Follow Friday + Week 8 Mermaid Challenge Reviews

I hope everyone had a great Independence Day! To view Patriotic stories I've been posting all week, view earlier posts on both my blogs!

Welcome to Week 8 of the Mermaid Lit Summer Reading Challenge! Below is my review for this week. If you have one of your own, feel free to link up with us and be sure to visit the others to see what they thought of their reads for this week! You may join the challenge anytime you like. See rules HERE. (Follow Friday below!)

This week, I read Mirage by Jenn Reese. I read Above World a few weeks ago and so when I saw that my library had the sequel, I jumped at the chance to read it. :D


First of all, I should note that this really isn't much of a mermaid book. The kids in it are merekids, but in book 1 they got the chance to come Above World (get it?) and have an adventure on land. Mirage continues that adventure, but there's really no part of it that takes place under the ocean.

The only real mermaid element we deal with is the fact that Aluna *mild spoilers from book 1* swallowed a seed that perpetuates the growing of her mermaid tail fin and is trying to keep it from slowing her down the entire novel. *end of spoilers*

That said, it's still a great read! It continues the adventures of Hoki and Aluna, but we get to see a lot of Dash's homeland while the kids try to get their three peoples (Merepeople, Fliers, and Equians) to forge an alliance.

This is a quick, fun, flowing read that I couldn't put down. Just as in book 1, I found the world-building to be delightful and smiled often. Hoki is totally adorble! Reese manages to put some very adult-feeling romance into the novel, but the kids are just young enough to be embarrassed about their feelings in a way that just makes your heart melt.

The adventure is there, too. Lots of action and page-turning fun. If you liked book 1, you'll love book 2. I certainly did, and will be on the watch for more by this author. :D

Has anyone else read Jenn Reese? How did you like her writing?

Follow Friday

Gain new followers and make new friends with the Book Blogger Feature & Follow! If this is your first time here, welcome! You are about to make some new friends and gain new followers -- but you have to know -- the point of this hop is to follow other bloggers also. I follow you, you follow me.

The Feature & Follow is hosted by TWO hosts, Parajunkee of Parajunkee's View and Alison of Alison Can Read. Each host will have their own Feature Blog and this way it'll allow us to show off more new blogs!

How does this work? First you leave your name here on this post, (using the linky tools -- keep scrolling!) then you create a post on your own blog that links back to this post (easiest way is to just grab the code under the #FF picture and put it in your post) and then you visit as many blogs as you can and tell them "hi" in their comments (on the post that has the #FF image). You follow them, they follow you. Win. Win. Just make sure to follow back if someone follows you!

Today is the U.S.'s Independence Day. Share your favorite book with war in it, or an overthrow of the government.

Source

For this blog, I'm going to go with A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. One of my favorite classic novels, it deals with the French Revolution where the peasants rose up to take back their lives from the corrupt rulers and aristocracy. It's a beautiful tale of love and loss set against this wartime background.

Another, which takes place about 20 years later, also in France, is Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. I just read this one last year and just know if you decide to read it that it's a very LONG haul, but definitely a worthwhile story. There are plenty of film and play versions available if you just want the story, and the recent film operetta version with Hugh Jackman was excellent.

Both are timeless, epic tales that I loved!

How about you? What's your favorite revolution book?

Networked Blogs and Linky are also welcome. Remember, if you follow via email, you get a free short story!

Tweet