Vortex by Julie Cross

Goodreads Blurb

Jackson Meyer has thrown himself into his role as an agent for Tempest, the shadowy division of the CIA that handles all time-travel-related threats. Despite his heartbreak at losing the love of his life, Jackson has proved himself to be an excellent agent. However, after an accidental run in with Holly—the girl he altered history to save—Jackson is once again reminded of what he's lost. And when Eyewall, an opposing division of the CIA, emerges, Jackson and his fellow agents not only find themselves under attack, but Jackson begins to discover that the world around him has changed and someone knows about his erased relationship with Holly, putting both their lives at risk all over again.

Vortex...ummm...well, goodbye my brain. You weren't helpful at all with this book, were you?

Vortex was beyond confusing for me. I totally forgot the happenings of Tempest (which I read around 10 months to a year ago...) so just jumping into this series was definitely surprising since we start exactly where Tempest left off. 

The time traveling rules...wow. My brain is too small to absorb this. I was completely confused and in the dark, reading all this professional sounding things that made absolutely no sense. World A, World B, World C, bouncing of World B, no World C, erasing their relationship, killing off past selves--WHAT?! Oh my God, I have a headache already. But I understood almost nothing in this book and I honestly don't feel as if it was described well for readers to easily understand--unless you're secretly a Tempest agent or you're incredibly, incredibly smart. (But I have to admit, once you understand it a bit, it sounds incredibly legit!)

Not to say that finally seeing the extent of what Jackson can do (or at least, I think extent) was boring! I loved it when he experimented, bringing us to past events that were completely different. I think that they were my favorite parts, but we definitely see the toll it takes in that cliffhanger!

A fun part about this book was the agent training which definitely piqued my interest! Come on, don't you love reading about this stuff? Not to mention that we learn about a few new characters who we officially meet in training! One who, honestly, got on my nerves and just loved to be Jackson at everything. But she definitely stirred things up! 

Even so, Vortex was a highly enjoyable read! There were definitely a ton of twists that made me snap the book shut and scream at the wall (Oh my, that sounds mental, doesn't it.). It was just completely shocking how some of these twists that just completely utterly shocked me. It's been a long time since I've been fully shocked like this! Vortex was action packed on every page and I found myself aching to pick it back up every time I put it down!

Unpredictable and wild, (and, comparing this to the thrilling feelings I remember after reading Tempest--about the only thing I DO remember), Vortex lives up to Tempest and it's hype and it's definitely a thrilling action book that I think both kids and adults (and in between) will enjoy and love! Especially the sci-fi fans that search for these kinds of books!

Pages: 352

Genre: Sci-fi

Series: Tempest #2

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

Release Date: January 15, 2013

Rating: 3.5--->4

Dualed by Elsie Chapman

Goodreads Blurb

You or your Alt? Only one will survive.

The city of Kersh is a safe haven, but the price of safety is high. Everyone has a genetic Alternate—a twin raised by another family—and citizens must prove their worth by eliminating their Alts before their twentieth birthday. Survival means advanced schooling, a good job, marriage—life.

Fifteen-year-old West Grayer has trained as a fighter, preparing for the day when her assignment arrives and she will have one month to hunt down and kill her Alt. But then a tragic misstep shakes West’s confidence. Stricken with grief and guilt, she’s no longer certain that she’s the best version of herself, the version worthy of a future. If she is to have any chance of winning, she must stop running not only from her Alt, but also from love . . . though both have the power to destroy her.

How many of us have been absolutely dying for this? ME! So I threw out all my rules about not getting ARCs about books I was going to buy (because my family has a rule of not buying hardbacks if I have an ARC. It's worked. So far.) and immediately traded for this! 

I started this in Nov. 30, then put it down, not because it was bad (I actually liked it a lot!) but because I got a book I'd really wanted to read, and because the way the story was executed...wasn't so good. And I was a bit disappointed, I guess. Don't get me wrong, the writing wasn't horrible at all! The plot wasn't that bad (besides being a bit rushed--someone gets killed about 1-2 chapters in, and there were so rash decisions), but...there would be characters mentioned that we wouldn't know and we had to figure it out ourselves. If this is one of those books where we peek into someone's life, it would make sense--if they new their own brother and sister they wouldn't think "my sister, Ehm", but as a book to be read, it was hard for me to grasp a hold on this new reality I was being introduced to. 

