Review: Magdalena Gottschalk: The Crooked Trail (Magdalena Gottschalk #1) by M. Gail Grant

Title: Magdalena Gottschalk: The Crooked Trail (Magdalena Gottschalk #1)
Author: M. Gail Grant
Format: ebook
Source: NetGalley

From Goodreads: Lily Brooke, where small town charm and a hidden secret converge one fateful late autumn night. The demons of the past are determined to never be locked away again. MALB, the Mystical Alliance of Lily Brooke, consists of six childhood friends that are bound together in loyalty, friendship, and courage. Together, they all face the unleashed enchantments that are haunting the children after their discovery of the forbidden sacrificial cave, crooked trail, and mysterious treehouse. Magdalena has always known she is different from the others, but the cause has always escaped her, until now. Coming to grips with her soul purpose, she must gather courage she never knew she possessed to save her friends and family from the evil forces hiding amongst them. 

Magdalena Gottschalk: The Crooked Trail, is a middle grades to young adult epic fantasy fiction novel, that explores faith, unity, differences, belief in a higher power, magic, and teamwork. It will leave you sitting on the edge of your seat, begging to turn the page, while written for audiences of all ages. With a touch of southern charm and tradition, this novel takes you on a journey not for the faint of heart. Witches, wizards, demons, black magic, and soul searching all have their place in the quaint little town of Lily Brooke. 

My Opinion: Magdalena and her friends Gabriel and Hubert decide to spend a beautiful day exploring the woods behind Hubert's farm. Magdalena just celebrated her 13th birthday and her wish to have something exciting happen to her has come true, but not in the way she had hoped! When people say to "be careful what you wish for," this is exactly what they had in mind!

I loved the description of this book and was looking forward to reading it, but there were a few glaring problems that really took away from my ability to fully engage with the characters and the story. The description of the book says that it is for middle grades to young adult, but I really think it is geared more toward the younger set. The characters are 13, so I would say this is the age of the readers that would enjoy it, as young adults would really notice the problems and be bogged down by them, as I was. The way the kids speak was weirdly formal, especially for 13 year olds. For example, they didn't use contractions when speaking to each other, and they explained things that the others should already know, almost like they were adults speaking to children instead of young teenagers speaking to friends they've known their whole lives. And at one point, when Magdalena is talking with 5 of her good friends (the members of MALB, the Mystical Alliance of Lily Brooke), she says: "This morning, he made eye contact with my mother, Leona, and had his assistant take his place at the door to greet the morning attendees. My mother turned to my father, Paulos, and excused herself stating she needed to go to the ladies' restroom." Again, these kids have known each other all of their lives, so you would assume they know who her mother and father are, which was why it was odd that she threw her parents' names in there, like they had no idea who she was talking about! I've just never heard kids do that, especially 13 year olds who seem to abbreviate everything these days. Then there was the wrong usage of who/whoever and whom/whomever, which is a pet peeve of mine. I stumbled every time the words were used wrong: e.g. "Whom wrote such a ridiculous story?" This happened over and over again. Also, the writing seems forced sometimes, which breaks the reader's concentration and the flow of the story itself. Other times, something just doesn't make sense, so you have to stop and figure out what didn't work in the sentence, and that takes you out of the story as well: "The group all tried to bend, move or sway the perfectly spaced boulders, but nothing gave." How the heck do you bend or sway a boulder? It just doesn't make sense. 

Another big problem for me was that there would be pages of descriptions of what was happening in a scene, as well as dialogue, and then when someone new came along, instead of just saying that the character repeated what they had heard, done or said, they actually repeated the whole darn thing! There was way too much retelling and re-explaining, and I feel like that bogged the story down a lot. But other times, not enough was explained. When something big happens to Magdalena in the second half of the book, and I mean big as in life changing, rock my world kind of big, she has a moment of indecision, then says she has come to terms with it, and then just seems to know instinctively what to do and how to do it (it's hard to describe it without giving it away lol), even though it's something that adults would have to take time themselves to figure out! There just wasn't enough explanation of how one got from point A to point B sometimes.

