Review: City of Ashes-Cassandra Clare

Title: City of Ashes
Author:Cassandra Clare
Release Date: July 2008
Publisher: Walker Books
Page Amount: 416, Paperback
First Line: 'Are you still mad?'

DONT READ THIS REVIEW UNLESS YOU'VE READ CITY OF BONES!!! SPOILERS!!!!

Synopsis...

Clary Fray just wishes that her life would go back to normal. But what's normal when you're a demon-slaying Shadowhunter, your mother is in a magically induced coma, and you can suddenly see Downworlders like werewolves, vampires, and faeries? If Clary left the world of the Shadowhunters behind, it would mean more time with her best friend, Simon, who's becoming more than a friend. But the Shadowhunting world isn't ready to let her go — especially her handsome, infuriating, newfound brother, Jace. And Clary's only chance to help her mother is to track down rogue Shadowhunter Valentine, who is probably insane, certainly evil — and also her father.

To complicate matters, someone in New York City is murdering Downworlder children. Is Valentine behind the killings — and if he is, what is he trying to do? When the second of the Mortal Instruments, the Soul-Sword, is stolen, the terrifying Inquisitor arrives to investigate and zooms right in on Jace. How can Clary stop Valentine if Jace is willing to betray everything he believes in to help their father?

Review...

Yet again, Cassandra Clare hasn't failed to capture our imagination and moulded our minds to her preference. A fantastic way to continue the series. Gripping from the very first words. We as readers have the pleasure of watching the characters grow into fierce fighters who can control what goes on and have the power to stop it. A roller coaster ride of a book, never stopping for you to step off until the last page. I must admit, this book is more gory than City of Bones, its not very graphic but still....there's quite a substantial amount of blood in this one. At times in this book, I literally gasped out loud because I was just completely in awe of the plot and what was happening.....page 180:'( Another fantastic flick through, can't wait till City of Glass. 5/5 A* once again:)

Review: City of Bones-Cassandra Clare

Title: City of Bones
Author: Cassandra Clare
Release Date: July 2007
Publisher: Walker Books
Page Amount: 448, Paperback
First Line: 'You've got to be kidding me'

Synopsis...

When fifteen-year-old Clary Fray heads out to the Pandemonium Club in New York City, she hardly expects to witness a murder -- much less a murder committed by three teenagers covered with strange tattoos and brandishing bizarre weapons. Then the body disappears into thin air. It's hard to call the police when the murderers are invisible to everyone else and when there is nothing -- not even a smear of blood -- to show that a boy has died. Or was he a boy?

This is Clary's first meeting with the Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the earth of demons. It's also her first encounter with Jace, a Shadowhunter who looks a little like an angel and acts a lot like a jerk. Within twenty-four hours Clary is pulled into Jace's world with a vengeance, when her mother disappears and Clary herself is attacked by a demon. But why would demons be interested in ordinary mundanes like Clary and her mother? And how did Clary suddenly get the Sight? The Shadowhunters would like to know. . . . 

Information: Goodreads

Review...

Well, what can I say, this book deserves more recognition than it has now! I'm not saying it should be Twilight/Harry Potter famous but people should know about the Mortal Instruments series!! This book was so easy to get into! Once you pick it up, you're hooked and you can read so much at a time. I read the majority of this in a week in France. Reading by the pool, sun beating down with a MI book, perfect:) This book combines romance & mystery with abnormal creatures such as vampires and werewolves. The storyline is nowhere near cliche and is completely original. To be quite honest, I prefer this series over Twilight and maybe even Hunger Games because of how unpredictable the plot is and the quirkyless of the characters. Speaking of characters, Clary is our main girl, we discover her and her friend Simon in a nightclub, Pandemonium, in New York. She spies an odd boy with bright blue hair and is enticed; she follows him. Clary sees that two men with weapons are closing in on the blue haired boy, Clary warns Simon but he is unable to see the men. Clary follows the boy into a spare room where a girl and two boys stood facing the blue haired boy. They killed him. They were shadowhunters. Shadowhunters are a breed of people who can only be seen by people who have the sight; the job of a Shadowhunter is to kill demons. The main storyline is about Clary's search into the Shadow world and their discovery of an evil man plotting against them. City of Bones is the first installment in The Mortal Instruments series of 5 books with a new release in 2014. I score this book 5/5 A*! Fantastic!!!!

