Monday, December 31, 2012

My Top 10 Adult Reads for 2012

Over the past year I have read some fantastic adult genre books. Making this list of only 10 favorites was very difficult and a lot of my favorite authors weren't even mentioned. So here is just a small taste of some  fabulous reads from 2012:

#10.Seven Nights in a Rogue's Bed
by Anna Campbell
Series: Sons of Sin #1
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, Forever
Publication date: September 25, 2012
Genre: Adult Historical Romance
Purchase*: Barnes and Noble/Amazon/Book Depository
Read my review


Will a week of seduction...
Desperate to save her sister's life, Sidonie Forsythe has agreed to submit herself to a terrible fate: Beyond the foreboding walls of Castle Craven, a notorious, hideously scarred scoundrel will take her virtue over the course of seven sinful nights. Yet instead of a monster, she encounters a man like no other. And during this week, she comes to care for Jonas Merrick in ways that defy all logic—even as a dark secret she carries threatens them both.
...Spark a lifetime of passionate surrender?
Ruthless loner Jonas knows exactly who he is. Should he forget, even for a moment, the curse he bears, a mere glance in the mirror serves as an agonizing reminder. So when the lovely Sidonie turns up on his doorstep, her seduction is an even more delicious prospect than he originally planned. But the hardened outcast is soon moved by her innocent beauty, sharp wit, and surprising courage. Now as dangerous enemies gather at the gate to destroy them, can their new, fragile love survive?
#9. Third Grave Dead Ahead
by Darynda Jones
Series: Charlie Davidson series #3
Publisher: St. Martin Press
Publication date: January 31, 2012
Genre: Adult Paranormal
Purchase: Barnes and Noble/Amazon/Book Depository
Read my review


Charley Davidson-grim reaper extraordinaire, private investigator . . . meh-is practicing her profession under the influence, caffeine and copious amounts of it, due to an extreme desire to induce insomnia. Every time she closes her eyes, Reyes Farrow, the part-human, part-supermodel son of Satan, is there. Only thing is, he’s a tad peeved. She did bind him for all eternity, so it’s hard blame him. But 13 days without a wink is bound to bring out the crazy in a girl. So, when a man hires her to find his wife, Charley accepts the job with one goal in mind: Put the man behind bars, and not the wet kind. She can sense the guilt waft off him and vows to find the woman’s body and prove he’s a murderer. In the meantime, Reyes is back in prison and none too happy about it . . . so Charley thinks, until she is carjacked by the dark-haired rake, who swears the very man he went to prison for killing is not only alive, but close by. And he wants Charley to find him. While a visit to her old friend Rocket sheds no light on Reyes’s situation, Charley finds out the man’s wife is still alive and time is running out. Finding her before she dies would be a miracle, but she has to try. Together with the help of a fashion-impaired receptionist named Cookie, Charley sets out to bring the bad guys to justice. She just hopes Reyes is not one of them. And that she’s not hallucinating from her self-induced bout with insomnia
#8.The Reckoning
by Alma Katsu
Series: The Taker Trilogy #2
Publisher: Gallery Books
Publication date: June 19, 2012
Genre: Adult Paranormal Romance
Purchase*: Barnes and Noble/Amazon/Book Depository
Read my review


SECOND IN ALMA KATSU’S GRIPPING SUPERNATURAL TRILOGY THAT BEGAN WITH THE TAKER  Lanore McIlvrae is the kind of woman who will do anything for love. Including imprisoning the man who loves her behind a wall of brick and stone. She had no choice but to entomb Adair, her nemesis, to save Jonathan, the boy she grew up with in a remote Maine town in the early 1800s and the man she thought she would be with forever. But Adair had other plans for her. He used his mysterious, otherworldly powers to give her eternal life, but Lanore learned too late that there was a price for this gift: to spend eternity with him. And though he is handsome and charming, behind Adair’s seductive faÇade is the stuff of nightmares. He is a monster in the flesh, and he wants Lanore to love him for all of time. Now, two hundred years after imprisoning Adair, Lanore is trying to atone for her sins. She has given away the treasures she’s collected over her many lifetimes in order to purge her past and clear the way for a future with her new lover, Luke Findley. But, while viewing these items at an exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Lanore suddenly is aware that the thing she’s been dreading for two hundred years has caught up to her: Adair has escaped from his prison. He’s free— and he will come looking for her. And she has no idea how she will save herself.
#7. Royal Street
by Suzanne Johnson
Series: Sentinels of New Orleans #1
Publisher: Tor
Publication date: April 10, 2012
Genre: Adult Urban Fantasy
Purchase: Barnes and Noble/Amazon/Book Depository
Read my review


