Frostbite by Richelle Mead

Product details;

Publisher: Razorbill.

Paperback, 336 pages.

Publication date: April 10th 2008.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Ages: 13+

Source: Bought it myself.

Summary of the book:

It’s winter break at St. Vladimir’s, but Rose is feeling anything but festive. A massive Strigoi attack has put the school on high alert, and now the Academy’s crawling with Guardians—including Rose’s hard-hitting mother, Janine Hathaway. And if hand-to-hand combat with her mom wasn’t bad enough, Rose’s tutor Dimitri has his eye on someone else, her friend Mason’s got a huge crush on her, and Rose keeps getting stuck in Lissa’s head while she’s making out with her boyfriend, Christian! The Strigoi are closing in, and the Academy’s not taking any risks... This year, St. Vlad’s annual holiday ski trip is mandatory. 

But the glittering winter landscape and the posh Idaho resort only create the illusion of safety. When three friends run away in an offensive move against the deadly Strigoi, Rose must join forces with Christian to rescue them. But heroism rarely comes without a price...

My review:

So I really hesitant to start this series to begin with, and I know this is the second book before anyone starts saying anything, I read the first one in this series quite a few months ago and I don't really see the point in doing a huge review on it because I cannot remember it 100%. 

So back to the review, to start of with I was pretty excited to start this one after reading the first one, although like I said I didn't want to read the series much because I had watched the trailer for the film and it looked really lame, but my friend persisted and told me I should read it and I'm glad I did. 

So it starts pretty much a day or so after the incident from the last book, so Rose has to go and do the test that she missed while she was on the run with Lissa and when her and Dimitri get to the hut in the forsest something is off with the situation and when he leaves the car to go and investigate of course Rose goes and follows, and it comes to light that the moroi that lived there and the dhampirs are all dead and one of them is a well known guardian who is known as "unbeatable" (not anymore, ha, lame joke) this being the  guardian who was going to test Rose. 

So this leaves Rose pretty shaken up as well as the rest of the moroi because they now realise that the strigoi are getting more daring and are attacking them now. It comes to the schools knowledge that they will be going away for Christmas on a ski trip to a place that is going to keep them protected and safe from the strigoi. Before they leave Roses's mother turns up at the school, it also looks as though she is coming with her at the ski resort. Also Christians aunt has turned up, Tasha who is all kinds of beautiful except for a nasty scar that is on her face that was left by an attack of Christian's parents. Christmas Day comes around and her mother gives her a beautiful present and also a bit of gossip that Tasha had asked Dimitri to leave with her and become her guardian, it also comed to her attention that she wants a baby and that she has her sights on Dimitri to be the father. Which of course makes Rose extremely jealous and she makes a relationship with Mason. 

So they go to the ski resort, Rose meets a mysterious guy who can visit her in her dreams and is attracted to her, then Mia, Mason and Eddie sneak out in search of the strigoi after another attack happened. Once Rose finds out she goes in search of them with Christian and when finding them thmey get kidnapped and are held hostage for a week before they break free and are then attacked, during the attack Mason is killed RIP and Rose kills her first 2 strigoi. Once back at the academy she has her two tattoos to show that she killed them and her and Dimitri meet to do their training where he tells her that he turned Tasha down and they share an intimate kiss, then it ends.

There's a lot more backstory but that's the main gist, so let me just say this, I adored this book and I was so happy that Dimitri turned her down, but I was also heartbroken that Mason died, I really wanted him to live so they could be best friends, and just be the best of friends. Lissa wasn't as much a main character as she was in the last one which was okay with me because I found her character to be whiny and it annoyed me. Blood whore was mentioned in this one a lot from when they were kidnapped and they tempted Rose to be bit, and she sort of craved it. I'm so in love with this series at the moment, and I'm pretty excited to read the next. The story is gripping and a lot of the time is has you wanting to pick it up all the time. There are moments in when it's slow and you're waiting for something exciting to happen but it's worth the read, also can I just say that I am so excited that Adrian is going to be in the next one, especially since he is also a spirit user and I want to see his and Lissa's relationship develop in a none romantic way of course seeing as I ship her with Christian, but you catch my drift. I also can't wait for Rose and Dimitri to start developing more of a relationship, coz as she said at the end of the last one they still have six months, so I hope it grows more. So all in all I would recommend this series for definite. I feel like there was a lot that happened in this book in such a short amount of pages, which is always good so - but I don't want to give too much away, although I think I already have gave away the biggest spoilers, oh well - not a spoiler free blog everyone! So you will have to read the book for yourself.