Review: Dirty Work-Julia Bell

Title: Dirty Work

Author: Julia Bell

Release Date: January 2008

Publisher: Young Picador

Page amount: 192, UK hardcover

First line: 'When I wake up, she is gone'

Synopsis...

Hope Tasker, an upper-class girl from Britain, is sick of her petty friends and distracted parents. She just wants to be free, to have fun, to live a little. So when she meets a mysterious foreigner named Natasha, something tells her that this could be her way out of her mundane life.
            Except Natasha is really Oksana, an impoverished girl from Russia, who was tricked into being sold into sexual slavery as a way to support her family. Oksana, far from being Hope’s way out, is instead a trap that lures Hope into an international prostitution ring. The two girls soon realize that if they are ever going to escape, they must learn to find enough common ground to work together—and to trust each other.
            Told in authentic alternating narratives, Dirty Work will immediately draw readers in to the shocking world of human trafficking, and proves that the issue is not only prevalent in today’s world, but that it could be happening right under our very own noses.

Review...

This book made me have a sudden realisation since the situation going on in this book is real, it's happening right now, anywhere. The novel opened my eyes to a world that I would rather ignore, frankly, it disturbed me. I grew so attached to Hope's character and felt soooo sorry for Natasha (Oskana), the characters are well described but I felt that the writing style wasn't very good and I couldn't get into this book to start with. The first couple of chapters aren't completely gripping but half way through I got hooked and couldn't stop. Since this book is so short, once you get pulled in, you can't put it down until you've finished the last page. I admit, I did skip a couple of chapters by Natasha because it went off topic sometimes, for example, sometimes Natasha just wrote chapters on end about her brother in Russia and it had nothing to do with the storyline and what was happening there and then in the plot, not relevant at all really. All in all, characters described well, settings and surroundings were easily interpreted but the writing style wasn't for me and hard to get into, I score this book 2.5/5 C-

Review : Fracture-Megan Miranda

Title: Fracture

Author: Megan Miranda

Release Date: January 2012

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Page amount: 262, UK paperback

First line: 'The first time I died, I didn't see God.'

Synopsis...

Eleven minutes passed before Delaney Maxwell was pulled from the icy waters of a Maine lake by her best friend Decker Phillips. By then her heart had stopped beating. Her brain had stopped working. She was dead. And yet she somehow defied medical precedent to come back seemingly fine. Everyone wants Delaney to be all right, but she knows she's far from normal. Pulled by strange sensations she can't control or explain, Delaney finds herself drawn to the dying. Is her altered brain now predicting death, or causing it?

Then Delaney meets Troy Varga, who recently emerged from a coma with similar abilities. At first she's reassured to find someone who understands the strangeness of her new existence, but Delaney soon discovers that Troy's motives aren't quite what she thought. Is their gift a miracle, a freak of nature-or something much more frightening?

Information from GoodReads

Review....

I snapped up this book due to a review, by Pebbles730, on youtube and read it so quickly to start with then I got bored slightly towards the middle but then continued really fast for 2 days and read the other half. Basically, this book has 2 parts: 1- Delaney in hospital, 2- Delaney's life with Decker and Troy. I'm completely Team Decker in this book because he is such a loyal, trustworthy friend to Delaney and she is unable to realise what she has in front of her. Troy on the other hand, he somehow manages to frustrate me because he is such a stalker! Troy and Delaney's relationship as friends confuses me because sometimes they are so close to each other and they don't care what anyone perceives of them, but other times they are at each others necks. I have so much empathy for Delaney's character due to what she's been through and the struggle with the falling relationship between her parents, her character is described and introduced very well and better than the other characters in the book. Overall, Megan Miranda's writing style never fails to please me and Fracture is no exception, I score this book 3.5/5, B+

HI?

Hey, my name's Hannah, I'm 14 years old and I live in England (and no I dont drink tea and dine with the queen), I practically live on my laptop (which has broken many times) watching youtube videos. My favourite youtubers are ChapterChicks, ilovebooks28, ShaneDawson and Janoskians:-) I used to be compleeetely obsessed with reading but nowadays I've become less keen but I'm trying to relive my passion for reading by reviewing and writing my book lists in a diary. At the moment I'm doing my GCSE's majoring in BTEC media studies, history and french. Hopefully, I will post on here regularly and I won't be the only person reading it, if so, I will probably make myself laugh in future years;) adios xo
P.S.  I just realised that I practically just wrote out my profile in this post, ahwell:)