Where Were You When You Read…?

You know all those memes where you list favourite book moments, tropes, characters, all-time faves, keeper shelf, re-reads, etc? I can’t do those. At all. Because my memory is atrocious. And there are simply too many books to read once, so no re-reading. No trying the same book later. You really only do get one chance with me 😉

So I don’t really have book memories. But for some special novels, I remember where I was when I read part of them. (The usual bed/bath/couch doesn’t count, because those are my regular reading places.) These three are all five-star books, by the way 🙂

5-Star Books Read So Far in 2013

Liz Coley: Pretty Girl-13
Beth Revis: As They Slip Away
Laura Bickle: The Hallowed Ones
Rachel Cohn: Beta
Tiffany Reisz: The Angel
Kelly Meding: Changeling
Lauren DeStefano: Sever
Dan Wells: The Hollow City
Krissy Kneen: Steeplechase
Blythe Woolston: Black Helicopters
Fleur Philips: Crumble

4 New Covers (Bick, Black, Cohn, Mead)

[REVIEW] Beta – Rachel Cohn

Rachel Cohn
Beta
Hyperion (US: 16th October 2012)
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Very strange but pleasant – this is my second five-star read in a row. This rarely happens, but I’m delighted.

Beta‘s spoilers should be keep to a minimum, because there are so many awesome twists and turns. In short: the clones seem more like androids (except for [spoiler redacted]): programmable, and whose purpose is to serve.

It’s hard to like the characters, but they’re very entertaining. I rather like Tahir’s understatement, but that will probably change. I hope Elysia doesn’t hook up with Alex. Would love to learn more about Dr Lusardi.

The outstanding depth of world-building includes vining, Firsts, Betas, Awfuls, Defects, FantaSpheres, ‘raxia, and all the beautiful scenery. Demesne is a stunning setting, and the story as a whole has a vivid colourscape. Fuchsia and violet feature heavily, as do botanicals. Biome City also sounds fascinating, so hopefully we’ll get to experience it in the next novel. (Emergent, 15th October 2013.)

16th October 2012 Releases

Happy Release Day to:

Rachel Cohn
Beta (Annex, Book 1)
Disney-Hyperion (US: 16th October 2012)
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Elysia is created in a laboratory, born as a sixteen-year-old girl, an empty vessel with no life experience to draw from. She is a Beta, an experimental model of a teenage clone. She was replicated from another teenage girl, who had to die in order for Elysia to exist. Elysia’s purpose is to serve the inhabitants of Demesne, an island paradise for the wealthiest people on earth. Everything about Demesne is bioengineered for perfection. Even the air induces a strange, euphoric high, which only the island’s workers – soulless clones like Elysia – are immune to. At first, Elysia’s life is idyllic and pampered. But she soon sees that Demesne’s human residents, who should want for nothing, yearn. But for what, exactly? She also comes to realise that beneath the island’s flawless exterior, there is an undercurrent of discontent among Demesne’s worker clones. She knows she is soulless and cannot feel and should not care – so why are overpowering sensations clouding Elysia’s mind? If anyone discovers that Elysia isn’t the unfeeling clone she must pretend to be, she will suffer a fate too terrible to imagine. When her one chance at happiness is ripped away with breathtaking cruelty, emotions she’s always had but never understood are unleashed. As rage, terror, and desire threaten to overwhelm her, Elysia must find the will to survive.

Daniel O’Malley
The Rook
Hachette Back Bay (US: 16th October)
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Myfanwy Thomas awakes in a London park surrounded by dead bodies. With her memory gone, her only hope of survival is to trust the instructions left in her pocket by her former self. She quickly learns that she is a Rook, a high-level operative in a secret agency that protects the world from supernatural threats. But there is a mole inside the organisation and this person wants her dead. As Myfanwy battles to save herself, she encounters a person with four bodies, a woman who can enter her dreams, children transformed into deadly fighters, and an unimaginably vast conspiracy.

