I thought I'd share the cover for Bethany Wiggins upcoming book Stung.
It was part of one of my recent posts Upcoming Books That Don't Yet Have A Cover and the author Bethany has let me know that the cover is up on Amazon and so I thought I'd post it for people to see.
I'm excited for this one it's been on my wishlist for a while.
Government attempts to save endangered bees by genetic modification causes their sting to induce deadly, flu-like symptoms in humans. A vaccine created in response changes children into ferocious, killer beasts. The uninfected have built a wall to keep the beasts out, & a girl has awakened on the wrong side.
Welcome, today I am hosting this stop on the Australian Blog Tour for Lauren Kate's book Rapture, the fourth and final book in the series.
I will be posting an interview with Lauren, and posting the Rapture book trailer.
A big thanks to Lauren and Dot from Random House Australia for setting this tour up.
1.Were any of your characters modeled after anyone?
Nearly all of them were modeled after real people—except for Daniel. Luce is based on my oldest, closest friend. Cam is based on my husband (yes, I’m married to the devil). Arriane is an amalgamation of the crazy friends I’ve collected over the years. Daniel, on the other hand, is based around Luce. I wanted his character to fit her character precisely, to grow into her as she grows, to fill the empty spaces around her.
2.If you had to pick, who would you choose - Daniel or Cam?
Well I have already married Cam…lucky for Luce, she can have Daniel.
3.What can we expect next book-wise? Are you still staying with the Paranormal genre?
I’m working on something exciting and new. Like the Fallen novels, this next series takes an old, familiar story and injects an impossible love into its backbones. It’s been invigorating and challenging to move away from the world I was so comfortable with: new rules, new voices, new obstacles to overcome. My lips are forcibly sealed from giving away more details at the moment, but I’m excited to share the news as soon as I can.
4.Were you a big reader when you were younger? If so what were your favourites?
My mother is a teacher, so I spent half my childhood moseying around our local public library while she worked on her lesson plans. I love Roald Dahl, Ellen Raskin, Lois Lowry, S. E. Hinton. My first swoony book crush was on Rhett Butler from Gone with the Wind.
5.And finally you're hosting a dinner party - which book characters would you invite along?
Publication: 22nd August 2010 Publisher: Pill Hill Press Pages: 272 Genre: Paranormal Age Appropriate: Young Adult
Most teens turn sixteen and get the license to drive, but Lil Falcon gets the license to kill demons. Orphaned as a child and raised by an eccentric grandfather, Lil is concerned with surviving high school and is unaware that she's a Guardian-a being with super powers charged with killing demons and protecting humanity. When she meets Bran, a mysterious boy with amazing abilities, his psi energy unlocks her latent powers. But Bran has a secret that can ruin their growing relationship, and the truth she discovers may destroy everything she believes in unless she finds the right balance between love and sacrifice.
My Thoughts.
I absolutely loved this book, after having been sent the second book in the series to review I ordered this one so I wouldn't be confused when I got to it, the cover I wasn't a big fan of at first but it eventually grew on me and is very accurate to Bran a character in the book.
We jump straight into the story which I loved instead of having to wait a while to find out what was going on, Lilith 'Lil' hears a boy's voice in her head telling her to meet him outside a bit wary she goes and finds a boy her age Bran who asks for her help , with the things he tells her she thinks he's lost his mind, but she soon discovers her life has all been a lie her Grampa has kept a lot of things from her, not only about herself but about who he really is too. She's a Guardian tasked with saving humans from the demons that want to take there souls.
I loved everything about this book the storyline was fantastic with all the different I guess you could say species of angels and demons which are: Xenith, Hermonites, Guardians, Neteru, Werenephil, Nosferatu, Souled Demons, Nephlings and Nature Benders.
To have a world where it's not your typical good angel and fallen angel makes this so much more exciting and intriguing and I enjoyed finding out about them all and their different powers and such. Some of the powers that are used in this book include: telepathy, teleportation, mind persuasion, healing, the ability to change time, telekinisis and the list goes on. Lil has a gypsy heritage that she's proud of and mostly dresses the part with the skirts and the jewellery and travels around with her Grampa in a trailer from place to place.
We also meet other trainee Guardians at Lil's school Remy, Sykes, Izzy and Kim and they all train together of course once they find out about Bran they're wary and don't trust him. I loved the interaction between Lil and Bran they make such a cute couple, there isn't really any character here that I felt bored reading about.
I really can't say enough good things about this book, now off to get lost in the second book.
Rae's always dreamed of dating a guy like Nathan. He’s nothing like her abusive stepfather—in other words, he’s sweet. But the closer they get, the more Nathan wants of her time, of her love, of her...and the less she wants to give.
As Rae’s affection for Nathan turns to fear, she leans on her friend Leo for support. With Leo, she feels lighter, happier. And possessive Nathan becomes jealous.
