Tuesday 1 December 2015

Teaser Tuesday: Snow Like Ashes by Sara Raasch

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm.
To play along just do the following:
  • Grab your current read
  • Open to a random page
  • Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
  • BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
  • Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Snow Like Ashes by Sara Raasch.

Snow Like Ashes – Balzer + Bray

Focus on the goal. Don’t get sidetracked. Don’t let fear take hold of you – fear s a seed that, once planted, never stops growing.
— Chapter 3

Holding on to some part of your past even if it means also holding on to the pain of never again having it. That pain is less horrible than the pain of forgetting.
— Chapter 14




In honour of the first serious snowflakes last weekend here is one of the few books where Winter is not the enemy! At least when the other seasons are involved as well, winter usually gets cast in the more unpleasant role. Must have something to do with its sunny and warm disposition. But I digress. First book in a proposed trilogy with a few really nice touches so far. Keeping in mind what I said about the unnecessity to reinvent the wheel when the wheel is a perfectly good invention I have no objection to building new chassis to hold said wheels. I liked a lot of things about this book, for example Meira as a main character with strengths and weaknesses ... I can’t resist stubborn girls who don’t accept their fate at face value. Even if she was a tiny bit thick to grasp something I had been wondering about since about page ten. But she was running for her life and other things, so maybe that’s an excuse. And then there is that thing with another geometrical form which I’m so not a fan of ... I really hope it dissolves itself somehow. Pleasantly preferably, but don’t ask me how.

Does anyone else picture fear like that nasty weed in the garden you can’t get rid of no matter what you try? I know there isn’t just one of those, but I like to think that every garden has its own kind that could symbolise your personal fear. What’s your most effective fear-weedkiller? Let’s hear from you in the comments!

Tuesday 24 November 2015

Teaser Tuesday: Angels Twice Descending by Cassandra Clare and Robin Wassermann

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm.
To play along just do the following:
  • Grab your current read
  • Open to a random page
  • Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
  • BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
  • Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Angels Twice Descending by Cassandra Clare and Robin Wassermann.

Angels Twice Descending –
Margaret K. McElderry Books

Don’t do this because you think you have to. Do it because you want to.
Only if you want to.
— 53%

Not someone you chose—someone the fates assigned you, someone who, under any other circumstances, might never have given you a second look, nor you him. Someone you would die for and kill for without a second thought, because he was family.
— 66%



The very last short story in the Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy series and as the back cover says someone lives and someone dies. In true Cassie fashion it’s not unreasonable (in a way as there were signs and all that jazz) but it’s still a swift kick and double punch in the feels. There were also other aspects about this story that I liked seeing as for example how Magnus’ flat has changed due to a certain addition to the family. And Izzy, fierce, fabulous, lovable Izzy with her tender warrior heart. I’ll dearly miss having the TMI cast as main characters and will hunt for every morsel of information in the books to come. But at the same time I can hardly wait for the new characters to take over the scene and tell their story.
This short story collection was a perfect way to tie up a few loose ends and give a proper good bye to the characters. Now the wait for the new full book begins in earnest. Is it March yet?

While we all want the next book in a series sooner rather than later sometimes things get in the way. What is the longest you’d be willing to wait between books? 18 months? 2 years? Longer? Share your opinion and teasers in the comments.

Tuesday 17 November 2015

Teaser Tuesday: Breakaway by Kat Spears

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm.
To play along just do the following:
  • Grab your current read
  • Open to a random page
  • Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
  • BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
  • Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Breakaway by Kat Spears.

Breakaway – St. Martin’s Griffin

“That’s the problem with you rich kids,” I said, hearing myself turn snide. “You’re never prepared for life when it happens.”
— Chapter 23

“If you kiss me, I promise I won’t hit you,” she said.
“Wow. That was almost … romantic,” I said.
— Chapter 26





There are a great number of things I want to say about this book, but the first thing that comes to my mind and vehemently demands to be said is “unexpected”. I don’t quite know what I was expecting from Kat Spear’s new book and therefore I cannot with all certainty say if the story honestly surprised me ... but it’s fair to say that this was quite different. Sure, there is the troubled male character I already knew she can write well, but his troubles were very different from those of Jesse “Sway” Alderman. For one instance, they are not self-made, at least not all of them. No one can choose the family and circumstances they are born into or whether or not they are the in the centre or on the margins of the family’s attention. But a few things are influenceable, like the choice of friends and how they are treated.
When is anyone ever truly prepared for the moment life happens? Yes, there are measures one can take to cushion the blow, but in the end if one wants to live, it will be necessary to find an acceptable balance between the amount of hurt one is willing to risk and the possibility to experience life. There are some hard truths in this book. There is no guarantee for a fulfilled life, no matter how much it is deserved or struggled towards. Sometimes reality is just furiously unfair. And I also think that is why this book is able to elicit so many different responses, because for example either the reader recognises and accepts that it is a contemporary depiction of one possible truth or they reject the story for its very nature. I have to admit that it took me a while to accept the end as it is very true to the story: where it begins right in the middle of something it also left me as a reader feeling as if I was yanked right out of it again. The edges are very frayed and raw. Life, as depicted, is messy and seldom neatly tied up, not matter where or when the observation begins or ends.
And while I know that it is extremely unlikely that it will all turn out well with rainbows and unicorns for all the characters, I really hope that they will be able to find a way to live their life to the fullest within the mostly limiting parameters they find themselves in. There is always hope and the aspiration to make to most out of the hand one is dealt. Anything less makes characters in stories and people in general uninteresting.

Writing this actually helped me appreciate the book more. It probably won’t make it onto the same shelf as Sway, but I understand the story better. Has there been a book that suddenly clicked for you the longer you thought/wrote about it? Let’s hear about it and your teaser in the comments!