Top Ten Tuesday: Finished Series I Have YET to Finish

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, is: Top Ten Finished Series I Have YET to Finish.

1. The Paper Gods trilogy by Amanda Sun.

2. Penryn and the End of Days series by Susan Ee.

3. The Mara Dyer series by Michelle Hodkin

4. The Madman’s Daughter by Megan Shepherd

5. Proxy by Alex London

6. Partials Sequence by Dan Wells

7. Passing Bells by Phillip Rock

8. Starters by Lissa Price

9. Soul Screamers by Rachel Vincent

So I know that’s only 9, but I can’t think of another completely published series that I’ve started and want to finish, though there probably are some.

Find Me Book Tag

So I was tagged for this forever ago by BookLoversBlog. Basically this tag involved finding books from my bookshelves which fit the prompts offered. I did as many as I could in hard copies so you can see the pretty colors, but most of my books are on my Nook, so some of them are less than stellar graphics. Enjoy!

1. A Book With A Sunset: Get to Me by Lara Van Hulzen

2. A Book With Water: Truly Madly Greekly by Mandy Baggot

3. A Book With A Flower: Dangerous Girls by Abigail Haas

4. A Book With A Heart: Solitaire by Alice Oseman

5. A Book With Gone in the title: Gone Missing by Linda Castillo

6. A Book With a Moon: New Moon by Stephanie Meyer (Yes I cheated on this one!)

7. A Book With A Weapon: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

8. A Book With a Girl in a White Dress: Soul Screamers: Volume One by Rachel Vincent

9. A Book with a Couple Kissing: My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick

10. A Book with Headphones: Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

So that was fun! I tag anyone who would like to participate!

Reviewing the Unreviewed: March 2015

I read a lot of books that I don’t end up reviewing for whatever reason. Some because I wasn’t impressed. Some because I didn’t have the time. Some I just wasn’t feeling it on whatever particular day I finished. I thought I’d start doing a post once a month  with just the couple thoughts I shared on Good Reads.

Fairest (The Lunar Chronicles 3.5) by Marissa Meyer. Read February 26 – March 1. 3 stars.

While I enjoyed this novella, I was really hoping to see Levana be a psychopath, in full Amy Dunne fashion. While she’s still kind of a psychopath, it’s in a sad way and makes her more a somewhat sympathetic character. I did enjoy the backstory, though, and the peeks of young Cinder, Winter, and Jacin.

Paranormalcy (Paranormalcy #1) by Kiersten White. Read March 4-7. 2 stars.

I’ve loved the other books by Kiersten White that I’ve read, so I was surprised in how uninteresting this book was for me. The main character wasn’t exactly unlikable, but she wasn’t very likable either. Not a lot really happened and a lot went unexplained. I got all three books of the series from the library, but I’m not sure if I’ll be continuing on with them right now.

My Soul to Lose (Soul Screamers 0.5) by Rachel Vincent. Read March 7-8. 3 stars.

Though I’m mostly left with confusion, the story was intriguing enough that I really want to find out what happens next.

My Soul to Save (Soul Screamers #2) by Rachel Vincent. Read March 10-12. 3 stars.

I thought the premise for the plot of this book was really interesting, but it didn’t quite live up to it’s potential for me. I thought things dragged too much at times. I don’t feel like there was any real character development with anyone besides Kaylee and even that was minimal. Overall this was just ok for me. I’ll still be giving the next book a shot sometime, though.

They All Fall Down by Roxanne St. Claire. Read March 14-15. 2 stars.

Had potential, but then went into the wildly unbelievable. It was entertaining for the most part, though.

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RE-READ

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell. Yes, I am FINALLY going to review this book. I’ll tell anyone who will listen it’s one of my favorites, but I haven’t read it in years. I was almost afraid I wouldn’t like it as much, but it still holds up (obviously – it’s Rainbow Rowell). I’m going to take my time writing the review, but it will be coming. My mother is currently reading the book, though, so I have to wait for her to give it back.

