Beautiful Chaos by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Beautiful Chaos is book 3 of the Caster Chronicles, continuing the story of Lena and Ethan--young, in love and trying to stop the end of the world.

If you haven't read Beautiful Creatures and Beautiful Darkness, stop right now and go read them.  Reading any further will spoil your reading experience of these first two books in the series and they are definitely worth reading.

After fighting darkness and bringing his love back from the brink of evil, you'd think Ethan Wate would get a break.  You would be wrong.  Not only does he not get a break, things are actually getting worse.  The summer is never-ending, the heat is unbearable. The sun is scorching clear into December and no one can figure out how to fix it.  The church-goers believe the end of days is near--and they have no idea how right they are.  The Order has been broken and until it is righted, chaos will ensue. 

Ethan, along with Lena, Link and Liv, has to figure out how to set things right.  He is receiving messages about the eighteenth moon and that a sacrifice will have to be made.  He has to find the One that is Two and determine what role this person plays in fixing the Order.  Plus, he's helping Link deal with being newly part Incubus, protecting Lena from her evil relatives and suspects that something isn't quite right with the newly Mortal Ridley.  To top things off, Amma is acting strangely and his Dad is suddenly inspired to write a book called "The Eighteenth Moon".  It's all a bit overwhelming for Ethan, but he'll do whatever it takes to protect the ones he loves.

I don't want to give away too much, but I will say this.  I regret reading this book now--because the cliff-hanger ending is spectacular and now I have to wait until Beautiful Redemption is published in October to find out what happens!  I highly recommend this series and I just learned that casting is taking place for a movie of Beautiful Creatures!  I can't wait to see how the book is adapted to the screen. 

New Author!

So, as you may know, lately I've been reading more independent authors and I've found another one that I like:  Rose Pressey.  I've read Me and My Ghoulfriends and Ghouls Night Out from the Larue Donovan series and No Shoes, No Shirt, No Spells from the Mystic Cafe series and really have enjoyed her characters and her stories.

Larue Donovan can see and speak to the dead.  She uses her abilities to help departed souls find the light and cross over to the other side.  However, during her attempts to help these souls cross, she usually finds herself hosting them as room mates for a while until they are ready to go.  Her side job as a ghost hunter usually brings her into contact with said souls, who then follow her home and hang around until they are ready to cross over.  Her 'friends' make her daily life a little complicated, since only her best friend knows about Larue's abilities (and she'd like to keep it that way). 

In both the books I have read, Larue gets mixed up with other 'supernatural' elements in her hometown that she never knew existed.  She encounters black magic witches, as well as the local white magic coven.  In both books, she is involved in a burgeoning romance with Callahan, the new guy in town, and her abilities make things a little complicated all around.  I have to say that I was somewhat disappointed with the plot similarities between the two books and hope that future plots are a little more creative, but I did enjoy the characters involved and hope to see more of this series in the future.

The Mystic Cafe series, however, is definitely my favorite of the two.  When her grandmother retires, Elly Blair finds herself the new owner of the Mystic Cafe, which her grandmother has run for all of Elly's life.  While she is a bit overwhelmed at the prospect of running her own restaurant, her grandmother throws in a surprise--magic.  Elly is skilled with magic, as her grandmother is, and it is now Elly's responsibility to not only feed the people in town, but to also add magic to their food in order to boost self-esteem, relieve pain or whatever the customer may need.  Unfortunately, things do not go smoothly for Elly and she must find a way to correct a spell gone awry before the powers that be close the cafe forever.

I really enjoyed the first installment and look forward to the next one, which is due out soon!  Rose Pressey also has a number of other series that I plan to check out in the near future :)

Hunt the Moon by Karen Chance

Hunt the Moon: A Cassie Palmer Novel by Karen Chance is the fifth book in the Cassandra Palmer series.  If you are not familiar with the series, stop now and go read Touch the Dark (Cassandra Palmer, Book 1), I guarantee you'll be caught up and reading Hunt the Moon: A Cassie Palmer Novel in no time.

