August Wrap Up

I can't believe summer is over.  This summer felt really long, but it was over way too soon.  It was a busy reading month with everything being released at the same time.  I got a bit overwhelmed and a little slumpy with my reading.  I'm a little behind with my ARCs but I'm getting there.  I think I still had a pretty good reading month.

Books/Ebooks/ARCs

• The Point by John Dixon
• Review
• This is an urban scifi fantasy.  It deals with troublemaking teens and young adults who have an aptitude for the unnatural.  Each of them has some sort of supernatural ability, but they can't stay out of trouble.  This lands them at The Point, a school within a school at West Point Army Academy.  Here they can hone their powers, while also working towards a career in the military.  It was OK.  The characters were a little too immature for my liking.  I think its a great book for young readers, I just had a hard time connecting to it.
• As Dust Dances by Samantha Young
• Review
• This is a follow on to Play On, but this standalone follows a different couple associated with the arts and music community.  This follows a broken musician and an equally broken record executive as they both try to figure out what they want out of life and how to navigate through fame and success.  If you are a fan of Sam's contemporary writing this is a must.
• The Prince by Jennifer L. Armentrout
• Review
• I was surprised with an ARC of this and I loved it.  I sort of continues where the Wicked Series left off, but it isn't a continuation.  It is a companion to the series, but like the original it left me without closure.  Rumor has it there is another installment coming and I hope it gives us some answers.  Great for new fans of JLA and diehards alike.
• These Rebel Waves by Sara Raasch
• Review
• This is full of political intrigue.  The magical system is based on botanical elements from the plants found on the island setting of the story.  The pirates are stream raiders who harvest and trade the plants on the iland of Grace Loray.  In some places the magic is legal in others it is forbidden.  The 3 main characters find themselves questioning everything they know about loyalty, magic, and peace in an effort to save those they love and their home.  It is fairly slow paced and more political than action packed.  
• Crew by Tijan
• Review
• I wasn't sure if I was going to get an ARC of this one, so I was pleasantly surprised when I was on the review list.  This is a new young adult contemporary series by Tijan.  It is very mature, and follows a group of kids in a crew.  They aren't a gang, but they kind of are in the way they protect each other and don't take crap from anyone.  They are dangerous and violent and it makes for a pretty unique storyline.

Audiobooks

I got through several audiobooks I've been waiting on

• The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
• This totally lived up to all of the hype.  This isn't normally the type of book I go for, but I throughly enjoyed it.  It was a captivating memoir, or atleast it felt like you were listening to a memoir about a real woman.  It was wonderful, highly recommend.
• The Diviners and Lair of Dreams by Libba Bray
• This was another unexpected surprise.  I didn't realize this was a paranormal read.  I loved it.  I loved the historical aspect to it.  I loved The Diviners so much I quickly went on to continue the series.
• War Storm by Victoria Aveyard
• I've been waiting for this for quite a while.  It picks up shortly after King's Cage with Cal and Mare forming alliances to fight Maven.  I'm really happy that I chose to finsih off the series on audio.  This is quite long, and a bit slow paced but the audio really helped me stay engaged.  There are several persepectives that add to the flow of the story that would have taken away from my reading experience but on audio they were quite good.  It kept me engaged and I'm quite happy with how the series ended.
• The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner
• I really enjoyed this.  It is full of political intrigue and has a couple of twists and turns that I didn't see coming.  It is a great follow up to The Thief and I'm looking forward to continuing the series.  
• Final Girls by Riley Sager
• I've been on a thriller kick lately and this book has gotten alot of hype lately.  I see why, it was quite good and I really enjoyed it.  It was one of those books where you weren't quite sure where it was headed until the very end and I surely didn't see the end coming.  I love that in my thrillers.  

Review: The Point by John Dixon

The Point by John Dixon
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was OK. I had much higher expectations for this and didn't end up loving it. I think it is a great YA urban fantasy/sci-fi book. I just couldn't connect with the characters or the storyline. I felt like the characters were much to immature for my reading tastes and the pacing was too slow for my liking. I think young adult readers will really enjoy this story and really love Scarlett.

