Countdown: September 2013 (2)

Fall is officially (almost) here, and it's my favorite time of year! No matter where I live or where I get the chance to visit, the Fall months are always the best wherever you land. I love pulling out a favorite pair of jeans and a super comfortable and slimming black turtleneck sweater with a pair of great boots. That's my idea of a perfect outfit, and a great book always goes great with that. And now that Summer is wrapping up, I'm winding down on the quick and fun reads that I feel goes hand in hand with the weather, and instead will venture into reading just about anything that comes across my path and sounds intriguing. Here are a few that fit that bill.

 

Countdown Pick #1:  Project Cain by Geoffrey Girard (09/03/2013)

 

Fifteen-year-old Jeff Jacobson had never heard of Jeffrey Dahmer, the infamous serial killer who brutally murdered seventeen people more than twenty years ago. But Jeff’s life changes forever when the man he’d thought was his father hands him a government file telling him he was constructed in a laboratory only seven years ago, part of a top-secret government cloning experiment called ‘Project CAIN’.

There, he was created entirely from Jeffrey Dahmer’s DNA. There are others like Jeff—those genetically engineered directly from the most notorious murderers of all time: The Son of Sam, The Boston Strangler, Ted Bundy . . . even other Jeffrey Dahmer clones. Some raised, like Jeff, in caring family environments; others within homes that mimicked the horrific early lives of the men they were created from.

When the most dangerous boys are set free by the geneticist who created them, the summer of killing begins. Worse, these same teens now hold a secret weapon even more dangerous than the terrible evil they carry within. Only Jeff can help track the clones down before it’s too late. But will he catch the ‘monsters’ before becoming one himself?

 

The idea of something like this happening is so sick and terrifying that I can't even believe it.  And yet, at the same time, I'm of course overwhelming intrigued to see how Girard will spin this, and where he'll take his readers throughout these pages.  I had no choice but to add it to my countdown list.

 

Countdown Pick #2:  Projection by Risa Green (09/03/2013)

 

When 13-year-old Gretchen Harris's mother is murdered at Gretchen's 8th Grade graduation party, everyone in the town of Delphi, California, suspects a power struggle within the Oculus Society: Delphi's version of the Junior League. Gretchen's best friend, Jessica Shaw, might even hold the key to finding the culprit withThe Plotinus Ability: the Oculus Society's jealously guarded secret power to trade souls, which hinges on a kiss. Gretchen's hope at finding the murderer ends in tragedy when Ariel Miller—the class outcast—stalks Gretchen and Jessica and surreptitiously films them exchanging a kiss to test if the Plotinus Ability is real, not knowing their motives. The ensuing YouTube video ("Popular Girls = Secret Lovers") goes viral, Gretchen's and Jessica's lives are further shattered, and they vanish from Delphi.

Flash forward two years later: Ariel is suddenly the most popular junior in town, but wracked with guilt over what she did to Gretchen and Jessica. When both girls reappear after their mysterious absence, Ariel finds herself pawn, suspect, and key player in their scheme to bring the murderer to justice.

 

As someone who knows plenty about the Junior League I'm curious to see how this California like society plays out.  Don't even get me started on the rest of the plot laid out in the synopsis above, because there seems to be a lot that will be going on in this future release, and all of it remains a mystery to me in one way or another.

 

Countdown Pick #3:  Scorched by Mari Mancusi (09/03/2013)

 

TrinityDon't leave me here... It starts with a whisper. At first Trinity thinks she's going crazy. It wouldn't be a big surprise--her grandpa firmly believes there's a genuine dragon egg in their dusty little West Texas town. But this voice is real, and it's begging for her protection. Even if no one else can hear it...

Connor
He's come from a future scorched by dragonfire. His mission: Find the girl. Destroy the egg. Save the world.

Caleb
He's everything his twin brother Connor hates: cocky, undisciplined, and obsessed with saving dragons.

Trinity has no idea which brother to believe. All she has to go by is the voice in her head--a dragon that won't be tamed.