We catch up with Cassie shortly following the events of Curse the Dawn (Cassandra Palmer, Book 4).  Cassie is preparing for her coronation as Pythia, training with Pritkin, learning Circle diplomacy from Jonas and vampire diplomacy from Mircea.  She is also dating Mircea, which does not sit well with the Circle because they fear she will be seen as partial to the Senate.  She's feeling a bit out of sorts with all the attention being paid to her and she's still not sure that she is the proper choice for Pythia, as she was never properly trained.  However, she doesn't have much time to ponder her position when the attempts on her life begin and no one knows how to protect her.

I really enjoyed this book, especially since it's been two years since the last in the series.  Cassie really learns a lot about herself, her power and her relationships with the people in her life.  She also learns about her mother and her relationship to the original spell cast by Artemis to separate the worlds of Gods and men.  There are still a lot of open questions, but that just tells me that there will be more Cassie Palmer to read in the future.  I just hope we don't have to wait so long for the next one :)

White Cat by Holly Black

 

White Cat (Curse Workers) by Holly Black is a book that I had on my Want list for quite a while.  It never came up on my book exchange sites and, for some reason, I passed over it whenever I downloaded new books.  This past week, I downloaded a handful of books that had been on my Want list for a while and White Cat (Curse Workers) is the first one I read.  I only hope I enjoy the rest of them as much as I enjoyed this one.

Cassel Sharpe belongs to a family of "workers", magic users or curse workers, a practice that is outlawed.  However, the gene seems to have skipped him somehow, because he is the only member of the family without power.  He is, however, an excellent con artist, which he did get from his parents.  With his father dead and his mother incarcerated, Cassel attends a very prestigious school, where he attempts to keep his family secrets while running a minor con here and there.  Cassel is also haunted by the memory of Lila, his best friend and first love.  Two years earlier he murdered Lila, although he has no recollection of actually committing the deed nor of why he did it.  His family covered up his crime and now his brothers and grandfather are trying to help Cassel move forward with his life.

However, all is not as it seems.  A terrifying bout of sleepwalking turns Cassel's world upside down.  Truths he has believed his entire life are false and nothing will ever be the same...

Holly Black has created an interesting world in her Curse Workers series.  Cassel is caught between many worlds:  his family's world of curse workers and organized crime, the elite world of his classmates and the world of Carney, where interesting characters reside.  Cassel is an intelligent, likable character whom you want to see get a happy ending.  I can't say if his ending is happy, but I can say that it leads me to want to read the sequel Red Glove (Curse Workers, Book 2), which was just released last week.

The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen

Sarah Addison Allen writes magic:  her stories are full of strong Southern women, sweetness and secrets.  In The Peach Keeper: A Novel, she once again weaves a wonderful tale of two Southern women, distant in the present but bound together by the past and a powerful secret.  Paxton Osgood has spent her life being the girl and then the woman that everyone seemed to expect her to be.  Willa Jackson is just the opposite.  She defied convention and her grandmother's attempt at a strict upbringing, only to 'lock down' that wild child to become a responsible adult.  Neither woman is truly happy, each wanting some part of who the other is, not realizing that what marks them as different, really makes them so much the same. 

Paxton is in charge of the restoration of the Blue Ridge Madam, a spectacular home formerly owned by Willa's ancestors, but lost during the financial crisis of the Depression.  During the landscaping, a skeleton is dug up from beneath the lone peach tree.  The skeleton brings to light secrets from the past, secrets of a Magic Man who held the town captive under his spell.  Secrets belonging to Willa's grandmother Georgie and Paxton's grandmother Adele.  The secret brings the younger women together, in an attempt to protect the older ones.  Their unlikely alliance leads each woman to discover something special and magical about herself, love and the power of friendship.

I am a huge admirer of Sarah Addison Allen's work.  The Peach Keeper: A Novel tells a wonderful story of love, loss and regrets.  It reminds us that we all need to be who we are, not who we think we should be and that we all need to open some space up in our lives for something good to come in.

WOW: Waiting On Wednesday

This is my first waiting on Wednesday post!  Thanks to Breaking the Spine for such a cool idea :)

Although I am anxiously awaiting the release of several upcoming books, the one closest to release is The Peach Keeper: A Novel by Sarah Addison Allen.  I absolutely love her books!  She combines fairy tale magic with Southern hospitality, all wrapped up in secrets and hope.  She examines the way that these secrets tie people together and how love never truly dies.  Her female characters are strong women, searching for a sense of belonging or for some lost piece of her history, that one thing that will bring perfect happiness into her life.

