March 27, 2017

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 
My review 

 Currently reading
Shift (Shade #2) de Jeri Smith-Ready

What I´m going to read next?
100 Hours (100 Hours #1) by Rachel Vincent

What are you reading today?
Leave me your links!

March 24, 2017

Review: The Ship Beyond Time by Heidi Heilig


Title: The Ship Beyond Time (The Girl from Everywhere #2) 
Author: Heidi Heilig
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Release date: February 28th 2017
Source: Edelweiss
Format: eARC

Rating: 4.25/5

Buy onAmazon | B&N | BookDepository

You can read my review of  The Girl from Everywhere - here
The breathtaking sequel to the acclaimed The Girl from Everywhere. Nix has escaped her past, but when the person she loves most is at risk, even the daughter of a time traveler may not be able to outrun her fate—no matter where she goes. Fans of Rae Carson, Alexandra Bracken, and Outlander will fall hard for Heidi Heilig’s sweeping fantasy.

Nix has spent her whole life journeying to places both real and imagined aboard her time-traveling father’s ship. And now it’s finally time for her to take the helm. Her father has given up his obsession to save her mother—and possibly erase Nix’s existence—and Nix’s future lies bright before her. Until she learns that she is destined to lose the one she loves. But her relationship with Kash—best friend, thief, charmer extraordinaire—is only just beginning. How can she bear to lose him? How can she bear to become as adrift and alone as her father?

Desperate to change her fate, Nix takes her crew to a mythical utopia to meet another Navigator who promises to teach her how to manipulate time. But everything in this utopia is constantly changing, and nothing is what it seems—not even her relationship with Kash. Nix must grapple with whether anyone can escape her destiny, her history, her choices. Heidi Heilig weaves fantasy, history, and romance together to tackle questions of free will, fate, and what it means to love another person. But at the center of this adventure are the extraordinary, multifaceted, and multicultural characters that leap off the page, and an intricate, recognizable world that has no bounds. The sequel—and conclusion—to the indie darling The Girl from Everywhere will be devoured by fans of Rachel Hartman and Maggie Stiefvater. Includes black-and-white maps. 

The Ship Beyond Time is the second book and conclusion of The Girl from Everywhere duology. Nix a young woman that had spent all her life aboard a ship, which her father the Captain can navigate through time and can visit both real and mythological places, as long as there is a map of the place they want to go, her father can travel through time to it.

In this book Nix discovers that she´s destined to lose the person she loves, but due that she had lived all her life watching her father suffer the loss of her mother, which he could not overcome after sixteen years and what losing her had done for him(he has an opium addiction), that´s why she had protected her heart all her life because she doesn´t want to repeat the same mistakes as her father, but when she receives a letter from another Navigator who tells her that there is a possibility of changing history and invites her to meet him in a mythological place to trade information, she immediately accepts his invitation because she´s determined to change her destiny and that of the person she loves.

I liked this book more than its predecessor, this second installment was riveting right from the start, perhaps because there is more romance, perhaps because they visit mythological places, perhaps because I was intrigued all the time to know what was going to happen with her loved one, perhaps because there are some chapters from Kashimir's point of view (I love reading his chapters, because we get to see what's behind his smile and jokes), maybe because there is no love triangle and maybe because it has adventure .. ..and all together make a great story.

Overall, The Ship Beyond Time is an engaging read about time travel, with diversity in the characters, is full of adventure, romance and with a bittersweet but satisfying conclusion.

Book trailer

March 21, 2017

Review: Shade by Jeri Smith-Ready


Title: Shade (Shade #1)
Author: Jeri Smith-Ready
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Release date: April 5, 2011

Rating: 3.5/5

Buy onAmazon | B&N | BookDepository
Best. Birthday. Ever. At least, it was supposed to be. With Logan's band playing a crucial gig and Aura's plans for an intimate after-party, Aura knows it will be the most memorable night of her boyfriend's life. She never thought it would be his last.

Logan's sudden death leaves Aura devastated. He's gone.

