October 25, 2016

Top 5 favorite thriller/mystery novels

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created bThe Broke and the Bookish.

Top 5 favorite thriller/mystery novels
(in no particular order)

I don´t like the genre horror whether are movies or books, I get afraid easily, so I just avoid them. That´s why instead of horror novels I decided to do my Top 5 about thriller/mystery books.

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

Far from You by Tess Sharpe


Leave me your links!

Hi, I'm undecided and I don´t know which book read this week. Have you read any of these books?
Please, recommend me a thriller/mystery book.

October 24, 2016

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is a meme hosted by Book Date.
Each week we spotlight the books we are reading, planning on reading or just finished reading.

Click on the image to look description in Goodreads.

I´d been in a reading slump, that´s why in October I only read four books and I haven´t been writing reviews as I should but I hopefully this will pass this next month.

Finished reading
First Grave on the Right (Charley Davidson #1) by Darynda Jones (4/5 stars)

Currently reading

What are you reading today?
Leave me your links!

October 21, 2016

Review: Bright Smoke, Cold Fire by Rosamund Hodge


Title: Bright Smoke, Cold Fire (Untitled #1)
Author: Rosamund Hodge
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Release date: September 27th 2016
Source: Edelweiss
Format: eARC

Rating: 3/5

Buy onAmazon | B&N | BookDepository
When the mysterious fog of the Ruining crept over the world, the living died and the dead rose. Only the walled city of Viyara was left untouched.

The heirs of the city’s most powerful—and warring—families, Mahyanai Romeo and Juliet Catresou share a love deeper than duty, honor, even life itself. But the magic laid on Juliet at birth compels her to punish the enemies of her clan—and Romeo has just killed her cousin Tybalt. Which means he must die.

Paris Catresou has always wanted to serve his family by guarding Juliet. But when his ward tries to escape her fate, magic goes terribly wrong—killing her and leaving Paris bound to Romeo. If he wants to discover the truth of what happened, Paris must delve deep into the city, ally with his worst enemy . . . and perhaps turn against his own clan.

Mahyanai Runajo just wants to protect her city—but she’s the only one who believes it’s in peril. In her desperate hunt for information, she accidentally pulls Juliet from the mouth of death—and finds herself bound to the bitter, angry girl. Runajo quickly discovers Juliet might be the one person who can help her recover the secret to saving Viyara.

Both pairs will find friendship where they least expect it. Both will find that Viyara holds more secrets and dangers than anyone ever expected. And outside the walls, death is waiting. . . .

Inspired by Romeo and Juliet, Bright Smoke, Cold Fire is a darkly romantic and atmospheric fantasy from acclaimed author Rosamund Hodge. 


Bright Smoke, Cold Fire is a retelling or re-imagining of the story of Romeo and Juliet, and their story takes place in Viyara, the last living city in the world, after the Ruining destroyed the world centuries ago, with a fog that kills everyone in its path and turned them revenants (zombies), that´s why the survivors fled to Viyara, a city protected by magic, but it charges a price of blood.

"The Juliet" (as she´s known) is a girl born in the Catresou clan, daughter of the patriarc, whom from birth was tattooed with magical words in her body, she´s the sword of the Catresou, a person that´s is compel by magic to give justice to anyone that sheds the blood of her clan and once she turned seventeen years old the last magic word will be written in her body, one word that will tied her to her guardian, he will make the decisions for her and she will have to obey him. So when Romeo kills Tybalt, Juliet decides to make Romeo her guardian, because she doesn´t want that her future guardian - Paris - force her to kill him, but in the ritual something goes wrong...really wrong.

 Romeo is the son of the patriarch of the Mahyanai clan, he´s a swordsman, but he´s also a romantic that keeps reciting poems all the time.

The story is told from the POV of Paris and Runajo (aka Rosaline - the girl Romeo was in love before he met Juliet). Paris is part of the Catresou clan and he´s selected to the guardian of "The Juliet", but because of what happened between Juliet and Romeo in the ritual, he never gets to be and his path is intertwined with that of Romeo, meanwhile Runajo is a novice in the cloister of Viyara where all novices and religious make blood rituals to keep the magic that protects Viyara, but Runajo is convinced that the magic is failing and that if she doesn´t do something about it, the city will be consumed by the Ruining (is the white fog that makes people revenants aka zombies), and when her path crosses with Juliet, she believes that she can help her in her search for a solution to protect their city.

And as we get to know Romeo and Juliet through the eyes of Paris and Runajo, the Romeo we see him as a tragic person, easily falling into despair, weeping for the loss of his love and  he is slow to action. Meanwhile the Juliet we see is cold, distant or angry other occasions. Meanwhile Paris is an observer and likes to do the right thing, but without changing the teachings of his family, so his alliance with Romeo is not easy. And the character I least liked was Runajo, as she´s someone willing to do anything to achieve her goal, no matter whom she has to sacrifice.

Bright Smoke, Cold Fire like the previous books written by Rosamund Hodge tends to be dark and raw, it has a good idea for a post-apocalyptic world, but i don´t know if its due that this is a duology but I thing that the world was under develop, I didn't connect or was invested with the characters, perhaps because the story begins after the death of Tybalt, so the romance was nonlinear because we get so read at the beginning of certain chapters with flashbacks of the interactions between Romeo and Juliet seen from t her point of view. The pacing is slow and the chapters jump between Paris and Runajo, so it took me a time to be invested in the plot, but the pacing improves in the last chapters and it ends with a good cliffhanger and it hooked me to read the next book in the duology.

