Really wanted this to be good
345733
This mouse is great in every way, as far as functionality is concerned.

It seems durable and a couple weeks in to owning it, I have had zero functionality related complaints.

My only complaint, and for me it is a deal breaker; the damn thing is too light.  I mean, you can blow on this thing and watch it scoot around.  It's just too sloppy with how sensitive it is, vs how light it is.  Feels like it should be a $10 mouse or less.  Really bummed, I like Anker, hopefully they can make some improvements.

Just my views on this thing.
4583555
Honestly the book started of good, it was a great idea for a store but how the store played out and how it was told was not good at all. I feel like i i was being tortured to finish read this.

I hate giving a bad review but again it was a great idea but badly told
1361424
At the beginning of this book, and up through about half way, I had high hopes for this and greatly enjoyed the story. It seemed fast paced, decent characters, and great potential for development. Unfortunately, around the point where the main male character gets kidnapped, everything begins and continues to go wrong. At the beginning of the book, what I thought was somewhat funny dialogue between some of the secondary characters, becomes drawn out nonsense that adds nothing to and steadily detracts from the story. Several of the characters have multiple conversations that remind me of children bickering; even better, the poor dialogue adds nothing to the story. Instead, it appears as though the author is attempting to get rid of holes in the plot through excessive "witty" dialogue.

There are other elements to the story that make it ridiculous. Not less than three times is a character trapped in or attempting to get into a supposedly impenetrable dangerous area. Each time, the characters basically just walk in. There are some extra characters thrown in (such as expert shape-shifters and the like) that I think were supposed to make the easiness of the escapes and entrances seem plausible, but after the third time that method begins feeling like a cop-out. Also, I don't find it unreasonable to expect that people who have been tortured or bitten by snakes (creating baseball sized bumps no less) act like they are actually hurt for more than  few pages. You'd think these characters just healed instantaneously the way this is written.

Unfortunately, the storyline doesn't make up for the poor dialogue and unrealistic events that occur. At the beginning, what sounds like a good story quickly turns into several disjointed events.

It is possible the book suddenly makes up for all its downfalls in the last bit of the book; however, I wouldn't know as I could't get past about 90% of the way in. It was a page turner for the first half and I quit reading after I had to force myself to actually care about what was going on.  There are better vampire/human fall-in-love stories. Twilight comes to mind.
4898198
I wanted so desperately to like this book more. It physically hurts that I can't give it a higher review, but it just has a couple vital things missing that keeps me from absolutely loving it.

Beginning was good. I liked how the story really got going almost instantly. No fumbling around and building up the main characters in a couple slow, awkward first chapters here. I will say that about this book too: character development was ON POINT. By the end of the book I KNEW these people. Every single character I got to see different sides and perspectives. No one was a crazy evil villain or a goody-goody. Even the main character, Cara, had her faults. Stealing away the crush of your sister is not exactly a slap on the wrist kind of move.

Then the middle comes along. I'm invested by now. I DESPERATELY want to know all about the past between Cara and Boone, but naturally the author kept me on my toes. And this was okay for a while. Like I said, it definitely kept me intrigued while I struggled through the endless insults and cat fights and ugly outfits. When I say struggled, I mean I sort of enjoyed the tense and nerve-wracking scenes at the beginning but then got over them for several reasons. First, the number of incidents just became too much. It really started to feel unrealistic. Second, I couldn't understand how Cara could have an honestly touching and realistic heart-to-heart with her ex, only to be in a screaming match with him the next morning. If they settled things so well--he said sorry, she said sorry kind of thing--why is he back to insulting her and her date like that never happened? Finally, they bothered me because I felt they were starting to take up "screen time" between Cara and Boone.

**Sorry, some spoilers**

That brings me to my last big issue with this book. I could feel the sexual tension. It, again, kept my on the edge of my seat like all the other things going on. I waited. And waited. And waited some more. BUT NOTHING REALLY HAPPENED! I hated that I became this fiend who NEEDED to read some action, but it wasn't fair that the authored made these characters so sexually charged and kept alluding to sexual incidents but never really followed through with a big moment. Even a fade-to-black kind of scene would have satisfied my thirst. But, unfortunately, I know exactly why the author didn't have a sweaty and gasping moment between Cara and Boone. This book really wasn't about that. The history we're shown implies that they've already had plenty of those moments. This week between them was about healing and forgiving. Sadly, sex does complicate things and I give them credit and the author for not going that far. Of course that still does not make me any happier about the fact that it didn't happen.

