Posts in "recap"

July 24, 2023

The Princess Diaries: Third Time Lucky by Meg Cabot

The basics

Title: The Princess Diaries: Third Time Lucky

Author:

Series: The Princess Diaries #3

- The Princess Diaries (2000)
- Princess in the Spotlight (2001)
- Princess in Love (2002)
- Princess in Waiting (2002)
- Princess in Pink (2003)
- Princess in Training (2006)
- Party Princess (2006)
- Princess on the Brink (2006)
- Princess Mia (2007)
- Forever Princess (2008)
- Royal Wedding (2015)

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Goodreads Summary:

Sometimes I think I must be the luckiest girl in the world. I mean, really. Think about it: I may not be pretty, but I am not grossly disfigured; I live in New York City, the coolest place on the planet; I'm a princess; I have a boyfriend. What more could a girl ask for?

WHO AM I KIDDING?????

Mia's love life is a disaster- and being heir to the throne of Genovia sure doesn't help.

Because while Mia's finally got herself a boyfriend, he's SO not the right guy. The one she really wants is Michael, but he's not available now he's going out with Judith who clones fruit flies. Would Michael ever prefer Mia to the fruit fly girl? As if!
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Posted by Amber • No comments
July 21, 2023

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

The basics

Title: Fourth Wing

Author:

Series: The Empyrean #1

- Fourth Wing (2023)
- Iron Flame (2023)

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Goodreads Summary:

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.

But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away...because dragons don’t bond to “fragile” humans. They incinerate them.

With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter—like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant.

She’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise. Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom's protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret.

Friends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda—because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die
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Posted by Amber • One comment
July 19, 2023

Belladonna by Adalyn Grace

The basics

Title: Belladonna

Author:

Series: Belladonna #1

- Belladonna (2022)
- Foxglove (2023)
- Wisteria (2024)

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Goodreads Summary:

For as long as Signa Farrow has been alive, the people in her life have fallen like stars...

Orphaned as a baby, nineteen-year-old Signa has been raised by a string of guardians, each more interested in her wealth than her well-being – and each has met an untimely end. Her remaining relatives are the elusive Hawthornes, an eccentric family living at Thorn Grove, an estate both glittering and gloomy.

Its patriarch mourns his late wife through wild parties, while his son grapples for control of the family’s waning reputation and his daughter suffers from a mysterious illness. But when their mother’s restless spirit appears claiming she was poisoned, Signa realizes that the family she depends on could be in grave danger, and enlists the help of a surly stable boy to hunt down the killer.

Signa’s best chance of uncovering the murderer, though, is an alliance with Death himself, a fascinating, dangerous shadow who has never been far from her side. Though he’s made her life a living hell, Death shows Signa that their growing connection may be more powerful – and more irresistible – than she ever dared imagine.
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Posted by Amber • No comments
July 17, 2023

The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan

The basics

Title: The Lost Hero

Author:

Series: The Heroes of Olympus #1

- The Lost Hero (2010)
- The Son of Neptune (2011)
- The Mark of Athena (2012)
- The House of Hades (2013)
- The Blood of Olympus (2014)

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Goodreads Summary:

JASON HAS A PROBLEM. He doesn’t remember anything before waking up in a bus full of kids on a field trip. Apparently he has a girlfriend named Piper, and his best friend is a guy named Leo. They’re all students at the Wilderness School, a boarding school for “bad kids," as Leo puts it. What did Jason do to end up here? And where is here, exactly? Jason doesn't know anything—except that everything seems very wrong.

PIPER HAS A SECRET. Her father has been missing for three days, ever since she had that terrifying nightmare about his being in trouble. Piper doesn’t understand her dream, or why her boyfriend suddenly doesn’t recognize her. When a freak storm hits during the school trip, unleashing strange creatures and whisking her, Jason, and Leo away to someplace called Camp Half-Blood, she has a feeling she’s going to find out, whether she wants to or not.

LEO HAS A WAY WITH TOOLS. When he sees his cabin at Camp Half-Blood, filled with power tools and machine parts, he feels right at home. But there’s weird stuff, too—like the curse everyone keeps talking about, and some camper who's gone missing. Weirdest of all, his bunkmates insist that each of them—including Leo—is related to a god. Does this have anything to do with Jason's amnesia, or the fact that Leo keeps seeing ghosts?
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Posted by Amber • No comments
July 14, 2023

A Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket

The basics

Title: A Bad Beginning

Author:

Series: A Series of Unfortunate Events #1

- A Bad Beginning (1999)
- The Reptile Room (1999)
- The Wide Window (2000)
- The Miserable Mill (2000)
- The Austere Academy (2000)
- The Ersatz Elevator (2001)
- The Vile Village (2001)
- The Hostile Hospital (2001)
- The Carnivorous Carnival (2002)
- The Slippery Slope (2003)
- The Grim Grotto (2004)
- The Penultimate Peril (2005)
- The End (2006)

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Goodreads Summary:

Dear Reader,

I'm sorry to say that the book you are holding in your hands is extremely unpleasant. It tells an unhappy tale about three very unlucky children. Even though they are charming and clever, the Baudelaire siblings lead lives filled with misery and woe. From the very first page of this book when the children are at the beach and receive terrible news, continuing on through the entire story, disaster lurks at their heels. One might say they are magnets for misfortune.

