Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Happy Tuesday!!! I've had a crazy past few days, so reading and writing has been limited... Family has come up from Texas, and needless to say they've kept my husband and me pretty busy... I've got a few quiet moments this early morning, so here's my teaser, plucked from Jana Oliver's Forsaken (The Demon Trapper's Daughter) :

"Only then did she let the scream loose into the depths of her pillow, let it rend her throat until she had no more breath. Then the tears came, streaming hot, salty. She tried not to let them overwhelm her, but it was no use. She chocked on her sobs, hammering the bed with her fists."

Happy Reading Everyone :)

~ Keely ~

(Don't forget to cast your vote for July's giveaway! ~ The poll is on the upper right hand side..)

Booking Through Thursday and From the Review Pile

This week's question asks:

Have you ever bought a book, started reading it and then realised you have already read it? If so, how far did you get?

This has never happened to me with a book, although I used to reread books all the time - intentionally - but I've definitely done this before with movies. I've added movies to my Netflix queue that sounded awesome, received them in the mail, only to have realization dawn on me thirty minutes in. So strange.

From the Review Pile is a meme hosted by Stepping Out of the Page every Thursday.

The aim of this meme is to showcase books that you've received for review (or if you don't receive review books, any book that you own and really want to read/review) but haven't yet got around to reading, in order to give the book some extra publicity.

I know that a lot of you have a huge pile of books that you want to read/review, but it understandably takes a while to get around to reading them all - here you can give a book (or two!) some of the publicity that it deserves, even if you haven't read it yet!

Right now, I have a few books patiently waiting for my undivided attention. I can't wait to get to them!

First is The Savage Grace by Bree Despain. I love this series, and although I need to brush up on the events of the last one (hey, it's been an entire year), I can't wait to find out what happens next!

A troubled soul. An impossible choice. A final battle.


Wrestling with the werewolf curse pulsing deep inside of her, Grace Divine was finally able to find her brother, but it nearly cost her everything.


With her boyfriend, Daniel, stuck in wolf form and Sirhan's death approaching, time is running out for Grace to stop Caleb Kalbi and his gang of demons. If she fails, her family and hometown will perish. Everything rests on Grace's shoulders.


The final installment in The Dark Divine trilogy brings Daniel and Grace's love story to a breathtaking conclusion.

Second is one I found for an astounding $2.99 for Kindle. The Demon Trapper's Daughter has been on my TBR list for too long now and I'm excited to finally be diving into it - soon.

Demon Trapper Riley Blackthorne just needs a chance to prove herself—and that’s exactly what Lucifer is counting on…

It’s the year 2018, and with human society seriously disrupted by the economic upheavals of the previous decade, Lucifer has increased the number of demons in all major cities. Atlanta is no exception. Fortunately, humans are protected by Demon Trappers, who work to keep homes and streets safe from the things that go bump in the night. Seventeen-year-old Riley, only daughter of legendary Demon Trapper Paul Blackthorne, has always dreamed of following in her father’s footsteps. When she’s not keeping up with her homework or trying to manage her growing attraction to fellow Trapper apprentice, Simon, Riley’s out saving citizens from Grade One Hellspawn. Business as usual, really, for a demon-trapping teen. When a Grade Five Geo-Fiend crashes Riley’s routine assignment at a library, jeopardizing her life and her chosen livelihood, she realizes that she’s caught in the middle of a battle between Heaven and Hell.

Happy Reading Everyong :)

~ Keely ~

Review: Requiem by Jamie McGuire

“Jared paced, brooded, and once in a while, when his thoughts were particularly tormented, he winced. The color had long left his face as he played back the different scenarios in his mind. Back and forth he paced, so many times that I watched the floor, wondering when he would wear a trail. His inner turmoil could have set the room on fire. It was unbearable to watch, but I couldn't leave him; not when he was planning my death.”


Dreaming of the dead might mean a restless night for anyone, but for Nina Grey it was a warning. 

Still healing from her last run-in with Hell, Nina struggles with not only her life as a Brown University student, but also as an intern at Titan Shipping, her father's company. Recurring nightmares about her father's violent death have become a nightly event, but being overwhelmed with guilt from Ryan's unexpected departure to the Armed Forces, and heart ache over Claire being across the ocean to protect him, Nina believes her sleepless nights are the least of her problems—but she's wrong.

Worried about Nina's declining health, Jared must steal back Shax's book for answers. Fighting new enemies, and with the help of new friends, Jared's worst fear comes to fruition. Desperate, he is faced with a choice: Fight Hell alone, or start a war with Heaven.

