If you're looking at this novella you probably have already devoured the entire series of "The Forest of Hands and Teeth" and are wandering where this all fits in. This short novella takes us through the life of Sister Tabitha, who you'll remember is pretty uptight and very rule-focused. BUT NOW, we find out why!

Tabitha knows about the hidden paths leading into the forest. She knows that it is forbidden to walk them. But she also knows that she is compelled to do it anyway! In this way, she's not so different from our usual heroine which gives us a invaluable insight into how she talks to her in the other books. Tabitha just can't help herself, she opens the gates and walks along the still-fenced-off path barely separated from the Unconsecrated poking their fingers through the wires of the fence to get to her. And then she meets a boy. A boy who is definitely not from her village, who is't Unconsecrated and who soon, will need her help.

Hare Moon surprised me. I expected it to be about choices, which it was. The choices that Tabitha would have to make and the things she would have to have seen in order to become who she does in the other books. The brutality of some of her actions though was really shocking for me and I had a whole new understanding of her character - so much so that I want to re-read the entire series to try and understand that more and see little hints of young-Tabitha in Sister-Tabitha.

We still get to see a bit more of the infection which I especially liked but what was really nice was to try and relate this book to the others we've already read. For example, there's one particular cameo I picked up on that made me smile.

I whole-heartedly recommend this novella to you. It is, of course, quite short but it will entice to you read the entire collection all over again to piece it all together. Ryan describes Tabitha as having "a new energy that ebbs too fast so that she immediately craves it again". That's how I feel about these books - so good that you just HAVE to read them again.

Jodi Picoult is one of my favourite authors, and I'm quite picky so if you haven't read anything by her before this is the perfect opportunity for you to dip your toes in the water and see if you like her. For those of you who are pretty familiar with her though, I think you'll really like this collection of short stories.

It's important to note that some of these pieces are featured elsewhere, as pointed out in the Forward of the novella. The stories have a similiar trend in common - they all feature aspects of Leaving Home. Initially I thought this would be three stories about children leaving home, but actually it was much better and much more than I expected.

The first short story is "Weights and Measures" and is about the loss of a child. Through the eyes of parents Abe and Sarah, we are able to see how parents cope with the death of a child - if in fact they cope at all. I found this story complex which I really didn't expect due the length of it. I particularly liked how Picoult portrayed Abe as feeling small and childlike, as though the loss of his child had lost him all of the years of his life that he spent as a father. I also liked that Sarah and Abe really do have completely different ways of managing their grief and this was interesting to see unfold.

The second piece is "An Open Letter to My Oldest Son, As He Leaves For College". This is a non-fiction which Picoult wrote for her son. It's beautiful. I loved it; I loved that for the first time we get to see who Picoult really is. We're always reading her voice through other characters so we never really know for sure what her take is on everything or what she would do in the place of many of her characters dilemmas so this was refreshing.

The third, and longest, piece is also about leaving home but this time, rather than a child, a mother is leaving home for a sort of "vacation" to see what it would have been like if her life were different, if she hadn't made the choices she did and essentially, if she was someone else. "Ritz" I liked the best because it seemed so real! I think was will especially appeal to mothers because it portrays the daily routine or role of a mother and in quite an under-appreciated light.

Overall, I do recommend this for all Picoult fans but also for anyone wanting to see what she's all about in the hopes you've found yourself a new author. I will say though, and this is the reason for my four stars, that because each story is so short it is pretty hard to develop the kind of emotion for or connection with a character in the way that you usually would. But it's not that I think this ditracts from how great it is, I just like to get in the characters heads a bit more and find their moral dilemmas.

For those of you who have heard of "Legend" by Marie Lu and are looking at this book thinking, "Is this meant to be read before or after Legend?" I can tell you that you can consider this short novella to be Legend 1.5.

Life Before Legend is split into two sections, one from Day's perspective and one from June's perspective. Day's story tells us of his first kiss. We get a really good insight into what it means to be rebelling against the Republic. But we also get to see the awkward actions of a 12 year old under pressure to impress a girl...and not really knowing what he's doing. I loved that part the most and I think Marie Lu does a fantastic job of making a boy of 12, who'd you assume to sound fairly immature, very mature. His voice is intelligent, witty and has so much fight in it - I definitely got a giggle or two out of it.

June's story tells us about her first day as the 100% kid (remember how she aced the "Trial") at Drake University. We again get a really nice insight into her character and it's nice to see her fighting to stay out of trouble all the time - she seems to be a total magnet for trouble despite her brilliance (but I think that's what we liked so much about her right?).

