Stacking The Shelves #20

Welcome to Stacking The Shelves! Stacking the Shelves is hosted by Tynga Reviews and is a meme to share those books, both print and e-book, that have been added to your shelves in the last week/s.

Happy New Year! I thought this week would be a quiet one after the huge book week I had last week However i still have credit on my itunes account from xmas so a few more ebooks made their way to me during the week.  I also spent a bit of time this week working out what reading challenges i would like to attempt in 2015 so stay tuned for my post on that some time this week. Click on Titles for links back to Goodreads

Purchased:

Nikk's bookshelf: Purchased This Week

 

Ravencliffe

by Carol Goodman

We Were Liars

by E. Lockhart

Night Embrace

by Sherrilyn Kenyon

The January Wish

by Juliet Madison

Loyalty in Death

by J.D. Robb

So what did you add to your shelves this week?

Teaser Tuesday #79: Ravencliffe (Blythewood #2) by Carol Goodman

Welcome to Teaser Tuesdays.

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

1. Grab your current read

2. Open to a random page

3. 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 muchaway! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

4. Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!


My current read is Ravencliffe (Blythewood #2) by Carol Goodman  and my three lines are from location 35 of 657

"Because..." Because she'd seen what I was and hadn't revealed my secret? She might just be manipulating me. But there was something else.

Avaline Hall is no ordinary girl.

She’s a student at Blythewood Academy, an elite boarding school that trains young women to defend human society from the shadowy forces that live among us. After the devastating events of her first year at Blythewood, Ava is eager to reunite with her friends—and with Raven, the compelling but elusive winged boy who makes her pulse race. She soon discovers, though, that the sinister Judicus van Drood hasn’t finished wreaking havoc on Blythewood—and wants to use Ava and her classmates to attack a much bigger target.

Ava’s the only one with any hope of stopping van Drood. But to scuttle his plans, she must reveal her deepest secret to everyone at Blythewood. What’s she willing to sacrifice to do what’s right—her school? Her love? Or her life?

Purchase: Amazon | Book Depository

PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT with either the link to your own Teaser Tuesdays post, or share your ‘teasers’ in a comment here (if you don’t have a blog). Thanks!

Review: Blythewood by Carol Goodman

Title: Blythewood (Blythewood #1)

Author: Carol Goodman
Published: 21 October 2103 by Speak
Source:  Booktopia
Reviewed: Sapphired Dragon
Rating: **** 1/2

My Review:

I have been eyeing off this title for a while and I am so glad I finally took the plunge and bought this recently as a Christmas present to myself as this is one of the most enjoyable books I have read in a while.

Set in New York in the early 20th century, this book has that old style, comfortable feel right from the beginning of a world on the cusp of progress with the suffragette movement and unionism starting to take shape.Ms Goodman places us squarely in this time zone through her writing which brings the era to life around us along with the colourful characters to back it up

We first meet main character Avaline "Ava" Hall, shortly after her mother's death on her way to work in the shirtwaist factory on the day of the famous shirtwaist factory fire and Ms Goodman uses actual historical events seamlessly entwined with fiction to immediately show us a glimpse of what Ava is up against.

After surviving both the fire and a brief stay in a mental asylum, Ava finds herself at Blythewood Academy, Elite School for Girls and her mother's Alma Mater. Here she is introduced to a whole new world, full of good, evil, mystery and magic and many many more questions about who she is,and what happened to her mother.

I love that this is not your run of the mill standard, less fortunate soul goes to elite boarding school and fights to fit in against the odds. This is also about a character finding herself and her purpose and that not everything is is black and white or as it may seem. The characters around her are just as well written and come to life under Ms Goodman's pen.

Ms goodman weaves a dark, powerful tale that you won't want to put down whether you predict what might be coming or cannot guess, either way this story will draw you into its spell and leave you breathless until the end. I loved it so much, I immediately bought the second book, Ravencliffe on finishing the last page and ravencliffe sneak peak.

I definitely recommend this story to anyone who loves reading brilliantly stories with dark magic, strong heroines and turn of the century grace.  

I give this novel 4 1/2 stars.

Sapphired Dragon xx

About The Book:

After narrowly escaping death in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, seventeen-year-old Avaline Hall is sent to Blythewood Academy, the elite girls’ boarding school in New York’s Hudson Valley that her mother attended years before. Ava hopes to solve the mystery of her mother’s death and its connection to the students who keep disappearing from Blythewood. But the school is not all that it appears . . . and neither is the handsome young man who saved Ava from the fire. What’s the meaning of the extraordinary powers Ava possesses? Who’s good and who’s evil? And who has the right to make that distinction?

Goodreads | Book Depository | Amazon

Teaser Tuesday #78: Blythewood by Carol Goodman

Welcome to Teaser Tuesdays.

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

1. Grab your current read

2. Open to a random page

3. 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 muchaway! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

4. Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!


My current read is Blythewood (Blythewood #1) by Carol Goodman  and my three lines are from Page 372

Because he's safer there than in the woods, I told myself, pausing on the fourth-floor landing to look out at the frozen woods.



Welcome to Blythewood.

At seventeen, Avaline Hall has already buried her mother, survived a horrific factory fire, and escaped from an insane asylum. Now she’s on her way to Blythewood Academy, the elite boarding school in New York’s mist-shrouded Hudson Valley that her mother attended—and was expelled from. Though she’s afraid her high society classmates won’t accept a factory girl in their midst, Ava is desperate to unravel her family’s murky past, discover the identity of the father she’s never known, and perhaps finally understand her mother’s abrupt suicide. She’s also on the hunt for the identity of the mysterious boy who rescued her from the fire. And she suspects the answers she seeks lie at Blythewood.

But nothing could have prepared her for the dark secret of what Blythewood is, and what its students are being trained to do. Haunted by dreams of a winged boy and pursued by visions of a sinister man who breathes smoke, Ava isn’t sure if she’s losing her mind or getting closer to the truth. And the more rigorously Ava digs into the past, the more dangerous her present becomes.

Vivid and atmospheric, full of mystery and magic, this romantic page-turner by bestselling author Carol Goodman tells the story of a world on the brink of change and the girl who is the catalyst for it all.

Purchase: Amazon | Book Depository

PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT with either the link to your own Teaser Tuesdays post, or share your ‘teasers’ in a comment here (if you don’t have a blog). Thanks!