Penwick Chronicles

**I received a review copy from the author in exchange for an honest review**

This book was a good book to start off my Summer reading. Since this book is set under the sea it's a good book to read during a hot day. This book would also be a good beach read. The descriptions of life underwater allows the reader to see what Florence is seeing. I loved the scenery of the underwater kingdom of Niemela. I thought the mer culture was very well developed and felt realistic to me.

The author categorizes this book as a fantasy romance, however I would also put this book in the adventure category. The book contains very few slow points at times it seems to go from one action scene to the next. In someways this is a problem. The book takes place over six days. In just six days several of the characters grow and change quite a bit. The amount of change in six days felt a little unrealistic to me. I overlooked that since this is a fantasy book. The book ends in a happy for now allowing the possibility for sequels.

**Originally reviewed for Penwick Chronicles**

I first heard of this author through her posts on Amazon's MOA forum. I was intrigued when she said she writes for intelligent women. What did that mean exactly? When this book became free around Christmas I clicked on it and decided to give it a try. I have to admit I was lost for the first 4% of the book. The writing style takes some getting used to. There are no dialogue tags in this book. By that I mean if two characters are talking there is no Mark asked and Danny replied. The conversation is in quotation marks and you just have to know who is speaking. In the beginning of the series before you really get to know the characters it is difficult to know who is speaking. I tried to read only when I had time to finish an entire chapter. If I had to stop reading in the middle of a chapter I would have to click back a few pages when I picked up the book again.

This is a series including six generations of one family. After the third book it is nearly impossible to keep up with all of the characters and how they are related. A family tree would have been helpful to be able to refer back to while reading. The plot was very complicated and parts of the bigger puzzle were revealed slowly. This meant that while reading later books in the series events that took place in earlier books would suddenly make more sense. The complexity of the plot makes this book a good candidate for a reread once you know how all the pieces fit together.

*Originally reviewed for Penwick Chronicles*

** Originally reviewed for Penwick Chronicles **

This is another seventh son of a seventh son fantasy story. I did enjoy listening the reader Christoper Welch has a good voice. He was able to vary his voice enough for each character that I never had trouble knowing who was speaking. I especially loved the creepy voices of the witches. This book was a good adventure with some scary moments so I would not recommend this book for very young listeners. I would also not recommend eating while listening to this book. Some of the witches spells are a little gross. Overall I think this book suffered from first of a series syndrome. The world that Mr. Delaney builds is very complex and I'm still not sure of all of the duties of a Spook. I like this story enough that I will be checking out the sequel in the future.


**I received this audiobook for free from Audiobookcommunity.com during their YA SYNC program Summer 2011**

** Originally reviewed for Penwick Chronicles **

I loved the new ideas of supernatural creatures and how they fit into our world. I really wanted to like this book but in the end the new ideas weren't enough. The book is told from two different points of view and for most of the book I couldn't figure out why Caleb was so important. I wish the two viewpoints would have connected sooner. At times I felt like I was reading two different stories in one book. I didn't find Kalista's relationship with Tristan to be believable at all. Her feelings changed way too fast. I loved the science lesson about the water crystals I found that section fascinating especially after I searched it on the internet and found out it was all based on real research.

**Originally reviewed for Penwick Chronicles**

Tapestry is a wonderful beauty and the beast themed book. Laura has loved Alex since she was a little girl and has been determined to marry him. Alex went off to war and came back different. When Alex’s injuries were described I was very surprised at how extensive they were compared to other Beauty and the Beast spin offs. The injuries to his face were severe enough to affect his eye sight. The first part of the book read like a fairy tale and I really enjoyed the lengths Laura went to in order to get Alex’s attention. About halfway through the book I was wondering what was going to happen with the rest of the story since everything was so perfect. The second half of the book was what really made it for me. The second half made the characters deal with real life hardships the fairy tale was over and real life began. At times I was wondering if there was going to be a happy ending or not. It was a little melancholy in the middle. I will mention that there were a few romance novel clichés I could have done without. Rest assured there is indeed a happy ending. I love the beauty and the beast theme and I thought this book did a very good job of retelling the story in a new way. I do have to mention the formatting. This book was scanned in order to make the digital copy and it shows there are a lot of scanning errors in this book. For example the word lad was used when it should have been had. The errors did pull me out of the story as sometimes it wasn’t clear what the word should have been.

This book was a very fast read for me. I enjoyed the authors depictions of angels and demons. I had a problem with the setting for some reason I didn't feel the characters were grounded in the setting of the Holy land. Maybe I'm being unfair because I have lived in Jerusalem, Israel but I don't feel the author accurately described the land. I also found it puzzling that the author chose Masada as the final battle instead of the tradition Megiddo. I don't think the plateau of Masada is bigger enough to hold the armies described as watching the battle. But again I'm rather picky about the scenery since I actually lived near it. Overall the book was a good read I recommend it.

The book was very enjoyable until the ending. The ending was very abrupt and left lots of loose ends. I'm not sure if this was meant to set up a sequel or not. I liked the premise but I think the world could have been developed a bit more. We only hear about one city Haven. We don't know if all the cities in the world are now set up like this. I think more information about other cities in the world would have made this a more interesting book. I did not notice as many formatting errors as mentioned in earlier reviews so I believe most of those issues are now fixed.