As the junior wizard sentinel for New Orleans, Drusilla Jaco's job involves a lot more potion-mixing and pixie-retrieval than sniffing out supernatural bad guys like rogue vampires and lethal were-creatures. DJ's boss and mentor, Gerald St. Simon, is the wizard tasked with protecting the city from anyone or anything that might slip over from the preternatural beyond.
Then Hurricane Katrina hammers New Orleans' fragile levees, unleashing more than just dangerous flood waters.
While winds howled and Lake Pontchartrain surged, the borders between the modern city and the Otherworld crumbled. Now, the undead and the restless are roaming the Big Easy, and a serial killer with ties to voodoo is murdering the soldiers sent to help the city recover. To make it worse, Gerry has gone missing, the wizards' Elders have assigned a grenade-toting assassin as DJ's new partner, and undead pirate Jean Lafitte wants to make her walk his plank. The search for Gerry and for the serial killer turns personal when DJ learns the hard way that loyalty requires sacrifice, allies come from the unlikeliest places, and duty mixed with love creates one bitter gumbo
#6. Shadow of Night
by Deborah Harkness
Series: All Souls Trilogy #2
Publisher: Viking
Publication date: July 10, 2012
Genre: Adult Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Romance
Purchase: Barnes and Noble/Amazon/Book Depository
Read my review


Now, picking up from A Discovery of Witches’ cliffhanger ending, Shadow of Night plunges Diana and Matthew into Elizabethan London, a world of spies, subterfuge, and a coterie of Matthew’s old friends, the mysterious School of Night that includes Christopher Marlowe and Walter Raleigh. Here, Diana must locate a witch to tutor her in magic, Matthew is forced to confront a past he thought he had put to rest, and the mystery of Ashmole 782 deepens. Deborah Harkness has crafted a gripping journey through a world of alchemy, time travel, and magical discoveries, delivering one of the most hotly anticipated novels of the season.
#5.Taking on the Dead
by Annie Walls
Series: The Famished Trilogy #1
Publication date: September 20, 2012
Genre: New Adult Post Apocalyptic
Purchase: Barnes and Noble/Amazon
Read my review

Life for Kansas was perfect until the day the world changed.
She has been hiding out for four years in solitude. It's the only way to survive. The only way not to draw the living dead. Helping a small group of people, she learns the new world might not be what she assumes. Venturing out of her refuge and comfort zone, she meets Rudy, who helps her find a greater purpose. She realizes that the world has moved on without her. Only it's not what she expects. Her knowledge of the living dead grows and only makes her more curious as humanity continues to hang on by a thread. While on her search for answers she finds comfort in new friendships and love, but her past seems as if it will haunt her forever. Kansas takes it upon herself to help other survivors, which would be easy if the famished were the only obstacles.In a trilogy plot thick with twists and turns, this adult dark fantasy is emotional as much as it is horrifyingly gripping.
#4. A Rogue By Any Other Name
by Sarah MacLean
Series: The Rules of Scoundrels #1
Publisher: Avon
Publication date:  February 1, 2012
Genre: Historical Romance
Buy: Barnes and Noble/Amazon/ Book Depository
Read my review


