So many books, such little time.

To the book bloggers that upload a review near enough everyday... How do you do it?? 

I try to read whenever I have free time like on the bus to work, when I'm on my lunch break etc... But I seem to take about a week, minimum, to finish a book. So how do you all do it in a day?? Is it your job to review books or do you hold down a full time job too and you're just some sort of God that absorbs a book like a glass of water. If the latter, do you have any tips for me to uploading reviews more often...

'"Zoey lives." Neferet's voice was flat, cold, lifeless.
'She does."
"Then you owe me the subservience of your immortal soul." She started to walk away from him, toward the rooftop exit.
"Where are you going? What will happen next?"
Disgusted by what she perceived as weakness in his voice, Neferet turned to him. She drew herself up tall and proud, and held out her arms so that the sticky threads that pulsed around her brush her skin freely, caressingly.
"What will happen next? It is quite simple. I will ensure Zoey is drawn back to Oklahoma. There, on my own terms, I will complete the task you failed."'

The narrative has definitely darkened in this book, (especially more towards the end) to the point where it has provoked an emotional response out of me, emotions that I didn't think I could feel towards this series. So now that Zoey and Stark are back from the Otherworld (yay for them), Kalona's soul now belongs to Neferet due to him failing his mission in making sure that Zoey's soul remains shattered. Neferet has to come up with a new plan in destroying Zoey... And ruling the world...

I liked that every chapter follows different characters still. Towards the end we visit unexpected characters such as Heath in Nyx's grove and also Linda Heffer, Zoey's mother, for a very short chapter.

Something that I'm starting to dislike is Rephaim, I don't know why, it's just something about him, and the fact that Stevie Rae is 'in love' with him?!? Nah, not falling for it. Neferet is also starting to get a bit boring as a villain as her evils plans are beginning to be predictable. I hope she gets fired by Darkness... If that's how it works...

In the hope of the next book 'Destined' to be the last, I found out rather recently that there's twelve books in this series... Ahhhhh... This is exhausting... The pace of the story is starting to slow down to a crawling speed, which I don't need knowing that there's four more books to go till I can close the lid on House of Night and store on a very high, very dusty shelf. People will say 'just stop reading them' but I literally can't because there will always be a nagging voice in my head saying 'what if it gets crazy better in the next instalment' and I will never have closure on this. Plus I've already bought Destined. So I'm powering through. (Fist pump) Bring it on...

'Y'all need to get yourselves together. Here's a newsflash from the only High Priestess you have left at this dang school: Zoey isn't dead. And believe me. I know dead. I've been there, done that and got the fricken tee-shirt.'

Wow.

At the end of the previous book, Heath, Zoey's consort was killed by Kalona and because Zoey witnessed it and blames herself for it happening, her soul therefore shatters and is currently stuck in limbo. To get Zoey back to her original state it is all up to Stark with the help and guidance from the rest of the gang.

In Burned, the Cast's have broaden their horizons. With the multiple threads of narrative, you get to spend more time with other characters rather than just Zoey. Also now that a bunch of characters have left the nest of Tulsa, the storylines are now set on an island off the coast of Italy (Neferet, Damien and the gang), an island near Scotland (Stark, Aphrodite and Darius) and then in the Otherworld following Zoey, Heath and Kalona. All of this adds depth to the story that was missing in the previous books.

Although I hit an all time in book five, I do feel like it is improving a heck of a lot and I'm looking forward to the next instalment, Awakened.

'Memory crashed over me, drowning me with despair and darkness and reality as my world shattered, and everything went black.'

Tempted was definitely an improvement from Hunted. The Casts didn't write their usually description for all the characters which they pretty much just copy and paste near the beginning of each book. They also wrote chapters from different characters point of views which I rather enjoyed (so then I didn't have to spend all my time reading from Zoey's POV.) It was a breathe of fresh air.

Now dealing with Zoey's boyfriend issues, she has managed to get herself down to a grand total of zero real BF's. She dumps Erik for being possessive. Bye. Heath is now classed as her consort ('bloodmobile') but he still thinks they're a thing. Bye. Stark is her warrior and Kalona only makes out with her through her dreams, I don't think that counts.

During the last book, Zoey was thinking that Kalona possibly isn't all bad and maybe he can be turned around onto the good side and at that point, I was screaming 'WTF is wrong with you?!? He came shooting out of the earth when your best friend got shot by an arrow and bleed everywhere like she rejected the change again. He started controlling everyone at the House of Night and killed Shekinah, the High Priestess of High Priestesses. You know in his previous life that he enslaved tribes and raped their woman and you think there's some good in him?!? You crazy!!' BUT... By the end of Tempted, I've started to feel... sort of sorry for him but it might be very short lived. Let's just see... Cue Burned.

