When I first saw this book on NetGalley I thought it was about a girl who finds out her bones are made of stone, who also happens to have eating disorders. I got the digital ARC to read and, to my surprise, the stone girl quotation at the beginning of the book’s description is just one of Sethie’s thoughts. I have mixing feelings about this, in one hand I think it was better that she didn’t have any supernatural powers, in the other hand I wished this book had something more, something that is missing.

Sethie is a teenager struggling with her weight. She’s dating—well, if by dating you consider having sex with—this guy she thinks is awesome, but he’s not quite like that. She attends a school for girls only and hangs out with Shaw, at the beginning of the book she becomes friends with Janey, one of his friends from school. They all hang out at an empty apartment on Sethie’s building to do drugs. We follow her as she becomes more and more addicted to her boyfriend and obsessed with her body. However, we don’t really see her grow up. Sethie is a really naive girl who stays in the same place during the entire narrative, in my opinion. Even when she was supposed to change, I did not see a single reason for her to admit that she was sick and try to do something about it. I didn’t feel anything for her, not even pity, and the book bored me to death in some parts.

I really wanted to like Sethie, but I just couldn’t feel her. Even though Sheinmel talks about her feelings all the time in the narrative, I couldn’t connect to Sethie in any way. Her obsessive behavior towards Shawn, the boyfriend, seemed to be a little too much for me. I don’t understand how Sethie never realizes what’s is really going on, how she never wakes up to reality with all the signs screaming around her. And then you may say “Well, maybe because she was focused on her body?” and I say that’s not really the answer. She spends half of the time saying how awesome it is to be with Shawn, and the other half talking about her body issues.

I believe The Stone Girl was an attempt to raise the attention to eating disorders in the YA world, but it could had been much better written. I never had any eating disorder myself, but I saw more than one reviewer complaining that the author’s research was lacking on the matter, which didn’t really affect me.

Author: Alyssa B. Sheinmel
Country: United States
Language: English
Genre(s): Young Adult, Contemporary
Publisher: Random House Children’s Books
Publication date: August 28, 2012
Pages: 224
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Phoebe Castro is an ordinary american teenager. She’s on her senior year and working hard to get a scholarship at USC, all she has to do is win a cross-country competition and keep her grades up. Things change when her mom decides to remarried a Greek guy and move to Greece. It happens that her mom’s new husband is the headmaster of an exclusive secret school in an island in the Aegean. The school only accepts descendants of the Greek gods as students, but Phoebe is a new exception.

Dealing with the fact that all the other students have superpowers, Phoebe needs to survive until she can get out of there with her one way ticket to USC. Of course, she falls for the wrong guy and has a pain in the neck stepsister who is trying to ruin her life, so things that were already complicated become impossible for her.

I had Oh. My. Gods. on my Kindle for months—I found out about the book after reading a review in a Brazilian book blog—, and only got it to read after I finished The Goddess Test. What can I say, I was in the mood for some more mythology! I had a great time reading this book, it was my first Tera Lynn Childs’, and I really enjoyed her narrative. Phoebe is as dramatic as any teenager could be, but she is also fun and I didn’t feel like “oh-my-god-just-get-over-it” as some teenagers main characters can make you feel. I’m definitely looking forward to reading more books written by Tera!

You can read the first chapter here, at Tera Lynn Childs official website.

Author: Tera Lynn Childs
Country: United States
Language: English
Genre(s): Young Adult, Fantasy
Publisher: Speak
Publication date: May 1, 2008
Pages: 264
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My favorite quotes on this book are bellow.

It’s named Dolphin something-or-other, but it feels more like riding a really angry bull. One that can’t wait to shake every last human off its back.

The next thing I know, Damian is kneeling over me and Mom is frantically waving her purse over my face. I think she’s trying to fan me back to my senses, but all I can think is it would really hurt if she drops it on my nose. Her purse is like Mary Poppins’s bag—it holds way more than should be possible.

I have learned—after many years of theoretical nonsense talk—to ignore the psychobabble. Trying to follow along only ends in headache.

“If you need anything at all,” Damian says, “please let me know and we will make arrangements. There is very little we cannot get here on Serfopoula.”
Yeah, except TV.

To snooze or not to snooze?

Closing my eyes, I wonder what she’ll forget to tell me next? First, the whole immortal thing. Now, the once-a-week grocery shopping thing. Maybe next I’ll find out Alexander the Great is coming back to life and bringing his army to dinner.

I am living proof that crushes are blind, deaf and dumb.

“A fairy tale,” he says, “is a story we wish were true.”

“I can’t understand why anyone would run on purpose, anyway. Are you masochistic?”
“Nonrunners don’t get it, I guess.” I close my eyes and picture myself running. A sense of calm sweeps over me. “There’s freedom in running. Escape. Power.”
“Insanity,” Troy adds.

Everyone has to find their version of therapy. Running is mine.

