Wednesday, October 6, 2010

YA books by LDS authors

I'm always interested in YA books by LDS authors. First off, they're usually very clean and I always appreciate finding books like that. Most of these books are piggybacking on Stephenie Meyer's success with Twilight, but I have to admit that that fact doesn't bother me much. If Twilight is going to make publishing companies give books written by LDS people more attention that's fine with me. :D If you liked Twilight these are books I'd recommend.


Paranormalcy just came out (I think last week). I was first in line for it at the library so I got it pretty quickly. Kiersten White has a very vivid and entertaining writing voice. It was such a fun read. This is not a vampire or werewolf book, and in fact rather gleefully makes fun of some of the stereotypical aspects of those overdone characters. Paranormalcy is completely original and I was engrossed by it. It's about a regular human girl named Evie who works for the International Paranormal Containment Agency, keeping paranormals under control (using her special ability to see through their glamours). Of course, everything turns to havoc as a mysterious power is killing all paranormals, and Evie herself discovers that she's not as normal as she once thought. There were lots of surprises in this book, and I really love it when I can't predict a plot. Definitely high marks for Paranormalcy and Kiersten White. I'll be waiting for her next book.





Spells is the sequel to Wings, which I really liked. It's very fun YA lit and there's a lot of mythology, magic, and faeries involved. I think Spells is more mature than Wings, but I still think the series is not as intense or interesting as I'd like it to be. It seems to rely too heavily on its romance to drive the plot, and I always get irritated when love triangles get dragged on too long. This book definitely suffers from that. Just my opinion. I really wanted to see Laurel develop her faerie powers, but that subplot wasn't given much attention. Overall, I was disappointed, but I still plan on reading the final book in the series whenever it comes out.




The Dark Divine has nothing to do with bare legs wrapped in purple tulle! Just saying. From reading author blogs I've learned that a lot of authors are very irritated by the fact that they have no control over what goes on their covers. That's completely up to publishing companies and how they want to advertise your book. It's quite obvious what kind of audience The Dark Divine is being marketed towards. I can guarantee you that this is a very clean book, though. Unfortunately, this is also a werewolf book. I didn't realize that fact until I was too far in to want to put it down. I'm just sick to death of werewolves and vampires. There were some original touches, and I liked the story and setting well enough. The book is about a girl named Grace Divine, whose father is a pastor. I thought bringing in some Christian touches made the book extra interesting. The story is a little dark in places, but nothing that bothered me. I probably enjoyed reading it more than Spells, even if it was a werewolf book.

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