Overall, this book did give a satisfyingly happy ending. Would I have liked an epilogue? Umm, YES! But it wasn't really needed. Cara and Boone knew where they were headed and weren't going to make the same mistakes they did before. I got that. Do I think the ending was almost a little too perfect after everything? Yes, again. But I liked it all and that goes along with my general feel of this book: I did like it. Like I said before, I wanted to like it so much more, but that's obviously just my opinion. The author still did great work and I look forward to her next book.
4971806
I wanted to like it, and it showed potential.. but once I got past the first book I bogged down in the second. I just kept waiting for something to happen, for the plot to stop thickening and start being edible, but that never happened. I actually stopped reading and deleted the book from my Kindle, something I rarely do. I also rarely leave two star reviews, but sadly this book just couldn't hold it together.
4105316
Really had to force my way through this book. I love the idea behind the story and really wanted to like it. Unfortunately wanting to like it didn't work like it was supposed to.
4683978
I so wanted to like this book! It sat on my shelf for a few months,and i  was convinced it would be a treat.... sadly, it had me gritting my teeth by  the end of the first chapter.
  Somewhere, buried beneath the accents  which dominated every page, was a good book trying to get out.  It could  have been so much more than it was, but when faced with shallow stock  fantasy characters who all spoke in an indecipherable mock-scottish burr,  it didn't stand a chance.
The main emotion Isabeau provoked was to make  me want to throttle her for being so stupid; and if one more person said  "Och, aye ken she be a bonny lass," I really felt i would have  screamed.  It was all so trite.
Don't get me wrong, it wasn't dreadful.  But there was so much potential there which just was wasted. The unsubtle  hint that the concept had its roots in scifi was unnecessary; the fantasy  concept didn't need justifying, and it just added to the general  clutter.
I wouldn't mind reading the sequels - but i'm not about to rush  out and spend more money on them.  But other people obviously love this  stuff, so maybe i'm just fussy..!
2510749
I feel the synopsis of what the book is about makes it sound a lot better than what it is.  I wanted to like this book, I really did. I had high hopes for it.  Unfortunately, it didn't do much for me.  I was expecting more of a ghost story. Instead I got more of a sci-fi story, and one that wasn't very good.

Jacob's grandfather tells him of a magical island of which he spent his childhood. He shows him photos and tells him stories about the peculiar children he grew up with. As Jacob becomes a teenager, he stops believing in his grandfather's ridiculous stories until something awful happens. Jacob travels to the mysterious island to find out about his grandfather.  Little does he know that by going to that island he's put himself and many others in danger.

First off, I thought the word building/setting were fantastic.  The author made me feel as if I was on the island. I'll give him props there.  The description of the world was beautifully described.

I couldn't relate very much to the characters. I can't really place why that is.  I just couldn't connect.  I found myself not caring what happened to any of them.  Perhaps the author should've spent a bit more time character building to make me relate to at least one the characters.  The characters just felt a bit one dimensional.  There wasn't even one that I could remotely say that I favourited. Okay, that's a lie. I liked Fiona, the Irish girl, but I only liked her because she was Irish, and I love all things Irish. That's it.

I found the pacing to be a bit slow. I'd read a chapter, then I'd get bored with it and go off to do something else. I really struggled with this book.  There are a couple of chapters that the pacing is great in, but it's not until the last two chapters that the pacing definitely picks up.

The dialogue was easy to understand although some Americans may not get all the slang British terms.  There was one scene where a character says "I was taking a piss" where he meant that he was joking around. The phrase he meant was "taking the piss" which is a British slang phrase for joking.  "Taking a piss" isn't a typo either as it's mentioned a few more times.  This annoyed me because taking a piss, is just that, it means urinating. "Taking the piss" means to be joking around.  Other than that, the dialogue was good.

The best part of the book was the photographs found within the book. I loved that little touch! I found myself studying the photos and enjoying them a million times better than the actual book.

The cover is also something I loved about the book.  How freaky does that little girl look??? The German cover looks even better.  It's the same photo, just with a green hue.  If I was marking the book based on the cover alone, it'd get 5 out of 5 for me.

The title of the book doesn't really leave anything to make you wonder what the books about. It says exactly what the book is about - a home for peculiar children.

All in all, this book left me feeling empty. I didn't really feel much of anything reading it until I got to the last two chapters where it got exciting.  However, I will not put myself through the torture of reading the second book in the series especially as I don't care about the characters or what happens to them.  I'm just glad I won this book in a competition and didn't buy it.

I was going to give this book a 2 - 2.5 star rating but the ending saved it a bit.

My overall score of this book would be 3 stars out of 5 at the best. It's okay, but not great.

(This review can be found on my blog).
3692406
I'd love to give this more stars, as the premise sounded like it had great potential, but two things ruined it for me.

