Companions of the Night by Vivian Vande Velde

by Carol6 Comments
Companions of the Night by Vivian Vande Velde Description: The romantic horror genre reaches a new level of complexity in this novel, which manages to be simultaneously thought-provoking and blood-curdling. Kerry becomes the unwitting accomplice of an attractive, mysterious boy on the run, only to discover that he is a vampire. Can she trust her feelings for someone so alien to her? Or has she been "seduced by the glamour of evil"? My thoughts: I didn't love this book, but I didn't hate it. It just didn't grab me. There were a couple things that I liked, though. Ethan, the vampire, never was anything but a vampire. He's not softened, not made into a perfect romantic hero. He drinks human blood, kills, lies to Kerry left and right, but Kerry still falls in love with him. Of course, she is a teenager and he does know how to manipulate her, but he truly cares about her, too. He just never loses his "vampireness" if that makes...
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Tuesday Teaser

by Carol4 Comments
Grab your current read. Let the book fall open to a random page. Share with us two (2) "teaser" sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12. You also need to share the title of the book that you're getting your "teaser" from...that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given. Please avoid spoilers! My teaser: Alex, sitting in front of the computer screen, got out of the Post site without reading the last article in the archives. He typed "Heathrow Heights" and the word "murder" into a search engine and eventually found a site that sold partial transcripts of trials going back fifty years. -161, The Turnaround by George Pelecanos Tuesday Teaser is hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Play along....
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Giveaways in Blogland

by CarolNo Comments
I thought I'd go ahead and share some of the giveaways I've found on various blogs this week. I'm currently holding two giveaways. The first is for I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti by Guilia Melucci. The second is for a pair of books, Bobbi Brown Living Beauty by Bobbi Brown with Marie Clare Katigbak and How Not to Look Old by Charla Krupp. Sheri, at A Novel Menagerie, has a copy of The Keeper of Light and Dust by Natasha Mostert up for grabs. Amberkatze's Book Blog has a great interview with Paula Brackston and is giving away a signed copy of her Book of Shadows. Drey's Library has a buch of giveaways going on right now. She has an interview with David Cristofano and five copies of his book, The Girl She Used to Be. She's also giving away five copies of A Lucky Child by Thomas Buergenthal. As if that's not enough, she's got an Earth Day themed giveaway and one for National...
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Musing Monday

by Carol3 Comments
Today’s MUSING MONDAYS post is about your to be read list… As a follow up to last week's question, Joseph asked how you keep track of your tbr list. Do you have a paper list or on your computer? Do you take it with you when you go shopping? How do you decide what gets added to it? I keep track of my to-read list on Goodreads.com. It's slightly out of control, though, since I add just about every book I'm even remotely interested in. I tend to order most of my books on-line or put them on hold through my library's website, which makes it easy to refer to my list. When I actually go shopping at bookstores, I usually pick up whatever catches my eye, whether it's on my list or not....
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Card Games for a Group

by Carol1 Comment
When you have more than 4 players or so for a game night, it can sometimes be hard to find games that everyone can play together. These are a few of my favorite card-based games that can be played with a larger number of players. The Great Dalmuti designed by Richard Garfield Description: Life isn't fair... and neither is The Great Dalmuti! One round you're at the top of the heap, and the next you're peasant scum in this fast-paced card game of medieval one-upmanship. The players take their places in the pecking order, from Greater Peon to Greater Dalmuti, and try to get rid of the cards in their hands. Next round, everyone's roles could change because the faster you get rid of your cards, the higher you'll go. If you're unseated, you're really unseated: everyone moves around the table each round to take up their new positions. But don't get comfortable in the cushy chair of the Greater Dalmuti, because in a...
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The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry

by Carol6 Comments
The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry From the dust jacket: Towner Whitney, the self-confessed unreliable narrator of The Lace Reader, hails from a family of Salem women who can read the future in the patterns in lace, and who have guarded a history of secrets going back generations, but the disappearance of two women brings Towner home to Salem and the truth about the death of her twin sister to light. The Lace Reader is a mesmerizing tale that spirals into a world of secrets, confused identities, lies, and half-truths in which the reader quickly finds it's nearly impossible to separate fact from fiction, but as Towner Whitney points out early on in the novel, "There are no accidents." My thoughts: Even after finishing this book, I'm not sure how I feel about it. The concept was great and I was engrossed, but there was something off for me. Maybe it's because in the first paragraph, Towner, the narrator, tells us she's a liar and...
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