City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments #2) by Cassandra Clare BOOK REVIEW

City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


City of Ashes is the follow-up to City of Bones, which has just been released as a movie called The Mortal Instruments, which is what the whole series is titled. I am a book person, so I have no desire to see the movie, and I not comment on it further.

City of Bones left us all at a loss for words after finding that all time bad guy Valentine, unlike the holiday of the same name, is still alive and that he is not only Clarey's father, but wait for it, yes Jace's father too. Shock or all shocks, horror of all horrors, and after they had their first kiss too. Hate that. Worst of all their mother, Jocelyn is in a trace, coma like but other-worldly induced and no-one and nothing seems to be able to bring her out of it.

Jocelyn is put in a mundane hospital, oh yeah, that is the name for ordinary  humans, mundane's. It actually fit's, and I find the humor in it quite pleasing. So she is at the hospital and Luke, poor Luke, so in love with her, but never telling her, is holding watch at her side hoping beyond hope that something will happen.

All the while, Jace and Clarey have to figure out how to act like brother and sister, when they were feeling alot more than that just a few minutes earlier. Simon still wants a relationship with Clarey, even if he is only a mundane, and then Isabella and Alex's parents are home and that brings a whole new can of worms, because it seems like "someone" has decided they don't believe the kids!

The last book, I felt a lot of de ja vue, but not in this book, in fact I found this book much easier and faster to read, and I am even more excited to move on to the next book. I felt the storyline flowed a little better, less of the backstory and history, and more of the teens trying to figure things out, but a lot, and I do mean a lot of unanswered questions in this book, so the next book has a lot to answer and tell the readers.



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City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments) by Cassandra Clare

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City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


City of Bones is the first book in the Mortal Instruments Series and involves another world of Downworlders, demons, half-humans, witches and warlocks, vampires and werewolves, Shadowhunters and more all trying to co-exsist in a human world, the treaties and accords and uprisings and overthrows and defeats.  But the main characters are teenagers trying to understand adults and themselves in the midst of all this, with each adult twists the truth of the history to fit themselves, making things only muddy for the the teens to figure out.

For parts of the book, I could swear I had read it before, or read something almost the same, but for most of it. it seemed like a new book.  The beginning and the, here before thought to be a normal human girl Clarey is able to "see" the ShadowHunters at a club seems so familiar, and the interest between Cleary and Jace, and the dislike that Isabelle and Alec feel toward her seems over the top teenage angst, but it so much feels like I have been there before.

I guess that the Shadowhunters and their marks might remind of Lara Adrian and the Breed, or many of the novels I have read, but it is more of a feeling, that although I know I have never seen this book before it feels familiar.

The twists and turns, the bits of History that Cleary learns from each adult she meets, and how each adult twists the history and their owe involvement in it to make them look less bad, and more a victim of place or timing, than really planning to do bad, is thoughtful and well laidout. The Ultimate twist that turns Jace and Cleary's world on it's head is kinda expected and I really hate that card played in the story, but I still want to continue reading and hearing more.

I am intrigued by the world, I want to read more and see how they figure out their struggles, how they decide who and what needs to be protected and what needs to be allowed to life free and left alone. Just keep a clean mind that you are going to be dealing with teenagers throughout and sometimes the throught processes and thinking aren't what you would expect from adults.



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Deadly Blessings by Julie Hyzy (An Alex St. James Mystery #1)

Deadly Blessings by Julie Hyzy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

To start off I have to admit that I really like Julie Hyzy as an author. I am caught on her White House Chef Mystery Series, so I had high expectations for this book. Originally I downloaded it on my free Nook for PC application, but my computer crashed and gave up the ghost so I lost that copy but I picked this up at the library, along with book two in the series the other day, and was excited to be able to read this and see if I liked it as much as I did her other series.

Alex St. James is an investigative reporter for a News Magazine on television in the Chicago area. At the beginning of the book, she is dating Dan, her counterpart at a rival production, and he just doesn't seem like he is really invested in the relationship, and the more the book goes on, the more I come to dislike him. By the end of the book, I hate the guy, I think smarmey is a god term for him!

Alex is investigating her own adoption, in secret so as not to upset her parents, and on her own time, which her boss is not happy with, that she is away from the office and job at any given moment. Apparently a shake-up is in the works and he wants her there, probably so he doesn't have to deal with it on his own, but he has a gruff manner and it takes until the very end of the book for me to actually understand Bas a little and actually come to have a bit of respect for him.

Alex is working on a story, a wild and explosive story of Polish immigrants, a Catholic priest and prostitution.  Bass pulls her off the story, but there is something about it that wouldn't let Alex leave it alone, so in the process of working up the "fluff" story that he replaces her on, she finds a way to still dig into the original story and gets extremely caught up in the story and the people, to the extent that she puts her own life in grave danger.

It is an extremely well written story, it pulls you along, there is never a lull in the flow of the story, and I couldn't put the book down, I had to know what happened. We are also introduced to a new guy, Will in the shake up at the office, which leads to some emotions on a personal level for Alex, and I for one am looking forward to seeing how that plays out in the future.

Another wonderful book by Julie Hyzy and I for one am looking so forward to the next, Deadly Interest.


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