Friday Finds and New Reads

Friday Finds and New Reads

This is where I talk about new books that really stand out to me or sound unique, and what new books I have to read or will be getting soon.

I hope everyone has had a wonderful week. For me, not only was it my birthday on Tuesday, but I also got to go to a book signing for Tahereh Mafi and Veronica Rossi on Wednesday. They are both fabulous authors and sweet, sweet ladies!

Anyways, lets get to it. First up this week we have Skylark by Meagan Spooner:

Summary: Sixteen year-old Lark Ainsley has never seen the sky.

Her world ends at the edge of the vast domed barrier of energy enclosing all that’s left of humanity. For two hundred years the city has sustained this barrier by harvesting its children's innate magical energy when they reach adolescence. When it’s Lark’s turn to be harvested, she finds herself trapped in a nightmarish web of experiments and learns she is something out of legend itself: a Renewable, able to regenerate her own power after it’s been stripped.

Forced to flee the only home she knows to avoid life as a human battery, Lark must fight her way through the terrible wilderness beyond the edge of the world. With the city’s clockwork creations close on her heels and a strange wild boy stalking her in the countryside, she must move quickly if she is to have any hope of survival. She’s heard the stories that somewhere to the west are others like her, hidden in secret – but can she stay alive long enough to find them?

I was first intrigued by the description. It sounds so mysterious and mystical and intense. I'm fascinated by the storyline and can't wait to check it out. And the cover has only served to add to that. You don't really know what's going on there and it makes me want to read it even more so! 

Next we have Winterspell by Claire Legrand:

Summary: To find her abducted father and keep her sister safe from the lecherous politicians of 1899 New York City, 17-year-old Clara Stole must journey to the wintry kingdom of Cane. There, Anise, queen of the faeries, has ousted the royal family in favor of her own totalitarian, anti-human regime. Clara's only companion is 18-year-old Nicholas, Cane's rightful prince, whom she freed from a curse that left him trapped in disfiguring faery magic -- but time is running out, for both Nicholas and Clara's family. A deadly secret threatens to destroy Clara and Nicholas even as it binds them irrevocably together. And the land of Cane is anything but sweet.

Full of seductive faeries, dangerous magic, bloody swordfights, and forbidden romance, WINTERSPELL is a retelling of the classic ballet The Nutcracker, as you've never seen it before.

For a while I was quite insistent that faerie stories just weren't for me, and then somewhere along the way I got pulled into them. I love each author's interpretation of them. Winterspell is no exception, especially since it's a retelling of The Nutcracker. It's a fabulous ballet and I can't wait to read this new version that Claire Legrand has written. 

And now for some new reads: