Ballad-Maggie Stiefvater

James Morgan and his friend Deirdre start school at Thornking-Ash, a boarding school for the musically talented. James is a piper, he plays the bag pipes. He's the best piper in the state.

When James meets Nuala (so she calls herself), a leanan sidhe (lan-an-shee), he finds that he feels more creative when she's around. She's basically a muse-faery.

James and her are getting to know each other and he's still in love with Dee, but he's warming up to Nuala and falling in love later. When he's not cracking jokes, he's getting into trouble or dealing with fey...okay, not exactly, but something like that. Nuala know she has to burn on Halloween in order to live, so she's not sure weather she needs to steal years from James or not, so she resists her urge to do so. James is working on a short play about a magician, called Ballad. He's letting Nuala direct it. Though she cannot create, she's always dreamed to direct and she's very good a inspiring his actors to do well.

Dee is later kidnapped and she's going to be used to make the faerie queen, Eleanor's consort the king of the dead. Nuala wants to be human. James lets her burn in the bonfire and says her true name seven times...but he has to go save Dee. I really can't tell you the rest. Just know that with James being the main character this time, it was so freakin' funny, I couldn't stop laughing. I seriously recommend this book. It only took me 2 day to read it though it's 352 pages long.

~*Haley*

Stargazer-Claudia Gray

This is the second Evernight book. Bianca starts the new school year without Lucas and Vic gives her a letter from Lucas saying to meet him is Amherst in October. She runs into another vampire there, a young girl who later turns out to be Charity, Balthazar's sister who he made a vampire way back when. Lucas was hunter her and thinks she's part of a gang. Later on Bianca and Balthazar strike a deal that he will help her meet Lucas from time to time if they help him get his sister back. They make an arrangement to pretend to be dating. Meanwhile, ghost of "wraith" activity has been going on at Evernight and when it does things seem to frost over, ice crystals everywhere. The wraiths are after Bianca, her parents have kept a secret from her-that her parents made a deal that their child would become a wraith instead of a vampire in exchange for the wraiths' help to conceive the child. Bianca's love and life are both on a thin line.

Overall, I liked this book. It was much easier to read after having read the first. I like Balthazar better than Lucas, I think. Balth's more charming.

~*Haley*

Evernight-Claudia Gray

Bianca, a shy 16-year old girl, has to start school at Evernight boarding school because her parents are becoming teachers there. She meets Lucas on orientation day and she feels comfortable with him. She really likes him and they get together and break apart a few times. She ends up going to the Autumn ball with Balthazar instead. Lucas shows up and Bianca kinda bites him...the first time she ever tastes human blood. It was 140 pages into the story and we finally find out that she's a born vampire, and I though Lucas was the vamp. Anyways, she's in trouble for it and there's a whole side story of Raquel, Bianca human friend, being stalked by the vamp Erich. Bianca confronts Erich and Lucas sees and Bianca confesses her vampire-ness to Lucas via email. We later find out that Lucas harbor a secret too-he's a vampire hunter, part of the Black Cross. Will their love survive, I mean, c'mon! Oh, and Bianca bit Lucas twice so now he has some vampire powers.

And also, Patrice is Bianca's roommate. The author wrote a short story about her in this other book I have.

I'm gonna read Stargazer, the sequel.

~*Haley*

Firespell-Chloe Neill

Lily Parker's parents send her to St. Sophia's boarding school in Chicago when they leave for Germany on a sabbatical. The school is pretty strange and so is her roommate, Scout. Scout disappears a lot at night and Lily wants to know what's going on. She find out that nothing is what it seems. Scout is a part of a group of magic users that want to protect Chicagoans from the psychic-energy stealing Reapers. Lily doesn't have a power so the elders of the Adepts don't let her join, but after being hit with firespell a darkening appears on Lily's back. She does have a power. Firespell.

Lily also finds out that her parent have been lying about their jobs. They aren't really philosophy professors, but geneticist, though they don't know that she knows.

Lily and the other Adepts have a fight against the Reapers and I will not spoil the rest. This is the 1st Dark Elite novel. I loved it because it was set in Chicago. Scout and Lily are pretty funny together. Jason sounds really hot. He's Lily's crush and he's a werewolf. I recommend this yummy series.

~*Haley*

Fallen-Lauren Kate

In this book, Luce Price is the main character. Her parents sent her to Sword & Cross reform school. Sword & Cross is more like a prison than a school. Some student even have to wear wristband with tracking chips in them. Luce has seen shadows all her life and back at her old prep school they caused something to happen to a boy she was alone with. Luce is on parole now for a crime she didn't commit. Luce meets Daniel. He ignores her and tries to avoid her as much as possible, but she eventually confronts him. Cam is nothing but nice to Luce. He even buys her a necklace, but Luce can't stop thinking about Daniel. It turns out that throughout her past lives she has always met him. Daniel is a damned Angel. He will live for ever only to see Luce die every seventeen or so years. Luce has a hard time believing this stuff but realizes that it's true later. Cam is evil and Daniel wants to save her. I can't go on anymore without spoiling the whole plot. The book's 452 pages long and I read it in 3 days. It's really good. It reminds me of the last book I read, Devil's Kiss because there's watchers (Grigoris) in it. It also reminds me of the Immortals series because Ever was killed over and over in her past lives too.


Pop Lit Journal:

This book had topics in common with other books I’ve read recently. Before this book I read Devil’s Kiss by Sarwat Chadda. It had a fallen angel in it too. A Watcher, or a Grigori. In that book they were evil, dark angels. Billi started falling for the Angel of Death because she was being deceived into trusting him. In Fallen, there are also some bad fallen angels. Luce is deceived into trusting Cam and Mrs. Sophia. Both basically had fallen angels in them. In Fallen the fallen angels were condemned to Earth for loving a human or something more than God. They didn’t elaborate, but it was pretty much what’s in the bible. Hush, Hush by Becca FitzPatrick also was about fallen angels. It was more like this book than any of the other ones I will mention. Nora, like Luce, falls for a fallen angel guy and end up in the middle of a great heavenly war.

There was also the concept of past lives in this book. Luce always died not long after she met Daniel every seventeen years. This reminded me of Alyson Noë l’s Immortals series where Ever was killed by Drina after she and Damon fell in love in each of her past lives. Since Daniel was condemned, he will live for ever only to see Luce show up in his life, fall in love with him and die every seventeen or so years.

She would sometimes die when they kissed because he is an angel, and it could shock her somehow. Sometimes she’d die from an information overload or by being killed somehow. She thought it sounded a bit romantic at first, like they were star-crossed lovers, but then it hit her that could die soon. She didn’t want to believe it though. She thought it sounded crazy, but her seeing shadow seemed crazier to her. Daniel said she never was able to see the shadows in her past lives. It’s almost like she has some kind of psychic ability now, like Ever had after becoming immortal, but not really. Maybe her soul’s evolving or something.

I want to mention the setting. A lot of books have boarding schools in them, but I haven’t read many with reform schools in them. Sword & Cross is a reform high school for young felons, insane teens and juvenile delinquents. Luce was pretty sane, though she didn’t believe it. She thought she might have killed Trevor and she deserved to be there. She became friends with the only sane person there, Penn. There were also other fallen angels hiding among them as students: Arriane, Roland, Cam, and Gabbe.

~*Haley*