Free Books for Review

Hello all! So I am very active online in several forums that have anything to do with books. I am working on my first YA novel, so I immerse myself so I love to meet other Indie authors. I have been approached several times over the past few months by tons of authors that are asking for my book group members and myself to read their books free in exchange for an honest review. I have to admit, some of the books I come across are not in my usual reading preferences, but I force myself to get over it and read their book. And I am SO GLAD I did! I have found some of the most amazing books from Read for Reviewing that I would probably never would have come across otherwise. I would like to share that with you guys as well. I am putting together an elite group of committed members that are willing to receive a free ebook in exchange for an honest review on sites such as Goodreads, Amazon, Smashwords, etc. If you are interested in joining this group. Please contact me by email and I will be happy to chat with you about it!
readingfrenzy30@gmail.com

Amadi, the Phoenix, the Sphinx, and the Djinn (Amadi #1-3) by Katharina Gerlach

Book Title: Amadi, the Phoenix, the Sphinx, and the Djinn (Amadi #1-3)
Author: Katharina Gerlach

Book Description: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13630711-amadi-the-phoenix-the-sphinx-and-the-djinn

*I DO NOT RECAP THE BOOKS IN MY REVIEWS, THAT IS WHAT THE BOOK DESCRIPTION IS FOR. NOR DO I HAVE SPOILERS. Go to the URL above to read the book description*

This book was provided for me free of cost by the author for an honest review. Thank you Katharina Gerlach, I appreciate all the hard work you put into this book and for trusting a copy to me for my opinion. It is a great honor on my part and your writing is exquisite.

Overall Rating

This book is ABSOLUTELY AMAZING! I mean, WOW! I don't often give a perfect score on everything but this book did! I was not sure what to expect and honestly, probably never would have come across this book on my own if it was not offered up for review. I am so glad it was. This book has so much imagination, it is an exquisite “fairy tale” that is not childish in the least. I was swept away to another Arabian world full of magic, mystery, suspense, romance, and an extremely strong female heroine to top it all off! I was so amazed at the end, I had to go to the author’s Facebook page to tell her how fantastic it was. I am going to pass it along to my daughter so that we can experience it as her bedtime story. I am so happy to be able to add a tale so incredible to my daughter’s mind and imagination. I extremely recommend this book for those that want to escape to a far away land.

Originality/Creativity:

The creativity and imagination that went into this book is incredible. Out of this world! I loved how all three of the stories wove into each other so smoothly and beautifully. I was knocked off my feet. If you love supernatural mixed with fairy tale with a YA feel to it, the originality in this book will quench that thirst for creativity flavor!

Complexity of Characters/Storyline:

This book has an incredible complexity to the characters. There are many characters, but not overwhelming so that you cannot follow the story. The main character Amadi grows by leaps and bounds within herself and it is fantastic to see how she overcomes the obstacles thrown her way. The other characters are creative and witty, they all complement each other so perfectly. You will definitely become attached to the main characters and by the end of the book, you will realize how talented the author is by being able to form this complex web of characters that all share a hand in each other’s destiny and how they all tie together in the end.

Quality of writing:

Nothing rubs me the wrong way more than a book that has a ton of errors in it, or writing that seems to be contrived from a five year old. Not this book, no sir! The names, the places, everything is extremely creative and fitting into the world that the author has created. There were not any major typo errors to annoy along the way. The story was so smooth like a perfect waterfall that flows from lakes to creeks and eventually into the ocean. I absolutely adore the author’s style of writing.

Action/Suspense:

I felt that the action was well spaced out in this book. Since it is 3 parts of stories into one novel, that made for the stories to pretty much have to have non-stop action. I literally read this book in one day, I just couldn’t put it down! The action scenes were appropriate, not too short, yet not too drawn out. The book held my interest the entire time. I appreciated that so much!
Would I recommend this book? HELL YES! I am already getting extremely excited about reading more books by this author. I really can’t wait to see what comes next. The author has awakened my need for mythology/fairy tale worlds and I just want to dive in and forget the real world and bask in her creativity!
No excuses! Just get the book! Seriously, right now!

Into the Night by Jade Fowler

Into The Night

Into the Night Series Book #1

Jade Fowler

Book description can be found at http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14896683-into-the-night

This book was provided for me free of cost by the author for an honest review. Thank you Jade, I appreciate all the hard work you put into this book and for trusting a copy to me for my opinion. It is a great honor on my part. I never summarize the book in my reviews, just go read the damn summary from the goodreads link above! I also NEVER give spoilers, I'm trying to give you my opinion, not ruin the freakin story for you!

Overall Rating

This book has all the elements that I LOVE. Supernatural, absolutely packed with everything! Witches, Vampires, Werewolves, Psychics and more! I was pleasantly surprised by the story, it had just the right amount of action and held my interest through the whole story. It was refreshing and has had a great impact on me.

Originality/Creativity:

I felt that the creativity in this story was wonderful! It can be tricky to add so many different supernatural elements, but the author did an exquisite job of explaining and weaving all of it together. The idea of having both humans and supernatural creatures existing together as both friend and foe was fantastic. I think people are naturally drawn to the supernatural and we don’t always want to see them as being enemy, but also as having goodness in them, which this story has. I adored the story basically being fight club for the paranormal. And a splash of weird romance too just added more flavor to the story! And I love it when books have the point of view of 2 different characters, in this case a guy (Logan) and a girl (Penny). I feel this adds appeal to both male and female readers.