I love that we're able to get multiple point of views for the book's synopsis alone, and can only hope that the actual books reads the same way.  I've always been a fan of books and movies focusing on dragons, and can't wait to add this one to my collection.

 

Countdown Pick #3:  Somebody Up There Hates You by Hollis Seamon (09/03/2013)

 

Chemo, radiation, a zillion surgeries, watching my mom age twenty years in twenty months: if that’s part of the Big Dude’s plan, then it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? Somebody Up There Hates You.

SUTHY has landed me here in this hospice, where we—that’s me and Sylvie—are the only people under 30 in the whole place, sweartogod. But I’m not dead yet. I still need to keep things interesting. Sylvie, too. I mean, we’re kids, hospice-hostages or not. We freak out visitors; I get my uncle to sneak me out for one insane Halloween night. Stuff like that. And Sylvie wants to make things even more interesting. That girl’s got big plans.

Only Sylvie’s father is so nuclear-blasted by what’s happened to his little girl, he glows orange, I swear. That’s one scary man, and he’s not real fond of me. So we got a major family feud going on, right here in hospice. DO NOT CROSS line running down the middle of the hall, me on one side, her on the other. It’s crazy.

In the middle of all of this, really, there’s just me and Sylvie, a guy and a girl. And we want to live, in our way, by our own rules, in whatever time we’ve got. We will pack in some living before we go, trust me.

 

As long as this doesn't turn out to be like John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, than I'll take a chance.  I might wait to read a few reviews first before diving into this one, because to be quite honest...I'm not sure I can take the type of devastation I experienced during and after Green's novel.

 

Countdown Pick #4:  Starry Nights by Daisy Whitney (09/03/2013)

 

Seventeen-year-old Julien is a romantic—he loves spending his free time at the museum poring over the great works of the Impressionists. But one night, a peach falls out of a Cezanne, Degas ballerinas dance across the floor, and Julien is not hallucinating.

The art is reacting to a curse that trapped a beautiful girl, Clio, in a painting forever. Julien has a chance to free Clio and he can't help but fall in love with her. But love is a curse in its own right. And soon paintings begin to bleed and disappear. Together Julien and Clio must save the world's greatest art . . . at the expense of the greatest love they've ever known.

Like a master painter herself, Daisy Whitney brings inordinate talent and ingenuity to this romantic, suspenseful, and sophisticated new novel.A beautifully decorated package makes it a must-own in print.

As a huge fan of all things Paris and romance related, there was no way this title wasn't going to make the countdown list.  I love the idea of this, and not to mention a romantic leading male who is attempting to rescue a legitimate damsel in distress, but in modern times...I like it!

 

Countdown Pick #5:  When the World was Flat (And We Were in Love) by Ingrid Jonach (09/03/2013)

 

Looking back, I wonder if I had an inkling that my life was about to go from ordinary to extraordinary.

When sixteen-year-old Lillie Hart meets the gorgeous and mysterious Tom Windsor-Smith for the first time, it’s like fireworks — for her, anyway. Tom looks as if he would be more interested in watching paint dry; as if he is bored by her and by her small Nebraskan town in general.

But as Lillie begins to break down the walls of his seemingly impenetrable exterior, she starts to suspect that he holds the answers to her reoccurring nightmares and to the impossible memories which keep bubbling to the surface of her mind — memories of the two of them, together and in love.

When she at last learns the truth about their connection, Lillie discovers that Tom has been hiding an earth-shattering secret; a secret that is bigger — and much more terrifying and beautiful — than the both of them. She also discovers that once you finally understand that the world is round, there is no way to make it flat again.

An epic and deeply original sci-fi romance, taking inspiration from Albert Einstein’s theories and the world-bending wonder of true love itself.

 

A little bit of star-crossed and unrequited love never hurt anybody...reading about it that is.  I'm not sure that I can say I've ever read a science-fiction romance before, but I'm happy to make this my first.