It's hard not to love Day and June. Coming from completely different worlds, one an alleged criminal always fighting for survial and the other an alleged progidy always striving for success, it's hard to imagine they'd have that much in common. But they're such likeable characters. I do think though that it's really important that you have read Legend before you read this because there are little bits and pieces which I appreciated that I don't think I fully could have if didn't already know Day and June and about the lives, and worlds, they come from.

I don't want to say too much because obviously this is only a very short story so it would be easy to give bits away, but I can promise you that if you loved Legend then you'll be dying to get a bit more information and you'll devour this in one sitting! The only complaint I have is that it is of course very short and I would have loved more!! But it's a novella so we can't complain! 5 stars all the way. SIX if I could! Happy Reading :)

I love a good Dystopian, and the world of YA is becoming inundated with fantastic worlds and some really unique ideas. But unfortunately, although this author had a REALLY unique idea, this dystopian world just wasn't for me.

I've read another series by Derting (Body Finders) which I thought was good, again it had a unique idea, but I wasn't blown away by it. So when I looked at the blurb for this book and found that it was by the same author I wasn't too excited by it, but the idea sounded so good that I just had to give it a go.

The world that Charlie (Charlaina), our leading lady, lives in is divided - this really appealed to me because I love the conflict it causes and the way the characters end up being total opposites. But what's even better is that it's divided by language - when the "upper classes" of the world are speaking their native tongue it is a hanging offence (Yes, really!) to even look at them! So you may have a pretty archaic idea of this world, and it is archaic in that it's ruled by a Queen who runs things in a pretty regimented, dictatorship, way.

The catch though, and something I really liked, was that Charlie was able to understand all languages - a secret she's been keeping all her life. And yes, another hanging offence because nobody else can do it! Well, that is until Charlie meets someone else who can. From this point the story kicks off and the relationships between characters begin to develop.

BUT sadly, that's kind of where the good stuff ends. It took such a long time to even meet that second mystery character and very little happened even when we did. Additionally, it was really hard to like said mystery character or Charlier because neither of them seemed especially layered. It was like Derting totally forgot to tell us what they were all about - I couldn't even tell you what they looked like apart from his grey eyes!

I really did want to like this story but ultimately, there was just nothing to it. I lost interest very quickly and because of this I really wasn't bothered what did or didn't happened to the characters. It's one of the books you find yourself measuring along the way to see how many pages you have left to read unfortunately. So for that reason, although I love the idea and I'm sure you would too, I just can't recommend this book because it the fantastic premise wasn't sold effectively enough for me to buy into it.

The blurb for Eden didn't really do it for me so I had a look at some of the reviews and was easily sold and I'm definitely glad I gave this book, and this new (to me) author, a chance. BUT, and unfortunately it's a pretty big but, there were a few niggles for me along the way that really detracted from my initial love of the book. Here's what I liked:

Eden is an apocolyptic world not that dissimilar from many depicted in young adult fiction at the moment. In fact, I was particularly reminded of Carrie Ryan's "Forest of Hands and Teeth" world - which is a compliment for those of you who haven't read that. The concept of an infection isn't therefore a particularly new one. But what was to me was the concept of a form of robot-apocolypse quite like this one.

The development of a cybernetic chip, by a company known as NovaTor Biotics, living underneath the skin of it's host is a radically new and exciting development for the world of medicine. Imagine needing a new limb, new muscle and tissue, a new organ altogether. Now imagine the development of a simple chip inside your body which will allow your body to regenerate that which has been lost. The process of this involves the hardening of the bodies cells to regenerate into a metal. Unfortunately for NovaTor (and everyone else!), this regenerative medicine just keeps on regenerating causing the metal to spread throughout the entire body thus making us machines.

Of course not everyone was affected by the chip, but the body is beginning to evolve to function with the effects of the chip causing the host to lose all that is human about them - causing them to turn on everyone else to assimilate further. Essentially, this is a story of the spread of a mechanical infection. How is it then spread to those unaffected? All it takes is one single touch from an infected and that's it, you're infected too!

All except for Eve, our leading lady. Experimented on as a child, Eve is a half-human, half-robot hybric who until recently had no knowledge of her past or her half robotic state. The advantage to Eve's "condition"? She can't be infected nor can she infect others, she's fast and strong just like the infected and does not feel pain. The down-side? She's also unemotional and incapable of understanding human emotions, such as grief for instance, due to her half-robot make-up. Which leads me nicely onto the love triangle. EVERYONE loves a good love triangle right? And this one is brilliant - I had no idea who I preferred in this situation.

