Life Eternal by Yvonne Woon

Well I actually finished this book a while ago, and I've been wanting and meaning to write a review, but I haven't found the time. But here I am finally writing it, so yay:D I'm reviewing Life Eternal by Yvonne Woon, which is the sequel to Dead Beautiful. I was really happy with this book. I've experienced a lot of book cases where the first book is AMAZING, and then the sequel down-right sucks. Thank God this wasn't the case with Life Eternal. And I read it so fast, I swear I thought I was only several chapters in and I was half-way through. It just kept me flipping the page and didn't get boring. There were a few little things that I was like OH NO PLEASE DON'T BE SECOND-BOOKISH. DON'T FALL UNDER THE SECOND BOOK CURSE, but apart from that it was really amazing. I completely suck at summaries, by the way, so I suggest looking up a summary. This is just more of my thoughts on the book.
I absolutely LOVE how Yvonne Woon can tie these intriguing mysteries into her novels. I feel like so many times there are these paranormal romance teen novels that are good, but the whole mystery is just "my love interest isn't human. what is he?!?!?!" but in this case, sure for Dead Beautiful there was that, but there was also the Gottfried mystery. Now there's a whole new mystery in Life Eternal, and I'm SO glad it wasn't like "I already KNOW the answer, come on Renee, why don't YOU?" but I was actually just as clueless as she was at times. I also really liked Anya, a new character in the novel. She was different and interesting. Now I was SLIGHTLY disappointed in this book though. It kind of hit the edge of that whole "second book curse" thing. It was right on the line. You know where the random extra guy comes in, or all of a sudden it becomes an unnecessary love triangle. Now this wasn't as bad as other books, the whole "guy-who-gets-involved-with-the-main-characters-love-life" wasn't nearly as bad. At first he was a good part of the story I thought, and later he himself was still an important character, but as he got more into Renee, and she started thinking about him I was just like "ugh, please don't turn this into a love triangle thingy." BUT however, it didn't necessarily do that, and I think the author did a nice job. My only other disappointment was Renee in this book and NOT trusting Dante. I swear, all these female protagonists are so ANTI-TRUSTING of their so called SOUL MATES. I'm always thinking "He's your "soul mate," your lover, whatever, and yet you can barely trust them?" I understood her suspicions throughout the book, and it'd be stupid if she was in denial and wouldn't be good for her character, but I feel like she just wasn't trusting enough and I see too much of that in these types of books.
BESIDES these little things though, I completely loved the book and cannot wait for the third one, which Yvonne Woon is currently working on, but there's no official title or release date yet.

Anna Dressed In Blood

I recently finished a book called Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake and it was AMAZING. Now this is a ghost story- something that I really haven't read yet. I've read about almost every paranormal creature from demons to nephilim to fallen angels to witches and so much more, but not a story about ghosts. Sure I've read books with ghosts mentioned or ghost-like figures, but not a book with the basis of ghosts and completely revolved around ghosts.
Cas Lowood is the heroin in this story, and it's nice to read about a male protagonist. From what I've experienced, YA novels with a male protagonist always seems to turn out really good! Now Cas is a professional ghost hunter, he moves around with his white witch mother and her ghost-detecting cat as different people tip Cas to kill a certain ghost in a certain area. Cas uses a deadly athame knife which he inherited from his deceased father. Usually for Cas, he just moves to an town, doesn't make friends, kills the ghost, and moves on. Well this time it's different. The ghost Cas is after, called Anna Dressed in Blood, really interests him. He's never been as interested in any ghost apart from the ghost that killed his father. According Anna's legend she kills anyone who enters her house, but when a few jerks from school knock him unconscious and throw him into the house, Anna spares his life. Anywhoo, I'm pretty bad with explanations, but this was really good. I read some reviews before I read the book and it mentioned it being gory...now at parts it was kind of gory, but it wasn't very descriptive and overlygross during any parts. And I DO get scared at well...scary types of things, but I really didn't get all that scared in Anna Dressed in Blood. It could be eerie at times and it was also a bit sad, but I liked that.
Anna Dressed in Blood was a nice mix of everything- for one I loved the cover and the title, the characters were well developed and I loved Cas, it had a nice mix of romance, action, suspense, friends, family....just a nice mixture of everything. It wasn't just completely revolved around romance. It had romance, but it also had action among other things that I mentioned. And I thought the romance was really adorable. It wasn't anything cliche or "great, I've seen this 100 times. Why do they like each other again? Oh right, they love each other's looks and are suddenly completely in love." It was actually very cute. And it was going at a perfect pace and had a great twist at the end, but the very ending wasn't super cliff-hangerish to the point where you go insane. Just enough to be super excited for the next book;) I finished this within two days and I really didn't want to put it down. I absolutely loved it and I would give it a five out of five stars. I definitely recommend this- even if you get scared easily. And if that's your case, just stick to reading it during the day and not at night and I'm sure you'll still love it:)
The sequel will be called Girl of Nightmares, said to come out August 7th, 2012!

