What I'm Reading & What I'm Loving

I finished "Angelology" last week and sadly I did not love it, especially not the end. Actually I enjoyed it until the end. I wanted to love it, it certainly had potential for me to love it. Danielle Trussoni certainly can write, and I loved all of the historical information about angels, and Nephilim, and The Watchers, but the bad guys were just so darned one dimensionally bad. So spoiled rotten bad.

A sequel and a movie are in the works, and I think as a movie it could really work. Not loving the end will not keep me from reading the sequel however because I have hopes for redemption and I have to find out what happens to The Watchers.

However, a book I did love recently is Lisa Mantchev's "Eyes Like Stars." A young adult fantasy set in the world of the stage (literally in one theater), but a world of the stage completely of Mantchev's own unique imagination. I adored the smart and sometimes a smart-mouthed female protagonist Bertie who is first forced to grow up, and who then takes the reins of her own life with spunk and determination. I loved her three wry wise-cracking faerie side kicks, and I also adored the possible love triangle, and the bad-boy-who-might-ultimately-be-a-hero Ariel.

Ariel gets some of the best one liners I have ever read, Mantchev must have had a field day writing him.

And I enjoyed how artfully Mantchev blends in classical theater, i.e. many Shakespeare plays, into the story. I have high hopes that young readers will want to find out more and will pick up Shakespeare's works themselves in order to learn more.

Happily the sequel "Perchance to Dream" (fabulous title) is out in fall! A movie is not yet in the works, but hey, we can dream and plot can't we?

@Mantchev is one of the writers that I follow on Twitter and has very kindly agreed to answer a few questions for my upcoming marketing & public relations blog series called, "Sisters Are Doing it For Themselves."

Under-the-weatherness and work obligations have me a little behind in the writing and researching of the blogs, but I promise to have the blogs together in April. I have come across a group of wonderful female writers, photographers and other creative types that are following their dreams and making wonderful things happen for themselves in fascinating ways via the help of the Internet. I hope you'll stay tuned.

In the meantime, feeling like a historical thriller (I adored Kate Moss's Labryrinth) I just picked up Kathleen McGowan's "The Book of Love."