Well, sort of.

Like everyone born after the Shift, Aura can see and talk to ghosts. This mysterious ability had always been annoying, and Aura had wanted nothing more than to figure out why the Shift happened so she could undo it. But not with Logan's violet-hued spirit still hanging around. Because Dead Logan is almost as real as ever. Almost.

It doesn't help that Aura's new friend Zachary is so understanding - and so very alive. His support means more to Aura than she cares to admit.

As Aura's relationship with with the dead and the living grow ever complicated, so do her feelings for Logan and Zachary. Each holds a piece of Aura's heart... and clues to the secret of the Shift. 

I must confess that I made a big mistake when I decided to start reading the Shade trilogy (which had been in my bookshelf since 2012), what happened is that I made a mistake in choosing the book and started reading Shift, the second book in the trilogy, the good thing is that when I was only at the 3rd chapter when I realized my mistake and changed the book but I already had spoiled the end of the first book.

Shade takes place in a world where sixteen years ago there was a Shift and all people born after that date can see ghosts, which are manifested in violet color, so the world had to adapt and now there are government institutions that are dedicated to monitoring ghosts, there are ghost-proof buildings, etc.

Aura our main character was born after Shift, something that has always bothered her since the ghosts can be annoying, inopportune and sometimes difficult to ignore, but her way of thinking towards the ghosts changes when her boyfriend Logan dies on his birthday and instead of their relationship ends with his death, it continues with the limitations of him being a ghost.

And to complete the love triangle is Zachary, the new boy at school, he moved from Scotland and ends up being Aura's partner for her thesis and to which she is attracted.

Logan dies in the first chapters, so Aura and Logan are an established couple and we do not see how they fell in love, we only get to see Aura mad with him and her insecurities, since Logan was the main singer of a band that was really popular and that was scout by some music labels.

There are interesting elements about the Shift that are only mentioned and I hope they are explored more in depth in the following books and Aura has a theory about it and she´s investigating on her own.

Overall, Shade is a good start to a trilogy that leaves you with bases of the mystery surrounding Shift, and with the romance that is a must in most of the YA books, as well as the love triangle that makes you rooting for Team Logan or Team Zachary and with an ending that hooked you to read the next book.

March 20, 2017

Review: Like a River Glorious by Rae Carson


Title: Like a River Glorious (The Gold Seer Trilogy #2)
Author: Rae Carson
Publisher: Greenwillow
Release date: September 27th 2016
Source: Edelweiss
Format: eARC

Rating: 4/5

Buy on Amazon | B&N | BookDepository

You can read my review of Walk on Earth a Stranger - here
After a harrowing journey across the country, Leah Westfall and her friends have finally arrived in California and are ready to make their fortunes in the Gold Rush. Lee has a special advantage over the other new arrivals in California—she has the ability to sense gold, a secret known only by her handsome best friend Jefferson and her murdering uncle Hiram.

Lee and her friends have the chance to be the most prosperous settlers in California, but Hiram hasn’t given up trying to control Lee and her power. Sabotage and kidnapping are the least of what he’ll do to make sure Lee is his own. His mine is the deepest and darkest in the territory, and there Lee learns the full extent of her magical gift, the worst of her uncle, and the true strength of her friendships. To save everyone, she vows to destroy her uncle and the empire he is building—even at the cost of her own freedom.

The second epic historical fantasy in the Gold Seer trilogy by Rae Carson, the acclaimed author of The Girl of Fire and Thorns.

Like a River Glorious is the second book in the saga The Gold Seer, the first book tells the story of Leah / Lee Westfall, she has the gift of feeling or finding gold, something that if discovered can be dangerous for her since she lives in 1849, in the middle of the gold rush, so in the first book she disguises herself as a man to escape her uncle who wants to use her for her gift. The same uncle Hiram that murdered Leah's parents, intending to stay with her and take advantage of her gift.

