In the Shadow of Blackbirds by Cat Winters

Title: In the Shadow of Blackbirds

Author: Cat Winters

Publisher: Amulet Books

Release Date: April 2, 2013

Source: Borrowed

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository

In 1918, the world seems on the verge of apocalypse. Americans roam the streets in gauze make to ward off the deadly Spanish influenza, and the government ships young men to the front lines of a brutal war, creating an atmosphere of fear and confusion. Sixteen-year-old Mary Shelley Black watches as desperate mourners flock to séances and sprit photographers for comfort, but she herself has never believed in ghosts. During her bleakest moment, however, she's forced to rethink her entire way of looking at life and death, for her first love--a boy who died in battle--returns in spirit form. But what does he want from her?

Featuring haunting archival early-twentieth-century photographs, this is a tense, romantic story set in a past that is eerily like our own time. 

I'll be honest, if it hadn't been a book club pick, I probably wouldn't have picked up Cat Winters' In the Shadow of Blackbirds on my own. Though that's not to say that I didn't enjoy the book, because I really did, in really unexpected ways.

Being a sixteen-year-old girl in the fall of 1918 isn't easy. Especially for Mary Shelley Black, whose father has been sent to jail for being against the war and whose best friend has enlisted to go fight overseas, all while the Spanish influenza ravages cities across the country. Now in San Diego and surrounded by mourners running to spirit photographers to help with their grief, pragmatic and logical Mary Shelley can't help but shake her head at the idea of ghosts. That is, until she learns the terrible news about Stephen. Now, the only way for Mary Shelley to find peace is to start believing in the one thing she has always been opposed to. 

In the Shadow of Blackbirds isn't a book I would have picked up on my own if I hadn't had to read it for book club. But that would have meant I would have missed out on a great book. This story wasn't what I thought it was going to be. Admittedly I didn't know much about it before I started reading so that's not really saying much. What I liked about this story was that instead of being hyper focused on World War One, as you would expect a book set in 1918 to be, it instead focused on the Spanish influenza, the other big event that year. And as weird as it might be to say this, I really enjoyed that aspect of the story. As much as I know about WWI, I don't really know much about the Spanish flu other than the fact that it killed more people than four years of war did. So in that sense, I learned a lot from In the Shadow of Blackbirds. But what really made this story unexpected was that for 95% of the story the main love interest was a ghost. That definitely made things interesting. But the setting, and everything it entailed, made it feel almost as if the story wasn't a ghost story.

I really enjoyed reading this story from Mary Shelley's point of view. She was definitely ahead of her times and it made her really interesting to read about. For a sixteen-year-old girl in 1918, being interested in logic and science isn't exactly what's expected but she never let that bring her down. What I liked about Mary Shelley most, though, is that it took a while for her to accept the fact that spirits were real and that Stephen was more or less haunting her. And I really didn't expect Stephen to be the way he was. It's not every day you're going to read a story where the main love interest is dead for 95% of it. But at the same time, Stephen was an interesting character to read about, especially when it came to how much he had been affected by the war in such a short period of time. In 1918, people didn't know everything we now do about PTSD so they didn't really know what to do with the boys coming back from the war who were completely traumatized by what they had seen. It definitely added a certain level of depth to who Stephen was and, at times, it seemed like he was two completely different people: the Stephen Mary Shelley remembers from before he went to France, and the Stephen who came home from the war. All of this to say that it made for a really interesting story to read.

Even if Cat Winters' In the Shadow of Blackbirds isn't what you would normally choose to read, I suggest you at least give it a try. I know I wouldn't have normally picked it up on my own, but by the end I found myself to be pleasantly surprised by the story.

Waiting on Wednesday (69)

For those who don't know, Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jill of Breaking the Spine where book bloggers showcase books they are particularly looking for to. For the next few weeks, I'm going to be doing this a little differently. Like I did last year, each week I will be talking about books that are coming out early next year from different publishers. Up this week are the last of the January 2013 releases coming from Amulet Books, Bloomsbury & Egmont USA.

