Sleepless (Bird of Stone #1) by Tracey Ward Review

5/5 Stars 373 Pages
Published August 12th 2013

After a long break from reading and a depression spell, an amazing book like this was just what I needed. What seems like any other ordinary story of a girl and a boy is actually something beautiful and addicting. Dreams becoming reality, lives being torn apart and rebuilt, and at it’s heart, a story of love and two people finding each other no matter what. And it’s everything I could ever want it to be.

The story follows two people, a girl named Alexia with a sleeping disorder that causes her to slip, or basically teleport herself to wherever she’s dreaming about. After losing her parents, they didn’t die they just decided that they didn’t want her to be apart of their lives at just sixteen, she lives with her older sister who’s deathly worried about her when she wakes up some days to find her missing. Sometimes she’s only gone a night, but sometimes she’s gone for a week, stuck in some frightening city that she’s not familiar with, or even stuck out in the wilderness with nothing but what she’s worn to bed. Good thing she started strapping her phone and some cash to her leg.

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The other character is a boy named Nick, who’s come from a military family, and who’s not very close to his mother after deciding he wants to be apart of a very prestigious and important branch of the military, one that saves people and risks their own lives in the process. He’s going through the training for most of the story, but there’s also something different about him. He’s not able to feel fear. The only thing he’s really truly scared of is a nightmare that he has often, one that Alexia also has.

The two find themselves intertwined one day when Alex and her sister are in Florida for a mini vacation, and out of nowhere Nick pops up, clearly drowning from something, but he’s just appeared out of thin air. After that event, they begin to meet in their dreams more often than not, and start to bond. But everything goes even deeper when Alexia tries to dig deep into why she is the way she is, and it’s unlike anything the two could have ever expected.

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This story is amazing and exciting and heartfelt. I really couldn’t get enough of it. It’s books like these that really make me want to read 24/7, and after finding out that this is actually a series, I can’t wait until I can get my hands on the next book. The characters are so lifelike despite their obvious differences from our real world, that you could almost believe that they’re real people. The story was gripping and everything I could have hoped for, and more. If you’re looking for something to pull you out of your normal book rut, then I highly recommend checking this out if you get the chance.

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

And if you’d like to keep up with the author, you can do so here on Twitter!

Thanks for reading! I hope you’re having a great day.

Potency (Glow #1) by Aubrey Hadley Review

Looking for your next young adult book about aliens? Than this may be the one for you. At an epic six hundred and twenty pages, this story is gripping and unique. The cover is beautiful, and it’s really the reason that I picked it up in the first place, before even reading the description. It would make a wonderful addition to anyone’s bookshelf, and I think that it’s a story I’ll remember for a long time, not only because it’s a series, but also because it’s really interesting.

 

Following Harper, a seventeen year old girl living in Nevada, she lives her life a little sheltered. Lately she’s only able to hang out with her friends when she sneaks out, because of her seemingly overprotective mother, who not only home school’s her, but ever since she found out about a new kind of sleeping sickness invading the world, she’s not allowing her outside either, in case she catches it. After all, she doesn’t want one of her daughters to die.

 

4/5 Stars 620 pages
Published July 16th 2019 by Ruby & Topaz Publishing

The story begins with Harper running into her house carelessly after sneaking out and running through the desert. She sees something that she can’t believe with her own eyes, and she’s convinced that she’s part of some kind of conspiracy because of it. After all, who sees a shadow that glows rainbow in the middle of the desert in the middle of the night? She swears she’s never going to sneak out again after that, but of course, she does.

 

After that event, however, things start to change for her. After returning home from babysitting one day, she logs onto facebook to see a video of a man literally disappearing. After that, not only the video disappears, but her facebook account does too. Feeding into her conspiracy theory paranoia, she sneaks out to warn her friend, but returns home to find her house empty, and her neighbourhood being locked down in a quarantine. Her neighbour has caught the sleeping sickness, and the government isn’t going to let it spread any further. Her family has snuck out before the borders were set in place, and she’s left alone in her home, until she finds a familiar face. That’s when things start to take an even worse turn however. She’s abducted by aliens, and her new life begins.

 

This book was so different compared to the other books I’ve been reading lately. I’m always into a good first person alien book, and this one wasn’t any different. The only problem I really have with it, is that it was so long that I kind of lost interest at some parts and then came back to it. I would have liked to see it split into maybe two books, because of that.

 

The characters are really interesting, my favourite being Harper of course, since she’s the main point of the story. The aliens in this book were so different than other aliens I’ve read about, and I really enjoyed getting to know them and their world, as well as their technology. I’m really excited to see what happens in the next book, though I’m kind of hoping that it will be a little shorter. I think this book has the potential to have a lot of fans, and I’m interested to see where the rest of the story takes us.

 

Definitely check it out if you think this is something you’ll enjoy. The book is available here.

Thanks for reading!