Complexity of Characters/Storyline:

Where the characters complex? Hell yeah. Especially Penny (main character chick). Man, that chick definitely had some weird freaky lovin’ going on in her situation which at times made you so creeped out, you wanted to take a shower. And Logan’s little crush obsession just made you feel sorry for the guy. There was the perfect amount of twists and turns in the story, and I feel that the author spaced out these crazy revelations just perfectly. I do have a few more questions about the story, but I believe that these were meant to be raised by the author so that she can continue the story in her future novels.

Quality of writing:

Nothing rubs me the wrong way more than a book that has a ton of errors in it, or writing that seems to be contrived from a five year old. Well, no worries of that in this book. The book is well written, easy to follow, and I found very limited errors.

Action/Suspense:

I felt that the action was well spaced out in this book. I didn’t have to wait until halfway through to read the first action scene. It all happened pretty quickly and was able to hold my attention through the book. I think that a few of the action scenes could have been a little more intense, but all in all, it was enough to keep me going.

Would I recommend this book? Absolutely! I am already getting extremely excited about the next book and can’t wait to get my hands on it. I really can’t wait to see what comes next. I think if you are a Supernatural/Paranormal fan like I am, you will thoroughly enjoy this book. You can buy it for a bargain price (book is worth WAY MORE) here:

No excuses! Just go get the damn book!

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

THIS PAGE IS CURRENTLY UNDER CONSTRUCTION!

Keep checking back, I am working on adding OOOODLES to this blog site. I am re-launching my small business which features my funky clothing line, fashion hair and jewelry accessories, and other kick ass items that I craft or come across. You will be able to participate in giveaway contests including: my merchandise items from my clothing line, fashion hair accessories, unique handmade jewelry, products that I sample and review from companies, and other odds and ends I procure from my uptrading business.

I also receive ARC's of many books so you will be able to hear my brutally honest (often times hilarious) reviews as well as win copies of those books. I am currently working on my YA novel and collaborating with my 7 year old on a children's book adventure series! 

So keep checking back to keep up with all the funky goodness that will soon be available on my site!

Die for Me (Revenants #1) by Amy Plum

Title: Die for Me
Series: Revenants #1
Author: Amy Plum 
Book Description: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9462812-die-for-me

Overall Rating: 

I have been wanting to read this book since I saw the amazing cover and read the description. But I am a bit spoiled see, once I know a book will be the first in a series, I try to put off reading it until a few more books are out in the series. That way, I don’t have to face my anger management issues when I am faced with an intense cliffhanger ending and the next book isn’t out for a year or so. I simply get to move along to the next book. So I finally finished reading this book.

I will save you the book description because obviously there is one you can read from goodreads. Here are my rankings(based on my kitty paw grading system at the top of my blog site) on what I believe to be the most important elements of a book:

                                                            

                                                              Originality/Creativity: 

There are a lot of books out there with supernatural beings (my favorite type of books), but most have the traditional supernatural things we are used to: vampires, werewolves, etc. I was not sure what to expect but was pleasantly surprised by the idea of the supernatural beings in this book: revenants. It was a fresh take on immortal beings and I very much appreciated that. The ideas were complex but not too much to where you couldn’t understand or follow the story line. So for that, this book gets 5 kitty paws!

Complexity of Characters/Storyline: 

The book was pretty straight forward with the characters, so I felt there was not a whole lot of mystery when it came to the characters. The main character, Kate, has suffered the loss of her parents and together with her sister, moved to Paris with their grandparents. Vincent is Kate’s love interest. Not a huge amount of his past was revealed until later in the book and even at that, I wish that the author would have elaborated more on his history. That would have been so fascinating, and I can only hope that the next books will do that. The other characters (mainly Vincent’s “kin”) were introduced, however not with much depth. Again, I guess we just have to wait and see…….. 

The romance aspect between Kate and Vincent was so/so for most of the book, you don’t really get that girly swooning feeling about them until the end of the book (at least for me). I wasn’t wowed by the romance but at the same time, I can’t stand the gooshy kissy kissy stuff which this book didn’t have (thank you little baby Jesus in a manger).

                                                              

                                                                  Quality of writing: 

The author writes with ease and it is not hard to follow the story. Use of vocabulary is not super complex which I believe fits with the story. Being that the story is taking place in France, I believe the author could have thrown in a little more French, but not so much that we would require a dictionary to read the book.

Action/Suspense: 

Action, adventure, and suspense (for me) is the most important part of a book. Seriously, that is what makes it entertaining, right? This is where the book let me down. There was an itty bitty bit of action (BARELY) here and there, nothing I felt that really pulled me into the book. Honestly, I continued to read just because I felt I owed it to myself because I waited so long to read it. I read this book on my Kindle, and when I FINALLY got to the biggest action scene, I looked down and saw that I was over 80% of the way through the book. That really pissed me off. Ridiculous. I felt cheated! The last action scene was ok, nothing that made you feel intense relief from being saved from impending doom after the action scene was done. Based on this, I honestly don’t know if I can bring myself to read the next books in the series which is a huge let down since the next two will be released this year.

Would I recommend this book to my friends? Probably not. There are a ton of other books out there that I would put priority over this one. Since I am an avid reader, I might decide to finish the series. The concept of Revenants is such a great idea, I am a bit curious to read on and see the author is able to develop it further and hit a home run on the rest of the series. But certainly not today.