Shopaholic Sundays (Sept. 23rd)

Shopholic Sunday is a feature here at I Write, I Read, I Review where I get to share the fabulous things I've bought, borrowed or received. It's also a place where I sometimes share books coming out that I'm dying to read or tell you about events that have been here or that are coming which I think you might be interested in. Thanks for visiting!

Hey guys! 

Sealer's Promise is almost ready for betas. Finally.

I am 60% through a final read through--basically a pre-beta proof read. Thank goodness I decided to. There are so many little keyboard mix ups that I would not have wanted to have see the light of day! Plus it's giving me a chance to see this all "together" rather then over a long span like when I did revisions or editing.

I also have my new cover!!!! *is extremely excited* I've shown it to a few close friends and the responses have been good. (My aunt made fun of the book title when I e-mailed her, but she does stuff like that about everything.) I'm aiming to do a cover and book trailer reveal in October during my Cover Lover Month event. If you want to be involved in that, please let me know. :)

I'm also still looking for interview guests for Cover Lover Month, so if you want to be a guest here at I Write, I Read, I Review and talk covers, please click here to learn more about how to make that happen.

But enough about me, my upcoming debut and my plans for October (which also include taking part in Zompocolypse and the Spooktacular Paranormal Reading Challenge for the second year). You're here to see what I bought this week, so lets get to it! 

Stacking the Shelves is a meme created by Tynga's Book Reviews where we get to share the fabulous things we bought, borrowed or received during the week.

For Review:

Broken

A.E. Rought

Imagine a modern spin on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein where a young couple’s undying love and the grief of a father pushed beyond sanity could spell the destruction of them all.

A string of suspicious deaths near a small Michigan town ends with a fall that claims the life of Emma Gentry's boyfriend, Daniel. Emma is broken, a hollow shell mechanically moving through her days. She and Daniel had been made for each other, complete only when they were together. Now she restlessly wanders the town in the late Fall gloom, haunting the cemetery and its white-marbled tombs, feeling Daniel everywhere, his spectre in the moonlight and the fog.

When she encounters newcomer Alex Franks, only son of a renowned widowed surgeon, she's intrigued despite herself. He's an enigma, melting into shadows, preferring to keep to himself. But he is as drawn to her as she is to him. He is strangely... familiar. From the way he knows how to open her locker when it sticks, to the nickname she shared only with Daniel, even his hazel eyes with brown flecks are just like Daniel's.

The closer they become, though, the more something inside her screams there's something very wrong with Alex Franks. And when Emma stumbles across a grotesque and terrifying menagerie of mangled but living animals within the walls of the Franks' estate, creatures she surely knows must have died from their injuries, she knows.

I am extremely excited to be holding an ARC of this book. Broken looks like it's going to be absolutely fabulous and I am very excited to dive in. I did one of my major English papers on Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, so any book that references it has a tendency to be near and dear to my heart. When I read the description for this I was absolutely dying to get my hands on it. Huge thanks to Strange Chemistry for sending this to me. :) 

I Won:

A White So Red

by Krystle Jones

Seventeen-year-old Snow’s life changed forever the night her stepmother, the Queen, sent her huntsman to cut out her heart. Fleeing for her life, Snow runs to the Silver Forest, a place as dangerous as it is enchanting, and begins an adventure she could never have dreamed.

With no one at her side but a rowdy band of carnivorous dwarves and an arrogant, rogue prince who’s too handsome for his own good, Snow must confront the challenge that’s been laid before her: Kill the Queen, and take back the kingdom that should have been hers.

But if she is to succeed, Snow will have to tap into a powerful, ancient form of magic, one that may have been sleeping inside her all along.

I've been looking forward to A White So Red for a long time. I absolutely loved Krystle's vampire / dystopian novel The Scarlet Dagger, so seeing what she would do with a classic fairytale held a lot of appeal for me. She is also one of the people I've become good friends with in the year or so that I've been blogging or publicly talking about my novel, so seeing this *finally* be on the brink of being readable by everyone is great. (I like seeing my friends succeed.) 

I always have to watch what I am doing when I review stuff by friends, but I've done it before and as always I'll note it. If you want an unbiased review from me of her work, look at the one I linked for The Scarlet Dagger. That was back when I first met her (actually, how we met). For what it's worth--it got 5 hearts and my Kat's Meow award, so I thought highly of it.

Will A White So Red far equally well? You'll have to wait and see. :) 

I Bought: 

Yes, I was bad. Yes, I spoiled myself with three new hardcovers from Chapters. But considering how much I've gotten done this summer I think I deserve them. :D I could not resist getting these! 

