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