I haven't actually read Linked by Imogen Howson yet, but I did get just approved for it by Edelweiss (**freaks out**) and since I've been drooling over that cover FOR FOREVER it seemed appropriate to include it.
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Enter: Booklikes! It's the perfect combination of Tumblr and Goodreads for me (so far), and I love that they already have all this functionality even though it's such a young site.
I'm thinking I'll probably use this site to post my other bookish thoughts, musings, and extra reviews - while still calling my real online home Tynga's. So excited! :)
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I thought I had torn through Obsidian, but I literally devoured Onyx. This series has caught me completely off guard, because I honestly didn't expect to love it as much as I do. Onyx absolutely sealed the deal for me, I'm in love with the Lux series.
In Onyx, we see a much different side to Daemon, and even to Katy. We're introduced to Blake - another new kid in town with a secret, and he quickly throws Katy's world into absolute tumult and gives Daemon reason to be jealous. Daemon had a long road ahead in this book, but he never gave up on Katy, even when she was bound and determined to give up on him.
In Obsidian, my only grief was that the plot was pretty basic. Onyx takes this to an entirely different level. In Onyx, the DOD has arrived - and no one has been telling the truth. There are tons of revelations about the DOD, who is an enemy and who is a friend, and even about the bond that Daemon and Katy share. On top of that, someone shows up in town that everyone assumed was dead, and it turns everything the Luxen thought they knew upside down. The world as they've seen and understood it has been a lie, and the truth is terrifying.
This is a book that will linger in the back of your mind, and I guarantee you'll find yourself reaching for it even though it's already 2am and you've gotta go to sleep. It's just that worth it.
That's all. Yes, this is a short review. That's partially because Onyx left me speechless, and partially because I'm already itching to go get book three in the series and start right now. This one is a must read!
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Admittedly, that's not what Obisidian is about. And yet, I literally stayed up into the wee hours of the night to finish this one. I finished Obsidian in near one (long) sitting. And I finished Onyx (book 2) even quicker - but more on that later.
As far as plot lines go, Obisidian isn't going to blow your socks off. It's your basic girl moves to new town, finds out neighbors are aliens, falls for one of them, and has to fight the bad guys. There really aren't many plot twists, and big mysteries aren't going to keep you up late at night. However, what WILL keep you up and engrossed in this book, are the characters.
I've never read two main characters who had a chemistry like Katy and Daemon, and I'm guessing this is what has also led such a cult-like book blogger following for this book. At first, I really really did not like Daemon. He was a douche, as Katy would so often put it, but I enjoyed every second of their interactions. They were explosive and hilarious and awkward and some of the things that came out of Daemon's mouth had me laughing out loud.
But again, many of things that he did and said to Katy also had me wanting to slap him up the back of the head for being such a jerk. Then a dozen pages later, he'd do something that totally had me swooning. This is actually a quote from Onyx actually (no spoilers here, no worries), but I wanted to include it here because it really describes the character of Daemon very well:
"Deadly and sweet - that was what Daemon was; two very different kinds of souls rested in him, fused together."
In the end, it is this give and take between Daemon and Katy that kept me glued to this book. There are secondary characters that shape the story and frame the relationship between these two, but really - if I'm totally honest with myself - we're all just in it for Daemon. I was incredibly satisfied with how Obsidian ended as well, I was so glad that Katy is not just caving in. Instead, she is making Daemon deal with the consequences of having been so cruel to her, and for once, I was glad she was making him work for it.
As soon as I finished Obsidian, I downloaded Onyx and settled in for another late night. I'd love to see some more plot development in the coming books in the series. If you take Daemon and Katy, and add some plot twists and something that keeps me on the edge of my seat, this could easily morph into a 5-star series for me.
There was something about this world that I just couldn't grasp. It was such a cool concept - the idea that everything and everyone and every thought are all part of one big cosmic weave, and that women called Spinsters are the ones trusted to weave this fabric and maintain it. But on the other side, it just kept giving me that "Am I in the Matrix?" feeling.
Try as I might, my measly brain just couldn't picture how that would work. How can they be weaving from within the weave? Who is weaving them? Who created the weave?
All these sort of existential questions kept getting in the way and distracting me while reading. I didn't feel like the world-building required to pull off a story line such as that really came through.
That said, aside from the actual mechanics of the world itself, I really enjoyed reading Crewel. I've been salivating over the cover since it first came out, and the premise of the book is so original. That fact alone kept me going, as the pacing on this one wasn't quite as heart-racing as I prefer. It was like taking a steady jog (ha! as if I've ever jogged in my LIFE) - it was enough to keep me going, but nothing that really made me want to glue my face to the book so I could carry it with me everywhere I went.
