Tag Archive | Ghost

REVIEW: Remembrance by Meg Cabot (A Mediator Novel)

Feb11

I apologize for not posting a review in some time. I’ve been keeping very busy with my work over at Melange Books, Satin Romance & Fire and Ice YA Books. Keeping up with the web design, cover design, and releases is a lot of work!

To add to my list of excuses, I had to take some time to binge re-read all six of the original Mediator YA novels by Meg Cabot, so that I could read the new NA novel, Remembrance, which I’ll be reviewing today!

 

I’m only slightly annoyed that the new book is taller than my copies of the original books and won’t line up perfectly on the shelf.

 

Remembrance by Meg Cabot
Series: Mediator #7
Read: Feb 10-11, 2016
Format: Paperback
My Book Rating: 4.5/5 Stars
Genre: Contemporary New Adult Paranormal Romance

This book. THIS BOOK! So many FEELS!

Okay, so about 6 or 7 years ago my mother-in-law told me about this series of books by Meg Cabot called The Mediator. At that point in time I don’t think I’d ever read a Meg Cabot book, though I’d seen the Princess Diaries movies and LOVED them. So she loaned me the books… and I read the entire series back to back a good 5 or 6 times. No joke. I was smitten. I bought the entire set of books and they have a permanent home on my bookcase.

Fast forward to about a year or so ago and I heard that a new Mediator book was being released. Ecstatic is the best word to describe my feelings over this. I love the characters of The Mediator so much, I was over the moon to go on another adventure with them.

So first, if you have NOT read The Mediator books yet, DO NOT READ THIS FULL REVIEW!  It will spoil it for you! You can keep reading for now, then I’ll tell you when to stop!

A quick recap of the premise of the original 6 books is this:
Sure Simon has just moved to Carmel, CA from Brooklyn, NY due to her mother remarrying. Not only does she have a new stepdad (the first father figure in her life since her own dad died ten years prior) but she’s also got three step brothers, whom she hilariously refers to as Sleepy (Jake), Dopey (Brad) and Doc (David).

The thing about Suze is, she sees dead people. She’s a mediator of spirits, a skill she was born with, and learned early on to keep secret. It’s a ability considers a curse. Imagine her surprise when, upon walking into her new bedroom for the first time, she discovers it haunted by an incredibly gorgeous Spanish ghost named Jesse. *Swoon*

In each book Suze has ghostly challenges, and Jesse is always there for her, whether she wants him to or not. Of course she falls in love, but nothing can ever come of it – he’s dead! To add to the fun, she’s got new friends at school CeeCee (the albino), and Adam (the boy who CeeCee is in love with, even though he shamelessly flirts with Suze). She’s also got some new enemies in the form of popular mean girls Kelly and Debbie (who are both somewhat in love with two of Suze’s new stepbrothers, though Suze can’t imagine why.)

Sure is a punch first, ask questions later kind of girl, which doesn’t sit so well with her new high school principal, who happens to be both a Catholic priest and a mediator himself! He becomes her mentor and together they help solve the area’s ghost problems.

Hooked yet? You should be. Seriously. Go check out the books! They’re nice quick reads. Now, if you haven’t read them yet, STOP READING NOW! SPOILERS AHEAD!

This book was… so much…. everything.

Time has passed since we last left Suze and Jesse. They are now engaged. He’s a doctor working as a resident at a local hospital. She’s working an internship at her former high school, well on her way to getting her masters to be a school counselor. What could go wrong? Well, Paul Slater, that’s what could go wrong. The basic gist is Paul is still in love with Suze and will do anything to win her heart (or at least one night with her). After Suze’s step-dad Andy’s TV show took off and started airing in syndication on cable TV, her parents moved away and sold the house – unknowingly to Slater Industries, owned by none other than Suze’s arch nemesis Paul Slater.

In a last ditch effort to have his chance with Suze, Paul is blackmailing her. According to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics (from his Egyptologist grandfathers collection of Mediator lore), destroying Suze’s former home – the one Jesse haunted for a hundred and fifty years – will unleash a curse on Jesse.

You can take the boy out of the darkness, but you can’t take the darkness out of the boy.

Meanwhile, the ghost of a young girl is clinging to one of the students at the Mission Academy. In an attempt to help said student, Suze unintentionally unleashes the child spirits wrath upon her, nearly getting her killed.

The rest of the old gang is back, and they’ve been up to some pretty hilarious things. I won’t spoil all the details for you, but you can look forward to seeing: Gina (Suze’s BFF from Brooklyn, who is now crashing on her futon), Kelly, Debbie (married to Brad! Mother of 6 year old triplets! I love those triplets!), CeeCee, Adam, Jake (who happens to be roommates with Jesse!), David, and of course, Father Dominic.