What a scoundrel wants, a scoundrel gets . . .
A decade ago, the Marquess of Bourne was cast from society with nothing but his title. Now a partner in London’s most exclusive gaming hell, the cold, ruthless Bourne will do whatever it takes to regain his inheritance—including marrying perfect, proper Lady Penelope Marbury. A broken engagement and years of disappointing courtships have left Penelope with little interest in a quiet, comfortable marriage, and a longing for something more. How lucky that her new husband has access to such unexplored pleasures. Bourne may be a prince of London’s underworld, but he vows to keep Penelope untouched by its wickedness—a challenge indeed as the lady discovers her own desires, and her willingness to wager anything for them . . . even her heart.
#3. The Restorer
by Amanda Stevens
Series: The Graveyard Queen #1
Publisher: Mira
Publication date: 2/21/2012
Genre: Adult Urban Fantasy
Purchase*:Barnes and Noble/Amazon/Book Depository
Read my review


My name is Amelia Gray. I'm a cemetery restorer who sees ghosts. In order to protect myself from the parasitic nature of the dead, I've always held fast to the rules passed down from my father. But now a haunted police detective has entered my world and everything is changing, including the rules that have always kept me safe. It started with the discovery of a young woman's brutalized body in an old Charleston graveyard I've been hired to restore. The clues to the killer—and to his other victims—lie in the headstone symbolism that only I can interpret. Devlin needs my help, but his ghosts shadow his every move, feeding off his warmth, sustaining their presence with his energy. To warn him would be to invite them into my life. I've vowed to keep my distance, but the pull of his magnetism grows ever stronger even as the symbols lead me closer to the killer and to the gossamer veil that separates this world from the next.
#2. Blackout
by Mira Grant
Series: Newsflesh Trilogy #3
Publisher: Orbit
Publication date: May 22, 2012
Genre: Adult Post-Apocalyptic /Zombie
Purchase: Barnes and Noble/Amazon/Book Depository
Read my review


Rise up while you can. -Georgia Mason
The year was 2014. The year we cured cancer. The year we cured the common cold. And the year the dead started to walk. The year of the Rising.
The year was 2039. The world didn't end when the zombies came, it just got worse. Georgia and Shaun Mason set out on the biggest story of their generation. The uncovered the biggest conspiracy since the Rising and realized that to tell the truth, sacrifices have to be made. Now, the year is 2041, and the investigation that began with the election of President Ryman is much bigger than anyone had assumed. With too much left to do and not much time left to do it in, the surviving staff of After the End Times must face mad scientists, zombie bears, rogue government agencies-and if there's one thing they know is true in post-zombie America, it's this:Things can always get worse.
#1. The Twelve
by Justin Cronin
Trilogy: The Passage #2
Publisher: Ballentine Books
Publication date: October 16, 2012
Genre: Adult Dystopian
Purchase*: Barnes and Noble/Amazon/Book Depository
Read my review


THE EPIC STORY OF THE PASSAGE CONTINUES
At the end of The Passage, the great viral plague had left a small group of survivors clinging to life amidst a world transformed into a nightmare. In the second volume of this epic trilogy, this same group of survivors, led by the mysterious, charismatic Amy, go on the attack, leading an insurrection against the virals: the first offensives of the Second Viral War. To do this, they must infiltrate a dozen hives, each presided over by one of the original Twelve. Their secret weapon: Alicia, transformed at the end of book one into a half human, half viral—but whose side, in the end, is she really on?
Wow that was hard and you will notice not all of these are five stars..but they stood out in my mind.
What adult novels stood out for you in 2012? 

Honorable Mentions 
Redemption by Susannah Sandlin
Sweet Chaos by Misty Evans 


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My Top 10 YA Reads Published in 2012

What a year for Young-Adult Books! Reflecting back over the past year I've read some stellar books from all of the young-adult genres and decided to share my favorites with you. Now keep in mind this list is based solely on the 250 books that I have read...I have a few books such as Pushing the Limit and Slammed in my TBR pile that might have made the list:


#10. The Darkest Minds
by Alexandra Bracken
Series: The Darkest Minds #1
Publisher: Disney Hyperion
Publication date: December 18, 2012
Genre: YA Dystopian
Purchase: Barnes and Noble/Amazon/Book Depository
Read my review