I enjoyed the characters that Taylor had created. They were well-woven, interesting and actually really likeable. Having said that, I couldn't tell you what Eve looked like if I tried! I'm not convinced she was even described to us aside from having long hair. Avian and West however, the two guys involved in the love triangle, ARE really well described and they were both really intriguing and mysterious - I think the fact they were so similar actually made it quite hard to predict which, if any, Eve would end up with.

The plot runs smoothly and does have some really exciting "fight" scenes within it between the infected and uninfected. Of course we also get to see the infection take hold of a few people which gives us a nice insight into how it works. What I also liked was the insight into how people would actually manage in an apocolyptic lifestyle hunted by machines. I thought that was handled really well and in an almost-believable manner.

HOWEVER, this now brings me on to the bad points. Keary Taylor has an incredible imagination without question but her writing in terms of grammar and spelling was so poor at the times that I actually got close to the throwing the book across the room in frustration at one point - which is just diabolical because I cherish my books! I can forgive the odd mistake, infact it really doesn't bother me that much at all, but after the middle of the book it was almost like her editor quit or she got tired and the writing just went downhill. It's only little things I suppose, like saying "passed" instead of "past" or "their" instead of "they're" so at first I let it slide but then there just seemed to be words that made no sense at all. One example I noticed a couple of times was that there would be a "has" instead of "was" or even "as". Really quite major typos which confuse the reader and distort the meaning of the sentences. Additionally, there was actually a whole line repeated at one point - and not for dramatic effect!

Anyway, despite the odd error here and there which did ditract from a brilliant imaginiative story I actually really did enjoy Eden. I think Keary Taylor has the potential to create fantastic books because her ideas are conveyed and layered well enough that they are actually different and interesting. I've heard along the grape-vine that there may be a movie in the near future and throughout reading the book I remember thinking "This would make a brilliant movie" so I can't wait to see how that turns out. As for a sequel, I don't think there will be one based on my interpretation of the ending but if you just want more of the world of Eden or perhaps want a taster to see if it's for you, I recommend Rebirth: An Eden prequel, to see if it's for you.

Overall, a unique and fun read with excellent characters. I'll definitely be keeping my eye on this author. I recommend getting yourself a copy, unless errors really do your head in!! Happy Reading, hope this helps :).

So imagine this? You've read so many young adult fiction books that you're pretty sure if someone cut you open you'd bleed predictable arrogant boys and typical shy but beautiful girls with an obvious, slightly cheesy, plot right? Well then read this!

This is absolutely incredible. This is the point where I have to tell you not to judge a book by it's cover because, in my opinion, it doesn't strike me as a book that's going to make me think or excite me. But this was so different to what I expected and in such a good way. Now enough of the gushing, here's why:

In a world pretty much exactly like ours is right now, people are getting cryogenically frozen. Only the select few. Why? Well we need to preserve them for their trip across the universe where their intellectual or military-trained brilliance will allow them to create life and forge a possibility for existence on another planet. So, our planet is Sol-Earth. Which I take to mean original Earth. And the planet our frozen friends are flying (On GodSpeed - some super cool spaceship) to is Centauri-Earth. As in centuries away. Actually, 300 years away. Give or take one or two.

Amy is our leading lady. Our leading, about-to-be-frozen, lady actually. Her parents work for the company deciding on this project and are being cryogenically frozen so Amy has been given the option too, as cargo rather than as an essential person for the mission. The great thing is that we get to see the entire freezing process - the even better thing though is getting an insight into what it's like once she is frozen. I was shocked that her brain was still functioning (in that she wasn't asleep), she seemed to be having almost coherent thoughts. I loved that, I thought that was a brilliant idea from Revis and really well portrayed.

Which leads me to Elder (because Amy is frozen now for 300 years). Elder is on Godspeed. Years in the future he is the very ship transporting Amy to Centauri-Earth. I really liked Elder (his name is explained if you're thinking it's a bit of a silly name). He's not like the typical young adult love interest because he's a really good stand-alone character. Upon Godspeed Elder starts to notice strange happenings - somebody keeps unplugging the frozen people, which kills them by drowning. One "almost" victim is Amy, but luckily she isn't killed in the unplugging process. Essentially we're calling unplugging murder.

