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Yay welcome to day 1 of our Top 10 of 2013 event! We're so happy that you all are participating with us! 2013 was a strange year for me. I've only read 75 books as of today. I hit a huge reading slump during the summer and didn't read anything in July or August. But after the slump I cam back with a vengeance lol I caught up to my goodreads challenge pretty quickly. The people at Goodreads have a cool Your Year of Books when you sign up for the challenge. If you want to see all the books I read this year go HERE! So today’s topic is Best Books I've Read in 2013 (Doesn't have to be released in 2013, just a book you've read in 2013). And I had a hell of a time narrowing it down to just 10 so there are a few honorable mentions added to this list. If you want to know anything about the books I chose just click on the title and it’ll take you to the Goodreads page!
And make sure to stop by my co-hosts sites Fiktshun and Magical Urban Fantasy Reads for their lists! Oh and make sure to sign up with the linky to share your lists! And don’t forget to enter the giveaway!Details are at the end of this post!
Monday,
December 23rd - Best Books I've Read in 2013 (Doesn't have to be released in
2013, just a book you've read in 2013)
1. Splintered by AG
Howard. This was my favorite of the year hands down!!!!!
2. The Bitter
Kingdom by Rae Carson. This series is on my all-time favorite list!
Rae is an amazing writer and Hector will definitely make my forever book
boyfriends list!
3. Siege and
Storm by Leigh Bardugo. Freaking fantastic book!!!!! Definitely
think it’s better than the first I has a new love peeps! Strumhuond!!!!!!!!!!
4. The
Madman’s Daughter by Megan Shepherd. Megan’s storytelling is amazing
and dark and twisted and she also ramps up the creep out factor! There’s also 2
hot boys to choose from!
5. Unravel Me by
Tahereh Mafi. It was awesome, amazeballs, mind-blowing!!!! Loved Warner ooh and
Kenji!
6. The Cadet
of Tildor by Alex Lidell. An amazing High Fantasy make sure to grab this
one!
7. Scarlet by
Marissa Meyer. Even better than Cinder
and Wolf and Thorne stole my heart away from Kai!
8. These
Broken Stars by Meagan Spooner and Amie Kaufman. I just
finished this one on December 18th and I already had my list set and
ready to go! But I HAD to move one down to the honorable mentions because this
book was EPIC!!!! I can’t wait for book 2!!!!
9. In The
Shadow of Blackbirds by Cat
Winters. One of the best ghost stories
I’ve ever read! And I loved that it was set in San Diego during World War 1 and
the Spanish influenza outbreak. It was creepy and awesome! Oh and I fell for my
first ghost Stephen!
10. The
Beautiful and The Cursed by Page Morgan. It’s historical paranormal
with gargoyles and one of the best books I read hand down in 2013!
Honorable
Mentions
Sweet
Peril by Wendy Higgins. Kaidan Rowe is just too sexy for words and
he made me melt into a puddle of goo in this one!
Gold by Talia
Vance. I beta’d this for Talia and OMG it is better than Silver!!!! All you
team Austin girls get ready to swoon :D
Sentinel by
Jennifer L. Armentrout. I love Jennifer’s books and even though I was sad to see
the series end Sentinel was the perfect ending!
The
Eternity Cure by Julie
Kagawa. Loved this one! Love all of Julie’s books! I also have a new found
fondness for Jackal.
The
Burning Sky by Sherry Thomas. A High Fantasy part of the time
and a historical Fantasy the other part. This one reminded me of Harry Potter a
bit just with older characters and trust me you will all fall for Titus :D
Through
The Ever Night by Veronica Rossi.
Another one that was as awesome as the first and this one had more Roar
so I was a happy girl!
Fragments by Dan
Wells. I will freely admit I wasn’t the hugest fan of the first book. The
second in this series though was awesome and I can’t wait to read the finale!
Did any of my favorites make your list? Fill out the linky and let me know! And good luck with the giveaway :)
Hey y’all!
Happy Super Bowl Sunday and welcome to my stop on the Scarlet Blog Tour!!!! I have an awesome guest post for you today
from Marissa about why she chose France as a setting and some wolfish
information too. Also make sure to check out my review of Scarlethere!
I also have a giveaway US/Canada only for a paperback of Cinder and a hardcover of Scarlet
to one lucky winner!
Cinder
returns in the second thrilling installment of the New York Times-bestselling
Lunar Chronicles. She’s trying to break out of prison—even though if she
succeeds, she’ll be the Commonwealth’s most wanted fugitive.
Halfway
around the world, Scarlet Benoit’s grandmother is missing. It turns out there
are many things Scarlet doesn’t know about her grandmother and the grave danger
she has lived in her whole life. When Scarlet encounters Wolf, a street fighter
who may have information as to her grandmother’s whereabouts, she has no choice
but to trust him, though he clearly has a few dark secrets of his own.