In this short book alone, the three youngsters encounter a greedy and repulsive villain, itchy clothing, a disastrous fire, a plot to steal their fortune, and cold porridge for breakfast.

It is my sad duty to write down these unpleasant tales, but there is nothing stopping you from putting this book down at once and reading something happy, if you prefer that sort of thing.

With all due respect, Lemony Snicket
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Posted by Amber • No comments
July 12, 2023

Once Upon a Broken Heart by Stephanie Garber

The basics

Title: Once Upon a Broken Heart

Author:

Series: Once Upon a Broken Heart #1

- Once Upon a Broken Heart (2021)
- The Ballad of Never After (2022)
- A Curse for True Love (2023)

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Goodreads Summary:

When Evangeline Fox learns that the love of her life is about to marry another, she feels her heart begin to break in two. Desperate and distraught, she offers the charismatic but wicked Prince of Hearts whatever he wishes in exchange for his help to stop the wedding. His request: three kisses. At first, it seems simple enough, but Evangeline quickly learns that bargaining with a Fate is a dangerous game, and it could cost her far more than she intended. For the prince has plans for Evangeline, plans that will either end in the greatest happily ever after, or in the most exquisite tragedy...
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Posted by Amber • No comments
July 10, 2023

Shift by Hugh Howey

The basics

Title: Shift

Author:

Series: Silo #2

- Wool (2013)
- Shift (2013)
- Dust (2013)

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Goodreads Summary:

In 2007, the Center for Automation in Nanobiotech (CAN) outlined the hardware and software platform that would one day allow robots smaller than human cells to make medical diagnoses, conduct repairs, and even self-propagate. In the same year, the CBS network re-aired a program about the effects of propranolol on sufferers of extreme trauma. A simple pill, it had been discovered, could wipe out the memory of any traumatic event. At almost the same moment in humanity’s broad history, mankind had discovered the means for bringing about its utter downfall. And the ability to forget it ever happened. This is the sequel to the New York Times bestselling WOOL series.
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Posted by Amber • One comment
July 7, 2023

The Final Gambit by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

The basics

Title: The Final Gambit

Author:

Series: The Inheritance Games #3

- The Inheritance Games (2020)
- The Hawthorne Legacy (2021)
- The Final Gambit (2022)
- The Brothers Hawthorne (2023)

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Goodreads Summary:

To inherit billions, all Avery Kylie Grambs has to do is survive a few more weeks living in Hawthorne House. The paparazzi are dogging her every step. Financial pressures are building. Danger is a fact of life. And the only thing getting Avery through it all is the Hawthorne brothers. Her life is intertwined with theirs. She knows their secrets and they know her.

But as the clock ticks down to the moment when Avery will become the richest teenager on the planet, trouble arrives in the form of a visitor who needs her help—and whose presence in Hawthorne House could change everything. It soon becomes clear that there is one last puzzle to solve, and Avery and the Hawthorne brothers are drawn into a dangerous game against an unknown and powerful player.
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Posted by Amber • No comments
July 3, 2023

Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel

The basics

Title: Sleeping Giants

Author:

Series: Themis Files #1

- Sleeping Giants (2016)
- Waking Gods (2017)
- Only Human (2018)

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Goodreads Summary:

A girl named Rose is riding her new bike near home in Deadwood, South Dakota, when she falls through the earth. She wakes up at the bottom of a square-shaped hole, its walls glowing with intricate carvings. But the firemen who come to save her peer down upon something even stranger: a little girl in the palm of a giant metal hand.

Seventeen years later, the mystery of the bizarre artifact remains unsolved - the object's origins, architects, and purpose unknown.

But some can never stop searching for answers.

Rose Franklin is now a highly trained physicist leading a top-secret team to crack the hand's code. And along with her colleagues, she is being interviewed by a nameless interrogator whose power and purview are as enigmatic as the relic they seek. What's clear is that Rose and her compatriots are on the edge of unravelling history's most perplexing discovery-and finally figuring out what it portends for humanity. But once the pieces of the puzzle are in place, will the result be an instrument of lasting peace or a weapon of mass destruction?
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Posted by Amber • No comments
June 30, 2023

Demonglass by Rachel Hawkins

The basics

Title: Demonglass

Author:

Series: Hex Hall #2

- Hex Hall (2010)
- Demonglass (2011)
- Spell Bound (2012)
- School Spirits (2013)

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Goodreads Summary:

Sophie Mercer thought she was a witch. That was the whole reason she was sent to Hex Hall, a reform school for delinquent Prodigium (a.k.a. witches, shape-shifters, and faeries). But then she discovered the family secret, and the fact that her hot crush, Archer Cross, is an agent for The Eye, a group bent on wiping Prodigium off the face of the earth.

Turns out, Sophie's a demon, one of only two in the world-the other being her father. What's worse, she has powers that threaten the lives of everyone she loves. Which is precisely why Sophie decides she must go to London for the Removal, a dangerous procedure that will either destroy her powers for good-or kill her.

But once Sophie arrives, she makes a shocking discovery. Her new housemates? They're demons too. Meaning, someone is raising demons in secret, with creepy plans to use their powers, and probably not for good. Meanwhile, The Eye is set on hunting Sophie down, and they're using Archer to do it. But it's not like she has feelings for him anymore. Does she?
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Posted by Amber • No comments
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