Blog Tour: The Seraphina Parrish Trilogy

Wander Dust by Michelle Warren

Series: Seraphina Parrish Trilogy # 1

Publication Date: November 30, 2011

Genre: YA/Fantasy/Time Travel/Romance

Ever since her sixteenth birthday, strange things keep happening to Seraphina Parrish. Unexplainable premonitions catapult her to faraway cities. A street gang wants to kill her, and a beautiful, mysterious boy stalks her.

But when Sera moves to Chicago, and her aunt reveals their family connection to a centuries old, secret society, she’s immediately thrust into an unbelievable fantasy world, leading her on a quest to unravel the mysteries that plague her. In the end, their meanings crash into an epic struggle of loyalty and betrayal, and she’ll be forced to choose between the boy who has stolen her heart and the thing she desires most.

Wander Dust is the breathtaking fantasy that will catapult you through a story of time, adventure, and love.

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My Review 

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. My attention was first brought to this book when I was stalking a friend's shelf. The cover grabbed my attention (I'll admit it. I am a complete cover whore) and after reading the synopsis I was further intrigued. 

As someone who is somewhat vary of self-published books, I didn't expect much when I divided in, even though I was curious, I went in hoping this wouldn't be a case of  'curiosity killed the cat' and it wasn't. This book was pretty good. It had it's faults, as well as the obvious cliches but it still managed to stand out.

After a couple of incidents, her aunt comes to pick her up and she is sent to a prestigious 'secret' academy. She finds out that she is a wanderer and she is part of a team with a protector and a seer. They all work together to travel through time. Each member has their own talents. A seer, for example, uses their ability to see the timelines of inanimate objects to find appropriate relics that will help the protector and wanderer travel through time. The job of a protector, is obviously to protect the wanderer and the wanderer is the one who has the ability to travel. Sound interesting? Hells yeah. The idea of teams working together to travel through time was really interesting to me.  

As someone who is somewhat of a nerd, I can be a little touchy about the idea of time travel so I tend to be very picky but I can say without a doubt Michelle pulled it off. She weaves a believable story and there weren't any holes. You might find yourself wondering what was happening at one moment and later on the book it is explained. She doesn't leave any lose ends. Everything fit together. 

The characters were pretty great as well. I had some problems with Sera from time to time but in the end it all worked out, I didn't hate her. She was determined and never let Max (I refuse to call him Bishop) distract her from her goals. She could occasionally be stupid in the way teenagers tend to be but she never went over the top.

And I am happy to say that this book didn't end on a major cliffhanger. Cliffhangers bother me. Unless they are well done, which is so rare that I shouldn't even mention it. It leaves us curious and with questions but it isn't overly dramatic. 

I have read the next two books in the series and while those two didn't work out for me I would recommend the first book. 

About the Author:

Michelle Warren is the author of the Seraphina Parrish Trilogy. She didn't travel the road to writer immediately. She spent over a decade as professional Illustrator and designer. Her artistic creativity combined with her love of science fiction, paranormal and fantasy led her to write her first YA novel, Wander Dust. Michelle loves reading and traveling to places that inspire her to create. She resides in downtown Chicago, not far from her imaginary Wandering world.

Find her here

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Unremembered by Jessica Brody

Title: Unremembered
Author: Jessica Brody
Series: Unremembered #1
Publisher: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux
Date Published: March 5, 2013
Buy: Amazon

Goodreads Summary

The only thing worse than forgetting her past… is remembering it.

When Freedom Airlines flight 121 went down over the Pacific Ocean, no one ever expected to find survivors. Which is why the sixteen-year-old girl discovered floating among the wreckage—alive—is making headlines across the globe.

Even more strange is that her body is miraculously unharmed and she has no memories of boarding the plane. She has no memories of her life before the crash. She has no memories period. No one knows how she survived. No one knows why she wasn’t on the passenger manifest. And no one can explain why her DNA and fingerprints can’t be found in a single database in the world.

Crippled by a world she doesn’t know, plagued by abilities she doesn’t understand, and haunted by a looming threat she can’t remember, Seraphina struggles to piece together her forgotten past and discover who she really is. But with every clue only comes more questions. And she’s running out of time to answer them.

