Off the Bookshelf: TORN, by Amanda Hocking

YA fantasy here, with enough of an intricately built world, I admit to having some trouble getting "into" it by the first book I read NOT being the first book.

Does that make any sense?

I picked up easily enough on the dynamics, the warring factions, the history of the heroine, without feeling like I had to wade through annoying data dumps. Yet there was always this sense of having missed out on inside information that everyone else knew. It interfered with being able to lose myself in the story.

However, that is MY problem, not the fault of the writer.

Wendy discovered in a previous book that she was a Changeling -- a baby born to another family, a Human family (mansklig) is taken , and a Trylle baby is left in his or her place, to be raised by them. Which apparently led to some real problems for Wendy and her unwilling -- drafted, shanghaied? -- mother and brother. Now she is "home," with her real mother, who just happens to be the queen, so Wendy has a lot of catching up to do, to prepare to take her mother's place.

This book just dumps more unpleasant surprises on her. Including politics and political marriage pressure. Ugh. And then there's this guy she thinks she loves, who is being all disgustingly noble and trying to discourage her, and he's just confusing her. Then this guy named Loki shows up who's charming and urges her to run away with him, but he kind of works for the bad guys ... Yeah, who can resist a handsome charming bad boy? I have to wonder if this book was written before or after Tom Hiddleston smirked his way across the big screen... (Yeah, I could look it up but I'm not gonna. Doesn't matter. This Loki belongs to the author, not Marvel.)

I had heard about Amanda Hocking for several years, and finally got hold of one of her books. I wish I had started at the beginning, though. And when I make a serious dent of depletion in my to-be-read pile (think the Leaning Tower, ready to bury me) I definitely have the first Trylle book on my hunt-and-devour list.

Off the Bookshelf: SECRETS IN DEATH, by JD Robb

Admit it, we've all wanted to take someone who has spread gossip about us and, at the very least, give them a face-plant somewhere messy and publicly humiliating. Gossips are the lowest of the low, worse than murderers, in a lot of ways. Shakespeare got it right when one character wailed about the destruction of his reputation. The suffering of a mortal wound either heals or it ends with death, but when your reputation has been shredded, it's hard to make it stop. Especially in the modern age of social media.

Dallas is on the scene -- as in, catching the victim's body as she bleeds out in a fancy bar -- when Larinda Mars, a notorious gossip reporter dies. It's natural that Dallas should take it a little personally that someone got slashed almost under her nose. She knows she saw the murderer, but identifying him or her is going to take some work because Mars had a lot of potential victims in her radar, including Dallas and those closest to her. But Mars' worst attacks weren't even public. She was a blackmailer, and making a very hefty profit from threatening to expose everyone's worst secrets and private pain. So who exactly did Mars push to the breaking point?

Another captivating jaunt into the future of New York homicide investigations, and all the complex personalities and relationships that just keep growing and changing in the In Death series. Can't wait until the next book comes out. I'm #91 in the queue at the library for DARK IN DEATH ... which doesn't come out until next year!

Off the Bookshelf: FAIREST, by Marissa Meyer

FAIREST is a play on, "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all," and gives it a really wrenching twist.

How?
Well, to start with, the "fairest" of them all doesn't look in mirrors. In fact, by the end of the book, all mirrors are outlawed.
The face she shows the world isn't hers -- stolen, in fact.
"Fair" has so many different connotations.

Meyer shows just what a talented writer she is by making us LIKE the evil stepmother/wicked witch/cruel enchantress character, Queen Levana, of the Lunar Chronicles. How? By showing how she became what she was, the reasons for the things she did. Seen through Levana's eyes, feeling her pain, you almost want to root for her. It's hard to hate someone who seems to have the whole world and all the cards stacked against her.

In many ways, yes, she is the best ruler Luna ever had ... but considering the self-centered, egotistical cretins who came before her, that's really not saying much. Maybe the worst kind of criminal is the one who honestly has good intentions. Or at least has convinced herself her intentions are good. But you know what they say about a road paved with good intentions.

If you love the Lunar Chronicles, you don't want to miss this part of the story, no matter how much it makes you squirm.