Embrace: A Snapshot

 

Embrace by Jessica Shirvington

"It starts with a whisper: "It’s time for you to know who you are…"

Violet Eden dreads her seventeenth birthday. After all, it’s hard to get too excited about the day that marks the anniversary of your mother’s death. As if that wasn’t enough, disturbing dreams haunt her sleep and leave her with very real injuries. There’s a dark tattoo weaving its way up her arms that wasn’t there before.

Violet is determined to get some answers, but nothing could have prepared her for the truth. The guy she thought she could fall in love with has been keeping his identity a secret: he’s only half-human—oh, and same goes for her.

A centuries-old battle between fallen angels and the protectors of humanity has chosen its new warrior. It’s a fight Violet doesn’t want, but she lives her life by two rules: don’t run and don’t quit. When angels seek vengeance and humans are the warriors, you could do a lot worse than betting on Violet Eden…" (from Goodreads)

The subject: a girl coming into her own as a paranormal being.

The setting: present-day, generic urban location. I'm not sure if we're actually told the specific city, but probably somewhere in the US. 

Shutter speed: fairly steady. It's not all action, all the time — there's a fair bit of information-sharing, flirtation, and teenage angsting — but there are significant events sprinkled throughout. All the same, though, I wasn't on the edge of my seat, tearing through the pages or anything.

What's in the background? An interesting take on religion. Embrace ends up getting into some pretty detailed angel mythology, based on texts outside of the Bible. For those who are traditionally Christian and take their faith quite seriously, Shirvington's portrayal of the angelic might cause some friction.

Zoom in on: the paranormal system. I was confused at times about the roles of each level of supernatural creatures and how the hierarchy in heaven worked. While the history was explained pretty clearly, the language defining angels of "dark" and "light" was vague. I did think the activation of certain Grigori senses in the presence of exiles was neat, and I liked the concept of the test Violet has to undergo (though I think it should have challenged her more), but a lot of the rest of it seemed similar to other angel books. More specifics about the angel powers and "magic" side of things might have made it stand out.

Anything out of focus? I didn't like Violet all that much, which I think put a damper on my reaction to this book. She bugged me because she would be swept away by her emotions (and sometimes her hormones) and would make decisions without considering all the facts. She was overly trusting, swayed too easily by others, and sometimes slow on cluing into things.

Ready? Say... "Mediocre."

Click! 3 shooting stars. This is one of those books where I find it hard to pinpoint exactly what didn't work for me. Suffice it to say that, probably for several reasons, it just didn't hit the right note. Decent, but nothing exceptional.

Note: there is some mature content and language in this book.

Disclaimer: I received this as an ARC for review from Raincoast Books.

This book counts towards my goal for the 2012 Debut Author Challenge.

U-Pick: Most Sadistic Villain?

Yes, it's a new blog feature! Each week I'll post a categorical superlative (e.g. "most sadistic villain" "crankiest father figure" "protagonist you would most like to slap some sense into" etc.) and list a few choices of characters from YA books in a poll. You get to pick! The poll will run for a week, and then in the following post I'll update with the name of the winning character.

First up: Most Sadistic Villain in YA. 

There are lots of choices here, so vote below! There's also an option for a write-in vote if your pick isn't listed. If that's the case, please choose "other" and then leave the character's name and book title in the comments :)

Top Ten Tuesday: Books That Fooled Me

This fabulous meme is hosted by The Broke and The Bookish, and this week's topic is books that were totally deceptive. It's been way too long since I participated in this meme, so I'm glad to be back at it! Some of these books tricked me in good ways, others in bad ways, but you'll have to read the whole list to learn which is which :)

Links lead to my reviews.

1.) Firelight by Sophie Jordan — pretty cover + lots of buzz about it! Plus, dragons aren't all that common in YA these days. But in reality: mostly about an angsty teenage girl who cannot make up her mind.

2.) Sunshine by Robin McKinley — hello, it's Robin McKinley, author of the incredible Beauty. Plus, I'd read some positive reviews of Sunshine. But this book turned out to be such a slog, with a protagonist I kept wanting to pummel.

3.) The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins — when I first heard about it (years ago now) I was all, "kids who fight to the death? Ugh, sounds kind of violent for my tastes..." But I received it as a gift from my mom, gave it a try, and absolutely tore through it. One of the best book presents ever!

4.) Anna & the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins — If I'd seen it in a bookstore without having heard any blogger buzz about it, I quite possibly would have passed it by. Thank you, book blogosphere, for drawing my attention to it so repeatedly that eventually I gave in and read it! And quite thoroughly enjoyed it.

5.) Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl — I read this book and then went, "Um, why exactly was everybody raving about it?" You can read all the reasons why I was unimpressed here. Suffice it to say, I have not bothered to pick up the next book in the series.