Now, the things that I liked about the book: the story itself was a good one. There was a sense of intrigue and mystery that drew you in and made you want to continue to read. The characters were described very well so it was easy to find yourself invested in them. The world building was great, so much so that you felt you were walking around Lily Brooke alongside the characters. The characters were likable so you found yourself honestly pulling for them to solve the mystery and save the town. The title comes from the choice you have in life of choosing the straight path, staying on the straight and narrow, or choosing the crooked trail, which can lead you to trouble. I really loved that symbolism.

In summary, I liked the actual story here, and the characters, but felt the book was bogged down with unnecessary repetition, stilted conversations, and story flow problems, which could all be fixed if the book were to be re-edited. 

I'm giving this book 3 stars out of 5 :)

Review: Hollywood High (Hollywood High #1), by Ni-Ni Simone and Amir Abrams

Title: Hollywood High (Hollywood High #1)
Authors: Ni-Ni Simone, Amir Abrams
Format: ebook
Source: NetGalley

From Goodreads: "They’re the daughters of celebrities—the kind all the teen mags gossip about! But the It Girls of Hollywood High are about to discover that fame has a price. And no friendship—or romance—is safe….
London Phillips will diet as her mother demands. She’ll even date the billionaire her mother has chosen for her. But she won’t give up her secret hottie, Justice Banks. She and Justice plan to elope—right after he becomes a hip-hop superstar. All he has to do is seduce a media mogul’s darling daughter, Rich Montgomery, and a record deal is his! But he better remember London is really his girl…

Rich is so lucky to have a BFF like London. It was London who introduced her to dreamy Justice. Little does she know that her new heartthrob is about to cause a media explosion that will change this spoiled princess’s life forever…

Spencer Ellington hates to see a billionaire go to waste. That’s why she’s hooking up with London’s boyfriend, Anderson Ford. London may not be in love with Anderson, but she believes he’ll do anything for her. Just wait till she finds out the only thing Anderson is doing is Spencer…

Heather Cummings wants in with the It Girls to secure the spotlight for her actress mother.

But when she stumbles upon a secret about the father she never knew, she discovers she has ties to the clique so scandalous it may just bring Hollywood High’s in-crowd to their knees!"

My Opinion: I received a copy of this book free of charge through NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion. 

This story is abhout four rich girls who call themselves the Pampered Princesses and go to a school called Hollywood High, which they rule from their table in the center of the lunch room. Their names are London, Rich, Spencer and Heather, and they are all about letting everybody else know that they are the creme de la creme of the Hollywood scene, and even though they try to put on a united front, the fact that they can't stand each other is pretty obvious to anybody within earshot. They turn on each other constantly and even though we find out that under all of their strutting and bragging they each have a crappy home life with pushy and even abusive parents, I found it very hard to care about them. They aren't very likable and they can be downright cruel when they don't get their way. They proudly admit that other than Heather, who plays a crazy character named Wu-Wu in a sitcom, they are filthy rich and famous for no "gawt-damn" reason at all. They are all about drama, drama, drama, and boys, boys, boys, and if they aren't the center of attention, they will act out and make sure that they are. 

At first glance, all you see are four spoiled little rich girls who expect everything to be handed to them on a diamond studded platter, but as you read on, you find out that all is not as it seems behind the scenes. They all have secrets that they try to  bury so no one will realize that they aren't happy at all with the way their lives are going and they have no one at home who really gives a damn what they do, as long as they don't end up in the headlines, which given the way that they act, is asking quite a lot of them! When they turn on one another, things get down and dirty real fast.

I have to confess that half of the time I had no idea what they were saying (due to some really crazy slang that I've never heard before) but I was always able to get the gist of what was going on. 