Splintered by A.G. Howard
January 1, 2013
Amulet Books

This stunning debut captures the grotesque madness of a mystical under-land, as well as a girl's pangs of first love and independence. Alyssa Gardner hears the whispers of bugs and flowers--precisely the affliction that landed her mother in a mental hospital years before. This family curse stretched back to her ancestor Alice Liddell, the real-life inspiration for Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Alyssa might be crazy, but she manages to keep it together. For now.

When her mother's mental health takes a turn for the worse, Alyssa learns that what she thought was fiction is based in terrifying reality. The real Wonderland is a place far darker and more twisted than Lewis Carroll ever let on. There, Alyssa must pass a series of tests, including draining an ocean of Alice's tears, waking the slumbering tea party, and subduing a vicious bandersnatch, to fix Alice's mistakes and save her family. She must also decide whom to trust: Jeb, her gorgeous best friend and secret crush, or the sexy but suspicious Morpheus, her guide through Wonderland, who may have dark motives of his own.

I remember seeing this book popping up everywhere for quite some time, but never really paid attention to what it was really about. All I really knew was that it had a pretty cover. But once I looked into it more, I realized that this was a story that I was really interested in reading and all the positive reviews I've been seing are only adding to this want. So yeah, I really want to read Splintered.

Doomed by Tracy Deebs

January 8, 2013

Bloomsbury

Beat the game. Save the world.

Pandora's just your average teen, glued to her cell phone and laptop, surfing Facebook and e-mailing with her friends, until the day her long-lost father sends her a link to a mysterious site featuring twelve photos of her as a child. Unable to contain her curiosity, Pandora enters the site, where she is prompted to play her favorite virtual-reality game, Zero Day. This unleashes a global computer virus that plunges the whole world into panic: suddenly, there is no Internet. No cell phones. No utilities, traffic lights, hospitals, law enforcement. Pandora teams up with handsome stepbrothers Eli and Theo to enter the virtual world of Zero Day. Simultaneously, she continues to follow the photographs from her childhood in an attempt to beat the game and track down her father, her one key to saving the world as we know it. 

Part The Matrix, part retelling of the Pandora myth, Doomed has something for gaming fans, dystopian fans and romance fans alike.

There are plenty of retellings out there but this is the first I heard of a retelling of the Pandora myth so it definitely piqued my curiosity. And the whole concept of it also sounds really interesting, and to an extent almost realistic. Who knows what would happen if the world were to go completely dark? All I know is that I'm definitely looking forward to reading Doomed. 

Nobody by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

January 22, 2013

EgmontUSA

There are people in this world who are Nobody. No one sees them. No one notices them .They live their lives under the radar, forgotten as soon as you turn away.

That's why they make the perfect assassins.

The Institute finds these people when they're young and takes them away for training. But an untrained Nobody is a threat to their organization. And threats must be eliminated.

Sixteen-year-old Claire has been invisible her whole life, missed by the Institute's monitoring. But now they've ID'ed her and send seventeen-year-old Nix to remove her. Yet the moment he lays eyes on her, he can't make the hit. It's as if Claire and Nix are the only people in the world for each other. And they are--because no one else ever notices them.

I absolutely love Jennifer Lynn Barnes' Raised by Wolves series so I get excited any time I hear she has a new book coming out. And as we all know by now, I am a sucker for anything that vaguely resembles a thriller. So this book just sounds perfect for me. I can't wait to be able to read Nobody.

So that's the last of the January 2013 books I'm waiting on. If I want to make it to February I may have to finally get around to renewing my library card because I don't know how I'm going to be able to afford all these books. Or even how I'm possibly going to even be able to read all the books I'm looking forward to.

Welcome, Caller, This is Chloe by Shelley Coriell

Title: Welcome, Caller, This is Chloe

Author: Shelley Coriell

Publisher: Amulet Books

Release Date: May 1, 2012

Source: Purchased

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository

Chloe Camden has a big heart and an even bigger collection of vintage shoes, not t mention a big personality and a primo spot with the in-crowd. But her world careens off its axis when her best friend inexplicably turns the entire school against her. Along and desperate, Chloe joins her school's struggling radio station, where she must team up with a group of misfits who don't find her too queenly.

Chloe ends up hoisting a call-in show that gets the station some much-needed publicity but also trouble, both for the station and radio techie Duncan Moore, a quiet soul with a romantic heart. On and off the air, Chloe must think carefully about whether it's better to talk or to listen.