Her only hope is a strangely alluring boy who claims to know her from before the crash. Who claims they were in love. But can she really trust him? And will he be able to protect her from the people who have been making her forget?

The opening to this book was beautiful. It was absolutely perfect and stunning, it was what made me go, this is going to be a great book, I just know it.

She wakes up in the middle of nowhere, she knows she is not supposed to have survived, yet she did. She doesn’t remember anything though, not even her name. I think this quote summarizes the idea of not remembering anything, usually it’s a difficult concept to wrap your brain around. What do you mean you cannot remember ANYTHING, how can you forget what you look like, or what a hug is, etc.

“Forgetting who you are is so much more complicated than simply forgetting your name. It’s also forgetting your dreams. Your aspirations. What makes you happy. What you pray you’ll never have to live without. It’s meeting yourself for the first time, and not being sure of your first impression.” 

Then we are introduced to the strange boy who claims to know this girl. He knows about the locket, unlike everyone else who claims to “know her”. The problem is that everything he is telling her confuses her, it makes sense but she doesn’t want to believe him, she likes to have proof and until she has that she won’t believe him.

I think Seraphina is a rather interesting character, I think the fact that she doesn’t remember anything is actually portrayed really well, it’s easy to believe that she HAS forgotten everything, of course this makes it a bit harder to relate to her, but then again I don’t think we CAN relate to her. I love how she won’t believe everything that she is told and would like concrete proof first, of course this is what may land her in trouble from time to time but at least she is thinking for herself, she isn’t dependent on anyone.

Cody, her foster brother is also really cute, I love the things he has to say and his grudge against pretty girls. That one made me laugh so much. But I love that despite this, he wants to help Seraphina, they aren’t all buddy buddy or anything but he still agrees to help her. He isn’t what I would call loyal but rather helpful I suppose.

Zen is absolutely adorable, there are no other words to describe him, of course I wish there was more of an insight to their current relationship instead of flashbacks but they never got the chance to truly reconnect with everything else that was going on. I don’t think there is much I can say to his character because you know we know he is caring and that he loves Sera but we aren’t told much else about him. Also I find their romance a little too cheesy, I don’t understand what Zen really saw in her. But that’s probably because their relationship wasn’t explored, it’s more like, the author told us they were in love and we were supposed to believe that.

The plot is rather interesting but everything feels so rushed. I think there were some great concepts in the book and I would have been happier had they been looked at in more depth. The author just seemed to be bouncing ideas around. One thing that really got me though was the concept of what makes you human. How do you define being human? Of course this isn’t a concept explored in the book but it’s mentioned and it stuck with me throughout the book, I questioned what Sera really was, trying to find the traces of humanity in her and trying to come up with my own definition of humanity.

I think in the end this book let me down. In the beginning of this review I say that I gave this book 3.5 because of the upcoming triangle and while that is one of the reasons (it was the one that got the most reaction out of me anyway, I might have overlooked everything else otherwise), I think this book did disappoint me even aside from that. The summary makes it sound so interesting, the sole survivor of a plane crash who doesn’t remember anything, in the end of course was she even a passenger on the plane? I guess I had my expectations up really high. This book brought in some really good concepts and had they been explored well enough to satisfy my needs it wouldn’t have been disappointing but alas that wasn’t the case.

I recommend this book to people looking for a light sci fic book. It isn’t all that but it was still good.

Timekeeper by Alexandra Monir

Title: Timekeeper

Author: Alexandra Monir
Series: Timeless #2
Publisher: Delacorte Books
Release Date: January 8th, 2013
Buy: Amazon

Goodreads Summary

When Philip Walker appears as a new student in Michele Windsor’s high school class, she is floored. He is the love she thought she lost forever when they said goodbye during her time travels last century. Overjoyed that they can resume the relationship they had a lifetime ago, Michele eagerly approaches him and discovers the unthinkable: he doesn’t remember her. In fact, he doesn’t seem to remember anything about the Philip Walker of 1910.