When Ruby wakes up on her tenth birthday, something about her has changed. Something alarming enough to make her parents lock her in the garage and call the police. Something that gets her sent to Thurmond, a brutal government "rehabilitation camp." She might have survived the mysterious disease that's killed most of America's children, but she and the others have emerged with something far worse: frightening abilities they cannot control. 
Now sixteen, Ruby is one of the dangerous ones. When the truth comes out, Ruby barely escapes Thurmond with her life. Now she's on the run, desperate to find the one safe haven left for kids like her--East River. She joins a group of kids who escaped their own camp. Liam, their brave leader, is falling hard for Ruby. But no matter how much she aches for him, Ruby can't risk getting close. Not after what happened to her parents. When they arrive at East River, nothing is as it seems, least of all its mysterious leader. But there are other forces at work, people who will stop at nothing to use Ruby in their fight against the government. Ruby will be faced with a terrible choice, one that may mean giving up her only chance at a life worth living.
 #9. Velveteen
by Daniel Marks
Series: Velveteen #1
Publisher: Random House/Delacorte
Publication date: October 9, 2012
Genre: YA Paranormal
Purchase*: Barnes and Noble/Amazon/Book Depository
Read my review


Velveteen Monroe is dead. At 16, she was kidnapped and murdered by a madman named Bonesaw. But that's not the problem. The problem is she landed in purgatory. And while it's not a fiery inferno, it's certainly no heaven. It's gray, ashen, and crumbling more and more by the day, and everyone has a job to do. Which doesn't leave Velveteen much time to do anything about what's really on her mind. Bonesaw. Velveteen aches to deliver the bloody punishment her killer deserves. And she's figured out just how to do it. She'll haunt him for the rest of his days. It'll be brutal . . . and awesome. But crossing the divide between the living and the dead has devastating consequences. Velveteen's obsessive haunting cracks the foundations of purgatory and jeopardizes her very soul. A risk she's willing to take—except fate has just given her reason to stick around: an unreasonably hot and completely off-limits coworker. Velveteen can't help herself when it comes to breaking rules . . . or getting revenge. And she just might be angry enough to take everyone down with her.
#8. Mystic City
by Theo Lawrence
Series: Mystic City #1
Publisher: Random House
Publication date: October 9, 2012
Genre: YA Dystopian
Purchase*: Barnes and Noble/Amazon/Book Depository
Read my review


For fans of Matched, The Hunger Games, X-Men, and Blade Runner comes a tale of a magical city divided, a political rebellion ignited, and a love that was meant to last forever. 
Aria Rose, youngest scion of one of Mystic City's two ruling rival families, finds herself betrothed to Thomas Foster, the son of her parents' sworn enemies. The union of the two will end the generations-long political feud—and unite all those living in the Aeries, the privileged upper reaches of the city, against the banished mystics who dwell below in the Depths. But Aria doesn't remember falling in love with Thomas; in fact, she wakes one day with huge gaps in her memory. And she can't conceive why her parents would have agreed to unite with the Fosters in the first place. Only when Aria meets Hunter, a gorgeous rebel mystic from the Depths, does she start to have glimmers of recollection—and to understand that he holds the key to unlocking her past. The choices she makes can save or doom the city—including herself.
#7. Cinder
by Marissa Meyer
Series: Lunar Chronicles #1
Publisher: Macmillan
Publication date: January 3, 2012
Genre: YA Steampunk Dystopian
Purchase:Barnes and Noble/Amazon/Book Depository
Read my review


Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl. . . .
Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.
 #6. Skylark
by Meagan Spooner
Series: Skylark #1
Publisher: Carolrhoda Books
Publication date: August 1, 2012
Genre: YA Fantasy
Purchase: Barnes and Noble/Amazon/Book Depository
Read my review