6.) Enclave by Ann Aguirre — I was kind of wary of this one since I'm not (or at least I thought I wasn't) big on post-apocalyptic stories. I usually prefer dystopians. But I was totally gripped by Enclave! (Admittedly, there are dystopian elements in this book, too.)

7.) Forgotten by Cat Patrick — a girl who forgets the past and "remembers" the future? Cool premise in theory, but in execution? So many problems. I was quite disappointed with this one.

8.) The Host by Stephenie Meyer — I'm not much of a sci-fi reader, but once I got into this book, I had to keep reading. Demolished the whole 600+ pages in about 2 days, I believe.

9.) Popular by Alissa Grosso — this sounded like one of those shallow YA books about high school cliques. It wasn't really on my radar in any meaningful way until it was suggested by the publisher for my Psychtember event last year, as it has a mental health aspect. I'm not going to spoil, but I loved the twist!

10.) The Vampire Academy series by Richelle Mead — vampire books generally don't appeal to me, and I resisted these for a long time. They've gotten a huge amount of attention and love from bloggers, but I guess I figured they wouldn't really have all that much substance to them. Finally I tried the first one and was hooked! They are amazingly addictive and consuming.

What books have fooled you, one way or another?

Rants & Raves: Yes, Self-Published Author, You DO Need An Editor!

This is a feature that appears sporadically on the blog, whenever I have a bookish issue I need to rant or rave about. Feel free to comment with your thoughts!

There are differences of opinion among book bloggers as to the value of self-published novels. Some specifically note in their review policy that they do not accept self-published books for review. Others, like myself, are wary but do not rule them out entirely. And I'm sure there are some bloggers out there who swear by them!

Personally, I'd like to suggest the following: there is nothing inherently bad about self-published novels. Just because the book is not under the label of a traditional publisher does not mean unequivocally that the book is of any lesser quality. It doesn't necessarily mean that the book "wasn't good enough" to be accepted by a standard publishing house. Sure, it may have a rather unsightly cover, but we all know that covers do not translate to the material within. And traditional publishers have been known to come out with some cover eyesores as well.

Like really awkward kissing covers.

Or the re-designed Nightshade series covers. (Seriously, what were they thinking?)

But books that go through traditional publishers come with one decided advantage:

THEY HAVE BEEN EDITED.  

As in, they have gone through several readings by another pair of eyes, looking at the story from a structural perspective, looking at the story line-by-line stylistically, and then finally copyediting for consistency and proofreading for errors.

I don't pretend to have loads of editing expertise, but I've taken enough courses and read enough books to know how essential this is in making a story readable. Authors are too close to their material to objectively see where the plot holes lie or the world-building falls apart. Sure, there are ways to achieve a better distance from your story (if you're interested in the process of self-editing, you might want to check out Susan Bell's The Artful Edit: On the Practice of Editing Yourself), but the best way, in my opinion? Get someone else to look it over.

Of course, it can be argued that some self-published novels do very well, commercially speaking. There seem to be other readers out there who don't mind the grammatical errors and substantive inconsistencies that drive me crazy. Perhaps there are two different breeds of readers: those who can shrug off the errors and whiz through books that read like the first draft of a manuscript...and those who can't.

Honestly, I'm not sure I can really understand the perspective of a self-published author who does not bother to get someone else to edit their work. Do you truly believe your story is the best it can possibly be when you're the only person to have set eyes on it? Do you only care about the money that's coming in, not the quality of your book? I can understand where financially there might be an issue, but if you can't afford an editor, at least try to get writer friends or beta-readers to point out the problems. Because you can be J. K. Rowling and your work will STILL need to be edited.

It's nothing that should be taken personally. Writing is a craft. So is editing. An editor can only do so much with the writing they are given — and a writer can only accomplish so much without an editor. It's a symbiotic relationship that, when it works smoothly, results in something greater than the sum of its parts: a truly worthwhile story.

In My (Masked) Mailbox (50)

In this meme, hosted by Kristi at The Story Siren, we share the books we've received, bought or taken out from the library. This post covers the past couple weeks.

I enjoy watching other bloggers' IMM vlogs, so for my 50th IMM post, I finally gave in and tried my hand at it! It is my first vlog so my apologies for any lighting/sound quality problems :)



Books featured:

Bought:

Zelah Green, Queen of Clean by Vanessa Curtis
Sophomore Switch by Abby McDonald
River Secrets by Shannon Hale
Princess Mia by Meg Cabot
Where I Want To Be by Adele Griffin
Frostbite by Richelle Mead
Clarity by Kim Harrington
God Is In The Pancakes by Robin Epstein
The Naughty List & So Many Boys by Suzanne Young


For review:

Teenboat! by Dave Roman and John Green
Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers

Thanks to Thomas Allen & Son for these!


Gifted:

While I'm Falling by Laura Moriarty (thanks to my mom for this one!)


Bloggers mentioned:


Small Review