Shelley Coriell's Welcome, Caller, This is Chloe has been on my radar for quite some time, but I didn't really know what to expect when I started reading it. As it turns out, Welcome, Caller, This is Chloe ended up being a book I highly enjoyed and surprised me in the best way possible.

Before the winter break, Chloe was at the top of her high school social pyramid. On the first day back, Chloe finds herself beings shunned by pretty much everyone in school ,including her two best friends, and Chloe has no idea why this is happening. And to make things even better, Chloe is forced by her guidance counselor to join the student radio for her independent study project. But Chloe quickly realizes that maybe working at the radio won't be as bad as she originally thought, especially if Duncan Moore is around. Except there might be more going on with everyone at the radio than Chloe originally thought.

When I began reading Welcome, Caller, This is Chloe I didn't really know what to expect. The book had been on my radar for quite some time, but I hadn't read any reviews. What I discovered as I started reading is that there was a lot more to the story Shelley Coriell wrote than I originally thought there would be. While I was expecting a light contemporary, I was not disappointed with what I got instead. Shelley Coriell wove a number of more serious elements into the story in a way that made it so I didn't necessarily realize there was so much going on. This was something I really liked about the book because it didn't make it feel like I was reading a really heavy story. As a whole, the mix of story lines really made for a highly enjoyable read.

While I'm not usually a big fan of the Queen Bee type of characters, I really loved Chloe. It might have been because when the story begins she is no longer in that position and the situation she finds herself in just makes you feel for her. Despite what it looks like from the outside, Chloe doesn't exactly have it easy. So I was really happy for her when she found the people at the radio station, especially Duncan Moore. Like Chloe, Duncan definitely doesn't have it easy and he and Chloe were good for each other. But the main thing about Duncan was that he was genuinely a great guy, despite everything he has gone through. The main thing about a lot of the characters in this book was that they all had their quirks that made them more real and more loveable.

Shelley Coriell's Welcome, Caller, This is Chloe was a surprising read and I loved every single page of it. It's a book I will for sure be recommending because it deserves to be read and enjoyed as much as I enjoyed it.

Welcome, Caller, This is Chloe Blog Tour

Today, as part of the blog tour for Welcome, Caller, This is Chloe I have the pleasure of having author Shelley Coriell here on the blog to do some word associations. So here is what she had to say.

What is the first thing that comes to mind for each word/phrase...

Book: Venice. I'm working on my BIG book, a contemp YA set partially in Renaissance Venice. My desk is piled with Italian travel guides and history books.

Travel: Venice. Can you see a trend here? I love this Northern Italian city's sun drenched canals, crumbling old buildings, and elegance. Not to mention a history bursting with centuries of passion and intrigue.

Childhood: Animals. I spent my summers at zoo camps and wanted to be a vet until my senior year of high school. That's when our family vet invited me to scrub in for out family dog's surgery. At the first sight of blood, I fainted and decided to become a writer.

Winter: Snow skiing. My husband is a HUGE ski nut. Me? I like hot chocolate and cute ear muffs.

Computer: Pink hippopotamus. A tiny one made out of Model Magic sits on my computer.

Writing: Venice. Sorry. I've been working on this thing for two years.

"First thing in the morning...": I make a steamy cup of green tea and hug my dog. No, that's wrong. I hug my dog then make tea. My dog, a rescue weim, is very needy.

Twitter: We're at the casual dating/flirting stage.

Television: Downton Abbey.

Sunshine: Home. I live in central Arizona, home to 300+ days of sunshine a year.

"At night...": Before I drift off to sleep, I give thanks for five things. Tonight I will thanks for: the color green, my friend Susan, book bloggers, firefighters, and strawberries.

Thanks for having me on your blog, Emilie. May your world be filled with good books and great people. 

Thank you to Sherry Coriell for stopping by doing these word associations. To learn more about Chloe's high school radio and win a $50 electronic/radio store gift certificate or one of ten CHLOE swag packs, got to Shelley Coriell's website, www.shelleycoriell.com/blog/. Good luck to all! 

And be sure to also follow the rest of the blog tour through The Teen Book Scene.