The worldbuilding was actually a little loose sometimes and I had all these questions about the world that were still left unanswered, and I'm hoping they're answered in DIVIDED, book 2! But I was just...disappointed that a book that seemed to set in such an intriguing world didn't focus on it at all.

And the character...West was just so hardheaded and rash and sometimes she acted like a brat. She made a lot, a lot, of insanely bad decisions that I knew would bite her in the butt later on. Also, even though she was supposedly a great killer and shot, almost every person she killed wasn't a clean death. She had to shoot them twice, or SOMETHING.

But that doesn't mean to say that I absolutely hated and despised it! As if. What I liked was that i didn't really concentrate on the romance at all (which didn't actually have much development...not that I minded much! Our love interest was pretty  awesome and I LOVED him!) and focused more on the plot and West's Alt, which definitely held me spellbound. West was definitely in danger as a striker and an active. Honestly, I'm not sure how she survived! But West is nothing if efficient with her weapons! 

And despite all I said up top (but really. I didn't connect with West. At all. And I feel like her brothers should've been named North and South and her sister East or something. That would've been EPIC.) Dualed improved a lot after the first 100 pages or so. Like, a lot. I knew exactly what was happening, the going ons and all, and I started to really appreciate how different it was from other dystopians. Instead of a budding rebellion, or West seeing the government as wrong or evil, she just does what everyone does--with the exception of being a striker of course! But this fact means that DIVIDED can go almost anywhere, because we have no idea what to expect!

I'm hoping that everything I complained about was fixed in the final hardcover edition, but...well, we'll see! In the meantime, I'd still pick this up! Do what I do--read the first 50 pages and, if you like it, buy it! I've found that not many books spiral downhill and usually get better as  you go on!

(As a side note, I think this is one of the series that can be iffy at book one, but get WAY better at book 2!)

Pages: 304

Genre: Dystopian

Series: Dualed #1

Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers

Release Date: February 26

Rating: 2.5--->3 stars

The Lost Girl by Sangu Madanna

Goodreads Blurb

Eva's life is not her own. She is a creation, an abomination--an echo. She was made by the Weavers as a copy of someone else, expected to replace a girl named Amarra, her "other," if she ever died. Eva spends every day studying that girl from far away, learning what Amarra does, what she eats, what it's like to kiss her boyfriend, Ray. So when Amarra is killed in a car crash, Eva should be ready.
But sixteen years of studying never prepared her for this.
Now she must abandon everything and everyone she's ever known--the guardians who raised her, the boy she's forbidden to love--to move to India and convince the world that Amarra is still alive.
What Eva finds is a grief-stricken family; parents unsure how to handle this echo they thought they wanted; and Ray, who knew every detail, every contour of Amarra. And when Eva is unexpectedly dealt a fatal blow that will change her existence forever, she is forced to choose: Stay and live out her years as a copy or leave and risk it all for the freedom to be an original. To be Eva.

The Lost Girl was, in all intents and purposes, a great read that definitely made an impression. But did I absolutely love it like I did others? No, not quite.But it was an amazing book that I did enjoy and, maybe did love the second half!

The Lost Girl was actually pretty slow for me in the first half and I honestly almost put it down.But I decided to push on and continue it and SO glad I did! After we meet Ray things really get to pick up. Because Ray, out of all people, was the closest one to Amarra, and he would be the first one who would be able to figure out that Eva isn't Amarra. That Eva is an echo. And *SPOILER!* he does. That's when things really picked up and I was almost desperate to find out how it ended. There were so many ways this book could go, and I loved the way it did!

Eva did annoy me for a single moment when she was leaving England and she ran to hug Sean. It was sweet! But I couldn't help a little trickle of irritation sneak in.That one thing could get her killed! WHAT WAS SHE THINKING?! But after that one anger moment, I loved her. She was trying to stay alive, but to survive as well. And despite what everyone said, she was human. Just because she wasn't born like a regular one doesn't mean she wasn't one. She had her flaws--she was stubborn and strong willed and she could be cruel if it meant surviving. But she wanted to live and I think that was the biggest tip off and I wanted to smack a lot of secondary characters for thinking of her like an empty machine or something.

The romance actually surprised me and that is one of possibly the hardest things to do in YA fiction nowadays without a solid love triangle. And no, this was not  a solid love triangle. I was thinking "Oh, she'll end up with Sean." then "No no, she'll end up falling in love with Ray and then he'll find out she's not the real Amarra and break her heart, then he'll fall in love with the real Eva then..." and then "Nah, maybe it IS Sean..." And who she did end up with satisfied me because the other guy was a complete butthole to her. 

