the book and into her world. I really like the concept for this book, but the whole thing was boring and forgettable with a somewhat disappointing ending.

Off the Page is a sequel to Between the Lines. It's a cute, light read. In order for Oliver to live in Delilah's world, he must switch places with a regular boy. Edgar is a loner. He agrees to go into the book because, as a gamer, it would be a dream come true for him. The book begins with Oliver starting high school and learning to adjust to the world he so desperately wanted to be a part of, with Delilah as his coach. But the book attempts to correct itself and the characters, both on and off the page, try to find ways to make everyone happy. Often times confusing with Edgar and Oliver as Oliver has to go by "Edgar" in his new world. I won a copy of this book through Goodreads First Reads.

Chris is a struggling writer whose marriage is strained and who doesn't have a great relationship with his eleven year old son, David. He finds and gives David a book, one that he had read as a child, for his birthday, but it's not the book David had wanted. Chris begins reading the book to his son each night before bed, and delights in the fact that David becomes very interested in it, but then the seizures begin. A bit drawn out, but overall a good book.