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BACK ON THE TBR SHELF

Call me Princess by Sara Blaedel. I liked The Forgotten Girls and wanted to read the other books in the series, but I just couldn’t get into it. As you can probably tell, March was a big YA month for me, so I wasn’t really feeling up to anything too serious. I’ll be giving this book another try, though.

Stray by Rachel Vincent. This was recommended by a blogger friend and was readily available at the library, so I gave it a try. I like the different take on “shifters” than most books are and the main character was funny enough that all of the annoying things she does weren’t too much to put me off her. The relationship with her brothers and childhood friends were kind of weird, though, and made me almost uncomfortable at times. I just couldn’t get too into it, so I decided to stop it for now, but I’ll pick it up again some day.

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DNF

Faking It by Cora Carmack. I was trying to find a good Fake Relationship book and I came across this one and decided to give it a try. Ugh.  I didn’t get terribly far in before I decided to DNF it. I liked the male character at first, but found the female lead pretty off-putting. Then there was a bunch of ridiculousness at a bar and I just couldn’t take anymore.

Review: My Soul to Take (Soul Screamers #1) by Rachel Vincent

Synopsis from Good Reads:

She doesn’t see dead people. She senses when someone near her is about to die. And when that happens, a force beyond her control compels her to scream bloody murder. Literally.

Kaylee just wants to enjoy having caught the attention of the hottest guy in school. But a normal date is hard to come by when Nash seems to know more about her need to scream than she does. And when classmates start dropping dead for no apparent reason, only Kaylee knows who’ll be next.

March has been a pretty slow reading month for me so far and My Soul to Take is the first book that’s inspired me to write a review. The Soul Screamers series is one that’s never been on my radar, but was part of the haul I won in a giveaway recently and I’m glad I gave it a go.

Kaylee is a banshee. A different term is used in the book, but it’s two words and pronounced the same, so I’m going with “banshee”. I haven’t encountered books about banshees before, so it was an interesting new twist for YA paranormal for me. For those unfamiliar, banshees are not-quite-humans who scream (or “sing”) for a soul that is about to be taken. Kaylee sees shadows and feels crushing grief whenever someone around her is about to die. While banshee myth is traditionally women, there are also male banshees and they can’t tell when a person is about to die, but once it’s happened, they can see the soul and can sometimes “redirect” it back into the body. However, doing so means someone else will have to die in the person’s place.

Kaylee has had a few episodes when the need of uncontrollable screaming takes over and her aunt and uncle, who she lives with, explain it away as panic attacks, but Kaylee has always known it’s a little more than that. When she has an “attack” at a club she’s calmed down by hottie-hot-hot Nash. Cue Typical YA Trope where the “Special Girl” who is more beautiful than she realizes falls head-over-heels into insta-love with the Hottest Guy Ever Who Has Never Noticed Her Before. Despite the cliché, I was ok with Kaylee and Nash’s relationship. While Nash has to explain a lot to her, they felt like pretty equal characters, needing to work together to save anyone. I’m still trying to decide if he’s mysterious or shady. There’s a lot that he holds back and by the end of the book I still feel like there’s a lot more about him that we don’t know.

In addition to the two main characters, we also get to know Kaylee’s aunt and uncle, popular cousin, best friend (who is mostly absent due to being grounded), and a reaper who has ties to Nash. I really liked Uncle Brendan and am intrigued by Tod, the reaper (but super annoyed it’s spelled with only one “d”. I don’t know why, but it bugs me).

I felt like the main mystery of the dying girls took backstage to Kaylee finding out about her family heritage of banshees and her romance with Nash. However, the resolution to it took me by surprise and I kind of liked that it wasn’t a typical “happily ever after” ending.

Overall, I enjoyed My Soul To Take and I think it broke me out of my reading rut. I’m looking forward to reading the next book in the series and would recommend it to people who like YA paranormal.

Rating (out of 5):