If I Should Die by Amy Plum

I was so excited to start this book as I've read the other two and couldn't wait to see how she would finish the trilogy off. Funny story (well to me it is) I had actually been searching for the first book in this series; Die for Me for ages, I would look in all the local bookstores where I left and could never find it and I didn't want to order it online until my wonderful boyfriend ended up spotting it on the shelf when we went book shopping. After I'd bought it I read it pretty much straight away, and then found the next one in another bookshop for a £1 so it was a bargain and it was brand new. Low and behold when I went to read the next one I realised it was the third one and was devastated because I was so excited to finish the series, anyway long story short it took me like a year to finish them cos I couldn't find the second book in stores for ages too.

So on to the review, I will give you the main gist of the whole story:

• Die for Me;

So basically it's about a girl called Kate who has to move to Paris with her sister Georgie because their parents died in a car crash so they move in with their grandparents. So Kate is quite a shy girl who likes to escape her misery in books and art and just be alone, until one day she meets Vincent.. First of all she meets a group of mysterious people in a cafe who she later sees saving a girl as she goes to jump off a bridge which leaves Kate with all sorts of questions which when she later confronts them they claim to be apart of the police and it's their job to do them types of things. Kate later starts to date Vincent and one day he leaves her to go off and do something with his friend Jules, Kate being inquisitive decides that she wants to follow them, leading her to the met where Kate witnesses Jules trying to save a guy who goes to commit suicide, they both die and Kate has a lot of questions for Vincent, who decides he doesn't want to go into detail which leads to Kate leaving him, later she has to do a project for school where she sees a picture of Vincent and his friends from the 1960s looking identical to what they do in the present. Later she goes to his house to apologise about Jules where she then finds Vincent's dead body leading Jules to say that he will explain everything. So they're Revanants and she learns everything about them and why they're dead and all that, she then finds out that her sister is dating someone called Lucian who is a bad guy as he is a numa and it all comes to the end when Lucian turns up at the La Masion and attacks the house leading Vincent to take over Kate's body while he is Volant and attacking him to then killing him.

• Until I Die

So it starts where two of the old revenants leave and two more names Violette and Arthur take their place. Kate then finds out that Vincent is known as the champion but she's not sure about it, she starts to do a load of research to come up with a way that will help them be together in the future. In  a meeting with the revenants Arthur singles Kate out and says that she is untrustworthy which results in her having to leave the meeting and a vendetta that Kate feels towards him. She later becomes good friends with Violette and the pair start going to moves together and Violette starts sending her flowers with hidden meanings behind them that only Kate will understand. During this her papys gallery gets broken into by numa who are trying to find information on the champion and the Guerisseur so that they can figure out who the champion is. Kate suspects that Arthur is the bad guy all along and that he is the one who is after Vincent for him being the champion, she explains all this to her sister Georgia and they go on   mission to follow him. A battle breaks out and it turns out it was Violette who was the bad guy all along, saying that she wanted Vincent for herself to take his champion powers and have them for herself, she throws him over a balcony onto a collection of chairs and the numa take his body threatening that they will burn it. Which leaves Kate and the rest of the revenants hopeless that they will kill him. HUGE CLIFFHANGER!

And now the main review;

• If I Should Die

So it starts with Kate crying outside because she feels she has lost Vincent forever, he then starts speaking to her in Volant form and explains that he feels he doesn't have much time left. Vincent goes in search of Bran hoping that he can give her help on what to do and how to save him, he tells her of the spell that could bring Vincent back into his own body. When Violette releases Vincent (by this point she has already burnt his body so he is linked to her) for 3 days they do their best to make the spell work and bring him back, and the first attempt failed the second one works but only just. Vincent comes back and Kate is over the moon thinking she would never see her love again. Once they get ready to leave New York and return back to Paris Jules explains to Vincent that he needs to stay there as he is not ready to leave telling Vincent that he has fallen in love with Kate and that it's too difficult for him. More plot twists happen when Vincent finds out JB has betrayed them when he made a deal with Lucian to help protect his people as well as the numa, when Vincent confronts him he leaves the La Masion and puts Vincent in control and Charlotte as his second. Kate then finds out that Violette has her grandmother and tells her to come to the hotel she is staying at and to bring Vincent she tries to keep it from him but he turns up anyway. When they confront her things get confusing, she goes to kill Vincent again but Kate offers her self up as sacrifice and she stabs her.. 4 days later Kate reawakens and it turns out that she is a revenant and not only that she is a champion. She escapes from Violette and finds out that Vincent still feels the same as he did when she was human and her family just need to adjust to it. Another battle breaks out and long story short, Kate chops Violette's head off and kills her, Jean Baptiste gets killed and his body thrown into a pit of fire and he dies. All in all Vincent and Kate are still together, Georgia and Arthur finally kills and Ambrose finally tells Charlotte how he feels.

