Follow Friday

This is a weekly blog meme hosted by Parajunkee's View and Alison Can Read.

Here are the general rules to Follow Friday:
1. Follow the Follow My Book Blog Friday Hosts and any one else you want to follow on the list
2. Follow our Featured Bloggers
3. Put your Blog name & URL in the Linky thing.
4. Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments
5. Follow Follow Follow as many as you can
6. If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the Love...and the followers
7. If you want to show the link list, just follow the link below the entries and copy and paste it within your post!
8. If your new to the follow Friday hop, comment and let me know, so I can stop by and check out your blog!

This week's question is: Activity! Who is your to-die-for book crush? What do you think they look like? Add an image to make us all happy.

MY ANSWER: I have already seen some excellent answers that I know that I would go with, but this week I will say Daniel Grigori from Lauren Kate's Fallen series.

By hobbs_luton at http://flickr.com/photos/hobbs_images/ (http://flickr.com/photos/hobbs_images/252479969/) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons

"There’s something achingly familiar about Daniel Grigori. Mysterious and aloof, he captures Luce Price’s attention from the moment she sees him..."

Goodreads Summary:

There’s something achingly familiar about Daniel Grigori.

Mysterious and aloof, he captures Luce Price’s attention from the moment she sees him on her first day at the Sword & Cross boarding school in sultry Savannah. He’s the one bright spot in a place where cell phones are forbidden, the other students are all screw-ups, and security cameras watch every move.

Even Daniel wants nothing to do with Luce – he goes out of his way to make that very clear. But she can’t let it go. Drawn to him like a moth to a flame, Luce has to find out what Daniel is so desperate to keep secret...even if it kills her.

Dangerously exciting and darkly romantic, FALLEN is a page-turning thriller and the ultimate love story.

Who is yours??

"Waiting on" Wednesday: Frost Burned

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Frost Burned - Mercedes Thompson #7 by Patricia Briggs

Expected Publication is March 5, 2013

Goodreads Summary:

Shapeshifter Mercy Thompson's life is calming down, at least enough that she can focus on mundane matters like Black Friday sales. But on her return, Mercy is unable to contact her mate, Alpha Adam Hauptman, or the other members of their pack. All she knows is that Adam is angry and in pain. With the werewolves fighting a political battle to gain acceptance from the public, Mercy fears Adam's disappearance may be related - and that he and the pack are in serious danger. Outclassed and on her own, Mercy may be forced to seek assistance from the most unlikely of allies: the vampire seethe.

Teaser Tuesdays

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

Grab your current read
Open to a random page
Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
Share the title and author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Initiation by Imogen Rose - Bonfire Academy Book 1

Teaser:

"I almost snickered when I detected a red hue forming on his snow-white skin. An embarrassed winter fey. Cute." 

Goodreads Summary:

Welcome to Bonfire Academy. Set in the foothills of the alpine mountains in St.Moritz, this exclusive private school caters to a special kind of student. Enter at your own risk... but if you are human, you may not want to enter at all.

This is part one of the prequel series (Bonfire Academy) in the Bonfire Chronicles. Book two, INTEGRATION, will be released summer 2012.

Review - The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

Paperback Cover

“These stories were very old, as old as people, and they had survived because they were very powerful indeed. They were the tales that echoed in the head long after the books that contained them were cast aside. They were both an escape from reality and an alternative reality themselves. They were so old, and so strange, that they had found a kind of existence independent of the pages they occupied. The world of the old tales existed parallel to ours, but sometimes the walls separating the two became so thin and brittle that the two worlds started to blend into each other. That was when the trouble started. That was when the bad things came. That was when the Crooked Man began to appear to David.”

Author John Connolly is well known for thrillers such as The Unquiet, but he flows more heavily into fantasy and fairy tales for The Book of Lost Things. Still, these fairy tale characters remind the reader of Grimm creatures and the story itself is dark and chilling.

The main character, David, is a 12-year-old boy whose mother passes away and is left with his father and his books. When Dad marries and has another child, David has a hard time coping, and begins to see his stories leap off his shelves and into his real life. After a series of "attacks", David finds himself in "Elsewhere", a new realm filled with some creatures who befriend him and some who attack him. David must make his way to the King and his Book of Lost Things if he hopes to make it back to his home in 1940's Europe all while dodging The Crooked Man who "will say less than he means and conceal more than he reveals."

The book touches on love, loss, envy, and survival but is largely about the progress of a boy becoming a man. Since the main character is a boy, you cannot help but cheer him through his struggles and at times wince at his reasoning or applaud his brave stands.

One of my favorite things is the importance Connolly gives to books and stories. As an avid reader, I felt drawn to his ideas that books wanted to be read and wanted us to bring them to life. I felt like I could hear the books whispering to me just as they did to David. He has a gift for making you feel what he wants you to feel.

I was not a fan of how slow moving some of the first few chapters were. There was some information given early on that I feel slowed down the reading and actually took away from it instead of adding necessary background information or anything of importance. Also, for the most part the tone of the book is not one that I would generally get in to as I do not prefer sad stories or horror tales and felt this had both. I would not  recommend children read this book even though it would seem like it would appeal to them since there are grisly aspects and frankly graphic and twisted content within.

The Book of Lost Things takes you on quite a journey. All readers will come to their own conclusions about certain events and in fact "Elsewhere" itself which I love. I gave this book 3 stars.