October 2012 Releases

Done with September 2012 Releases? Here are October 2012 Releases. For future releases, check Reading Wishlist.

3 New Covers (Cohn, Mahoney, Pascal)

2 Events, 1 News & 11 New Deals

On Thursday 24th February, Keri Arthur will be the star of Library Lovers’ Lunch at Belgrave Library in VIC. Starts at 12:30PM and costs $10, which includes lunch. You can book your place by phone on 9754 7266, or online. Hope to see you there!

Rachel Caine will come to Australia for the worldwide release of Bite Club (Morganville Vampires, Book 10) in May 2011. Stay tuned for more details.

Sara Creasy‘s sci-fi romance Song of Scarabaeus has been nominated for the 2010 Philip K. Dick Award. The sequel, Children of Scarabaeus, will be published 29th March 2011.

Rachel Cohn‘s 4-book sci-fi/fantasy series to Disney-Hyperion (World English). The first book, Beta, will be published in 2012, the rest following in 1-year intervals. Set in the bioengineered tropical paradise of Annex, which is staffed by soul-less clones. In Beta, 2 teenage girls – 1 human & the other her clone – are both stranded in the Annex & fall in love with the same guy.

Film rights for Jack El-Hai‘s The Lobotomist sold to Realm Pictures producer Brad Fischer, working with Leonardo DiCaprio’s production shingle, Appian Way. A biography of Walkter J. Freeman, the brilliant doctor who found infamy instead of medical glory after he introduced the lobotomy as a treatment for mental illness.

Kat Falls’s dystopian YA romance trilogy, The Fetch, to Scholastic Press (world rights, exc. UK/Aus/NZ). 1st book scheduled for 2012. Set in a near future in which American has been literally separated – a wall has been erected – into East & West after a disease ravages the eastern half of the country. When a 16-year-old girls is forced to travel east into the “savage zone” on a dangerous mission, she winds up meeting a mysterious boy.

Kathy Hepinstall‘s The Blue Asylum to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (NA). Madness, slavery & war are the backdrop to a love story set during the Civil War, at an insane asylum on remote Sanibel Island, as a plantation wife who has been committed by her husband falls in love with a fellow inmate & plots their escape.

Nancy Holzner‘s next 2 Deadtown novels will be released in 2011 & 2012 respectively.

UK rights for Tara Hudson‘s debut YA ghost romance Hereafter sold to HarperCollins Children’s for publication in July 2011.

Jay Kristoff‘s Stormdancer in a 3-book World English deal to Thomas Dunne Books, in association with Tor UK. A dystopian fantasy set in steampunk feudal Japan.

Screen rights for Marie Lu‘s futuristic Legend to CBS Films/Temple Hill. Takes place in a North America split into 2 warring nations, following a young Robin Hood & a teen prodigy hired to hunt him down who uncover an impossible truth about their totalitarian leaders. Lu has planned the series as a trilogy & will be involved in the scripting phase as an exec producer.

Gena Showalter has sold Alice in Zombieland, the 1st in a series. A teenage girl loses her family in a crash, only to wake up to a world of zombies & zombie-slaying, as well as a bad boy who could save or destroy her.

Cecily von Ziegesar’s Gossip Girl, Psycho Killer to Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (NA), scheduled for October 2011. Will riff on the original title that launched the popular YA line about a group of wealthy Upper East Side teenagers who attend a posh Manhattan private school. The book, which will be a mashup in the style of Pride, Prejudice & Zombies, is a serial killer version of the original Gossip Girl novel…or “Gossip Girl: Slasher Edition”. Blair Waldorf & Serena van der Woodsen become the “most fabulous, trendsetting serial killers” around.

Jill Williamson‘s YA novel Jason Farms to Zonderkids for publication in June 2012. A girl discovers an underground lab of clones – all of whom look suspiciously like a boy from school.