Michele then finds her father’s journals, which tell stories of his time-traveling past. As she digs deeper, she learns about his entanglement with a mysterious and powerful organization called the Time Society and his dealings with a vengeful Windsor ancestor. Michele soon finds herself at the center of a rift over 120 years in the making, one whose resolution will have life-or-death consequences.

Alexandra Monir’s Timekeeper combines breathtaking romance with a tale of complex magic in a sequel that will have every reader believing in the transcendent power of love.

I have terrible luck, whenever I get excited for something it gets messed up. I wish I could say this book was amazing and that it was worth it but it wasn't. This book was disappointing. It was so disappointing that I feel like pretending that the first was a stand alone and that the ending never happened. Okay I may be overreacting according to some people but I am so disappointed it hurts. The author had two years to work on this and if this is what she came up with.. well I don't even know what to say. The first one was magical, it had this musical flow to it which made you love it so much and things made so much more sense in the first one. Also the historical concept was so much more better. I am not one for historical fiction but sometimes I'll come across one that I love, Timeless was one of them but Timekeeper failed to do the time era's it was referring to justice. Aside from that it also seemed rushed, the author never focused on anything, just kept on throwing bits of stuff at us. One second she would say one thing and the other she would mention another, she kept on jumping from idea to idea never telling us enough about what she was talking about. For example, Lisa was mentioned once in the book when Michele had to go to her for help. Lisa disappeared from the book after that. She used to be her mother's best friend. I would have loved to know something about her but there was nothing. I got the ending I was hoping for but not in the way I wanted, some of the things don't even make sense with the whole Philip thing. Monir took the easiest and the most obvious way out of the problem and it disturbed me because it wasn't what I wanted. I was even more disappointed with how easily Philip accepted things, it was so sudden you don't see the change happening. Did I mention how obvious her solution was? I am going to repeat it to put emphasis on the obvious part because half of the people already guessed it. I guess it's not only the romance that disappointed me because the romance wasn't the only thing that captivated me in the first book- although it was part of it, it was the how the author weaved in the historical concepts and Michele's way of dealing with things. This book was a jumbled puzzle. The pieces didn't fit together perfectly. The whole book was all over the place. I feel like I am being easy on this book because despite what I said it breaks my heart to see how Timekeeper turned out. I cannot make myself give it a worse rating because despite being not as good as I hoped, it wasn't horrible. In most situations a horrible sequel would make me dislike the first book but it didn't happen in this case probably because I felt so detached in this one. I never got involved with the characters. I was sitting there trying to figure out where the characters I loved disappeared because in this book, they were flat. There was no depth to them. I really do hope that people don't find it as disappointing as I did because I know a lot of people have been waiting for it longer than I have and I hope that it makes them happier than it made me. I think the worst part is that this was the book I was most excited about for this year and seeing how it wasn't nearly as good as I hoped, I lost hope for all the other books I had been waiting for.

Timeless by Alexandra Monir

Title: Timeless
Author: Alexandra Monir
Series: Timeless #1
Publisher: Delacorte Books
Date Published: January 11, 2011
Buy: Amazon

Goodreads Summary

When tragedy strikes Michele Windsor’s world, she is forced to uproot her life and move across the country to New York City, to live with the wealthy, aristocratic grandparents she’s never met. In their old Fifth Avenue mansion filled with a century’s worth of family secrets, Michele discovers a diary that hurtles her back in time to the year 1910. There, in the midst of the glamorous Gilded Age, Michele meets the young man with striking blue eyes who has haunted her dreams all her life – a man she always wished was real, but never imagined could actually exist. And she finds herself falling for him, into an otherworldly, time-crossed romance.
 Michele is soon leading a double life, struggling to balance her contemporary high school world with her escapes into the past. But when she stumbles upon a terrible discovery, she is propelled on a race through history to save the boy she loves – a quest that will determine the fate of both of their lives.

I read this book because of this one review I had read. It was a reviewer I followed and well since she had given it 5 stars and written such a good review for it I though I should read it.

I was looking for a good romance, after reading so many unreleastic teen romances, I needed characters to have the spark.

