Book Review: Eden’s Serum (Eden Lost #1) by Angelique S. Anderson

4/5 Stars 310 pages
Published April 6th 2017 by Creative Angel Design and Publication

Encapsulated in a beautiful cover, ,this horrific story tells about a world where tech has advanced far beyond the need for identification and money, and even illness. Eden’s Serum is one that only the richest of the rich can afford, offering youth, health and above all, immortality. But as Adam is about to find out, not everything is as it seems, and his ultra rich bachelor life may not b as satisfying as it once was.

After developing a kind of super card that took the world by storm, dubbed simply the Identicoin, the book begins with an emergency. And Adam is headed head first into the bomb threat at his workplace to do whatever he can to save his life’s work. Interesting enough, this opening scene really sets the pace for the rest of the book, if you can believe it. Because two years later, the Indenticoin has completely taken over the world. And Adam has more money than he knows what to do with babies are now assigned an Identicoin at birth, holding all the important paperwork they could ever need for their upcoming lives, and are required to wear it at all times in public by law.

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The next technological leap that Adam wants to take with his life is making himself immortal. Through injection and claimed to be made from plants, it seems safe enough, after all, Adam’s genius must stick around as long as possible so that he can continue to change the world with his inventions. But is it truly safe? Has it even been fully tested? And why do the doctors preparing him for this next part of his life seem so sketchy? What are they hiding?

Aside from these everyday problems; Adam’s work turns out to be spying deep into his personal life, which he’s obviously not happy about, but is willing to put up with it for a cushy promotion, new house, and a workplace he’s allowed to run, by himself. But not long after his injection, he goes to work hiring people for his new office, and begins experiencing horrible blackouts, accompanied by blinding pain.

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Honestly, I really enjoyed this book. I love things about tech and the future and everything like that, and this book fits that perfectly. It was mysterious and exciting, and all the characters were very realistic with their good and bad traits showing for everyone to be hyperaware of. I was very interested in uncovering everything that was hidden by the higher-ups in this story, and the big adventure that Adam and Evelyn have to o through to really get to know what’s really going on was extremely gripping and easy to get into. I think this was a really great take on the classic Adam ad Eve and the Garden of Eden story. I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen next in the series, and I think to put it simply, this is a great story about trusting y our gut and your own intuition. If you like science fiction and are sixteen plus years old, and also not squeamish about violence, I would say definitely give this book a shot!

If you’d like to grab a copy, you can here through my link!

Thanks for reading! Hope you’re doing well, and maybe don’t trust an injection that claims to make you immortal.

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The Reader (Immortal Series #1) by M.K. Harkins Review

5/5 Stars 262 pages
Published July 2018

If you haven’t noticed, I’ve really been into these books about people with special powers, immortal or not. And this book has fit perfectly with that mood I’ve had lately. A story about people who can read minds, but with a few twists, one of which being that their people live in an underground compound build into a mountain. How amazing would that be to explore? I wouldn’t even mind living underground, if that were the case. This book was everything I wanted it to be and more.

Ann has lost her memory. Waking up on a beach with a face full of sand and a bullet wound, she’s devastated by her loss, and has no idea what to do from here. That is, until two guys show up to help her. Though she doesn’t know them, and a voice inside her head says that she can trust only one of them, she’s compelled to go with them to what they call their compound, a mansion built into the side of a mountain and surrounded by fake houses. Little does she know this is the easiest thing that will happen to her from now on.

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Turns out, she’s a Reader, an immortal being who can read minds. And not only that, but she may just be The Lost One, a person that might as well be mythical for all anyone knows. A mix of the three immortal races, The Seers, who have been extinct due to war, The Jacks, an evil group bent on destroying the world to get what they want and who have to switch bodies every fifty years to keep their lives going, and of course The Readers. But she’s not convinced that she’s even a Reader, despite everyone around her knowing. That is, until she escapes from her amazing prison, and out into the real world where the humans are, and some of the Jacks are able to track her down. Will she regain her memory and put a stop to the evil group?

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Like I said, this book was everything I wanted it to be and more. I wasn’t quite sure what I was getting myself into when I started it, but once I read the description again, I knew I was going to be hooked. This book is exciting and very mysterious, with characters I love and characters I hate, and really just a story that kept me guessing. I read it in less than a day, and once I found out that there was a second book to this duology, I knew I would have to get my hands on it. My favourite character was probably Lucy, because she’s just so nice and upbeat and just the perfect best friend. If you love books about people with mysterious powers and immortal bodies, than this is a book you should pick up next.

If you’d like to grab a copy, you can do so here through my Amazon Associates link.

Here’s a link to the author’s Twitter, if you’d like to keep up with them!

Thanks for reading! Hope you’re doing well and staying safe.

October 2020 Favourites

Hey everyone! I’m posting a bonus today, because I like to break up the cover reveals on my blog so there’s a little variety, you know? So here we go! My favourite books I read last month.

First off, Leonardo 2 by Stephane Levallois.