This is when it gets thick ~ helluva sequel. I loved Providence, but as I said in my review, I wished there would be more background, history, something. I got more than enough in Requiem. With a surprise on every page, Requiem went at a racing pace, bringing Nina deeper into the depths of Heaven and Hell, allowing her to make the discovery that she's not as displaced in Jared's world as she once thought. 

So much happens in this sequel, my head is spinning trying to figure out what to write first. My favorite element was the history provided, the little details that caused Nina's world to head in a downward spiral.When you're reading Providence, you start to believe that this is going to be a simple love story, and Jared and Nina will always have to fight fate to be together. As if that obstacle wasn't difficult enough, Requiem makes their problems in the first novel seem like sweet indulgences. I didn't expect freakish, practically fulfilled prophecies and full on battles with Hell, but that's what I got, and I gladly accepted. 

I had to look up the meaning of Requiem. A requiem is a "mass for the dead." I don't know why they can't simply say 'funeral,' so I'm assuming it's much more complex than that. The dead reach out to Nina in her sleep, sending her messages in hopes to help her and Jared with this overwhelming prophecy she's a part of that will supposedly alter the balance between Heaven and Hell. That, and Nina and Jared's destiny isn't exactly full of life, so I suppose the title is also in relation to that. (I'm trying to be vague here; don't want to spoil too much for ya.)

As for Nina and Jared's relationship, it's reached that peak where there love holds fast and nothing can keep them apart. It's the other characters that are focused on here such as Claire, Ryan, and even Kim. I love that McGuire expands on these other lovable characters and brings them closer to Nina and the shadows she faces. As if the demonic and historic storyline weren't enough in this book, the growth of all these characters gives the story even more ground to stand on. 

Definitely a must read. This book blew my mind, and as soon as I turned the last page, my thumbs hastily brought up the Kindle store to purchase the third and final installment, Eden. Worth your time, I promise.

Happy Reading Everyone :)

~ Keely ~  

Review: City of Ashes

Clary Fray just wishes that her life would go back to normal. But what's normal when you're a demon-slaying Shadowhunter, your mother is in a magically induced coma, and you can suddenly see Downworlders like werewolves, vampires, and faeries? If Clary left the world of the Shadowhunters behind, it would mean more time with her best friend, Simon, who's becoming more than a friend. But the Shadowhunting world isn't ready to let her go — especially her handsome, infuriating, newfound brother, Jace. And Clary's only chance to help her mother is to track down rogue Shadowhunter Valentine, who is probably insane, certainly evil — and also her father.

To complicate matters, someone in New York City is murdering Downworlder children. Is Valentine behind the killings — and if he is, what is he trying to do? When the second of the Mortal Instruments, the Soul-Sword, is stolen, the terrifying Inquisitor arrives to investigate and zooms right in on Jace. How can Clary stop Valentine if Jace is willing to betray everything he believes in to help their father?

In this breathtaking sequel to City of Bones, Cassandra Clare lures her readers back into the dark grip of New York City's Downworld, where love is never safe and power becomes the deadliest temptation.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Without a doubt, Cassandra Clare knows how to weave a twisted fairy tale into something you just want to wrap around yourself and curl up with for hours. I'm usually a character driven reader, but in this unique and rare case for me, I think I'd have to say the story creates the characters. There are so many unexpected elements, tragedies, emotional spikes, and battles that as soon as you get used to the way you think the story is going, it changes on you and presents a completely different perspective. The storyline is creative, original, and completely open to anything both possible and impossible.

I'd love to take a stroll through Clare's magic-filled mind. Her descriptions always leave me wondering, "how'd she come up with that?" Her imagination seems childlike, but it also adds that tinge of horror that makes what we are reading believable - in that fairytale way, of course. The demons she comes up with are, strangely, one of my favorite aspects. Some of them made me gag - no, really - which they are inevitably supposed to do with their evil intentions and overall nastiness. Disgusting demons aside, the other creatures she depicts, such as the fairies of Seelie Court and the hybrid Downworlders, draw you to this 'other' world, making it seem more real than the 'mundane' world Clary always thought was reality before she discovered the Shadowhunters.

The one and only problem I had with the book was Clary. She's not the most unlikable heroine I've ever come across, but her suffering maturity level and unfailing ability to ignorantly force her way into grave situations - on the premise that she wants to 'help' when really she just freezes, screams, and waits for someone to save her - really grated my nerves. However, I do understand that this world is still new to her and that she severely lacks the training that the others possess. I hope her 'helpless female syndrome' subsides as she learns more about herself and her heritage.
Now although I did say that I think the storyline steals the show in this book, as a character driven reader, I couldn't help but be entranced by the complexity of the relationship between Jace and Clary. All I'm gunna say is that I don't think Jace is who he thinks he is, and the angst they are causing each other is going to, has to, subside eventually.

Happy Reading Everyone :)

~ Keely ~