As
Scarlet and Wolf work to unravel one mystery, they find another when they cross
paths with Cinder. Together, they must stay one step ahead of the vicious Lunar
Queen who will do anything to make Prince Kai her husband, her king, her
prisoner.
I get asked a lot about the
settings I’ve chosen for The Lunar Chronicles: China, France, the Sahara Desert…
Having been born and raised in America, it would have been easiest for me to
keep the series in a futuristic version of America, but setting the books in locations
around the globe was a decision I made very early on in the planning of this
series.
One of my main reasons was that I
wanted the series to feel big. A lot of problems that are facing the
characters—the plague, the war being threatened by the Lunars—are problems that
would impact every person on the planet. So by spreading out the story
locations I felt I could better convey the idea that these are big, scary,
global issues.
However, I still had to decide where,
exactly, to set each book. I’ve talked about my choice for China for Cinder on
my web site (http://www.marissameyer.com/faq),
and I’m sure I’ll talk more about choosing Africa for Cress in the future, but
for the purpose of this blog tour and the launch of Scarlet, today I’m answering:
Why France?
When I was first outlining Scarlet,
I had a vague idea that werewolves were going to play a part, taking on the
villainous role of the Big Bad Wolf. I wasn’t yet sure how “wolfy” they would
be or how that very paranormal creature was going to tie into my very
tech-oriented world, but I did know that I wanted a setting that would support
some sort of werewolf beings.
Specifically, I wanted a location
that already had a history of werewolves. Somewhere I could play up an almost
subconscious terror of these mythical beasts, even in a society in which no one
has given in to such superstitions for hundreds of years.
Many of the victims were
children, including a young girl who was found to have had her heart ripped out
of her chest.
However, the beast also attacked
and killed numerous women and even men—sometimes it would attack large hunting
groups, leaving multiple eye-witnesses behind.
The killings were never truly
solved, and it’s impossible to tell how much of the story was peasant
superstition and how much was fact. If the beast was real, it was like no
animal we know of today—both with regards to its physical description, but also
in the way that it hunted and devoured its prey. If the beast was a costumed human
doing the killings, it did not follow any sort of victim pattern that would fit
the modes of serial killers today.
In the 1760s, though, the
townsfolk were convinced that the Beast was a Loup-Garou—a Werewolf. They
believed that it was a human sorcerer who transformed into a vile beast in
order to prey on humans and eat their flesh.
Eventually, King Louis XV himself
put together a team of professional wolf hunters and charged them with finding
and killing the Beast. The hunt continued for months, while the killings piled
up. The hunters did kill an enormous wolf—the largest anyone had ever seen—and
they believed they had finally brought down the notorious Beast. However, a few
months later, two more children were killed…
When the Beast was finally killed
for real (at least, in theory), it was by a local hunter named Jean Chastel. As
the myth goes, Chastel shot the beast with a silver bullet after receiving a
tip from God himself.
(And thus began the mythology of
silver bullets alone being able to kill a werewolf.)
When I finished watching that
documentary, it seemed the choice had been made for me. Southern France not
only had a history of werewolf mythology, but it had a history that had
influenced the mythologies we still talk about today. A history that is still
largely based on an unsolved mystery, that merges elements of truth and legend,
that combines the reality of horrific killings and eye-witness accounts with
stories that have been skewed by superstition and terror.
Cinder
returns in the second thrilling installment of the New York Times-bestselling
Lunar Chronicles. She’s trying to break out of prison—even though if she
succeeds, she’ll be the Commonwealth’s most wanted fugitive.
Halfway
around the world, Scarlet Benoit’s grandmother is missing. It turns out there
are many things Scarlet doesn’t know about her grandmother and the grave danger
she has lived in her whole life. When Scarlet encounters Wolf, a street fighter
who may have information as to her grandmother’s whereabouts, she has no choice
but to trust him, though he clearly has a few dark secrets of his own.
As
Scarlet and Wolf work to unravel one mystery, they find another when they cross
paths with Cinder. Together, they must stay one step ahead of the vicious Lunar
Queen who will do anything to make Prince Kai her husband, her king, her
prisoner.
Holy crap
Scarlet was flipping fantastic! I
loved Cinder and how Marissa turned a
fairy tale into something new and sci-fi but, kept the Cinderella elements
there. She did the same with Scarlet but in my opinion she did it even better!
What I
loved about this book is we still get Cinder’s POV but we also get Scarlet’s as
well and now we have two kick ass heroines in one book! Also we get to see
Kai’s POV (but not very much I hear he has a bigger part in Cress) and a newcomer
Captain Carswell Thorne who is so funny he made me snort in a few parts! The
one character I was really intrigued by was Wolf. When I met Marissa all she
would say was “He’s sexy… a street fighter with a dark and mysterious past.