The plot was, like I said, slow in the beginning but later picked up at a speed I enjoyed and had me flipping rapidly through the pages. I had no idea what would happen next because Eva was just completely unpredictable! And when we get a closer look at the Weavers, I also realized just how...different they each were. Matthew was actually my favorite character, secondary and otherwise. He was hilarious to read about and, have no doubts, was actually at least the smallest bit human to make us love him. 

I was thinking, though, how many open strands there are for a stand alone book. I have so many questions unanswered but it doesn't seem like we'll be getting a sequel!

The Lost Girl was really a great read that will make you wonder yourself--What really makes us human and what makes us not? The Lost Girl is just the kind of book you need to read if you just need a fun story that really does make you wonder these things. Quick paced and wonderful, it will captivate you!

Pages: 432

Series: Stand alone

Genre: Sci-fi

Publisher: Balzer+Bray

Release Date: August 28, 2012

Rating: 4 stars

Beta by Rachel Cohn (Bit of a Spoiler...Vague Spoilers)

Goodreads Blurb

In a world constructed to absolute perfection, imperfection is difficult to understand—and impossible to hide.
Elysia is a clone, created in a laboratory, born as a sixteen year old girl, an empty vessel with no life experience to draw from. She is a Beta, an experimental model of teenaged clone. She was replicated from another teenage girl, who had to die in order for Elysia to be created.
Elysia's purpose is to serve the inhabitants of Demesne, an island paradise for the wealthiest people on earth. Everything about Demesne is bioengineered for perfection. Even the air there induces a strange, euphoric high that only the island's workers—soulless clones like Elysia—are immune to.
At first, Elysia's new life on this island paradise is idyllic and pampered. But she soon sees that Demesne's human residents, the most privileged people in the world who should want for nothing, yearn. And, she comes to realize that beneath its flawless exterior, there is an undercurrent of discontent amongst Demesne's worker clones. She knows she is soulless and cannot feel and should not care—so why are overpowering sensations clouding Elysia's mind?
If anyone discovers that Elysia isn't the unfeeling clone she must pretend to be, she will suffer a fate too terrible to imagine. When Elysia's one chance at happiness is ripped away from her with breathtaking cruelty, emotions she's always had but never understood are unleashed. As rage, terror, and desire threaten to overwhelm her, Elysia must find the will to survive.

One line review: Beta was an enjoyable read, but I didn't LOVE it as much as I hoped I would. (P.S. sorry if I'm redundant. I've been tired lately for no reason...also. I have a book hangover. Read Pushing the Limits, loved it, so all books seem a bit dim to me right now.)

There was a lot of description in her writing and I'm not quite sure...is that good or bad? I mean, Elysia is a clone so she would think of things in descriptive ways, but it just got on my nerves sometimes. But otherwise Beta was written beautifully! What I liked was that a lot of things were well thought out. Like how one side of the face got the purple fleur-de-lis tattoo to announce that they were clones and the other got a different tattoo, telling what their specific job was. And how the process of creating a clone was where a dead body had to go through the process in 48 hours etc.  It just seemed like the world was real the way there were no small holes in the logic! Wait. Did that make sense?

The thing I didn't really enjoy were the characters. One moment, Elysia seemed like the (supposedly) unemotional clone she should've been then an actual human. Sure, half the book she was supposed feel, but even in the beginning, she just switched back and forth and it just annoyed me. (And near the end when she accepts Alexander...she's been fighting to be her own person..but suddenly she accepts him because he's an excellent solution? And because "she" isn't there so it's Elysia's for the taking? What?) And Tahir...well he was OK, but it wasn't really explained why he acted like himself after he met Elysia...

As for the romance...it just seemed a bit sudden, and it didn't feel like actual feelings were there. More like..they were there so they fell in love. That was kind of my feeling for the entire book since their "romance" came to light. Elysia just seemed extremely desperate to love someone and Tahir was there. (Redundance...) But...eh.

Pages: 304

Series: Beta #1

Genre: Dystopian/Romance

Publisher: Hyperion

Release: October 16

Rating: 3 stars

"My heart suddenly beats faster, as if I am being threatened, when I know I am only being reassured about my duties. "I do not wish," I state. "I serve."