Time for some mini-reviews! What are mini-reviews, you ask? As the title suggests, these are short reviews, consisting of one paragraph tops, about a book. It’s a way to catch up on the books I’ve read a while ago, but never got around to reviewing.
Redemption (Hearts of Stone #1)
Title: Redemption (Hearts of Stone #1)
Author: Veronique Launier
Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal Romance
Rating: 3,5 stars
Purchase: Amazon
Aude Vanier is a sixteen-year-old rock star with a problem–stone monsters keep attacking her. And when they do, she finds herself chanting in a language she doesn’t understand.
Guillaume de Rouen has been stuck as a gargoyle on a church for the last seventy years, until Aude’s chanting releases him back to his seventeen-year-old human form.
An ancient Iroquois prophecy about the destruction of Montreal is coming true. Together, Aude and Guillaume can stop it. But Aude is the descendant of a centuries-old coven of witches–a coven that Guillaume failed to protect seventy years ago. This time, if they fail, the world will never be the same.
Review: Gargoyles! It’s the first time I’ve read a YA paranormal focusing on gargoyles. The plot was intriguing, the characters were fun too. However, while the novel starts off with a bang, offering all these refreshing elements, it goes downhill fast. By the end, the main characters becomes whiny and needy, and I didn’t like her all that much. A decent novel all the same, but not one of my favorites.
America’s Haunted Universities
Title: America’s Haunted Universities
Author: Matthew L. Sawyne
Genre: Non-Fiction, True Haunting
Rating: 3 stars
Purchase: Amazon
America’s Haunted Universities examines some of the most haunted locales in the country–U.S. university campuses. From haunted libraries to doomed dorms, journalist Matthew L. Swayne has scoured universities across the country to bring readers the most comprehensive look available at ghost encounters at these bastions of higher education. This guide explores the strangest and most enduring stories with first-hand accounts, historical analysis, and a re-telling of classic legends.
Readers will find stories about long-dead college faculty who still appear in a spectral sense on American campuses, coeds who met untimely ends, a haunted elevator, the carnivorous Penguin man, the ghostess with the mostess, and a poltergeist named “Monkey Boy,” as well as many other chilling and bizarre entities and encounters.
Review: The story weren’t detailed enough for me to really enjoy them. The author skips over historical details, and the ghost stories aren’t backed up with interviews, or with the author’s own experiences. The collection seems thrown together, and not all stories are connected.
The Ghosts of Belfast
Title: The Ghosts of Belfast
Author: Stuart Neville
Genre: Mystery, Thriller
Rating: 4,5 stars
Purchase: Amazon
Fegan has been a “hard man,” an IRA killer in northern Ireland. Now that peace has come, he is being haunted day and night by twelve ghosts: a mother and infant, a schoolboy, a butcher, an RUC constable, and seven other of his innocent victims. In order to appease them, he’s going to have to kill the men who gave him orders.
As he’s working his way down the list he encounters a woman who may offer him redemption; she has borne a child to an RUC officer and is an outsider too. Now he has given Fate—and his quarry—a hostage. Is this Fegan’s ultimate mistake?
Stuart Neville is a partner in a multimedia design business based in Armagh, northern Ireland. This novel, also known as The Twelve in the UK and Ireland, is the first in a series.
Review: This was an intriguing debut. Fegan is haunted day andn ight by twelve ghosts, the ghosts of his innocent victims. This is a gritty, haunting novel with great prose, and a main character who gives a whole new dimension to the word ‘intriguing’. I’m looking forward to reading more by this author.
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