That’s all I can say for now.” Ok well she had me hooked with sexy lol but,
what I didn’t expect was that I’d fall so damned hard for this guy. Prince Kai
fans may not; they are two completely different people but I like my guys a
little rough around the edges and Wolf was definitely that! He now owns my
heart completely. Don’t get me wrong I still love Kai but he’s not my dude.
Scarlet is Red Riding
Hood on steroids people! This story has so much action and pure craziness you
will love it! I love that Marissa seemed
to up the sci-fi aspect too more ships and aliens, also more danger and
swoon-worthy moments! I cannot tell you how much I am dying to read book 3 Cress now! This wait is going to
suuuccckkkkkk!!!!!
I chose a couple passages because I couldn’t choose just one lol.
Cinder and Thorne:
“It seems that
you’ve stumbled into the wrong jail cell. Do you need directions to get back to
yours?”
She blinked.
Thorne smiled.
The girl
frowned.
Her irritation
made her prettier, and Thorne cupped his chin, studying her.
He’d never met a
cyborg before, much less flirted with one, but there was a first time for
everything.
“These cells
aren’t supposed to be occupied,” she said.
“Special
circumstances.”
She surveyed him
for a moment, her brows knitting together. “Murder?”
His grin grew.
“Thank you, but no. I started a riot on the yard.” He adjusted his collar,
before adding, “We were protesting the soap.”
Her confusion
grew, and Thorne noticed that she was still in her defensive stance.
“The soap,” he
said again, wondering if she’d heard him. “It’s too drying.”
She said
nothing.
“I
have sensitive skin.”
Scarlet and Wolf:
“It
wasn’t me,’ He said, his tone unwavering. “There are other tattoos like mine.
It was someone else.”
“Oh, really?
Like you’re part of some cult or something?” The feathered body of one of the
chickens pressed against her leg and she started, barely managing to keep the
gun level.
“Or something,”
he said with a flinching shrug. One foot crunched against the gravel.
“Don’t come any
closer!” Scarlet yelled. The chicken clucked and dawdled away. “I will shoot,
you know.”
“I know.” A
flicker of kindness passed over him and he pointed at his temple. “You’ll want
to aim for the head. That usually makes for a fatal shot. Or, if you’re feeling
shaky, the torso. It’s a larger target.”
“Your head looks
pretty big from here.”
He laughed—the
expression changing everything about him. His stance relaxed, his face warmed.
Hey welcome to the last day of the Top 10 Books of 2012! We hope you
all have been having fun! To close out the week we’re looking forward to 2013
so today’s topic is….. Top 10 Books I'm looking forward to in 2013. (This list should
be comprised of books released ONLY in 2013)
Ok I’m being a big time cheater here! I’ve read most of these books
already but I needed to share how awesome they are on and there’s not a top 10
it’s a top 12! I’ll put READ next to the ones I’ve read lol.
1. Siege and Storm by Leigh
Bardugo READ. Freaking fantastic book!!!!! Definitely think it’s better than
the first I has a new love peeps! Strumhuond!!!!!!!!!!
2. The Madman’s
Daughter by Megan Shepherd READ. This is definitely going to make my best of
2013 list. Megan’s storytelling is amazing and I’m already dying to get my
hands on book 2!
3. Unravel Me by Tahereh Mafi
READ Yep and it was awesome!!!! Loved Warner ooh and Kenji! And remember to check out my Day 2 post I'm giving this one away!!!!!
4. The Cadet of Tildor by Alex Lidell
READ An amazing High Fantasy make sure to grab this one!
5. Scarlet by Marissa
Meyer READ. Even better than Cinder
and Wolf and Thorne stole my heart away from Kai!
6. Dark Triumph by RL LaFevers
READ. I loved Sybella in Grave Mercy
and her story was amazeballs and heartwrenching!
7. Ashes on the
Waves by Mary Lindsey. A story based off of Edgar Allen Poe’s Annabel Lee?
Yes please!
8. Apolloyn by Jennifer L.
Armentrout. Dying for this one after reading Deity and Elixir!
9. Unbreakable by Elizabeth
Norris NEED MOAR BEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh and Strutz J
10. Through The Ever
Night by Veronica Rossi READ Another one that was as awesome as the first
and this one had more Roar so I was a happy girl!
11. Gold by Talia Vance
READ. I beta’d this for Talia and OMG it is better than Silver!!!! All you team
Austin girls get ready to swoon :D
COVER TBD
12. Tarnish by Katherine Longshore.
Anne Boleyn before Henry VII? Um how awesome is that? I can’t wait to see
Katherine’s take on her!!!!!
Did any of my favorites make your list? Fill out the linky and let me
know! And good luck with the giveaway! Today’s giveaway is hosted by Mindy from
Magical Urban Fantasy Reads!