Her previous books,  Garden Spells (Bantam Discovery), The Sugar Queen (Random House Reader's Circle), and The Girl Who Chased the Moon: A Novel are all wonderful reads and highly recommended.

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

Deborah Harkness' debut novel, A Discovery of Witches: A Novel, is amazing.  I was drawn in from the first and did not want to put it down.  It's like a mature Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1) meets The Da Vinci Code.  The characters are interesting and complex, the story is exciting without being too ambitious or overcomplicated.  The book held me spellbound and is responsible for a few hours of lost sleep. It's an historical-supernatural-romance-adventure-mystery--my favorite genres wrapped into an exceptionally good book.

Diana Bishop is not going to use her magic--at least, that's what she keeps telling herself.  She is the last in a long line of powerful witches, with a father as powerful as her mother.  However, having lost her parents when she was seven years old has turned her away from her heritage and her magic.  While researching alchemical manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, she comes in contact with a volume that reaches out to her magic.  Panicked, she returns the book to the stacks, but it is too late--word is out that she has discovered the lost Ashmole 782 and now all species of creatures are after her.

Enter Matthew Clairmont, renowned scientist and vampire.  He has been searching for Ashmole 782 for centuries and is determined to retrieve the book Diana has recalled.  He feels drawn to Diana, feeling the need to protect her from the other creatures, despite witches and vampires being notorious separatists.  They are thrown into an uneasy friendship when the worlds of witches, vampires and daemons descend upon Diana, all looking for the manuscript.

A Discovery of Witches: A Novel is one of the best books I've read in quite a while.  It's clearly written to have a sequel, possibly more than one, and I am anxiously awaiting the next book.  I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading.

Coyote Dreams by CE Murphy

Coyote Dreams (The Walker Papers, Book 3) by CE Murphy picks up a short time after Thunderbird Falls (The Walker Papers, Book 2).  Joanne Walker finds herself in a rather precarious position--hungover, with no recollection of the previous night & a gorgeous, naked stranger in her bed.   She never gets drunk and she certainly never has casual sex, but all evidence points to the contrary.  However, nothing is truly as it seems for something powerful has been awakened & it's working it's way into Joanne's life. Her friends and co-workers are falling asleep and not waking up.  She starts receiving powerful dreams, apocalyptic dreams where the world ends & she is at the center of it all.  She is also having dreams where she has everything she ever wanted:  her old job back, the respect of her co-workers restored & the attention of a certain police captain.  But what is real and possible and what is just manipulation?  She'll have to figure it out if she is going to defeat the powerful force feeding on the life force of those that make up her life.

In this latest installment of the Walker Papers, we find Joanne still looking for Coyote to guide her, only to find out that he is trapped and can not help her without drawing attention to her.  Instead, she has to start looking inside herself for the answers.  CE Murphy has created a wonderfully complicated character in Joanne Walker. Her mixed heritage, her unconventional upbringing by her father & abandonment by her mother create a backdrop for a lost sense of self in a woman who needs to know who she is.  As a powerful Shaman, Joanne is capable of great things, but her inability to accept her power combined with her own issues of self-loathing are working against her.  In this latest story, Joanne has to look deep inside herself, to find the answers to defeat the powerful force that is slowly devouring those that make up Joanne's life.  We finally start to see her acknowledge and accept issues from her past that desperately need to be healed.  We also come into some interesting information about Coyote, which I hope is pursued in the next book, Walking Dead (The Walker Papers, Book 4).  Joanne's character is truly beginning to evolve and she just might be able to accept who she is and what she is meant to do.  However, nothing comes without a price and, in the end, she is faced with a very difficult decision about which path in life she is to take.

I really enjoy this series and Coyote Dreams (The Walker Papers, Book 3) is no exception.  I appreciate how Joanne's character evolves at her own pace & doesn't have a lot of major, life changing epiphanies that solve all her issues at once.  I'm seriously looking forward to reading Walking Dead (The Walker Papers, Book 4) to see how her decisions in this story have manifested in her life.