So the journey begins, and the relationship of course, between Elder and Amy to find the murderer. There are little quirky ideas that I liked a lot that Beth Revis has thrown into the mix. Like the concept of a "monoethnic" community of people which supposedly reduces discord upon the ship. Ideas like this which are really quite shocking made me think about the book and the concepts; any book that forces the reader to think and ask questions is, to me, a success. Other ideas that were science related were great as well, like the medi-patches (tiny, needle-infested, patches which calm people down). The explaination of some of these things was very well thought out.

I recommend this book wholeheartedly. It sat, dejected, on shelf for quite some time because I doubted it's potential and I really wish I had moved it to the top of the pile sooner. It was a fantastic read, and if you're anything like me and you think you've read so much YA fiction that you just can't be surprised anymore then I implore you to read this. You'll be pleased!

Earth Girls sounds like such a brilliant concept, and it was, but it had some pretty major flaws.

I was excited to read a book set so far in the future, 2788, where Earth is only inhabited by "the handicapped" or "apes" as they're more often called. The handicapped are infact humans who do not possess the immune system to survive on other planets like "the norms" do. Norms use portals between worlds, not necessarily planets, to travel, live or gain education.

Jarra, our heroine, is 18 and ready to go to University. Jarra, however, is an "ape". Apes are usually sent to Earth when their parents give birth to them because they cannot survive in other world, and many of their parents leave them with ProParents (essentially adoptive parents) so that they may return to their home world. So as you can imagine Jarra has a bit of a chip on her shoulder, and who could blame her.

Jarra wants to break the mould though. Jarra invents a fake life for herself as she joins a History course at an Earth University with norm students. Not wanting anyone to know she's handicapped, Jarra creates an entirely new identity in which she claims to be a child from the military with military parents. Her intention? To fool all of the norms, proving she is just as good as them, and spring this fact on them at the best possible moment.

Now, that sounds pretty good. You can see where it's going but, it's still an interesting concept and nice to find out how the different worlds and people act. Like for instance, each group of norms from different worlds has their own dialect (something that I found irritating to be honest because the dialect purely consisted of a couple of stupid words which were really quite childish - causing the characters to just sound immature rather than unique).

Part of the History course requires the students to excavate old ruins left behind in the old cities when the norms left for other worlds. This is where it got annoying. Jarra is by far THE most irritating character I have ever come across. As she starts the course she is a self-professed expert in absolutely everything and does all she can to let the other students know that. Infact, even the professor asks all his questions to Jarra and even has her lecture to the class on numerous occassions. Which she does, in an even more obnoxious manner, giving hints and tips to the class as if she's been there and done that already.

I spent a lot of the book convincing myself that actually, Jarra has had it pretty rough so she has more than enough right to be a little bitter or catty. I even convinced myself that actually, maybe she's so knowledgeable because it's something related to being abandoned and she's proud of being intelligent. Or even, maybe she wants people to notice her and that's why she shows off. But after an entire book of it I just couldn't continue to forgive her for being such a self-important character because Edwards really failed to show any sincere vulnerability or human emotion from her.

There's a particular section of this book where Jarra has told so many lies that even she's started to believe them. In fact, the narrative is written as though she is entirely convinced that she is from the military, that she never was an "ape" and that she has family in the military back home. This all occurs after a pretty traumatic episode, so I guess you could excuse it as post traumatic stress or something, but it was so badly conveyed that I had no sympathy for Jarra - it just made me like her even less.

I do think this series had great potential, I just wish Edwards had given us a more humble main character. Or just a likeable one. If there's a sequel I don't think I'll be reading it, which is unfortunate because I really was excited about this story.

You'd think by this point we'd seen it all wouldn't you? Us young adult fiction readers have read everything there is on angels, faeries and all the jazz and to be honest - we must be pretty confident we're past being surprised. But we were wrong.

Unearthly is your typical hidden-identity angel book in tha Clara (our leading Angel girl) must hide her true being. But, that's about all that's typical about this book. Having never heard of Cynthia Hand I thought it was only fair to give a new author a chance and I'm so glad I did because her character and world building was beautiful and her ideas were so exciting.

Clara is only PART angel. And not a very big part either - just a quarter. As is her brother Jeffery. Clara keeps having dreams, unusual dreams but always the same one. Only sometimes with additional details here and there. Except Clara isn't dreaming whilst she's asleep, she's dreaming whilst she's awake which can be pretty embarrassing (but funny for us). What this means is, Clare has received her purpose. In Hand's world, angels have destinies. They are put on Earth to fulfill a purpose shown to them in their minds after they reach a certain age.