'I'm seventeen! I can't save the world - I can't even parallel park!'

I'm starting to get rather irritated with this series.

I'm on book five. Yes I've read the previous four. I already know who Zoey's friends are and that Erin and Shaunee are basically twins but not actual twins because 'Erin is a blonde-haired blue-eyed Oklahoma girl and Shaunee is a caramel-coloured easterner of Jamaican descent.' That same explanation has been in every book so far. So if it's in the next one I'm going to flip.

Another thing, Zoey is becoming hard to sympathise with due to her being a whore. Every guy she meets, she has to make-out with (Heath, AGAIN!!, Erik AGAIN!!, Stark and even her enemy Kalona) and then spend ages contemplating that maybe the guy she just finished making-out with is the one for her but yet she still likes everybody else. I find her rather pathetic and spineless now and it feels to me that the Cast's are trying to fill up a 439 paged book with a load of random crap.

I know this review sounds real negative but that's my honest opinion. I am still going to carry on reading this series but the only thing that is pulling me through is my need to finish something that I've already started and I hope that it will miraculously improve.

My heart was hammering painfully, and I was on the verge of panic that was making me dumb with numbing fear. All I could do was pant with terror as it got closer. Its horrible wings displacing freezing, putrid air, it came out at me. I could see it - I could see the man's eyes within the mutated bird's face... And arms...mother arms of a man with twisted, grotesque hands held up in the shape of ragged, dirty claws.'

This is where it starts to get interesting. At the end of the previous instalment, Neferet declared war on the human race and in Untamed, she announces it at a council meeting which includes all the professors of the House of Night, the Sons of Erebus and the Dark Daughters and Sons prefect council. But she is interrupted by the High Priestess of High Priestesses, Shekinah, who puts a stop to all this nonsense.

I did enjoy that the plot actually got somewhere rather than constantly focusing on Zoey's many boyfriends. Although a new character, Stark, is introduced who was a transfer from the Chicago House of Night and he has the ability to make it impossible to miss a target with his bow and arrow. Even though Zoey only met him two hours or so ago, she starts to get feelings for him when he tells her of his past which, in my eyes, makes her very easy and spineless.

One thing that I found annoying was the fact that in every book, Cast has to always imply that 'their nights are our days' and give the exact same description used previously for Zoey's friends, even though we've been following the story and already know who they are and what they look like.

'Believe in yourself, Daughter, and get ready for what is to come.'

In the previous book, Zoey was juggling many things and situations.
1. Stevie-Rae, Zoey's best friend and roommate, died, yet came back to life as an undead dead thing.
2. Heath, Erik and Loren, her three boyfriends. 'I think I'm turning into a ho,' yes... Yes you are.
3. Neferet, the High Priestess, being a evil little bitch.
4. Not being able to tell her friends, Damien, The Twins and Jack, about anything.

In Chosen, Zoey helps Stevie-Rae to become her self again by taking her away from the rest of those undead dead things and keeping her in Aphrodite's parent's garage apartment whilst they're away for the winter. But with Stevie Rae having to drink blood almost all the time otherwise she goes CRAZY, Zoey has to sneak in blood from the professors' kitchen where there are pouches of blood that's been donated by humans. Zoey has an idea on how to fix Stevie-Rae by using the five elements.

On the way back to school after seeing Stevie-Rae, Zoey and Aphrodite get a really weird feeling when they drive past the East Wall, getting out of the car to investigate they stumble across a body, nailed to a crucifix, with the head on the floor next to it. Then the realisation hits them that it's one of the professors at the House of Night.

Zoey's three-way relationship is still happening and its starting to get on my nerves a little bit that she keeps playing everyone but hey ho.

I didn't find this one as interesting as the first two, but it definitely picked up towards the end.

'Sight of the cat
Hearing of the dolphin
Speed of the snake
Mystery of the Phoenix
In Nyx's name we call to thee
And ask that with us you will blessed be!'

In the previous book, Zoey had been newly marked as a fledging vampyre and as she finds herself she knows that she has the helping hand of the goddess Nyx protecting and guiding her through these soon to be dark times. In Betrayed, Zoey truly understands the lesson Nyx is teaching that 'darkness does not always equate to evil, just as light does not always bring good.' Zoey struggles to balance three boyfriends, a death of a friend and her duty.

Again like the first book I LOVED Betrayed. You get to follow the same characters further into the adventure of finding out the truth of the happenings at the House of Night. Even though this is the second time I'm reading this series of book, I am still being surprised and kept on the edge of my seat throughout the whole novel.

