Weekly Reading at The Scorpio Races with Mara Dyer

Recently Finished Reading

The Scorpio Races, Maggie Shiefvater. It happens at the start of every November: the Scorpio Races. Riders attempt to keep hold of their water horses long enough to make it to the finish line. Some riders live. Others die.

Loved it!!! Stiefvater really brought the characters to life in my mind, writing a book that's both character and plot driven. I loved Puck, the first girl to enter the races alongside these nasty, flesh loving water horses; and Sean, the young, brooding, moody favorite. I felt everything they went through - and was excited with the build-up to the Scorpio Races, and later, with the intensity of the actual race itself. I was trying not to rush through the ending because I wanted to make sure to read every detail, but at the same time, I was on the edge of my seat wondering what would happen. The romance part of the story was not over-done - something I find with most young adult novels. Instead, it was cute, simple and slow developing. Excellent book and highly recommended!

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer, Michelle Hodkin. Mara Dyer doesn't think life can get any stranger than waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there. It can. She believes there must be more to the accident she can't remember that killed her friends and left her mysteriously unharmed. There is. She doesn't believe that after everything she's been through, she can fall in love. She's wrong.

This was a much hyped book that I liked ... but not loved. I thought Mara was a well developed character and the first half of the book was well done. But the "love interest" (Noah) left me with a few issues - I had problems with the believability of what/ who Noah turned out to be ... I don't think it got enough buildup or attention in the book - and his character could have been fleshed out more. He also seemed really obsessed with Mara - not just in love - and I get the explanation, but he just seemed a bit over the top to me. I'm also NOT a fan of "to be continued" type endings for books! Even if a book is meant to be part of a series, it should stand on it's own. It bothers me so much that I will NOT read sequels of books that do this. There are exceptions of course, but The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer is not one ... it just didn't peak my interest enough to see what happens next.

Currently Reading and Next

You Are Free: Stories, Danzy Senna. Each of these eight remarkable stories by Danzy Senna tightrope-walks tantalizingly, sometimes frighteningly, between defined states: life with and without mates and children, the familiar if constraining reference points provided by race, class, and gender. Tensions arise between a biracial couple when their son is admitted to the private school where they'd applied on a lark. A new mother hosts an old friend, still single, and discovers how each of them pities-and envies- the other. A young woman responds to an adoptee in search of her birth mother, knowing it is not she.

77 Shadow Street, Dean Koontz. I'm a big Koontz fan-girl!
The Pendleton stands on the summit of Shadow Hill at the highest point of an old heartland city, a Gilded Age palace built in the late 1800s as a tycoon's dream home. Almost from the beginning, its grandeur has been scarred by episodes of madness, suicide, mass murder, and whispers of things far worse. But since its rechristening in the 1970s as a luxury apartment building, the Pendleton has been at peace. But now inexplicable shadows caper across walls, security cameras relay impossible images, phantom voices mutter in strange tongues, not-quite-human figures lurk in the basement, elevators plunge into unknown depths.

What are you looking forward to reading this week? I'm slowly going through my short stack of books that piled up on me over the holidays.