Time to announce the winner of the Kick Butt Characters Giveaway Hop, hosted by I Am A Reader, Not A Writer, and Good Choice Reading.


The winner of my advanced reader copy of I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga is:

Latisha D.

Congratulations, and thanks to everybody who entered. There were a total of 180 entries.

Published by Flux
Released March 8, 2012
257 pages
Where I got it: E-galley received from publisher via NetGalley
Rating: 3 stars

Thorn is having a little trouble adjusting to her new school in Nevada. As the goth daughter of the town’s woman preacher, people give her strange looks and make a lot of assumptions about her. What none of them know is that Thorn has a psychic ability that helps her find things. When she finds a locket left on the stage after her school’s talent show tryouts, it introduces a mystery to her, perhaps involving murder. Thorn feels compelled to find out what the locket means and who lost it, all while attempting to find her place within school and her family.

I’m not remotely goth, although I am into creepy things and Halloween. We had plenty of goth kids at my high school, and I never really interacted with them. After reading Buried, maybe I should have tried. Thorn and her friends shun all that is mainstream and love to paint themselves with Halloween makeup and wear Hot Topic-type clothing, but Thorn still has trouble because of how everybody else views her. She wants the ability to be herself, and to dress how she wants, but that same style colors the perception of those around her. Good things we have this story, told in first-person perspective, to draw us into Thorn’s life and outlook.

There are a few red herrings thrown into the mystery, but I felt it was pretty obvious from the beginning who is involved; the test was to see how exactly. There were two major subplots that fleshed out the book nicely. The first was the tension with Thorn’s parents, especially her dad. He can’t understand why she chooses to dress the way she does, and says hurtful things because of it. The second subplot was somebody called the Grin Reaper. This mystery person doles out payback to the bullies at school, all while leaving a calling card of a smiley face.

While Buried didn’t blow my mind, I really enjoyed spending time with it. I’d be happy to continue reading the series as it progresses to see what new mysteries Thorn will solve.

Amazon link
Goodreads link

Ashen Winter by Mike Mullin
Release date: October 8, 2012
Published by: Tanglewood Press

I thought Ashfall was one of the strongest YA debuts I read last year. I’m so glad that Mullin is following it up with a sequel! This one is bound to give me volcano nightmares as well.

Blurb (from Goodreads):

It’s been over six months since the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano. Alex and Darla have been staying with Alex’s relatives, trying to cope with the new reality of the primitive world so vividly portrayed in Ashfall, the first book in this series. It’s also been six months of waiting for Alex’s parents to return from Iowa. Alex and Darla decide they can wait no longer and must retrace their journey into Iowa to find and bring back Alex’s parents to the tenuous safety of Illinois. But the landscape they cross is even more perilous than before, with life-and-death battles for food and power between the remaining communities. When the unthinkable happens, Alex must find new reserves of strength and determination to survive.

Published by B&H Publishing Group
Released March 1, 2012
352 pages
Where I got it: E-galley received from publisher via NetGalley
Rating: 3 stars

The sleepy, small Southern town of Amaryllis, Mississippi has been shaken up by a series of murders. Elderly women have been killed, all the same way, and all left in their closets, giving the serial killer the moniker “The Closet Killer.” Recently, though, he’s broken his trend by killing a young woman. Three women in the town believe they know who the killer is, and all three believe it to be a different man. Now Tully, Cherrie Mae, and Deena will need to team up to do what the police can’t do: solve the case of the Closet Killer.

Gone to Ground is a little out of my usual reading wheelhouse, but I was very glad I took a chance on it.  This was a fun, compelling little mystery, complete with a taste of female empowerment and righteous justice. Told from alternating perspectives of the three main women characters, we slowly are given clues, which alone don’t mean anything. Each of the male suspects seems like he could be guilty, and I was kept guessing as to what really happened to the victims.

Gone to Ground is chalk full of Southern charm, small-town gossip, and the threat of danger right under the surface. This is being described by some as Christian fiction, but I didn’t notice much religion in it, other than the tendency of one of the characters to pray about things. I found the writing to not be preachy in any way, which was a great relief to me. I’d gladly read another mystery by Collins!

Amazon link
Goodreads link

Time to announce the winners of the Spring Cleaning Book Giveaway Hop, hosted by I Am A Reader, Not A Writer.

Helping me clear out my shelves are:

A Good and Useful Hurt by Aric Davis — Stephanie P.
Beneath a Meth Moon by Jacqueline Woodson — Brooke D.
The Sounding by Carrie Salo — Helen B.
Ravenwild by Peter J. Plasse — Saba
Those Across the River by Christopher Buehlman — Cheryl S.

Congrats to the five winners, and thanks to everybody who entered!