Sixteen year-old Lark Ainsley has never seen the skyHer world ends at the edge of the vast domed barrier of energy enclosing all that’s left of humanity. For two hundred years the city has sustained this barrier by harvesting its children's innate magical energy when they reach adolescence. When it’s Lark’s turn to be harvested, she finds herself trapped in a nightmarish web of experiments and learns she is something out of legend itself: a Renewable, able to regenerate her own power after it’s been stripped.
Forced to flee the only home she knows to avoid life as a human battery, Lark must fight her way through the terrible wilderness beyond the edge of the world. With the city’s clockwork creations close on her heels and a strange wild boy stalking her in the countryside, she must move quickly if she is to have any hope of survival. She’s heard the stories that somewhere to the west are others like her, hidden in secret – but can she stay alive long enough to find them?
#5. Partials
by Dan Wells
Series: Partials Sequence #1
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: February 28, 2012
Genre: YA Dystopian
Purchase: Barnes and Noble/Amazon/Book Depository
Read my review





The human race is all but extinct after a war with Partials—engineered organic beings identical to humans—has decimated the population. Reduced to tens of thousands by RM, a weaponized virus to which only a fraction of humanity is immune, the survivors in North America have huddled together on Long Island while the Partials have mysteriously retreated. The threat of the Partials is still imminent, but worse, no baby has been born immune to RM in more than a decade. Our time is running out. Kira, a sixteen-year-old medic in training, is on the front lines of this battle, seeing RM ravage the community while mandatory pregnancy laws threaten to launch what’s left of humanity into civil war, and she’s not content to stand by and watch. But as she makes a desperate decision to save the last of her race, she will discover that the survival of humans and Partials alike rests in her attempts to uncover the connections between them—connections that humanity has forgotten, or perhaps never even knew were there.  Dan Wells, acclaimed author of I Am Not a Serial Killer, takes readers on a pulse-pounding journey into a world where the very concept of what it means to be human is in question—one where our humanity is both our greatest liability and our only hope for survival. 
#4.This is Not A Test
by Courtney Summers
Publisher: St. Martin
Publication date: June 19, 2012
Genre: YA Horror
Purchase: Barnes and Noble/Amazon/Book Depository
Read my review



 It’s the end of the world. Six students have taken cover in Cortege High but shelter is little comfort when the dead outside won’t stop pounding on the doors. One bite is all it takes to kill a person and bring them back as a monstrous version of their former self.
To Sloane Price, that doesn’t sound so bad. Six months ago, her world collapsed and since then, she’s failed to find a reason to keep going. Now seems like the perfect time to give up. As Sloane eagerly waits for the barricades to fall, she’s forced to witness the apocalypse through the eyes of five people who actually want to live.
But as the days crawl by, the motivations for survival change in startling ways and soon the group’s fate is determined less and less by what’s happening outside and more and more by the unpredictable and violent bids for life—and death—inside.
When everything is gone, what do you hold on to?
#3. Every Day
by David Levithan
Publisher: Knopf
Publication date: August 28, 2012
Genre: YA Fiction
Purchase: Barnes and Noble/Amazon/Book Depository
Read my review


Every day a different body. Every day a different life. Every day in love with the same girl. 

Every morning, A wakes in a different person’s body, a different person’s life. There’s never any warning about where it will be or who it will be. A has made peace with that, even established guidelines by which to live: Never get too attached. Avoid being noticed. Do not interfere.
It’s all fine until the morning that A wakes up in the body of Justin and meets Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon. From that moment, the rules by which A has been living no longer apply. Because finally A has found someone he wants to be with—day in, day out, day after day.

With his new novel, David Levithan has pushed himself to new creative heights. He has written a captivating story that will fascinate readers as they begin to comprehend the complexities of life and love in A’s world, as A and Rhiannon seek to discover if you can truly love someone who is destined to change every day.
#2. The City's Son
by Tom Pollock
Series: The Skyscraper Throne #1
Publisher: Flux 
Publication date: September 8, 2012
Genre: YA Urban Fantasy
Purchase*: Barnes and Noble/Amazon/Book Depository
Read my review


