In My Mailbox- Week of Dec. 8 Part 3

Yes, finally, it's here!! The remaining seven or eight titles I got last week.


Going Too Far by Jennifer Echols
All Meg has ever wanted is to get away. Away from high school. Away from her backwater town. Away from her parents who seem determined to keep her imprisoned in their dead-end lives. But one crazy evening involving a dare and a forbidden railroad tracks, she goes way too far...and almost doesn’t make it back.

John made a choice to stay. To enforce the rules. To serve and protect. He has nothing but contempt for what he sees as childish rebellion, and he wants to teach Meg a lesson she won’t soon forget. But Meg pushes him to the limit by questioning everything he learned at the police academy. And when he pushes back, demanding to know why she won’t be tied down, they will drive each other to the edge--and over...

My Thoughts: Got this book from Jennifer herself. I absolutely loved her Simon Pulse RoComs and have been looking forward to reading something new by her for a while now. This looks like a fantastic book and I can't wait to get to it.



Poison Ivy by Amy Goldman Koss
"IVY: I told Ms. Gold about how The Evil Three have been after me, feeding off me since fourth grade.MARCO: It isn't a very pretty story, so if you're looking for 'nice, ' you better ask someone else. ANN: We just have to come up wiht some witnesses for our side. Think! Does anyone owe you any favors? BRYCE: I figure, Dude, why not make a little spare change on the side? A buck a bet. All's I has to do was explain that liable was civil for guilty, and they swarmed like flies." Eight first-person narrators give different versions of the same event. Lessons about the inner workings of the judicial system pale beside the insights into human nature. With pathos and a great deal of humor, Amy Goldman Koss keeps you turning pages.

My Thoughts: I haven't read anything by Amy before, but when she contacted me about the paperback of her book coming out recently and wanting to send me a copy, I said sure. So it came in the mail about a month later from her publisher (she told me it would be there in a "jiff") and it does look like a very good book. All I know about Amy though is that she is a LAYA (Los Angeles Young Adult Author- obviously one of those As is left off but don't take that up with me- take it up with Lisa Yee) and is Peepy's sworn enemy since she keeps trying to eat him. Not much to go on, but eventually a review will be up and you can see what my opinion will be of her then.

No Picture Available for this book- there is a cover but I can't find it anywhere online. If you can get to the PDF file featuring Penguin's Summer 2009 titles, the cover is in there and it is EFFIN' AMAZING!!!
Strange Angels by Lili St. Crow
Dru Anderson has been “strange” for as long as she can remember. She travels from town to town with her father, hunting the things that go bump in the night and eat the unwary. It’s a weird life, but a good one–until it all explodes and a zombie busts into her new house.

Alone, terrified, and trapped in an icy town, Dru’s going to need every inch of her wit and training to stay alive. Can she trust the boy who is just a little too adult–and just happens to get bit by a werwulf? Or the strange blue-eyed boy who tells her she’s heir to a long-forgotten power? Can she even trust her own instincts?

Because Dru is not the first in her family to be killed by the darkness of the Real World. The monsters have decided to hunt back–and now Dru has to figure out who to trust, who to fight, and when to run. And not incidentally, she has to figure out how she’s going to get out of this alive.

And she has to do it in the next 24 hours, or it’s all over…

My Thoughts: What immediately caught my eye was the cover, esp. since I saw it twice. Penguin had it as a full page and then a smaller version on the next page where it talked about the book. Then I read the summary and was like "OMG ME WANT NOW!!" And now I finally have it- it looks even more amazing in person. I can't wait to read it.


Just One Wish by Janette Rallison
Seventeen-year-old Annika Truman knows about the power of positive thinking. With a little brother who has cancer, it’s all she ever hears about. And in order to help Jeremy, she will go to the ends of the earth (or at least as far as Hollywood) to help him believe he can survive his upcoming surgery.

But Annika’s plan to convince Jeremy that a magic genie will grant him any wish throws her a curveball when he unexpectedly wishes that his television idol would visit him. Annika suddenly finds herself in the desperate predicament of getting access to a hunky star actor and convincing him to come home with her. Piece of cake, right?

My Thoughts: When I read Rallison's How to Take the Ex Out of Ex-Boyfriend back in 2007, I was like "I need to read more from her." So when I saw that she had two books coming out in early 2009, I requested them and I got both about a month ago. This was another repeat that Jillian sent me.