There were a few inconsistencies from the original books to this one (I re-read all 6 original books before I let myself read the new one,) but nothing to really spoiled the plot. Just minor details, like for example, it’s said that Suze had Mr. Walden for junior and senior years, but she had him for sophomore and junior years in the book, we never actually get to experience senior year with her.

If you loved Suze’s crazy schemes and hilarious dialogue in the past as much as I do, you can absolutely expect more in this beast of a book. (I’m not kidding, this book is a beast! 388 pages people!)

I Instagrammed a couple of hilarious passages while I was reading, this will give you just a taste of what you’re in for. (For some reason the blog is only letting me embed one, but if you click on my Instagram photos there are a total of 3 from this book.)

I’d forgotten just how much I love to hate #PaulSlater. #amreading #mediator #remembrance #suzesimon #JesseDeSilva #suzeandjesse #megcabot #yareads #bookish #bookquotes #bookboyfriend #bookstagram #bookboyfriend #lovetohate

A photo posted by Caroline Andrus (@caroline_andrus) on

Ultimately, was the book perfect? No. There were some things I’ll change, such as (SPOILER ALERT!) I wish Jesse had stuck to his guns and waited until marriage to sleep with Suze. It was such an important thing to his character, that I felt like he changed too much. And yes, I get that it had been like, 7 years between the evens of the last book and this one, but I still don’t like that he didn’t wait that short time longer. (/END SPOILER)

However, this book had me laughing out loud, sometimes until I was nearly in tears, and for me, that makes this completely worth it. I didn’t feel the immediate need to re-read it though. Maybe that’s because I have so many more books to read right now, or the fact that the book is so much longer than any of the originals. I don’t know.

End result though, if you LOVE the original Mediator books, I’m sure you’ll love these as well.

NOTE: Because the characters are older now, Suze is 24 and Jesse is 28, there is adult language as well as adult situations. While I would totally let my daughter read the other Mediator books as soon as she wants—though I don’t think she’d appreciate them until she was at least 14 or 15—I would wait to introduce her to this book until she was at least 16 or 17, depending on her maturity level at the time.

REVIEW: Finding The Way Back by Jill Bisker

Oct7

Finding The Way Back by Jill Bisker

Read: September 2015

Format: Ebook (Kindle)

My Book Rating: 4/5 Stars

Genre: Ghost Story (paranormal, light romance)

 

I put off reading Finding The Way Back for a while because I don’t typically read adult fiction. I’m pretty sure I’ll be 19 forever, though my body may age. That said, I know Jill Bisker personally and I designed her cover, so I gave it a chance.

Finding The Way Back is the story of Laney, a young woman going through a divorce. She’s picking up the pieces of her life and learning to be herself again now that she’s no longer under the spell of her loser of a (soon-to-be) ex-husband. To help get her mind off things Lancey’s mother invites Laney and her cousin Connie to live in and fix up the old house their grandfather lived in. As it turns out, Gramps had a bit of a hoarding problem, there’s hardly any room to move around the old house he’s packed it so full!

As Laney and Connie begin their mission of clearing out the house—trashing the junk, dispersing sentimental items to the family, and selling the valuables on eBay—things really get interesting. As it turns out, the house is haunted and the women’s mothers’ never bothered to share that little bit of information on them. Let me tell you, there are some creepy moments in this book that made me wonder what I was thinking reading this on my Kindle in bed in the dark late at night!

So, when the ghost makes it’s appearance, Connie does what any intelligent girl does: she calls the Ghostbusters. Okay, not really, but close enough. She invites a guy she knew in high school, Emmett, plus some of his friends, to come scope out the joint. Emmett is a hobby ghost hunter. And hot. Really hot. Laney tries to deny the attraction but it’s there. So as Laney and Connie attempt to cohabit the house with a ghost, Emmett becomes their knight in shining armor.

I liked the romance in this book, it was a slow build that didn’t seem sudden and out of nowhere. The ghosts were the perfect blend of spooky, creepy and wondrous. And Ms. Bisker created a fabulous story for the haunting of the house. As a bonus, there were some local details in the book that made me chuckle because I know those things oh so well. Not to mention the little points of humor scattered throughout the story (I loved the closet scene with Emmett and Laney!)

There were some things I didn’t enjoy as much. I found some parts of the book to be too over detailed (I read YA, remember? We gloss over the details for the most part in YA!) and sometimes it felt a little repetitive.

Overall, I did enjoy this story and I will be reading (and reviewing!) the sequel which is due to come out from Melange Books this fall.

