Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier

Goodreads Summary:  A beautiful retelling of the Celtic "Swans" myth, Daughter of the Forest is a mixture of history and fantasy, myth and magic, legend and love... To reclaim the lives of her brothers, Sorcha leaves the only safe place she has ever known and embarks on a journey filled with pain, loss and terror. When she is kidnapped by enemy forces and taken to a foreign land, it seems that there will be no way for Sorcha to break the spell that condemns all that she loves. But magic knows no boundaries, and sorcha will have to choose between the live she has always known and a love that comes only once.


My Take:  This wasn't the book for me. I really tried to get into this book at one point I found myself just doing some skipping around and skimming to see where it was going and decided, this is not worth the effort to read.


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Comanche Moon by Larry McMurtry

Goodreads Summary:  We join Texas Rangers August McCrae and Woodrow F. Call in their middle years, just beginning to deal with the perplexing tensions of adult life - Gus and his great love, Clara Forsythe; Call and Maggie Tilton, the young whore who loves him - when they enlist with a Ranger troop in pursuit of Buffalo Hump, the great Comanche war chief; Kicking Wolf, the celebrated Comanche horse thief; and a deadly Mexican bandit king with a penchant for torture. Assisting the Rangers in their wild chase is the renowned Kickapoo tracker, Famous Shoes. Comanche Moon joins the twenty-year time line between Dead Man's Walk and Lonesome Dove, as we follow beloved heroes Gus and Call and their comrades-in-arms - Deets, Jake Spoon, and Pea Eye Parker - in their bitter struggle to protect an advancing Western frontier against the defiant Comanches, courageously determined to defend their territory and their way of life. At once realistic and yet vividly imagined, Comanche Moon is a giant of a book - written by one of America's most honored and distinguished novelists - and the keystone to a mighty achievement of storytelling, unparalleled for its sweep, its meticulous re-creation of the past, its sheer energy, and its celebration of life: an epic adventure full of heroism, tragedy, cruelty, courage, honor and betrayal, and the culmination of Larry McMurtry's peerless vision of the American West.

My Take:  I couldn't finish this book. Reading all the western banter was way too distracting. I think the personalities of the characters were also not very desirable. So I gave up!

Sorry Kelly, I REALLY tried to get into it and it just wasn't happening. It stayed in my car after I Renewed it from the library 3 times.

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

Summary: When we first meet 14-year-old Susie Salmon, she is already in Heaven. This was before milk carton photos and public service announcements, she tells us; back in 1973, when Susie mysteriously disappeared, people still believed these things didn't happen. In the sweet, untroubled voice of a precocious teenage girl, Susie relates the awful events of her death and her own adjustment to the strange new place she finds herself. It looks a lot like her school playground, with the good kind of swing sets. With love, longing, and a growing understanding, Susie watches her family as they cope with their grief, her father embarks on a search for the killer, her sister undertakes a feat of amazing daring, her little brother builds a fort in her honor and begin the difficult process of healing. In the hands of a brilliant novelist, this story of seemingly unbearable tragedy is transformed into a suspenseful and touching story about family, memory, love, Heaven, and living.


My Take: I was really looking forward to read this book and we were reading it for a bookclub. Well I never finished the book. Too depressing and boring. I heard about the ending and that makes the book even worse. So unless I don't have anything better to read, I will probably not finish the book.

Blue Moon by Alyson Noel

Goodreads Summary: Eager to learn everything she can about her new abilities as an Immortal, Ever turns to her beloved Damen to show her the way. But just as her powers are increasing, Damen’s are waning.  In an attempt to save him, Ever travels to the magical dimension of Summerland, where she learns the secrets of Damen’s tortured past; a past which he has always kept hidden from her. But in her quest to cure Damen, Ever discovers an ancient text that details the workings of time. Now Ever must chose between turning back the past and saving her family from the accident that claimed their lives—or staying in the present and saving Damen, who grows sicker every day.

My Take: I stopped reading this book halfway through. I had high hopes for this series and was very disappointed. I almost gave up on the first book because I felt I was reading about the same mysterious bad boy that is in just about EVERY young-adult paranormal romance book. ***YAWN*** I still decided to give the book a chance so I read on. I ended up thinking the book turned out OK so I decided to give the series a chance to get better.

There is not a single character in the book that I care for. I started liking Damen and was happy that Ever and Damen can finally be together after 400 years. Then Damen starts to get sick and then disappears on the night that they are supposed to be “together”, the night he has been waiting for in 4 centuries.

When he returns he gives her the cold shoulder, as a result she starts stalking him and goes on a journey to find out what is wrong. At this point I am extremely frustrated! So this is where I started skimming through the book to see if the book was going anywhere. I read through some spoiler reviews and now I am really bugged.

***SPOILER***
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In the end she was tricked by another Immortal and they cannot mix DNA or it will kill Damen. OH PLEASE!!!!

I would have to be really bored to give these books another chance.