Monday's Review of Hidden By Author M.Lathan

Blurb:

Sixteen-year-old Leah Grant has given up on being normal. She’d settle for stopping the voices in her head, intrusive visions of the future, and better odds of making it to her seventeenth birthday.

That’s the thing about pretending to be human in a world where magic used to exist – at any moment, her cover could be blown and she’ll be burned to death like the rest of the witches.

Everything changes when she loses control of her powers and flees the orphanage she grew up in. She desperately wants to be invisible but finds her face plastered on every news channel as humans panic over the possible resurgence of her kind. And now the hunters won’t give up until they find her.

Making friends for the first time in her life and falling in love with one of them drives her to discover why she is unlike any being she’s ever met – human or otherwise. The dangerous powers inside of her that would repel Nathan, her new, handsome reason for living, are priceless to some. The locked up forever kind of priceless. And to others, they are too dangerous to allow her to live.

Let’s hope she can stay hidden.

About the Author:

M. Lathan is a young adult fiction author. She lives in San Antonio with her husband and mini-schnauzer. She enjoys writing and has a B.S. in Psych and a Masters in Counseling. Her passion is a blend of her two interests – creating new worlds and stocking them with crazy people. She enjoys reading anything with interesting characters and writing in front of a window while asking rhetorical questions … like her idol Carrie Bradshaw.

           

Review of Hidden

Rating 3 stars

www.reviewoffantasy.com

Leah is a loner, her mind is brainwashed into believing that witches are evil and anyone with supernatural abilities should die. She avoids people in order to keep her magic hidden. Being bullied in the orphanage for humans, she tries to keep her awful thoughts of killing her bullies from becoming a reality. But when she nearly flips Sophia who’s a witch takes her away and brings her to a house full of supernatural. Her social skills are zero, so she struggles to trust and befriend the other youth in the house. The house she finds out is actually hers. Sophia had more than one reasons to take her from the orphanage.

As Leah comes out of herself she soon falls for Nathan and he teaches her all about their kind, and that they aren’t evil and neither is she. He educates her all about hunters, who they must avoid at all costs. But with Leah’s picture on the news channel hiding soon becomes a problem  and with her old world being replaced with a new one, she becomes guarded in other ways, now she’s not hiding her abilities from the humans, she hides them from her friends questioning if she is really a witch after all.

Watching Leah become a stronger and fun person was brilliant, she was definitely depressed in the orphanage and watching her overcome all she believed to be true was great. The love story between her and Nathan was gentle and Kind and I loved reading about the two of them. But when Leah reveals something about herself and Nathan turns his back on her, for me I didn’t care if he gave her the stars, moon and sun, I just couldn’t like him for the remainder of the story. I cringed every time he was near and wanted so badly for Leah to kill him, because that’s what he deserved not forgiveness. For me when Nathan walks away from Leah my heart wasn’t in the story I was too angry, even though so much more about her parents, and what she really is, is revealed, I just couldn’t stomach Nathan for one more moment.

But that is my opinion maybe others will feel differently about this book.

Monday's Review ~ The Breeders By Katie French

Blurb:

Sixteen-year-old Riley Meemick is one of the world's last free girls. When Riley was born, her mother escaped the Breeders, the group of doctors using cruel experiments to bolster the dwindling human race. Her parents do everything possible to keep her from their clutches-- moving from one desolate farm after another to escape the Breeders' long reach. The Breeders control everything- the local war lords, the remaining factories, the fuel. They have unchecked power in this lawless society. And they're hunting Riley.

When the local Sheriff abducts the adult members of her family and hands her mother over to the Breeders, Riley and her eight-year-old brother, Ethan, hiding in a shelter, are left to starve. Then Clay arrives, the handsome gunslinger who seems determined to help to make up for past sins. The problem is Clay thinks Riley is a bender-- a genderless mutation, neither male nor female. As Riley's affection for Clay grows she wonders can she trust Clay with her secret and risk her freedom?

The three embark on a journey across the scarred remains of New Mexico-- escaping the Riders who use human sacrifice to appease their Good Mother, various men scrambling for luck, and a deranged lone survivor of a plague. When Riley is shot and forced into the Breeder's hospital, she learns the horrible fate of her mother—a fate she'll share unless she can find a way out

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Katie French imagined herself an author when her poem caught the eye of her second grade teacher. In middle school she spent her free time locked in her room, writing her first young adult novel. Though her social life suffered, her love for literature thrived. She studied English at Eastern Michigan University, where she veered from writing and earned an education degree. She spent nine years teaching high school English. Currently she is a school counselor, doing a job that is both one of the hardest things she's ever done and the most rewarding. In her free time she writes, reads great books and takes care of her two beautiful and crazy children. She is a contributor and co-creator of Underground Book Reviews, a website dedicated to erasing the boundaries between traditional and non-traditional publishing. She lives in Michigan with her husband and two children. You can find her at www.katiefrenchbooks.com, at www.undergroundbookreviews.com or on Facebook.

                  

Review of the Breeders

Star Rating: 3 stars

www.reviewoffantasy.com

The opening starts in a barren landscape. Dust, poverty and hunger where the three things I felt, yet the house was filled with love.

In a world where girls are taken to be used as breeders no-one is safe so Riley pretends to be a boy, as she is the last free girl hidden in plain sight, under the sheriff’s nose who is evil. Clay the sheriff’s son helps riley out and goes with her after her mother and auntie are taken, but riley and Ethan survive and go in search of her family.

I didn’t care much for clay I found him shallow and childish, he couldn’t seem to make up his mind about Riley or his dad for that matter, I found he managed to get under my skin.

Riley is headstrong and her devotion to her family is unshakable through her journey of trying to save her mum from the breeders she gets into tons of trouble and to make things worse she has her eight year old brother to take care of and Ethan loves to moan.

Overall it was an intriguing read something different.