Then a tragedy lands Rae in the ICU. Now, hovering between life and death, Rae must find the light amid the darkness…and the strength to fight for life and the love she deserves.
Sixteen year old Loki Blackstar is no Prince Charming. His mother is a ghost. His only friend is a red Cadillac that talks to him through the radio. He looks like an Angel but acts like jerk. No wonder he has been banned from Heaven, which is the least of his troubles. Loki needs a job to pay for school and support himself.
Still, Loki has a rare gift: He is a Dreamhunter. One of the few in the world who can hunt and kill immortal demons in their dreams so they never wake up again.
When Loki is sent to kill a sixteen-year-old vampire girl the locals call Snow White Sorrow, he is pulled into a magical but dangerous world. The locals believe the monster to be Snow White.
The real Snow White... living in the ruins of an ancient castle in a small town. She is described as horribly beautiful, terrifyingly enchanting, and wickedly lovely.
What he finds instead is a beautiful monster girl filled with rage and hurt, who has an epic untold story to tell of things such like why the Brothers Grimm altered the fairy tale, who the Evil Queen really is, where the mirror came from, and who possessed it.
Snow White has killed every person who has dared come near the castle where she once lived with the queen. Mysteriously, she lets Loki live.
Jules lives with her family above their restaurant, which means she smells like pizza most of the time and drives their double-meatball-shaped food truck to school. It’s not a recipe for popularity, but she can handle that.
What she can’t handle is the vision. Over and over, Jules sees a careening truck hit a building and explode... and nine body bags in the snow.
She has no idea why this is happening to her or if she’s going crazy. It hardly matters, because the visions are everywhere--on billboards, television screens, windows--and she’s the only one who can see them.
But it’s not until the vision starts coming more frequently, and revealing more clues, that Jules knows what she has to do. Because now she can see the face in one of the body bags, and it's someone she knows. Someone she’s been in love with for as long as she can remember.
“I found out two things today. One, I think I’m dying. And two, my brother is a perv.”
So begins the diary of 14-year-old Jenna Samuels, who is having a very bad eighth-grade year. Her single mother spends all day in bed. Dad vanished when she was eight. Her 16-year-old brother, Casey, tries to hold together what’s left of the family by working two after-school jobs— difficult, as he’s stoned all the time. To make matters worse, Jenna is sick. When she collapses one day, Casey tries to race her to the hospital in their beat-up Prius and crashes instead. Jenna wakes up in the ER to find Casey beside her. Beatified. Literally. The flab and zits? Gone. Before long, Jenna figures out that Casey didn’t survive the accident at all. He’s an “A-word.” (She can’t bring herself to utter the truth.) Soon they discover that Jenna isn’t just dying: she’s being poisoned. And Casey has been sent back to help solve the mystery that not only holds the key to her survival, but also to their mother’s mysterious depression and father’s disappearance.
Someone is kidnapping and incinerating otherworlders beyond recognition, and detective Marisol Whitman, a succubus, races to find the murderer before he claims another victim. But her pursuit is derailed when her responsible younger sister vanishes. Marisol suspects foul play and enlists support from an unlikely source: an agent from the Otherworlder Enforcement Agency, Valerio Costa.
When the trail pointing to everyone from vampires to witches dries up, Agent Costa admits to knowing more than he’s shared. Marisol’s sister’s kidnapper harnesses more magic than she can imagine—and they’re running out of time. To find her sister before her powers are drained and twisted beyond recognition, Marisol must connect the dots between cases and put her trust in Costa, a salamander who may burn her before she can solve either case.
My Thoughts.
I'd never heard of this author or series before starting this book but was intrigued by the title, and I can say after finishing this in about 3 hours or so that I absolutely loved it, the only problem being that I didn't realise this was the second book in the series but luckily enough you can get by without reading it and the world that this book is set in is explained and it's easy to follow along the storyline.
The story focuses on Marisol a succubus who is a detective in the police department, she is partnered up with Valerio Costa who works for the OWEA (Otherworlder Enforcement Agency) after her younger sister Elaine (also a succubus) doesn't return home one night and with her sister being the responsible type she immediately knows that something is wrong, Costa informs her that there has been a spate of missing succubi and that they are being sold as sex slaves, she is also helping on another case involving Otherworlder victims being burnt beyond recognition, burnt so bad that they can't even tell what kind of Otherworlder it is, Marisol finds that there seems to be quite a few bodies like this found around quite a few states and that they may tie in some way to her missing sister's case.
I loved the assortment of different Otherworldly types in this series your usual succubi, vampires, witches and some new ones including Salamanders which Costa happens to be who can produce fire , although the better they are with their powers the resistance to fire themselves lessens.
I loved the chemistry between the two leads in this story and just wished that the story was longer, so involved in the story I was disappointed when it ended.
It's not often that I find a book that I'm so involved in that I finish it in one sitting but the fantastic storyline had me burning through the pages desperate to see what was going to happen next.
Everybody needs to give this series a go you won't be disappointed.