In this sequel, Leah lives in a settlement in California with the families she met on her trip from Georgia to California, in addition to her best friend and love interest Jefferson McCauley, they already know that she's a girl and with them they form a community in a place that Leah chose with her gift which is rich in gold, but despite having spent months since Leah saw her uncle Hiram, he has not forgotten her, for when he finds her, he will do everything in his power to have her at his side, regardless of whom he should step on to get her.

In this book we see Leah and her group of friends go through hardship, hard work and heartbreak that they must do to create their new community as well as some losses of some of their friends due to the greed of others, making Leah´s new adventure really difficult and she will suffer in order to live a life as an independent woman.

Like a River Glorious is a good sequel, a bit more raw than the previous one in relation to the way people of color, Native Americans and Chinese were treated in the time of the gold rush in California, as well as the prevailing rule of the strongest is the one who lives and the weak die. I can not wait to read the next book in this trilogy.

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 
With All My Soul (Soul Screamers #7) by Rachel Vincent (4.5/5 stars)
Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight (4/5 stars)
Shade (Shade #1) by Jeri Smith-Ready (3.5/5 stars)

The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli (4/5 stars)

 Currently reading

What I´m going to read next?
Shift (Shade #2) de Jeri Smith-Ready

What are you reading today?
Leave me your links!

March 14, 2017

March 10, 2017

Review: Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight


Title: Reconstructing Amelia
Author: Kimberly McCreight 
Publisher: HarperCollins
Release date: September 7th 2010
Reading level: Mature YA

Rating: 4/5

Buy onAmazon | B&N | BookDepository
In Reconstructing Amelia, the stunning debut novel from Kimberly McCreight, Kate's in the middle of the biggest meeting of her career when she gets the telephone call from Grace Hall, her daughter’s exclusive private school in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Amelia has been suspended, effective immediately, and Kate must come get her daughter—now. But Kate’s stress over leaving work quickly turns to panic when she arrives at the school and finds it surrounded by police officers, fire trucks, and an ambulance. By then it’s already too late for Amelia. And for Kate.

An academic overachiever despondent over getting caught cheating has jumped to her death. At least that’s the story Grace Hall tells Kate. And clouded as she is by her guilt and grief, it is the one she forces herself to believe. Until she gets an anonymous text: She didn’t jump.

Reconstructing Amelia is about secret first loves, old friendships, and an all-girls club steeped in tradition. But, most of all, it’s the story of how far a mother will go to vindicate the memory of a daughter whose life she couldn’t save.

Fans of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl will find Reconstructing Amelia just as gripping and surprising. 
Reconstructing Amelia is a thriller/mystery where Kate tries to rebuild the last weeks of her daughter´s life, whom supposedly committed suicide, but a month after her death she receives a text message from a blocked number where she is informed that her daughter Amelia didn´t jump from the roof of her school, so with some help she can reopen the case and together with the police she begins to ask questions and investigate the text messages, emails and other social networks of Amelia, to find out what really happened, but Kate might not be ready for some of the things she finds out about her daughter.

Kate is a single and working mother, she´s a successful lawyer, from a major law firm and works long hours, and as a result she doesn´t spend much time with her daughter. Amelia is a 15-year-old girl that goes to a private school in Brooklyn, she´s a good student, with excellent grades and is well liked by her teachers. So when Kate receives a call from the school where she is informed that her daughter has been suspended and that she has to pick her up, but when Kate arrives to Amelia´s school, she finds several police cars, firetrucks and a ambulance in front of the school and shortly she´s informed that Amelia jumped to her death from the roof.

The plot is told from the point of view of Kate and Amelia, with a linear timeline in the present in the case of Kate and in the past, with several text messages, emails and facebook entries in the case of Amelia.


Overall, Reconstructing Amelia is a good mystery thriller, full of secrets, with a dark plot that explores the lives of teenagers, as well as elite school clubs, that kept me intrigued all the time and that in more of one occasion I was tempted to cheat and read the ending because I really needed to know what had happened to Amelia. In the end this is a novel that does not have a happy ending but it answers several questions about our main characters.