Planet Earth, engaged in an intergalactic conflict, owes its salvation to the clone of Leonardo da Vinci and to the rebirth of his genius. Author Stéphane Levallois has created the fantastic universes of many of the big Hollywood blockbusters (Alien, King Kong (Skull Island), Harry Potter and many others). The result of two years of elaboration and work, this space opera exemplifies his talent in two areas that he masters to perfection: the universe of science fiction and art. To build his story and compose his boards, Levallois draws from the painted and drawn work of the Renaissance master, selecting a large number of drawings and paintings by Leonardo to represent the characters, vessels or even the architectures in his story. The grand scale result is stupefying as Leonardo’s everlasting visions are successfully projected into a stunning futuristic setting.

Second is The Cup and the Prince (Kingdom of Curses and Shadows #1) by Day Leitao.

One prince wants her out.
Another wants her as a pawn.
Someone wants her dead.

Zora wants to win the cup and tell them all to screw themselves.

Yes, 17-year-old Zora cheated her way into the Royal Games, but it was for a very good reason. Her ex-boyfriend thought she couldn’t attain glory on her own. Just because she was a girl. And he was the real cheater. So she took his place.

Now she’s competing for the legendary Blood Cup, representing the Dark Valley. It’s her chance to prove her worth and bring glory for her people. If she wins, of course.

But winning is far from easy. The younger prince thinks she’s a fragile damsel who doesn’t belong in the competition. Determined to eliminate her at all costs, he’s stacking the challenges against her. Zora hates him, hates him, hates him, and will do anything to prove him wrong.

The older prince is helping her, but the cost is getting Zora entangled in dangerous flirting games. Flirting, the last thing she wanted. And then there’s someone trying to kill her.

Third is The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (The Hunger Games #0) by Suzanne Collins.

It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capital, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to outcharm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute.

The odds are against him. He’s been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined — every choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favor or failure, triumph or ruin. Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute… and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire to survive no matter what it takes.

The fourth book is Girl Minus X by Anne Stone.

Fifteen-year-old Dany is trying to survive with her little sister, Mac, in a world collapsing under the weight of a slow, creeping virus that erodes memory. As their identities slip away from them, the late-stage infected are quarantined by the Ministry of Disease Control in prison-hospices, military camps where some of Dany’s family have already been taken.

When a new and more virulent strain of the disease emerges and Dany begins to experience symptoms, the sisters are cast into crisis. As they try to escape the city together with Dany’s best friend, Eva, and history teacher, Mr. Faraday, Dany comes to see the ways in which her own fear has carried her trauma with her. As her past erodes, Dany’s present flickers into full fluorescence.

Elegant and thoughtful, Girl Minus X is a novel in which a young girl navigates her trauma in a world that can’t help but forget.

And the last one is Echoes of War (Echoes Trilogy #1) by Cheryl Campbell.

Decades of war started by a genocidal faction of aliens threatens the existence of any human or alien resisting their rule on Earth. Dani survives by scavenging enough supplies to live another day while avoiding the local military and human-hunting Wardens. But then she learns that she is part of the nearly immortal alien race of Echoes—not the human she’s always thought herself to be—and suddenly nothing in her life seems certain.

Following her discovery of her alien roots, Dani risks her well-being to save a boy from becoming a slave—a move that only serves to make her already-tenuous existence on the fringes of society in Maine even more unstable, and which forces her to revisit events and people from past lives she can’t remember. Dani believes the only way to defeat the Wardens and end their dominance is to unite the Commonwealth’s military and civilians, and she becomes resolved to play her part in this battle. Her attempts to change the bleak future facing the humans and Echoes living on Earth suffering under the Wardens will lead her to clash with a tyrant determined to kill her and all humankind—a confrontation that even her near-immortal heritage may not be able to help her survive.

Thanks for reading! Have you checked out or want to check out any of these books yet? Lets talk about them!

Colors of Immortality (Colors of Immortality #1) by J.M. Muller Review

Honestly, I’ve very conflicted with this book. I love the idea of the story, but I feel like the first half of the book fell short, the characters seemed incomplete, and they kind of just spent a lot of time lashing out at each other, and that wasn’t very fun to read. But the second half, oh man. I couldn’t get enough. Once it moved out of the normal daily life kind of situations and into the supernatural deaths and immortality and powers kind of stuff, it really blossomed.

3/5 Stars 270 pages
Published July 29th 2016 by BookBaby

Following a teenage boy named Daniel, the story starts off with an argument between him and his newly ex girlfriend. She’s been drugged and molested at a party, and he doesn’t believe her. This is why I initially really didn’t like the book. She’s hysterical, and he’s just mad that she slept with someone else. He doesn’t care about what really happened, why it happened, and how it happened. I almost put down the book because of that. It’s really insensitive. I think there could have been a way better version of this story without that. Anyways, he goes on to work, we learn about his sad back story with his absent parents, and why he lives with his grandma. Then he’s supposed to go on a hiking date with his best friend and two girls, but when he arrives at his friends house, they’ve already left with his cousin. He’s mad, but it’s for the best. That’s when things really start to change.