October 17, 2016

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is a meme hosted by Book Date.
Each week we spotlight the books we are reading, planning on reading or just finished reading.

Click on the image to look description in Goodreads.

Finished reading

Finnikin of the Rock (Lumatere Chronicles #1) by Melina Marchetta (4.5/5 stars)

Currently reading

What are you reading today?
Leave me your links!

October 14, 2016

Review: Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil by Melina Marchetta


Title: Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil
Author: Melina Marchetta
Publisher: Mulholland Books
Release date: October 11th 2016
Source: Netgalley
Format: eARC

Rating: 4/5

Buy onAmazon | B&N | BookDepository
In the wake of a devastating bombing, a father risks everything to find out who was responsible.

When Bish Ortley, a suspended cop, receives word that a bus carrying his daughter has been bombed, he rushes to be by her side. A suspect has already been singled out: a 17-year-old girl who has since disappeared from the scene.

The press has now revealed that she is the youngest member of one of London's most notorious families. Thirteen years earlier, her grandfather set off a suicide bomb in a grocery store, a bomb her mother confessed to building. Has the girl decided to follow in their footsteps?

To find her, Bish must earn the trust of her friends and family, including her infamous mother, now serving a life sentence in prison. But even as he delves into the deadly bus attack that claimed five lives, the ghosts of older crimes become impossible to ignore.

A gripping fusion of literary suspense and family drama, Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil is a fast-paced puzzle of a novel that will keep readers feverishly turning pages.

From Melina Marchetta I´ve read Jellicoe RoadSaving Francesca and The Piper´s Son, which are among my favorites and although I have not read her fantasy trilogy - Lumatere Chronicles...yet, I´ve read very good reviews of it, so that´s why when I saw her name in a new book, I didn´t hesitate to ask for her new novel for review even though I didn´t read the synopsis before I request it, because so far I haven´t been disappointed by any of her books. Tell the Truth, Shame Devil is her first adults novel and it´s a crime/mystery novel.

The story is set in the UK and France, it begins in the city of Calais, with a bomb exploding in a bus of english teenagers that were on a summer tour in France. Bish Ortley, is a police officer who is suspended from his job, and when he gets a call telling him that the bus where his teenage daughter was traveling might be the one where a bomb exploded. Bish travels to Calais to find out if his daughter was on that bus, once there, he discovers that Violette, one of the teenagers traveling on the tour is the granddaughter of the person that thirteen years before was responsible of a suicide bomb in London, which automatically makes her one of the suspects. So when she disappears, Bish is involved in the search party.

Bish is a middle-aged man, divorced, has problems with alcohol, has a teenage daughter, he´s a chief inspector, that at the time of the beginning of the book was suspended from his police work. Bish is dragged in the search for Violette, so he must visit her Violette´s mother on prison, as part of its investigation and it is during this search, that Bish begins to uncover dark truths about Brackenham Four (the name that the paper´s gave to Violette´s family) and the investigation that took place.

Something I'm not sure if I liked, is that as Bish only speaks English, some conversations (in French or Arabic) weren´t translated, unless there was some translator present at the scene, perhaps it was so we got to feel the language barrier that Bish is feeling at the moment, because many characters around him speak more than one language except for him.

The book is told mostly from the point of view of Bish, but we have some chapters from the point of view of other secondary characters,

Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil is a a good mystery novel that has a good main and secondary characters and I was invested in their well being, also the book covers topics such as family, racism, terrorism and other strong themes, so I recommend it for adults only.

October 11, 2016

Top Five Books I've Read Because Of Recommendation

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created bThe Broke and the Bookish.

Five Books I've Read Because Of Recommendation
(in no particular order)
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter #1) by J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter was recommended to me by my sister-in-law on 2004.
The Piper's Son by Melina Marchetta; I don´t remember in which blog I saw it first, but I had just finish reading Where She Went by Gayle Forman and I wanted a similar book and I found it in a sort of post "if you like this you may like this", so I look it on goodreads and I found out that it was a companion novel and I end up reading Saving Francesca and The Piper´s Son.
The Demon King (Seven Realms #1) by Cinda Williams Chima: I saw it for the first time on 2011, on an IMM vlog, and the blogger was fangirling about The Gray Wolf the third book in the series, and I check it out on goodreads and it had good reviews, but it wasn´t until I start seeing reviews on several blogs that I decided to buy the series.

Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse #1) by Charlaine Harris; This one was recommended to me by my sister-in-law and she also lend them (book 1-book 9) to me.
Dark Lover (Black Dagger Brotherhood #1) by J.R. Ward: I found this series, because once that I had read til book 9 in the Sookie Stackhouse series and the book 10 wasn't published yet, I needed another PNR novel.

Leave me your links!

October 10, 2016

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is a meme hosted by Book Date.
Each week we spotlight the books we are reading, planning on reading or just finished reading.

Click on the image to look description in Goodreads.

Finished reading
Like a River Glorious (The Gold Seer Trilogy #2) by Rae Carson (4/5 stars)
Scarlet (The Lunar Chronicles #2) by Marissa Meyer (4.5/5 stars)
Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil by Melina Marchetta (4/5 stars)

Currently reading

Finnikin of the Rock (Lumatere Chronicles #1) by Melina Marchetta

What are you reading today?
Leave me your links!