Moving onto Chosen!!!!

'Merry meet and merry part and merry meet again.'

'Zoey Redbird, Daughter of Night, I name you my eyes and ears in the world today, a world where good and evil are struggling to find balance.
'But I'm only sixteen! I can't even parallel-park! How am I supposed to know how to be your eyes and ears?''

Marked is the first in the House of Night series. Zoey is a normal teenager who goes to high school, has a best friend called Kayla and a boyfriend called Heath who is a football player, a drinker and a smoker. Until one day, a tracker marks Zoey with a sapphire blue crescent moon on her forehead. Next step: she has to get herself to the House of Night, which is a school for vampyres, otherwise she dies. Panicking, Zoey goes to her Cherokee grandmother seeking advice when she falls and bangs her head causing her to become unconscious where she dreams that she meets the vampyre Goddess, Nyx, who says the above quote. She then wakes up at the school, where she meets the High Priestess, Neferet, who takes herself on as Zoey's mentor. Zoey then meets and befriends her roommate, Stevie-Rae, who introduces Zoey to her circle of friends, Damien, Erin and Shaunee. Together they form the elements that will stop evil spirits from terrorising the world.

This is the second time I've read the House of Night novels, I read them when I was younger and rather enjoyed it and due to recent readings not fulfilling my needs for a enticing adventure, I thought I would return to, what I like to call 'my comfort books', which consists of Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, House of Night just to name a few.

So Marked is always going to be a five star read for me, although, reading it again after quite a few years has made me realise that elements of the story are rather childless. But, oh well.

The Butterfly Summer - Harriet Evans

'What's loved is never lost.'

Nina lives with her parents now that she is divorced from her husband Sebastian. Nina's childhood wasn't all that easy with her father leaving her and her mother back in 1986, when he 'went on an expedition to the Venezuelan rainforest to search for the Glasswinged butterfly and he never came back'; Nina was only six months old. Nina's mother, being on her own to raise a child, found a very nice and important person to help her out, Mrs Poll from the top floor until her partner, Malcolm, came along. Many years later, Nina meets a strange lady at the library, her 'dead' father returns and claims that Nina will inherit Keepsake, a cottage in the middle of nowhere in Cornwall where millions of butterflies find sanctuary but in the house itself, her ancestors lives have been taken.

The story seems to take the route of a murder mystery but I can assure it isn't.

This was a rather interesting and enjoyable read although when the story took me back to Theodora Parr's 'The Butterfly Summer', I found that it dragged on for too long and when it went back to the original story, I forgot what happened previously and would get the two time differences mixed up. Because of this I'm only giving it two stars as half-way through it felt like a chore reading this.

I received a copy of 'The Butterfly Summer' from the Goodreads Giveaway.

'A fox. Must be the one whose path had crossed with hers. Then it had been sick; now it must be dead, because it made no effort to get away, neither when the hands held it up nor when they thrust it away.
And then there was a dead fox flying through the air and landing in the building that was to be its funeral pyre.'

Over the course of ten days, you see a whole community go up in flames after the death of Ruben, a youth with disabilities who's loved by everyone in the Lovelace estate, by the hands of the police. This sparks a flame near a knocked-over can of gasoline, as when a quiet, civil protest for answers on Ruben's death becomes an excuse to loot shops, burn down buildings, disrespect the police as well as other members of the public, even to kill innocent animals like a fox. 'Ten Days' is loosely based on the London riots which happened back in 2011.

...

What to write...

Ok... I did like it but also at the same time I didn't. I sort of found it a bit boring, with only a couple of bits that sparked my interest. I found that it escalated too soon into the story and it didn't get excited till the very end. It was quite an easy read though.

One of the minor parts of the story that I found interesting was the fox that appears strolling in front of Cathy Mason unperturbed early one morning at the beginning and then again later in the story in amongst the mess of the riot, see above quote.

Received in a Goodreads Giveaway.

'For a moment, in this passing gesture, weary with affection, exasperated at the other man's stubbornness and refusal to understand, Morgan saw David before him, the man David might have become. "Have you learned nothing from all this?"

Answer: ... No, not really...

Morgan is a disfigured man who keeps himself to himself in his mansion on his estate, living with only one other person, his elderly housekeeper, Engel. One ordinary day, a baby is found by the back door and Morgan decides to bring her in and raise her as his own. But the next day, more children appear out of thin air, ‘Morgan was stand by the drawing room window and gazing out into the garden when a square of air above the lawn seemed to ripple as though it were silk and a knife had been drawn across it, and a child appeared on the lawn and began to walk towards the house, perfectly confident, it seemed, that she would be received.’ Every day, more and more children arrive, on their own or in groups. When the ministry of welfare turn up at his door, due to rumours of Morgan having forty-four children running around his estate, they end of taking the first child, Moria. Morgan and a handful of other children go out in search for her, ending up at a factory that his sister runs and turns out to be a family business, but what do they do with children there?

