Mundie Moms

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Hunger Games #3 Release Date Announced!!

This is so EXCITING!!!! We can't wait as The Hunger Games Trilogy continues!!

Book Review- Shadowed Summer


By Saundra Mitchell
Released by Delacorte Books for Young Reads
February 2009
192 pages
Source: Bought
4 out of 5 stars


Synopsis -
Iris is ready for another hot, routine summer in her small Louisiana town, hanging around the Red Stripe grocery with her best friend, Collette, and traipsing through the cemetery telling each other spooky stories and pretending to cast spells. Except this summer, Iris doesn’t have to make up a story. This summer, one falls right in her lap.

Years ago, before Iris was born, a local boy named Elijah Landry disappeared. All that remained of him were whispers and hushed gossip in the church pews. Until this summer. A ghost begins to haunt Iris, and she’s certain it’s the ghost of Elijah. What really happened to him? And why, of all people, has he chosen Iris to come back to?

Saundra has this way of pulling you right into her richly filled landscape of southern forklore and hot southern summer nights. Mix that with a good old Southern ghost story that turns out to be more than that and you'll find yourself in Shadowed Summer. Iris has more than she bargained for when her best friend and her go into a cemetery and pretend to call upon the dead, only this time it really worked.

Elijah Landry's sudden appearance to Iris and his haunting her is more than she anticipated and she tries to find out more about him, she realizes it will be harder than she thought. She'll find out things that some people have kept secret for a reason, as she finds out who Elijah really is and what really happened to him.

Be warned, once you start reading you won't be able to stop until you find out what happened to Elijah and what secrets Iris is about to uncover.

To find out more about the book please go here-

To visit Saundra's site please go here.

2009 Urban Fantasy Cover Art Awards

Be sure to go here and vote for our favorite books!! Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick has been nominated a handful of times, along with Fragile Fraternity by Melissa Marr, and Demon's Lexion by Sarah Rees Brennan. Be sure you go here and vote-
http://www.kwiksurveys.com/online-survey.php?surveyID=LNEHO_8878bb7c

Lauren Kate interview

I can't believe I missed this *thank you to the lovely for making me miss this*, but our awesome affiliate The Crooked Shelf has an AMAZING interview with Lauren Kate!! Yep, she's the author of the book Fallen due out this month.
Here's a teaser of the amazing interview-
How did you get into writing professionally?
I’ve always wanted to be a writer and always found myself in bookish situations. My first job out of college was working as an editor at a publishing house in New York. I was trying my hand at short stories, but I didn’t have enough time to work on a longer novel. Then, much to my entire family’s horror, I quit my good job and moved to California to go to a Masters Program in Fiction (which is a fancy way of saying: here’s two free years to write). By then, I’d met so many great people in publishing--my former boss became my agent. He helped me get Fallen into the right hands, and the rest has been sort of a whirlwind!

Join Caster Girls

Love Beautiful Creatures? Want a fan site to join? Then join our new affiliates Caster Girls-
Caster Girls

Release date: May 2008
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
# of pages: 229
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
Synopsis:
Having recently discarded her dorky image—and the best friend that went with it—Colby Cavendish is looking forward to a long hot season of parties, beach BBQ's, and hopefully, more hook-ups with Levi Bonham, the hottest guy in school. But her world comes crashing down when her parents send her away to spend the summer in Greece with her "crazy" aunt Tally. Stranded on a boring island with no malls, no cell phone reception, and an aunt who talks to her plants, Colby finds herself worrying that her new friends have forgotten all about her. But when she meets Yannis, a cute Greek local, everything changes. She experiences something deeper and more intense than a summer fling, and it forces her to see herself, and the life she left behind, in a whole new way...

One summer changes everything in this poignant young adult novel about best friends, popularity, and an unforgettable summer romance.


This is a cute story about Colby figuring out who she is; we take the journey with her, through diary entries, blog post, emails and text messages. Colby has always been one of the girls that wasn't in the inner circle but wanted to be. After a lucky shot in volleyball, the most popular girl in school befriends her. To accept this friendship Colby has to give up her old life and shun her best friend Natalie.

Colby is in the in crowd, attending parties, has a "boyfriend" and staying out pass curfew - her parents are in the middle of a divorce and decided to send Colby to Greece for the summer, while their divorce gets ugly(wished that was my summer before my sr. year) Colby is extremely upset with her parents. She doesn't understand why they are punishing her for their problems. This was supposed to be the summer of her dreams. They are sending her to stay with an aunt; they have always called Crazy aunt Tally.

Colby arrives in Greece and has to take a boat to the small secluded island of Tinos. It is her worst nightmare- no cell service, no Internet, no TV. Luckily she does find an Internet Cafe; with her laptop and a frappacino in hand she starts a blog called Cruel Summer.

During the three months Colby spends on the island, she learns that what she thought was love, was just a crush, that her new best friend isn't much of a friend, that best friends will fight, but they are able to move past it and that Crazy aunt Tally, isn’t so crazy after all.

A great interview with Cassandra Clare

Has posted a great interview they did with Cassandra Clare.
Here's a sample of what you can read from their site-

There are people I know and others out there that don’t seem to like jace attitude, saying he’s to cocky or arrogant, but some may argue but that’s what makes him so lovable and attractive his dangerous confident side , he’s tough and passionately protective about the people he cares about eg, Clary, I personally cant understand how you cannot love jace, so how do you feel about these opinions, and when you were thinking up jace' character what did you have in mind?

I think that literary characters are like real people — no single one of them is universally beloved by everyone on the planet. We're all different, and we're drawn to, or repelled by, different qualities. I am less interested in whether people love Jace than whether they find him interesting — I've read many a book about characters who I suspected I'd dislike in real life, because I was curious about what they'd do next and what would happen to them. As for Jace being cocky and arrogant — I think not many people get to the end of the series and continue to think that that's true.