“I’m sorry, all right.” He reaches so abruptly for his right foot I’m surprised he doesn’t tear a tendon. “How many times do I have to say it?”
“About a million more times would be a good start.”

Because I want to be with you so badly I don’t care if you’re screaming at me the whole time as long as I’m with you.

After a long wait, I finally put my hands on a copy of Insurgent and I just couldn’t waste any minute after that, so I started reading it right away. 4h30 later and I found myself in shock. Insurgent picks up where we were left in Divergent, with Tris, Four, Marcus, Peter and Caleb running away. They get to the Amity compound, where they can finally rest and get medical help. This is just the beginning of a story pack with action and twists. I held my breath a lot of times while reading and didn’t even realize I was doing it! I loved the fact that we see a little bit of the Amity and the factionless, and I really enjoyed seeing Tris and Four’s relationship growing. We get to see better some characters from the first book and we find out more about how the society became divided by factions. It is longer than the first one, but it didn’t feel like it to me, the narrative gets to you and you can’t stop reading it.

I’m not sure I can talk about this one without giving away important information. It is an awesome book, even though Veronica is aware that there are some errors in the story. It’s highly addicting and you are going to suffer at the end of it—yes, I have to be honest with you, there’s a cliffhanger that’s going to make you wish it was 2013 already. I finished reading it and I was so in shock that it took me more than a week to sit down and write this review, I had to process the book, just like it happened with Divergent.

Author: Veronica Roth
Country: United States
Language: English
Genre(s): Young Adult, Dystopian Future, Thriller
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: May 1, 2012
Pages: 544
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My favorite quotes on this book are bellow.

“How lucky,” says Caleb. He gives Tobias a wary look.
“Luck has nothing to do with it,” Tobias says. “I only worked there because I wanted to make sure I could get out.”

“They have an equal role in government; they each feel equally responsible. And it makes them care; it makes them kind. I think that’s beautiful.”
“I think it’s unsustainable.”

He wraps his hands around my hips and presses me gently against the door. His lips find mine.
I don’t remember why I came here in the first place.
And I don’t care.

“Died” was just a fact to me then, detached from emotion. But “dead,” mingling with the churning and bubbling noises in this room, strikes a blow like a hammer to my chest, and the monster of grief awakens, clawing at my eyes and throat.

“We’re all right, you know,” he says. “You and me. Okay?”
My chest aches, and I nod.
“Nothing else is right.” His whisper tickles my cheek. “But we are.”

If this continues I will break apart, and maybe that would be better, maybe it would be better to shatter and bear nothing.

I didn’t realize until that moment that Dauntless initiation had taught me an important lesson: how to keep going.

No factions? A world in which no one knows who they are or where they fit? I can’t even fathom it. I imagine only chaos and isolation.

“Be careful though.”
“Aren’t I always?”
“No, I think the word for how you usually is is ‘reckless.’”

“I have a knife in my back pocket,” I say. “Put your hands on me, and I will make you regret it.”

I am tired of being Tris. I have done bad things. I can’t take them back, and they are part of who I am. Most of the time, they seem like the only thing I am.

But I can’t do it. My parents lost their lives out of love for me. Losing mine for no good reason would be a terrible way to repay them for that sacrifice, no matter what I’ve done.

“Yeah. She’s a big scary Divergent, and she’s going to make your head explode with only the power of her brain,” says Lynn, jabbing him between the eyes with her index finger. “Don’t tell me you actually believe all that kid stuff about the Divergent.”

“I think it would be easier to fight in a dress,” says Marlene, tapping her chin. “It would give your legs freer movement. And who really cares if you flash people your underwear, as long as you’re kicking the crap out of them?”

“Here I finally feel… sane again.”
“Which is odd, considering you are acting like a psychopath.”

“Killing you is not the worst thing they can do to you,” I say. “Controlling you is.”

“Well, half of half of our faction.”
“In some circles they call that a quarter, Mar,” Lynn says.

We both have war inside of us. Sometimes it keeps us alive. Sometimes it threatens to destroy us.

I love Tris the Divergent, who makes decisions apart from faction loyalty, who isn’t some faction archetype.

The more reckless I get, the more popular I am with the Dauntless.

Tobias is right—I’m not Dauntless; I’m Divergent. I am whatever I choose to be.

Sometimes I feel like I am collecting the lessons each faction has to teach me, and storing them in my mind like a guidebook for moving through the world. There is always something to learn, always something that is important to understand.

Blood is a strange color. It’s darker than you expect it to be.

Why I chose Dauntless in the first place: not because they are perfect, but because they are alive. Because they are free.

“Aren’t you going to ask me if I’m all right?” I say.
“No, I’m pretty sure you’re not all right.”

You made your decision. These are the repercussions.