Running from her traitorous best friend and her estranged father, graffiti artist Beth Bradley is looking for sanctuary. What she finds is Urchin, the ragged and cocky crown prince of London’s mystical underworld. Urchin opens Beth’s eyes to the city she’s never truly seen-where vast spiders crawl telephone wires seeking voices to steal, railwraiths escape their tethers, and statues conceal an ancient priesthood robed in bronze.
But it all teeters on the brink of destruction. Amid rumors that Urchin’s goddess mother will soon return from her 15-year exile, Reach, a malign god of urban decay, wants the young prince dead. Helping Urchin raise an alleyway army to reclaim his skyscraper throne, Beth soon forgets her old life. But when her best friend is captured, Beth must choose between this wondrous existence and the life she left behind.
#1. Grave Mercy
by Robin LaFevers
Series: His Fair Assassin #1
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication date: April 3, 2012
Genre: YA Historical Fiction
Purchase: Barnes and Noble/Amazon/Book Depository
Read my review


Why be the sheep, when you can be the wolf?
Seventeen-year-old Ismae escapes from the brutality of an arranged marriage into the sanctuary of the convent of St. Mortain, where the sisters still serve the gods of old. Here she learns that the god of Death Himself has blessed her with dangerous gifts—and a violent destiny. If she chooses to stay at the convent, she will be trained as an assassin and serve as a handmaiden to Death. To claim her new life, she must destroy the lives of others. Ismae's most important assignment takes her straight into the high court of Brittany—where she finds herself woefully under prepared—not only for the deadly games of intrigue and treason, but for the impossible choices she must make. For how can she deliver Death’s vengeance upon a target who, against her will, has stolen her heart?

Honorable Mentions 


What were some of your favorite YA reads for 2012?

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Sunday, December 30, 2012

ARC Reading Challenge Goals for January 2013

Review Request January at Musings of a Bookworm

I am joining the Gang @ Musings of a Bookworm
for their January 2013 month long challenge to read ARC's.

I will be reading books for January and February Reviews
Here is a list:


Uses for Boys
Shadowland
The Bonded
The Drowning House
Trashy Chic
Breaking Point
Trouble with Fate -DNF
Till the World Ends
White Horse
What Happens in Scotland
Unravel Me
Slated
Intercept
The Harvesting
The Woman from Paris
Scent of Darkness
Austenensibly Ordinary 
Hysteria
Water Witch
Love and Other Perishable Things
Nobody's Angel
Run the Risk
The Importance of Being Wicked
Gilded Wings
Taming Her Forbidden Earl 

join in the fun! 


Update:
Read 30 books in January
of which:
21 ARCS
9 personal reads


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The Sunday Post ~sharing blog news and book haul

The Sunday Post ~ 36th Edition
The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer ~ It's a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week on your blog, showcase books and things we have received and share news about what is coming up on our blog for the week ahead. 
Oh my sweet goodness, what a wonderful week! Our family has been here from the coast and we have been enjoying their company. My daughter and her boyfriend "the one" spent Christmas with us as well and will be back Monday to bang in the new year with us. I have had a blast scooping up book deals and pre-ordering my most anticipated books! 

Last Week on the Blog we brought you


This Week on the Blog look for

  • Top 10 YA reads for 2012
  • Top 10 Adult reads for 2012 
  • The Unhallowed Ones by Laura Bickle (review)
  • Fear Collector by Gregg Olsen (review)
  • The Uninvited by Liz Jensen (review)
  • Grave Intentions by Lori Sjoberg (review)
  • Hellion in her Bed by Sabrina Jeffries (review)

  • Book Haul  
    For Review: 


    The Ruins of Lace by Iris Anthony
    thanks to Sourcebooks


    The Bughouse Affair by Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini 
    thanks to Tor/Forge publishing


    The Better to See You by Kate Serine
    courtesy of Kensington ebooks

    Gifted or Won:

    I pre-ordered a lot of books that will release on January 27, 2013
    Ever After by Kim Harrison
    Boundless by Cynthia Hand
    Dream Eyes by Jayne Ann Krentz
    Everbound by Brodi Ashton 
    and still have money to spend..woot! woot!


    The Tragedy Paper by Elizabeth Laban
    thanks to Random House


    I won There Comes A Prophet by David Litwack during the blog tour
    stop from Candace @ Candace's Book Blog

    Downloaded for free thanks to Carina Press:




    Purchased for killer after Christmas deals:





    That's my news
    link up and share yours! 



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