Mundie Moms

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Blog Tour/ Book Review- Priscilla The Great



Published by World Marker Media
Published on December 15th, 2010
5 stars- It's a great Middle Grade Read

Meet Priscilla Sumner, an ordinary seventh grader with extraordinary gifts. As if middle school isn’t hard enough, not only does Priscilla have to fight pimples and bullies, but genetically enhanced assassins trying to kill her and her family. Armed with wit, strength, and a genius best friend, Priscilla must defeat the Selliwood Institute, an organization dead set on turning children into killing machines.

Add an older brother annoyingly obsessed with Christina Aguilera, mischievous baby twin brothers who could scare the sin off of Satan, and parents more puzzling than a Rubik’s cube in the Bermuda triangle and expect a smoking page-turner! (quoted from Goodreads)

Priscilla the Great is a fabulously, fun, entertaining read. Priscilla herself is a snarky, engaging character, whom I really enjoyed getting to know.

Twelve year old Priscilla has grown up thinking her family was some what normal. With a mother who's often away on business, a dad who looks more like a WWE wrestler, a sixteen year hold heart throb bother and two five- year old trouble making twin bothers, she never would have thought her family is far from normal! With out giving away some of the plot, it's not until Priscilla's powers or secret abilities are known does she realize that she and her family are far from normal!

What I enjoyed the most about the book is the interaction between Priscilla and her family and friends. Each of them are great characters and add something unique to the story. I loved her description of her dad, as he's someone I wouldn't want to meet in a dark ally, but yet he has this fierce love and devotion as a family man. When you read about him, you'll understand what I mean. I adored her mom!! I was pleasantly surprised with Priscilla and Kyle's refreshing relationship. It was great watching them go from always competing against each other to something more. I think I was just as shocked by the change as Priscilla since they have grown up together.

Priscilla the Great is action packed, has some great plot twists, and is an engaging read. The best way for me to describe it is it's a sci-fi meets contemporary, with a little bit of coming of age and dashed with a little bit of romance. Sybil was written a fabulous 1st book in what I think will be a great middle grade series. I would highly recommend picking up this book. I think it's going to be appealing to both boy and girls, as it offers a little bit of everything. Middle grade wise, I give it 5 stars. I also posted my review for this on our children's book review site Mundie Kids.

Blog Tour- Interview with Saundra Mitchell

We're are so excited to have Saundra Mitchell on our site today! Recently we had the chance to ask Saundra a few questions about her newest release, The Vespertine!

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Released on March 7th, 2011

The summer of 1889 is the one between childhood and womanhood for Amelia van den Broek-and thankfully, she's not spending it at home in rural Maine. She's been sent to Baltimore to stay with her stylish cousin, Zora, who will show her all the pleasures of city life and help her find a suitable man to marry. Archery in the park, dazzling balls and hints of forbidden romance-Victorian Baltimore is more exciting than Amelia imagined. But her gaiety is interrupted by disturbing, dreamlike visions she has only at sunset-visions that offer glimpses of the future. Soon, friends and strangers alike call on Amelia to hear her prophecies. Newly dubbed "Maine's Own Mystic", Amelia is suddenly quite in demand. However, her attraction to Nathaniel, an artist who is decidedly outside of Zora's circle, threatens the new life Amelia is building in Baltimore. This enigmatic young man is keeping secrets of his own- still, Amelia finds herself irrepressibly drawn to him. And while she has no trouble seeing the futures of others, she cannot predict whether Nathaniel will remain in hers. When one of her darkest visions comes to pass, Amelia's world is thrown into chaos. And those around her begin to wonder if she's not the seer of dark portents, but the cause.


What do you find most intriguing about writing a historical fiction?

It's like time travel for me! I like to immerse myself in a book when I'm writing it; when things work out, I feel like I don't so much sit down to write, as I go to another place and try capture what's really happening there. I enjoy this when I write contemporary books as well, but adding history to the mix makes it especially exciting. That's one of the reasons I invariably cry when I finish the first draft- that world is over, and I can't go back. I can only reminisce!

What is one thing you admire most about each of your characters, Amelia, Nathaniel, Zora and Thomas?

Ooh, intriguing question. I admire Amelia's honesty about herself. She knows she's a follower; she admits her darker impulses. She may not be proud of those things, but she doesn't try to pretend they're not there.

I admire Nathaniel's determination. It doesn't matter that he's poor, or that he has to struggle- when he sets his mind to something, he gets it done.

I admire Zora's strength and loyalty. She can be pushy, and she knows it-- but she's not fickle. She loves the people she loves, and she's unerringly on their side.

As for Thomas, I admire his patience. Pretty much every single person he knows goes out of their way to try it, but he perseveres.

If you could go back in time, what era would you want to visit and why?

I want to go to so many whens! I wish I could see 18th dynasty Egypt, when the pyramids were still clad in limestone and capped in gold. I wish I could go to imperial Rome, when all the statues still wore their dazzling colors. It would be amazing to be there when the Emperor of China ordered 10,000 terracotta warriors for his tomb. To stand on the top of Macchu Picchu and marvel at the waterways and horizon. To be there when Stonehenge was new, and the stones were still blue.