I really tried to feel something for these girls when I read about their tragic pasts and their parents, some of whom should never have been allowed to have children in the first place, but the way they talk and act makes them look like stereotypical rich bitches, and even worse than that, they were portrayed as needing a man to make them feel good about themselves, which is not the message I would want my daughter to take away from a book. I thought their behavior might change and that they might experience some personal growth by the end of the book, but I was very disappointed when they only seemed to get worse and worse. 

Don't get me wrong - there were some very funny parts of the book that made me smile while I was reading it, and there were flashes of insight that the characters experienced that I thought would make them clean up their acts a bit, but that didn't happen. They had no self control and when they got mad, especially at each other, the claws came out and it wasn't pretty.

Basically, I really tried to enjoy this book, and did in fact like some parts of it, but overall when I finished the book, I decided that I wasn't going to read the rest of the series since I expect it would be more of the same. It was a quick read and it might appeal to teenagers but I can't really recommend it just because I managed to finish it. As usual, I would tell everyone to decide on their own whether or not to read it as mine is only one opinion out of many. Because there were areas that were funny and there were a few insightful moments in the girls' lives, I am going to give this book 3 stars. 

Review: Broken (Broken #1), by A.E. Rought

Title: Broken (Broken #1)
Author: A.E. Rought
Format: ebook
Source: NetGalley

From Goodreads: "Imagine a modern spin on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein where a young couple’s undying love and the grief of a father pushed beyond sanity could spell the destruction of them all.

A string of suspicious deaths near a small Michigan town ends with a fall that claims the life of Emma Gentry's boyfriend, Daniel. Emma is broken, a hollow shell mechanically moving through her days. She and Daniel had been made for each other, complete only when they were together. Now she restlessly wanders the town in the late Fall gloom, haunting the cemetery and its white-marbled tombs, feeling Daniel everywhere, his spectre in the moonlight and the fog.

When she encounters newcomer Alex Franks, only son of a renowned widowed surgeon, she's intrigued despite herself. He's an enigma, melting into shadows, preferring to keep to himself. But he is as drawn to her as she is to him. He is strangely... familiar. From the way he knows how to open her locker when it sticks, to the nickname she shared only with Daniel, even his hazel eyes with brown flecks are just like Daniel's.

The closer they become, though, the more something inside her screams there's something very wrong with Alex Franks. And when Emma stumbles across a grotesque and terrifying menagerie of mangled but living animals within the walls of the Franks' estate, creatures she surely knows must have died from their injuries, she knows."

My Opinion: Emma Gentry is living in a hazy world of pain since losing her boyfriend Daniel in an accidental fall when she meets the new boy at school, Alex Franks, and feels an undeniable pull and connection that she can't fight, and doesn't understand. Unfortunately, since we already know this is a very loosely based retelling of Frankenstein, it's way too easy to figure out why Alex and Emma are drawn to each other. Let me preface this by saying that I love retellings, which is why I was looking forward to reading Broken, but I wish there had been more surprises and twists than there were. 

I also had a problem with the length of the book, since it seems like it could have been pared down by at least half without losing any of the important parts. The writing was very descriptive, which isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but when it seems like the same descriptions are used over and over and over, it becomes very monotonous and I, for one, found myself skimming the paragraphs while reading because I was losing patience, which rarely happens to me. I didn't want to give up on the book, but I felt like if I had to read one more time about Emma standing in line for coffee, or arguing with her mother, I was going to scream! Descriptive writing isn't a bad thing, but only when the descriptions vary throughout the course of the book. In this case it seemed like the same phrases were used repeatedly and that got tiring very fast. 

I don't want to sound like I didn't like the writing because I did - at first - I just think a lot of it could have been cut out without affecting the story, and maybe even improving the story by making it easier to read.  

The ending didn't come as a surprise (again, this is a retelling so we kind of know where it's heading from the get go) but my problem is that this was basically the only action packed part of the story since the first 85% of the book was about the romance developing between Emma and Alex and Emma's confusion regarding this.

I have to give this book 3 stars because I think it could have done with major editing and slashing of repetitive descriptions, but the basic story was good and I think if it had been shorter I would have flown through it and really enjoyed it.