Andye Reads

by Jackie BLOOD RED, SNOW WHITE by Marcus Sedgwick Publisher: Roaring Brook Press (October 25, 2016) Publication Date: October 25, 2016 Sold by: Macmillan Goodreads | Amazon Russia wakes from a long sleep and marches to St Petersburg to claim her birthright. Her awakening will mark the end for the Romanovs, and the dawn of a new era that changed the world. Arthur Ransome, a journalist and writer, was part of it all. He left his family in England and fell in love with Russia and a Russian woman. This is his story.  Oh how the mighty fall. Blood Red, Snow White seemed like something that I could fall head over heels in love with. I mean HISTORY. Russian Revolution. Like, the use of real history. All of this fantastically intertwined with allusions and metaphors out into the next world. Like, what is there NOT to love? Right? RIGHT? This is where I went wrong, because, although it seems to check all of the boxes…I just really struggled. I couldn’t get into it. I just really ...

Review by Jackie IRON CAST  by DESTINY SORIA Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Harry N. Abrams (October 11, 2016) Language: English Goodreads | Amazon In 1919, Ada Navarra—the intrepid daughter of immigrants—and Corinne Wells—a spunky, devil-may-care heiress—make an unlikely pair. But at the Cast Iron nightclub in Boston, anything and everything is possible. At night, on stage together, the two best friends, whose “afflicted” blood gives them the ability to create illusions through art, weave magic under the employ of Johnny Dervish, the club’s owner and a notorious gangster. By day, Ada and Corinne use these same skills to con the city’s elite in an attempt to keep the club afloat. When a “job” goes awry and Ada is imprisoned, she realizes they’re on the precipice of danger. Only Corinne—her partner in crime—can break her out of Haversham Asylum. But once Ada is out, they face betrayal at every turn. It’s the early 1900s and hemopaths are s...

Review by Jackie SPINDLE by E.K. Johnston Hardcover: 368 pages Publisher: Disney-Hyperion (December 6, 2016) Language: English The world is made safe by a woman...but it is a very big world. It has been generations since the Storyteller Queen drove the demon out of her husband and saved her country from fire and blood. Her family has prospered beyond the borders of their village, and two new kingdoms have sprouted on either side of the mountains where the demons are kept prisoner by bright iron, and by the creatures the Storyteller Queen made to keep them contained. But the prison is crumbling. Through years of careful manipulation, a demon has regained her power. She has made one kingdom strong and brought the other to its knees, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. When a princess is born, the demon is ready with the final blow: a curse that will cost the princess her very soul, or force her to destroy her own people to save her life. The threads of magic are tightly ...

Review by Jackie THE LOVELY RECKLESS by Kami Garcia Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Imprint (October 4, 2016) Language: English Goodreads | Amazon From #1 New York Times bestselling author Kami Garcia, a contemporary romance full of loss, love and redemption… Seventeen year-old Frankie Devereux would do anything to forget the past. Haunted by the memory of her boyfriend’s death, she lives her life by one dangerous rule: nothing matters. At least, that’s what Frankie tells herself after a reckless mistake forces her to leave her privileged life in the Heights to move in with her dad―an undercover cop. She transfers to public school in the Downs, where fistfights in the halls don’t faze anyone and illegal street racing is more popular than football. Marco Leone is the fastest street racer in the Downs. Tough, sexy, and hypnotic, he makes it impossible for Frankie to ignore him . . . and how he makes her feel. But the risks Marco takes for his family could have devas...

Review by Jackie STALKING JACK THE RIPPER by Kerri Maniscalco Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: jimmy patterson (September 20, 2016) Language: English Goodreads | Amazon Seventeen-year-old Audrey Rose Wadsworth was born a lord's daughter, with a life of wealth and privilege stretched out before her. But between the social teas and silk dress fittings, she leads a forbidden secret life. Against her stern father's wishes and society's expectations, Audrey often slips away to her uncle's laboratory to study the gruesome practice of forensic medicine. When her work on a string of savagely killed corpses drags Audrey into the investigation of a serial murderer, her search for answers brings her close to her own sheltered world. I adore gore. I like my Halloween (all of October, bring on the ghouls and vampires and werewolves) reads to be feisty and bloody and filled with feminist power. Stalking Jack the Ripper was a slam dunk for all of these criteria. When were addi...