At the beginning of each chapter, Lambert writes a little sentence to sum up what’s going to happen in the following chapter, ‘Chapter Three... In which medical help us required and Morgan is shocked by an image in water.’ I found that this spoiled the book a little bit as it basically tells you what happens before you’ve read it.

Some of the content of the story was described in incredible detail that the horrific images are carved into my brain and won’t go away, no matter how many Disney princess film I watch.

I did find that this story with its 202 pages was too short for all the issues it raised. I’m also not sure what genre The Children’s Home would come under as I heard that it’s classed as a fairytale but I do not see that at all.

'Eight inches to go. Seven. I try to not think of what we were taught about the physics of space. And what happens to the human body in a vacuum.
"My tongue. I can feel it on my tongue."
Five inches. "Carver, we're nearly there." Four.
Suddenly he's screaming in my ears. "It hurts, Riley, make it stop, make it stop!"'

Morgan is a disfigured man who keeps himself to himself in his mansion on his estate, living with only one other person, his elderly housekeeper, Engel. One ordinary day, a baby is found by the back door and Morgan decides to bring her in and raise her as his own. But the next day, more children appear out of thin air, ‘Morgan was stand by the drawing room window and gazing out into the garden when a square of air above the lawn seemed to ripple as though it were silk and a knife had been drawn across it, and a child appeared on the lawn and began to walk towards the house, perfectly confident, it seemed, that she would be received.’ Every day, more and more children arrive, on their own or in groups. When the ministry of welfare turn up at his door, due to rumours of Morgan having forty-four children running around his estate, they end of taking the first child, Moria. Morgan and a handful of other children go out in search for her, ending up at a factory that his sister runs and turns out to be a family business, but what do they do with children there?

At the beginning of each chapter, Lambert writes a little sentence to sum up what’s going to happen in the following chapter, ‘Chapter Three... In which medical help us required and Morgan is shocked by an image in water.’ I found that this spoiled the book a little bit as it basically tells you what happens before you’ve read it.

Some of the content of the story was described in incredible detail that the horrific images are carved into my brain and won’t go away, no matter how many Disney princess film I watch.

I did find that this story with its 202 pages was too short for all the issues it raised. I’m also not sure what genre The Children’s Home would come under as I heard that it’s classed as a fairytale but I do not see that at all.

'They all laugh as they order drinks from a wench passing by their table. They deal the cards and begin playing. After about an hour, a fight breaks out between two ruffians a few tables a way. A cup comes flying over to their table and hits Python on the head.
"Oh, man, here we go again..."'

Captain Meek and his band of space pirates travel around space purchasing a new space ship, new weapons and a cloaking device with platinum bars. When looking for hauling work they are summoned by Trent, the guild master, they are given the task to organise a meeting with Lady Evella Noctu of the Noctu Merchant Group who happens to be a Rainbow-Coloured Morphic Dragon with very powerful telepathic powers. Their mission to drop her and her daughter Gothica at Zertin, the home world on the Wolfkins.

I won this book in the Goodreads Giveaway and it doesn’t state that it’s a proof copy so I’m assuming that this is the final published version... which is rather disappointing because every page has some form of mistake. There were many grammar mistakes such as:

• ‘You’ was used instead of ‘your’ or ‘you’re’
• ‘To’ was used instead of ‘too’ or even ‘two’
• And finally ‘they’ instead of ‘their’ or ‘there’

The consistency with the spelling of the names of characters:

• ‘Gothica’, the daughter of Lady Evella, got changed to ‘Gothic’ half way through
• Captain Meek’s robot, ‘Mcloud’ got changed to ‘MCloud’
• And the space pirates destination, the ‘Laughing Skull’ was also changed to ‘Laugh Skull’

There were also simple words such as ‘the’ missing from sentences. And then later on there would be the same work repeated twice. Even in the quote used at the beginning of this review there is a mistake, ‘a way’ should be one word.

Another annoyance of mine was the over-use of the word ‘wanker’. There was a period in the book that every page had ‘wanker’ at least once when it isn’t even necessary. For example, ‘Who is going to be wanking with us if we are on a planet-sized Space Dragon.’

There are the reason I am giving it only one star because I would be embarrassed to even let this be published without it being proofread.