What inspired you do create the brother sister tag on jace or clary, or was it just something you thought would stir up some juicy horror and confusion for us readers ?

I'm my first reader — the person I write for. I have to come up with stories that interest and fascinate me, or I have no impetus to continue writing the story. I got the idea for Clary and Jace's relationship from a newspaper article about two people who were about to get married when they realized via blood tests that they were in fact brother and sister, and had been adopted out to different families. It seemed like a good set-up for a dramatic story arc. I was instantly interested in what would happen next. I have to say that a version of the books in which the brother-sister twist didn't exist would have bored me to pieces. I don't think I could have written it.

Be sure to check out their site for the rest of this great interview!!!

The Tenner's and Gifts


If you're not familiar with the 10'ers, they're a wonderful group of YA authors who's book are debuting this month and next year. They're all amazing and they have this really cool site here.

Lindsey Levitt, one of the 10'ers posted about Gifts. Her question is, "What gift, whether given or recieved, has impacted you most as a writer?"

The responses are amazing. It got me thinking about being inspired. Writers have this ability to inspire us. They help us open our minds, make us think, use our imagination, allow us to fall in love in with reading and may even make us want to start writing.

My question is, What or who inspired you to get into reading? Or maybe there's an author or two who helped you fall in love with reading.
For me, I grew up in a home with books and have always loved to read. Once the real world greeted me I didn't feel that I had time to read. It wasn't until almost three years that I fell in love with reading again. I had just had my second baby and one of my friends was talking about some great books she was reading for her book club.

Thinking there's no way I have time to read, but really wanting to get back into reading I decided to go out and get one of the books that we talked about. The author was Shannon Hale. I devoured her books and after her books I moved to Stephenie Meyer's books, as Eclipse had just been released. Through Stephenie I found Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instrument Series. The rest as they say is history.

These authors inspired me, and motivated me to get back into reading and now there's been many other wonderful authors that have kept feeding my love of reading. It's not just the love of reading that authors have given back to us, it's also finding our love of writing and bringing so many friends together from all over the world as fan sites and blogs have been set up to discuss our love of our favorite authors, their books and the worlds they create and welcome us into.

I think authors have given back to us way more than they could have ever dreamed of. I thank all of the authors that have inspired me. I thank all the authors who make themselves available to their fans. You never know who you might bring inspiration to next.

You can find out who some of our favorite authors are in our Mundie Moms Book of The Months and Spot Light book forum here.

Review - This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen


Published: 8 March 2004
Publisher: Puffin
Paperback 345 pages
5 out of 5 stars

Remy doesn't believe in love. And why should she? Her romance novelist mother is working on her fifth marriage, and her father, a '70s hippie singer, left her with only a one-hit wonder song to remember him by. Every time Remy hears "This Lullaby," it feels like "a bruise that never quite healed right." "Wherever you may go / I will let you down / But this lullaby plays on..."

Never without a boyfriend, Remy is a compulsive dater, but before a guy can go all "Ken" on her (as in "ultra boyfriend behavior") she cuts him off, without ever getting close or getting hurt. That's why she's stunned when klutzy, quirky, alterna-band boy Dexter inserts himself into her life and refuses to leave. Remy's been accepted to Stanford, and she plans on having her usual summer fling before tying up the loose ends of her pre-college life and heading for the coast.

Except Dexter's not following Remy's tried-and-true rules of break-up protocol. And for the first time, Remy's questioning whether or not she wants him to.

This is the first Sarah Dessen book I have ever read, even though she has a number of young adult books published. I always approach books like This Lullaby with caution, preferring the fast paced action of Urban Fantasy books. In truth, I wasn’t expecting to like this book much, but in the interests of being fair, I decided to give Sarah a go, maybe she would be the author to change my mind. And she was. This Lullaby is one of the best teen books I’ve ever read, and I’ve read a lot of books.

This Lullaby follows the story of Remy, an eighteen year old girl who has little to no faith in love. She never met her father, who passed away before he had a chance to meet her. Before he died we wrote a now-famous song “This Lullaby” dedicated to the daughter he never met. It doesn’t help much that her mom is a flake, flitting from marriage to marriage and cocooned in her writers bubble. Remy likes control and order and is the same when it comes to relationships. She has to have the upper hand, never letting things go far enough for any attachment to form.

Dexter comes storming into her life in all his glorified messiness. He’s clumsy, awkward and musician; everything Remy hates. But he’s persistent and is determined to worm his way into Remy’s life, whether she wants him too or not. When they get together, her friends are shocked that she would put up with his laid back demeanour, his sloppy lifestyle. Everyone is expecting the break up to come before the end of summer; everyone except Dexter, who has faith in their relationship, but will it work out?

I really loved the characters in this book and Sarah has this magic way with words that make you feel like you know the characters and are sharing this experience with them. I connected so easily with the characters right from the get go. Like Remy, I like order and control, but only in certain aspects of my life; like books and clothes. But also, like Dexter, I’m quite sloppy, am a seriously bad timekeeper and I hate making plans for the future. I’d rather just go with the flow and see where the wind takes me.

The story line was very powerful and I devoured the book in one sitting, I just couldn’t put it down. As a bonus, how cute is that cover, very kooky and fits well with the theme of the book. Not only was it fresh, believable and engrossing, it was also funny. I laughed out loud so many times through the book at the little things Dexter said or did, or when Remy was being anal for no reason. Sarah Dessen is a genius, and this novel far surpassed my expectations. I look forward to reading her other novels, which I for one am so excited to buy. Amazing.

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