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It turns out that the meeting was a trap. Supernatural beings known as Veloures, had lured his best friend out hoping to get him, but instead killed his best friend and turned him into one of them. That’s what they want to do with him. So when he goes out looking for his friend, he finds someone else, someone not human, and someone who wants to hurt him. And that’s when he meets Fantasia, instant love of his life, super beautiful goddess of a girl with healing powers. She takes him to her cave and explains everything, and gives him a choice that no one else will, become like them, or leave his life behind and run, and try to forget about everything that she’s told him, and that he’s seen.

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This is why I liked the book. The supernatural beings were so different than any others I’ve read about, but the beginning of the book is just so hurtful and mean I really couldn’t get over it. I didn’t like the main character very much because of his insensitivity, and I mean, I get that he’s a teenage boy and they have their ego to worry about, but I think that was really pushing it. Like I said earlier, I think that the first half could have been rewritten in a way that it matched up more to the second half, and I would have absolutely loved it. That’s just me though. I might be a little too sensitive to topics like that. I would recommend it to people with a strong stomach who like young adult books about supernatural beings, and their afterlife. The book itself isn’t particularly gory or violent, until the last chapter of the book, but that being said, the last chapter was the most exciting and heart wrenching for me.

If you’d like to grab a copy, you can do so here, through my Amazon Associates link!

Here’s a link to the author’s Twitter, if you’d like to keep up with them!

Thanks for reading! Hope you have a great day, and you’re staying safe.

Angels of Moirai (Angels of Moirai #1) by Nicole Salmond Review

4/5 Stars 370 Pages Published May 3rd 2015

Are you like me and really just craving a book about angels and demons? I don’t know why, but lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about books like Hush, Hush. I just really wanted to read a young adult book about angels, and that’s exactly what this is. However, this is a lot more romance centered than what I expected.

Lila is a senior in high school. Though she’s from a fabulously wealthy self started family, her and her sister are horribly lonely without their parents around, and that’s how their life has been for most of it. She feels like she’ll never be who her parents want her to be, and that they’ll never fully love her because of it. And this is why we find her at the bottom of the pool holding onto a rock at the beginning of the book.

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Though her parents always let her and her sister Hayley down, she’s never going to be like that. She focuses on her school and taking care of the house, that is until she starts having these strange waking dreams about an angel. Little does she know that her life is about to change in an insane way. Especially at the end of the book. The angel from her waking dreams is in fact a real person, and he’s transferred to her school for the remainder of the year.

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Honestly, I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I picked this book out for my next read. Full of romance and kind of lacking in any excitement until the last ten percent of the book, I did really enjoy this book because it was something different than what I’ve been reading lately. I wanted a book about angels, and I got one. I’m not usually into slow books like this, but it was a nice relaxing break that I could pick up and put back down, and then pick right back up again. I also enjoyed reading it before bed because of how chill it was.

Again, however, this is another one of those books where the boy is really, really, old and immortal, and the girl is barely eighteen. I can put that aside though, because I can’t believe the insane turn that the end of the book took. I didn’t expect it at all, and if it didn’t happen, I’m not sure I would think about reading the second book in the series. But now? I have to! There’s no discussion about it. I need it in my life.

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Overall, if you’re looking for a teen romance book about angels and demons, the angel is named after american singer, song-writer and guitarist James Taylor, and a teenage girl just fighting her way through her classes and contemplating what university to go to, then this is the book for you. I really liked it, and I’m glad I got the chance to check it out.

If you’d like a copy, you can grab one here!

Thanks for reading! How do you feel about books about angels? Let me know in the comments! I’d love to chat. Hope you’re doing great and staying safe.

Tooth and Talon by Alex Hernandez Review

Tooth and Talon by Alex Hernandez 3/5 Stars 308 pages
Published July 17th 2017 by EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing

In a world full of genetically modified humans and space ships, fifty eight year old Oya is going to live forever. Or, maybe not. Earth is almost abandoned, and our solar system is just the tip of the iceberg in this new world. Mars is inhabited by Raptors, more commonly referred to as Harpies; people that have altered themselves to have wings and talons.

 

The beginning of the book shows Oya visiting her one hundred and eighty five year old grandmother on her little island, still living on Earth. Everyone around her has evacuated, but she refuses to give up home that she can return it to it’s former glory. Oya is worried about her, but she seems fine for the most part. Her grandmother turns out to be probably my favourite character in the book, because she just believes in herself and the world so much that she’s almost able to will what she wants into existence, and I want to be like that.

 

The story itself is exciting, but a little hard to follow. For some reason I felt like I was missing something, like another book beforehand that more thoroughly explained terms, and appearances of things in the story. The third person viewpoint doesn’t bother me, and it’s jumps right into the action, but I get a little lost trying to follow the actual story. I just can’t imagine what’s happening with the characters because I can’t imagine them in general, and there’s a lot of words that I don’t know, that aren’t explained. Overall, though I did enjoy the story and think it was really unique and interesting. I think it has the potential to have a lot of fans.

 

If you’re looking for something futuristic and somewhat alien, than this is the book for you. It’s available here, and here’s a link to the author’s Twitter, if you’d like to keep up with them.

Thanks for reading!