Review: Heir and the Spare by Emily Albright

The Heir and the Spare by Emily Albright

Publisher: Merit Press

Release Date: December 4, 2015

My Rating: ★

Goodreads

--

      Going all the way to England for university–to Oxford no less–would be exciting enough. But no sooner does Evie set foot on English soil then she falls for a boy who turns out to be a real prince–in fact, second in line to the throne of England.  Edmund is wonderful, even though loving him can be a royal pain, from the demands of his family to the stuck-up aristocrat who thinks she should be the one to win Edmund's heart. 

      All that is swept aside, however, when the riddle of Evie's past surfaces, and the new couple becomes obsessed with figuring out who the real Evie is, with the growing suspicion that the truth will be a shocker.

--

Wet socks and the Star Wars Christmas special both have something in common.  They suck.

Just like this book.

I’ll be honest; I only picked up this book in the first place because I thought the cover was cute.  When I read the premise I wasn’t expecting much, but I still had hope.  And with every chapter I completed that hope was slowly squashed out of me.  Just to be clear, I don’t have anything against fluffy romance.  I love a good bit of fluff.  But this book was like eating an entire cake in one go and then guzzling a pound of sugar.

Review: Passenger by Alexandra Bracken

Passenger by Alexandra Bracken

Publisher: Disney-Hyperion

Release Date: January 5, 2016

My Rating: ★★★★

Goodreads

--

In one devastating night, violin prodigy Etta Spencer loses everything she knows and loves. Thrust into an unfamiliar world by a stranger with a dangerous agenda, Etta is certain of only one thing: she has traveled not just miles, but years from home. And she's inherited a legacy she knows nothing about from a family whose existence she's never heard of. Until now.

      Nicholas Carter is content with his life at sea, free from the Ironwoods-a powerful family in the Colonies-and the servitude he's known at their hands. But with the arrival of an unusual passenger on his ship comes the insistent pull of the past that he can't escape and the family that won't let him go so easily. Now the Ironwoods are searching for a stolen object of untold value, one they believe only Etta, his passenger, can find. In order to protect her, Nick must ensure she brings it back to them-whether she wants to or not.

Together, Etta and Nicholas embark on a perilous journey across centuries and continents, piecing together clues left behind by the traveler who will do anything to keep the object out of the Ironwoods' grasp. But as they get closer to the truth of their search, and the deadly game the Ironwoods are playing, treacherous forces threaten to separate Etta not only from Nicholas but from her path home forever.

--

Before I say anything else, kudos to Alexandra Bracken for an appropriate use of a prologue.  It actually added to the plot by setting up one of the characters without being a shameless info-dump.

Review: MARTians by Blythe Woolston

MARTians by Blythe Woolston

Publisher: Candlewick Press

Release Date: October 13th 2015

My Rating: ★★★

Goodreads

--

Last girl Zoë Zindleman, numerical ID 009-99-9999, has just been graduated. Early. Her options: wait for her home to be foreclosed and stripped of anything valuable now that AnnaMom has moved away, or move to the Warren, an abandoned strip-mall-turned-refuge for other left-behinds—a safe place, and close to AllMART, Zoë’s new employer, where “your smile is AllMART’s welcome mat.” Zoë may be the last girl, but her name means “life,” and Zoë isn’t ready to disappear into the AllMART abyss. Zoë wants to live.

               MARTians is set in a world of exurban decay studded with big-box stores, where its inhabitants are numbed by shopping and the six o’clock “news.” MARTians may be the future, but it is frighteningly familiar.

--

What I learned from this book: One day Walmart and K-Mart are going to rule our lives and it’s totally going to SUCK.  (Okay, so you changed the names to AllMART and Q-Mart, but I see you, Blythe Woolston, I see you.)  When I first picked up this book I hadn’t exactly bothered to learn what it was about.  I, naturally, assumed it was about aliens from mars plus shopping carts.  But no, there are no aliens here, just really creepy big-box store employees.