Review by Jackie... A SHADOW BRIGHT AND BURNING By Jessica Cluess Series: Kingdom on Fire #1 Hardcover: 416 pages Publisher: Random House (September 20, 2016) Language: English Grade Range: 7 and up Age Range: 12 and up Goodreads | Amazon I am Henrietta Howel. The first female sorcerer in hundreds of years. The prophesied one. Or am I? Henrietta Howel can burst into flames. Forced to reveal her power to save a friend, she's shocked when instead of being executed, she's invited to train as one of Her Majesty's royal sorcerers. Thrust into the glamour of Victorian London, Henrietta is declared the chosen one, the girl who will defeat the Ancients, bloodthirsty demons terrorizing humanity. She also meets her fellow sorcerer trainees, handsome young men eager to test her power and her heart. One will challenge her. One will fight for her. One will betray her. But Henrietta Howel is  not  the chosen one.  As she plays a dangerous game of deception, s...

Review by Jackie SPARE AND FOUND PARTS by Sarah Maria Griffin Print Length: 416 pages Publisher: Greenwillow Books (October 4, 2016) Publication Date: October 4, 2016 Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers Goodreads | Amazon Nell Crane has never held a boy’s hand. In a city devastated by an epidemic, where survivors are all missing parts—an arm, a leg, an eye—Nell has always been an outsider. Her father is the famed scientist who created the biomechanical limbs that everyone now uses. But she’s the only one with her machinery on the inside: her heart. Since the childhood operation, she has ticked. Like a clock, like a bomb. And as her community rebuilds, everyone is expected to contribute to the society’s good . . . but how can Nell live up to her father’s revolutionary ideas when she has none of her own? Then she finds a lost mannequin’s hand while salvaging on the beach, and inspiration strikes. Can Nell build her own companion in a world that fears advanced technology? The deeper...

Review by Jackie A SHADOW BRIGHT AND BURNING by Jessica Cluess Print Length: 416 pages Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers (September 20, 2016) Publication Date: September 20, 2016 Sold by: Random House LLC Language: English Goodreads | Amazon I am Henrietta Howel. The first female sorcerer in hundreds of years. The prophesied one. Or am I? Henrietta Howel can burst into flames. Forced to reveal her power to save a friend, she's shocked when instead of being executed, she's invited to train as one of Her Majesty's royal sorcerers. Thrust into the glamour of Victorian London, Henrietta is declared the chosen one, the girl who will defeat the Ancients, bloodthirsty demons terrorizing humanity. She also meets her fellow sorcerer trainees, handsome young men eager to test her power and her heart. One will challenge her. One will fight for her. One will betray her. But Henrietta Howel is not the chosen one. As she plays a dangerous game of decep...

Review by Jackie VASSA IN THE NIGHT by Sarah Porter File Size: 1852 KB Print Length: 304 pages Publisher: Tor Teen (September 20, 2016) Publication Date: September 20, 2016 Sold by: Macmillan Goodreads | Amazon Vassa in the Night is an enchanting, modern retelling of the Russian folktale “Vassilissa the Beautiful” for young adults by the critically-acclaimed author, Sarah Porter. Leigh Bardugo, New York Times bestselling author of the Grisha Trilogy, calls it, "A dark, thoroughly modern fairy tale crackling with wit and magical mayhem." In the enchanted kingdom of Brooklyn, the fashionable people put on cute shoes, go to parties in warehouses, drink on rooftops at sunset, and tell themselves they’ve arrived. A whole lot of Brooklyn is like that now—but not Vassa’s working-class neighborhood. In Vassa’s neighborhood, where she lives with her stepmother and bickering stepsisters, one might stumble onto magic, but stumbling out again could become an issue. Babs Yagg, th...