Scarlett Winter is a selfish, brat who doesn't care about anyone but herself and doesn't care if her actions hurt anyone. She doesn't apply herself at school, sports, or pretty much anything even though she is bright, athletic, and compeltely capable. She just doesn't care about anything enough to apply herself. After getting in trouble one to many times, her father is ready to ship her off to the Army. Scarlett wants to go backpacking through Europe instead. This causes yet another family fued, but this time her older brother is involved. Their dad abused Scarlett's brother Dan, who turned the abuse onto her as they got older. This time when Dan starts a fight with Scarlett, she hits him back with more force than should be possible. This isn't the first time Scarlett has done something out of the ordinary. Scarlett decides to lay low after the family fight and crash a friends graduation party when she happens upon and stops a terrorist bombing. Enter Colonel Rhodes from West Point, he is aware that Scarlett may have superhuman or posthuman powers and those powers can be honed at The Point, as secret school with West Point.

Scarlett isn't left with many options at this point, take the blame for the bombing or join the Army and learn to control her powers. She chooses door number 2 and becomes a Cadet. Army life does not suit stubborn, outspoken, rebel Scarlett, but she quickly finds her place at The Point with people who understand her. While Scarlett is learning how to harness her powers, there are a rouge group of posthumans that want to eradicate non-posthumans. This part feels kind of rushed at the end of the book, and is very chaotic. The bad guy, Jagger, incites chaos which is part of the action, but it was hard for me to keep track of what was going on. The book takes quite a while to introduce you to Jagger, then it is all over in a few chapters. The buildup was pretty significant for the small amount of action we get. I just wanted more action from a book like this, they spend a lot of time at school training.

As far as the book goes, I wanted a little more character development. As I stated earlier, I didn’t connect with any of the characters. I didn’t like Scarlett at all, she was kind of selfish, jerk and while she is the heroine she never really redeems herself in my opinion. I feel like she will always be selfish and disrespectful. There are plenty of side characters, but I needed more from all of them. The plot was decent; I really liked the combination of the military academy with the idea of the posthuman. I think young adult readers will really enjoy this. It has some decent humor and puts a unique spin on super human powers that I haven't read before.

View all my reviews

August TBR

I'm starting to get caught up on my ARC list, unfortunately several of them are releasing on the same day.  I was doing really well until June hit then I got a bit slumpy and behind schedule.  All of my TBR is ARCs because I committed to having reviews posted by release day.

Books/Ebooks/ARCs

• The Point by John Dixon
• Netgalley recommended this to me because I reviewed something else, Nyxia I think.  This looks really interesting.  Future military cadets with superhuman powers, sounds amazing right?  I'm also a sucker for a female hero.  This comes out on August 7th.
• As Dust Dances by Samantha Young
• This is a follow on to Play On, but this standalone follows a different couple associated with the arts and music community.  The synopsis promises a tragic ending to a successful music career, a sexy record exec, and Sam always writes amazing romances and dialogue between her characters.  This comes out August 7th, I have and ARC and will be reading this next.
• These Rebel Waves by Sara Raasch
• I loved Raasch's Snow Like Ashes series and can't wait to read this.  It also comes out August 7th.  This promises pirates, magic, and rebellion.  Sounds awesome!
• Ruin of Stars by Linsey Miller
• I've had the ARC of this forever.  This is the sequel to Mask of Shadows, and follows a gender neutral assassin.  Sal is now one of the Queen's elite assassins, but she also wants to find out what happened to her family.  Book 1 was action packed and I'm looking forward to seeing where Sal's adventure takes us.  This is out on August 28th.

There are a couple of more books I want to get to in August but lets get through these ones first.  Jennifer L Armentrout's 1001 Dark Nights The Prince comes out in August as does Tijan's Crew.  I'm hoping to get to those and maybe some challenge books.  

Audiobooks

I'm still waiting on a bunch of these at the library, so we'll see what we get to this month.  Most of these are holdovers from July,

• The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
• Everyone keeps talking about how good this book is so I grabbed it on audio.  I had no intentions of reading this, but some of my favorite reviewers loved this so I thought I'd take a chance.  
• The Diviners by Libba Bray
• I keep hearing great things about this one as well.  I already started this and so far it is really interesting.  It started out a little slow, but I'm invested now.  I'm liking the paranormal spin to things and 
• Repeats from last month, still on the waiting list
• War Storm by Victoria Aveyard
• The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner
• Circe by Madeline Miller
• Warcross by Marie Lu