(Review) Taking The Reins (The Rosewoods, #1) - Katrina Abbott

Title: Taking The Reins (The Rosewoods, #1)
Author: Katrina Abbott

Genre: Young Adult (Contemporary, Romance)

Format: ebook
Publisher: Over The Cliff Publishing
Date Published: January 28, 2014

Amazon

Summary (from Goodreads)

Brooklyn Prescott (if that’s even her real name) is the new girl at The Rosewood Academy for Academic Excellence, now that she’s moved back to the States after two years living in London. Rosewood, a boarding school for children of the rich and famous and known for its celebutantes, is missing just one element important to any junior’s education: boys. But luckily for Brooklyn, and the rest of the Rosewood girls, there’s a boys’ boarding school, The Westwood Academy, just a few miles away.
On her very first day, Brooklyn meets Will, a gorgeous and flirty boy on campus to help with move in. But is he who she thinks he is? And what about Brady, the cute stable boy? Or Jared, the former child actor with his grown-up good looks who can always make her laugh? As Brooklyn settles in at Rosewood, she’s faced with new friends, new challenges and new opportunities to make herself into the girl she always wanted to be. Whoever that might be.
Taking The Reins is the first installment of The Rosewoods, an exciting new Young Adult series for readers who love fun, flirty love stories.

Review:

I received an ebook copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.

Taking The Reins tells the story of a recently-moved Brooklyn Prescott to an all-girls school. I actually really like the light-hearted way the story was told. Nothing too provocative or complex, just a really good, world-building, introductory book that would serve really well as a springboard for more complex issues. The story itself has some really good points but at times I felt it lacked some depth, but it really just fitted well with the simplistic feel of the story. 

Brooklyn's journey into the well-cushioned world of celebrities and wealthy teens started off pretty mild - room mixups, troublesome schedules, mean deans and liking the wrong boy? Yeah, I didn't really see the last one coming but I'm glad the story didn't go off too complicated with that plot because that would've ruined it for me. She and Emmie has such a good friendship and it would've been sad if they had boy issues so early in the story. 

The abundance of characters introduced so quickly into the story threw me off a little bit but it was understandable, we'd want to hear about them early to get to know them one by one. I'm really glad the author has given each character their appropriate screen time and that each one was given a distinct personality. The girls were pretty decent ladies themselves, i'm really glad no one was being snobby and creating unneccesarry drama. As for the boys, the whole thing seemed a little too "dating game" at the dance part but there couldn't have been a better way to introduce them all. I'm really rooting for Brady right now although he maintains to be an enigmatic character still. 

I enjoyed the story for what it was, nothing too complicated and intense for an introductory book. I recommend it for anyone wanting a relaxing, light right. 

Rating: ♚♚♚♚

(Review) Time For Cherries - Camille Thomaz Labanca

Title: Time For Cherries
Author: Camille Thomaz Labanca
Format: ebook, novella
Pages: 40 pages
Genre: New Adult (Contemporary, Romance)
Date of Publication: February 14th 2014

Amazon

Summary (from Goodreads)

Life wasn't subtle with Melissa, and the secret that she keeps is the same that kills her. When she enter into a prestigious university in Rio de Janeiro to attend a journalism course, she meets Lucas. He soon establishes a goal: get to know her better ― to the point of finding out all the details that scare, animate and make her who she is. If Melissa will be ready to let him go, well, that's another question ... And nobody said he gives up easily.

Review:

I received this book from the author for free in exchange for an honest review. Thank you so much!

Time for Cherries is a story of a young woman's struggle to find worth in her damaged self. It tells the story of Melissa, a rape victim who, ever since then, has blamed herself for what has happened to her. She then applies herself to so many things, can't allow herself to be distracted to the point that she doesn't allow herself to be uprooted from her carefully planned university life in Rio.

There she meets the guy who might just save her from the torment of her nightmares and show her that her deep-seated fears are none of her fault at all but it could very well be the way to fixing her somehow. Lucas is a perfect example of a guy that Melissa needs in her life.

After their intimate encounter, something I didn't expect but it was sweet nonetheless, the person who Melissa fears the most shows up. Finally, she has the chance to undo her fears and Lucas is just the guy to help her through that. At one point It got a little frustrating for me, because none of this really was Melissa's fault. Victim-blaming is a big deal for me and it was really hard to hear her justify what happened to her like she asked for it.

All in all, it was a short but lovely, uplifting read towards the end. I just wished the translation I was provided with was more descriptive and that there was more to it.