The first was the main character, Charlotte, (Charlie). She was petulant and annoying. If it weren't for the secondary characters, I may not have bothered to finish this. The final part of the book had her acting in such a way that was so far-fetched, that I almost wanted to skip over the parts that she "starred" in.

The second was that my edition really needed to have another edit run-through. When the incorrect word or punctuation is way off, it really pulls me out of the story.

The winning parts of this were a few of the secondary characters, such as Roxy, (Charlie's grandmother), Rhiannon and Roland, (2 of the oldest vampires in existence). They were well-drawn out and interesting.
4035428
I really wanted to like this story. The concept is just so good- a fresh take on the zombie genre where zombies retain their intelligence and human characteristics, but they must have meat to live, so it makes survival difficult. Plus there is a group hunting the zombies, making their lives more difficult. The idea of having the story told from the perspective of one of the human zombies is just fantastic.

So why have I awarded only 3 stars?  Well, it's because I could only get about halfway through this book before giving up. There are lots of typos, which I did my best to overlook, but for me the real deal breaker was the improbability of several of the plot points. I will present a few example so,

********SPOILERS BELOW***************

When the characters go on the run from those hunting them, they are told to befriend a coroner or someone who has access to dead bodies. Really, they had already scored by having one of their group members be friends with a coroner, but sure enough after they split up they arrive in a town looking to eat, then find a place to buy meat by using the phonebook and to their delight the butcher they find happens to be brothers with a coroner who can get bodies for them. Its all just a bit too convenient for me.

Soon after that, some group members are reunited after being apart for a few days. One of them describes getting away from the hunters, a group dedicated to hunting these zombies, by running out the front door, across the road and hiding in a neighbors tool shed until dark. Really? The hunters didn't see her cross the road, and they never though to check in any tool shed for the fugitive they were searching for?

And how did she manage to find the other group members? She went to a cell phone store and "paid an employee to tell me your location based off of Susan's phone." Too convenient for me, to the point of it almost being insulting to the reader, trying to pass off such improbabilities as totally normal occurrences.

***********End of Spoilers**************

For me the plot was a 4 or 5 star plot, but was marred by typos, amateurish writing and highly improbable plot points. I will give the book 3 stars because I suspect others may be able to see past these flaws and enjoy the story for what it is. I personally made it to 54% and gave up (and I usually see books through to the end) due to annoyance, so I feel that 3 stars is actually pretty generous.
461308
I feel horrible for saying this, but I really wish I hadn't spent money on this.  I read the little preview and it seemed like it was going to be a good story.  Though at the beginning the heroine, hero, and heroine's friend were entertaining, by the middle I wanted to slap some sense into them.  I only kept reading in hopes that it would turn into a different story.  The girls were immature girls, if you're looking for a story about a young woman falling in love and gaining emotional maturity, you'll be sadly disappointed.  ***Spoiler alert***And would a decent girl sleep with her sister's "fiance," even if the sister is a b****?  Once would have been pushing it already--it can easily be seen as a mistake. But the heroine allowed the guy to push her too many times that I couldn't stand her lack of family loyalty and and self worth for herself. ***Spoiler alert***
1715613
This book guys, this book. I really wanted to like it but honestly I just don't. There were some very excellent things and some unique and good ideas but it just didn't work out in the end. So for this review I'm going to list the good and the bad.

The good: This book had a unique idea to tell the story of an author and at the same time let readers see the book she wrote. I've never seen this done before.
The bad: By combining these two stories there is a huge genre difference (contemporary verses paranormal), the book is HUGE but neither story really had enough room to be fleshed out, the ties between the two stories are not strong enough to justify the combination. I would have preferred two separate books with more attention paid to each.

The good: The story focused on a YA writer for a YA audience.
The bad: Both stories are really more new adult then young adult. Darcy (the contemporary story) is out of high school and finding her place in the world which SCREAMS new adult. Lizzie (the paranormal story) is in high school for part of the story, but as she is graduating and trying to figure out what to do with her life after everything that has happened it makes the story passable for new adult.

The good: There is a hint of romance that could appeal to readers.
The bad: The romance fell rather flat. Darcy's romantic story was full of drama, insecurity, lack of trust, and frankly wasn't something I wanted to read. Lizzie's romance was something I would have liked to see develop instead of the fast roller coaster it took (I think this has a lot to do with the shortness of that story, with more attention this might have been done nicely).

The good: There were some amazingly awesome characters like Darcy's sister who was real, fun, and someone I'd like to know. She didn't feel forced, added in for the sake of creating diversity or comic relief.
The bad: The main characters of Darcy and Lizzie fell flat. I personally can't stand Darcy, everything is given to her and she still is insecure and irresponsible. Lizzie was better but she just didn't stick with me like some of the other minor characters.

