First Impression Friday: Crossfire In the Street

First Impression Fridays are a weekly meme hosted by J.W. Martin. This week I will be discussing Crossfire In The Street.

I started reading this book on the train today, and I was drawn in immediately. Cora is seventeen and she loves someone who is against slavery. Her family doesn’t own slaves, but they are pro-states rights. She doesn’t know if their father will support their love, and he seems to be wary about marrying her. He only seems to be in it for stolen kisses, and he is about to go off to war. Her brother Pete is also making the tough decisions between going to war or staying to work on the farm.

This is what I got within the first 30-40 pages of this novel. I am SO excited to read the rest of this historical fiction novel! I haven’t really seen anything about the South that isn’t super pro-slavery, but it is interesting to see some people who were kind of caught in the middle. I don’t know if they actually existed in real life, but I would like to think that they would.

Also, I love the cover. It isn’t too flashy, but it shows the true darkness of the war. As of now, I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a new historical fiction novel about the Civil War.

First Impression Friday – Children of Blood and Bone

First Impression Fridays are a weekly meme hosted by J.W. Martin. This week I will be discussing Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi.

I had heard amazing things about this book before I read it. I had high expectations had to force myself to wait to read it until I had finished some blog tour books.

Now that I am 100 pages in, I don’t know what to feel. None of the characters are really standing out to me. Zélie is the main character, but I don’t feel any other emotions from her besides anger. All she seems to do is either get angry or make a mistake that she will later try to defend and then get angry. I hope that she goes through some serious character development because for now, I can’t bring myself to like her. I also despise the princess, Amari. Her friend/servant dies because she was found to have magic powers. What does she do? She goes into a town full of people like her, attracting the royal guard, and endangers them all by asking for help. Instead of properly avenging her friend, she simply causes more people like her to be murdered and have their homes destroyed. She could have done something big from working on the inside and trying to get things to help the maji through the government, but instead, she chose to run away and draw all attention to herself. Some people may say that the mistake makes her human, but I just think that she is just being irresponsible and not really caring who dies from her decisions. I also want to see some big changes from her.

Overall, I am worried about the direction that this story is taking for me. I hope that it will improve, and fast. If it doesn’t, I don’t know what I am going to do. I guess the hype ruined it for me.

First Impression Friday – Goliath

First Impression Fridays are a weekly meme hosted by J.W. Martin. This week, I will be discussing my first impression of Goliath, or the third book in the Leviathan trilogy.

I have read the first two books in this trilogy. The first book was the best in my opinion, and the last book was actually rather forgettable for me. I want to finish off the trilogy, and I just have to get through this one.

I knew of this author before getting into this book because I had DNFed the Uglies series and recently gotten into the Leviathan trilogy. I liked the first two books of the Leviathan trilogy enough, and I had been looking forward to finishing it and actually being successful at finishing a series that I had started!

Then I saw the book. I personally think that this is the worst cover of the Leviathan trilogy. I didn’t really like any of the covers, but this one just seemed worse.

Now I am about halfway through the book, and I am about all the way done with it. Deryn, the girl who pretended to be a boy to get into the military, has fallen in love with Alek, the Clanker prince. I didn’t want her to fall in love at all, and I thought that romance wouldn’t be touched upon in this series. I wanted her to simply stay a soldier. But as in all YA books with a teen girl, the girl has to have some reason to fall in love with the boy.

Also, the action scenes are very lackluster. I have been confused throughout almost the entire book, but I just keep trekking forward to finish it.

I think this book will stand between 1 and 2 stars for me. I simply just cannot get into it, and I don’t think that I will ever be able to. However, I am determined to finish it, hopefully tonight, so that I can say that I actually finished the entire trilogy. I am also going to be wary of more Westerfeld’s books, as I’ve struggled with every work of his that I have ever read.