Showing posts with label michelle rowen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label michelle rowen. Show all posts

Friday, February 22, 2013

Coming Out of My Cage, I've Been Doing Just Fine


Expected Publication: February 26th, 2013
Wicked Kiss (Nightwatchers # 2)
By: Michelle Rowen
Harlequin Teen
ISBN-13: 9780373210640

MY KISS CAN KILL.

I used to be ordinary Samantha Day, but that's changed. Now, after one dark kiss from a dangerous boy, I can steal someone's soul...or their life. If I give in to the constant hunger inside me, I hurt anyone I kiss. If I don't...I hurt myself.

Bishop is the one whose kiss I crave most, but if I kiss him, I'll kill him. Then there's another boy, one I can't hurt. One whose kiss seems to miraculously quell my hunger. They're both part of a team of angels and demons that's joined forces in my city to fight a mysterious rising darkness, an evil that threatens everyone I know and love. I just wonder if I'll be able to help Bishop-or if I'm just another part of the darkness he's sworn to destroy....



Review
 
     Samantha Day was an ordinary girl just a week ago, wanting nothing as much as to be kissed by the boy she'd been crushing on for a long time.  She didn't expect him to steal her soul when it finally happened.  Oh yeah, and Sam is also half angel and half demon, which makes things even more complicated.  Now with a constant hunger, Sam must fight and retrieve her soul before it's too late and she's gone for good.  With the help of a team of Angels and Demons assembled to keep the balance in the universe, (including fallen angel Bishop who Sam shares an attraction with and Kraven a demon, and Bishop's brother) Sam needs to find a way to get rid of the 'Grays' before the city is destroyed.  But when the dust settles who will still be alive?  I was kind of on the fence about the first book and am not really into the angels/demons YA trend that's still kind of floating around.  But this book ended up being kind of 'meh' for me like the first one.  The reason it gets as much accolade as it does from me, is mostly due to the supporting characters and not the leads.  For instance, mean girl Jordan grows and changes so much in this book, but manages to stay snarky and interesting even after becoming Sam's friend (a.k.a getting mixed up with the supernaturak shit in her life).  I also enjoyed the addition of Cassandra, the female angel sent down on a secret mission which might be at cross purposes with the rest of the group's aims.  The dynamic between Cass and the rest of the group was interesting, even if her self-righteous attitude did grate on my nerves somewhat.  The jealousy on the part of Sam got really annoying though and made me want to smack her.  As a reader I enjoyed the backstory given about Bishop and Kraven's tumultuous history and thought it was very well executed.  But the rest of the plot felt like it dragged, making me want to skip large chunks out of pure boredom.  There were a couple of plot twists that caught me off guard, which always impresses me.  I like it when an author's writing is good enough to keep me guessing.  Too bad that momentum didn't exist through the whole book.  Especially with the scene where Sam "died" and was no longer a Grey afterwards; it was so cheesy and predictable, with no real substance.  I'm glad I stuck with it and read this book, because it turns out this is the last one and it WON'T be a trilogy.  In a way that sucks, because the ending was extremely loose and even though the action plot got resolved, the romantic one definitely did not.  Overall, an unsatisfying book but a decent read.

VERDICT:  2.75/5  Stars

*I received an Advanced Reading E-book Copy from the publisher, via NetGalley. No money or favors were exchanged for this review. This book's expected publication date is February 26th, 2013.*

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

The Kiss That Ruins...

Expected Publication: May 22nd, 2012
Dark Kiss (Nightwatchers # 1)
By: Michelle Rowen
HarlequinTeen
ISBN-13: 9780373210473


I don't do dangerous. Smart, über-careful, ordinary Samantha-that's me. But I just couldn't pass up a surprise kiss from my number-one unattainable crush. A kiss that did something to me...something strange. Now I feel hungry all the time, but not for food. It's like part of me is missing-and I don't know if I can get it back. Then there's Bishop. At first I thought he was just a street kid, but the secrets he's keeping are as intense as his unearthly blue eyes. If he's what I think he is, he may be the only one who can help me. But something terrifying is closing in, and the one chance Bishop and I have to stop it means losing everything I ever wanted and embracing the darkness inside me.... NIGHTWATCHERS When angels and demons must work together, something beyond evil is rising...

Review

   Samantha never expected her longtime crush Stephen to finally kiss her when she went clubbing with her best friend Carly.  He said it would change her life, but she never would have seen it coming.  Now Sam is hungry, just not for food anymore.  What she wants now are human souls.  Because it turns out that Stephen stole her soul when he kissed her!  Now Sam is enlisted to help a group of angels and demons, sent to stop all of the Grays (term for soul-suckers) from destroying the town, possibly even the world.  But there might be more to the situation than any of them have been told.  And when they've defeated the Grays will Bishop, an angel who Sam is starting to fall for, be able to leave as planned?  Or will he be stuck on Earth, cast from Heaven forever?  This book was semi-new to me.  I have tryed and mostly succeded at staying out of the angel/demon craze in YA books.  Therefore I'm not burnt out on them yet like so many others seem to be.  I kind of have mixed feelings about Sam as a heroine.  She was sort of a bitch through the whole situation, a little too woe-is-me Bella Swan in her mentality.  It was like Sam was physically incapable of seeing anyone's problems but her own.  Bishop was too much of the strong, silent yet suffering type to really appeal to me.  After so many of them in YA books, do-gooder heroes bore me.  They annoy me somewhat as well.  The insta-love/lust is so overplayed I can't even express it.  The people who interested me of course were the side characters, like Carly, Kraven, and the others on the team sent to fight the Grays.  Maybe there will be more of them in the second book, but I probably won't be reading it to find out.  The style this was written in drove me mad - not enough action to counterbalance all of Sam's angst and I just didn't connect with the main characters.  The plot would have been a winner, but the characters bogged it down.

VERDICT:  3/5  Stars

*I received an Advanced Reading E-book Copy from the publisher, via NetGalley. No money or favors were exchanged for this review. This book's expected publication date is May 22nd, 2012.*