This means that now that Clara has SOME idea of her purpose she knows where she needs to be, and it's not where she is now. So Clare and her family move from California to start a whole new life with some really brilliant characters thrown in. As Clare starts her new school she meets Christian. The boy from her vision. The boy she must save. Now as you might expect there's an element of a love interest there. BUT, there's a love TRIANGLE people! Got to love a good love triangle! Tucker, our brooding and pretty grumpy cowboy is so likeable. He is by far my most favourite character. The best part is, it's so hard to decide which of the two is better suited to Clara - the broody but gorgeous gentleman of a cowboy or the drop-dead gorgeous boy Clara must save from the burning forest.It's also really nice to see Clara's relationships with everyone. Not only with Tucker and Christian but more so with her brother (whose waiting for his purpose) and her mother (a fellow, slightly stronger, angel with a hell of a lot more experience to pass down). Interestingly, Clara's mother always seems so reluctant to teach Clara about the ways of being an Angel, about a purpose or about "Black Wings" - something I'll leave you to find out about yourself.

Along the way we get to learn so much about angels. How they come about, how the whole purpose thing works but there are still a few questions left unanswered which leaves me desperate to read the next in the series. And to me, that's the sign of a good book so I can't recommend this enough. There's a massive twist at the end too which I didn't see coming at all!! Overall, this book is fantastic. It's a really new take on a typical story with uniquely likeable characters which is definitely something hard to come by. Definitely give this a read.

Finding Sky is definitely different that's for sure. It may have a typical boy-meets-girl and they fall in love thing, but the ideas behind it are really quite something. I've gotten so used to reading brilliant young adult fiction at the moment that it's hard to come by anything especially new or interesting but you know what, I'd never heard of a SoulFinder before. And that was more than enough to keep me glued to the very pages through the night.

Sky, our British leading lady, is okay. I didn't like her as much as I would have wanted to but she was quite funny which was nice. Zed, our leading American man, is better. Sky has moved to America with her family so is starting a new school. Now, this aspect of any young adult story is always something I love. Any mention of new schools, boarding schools or the like really interest me because we then get to learn everything from scratch along with the main characters which makes it more enjoyable from my perspective. As you might expect, Zed is beatifully hansome and arrogant whilst Sky is shy and a hidden beauty. BUT, little does Sky know, she's anything but ordinary. And neither is Zed.

After everything eventually goes as you anticipate, Sky is introduced to Zed's massive, and quirky, family. All of which seem to have a little more to them than initially seems. I won't explain what exactly Zed, his family and Sky are but what I will say is they all have very interesting abilities which are entirely explainable but VERY unique to the YA genre. The concept of the SoulFinder is equally interesting - two people who are destined to be together based on a particular feeling or sensation the two feel. In essence two halves of a whole that very rarely find each other in reality because of the vast population and small liklihood of these exact two individuals ever meeting.

I do recommend this book because it is new and it is interesting but I have to say that, on a negative note: It was so incredibly predictable once the initial concept was explained. On top of that, I didn't buy into Zed's typical bad boy character nor did I really like the typical girl with low self-esteem and hidden cuteness. The thing is, Stirling had such a great idea that was really unique and I think she kind of spoiled it with her typical characters. Overall, a good read, but I didn't like the characters enough to care about the sequel.

I was so excited to get started with this series. I've grown to really love the characters and am usually caught sitting on the edge of my seat waiting to find out what happens. This series has really stepped up a gear I think because some of the previous series have been a bit slower and not so gripping (still good, but not the usual brilliance of Greys).

This time around we see some interesting storylines. Teddy gets quite an interesting story which stretches throughout the entire series so that was nice since she doesn't often get much of a look-in. Additionally, there are a couple of clinical trials going on (one of which is a dementia trial) which is interesting to see because obviously a number of the characters have a particular history with this disease.

I don't like to say too much because even the slightest things can put ideas into our heads about what's going to happen. All I'll say is that the anticipated tragedy at the end of every series is as gripping as ever. This time though guess what? The producers have really gone all out and there's a musical episode!! I know - it's exciting! Alongside that, there are a couple of other interesting episodes like one episode which is a filming of a tv show explaining the shooting from the previous series. That's a brilliant episode and you can imagine that had it been real, that's exactly what would have happened.

Overall, definitely a great series - I was laughing as much as I did in the first and second series.