The good: Darcy's story had many hidden gems about publishing that were fascinating if you know the publishing world. I enjoyed reading about BEA from an author's perspective and reading things about "Publisher's Brunch" and the like.
The bad: Darcy's story was terribly unrealistic which really surprised me. Darcy writes a book during National Novel Writing Month (which seems to be the first novel she ever wrote) and then lands an agent and a HUGE publishing deal all within a few months. I've never met an author who had an experience like this. I know authors who wrote ten stories before their book was picked up by a publisher and so many authors do not get huge advances for their books and even less do when they are debut authors. Having this story, which could have informed readers to the life of an author, instead shows an unrealistic representation of the publishing world, which is a shame. Also for readers who do not know the publishing world they might not enjoy the story of a writer. I'm interested to see the reaction from readers not involved in the publishing world.

So there you have it. A great premise and lots of great gems but overall it just didn't work for me.

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
3480441
Overall, the idea behind the book was good. A Soulmate Imperative that brings people together, an interesting kind of magic, and a underlying plot of intrigue in the corportate world.

The idea is good, but sadly Ms Macela could not follow through.

To be honest, I was only able to get to page 130 after repeated stopping and starting before I had to put the book down for good. I started disliking the characters from the start, and that ruined the story for me, pulling me out of what was happening again and again. One of my biggest problems was with the dialogue. No one says things like "that sounds exceedingly plausible" in normal everyday conversation. I could not find it in myself to believe that this supposedly everyday, average woman with some magical talent had the vocabulary of a university professor. Also, characters would too often launch into a conveniently placed explanation of what was happening that, sometimes by other character's own admission, was not the norm for them. The deviations from personality in an attempt to explain things ruined what little interest I had left in the characters.

Aside from the overly formal, stilted conversation I found it hard to see the chemistry between Bent and Daria. It could easily have been there and my dislike of the story colored by perception of it, but to me all the chemistry I noticed was them both rubbing their chests a lot at the same time, and Daria showing a complete lack of inhibitions and rational thinking when it came to having sex with Bent, when normally she is supposed to be a "logical and rational" woman.

I felt that the plot itself needed work as well. The corporate intrigue would normally have fascinated me, but I felt that it fell flat. The characters weren't responding to the problem in a way to make me think it was serious. I was told by the author it was important and big, but the characters couldn't make me believe it. The set up of the problem failed to engage me, and from there I felt that Ms Macela couldn't recover.

Once the subplot was taken away, the only other issue was the Soulmate Imperative, which meant Daria and Bent climbing into bed together. At the time I threw down the story they had only reached the heavy groping stage, but I found it easy to predict what would happen if I had continued to read. Amazing sex, the issue of Bent not having magical powers, some third party (most likely the corportate intrigue evil person) causing issues, and Daria saving the day through some act of amazing, unexpected power. Or something like that.

All in all, I found it to be a standard romance plot that fell flat. The characters were too one dimensional and I could not believe that they were in any way real people. The dialogue was forced, and sounded like the author had gone through with a thesarus in an attempt to make the characters seem more intelligent. The storyline was predictable, and all in all completely unengaging.

If you really feel the need to read this book, don't waste your money. Borrow from the library, where at least you won't be upset when you realize what a waste of money it was.
365457
I really wanted to like this, I really did ... I finished it but I had to slog through to the end. I'm glad I was able to read this through my Kindle Unlimited subscription.
I love high fantasy and this was just 'highly' disappointing. No character connection, wordy with no real story direction.
Epic fail on many levels.
2436943
I wanted to like this.  Its an interesting premise, the magic system made some sense and there was at least an attempt to balance it, and the intrigue built into the tale opened up plot possibilities.

Sadly, the really bad romance, the over the top betrayal and the angst the main characters display turned me off.  It was a great idea, but I can't recommend this book
397082
I had high hopes for this book. I really liked the premise and I am probably 3/4 of the way through the thing. I hoped it would get better. I was waiting for something to happen, to maybe begin to find some redeeming qualities in the heroine, to maybe be surprised by a twist, to have a plot point revealed. Those things just never happened. There were entire chapters with no point. She showed the same character motivations over and over again. The romance/sex scenes were sort of random.  I started to get really annoyed and bored. I read a lot and I cannot remember when I didn't finish a book before this one that is. I didn't finish this one and I have no intention of finishing it ever.
1905299
I wanted to love this story, I read the entire series just sure it was going to get better... It really didn't. The characters where lacking, the action was lacking, the word build was lacking, basically the entire series was lacking. This series had the potential to be really good, but in my opinion fell short in all aspects.