Rating: ♚♚♚♚

(Review) See Jane Run - Hannah Jayne

Title: See Jane Run
Author: Hannah Jayne
Format: ebook, finished copy
Pages: 288 pages
Genre: Young Adult (Contemporary, Mystery)
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Date Published: January 7th, 2014

Amazon | Book Depository

Summary (from Goodreads)

I know who you are.

When Riley first gets the postcard tucked into her bag, she thinks it's a joke. Then she finds a birth certificate for a girl named Jane Elizabeth O'Leary hidden inside her baby book.

Riley's parents have always been pretty overprotective. What if it wasn't for her safety...but fear of her finding out their secret? What have they been hiding? The more Riley digs for answers, the more questions she has.

The only way to know the truth? Find out what happened to Jane O'Leary.

Review:

See Jane Run was a very exciting read, to say the least. I expected the parents to be the "mean people" in the story. I'm glad I was proven wrong though the replacement was a little weak and kinda made me detached to the story for a little while as it was explained a little later.

Riley was living a normal albeit closeted life when one day she found a birth certificate of a girl lodged inside her baby book. Following her instincts (after several nags from her friend Shelby) she decides to find out the truth about it, and it didn't help her suspicions that her parents are also very secretive about her own past. 

She decides to use the time she got away from her parents to investigate this mystery with the help of JD, a resident "juvenile delinquent" that didn't smell like good news to me when we first read about him. He reminded me of Christian Slater's "JD" from Heathers, and Riley being a baby version of Winona Ryder's Veronica Sawyer. 

The whole deal with Tim stalking/kidnapping her and being in the Witness Protection Program was explained a little too late in the book, something i wished the author left hints of in the beginning. It would've had more impact rather than the truth being just carelessly dumped at the end. While I like how the book showed Tim's degenerative state, I highly doubt it would've taken Riley that long to escape especially when they went out. Couldn't she just have screamed? 

Still, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It had the right amount of thrills in it's pages. 

Rating: ♚♚♚♚

(Review) Timebound (The Chronos Files #1) - Rysa Walker

Title: Timebound (The Chronos Files #1)
Author: Rysa Walker
Format: epub
ISBN:  9781477848159
Publisher: Skyscape
Date Published: January 1st 2014

Summary (from Goodreads)

When Kate Pierce-Keller’s grandmother gives her a strange blue medallion and speaks of time travel, sixteen-year-old Kate assumes the old woman is delusional. But it all becomes horrifyingly real when a murder in the past destroys the foundation of Kate’s present-day life. Suddenly, that medallion is the only thing protecting Kate from blinking out of existence.

Kate learns that the 1893 killing is part of something much more sinister, and Kate’s genetic ability to time-travel makes her the only one who can stop him. Risking everything, she travels to the Chicago World’s Fair to try to prevent the killing and the chain of events that follows.

Changing the timeline comes with a personal cost, however—if Kate succeeds, the boy she loves will have no memory of her existence. And regardless of her motives, does she have the right to manipulate the fate of the entire world?

Review:

WOW I'm so glad I finally got around to finishing this book! I seriously thought I would get too frustrated and just drop but Rysa Walker has got me hooked at every word despite my agonizingly slow pace. Just thinking about the whole deal with time travel is enough to make my head spin but this book my Rysa Walker was definitely a good and worthy read.

The story starts a little simple, and slowly hops into more convoluted aspects of time travel. Kate's character, who I love so much because she's realistic about everything despite everything going on around her, is a feisty but shy girl. My favourite mix of a heroine. The convoluted parts may stem from the fact that my reading was spaced in long intervals (days, at most) due to personal circumstances, but in it's entirety it wasn't that difficult to follow. There are areas that seemed a little grey for me, like if Prudence on who's side, the ultimate plan of Saul and the Cyrists for the whole world and how those people who were going to be time-travelling and researching points in history came to be but I'm hoping that'll be answered in the next books. I also had my doubts on who Kiernan really was, and I was starting to worry that his character wouldn't be utilized well but Rysa Walker has weaved him really well into the story. Sure, he didn't get that much face time but there was something in the way that the story was written that you know it's believable. 

I'm very glad that the story flowed the way it did, instead of a terrible and agonizing cliffhanger immediately at the end. The whole aspect of time travel, CHRONOS keys and changing the course of history greatly interests me (Whovian here) and this book would certainly be suited for someone interested in it. 

Rating: ♚♚♚♚