Review by Jackie... THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES By Mindy McGinnis Hardcover: 352 pages Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books (September 20, 2016) Language: English Goodreads | Amazon Alex Craft knows how to kill someone. And she doesn’t feel bad about it. When her older sister, Anna, was murdered three years ago and the killer walked free, Alex uncaged the language she knows best. The language of violence. While her crime goes unpunished, Alex knows she can’t be trusted among other people, even in her small hometown. She relegates herself to the shadows, a girl who goes unseen in plain sight, unremarkable in the high school hallways. But Jack Fisher sees her. He’s the guy all other guys want to be: the star athlete gunning for valedictorian with the prom queen on his arm. Guilt over the role he played the night Anna’s body was discovered hasn’t let him forget Alex over the years, and now her green eyes amid a constellation of freckles have his attention. He doesn’t want to...

Review by Jackie... OUR CHEMICAL HEARTS By Krystal Sutherland Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: G.P. Putnam (September 6, 2016) Language: English Goodreads | Amazon John Green meets Rainbow Rowell in this irresistible story of first love, broken hearts, and the golden seams that put them back together again.   Henry Page has never been in love. He fancies himself a hopeless romantic, but the slo-mo, heart palpitating, can't-eat-can't-sleep kind of love that he's been hoping for just hasn't been in the cards for him—at least not yet. Instead, he's been happy to focus on his grades, on getting into a semi-decent college and finally becoming editor of his school newspaper. Then Grace Town walks into his first period class on the third Tuesday of senior year and he knows everything's about to change.   Grace isn't who Henry pictured as his dream girl—she walks with a cane, wears oversized boys' clothes, and rarely seems to shower. But when ...

 Review by Jackie How to Keep Rolling After a Fall by Karole Cozzo Age Range: 12 - 18 years Grade Level: 7 and up Paperback: 256 pages Publisher: Swoon Reads (August 2, 2016) Goodreads | Amazon After a cyber bullying incident turns her life upside down, a handsome wheelchair rugby player shows a former mean girl that everyone deserves a second chance in this swoonworthy new novel from the author of How to Say I Love You Out Loud. The party was at her house. The photos were posted to her Facebook account. That's all the evidence anyone needed to condemn Nikki Baylor for a cyberbullying incident that humiliated a classmate and nearly resulted in the girl's suicide. Now Nikki's been expelled from her old school, her friends have abandoned her, and even her own parents can't look her in the eye. With her plans for the future all but destroyed, Nikki resigns herself to being the girl everyone hates - almost as much as she hates herself. But then Nikki meets Pax, a s...

Review by Jackie The Loose Ends List  by Carrie Firestone Rating: 4.5 Stars Published by NOVL one June 7, 2016 Goodreads | Amazon A refreshing, funny, and moving debut novel about first loves, last wishes, and letting go. Seventeen-year-old Maddie O'Neill Levine lives a charmed life, and is primed to spend the perfect pre-college summer with her best friends and young-at-heart socialite grandmother (also Maddie's closest confidante), tying up high school loose ends. Maddie's plans change the instant Gram announces that she is terminally ill and has booked the family on a secret "death with dignity" cruise ship so that she can leave the world in her own unconventional way - and give the O'Neill clan an unforgettable summer of dreams-come-true in the process. Soon, Maddie is on the trip of a lifetime with her over-the-top family. As they travel the globe, Maddie bonds with other passengers and falls for Enzo, who is processing his own grief. But d...

Review by Jackie The Square Root of Summer by Harriet Reuter Hapgood Age Range: 12 - 18 years Grade Level: 8 - 12 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Roaring Brook Press (May 3, 2016) Goodreads | Amazon This is what it means to love someone. This is what it means to grieve someone. It's a little bit like a black hole. It's a little bit like infinity. Gottie H. Oppenheimer is losing time. Literally. When the fabric of the universe around her seaside town begins to fray, she's hurtled through wormholes to her past: To last summer, when her grandfather Grey died. To the afternoon she fell in love with Jason, who wouldn't even hold her hand at the funeral. To the day her best friend Thomas moved away and left her behind with a scar on her hand and a black hole in her memory. Although Grey is still gone, Jason and Thomas are back, and Gottie's past, present, and future are about to collide―and someone's heart is about to be broken. With time travel, quantu...