Countdown: November 2013 (2)

While the month of October is one of my favorites (your birthday month usually is) I find that November has always been an exciting and fun time of year as well. Everyone is always running around trying (and usually failing) to get ready for the December holidays, visiting family, booking those trips and making travel plans. Its all usually a whirlwind and sometimes I find myself feeling a bit frayed at the edges, but I love it nonetheless! So amid all the chaos that the holidays usually bring all of us, I enjoy counting down for the books that will hit the shelves and hopefully carving out some time to take a break and lose myself in their pages.

 

Countdown Pick #1:  Loud Awake and Lost by Adele Griffin (11/12/2013)

 

LOUD. There was an accident. Ember knows at least that much. She was driving. The car was totaled. She suffered back injuries and brain trauma. But she is alive. That's the only thing left she can cling to.

AWAKE. Eight months later, Ember feels broken. The pieces of her former self no longer fit together. She can't even remember the six weeks of her life leading up to the accident. Where was she going? Who was she with? And what happened during those six weeks that her friends and family won't talk about?

LOST. One by one, Ember discovers the answers to these questions, like a twisted game of dominos. And little by little, the person she used to be slips further and further away.

In the wake of her critically praised young adult psychological thrillers, Tighter and All You Never Wanted, National Book Award finalist Adele Griffin has created another triumph. Loud Awake & Lost is an unflinching story of loss and recovery.

 

I'm a huge fan of Griffin's previous works and while this one doesn't sound exactly the same as her others, if it's got her special touch I'm confident it will be one I'll want to own and add to the library.

 

Countdown Pick #2:  Save the Enemy by Arin Greenwood (11/12/2013)

 

Everything has been downhill since Zoey Trask’s mother was murdered in a random mugging. Her younger brother, Ben, is on the autistic spectrum and needs constant supervision. It’s senior year, and she’s the new girl at a weird private school in Old Town Alexandria, VA, full of kids who seem too nice to be true—including a very cute boy named Pete. Aside from half-forgotten martial arts and survivalist skills that her widowed father insisted on teaching her (because that is excellent for her social life), Zoey has nothing to offer Pete or anyone else.

Then Dad is kidnapped. Zoey suddenly finds herself sole caretaker of a younger brother she barely understands. Worse, Ben seems to hold the key to their father’s disappearance in his Dream Diary, a bizarre journal of names and places Ben claims that their mother shares from beyond the grave. And as if Zoey doesn’t have enough on her plate, there’s Pete, who stubbornly refuses to leave her side.

Relying on the skills she never wanted to learn—Dad might have had his reasons after all—Zoey is plunged into a lethal battle to rescue her father, protect her brother, and determine the identity of her family’s true enemy.

 

So while I know this is not falling under the paranormal genre, it doesn't sound like your typical contemporary novel either, does it?  As a romantic I'm already liking the sound of this Pete character, who's not going anywhere despite the fact that Zoey doesn't seem to be the type to throw herself at a boy...only time will tell what Zoey finds when she gets to the bottom of this mystery revolving around her family.

 

Countdown Pick #3:  This Wicked Game by Michelle Zink (11/14/2013)

 

Claire Kincaid’s family has been in business for over fifty years.

The voodoo business.

Part of the International Guild of High Priests and Priestesses, a secret society that have practiced voodoo for generations, the Kincaid’s run an underground supply house for authentic voodoo supplies. Claire plays along, filling orders for powders, oils and other bizarre ingredients in the family store, but she has a secret.

She doesn’t believe.

Struggling to reconcile her modern sensibilities with a completely unscientific craft based on suspicion, Claire can’t wait to escape New Orleans – and voodoo – when she goes to college, a desire that creates almost constant conflict in her secret affair with Xander Toussaint, son of the Guild’s powerful founding family.

But when a mysterious customer places an order for a deadly ingredient, Claire begins to realize that there’s more to voodoo – and the families that make up the Guild – than meets the eye.

Including her own.

As she bands together with the other firstborns of the Guild, she comes face to face with a deadly enemy – and the disbelief that may very well kill her.

 

New Orleans has always fascinated me, and if you put a story with a spin like this in front of me, there's no way I'm going to pass it up.

 

Countdown Pick #4:  Pawn (The Blackcoat Rebellion, #1) by Aimee Carter (11/26/2013)

 

YOU CAN BE A VII. IF YOU GIVE UP EVERYTHING.

For Kitty Doe, it seems like an easy choice. She can either spend her life as a III in misery, looked down upon by the higher ranks and forced to leave the people she loves, or she can become a VII and join the most powerful family in the country.

If she says yes, Kitty will be Masked—surgically transformed into Lila Hart, the Prime Minister's niece, who died under mysterious circumstances. As a member of the Hart family, she will be famous. She will be adored. And for the first time, she will matter.

There's only one catch. She must also stop the rebellion that Lila secretly fostered, the same one that got her killed …and one Kitty believes in. Faced with threats, conspiracies and a life that's not her own, she must decide which path to choose—and learn how to become more than a pawn in a twisted game she's only beginning to understand.

Previously titled Masked.

 

It sounds to me like we've got another great dystopian series on our hands!  Not only does this book sounds like it's got the potential to be a real page turner that will keep readers on the edges of their seats, but this cover completely drew me in, and the tagline, 'The first move is hers...' I just loved everything about it!