Even then, I didn’t expect a whole lot when I went into the book, much less to come out with my brain fried.

Writing the review approximately 2 months after reading it I still get goose bumps thinking about it.

Alexandra Monir is a genius. I had wanted to read this book for the romance but I ended up enjoying the whole time travel concept equally.

Monir has a different approach to time travel and for that I am glad. I am so fed up with people always complaining about how traveling back in time will change something in the present blah blah blah. But here it’s about Michele helping out her ancestors. It’s how her help led to the things as they are in the present and that itself is such a unique concept. The way Monir connects everything and brings it all together like pieces of a puzzle makes it so unique. There are still some pieces that are missing or don’t fit but I guess that’s what Timekeeper is for.

Moving on to our main character. I loved Michele. I absolutely loved her. I loved how brave she was and how she was willing to let Philip go even seeing how much it hurt her. I really didn’t think she would be that strong when I started the book. Like I said before, I was vary of the book when I had started reading. But Michele proved to be a lot more than a love sick teenager. She had so much going on and she figured out so many things. I love her for her determination and her will to do the right thing.

Now moving on to our love interest, Philip.

I am not going to say anything about him. Just 4 words. They should get my point across.

I LOVE YOU PHILIP! 

The ending of the book isn’t necessarily like the cliff hanger people make it out to be. It could be viewed as a happy ending were the book a stand alone but if you read the synopsis to the sequel, Timekeeper, that’s when the ending becomes a cliff hanger and that’s why I cannot freaking wait for the book to be out. I need it so bad because there are so many questions in my mind that need to be answered.

Mini Reviews: Some Girls Bite by Chloe Neill and Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier

Title: Some Girls Bite
Author: Chloe Neill
Series: Chicagoland Vampires #1
Publisher: NAL Trade
Date Published: April 7, 2009

This book probably deserves more than the 2.5 I gave it but then again it was somewhere between okay and likeable for me. I am not a fan of vampire books, I have my reasons of course and I am trying to reconnect with vampires because otherwise I am going to be avoiding a lot of books and then eventually I’ll run out of books to read and then I’ll die.

The only vampire series I’ve read and thoroughly enjoyed was the Vampire Academy. I was actually surprised by how good the world building was in this book but it couldn’t overlook my issues with the book. The main character was awesome but I hated how she was obsessed with Ethan. I do NOT like Ethan. I like Morgan and she doesn’t really spare him a second glance. I also dislike her best friend. She is supportive and what not but it seems like she is more obsessed with the idea of her best friend being a vampire than anything else. Also it annoys me that she doesn’t realize that Merit is moving out because of her. It really pissed me off because you know you both share the house dammit and she also needs her sleep, go to his house if you plan on staying awake (no I am not going to say it). One of the things that bothered me about the world building was that why are the vampires only in Chicago? What’s so special about Chicago? Yeah.. that didn’t make sense to me at all.

I believe that this book would probably appeal to everyone but if you cannot overlook certain things then you are going to have a hard time enjoying it, just like I did.

Title: Ruby Red
Author: Kerstin Gier
Series: The Ruby Red Trilogy #1
Publisher: Henry Holt
Release Date: May 10, 2011
Buy: Amazon

Damn these Germans can write, first Cornelia and now Kerstin.

I don’t think I’ve read a time travel book this good. Mostly you would come across time travel romances but this book isn’t about the romance, it’s about the mystery and time travel.

Everything is so well developed. From the relationships to the plot to the ending. The ending is good but the epilogue is worth dying for. Plus there isn’t a cliff hanger although the Epilogue does leave you rather excited (dying) for the sequel.

The only problem I had was Gideon. I kind of dislike him. He is the pretty boy, the boy who thinks it’s alright to act like a jerk and treat people like shit, sure there are good sides to him and he has his own sob story (well it isn’t that sad but you get the point) but I hate it when guys be jerks for no real reason.

This book blew my mind and is so damn original. Time travel, secret societies, lies, evil mind readers, sarcastic main characters, what else can a girl want?

I recommend this book to everyone who is looking for something unique.