YA New Releases in December 2015

First, let me apologize for my terribly long hiatus. My blogging needs to be a lot more regular and common, and that is the promise I make to you all. Next year. After finals. 🙂 But first, we have our last month of new releases for 2015!

1. Their Fractured Light, by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner – Coming December 1st, 2015

A year ago, Flynn Cormac and Jubilee Chase made the now infamous Avon Broadcast, calling on the galaxy to witness for their planet, and protect them from destruction. Some say Flynn’s a madman, others whisper about conspiracies. Nobody knows the truth. A year before that, Tarver Merendsen and Lilac LaRoux were rescued from a terrible shipwreck—now, they live a public life in front of the cameras, and a secret life away from the world’s gaze.

Now, in the center of the universe on the planet of Corinth, all four are about to collide with two new players, who will bring the fight against LaRoux Industries to a head. Gideon Marchant is an eighteen-year-old computer hacker—a whiz kid and an urban warrior. He’ll climb, abseil and worm his way past the best security measures to pull off onsite hacks that others don’t dare touch.

Sofia Quinn has a killer smile, and by the time you’re done noticing it, she’s got you offering up your wallet, your car, and anything else she desires. She holds LaRoux Industries responsible for the mysterious death of her father and is out for revenge at any cost.

When a LaRoux Industries security breach interrupts Gideon and Sofia’s separate attempts to infiltrate their headquarters, they’re forced to work together to escape. Each of them has their own reason for wanting to take down LaRoux Industries, and neither trusts the other. But working together might be the best chance they have to expose the secrets LRI is so desperate to hide.

The final installment in the Starbound series, I hope fans like me get to see an epic conclusion to this wonderful sci-fi romance series.

The Heir, by Kiera Cass

“There are some things you don’t learn about yourself until you let someone else into the most intimate places of your heart.”

Rating: 3.25

Princess Eadlyn has grown up hearing endless stories about how her mother and father met. Twenty years ago, America Singer entered the Selection and won the heart of Prince Maxon—and they lived happily ever after. Eadlyn has always found their fairy-tale story romantic, but she has no interest in trying to repeat it. If it were up to her, she’d put off marriage for as long as possible.

But a princess’s life is never entirely her own, and Eadlyn can’t escape her very own Selection—no matter how fervently she protests.

Eadlyn doesn’t expect her story to end in romance. But as the competition begins, one entry may just capture Eadlyn’s heart, showing her all the possibilities that lie in front of her . . . and proving that finding her own happily ever after isn’t as impossible as she’s always thought.

The days in which I took The Selection series seriously, were gone a long time ago. I thought The Selection was a fine book back in the day, I didn’t mind it at all. The Elite made me see all the issues with the series as a whole, but it was a good book anyway. I guess I learned a whole lot about world-building, character development, and plot during the time between reading The Elite and The One, because I severely disliked the latter. Since then, I didn’t think of The Selection series as “good for nothing”, but rather made for entertainment. Which is exactly why I picked up The Heir, for entertainment. Harsh, but true.

But… I actually kind of liked this. The plot and story-telling wasn’t bad, the writing wasn’t horrible either, and I could actually stand a few of the characters. Most of my dislike for this book, stemmed from its prequel series.

The lack of world-building in the former books set it up for failure in the aspect of… well, world-building. From what I’ve seen, it hasn’t improved at all, Cass is still using her old world and not doing much with it. There could have been more explanation about the fall of the castes and how things went after that, but of course, the main focus was on the romance and drama, which I don’t mind. The former books were going in that direction, and that was the main focus of the series anyway, so it doesn’t really bother me now and it never did.

I expected to despise the characters from the moment I started reading, probably because of all the reviewers on Goodreads complaining about our problematic heroine, Eadlyn Schreave. Concerning Eadlyn, I agree and disagree with the reviewers. She is, indeed, a very bratty, insolent, and ignorant girl, and it is often painful to read the book through her voice, mostly in the beginning. I’m sure a lot of readers wanted to release a string of curses at this girl after stating that SHE WAS THE FUTURE QUEEN AND NO ONE WAS MORE POWERFUL THAN HER at least twenty freaking times.