So I loved this book, I thought it had the right amount of energy and love and just so much tension and it was beautiful, I was shocked when it turned out that Kate was a revenant but when you think about it properly it's not really a shock it's sort of expected and you can sort of tell by the way she can communicate with Vincent which is also how I sort of knew she would be the champion, as soon as I found out she was revenant I knew she would be the champion. It didn't lack in anything it was a fantastic read and I'm just gutted that the series is over now and I really want to read her novella but I don't have a kindle :( but yeah, there isn't enough good things I can tell you about this book because it is just so good, and I still love Vincent and Kate's relationship they're just adorable. 

Extras;

Revenants: People who died saving someone and keep doing it after death. Each time a revenant dies, they reanimate at the same age that they had died the very first time. Revenants are not human, but immortal.

Dormant: When a revenant's body is hibernating, but their mind is still active. (This is when a revenant looks and feels like they're dead.)

Patrol: When revenants travel in threes.

Volant: When a revenant's mind leaves their minds, they have a sixth-sense where they can sense when something is going to happen that the others can use to save someone.

Numa: Revenants, but in reverse. Their jobs isn't to save lives, but to destroy them. They never die because they keep killing.

Champion: The person who takes over Jean-Baptiste's place when Jean-Baptiste dies. The Champion also possess preternatural powers of endurance, persuasion, strength, and communication. The Champion's power can also be transmitted by force. The guerisseur will identify the Champion.

Guerisseur: A person who have special abilities regarding revenants.

I rate this 5 out of 5 starts.

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness.

Okay so first things first I didn't end up finishing this book like I said I probably wouldn't because it was awful. The plot was all over the place and there was never just a continuous plot throughout the whole book. It lacked in umph and didn't get me excited to read. I'm the type of person who liked to get into bed and chill with a nice book and every time I got into bed I just didn't want to pick it up and read it because I was so bored whilst reading it. Don't get me wrong not all of the book was bad, it had its moments where it got really exciting and I was really getting into it but then it just sorter dwindled and lost where it was going. It was like she had this massive idea laid out on how she wanted the book to be but then just lost it half way through. There were chapters upon chapters where she just rambled on about nothing that was relevant to the story and she would just do chapters that would fill space - it was like she started writing this book and she thought to herself "I can make it as long as I want and as boring as I want and people will want to read it", er no.

I mean I enjoy detailed books as much as the next person but what I don't enjoy is having to read every single characters backgrounds, I understand that it's character building and that's how you get to know a character but just tell me about the important characters and not just the minor ones who don't even really have a role in the book because let's be honest that's just a waste of paper. I was so determined that I would get through it and that I would finish it and that it would be my favourite book that I'd read but it was just so boring. There was nothing that was gripping to me and nothing that kept me on the edge of my seat.

So it's about a girl called Diana who is a historian and is also a witch who doesn't use her powers due to the fact that both her parents where killed whom again were a witch and a wizard and so from then on she refused to use them - one night in the library she takes out the book known as Ashmole 782 which is a manuscript that is supposed to have all the secrets about witches, about how deamons were created and vampires, and she unlocks the spell that is encrypted on this book but she doesn't know how, as soon as people get knowledge on the fact that she has unlocked it they all want the book, and they all want to get their hands on it and find out what it's all about for themselves, enter: Matthew, the strikingly handsome vampire who requires an interest in Diana and who also wants the book for himself. There is Peter Knox who is a not so nice wizard and liked to threaten her and tell her she needs to stay away from him cos he is nothing but bad news and blah blah, all the typical threats. And then the obvious happens, they become... Wait for it... Attracted to each other, oooo. Because that was not obvious in the slightest ey.

The characters were so dull, Diana was just a witch who liked to wow, go to yoga, go for meals and spend a lot of her time drinking wine - pages upon pages were just dedicated to all the different smells of wines and she would describe each and every smell to Matthew who was also a massive wine fan. Seriously didn't see the point in that, it was just your typica I'm a witch he's a vampire but I love him, but I can't have him. So if you have it on your to read pile, I would just throw it away because it's not even worth it.

All in all I rate this 0.5 out of 5.

Also I am currently reading if I should Die the last in the Revanants trilogy, so look out for that review next :)

Update.

So I realise I ended up just abandoning this and whatnot, and that's really because I completely forgot all about it and I couldn't remember my email address that I used and I just spent like an hour trying to remember to the point where I had to get on my old dragon like laptop just to find it because I'd remembered it on the website on my laptop 🙈

But basically I really want to get back into writing blogs about books and reviewing them and stuff but right now I'm going through a dry spell where I'm not in the mood to read as much - like I am currently reading A Discovery of Witches and I don't even want to finish it because I'm seriously not enjoying it and I just want to give up which is not like me. And it's then putting me off wanting to start another book because this one has been so bad.

Anyway stick with me and I'm sure that I will have another book review out soon, I promise! Also let me know what book reviews you want to read and I will try and do them (if I have read the book or if I own it to read)