 

Disclaimer: I designed the cover for this book so I do receive a small monetary compensation for sales of the book. This in no way affects my review of the book. If I wanted to be dishonest, every book I design covers for would be a 5 star read! 😉

REVIEW: Ghost for Sale by Sandra Cox

Sep21

I recently joined NetGalley, which if you don’t know, is a service that allows authors and publishers to offer their books to reviewers. Anyone can join, but you have a better chance if you’re a blogger. So, I joined. Then felt guilty because I started my full time job and didn’t think I’d have time to read any of the books I was approved for. Then I discovered I could use text to speech on these books and listen to them while working! I don’t feel so guilty now, because while text to speech narration is pretty terrible, at least I’m getting the reading done! (And my local library’s audiobook selection is severely lacking the type of books I want to read.)

Below is my review for the first book I received from NetGalley. Unfortunately, my first experience was not a very enjoyable one, but I have hopes that I’ll be approved for some books I will enjoy.

 

 

Ghost for Sale by Sandra Cox

Read: August – September 2015

Format: Ebook ARC (Kindle)

My Book Rating: 2.5/5 Stars

Genre: New Adult Paranormal Romance

 

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Confession. I got about 30% through this book and didn’t think I could finish. Then, I realized I could use the text to speech feature on my Kindle and listen to the book at work. Multi-tasking at its finest. If not for text to speech, I probably would have quit this book.

When I saw Ghost for Sale on NetGalley I had to read it. I’m a huge fan of Meg Cabot’s Mediator series, about a girl who can see, hear, and touch ghosts. In Mediator, the heroine moves into an old house with her family and discovers a ghost from the 1800’s living in her bedroom. The romance is a slow build throughout the series and the characters have more to their lives than just thinking about how hot the other is. Like, mediating ghosts and helping them cross to the afterlife.

While Ghost for Sale starts out great, with our heroine Caitlin’s cousin/roommate, Marcy, receiving two test tubes in the mail, supposedly containing ghosts, and upon opening said test tubes only Caitlin can see said ghost. From there, it goes downhill.

For starters, despite being told multiple times that Caitlin’s cousin Marcy is so beautiful and rich and all the guy want her, every single male in the book asks Caitlin out. In the beginning, in the club, she dances with and is asked out by two guys, minutes apart, if that. She gets hit on by a cop who pulls her over. Don’t even get me started on the “not really her boyfriend” guy who dates her, while seeing other girls because he “has needs” and Caitlin won’t sleep with him. It was downright unbelievable that the author couldn’t add in a single male character who didn’t fall all over himself for Caitlin.

Caitlin herself was completely impossible to relate to. See previous paragraph, then add in how shallow she acts. One guy actually tells her something along the lines of “you act ditzy, but I know you’re actually very smart” – how??? How does he know this because she acts like an idiot for 98% of the book. As stated before, we’re told multiple times how beautiful and rich Marcy is, and how Caitlin’s family doesn’t have money like them, yet her parents can afford to buy her a custom pink VW Bug for her birthday? Maybe she’s not as well off as Marcy, but it was irritating to be led to believe she’s not rich when she is.

Then, let’s talk about clothes and coffee. On second thought, let’s not. It felt as though every other page Caitlin was drinking coffee or thinking about coffee or her ghost, Liam, was bringing her coffee. Every time she changed clothes we had to hear what she was wearing, down to her jewelry and nail polish choice. As well as every other character. I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU’RE WEARING! If it’s not relevant to the story, and doesn’t drive the plot forwards, why waste my time?

Speaking of the story, after the promising opening, it slowed. It didn’t pick up again until almost halfway through. The beginning was us being told how much Caitlin loves Liam despite him making sexist comments and basically kind of being a jerk in my opinion. All while she’s dating this AMAZING guy she met in the club, Patrick, who was sweet, kind, caring, fun and most importantly, ALIVE.

I don’t want to give the whole story away, so I’ll be vague here. Basically, everything is tied up all pretty with a bow with our heroine basically having to do nothing at all, things just fell into place. The “villain” backed down in about two seconds. And Caitlin reacted like Bella in Twilight when Edward left her. At least Bella had the excuse of having had an intense relationship with Edward, whereas Caitlin knew Liam about a week. She was a complete drama queen and I never bought the romance for one second.

The ending…. Let’s just say there’s suspense of belief in fiction, and then there’s scoffing at the absurdity of what the author wants us to believe.

In all, I feel Cox has potential as an author, but this story didn’t work. There wasn’t enough of a plot to work with – it actually felt like most of the beginning was added as filler to make the book longer—and though she tried to build a romance between Caitlin and Liam, it just didn’t work. I didn’t believe it. When the characters act one way and the other characters don’t react reasonably, it just doesn’t work for me.

Ultimately, I’d say skip this one. If another book by this author appears on NetGalley I’d give it a shot, but I won’t expect much.