The romance had a slight twinge of insta-love, not too bad, but it was definitely there. This one is the very definition of a vague sort of liked but didn't love sort of book. I felt as though the motivations of the main character were very clear, and I sympathized with her as she dealt with the pain of losing her family, but beyond that surface level connection,
I never felt truly invested in Adelice. I was interested to see how her story would turn out, but there were many times I thought I could have put this one down mid-read and walked away without feeling like I was going to miss much. It was a decent read, but I probably won't be going for the second one in this series.
The government now hunts, imprisons, and experiments on these hybrids that have fallen through the cracks, attempting to 'fix' them. But they don't appear to pose any real threat to anyone. Hybrids don't have any sort of special powers, or super strength - I didn't see one good reason at all for the government to make such a big deal out of them. And the book itself doesn't offer much more explanation than "I'm a hybrid, and that's bad." Beyond that - it's never really explained how coupling in general would work in the outside world.
How do people get married? Do you just hope that both of your twin souls happen to fall in love with both of the twin souls of your spouse? Or what? That part sort of skeeved me out.
I didn't necessarily buy that the whole concept itself would ever work anyway. I did love the relationship between Addie and Eva, the twin souls. They truly were inseparable, and I loved the way that neither would want to exist without the other. Their interactions and the angst between them was so relate-able.
Addie, the dominant soul, deals with the guilt of having control over their body, and also struggles with the fact that she can never be truly alone in her own body. The fact that she would want to be alone, just for a moment, makes her feel terrible, because it is essentially saying that she wishes that Eva didn't exist anymore - and that's not what she wants either.
And Eva must deal with the fact that she is the dormant soul - she has no control of her own body or voice. She must sit back and watch, trapped, as Addie lives their life. I really identified with both of the girls. Neither is in a situation I would ever want to find myself in. The inner conflicts they dealt with were heart wrenching. There's a "major" revelation that happens about halfway through that I wasn't impressed with. I put "major" in quotes, because once again - it just sort of fizzled for me.
Given that the rest of the entire planet is still hybrid, more than anything I found myself wondering why Addie and Eva hadn't thought that there was something more going on in their little part of the world. What did they think made them so different? Did she think that they all just happened to be a part of the world whose souls were settling? It took a while for this book to really speed up.
The start was decent, and things did happen in a believable timeline, but it did end up ultimately getting very good. It wasn't until I was about 3/4 of the way through the book that things really started to unfold. But by then, I was convinced that this one had some pretty great potential, and I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for the next book.
I did enjoy Ali's character, though she seemed sometimes convoluted. I loved when she didn't let Cole give her any crap or tell her what to do, but then there were times that all he had to do was flex a muscle in her general direction and she would melt back into his arms. It just didn't ring that genuine to me.
Ali and Cole's relationship just did not sit very well with me. He's just mean and distant, and I couldn't really nail down exactly why they should be together. Part of the reason I was frustrated with their relationship, is because Ali's earliest objections to dating Cole are that she doesn't even know him. So Cole says that they will fix that by getting to know each other.
Then the author pulled one of these: "For the next few months...."WAIT - what?! I was so mad! Are you honestly trying to tell me that you just skipped over a few month's worth of info in a zombie novel? The few months during which Ali actually starts to take the zombie fighting seriously and does this "getting to know each other" and training with Cole - and you're not even going to tell me about it?
As far as secondary characters, this is where this book totally rocked. Ali's best friend Cat was HILARIOUS. The scene when she first meets Alice was absolutely hilarious. Even better because I was able to listen to it, rather than just read it, so all the sarcasm and run-on sentences were just that much funnier. Ali's grandparents were also so cute, trying to catch up with the teenage slang. Some of the things they would say to Ali were completely ridiculous.
There were lots of inner-thoughts mixed in with the actual dialogue. In a normal book, this is fine - great even - because they can italicize or bold the inner dialogue to differentiate it from what the characters are actually saying. The audiobook didn't translate all that well in this case, because there were dozens of times that I'd get her inner dialogue mixed up with what she was actually saying, and I have to admit, it did get frustrating.
I can't say this book was boring - it absolutely wasn't. I never even considered not finishing it, even with some of the things I mentioned above. It wasn't a train wreck, it just had a few fatal flaws for me. Who knows, maybe someone else wouldn't be bothered as much by that, but for me, the little things killed this one, even though I was SO amped up about reading this book.