Beautiful Americans by Lucy Silag
Pretty Little Liars meets My So-Called Life in this story of four American teens in Paris and the scandals that haunt each of them.

There’s rich New York girl Alex; Cali-born dancer Olivia; closeted Memphis boy Zack; and finally PJ, an elusive beauty from Vermont who’s hiding a dark past.

Studying abroad for their junior year of high school, they run wild in the Tuileries, hold clandestine parties in their host families’ luxe apartments, take over tiny crowded cafes and generally live the glamorous life.

But in the end they all must face the lies they’ve told and secrets they’ve kept when the unthinkable happens.

My Thoughts: I am so excited to read this book. I asked Anne for this book a couple months when I read the synopsis of it somewhere- probably on a Waiting On Wednesday post or in one of Kristi's Books to Pine For- and got it (yes, another repeat from Jillian, which is good for you guys cuz repeats= contest!). Anyway, I'd mainly been excited about it because of the closeted boy bit- I'm always excited to read about gay boys, which you'll find out again when I post on Sunday something else I got this week, lol. And then I read a review of it basically condemning the book because it had profanity, sexual situations, homosexuality, and other "bad" things (which aren't really bad since if a book has those things, that means it's mainly for OLDER teens who can handle that kind of stuff or for the younger teens who are mature enough to handle that stuff). This review made me MORE excited to read the book because I LOVE profanity and sexual situations, esp. homosexual ones! YAY! I think it's coming out (haha) next month, so expect a review of it in the coming weeks!

I can't find a singular image for this one either, but you can see the cover here at The Story Siren
Lipstick Apology by Jennifer Jabaley
Emily Carson’s sure she’ll get busted for throwing a party while her parents are on vacation. She has no idea her parents’ plane will crash that night. Or that her mother’s last words will appear on the news in the form of a message scrawled in lipstick on a tray table: “EMILY, PLEASE FORGIVE ME.”

Now it is fall and Emily’s moved to New York City, where her public tragedy gets her noticed by the popular girls at her posh new Tribeca school. In turn, they introduce her to the perfect distraction: hottie Owen. As Emily discovers more about her mother’s infidelity to her father, she embarks on a rollercoaster relationship of her own with Owen. Emily also forms an unlikely friendship with her quirky chemistry partner, Anthony—and so a sort of love triangle begins. It is Anthony who brings Emily donuts fresh from his mom’s bakery. It is Anthony who encourages her to face her grief and uncover her mother’s secret. It is Anthony who will be there when popularity comes crashing down around her. So when her fling with Owen takes a nosedive, will Anthony be the one she runs to in the end?

My Thoughts: I really like the idea for this book and it intrigued me enough to ask for it while I was looking through the Penguin Summer 2009 catalog. Plus, the cover is really pretty. And love triangles are the best, hehe.



The King's Rose by Alisa Libby
Appointed to the queen’s household at the age of fourteen, Catherine Howard is not long at court before she catches the eye of King Henry VIII. The king is as enchanted with Catherine as he is disappointed with his newest wife — the German princess Anne of Cleves. Less than a year from her arrival at court, Catherine becomes the fifth wife of the overwhelmingly powerful, if aging, King of England.

Caught up in a dazzling whirl of elaborate celebrations, rich gowns and royal jewels, young Catherine is dizzied by the absolute power that the king wields over his subjects. But does becoming the king’s wife make her safe above all others, or put her in more danger? Catherine must navigate the conspiracies, the silent enemies, the king’s unpredictable rages, as well as contend with the ghosts of King Henry’s former wives: the abandoned Catherine of Aragon, the tragic Jane Seymour, and her own cousin, the beheaded Anne Boleyn. The more Catherine learns about court, the more she can see the circles of danger constricting around her, the threats ever more dire.

My Thoughts: Like the books from Part 2, I know nothing about this book but hey, it's worth a shot! It does look intriguing and I seem to be enjoying more historical fiction these days (Ransom My Heart, Fever 1793 and Bewitching Season), so we'll see if I like this one too!

I think that's all but since I'm not at my house and I forgot to bring a list of the remaining titles, I may have missed one. If I did, I'll write about it on Sunday when I talk about this week's books.