Clockwork Prince

Wow. Just wow. So as most of you know, Clockwork Prince is the sequel to Clockwork Angel and the second book in The Infernal Devices series. Now I've read reviews online from before the book was officially out in stores, and they all described how amazing it was, but I was surprised how amazing it actually was. Emotional roller coaster? Completely. Maybe Bipolar Prince would work? Clockwork BIPOLAR? Okay, yeah those obviously don't work, but I felt completely and utterly bipolar reading this. One second I'm laughing, then I'm crying, then I'm smiling again to myself, and then I'm angry and gosh, I've never felt so many emotions in one book. And there were so many twists and turns! It was insane.
Now, Tessa annoyed me in this one. I've always liked Tessa, well I did in the last book. She's a strong character and all, but ugh, she annoyed me in Clockwork Prince. At first it was just for my own stupid opinionated reasons, such as "TESSA Y U NO FORGIVE WILL AND START MAKING OUT?!" For a while it was just stupid stuff like that, like "Gosh Tessa, I know you're being a strong character, but can you be weak for just one second and fall back into Will's arms even if he was a jerk to you?" But then after a while I felt like some of the things she said were kind of rude or something. Change it from old-timey talk to modern day talk, she'd probably sound pretty rude. Some of her decisions and the things she says just irk me. And half of the time she's lying to herself trying to push her feelings for Will away, and denying that she has them. And she really was just downright rude at times and just some of the things she did. Ugh, Tessa.
Cassie Clare gets better with each book she writes, I swear. I really really like the characters in this series. And the infernal devices were mentioned in this one! I don't recall it being mentioned in Clockwork Angel, perhaps it was, but I just remember when I saw the infernal devices mentioned I was interested since that's the title of the series of course.
There were lots of new characters as well! At the very beginning two new replacement servants came for the ones the institute lost in the previous book. Then there was Gabriel and Gideon Lightwood, I think Gabriel was in the last one, but Gideon was new, and there was a lot more of the Lightwood brothers in this one. I think it's really fun reading about the ancestors of the characters from The Mortal Instruments series. If I see a familiar last name it just seems exciting:) There was also a lot more Sophie (the servant) in this book I think, and I really like Sophie. She's a sweet character, and it's interesting as she's human and all. There's also some Magnus in this one and I completely love Magnus;)
Now I can't say I was completely happy with the ending, but I can't tell if Cassandra Clare is setting up something or not. Who knows, that woman works in mysterious ways;) I just recommend to either read this ASAP because it's simply amazing ooor, put it off as long as you can so you don't have to torture yourself for another year until Clockwork Princess comes out. I'm not sure if I can wait that long. Clockwork Prince I think was better than Clockwork Angel, and although a lot of the time I didn't like what was going on, or what happened, it was still SO GOOD. It's so hard to explain and there really are no words to describe this book.

Book Blog!

Hello, welcome to The Scent of a New Page!
Well, I've been meaning to make a book blog for quite some time. A long time really. But then there's that thing that always troubles me....titles. Names, usernames, all of that. I can never decide or think of any! I was trying to think of one for so long, but all my ideas SUCKED as usual. So then I came across the idea of The Scent of a New Page. I love love love the scent of a new book. I made it the scent of a new PAGE though, because well, some people may like the scent of an OLD book or something...Anyways, I'm going to get off topic, so yes, this is my book blog.
Now I doubt anyone will read it, but...I still wanted to make one. I'd still probably post stuff even if no one read it. Well if I keep typing, this post will end up being too long, so I'll stop here!
-Hannah