History is this great, spiraling thread of human beings, remarkable human beings who walked, and breathed, and loved, and to get a chance to be immediately connected to that, wow. It would be amazing.

What is one of your favorite historical fictions to read?

There are so so many, it's impossible to pick just one. But one that doesn't get enough credit, I think, is FEVER 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson. That book knocked my socks off.


What three books are you most looking forward to reading this year?

I'm super looking forward to Myra McEntire's HOURGLASS, which has flavor of timeslip in it, Sonia Gensler's THE REVENANT, which is both historical AND haunted, and Malinda Lo's HUNTRESS, which takes us back to the world she created with her extraordinary debut, ASH.

________________________________

Thank you Saundra for being with us today!

Be sure to visit The Vespertine Blog Tour page to get more information about the tour and visit these sites here-
March-

Mark your calendars for our LIVE author chat with Saundra on March 31st here on the blog at 8 pm CST! Be sure to visit Saundra's site on April 1st to enter her AWESOME The Vespertine giveaways!!

We have TWO signed The Vespertine Dance cards we're giving away today. To ENTER all you have to do is-
* Be a Blog Follower
* Be at least 13 yrs and older
* this is OPEN to all followers, both in the US and International

Book Review-No Hope For Gomez


By Graham Parke
Published by Outskirts Press
Released on January 12th, 2010
Source- Book from author for review
3 stars- It's a good, fun read

It's the age-old tale:
Boy meets girl.
Boy stalks girl.
Girl already has a stalker.
Boy becomes her stalker-stalker.

We've seen it all before, many times, but this time it's different. If only slightly. When Gomez Porter becomes a test subject in an experimental drug trial, he is asked to keep track of any strange experiences through a blog. What Gomez isn't ready for, is so many of his experiences suddenly seeming strange; the antiques dealer trying to buy his old tax papers, his neighbor boiling salamanders on his balcony at midnight, the super sexy lab assistant who falls for him but is unable to express herself in terms outside the realm of science. But when one of the trial participants turns up dead and another goes missing, Gomez begins to fear for his life. No longer sure who he can trust and which of his experiences are real and which merely drug induced illusions, he decides it%u2019s time to go underground and work out a devious plan.

Now, years later, his blogs have been recovered from a defunct server. For the first time we can find out firsthand what happened to Gomez as he takes us on a wild ride of discovery (quoted from Goodreads).

No Hope for Gomez is a fun, laugh out loud read. Graham introduces readers to his debut character in a unique way by chronicling his experiences through an experimental drug trial. Gomez is an awkward, quirky character to get to know. He's constantly trying to decipher his feelings, trying to figure out if they're truly what he feels or if they're a side effect of the drugs. This makes him more relatable in an odd sort of way. He's someone who's had little experience in the dating field, so when he finds himself falling in love with one of the doctors, he doesn't know if what he's feeling is a result from the drugs he's taking or his true feelings.

Gomez is hilarious. I loved the way in which the book is written. It's a mix of Gomez's inner monologues and his daily, detailed blog posts he's suppose to make logging everything he's done and his feeling for the day. Here's a great example of Gomez,

"Sometimes I think about messing with the researchers' minds through my blogs. I toy with the idea of blogging about some bogus experiences that will throw them off. Like suddenly developing an unhealthy attraction to clams, or finding myself able to deduce people's phone numbers from their liver spots. But then I remember how much I like Dr. Hargrove, and I end up blogging truthfully."

Mixed into Gomez's adventures being a drug rat is a crazy, fun plot that is part comedic, part mystery and a little part romance. Graham throws a twist into the plot when fellow drug participants go missing and turn up dead. It's when Gomez decides to take the investigation into his own hands do the outrageously funny characters Warren, Gomez's neighbor and Hicks, the only employee at Gomez's antique store really lighten the mood and together their characters creature a unique dynamic for the story.

No Hope for Gomez is truly a one of a kind, witty read. There is some mild language and sexual references made, making this a book I would recommend for older teens, though I feel this book is one that has a lot of cross over appeal to it.

Waiting on Wednesday- Shattered Souls

By Mary Lindsey
Published by Philomel/Penguin
To be released on December 8th, 2011

Lenzi hears voices. She also sees visions--gravestones, floods, a gorgeous guy with steel gray eyes. She knows she must be going crazy, just like her dad did. Her boyfriend, Zak, can't do anything to help, and the voices just keep getting louder, the visions more intense. But when Lenzi meets Alden, the boy from her dreams, everything makes sense.

Sort of.

He tells Lenzi that she's a reincarnated Speaker--someone who can talk to lost souls and help them move on--and that he has been her Protector for centuries. But instead of embracing her abilities, Lenzi struggles between her life as the girlfriend of a sexy musician and the life she is destined to lead with Alden. Yet time is running out; a malevolent spirit has been trying to destroy Lenzi for ages, and he will surely kill her if she doesn't make a decision soon.

Her choices are clear: Destiny or normalcy. Alden or Zak. Life or death (quoted from Goodreads).

The cover is captivating! This sounds like an awesome debut book and I'm really looking forward to reading it when it's out at the end of the year.

What book's release are you looking forward to?

"Waiting on Wednesday" is a weekly event hosted by Jill from Breaking the Spine that spotlights books that we are eagerly anticipating.

Labels