I read somewhere, once, that crying defies scientific explanation. Tears are only meant to lubricate the eyes. There is no real reason for tear glands to overproduce tears at the behest of emotion.
I think we cry to release the animal parts of us without losing our humanity. Because inside me is a best that snarls, and growls, and strains toward freedom, toward Tobias, and, above all, toward life. And as hard as I try, I cannot kill it.
So I sob into my hands instead.

“Evil depends on where you’re standing.”
“No matter where I stand, I’ll still think mind controlling an entire city of people is evil.”

I’m going to die tomorrow. It has been a long time since I felt certainty about anything, so this feels like a gift.

“What are you, twelve?”
“And a half,” he says.

They are not characterized by a particular virtue. They claim all colors, all activities, all virtues, and all flaws as their own.
I don’t know what binds them together. The only common ground they have, as far as I know, is failure. Whatever it is, it seems to be enough.

“Relax, Beatrice (…) I’ve driven a car before.”
“I’ve done a lot of things before, but that doesn’t mean I’m any good at them!”

“Insurgent,” he says. “Noun. A person who acts in opposition to the established authority, who is not necessarily regarded as belligerent.”
“Do you need to give everything a name?” says Cara, running her hands over her dull blond hair to tuck the stray pieces back. “We’re just doing something and it happens to be in a group. No need for a new title.”
“I happen to enjoy categorization.”

“Nando?” I say to him. “I thought the Erudite didn’t like nicknames?”
“When a pretty girl calls you by a nickname,” he says, “it is only logical to respond to it.”

People, I have discovered, are layers and layers of secrets. You believe you know them, that you understand them, but their motives are always hidden from you, buried in their own hearts. You will never know them, but sometimes you decide to trust them.

• A Wolf’s Heart, Vivi Anna
• Bitterblue, Kristin Cashore
• Black Dawn, Rachel Caine
• Blade of Moonlight, Kimberly Dean
• Body and Soul, Stacey Kade
• Bound to Me, Jocelynn Drake
• Breaking Bad, Jodi Redford
• Captivated, Lauren Dane
• Danger That Is Damion, Lisa Renee Jones
• Dark Matters, Vicki Pettersson
• Dark Vengeance Vol. 2: Winter & Spring, Jeff Mariotte
• Deadlocked, Charlaine Harris
• Demon’s Bride, Zoe Archer
• Destined, Aprillyne Pike
• Embrace of the Damned, Anya Bast
• Evil Dark, Justin Gustainis
• Forbidden Passion, Crystal Jordan & Loribelle Hunt
• Heart of Brass, Kate Cross
• Hunted, Rebecca Zenetti
• In the Company of Witches, Joey W. Hill
• Insurgent, Veronica Roth
• Into the Rift, Cynthia Garner (enovella)
• Kiss of the Goblin Prince, Shona Husk
• Lady Maggie’s Secret Scandal, Grace Burrowes
• Mayan Craving, A.S. Fenichel
• Piercing the Veil, R.G. Alexandra
• Queen of the Dead, Stacey Kade
• Shadow’s Embrace, Tielle St. Clare
• Shine, Jeri Smith-Ready
• Silence, Michelle Sagara
• Slated, Teri Terry
• Souless, Robin Leigh Miller
• Sparks Fly, Katie MacAlister
• Super Lovin’, Vivi Andrews
• Sweet Evil, Wendy Higgins
• The Last Princess, Galazy Craze
• The Peculiars, Maureen Doyle McQuerry
• The Serpent’s Shadow, Rick Riordan
• The Shifter, Jean Johnson
• The Vicious Deep, Zoraida Cordova
• The Witch Thief, Lori Devoti
• Under Suspicion, Hannah Jayne
• Waiting, Carol Lynch Williams
• Wanted, Heidi Ayarbe
• Warrior Enchanted, Addison Fox
• Water Mark, Kathleen Scott
• When You Were Mine, Rebecca Serle
• Where There’s Smoke, Karen Kelley
• Wrecked, Anna Davies

News:

• Marie Lu revealed this week the cover for the second book in the Legend series, Prodigy , and posted and excerpt of its first chapter. You can read it clicking here.
• Last week we saw the beautiful cover for The Evolution of Mara Dyer , and this week we have a new surprise from Michelle Hodkins! You can download and read an exclusive GoodReads excerpt clicking here.

Book trailers:

Bitterblue, Kristin Cashore

Sweet Evil, Wendy Higgins

Until I Die, Amy Plum

Destined, Aprillyne Pike

Arise, Tara Hudson

Covers:

• Asunder, by Jodi Meadows, second book in the Newsoul series, will be released on 2013 and had its cover revealed today.
• Sequel to Legend, Prodigy , by Marie Lu, will be released on January 2013.
• The Goddess Legacy , by Aimee Carter, a collection for The Goddess Test series, will hit the shelves on July 31st, this year.
• On October 2nd, The Torn Wing, by Kiki Hamilton, second book of The Faerie Ring series, will be released.