Winner of my 100 followers giveaway!

I seriously need to apologize to everyone for the long wait. I have been without internet for a while and can only get on maybe once a week or every two weeks. Still, that's no excuse for holding off on announcing the winner of my 100 followers giveaway. So, to get right to it, the winner of the $25 Amazon GC is....

Katie B.!!!

I've already received her confirmation email. Don't be discouraged, I still have giveaways going on and plenty more to come!

Review: The Maze Runner

Title: The Maze Runner
Author: James Dashner 
Publisher: Delacorte Books 
Pages: 374
Source: Public Library
My Rating: 5/5 Stars

 When Thomas wakes up in the lift, the only thing he can remember is his first name. His memory is blank. But he’s not alone. When the lift’s doors open, Thomas finds himself surrounded by kids who welcome him to the Glade—a large, open expanse surrounded by stone walls.

Just like Thomas, the Gladers don’t know why or how they got to the Glade. All they know is that every morning the stone doors to the maze that surrounds them have opened. Every night they’ve closed tight. And every 30 days a new boy has been delivered in the lift.

Thomas was expected. But the next day, a girl is sent up—the first girl to ever arrive in the Glade. And more surprising yet is the message she delivers.

Thomas might be more important than he could ever guess. If only he could unlock the dark secrets buried within his mind.

My Review

Everybody is always ranting and raving about the awesomeness that is in the works of James Dashner's 'The Maze Runner'. So, when I walked into my library and saw it sitting there calling my name, I had to pick it up. The cover is boring when you first look at it. There isn't anything that's really eye catching. It's plain. The font is just..there. I was pretty sure I'd hate it for all it was worth.

I started reading the book out of curiosity. I told myself that I wouldn't read it until I finished all the books I was reading first. I figured, "Hey, why not? Just one chapter won't hurt anything." Oh, was I completely wrong. Apparently I didn't know what I was getting myself into. After reading the first chapter, I was hooked. Something about it sucked me in! Maybe it was the fact that this boy, Thomas, finds himself sitting there in the darkness of unknown territory without any memories of his life other than his name. It might have been the fact that only teenage boys of the male gender resided in the Glade. Or, it could have even been the weird dialect of the language. Either way, I devoured this book! It's one of those books that you don't want to finish in one or two days because you never want it to end, but you can't help it! I simple just couldn't put it down.

The story starts out with Thomas sitting in pitch-black darkness with no memories of a life he was sure he once lived. When light finally makes it's way to him, he realizes he isn't alone. Several dozens of boys, all around the same age, help him up out of the somber hole. They speak English, but with a weird, selective vocabulary. All seems casual in the Glade aside from having no adults present and having their memories wiped. Every month on the same day, a new boy is subjected to the Glade. But, the day after Thomas arrives, a girl is delivered, unconscious and with a message, and all hell seems to break loose.

This book is absolutely fantastic, a new favorite series for me! I'm already almost half way through the second book and it only get's better. I highly recommend this book to everyone that loves a good dystopian read. I laughed, I bawled my eyes out, and I hoped. I had so much hope for the characters of this story, but sometimes, all the hope in the world can't help them against the evils that find them. I never thought I'd say this, but it sure blows 'The Hunger Games' out of the water!

GIVEAWAY!! Audrey's Guide To Witchcraft

Falling in Love, baking a magical cake, fighting an evil necromancer—it’s all in a day’s work for Audrey Oliver, seventeen-year-old witch-in-training. When her mother goes missing and her twenty-one-year-old witchy cousin shows up out of the blue, Audrey knows something’s gone horribly, dangerously wrong. Now it’s up to her to get her own magical powers up to speed before everyone she loves is destroyed by the sorcerer intricately connected to her mother’s secret past.

 

Jody Gehrman

 Jody is the author of seven novels and numerous plays. Audrey's Guide to Witchcraft is her newest YA novel, available July 18th, 2012. Babe in Boyland was published in 2011 by Penguin's Dial books and has recently been optioned by Disney. She also writes stage plays, screenplays, and  sometimes even songs. Her plays have been produced in Ashland, New York, San Francisco and L.A. She and her partner David Wolf won the New Generation Playwrights Award for their one-act, Jake Savage, Jungle P.I. She's a professor of English at Mendocino College.

 

 

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What Should I Read Next?!

"First Frost" Promo!

Author Liz DeJesus has stopped by today with a teaser from her book First Frost.

At four o’clock in the afternoon, they closed the doors of the museum, a couple of hours earlier than usual. Thankfully no one complained. Bianca locked the doors, counted the money in the cash register, and locked it in the safe underneath Rose’s desk. Unfortunately, she hadn’t found anything in her mother’s office or in any other room in the museum, at least nothing that seemed like an obvious place to hide a really old spell book.

“Done?” Ming asked as soon as Bianca stepped out of Rose’s office.

“Almost. I have to set the alarm before we leave here tonight,” Bianca said.

“Okay. I’ll try to remind you,” Ming promised.

Bianca went to the utility closet and grabbed two flashlights. She handed one to Ming and lead the way up to the attic. She thought about the last time she was in that room. Rose and Bianca had explored one of the trunks and had found a treasure trove. She could only hope that she would find what she was desperately searching for.

“So what does this book look like? Any idea?” Ming asked.

“I have no idea what it looks like.” Bianca took a deep breath and added sarcastically, “This should be fun.”

“Well…I’m sure it’s not going to say Evil Queen’s Spell Book on the cover of it. Right?”

“Right.”

Bianca wondered why no one recognized that Queen Mirabel was evil sooner. How it was that she could hide her true nature for so many years. Most of the time people can sense when there’s something wrong with a person. Yet…Queen Mirabel was able to hide her intentions very well. The only one who saw right through the charade was Snow White.

Maybe that’s why she hated Snow White so much. Maybe it had nothing to do with Mirabel’s jealousy of her beauty and everything to do with the fact that Snow White saw right through her.

“Right!” Bianca shouted.

“What?” Ming asked with a frown.

“It’s not going to some big creepy book. She was a queen. She needed to hide what she really was from her husband, the king, and everyone else. It has to be in a book that looks harmless and possibly even…boring.”

“Boring, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Ye Olde Knitting Book?” Ming joked.

Bianca giggled. “Probably something along those lines.”

“Ye Olde Cooking Book?” Ming suggested.

“Ye Olde Cleaning Book.”

They made more jokes that involved “Ye Olde” as they looked in the boxes in the attic.



© Liz DeJesus 2012



Official blurb:



For generations, the Frost family has run the Museum of Magical and Rare Artifacts, handing down guardianship from mother to daughter, always keeping their secrets to “family only.”

Gathered within museum’s walls is a collection dedicated to the Grimm fairy tales and to the rare items the family has acquired: Cinderella’s glass slipper, Snow White’s poisoned apple, the evil queen’s magic mirror, Sleeping Beauty’s enchanted spinning wheel…

Seventeen-year-old Bianca Frost wants none of it, dreaming instead of a career in art or photography or…well, anything except working in the family’s museum. She knows the items in the glass display cases are fakes because, of course, magic doesn’t really exist.

She’s about to find out how wrong she is.



About the author:

Liz DeJesus was born on the tiny island of Puerto Rico. She is a novelist and a poet. She has been writing for as long as she was capable of holding a pen. She is the author of the novel Nina (Blu Phi'er Publishing, October 2007), The Jackets (Arte Publico Press, March 31st 2011) and First Frost (Musa Publishing, June 2012). Liz is currently working on a romance novel and the sequel to First Frost.

Author's Links:

Website

Facebook

Purchase First Frost