Throne of Glass

by Sarah J. Maas

After serving out a year of hard labor in the salt mines of Endovier for her crimes, 18-year-old assassin Celaena Sardothien is dragged before the Crown Prince. Prince Dorian offers her her freedom on one condition: she must act as his champion in a competition to find a new royal assassin.

Her opponents are men-thieves and assassins and warriors from across the empire, each sponsored by a member of the king's council. If she beats her opponents in a series of eliminations, she'll serve the kingdom for three years and then be granted her freedom.

Celaena finds her training sessions with the captain of the guard, Westfall, challenging and exhilirating. But she's bored stiff by court life. Things get a little more interesting when the prince starts to show interest in her... but it's the gruff Captain Westfall who seems to understand her best.

Then one of the other contestants turns up dead... quickly followed by another. Can Celaena figure out who the killer is before she becomes a victim? As the young assassin investigates, her search leads her to discover a greater destiny than she could possibly have imagined.

This was a Waiting on Wednesday pick for me a few weeks ago, but I've been so busy getting stuff done for Sealer's Promise that I haven't had time to read. So I held off on picking it up. Now that I'm about to be taking a 'breather' after I get SP out to betas and while I work on outlining the rest of the series, I should be able to dive into this soon. I'm looking forward to it--what I read on the way home in the car had my attention from the first page. I have high hopes here. 

Alice in Zombieland

by Gena Showalter

She won’t rest until she’s sent every walking corpse back to its grave. Forever.

Had anyone told Alice Bell that her entire life would change course between one heartbeat and the next, she would have laughed. From blissful to tragic, innocent to ruined? Please. But that’s all it took. One heartbeat. A blink, a breath, a second, and everything she knew and loved was gone.

Her father was right. The monsters are real….

To avenge her family, Ali must learn to fight the undead. To survive, she must learn to trust the baddest of the bad boys, Cole Holland. But Cole has secrets of his own, and if Ali isn’t careful, those secrets might just prove to be more dangerous than the zombies….

I wish I could go back and do a thousand things differently.
I'd tell my sister no.
I'd never beg my mother to talk to my dad.
I'd zip my lips and swallow those hateful words.
Or, barring all of that, I'd hug my sister, my mom and my dad one last time.
I'd tell them I love them.
I wish... Yeah, I wish.

Gena Showalter + Alice in Wonderland + Zombies ... How could I not pick this up? It also doesn't hurt that the book has a totally gorgeous cover. This book has potential to be totally fabulous and I'm going to do my best to get to it soon. It will likely be one of the books I read for the Spooktacular Paranormal Reading Challenge.

Dearly, Beloved

by Lia Habel

Can the living coexist with the living dead?

That’s the question that has New Victorian society fiercely divided ever since the mysterious plague known as “The Laz” hit the city of New London and turned thousands into walking corpses. But while some of these zombies are mindless monsters, hungry for human flesh, others can still think, speak, reason, and control their ravenous new appetites.

Just ask Nora Dearly, the young lady of means who was nearly kidnapped by a band of sinister zombies but valiantly rescued by a dashing young man . . . of the dead variety.

Nora and her savior, the young zombie soldier Bram Griswold, fell hopelessly in love. But others feel only fear and loathing for the reanimated dead. Now, as tensions grow between pro- and anti-zombie factions, battle lines are being drawn in the streets. And though Bram is no longer in the New Victorian army, he and his ex-commando zombie comrades are determined to help keep the peace. That means taking a dangerous stand between The Changed, a radical group of sentient zombies fighting for survival, and The Murder, a masked squad of urban guerrillas hellbent on destroying the living dead. But zombies aren’t the only ones in danger: Their living allies are also in The Murder’s crosshairs, and for one vengeful zealot, Nora Dearly is the number one target.

As paranoia, prejudice, and terrorist attacks threaten to plunge the city into full-scale war, Nora’s scientist father and his team continue their desperate race to unlock the secrets of “The Laz” and find a cure. But their efforts may be doomed when a mysterious zombie appears bearing an entirely new strain of the virus—and the nation of New Victoria braces for a new wave of the apocalypse.

Lia Habel’s spellbinding, suspenseful sequel to Dearly, Departed takes her imaginative mash-up of period romance, futuristic thriller, and zombie drama to a whole new level of innovative and irresistible storytelling.

Dearly Departed was one of my favorite books last year, so when I found out that the sequel was releasing and saw it today at Chapters I had to have it. I absolutely have to know what happens to Nora and Bram! This is likely another book for next month--if I can wait that long. 

So that was my week of absolute awesome. I would love to know what you got, too. I hope this week has been good to you. :) Please feel free to leave a link to your Stacking the Shelves, IMM, book haul, etc. and I'll do my best to visit. :)