It’s one thing to be considered a bruja, a powerful witch that can feel the memories of people based on items that were touched by them. It makes it so difficult to be around anybody, or any public place for that matter. One of the very few perks of being a bruja would be getting brand new items just for yourself, whether it’s clothes or books or furniture. It’s almost too much for Tessa to handle. So when her family gets relocated from busy California to rural Texas, she takes it a chance to start over, a chance to not be “Freaky Tessa”.
It seems to be going well for her, with her getting invited to a party early on in her arrival, but something happened. Something that should have been a good thing for her, but ended up being so very wrong. See, Tessa ends up getting kissed by a boy that she met when first arrived, but that’s not all she got. And when her so-called friends find out what happened, they basically abandon her and want nothing to do with her. How bad could that kiss be that this group of Tessa’s friends would completely leave her? It all makes sense when Tessa has to attend the boarding school that her father recently got a job at the whole reason why Tessa and her family relocated in the first place.
It’s one thing to be a bruja, but now Tessa has to deal with being a werewolf too. And if that’s something surprising, it’s also worth noting that this boarding school, St. Alibe’s, is a boarding school completely made up of werewolves. Not only are there werewolves involved, even the mean girl werewolves that make high school such a wonderful place, but they have to go up against their mortal enemies – the vampires, and they are anything but nice.
This book honestly had such a fresh feel on the werewolf mythology. There are so many books about vampires and while this book still does pit them against werewolves, it’s nice to read about the werewolves as the main species to root for rather than the vampires. This was the first book specifically about werewolves that I’ve read and I honestly really loved it. It also had witch mythology involved and having Tessa become an enigma to her kind, both a witch and a werewolf, making her one of the most powerful supernatural creatures in this world was a stroke of genius. I also really appreciated Tessa’s attitude, and how no-nonsense she was. There were times when she would feel like all was lost, or at least felt like giving up, but she would always get back on the horse and figure it out. I honestly love when the main character is one with attitude, one that doesn’t have everyone in the world loving her and her behaving like a dainty princess. I love the girls that can fight and hold their own, and Tessa is exactly that.
This is the first book in the Alpha Girls series, and I can’t wait to read the rest of the series. Tessa is honestly one of the main characters that I can actually get behind without completely losing all faith in her. I highly recommend this one for anyone who is into supernatural books, or wants to try out a new werewolf series.
Rated: 5/5 Stars
Tag: Leelynn’s Reviews
Sleeping Tom – Book Review
I received this book in exchange for an honest review, through the GoodReads group “YA Buddy Readers’ Corner”.
“The last week had made her realize something more important than her feelings for him: her true self. She wouldn’t die without him; she would miss him, sure, but it wouldn’t change who she had become.”
In an attempt to change her life, Rebecca transforms herself into a new girl, an alter ego named Caden, in order to escape the abuse that she suffered from her ex boyfriend Sean. In the aftermath of yet another altercation with Sean, Caden finds herself stranded in the middle of a bridge, contemplating on whether she should jump or not. Yes, it reached an all-time low for her at that moment, and if she had ended up jumping, everything that happened in this book would have never taken place. Is that a good or a bad thing, it’s yet to be said, but the main thing for sure is that Caden’s life will never be the same.
When Caden decides that ending her life is not worth it, no matter what Sean did to her, she ends up getting a ride from the mysterious Gabriel, a sarcastic, ill-tempered teenager who decides to end up helping her out with a place to stay for the night. It feels like she may have overstayed her welcome, and even though she has nowhere else to go, she tries to figure out a way to convince Gabriel to take her in. All of a sudden, she wakes up to the strangest noise in the night, and finds someone completely different in the house. He claims that his name is Tom, and his personality is almost one of a child. The longer she stays in that house, the more she comes to realize that not is all as it seems, and that maybe Gabriel and Tom are actually the same person. But which one does she love more? And if they are the same person, will she do whatever it takes to make sure she gets only one of them in her life, even if it means getting rid of the other one?
This book was an interesting one for me, and while I believed that it had a supernatural element prior to reading it, going through it made me realize that not everything has an unnatural explanation. Gabriel and Tom are a prime example of Dissociative Personality Disorder, and it was interesting to see how the author would explain it in the book. Rather than making it seem like it was a disease that made people crazy, Fairfall has Caden do her research in order to understand what’s happening with Gabriel. What I didn’t like about the book was what Caden did to Tom, showing how selfish she is when it comes to what she wants. She may have been abused by Sean and almost killed by him, but what she did to Tom was completely out of line. She made promises to both Gabriel and Tom and yet she couldn’t follow through. The ending of the book really does set up the next book, and I’m really hoping that the second book comes out soon, even if it’s just to see what ends up happening once and for all.
Rated: 4/5 Stars
Blonde Ambition – Book Review
I don’t think there will ever be An A-List book that I don’t like. It’s hard to find any book in this series that I have read that I have an actual problem with. I’m so glad that Anna broke up with Ben, especially since it seemed like she was head over heels with him. There’s a difference between loving him and lusting over him, and she finally realized that before it was completely too late. Anna is so far my favorite character throughout the series, but Sam is a pretty close second. It’s a tie between those two right now, and when Sam and Anna work together, they are a force to be reckoned with.
Cammie is still the girl we love to hate, even if we can’t help but envy her body and hair. At least, I probably would if I had seen her in person. Just the way she has been described throughout the books screams sex icon, and I’m pretty sure she has been called that by quite a few characters in the book as well. We know that Cammie is hurting over the death of her mother, even if it happened when she was a little girl. She’s also hurting because it seems like her dad doesn’t take the time to actually get to know her, and would rather immerse himself in work and his other family members than her. Is that necessarily her fault? Or is it her father’s fault? I feel like it could be a little bit of both.
Dee is still a mystery to me. She can seem like a complete airhead, and then in another breath it seems like she has all this hidden wisdom inside her. It’s like she pretends to be stupid so that nobody will realize just how smart she really is. But sometimes her pretending to be dumb gets in the way of her friendships, and I think that Dee just needs to be herself with her friends if she wants these relationships to last. Sam and Cammie always look down on Dee because they think she’s a few tools short of a full set, so of course they take her for granted. It’s not right to Dee, and hopefully things will start to change.
This was mostly a brief overview of my thoughts so far of the series, but it stands to say that I thoroughly enjoy this series and I’m so glad that there are more books for me to read. I haven’t had enough of Anna and the Unholy Trinity, so bring it on!
Rated: 4/5 Stars
Sometimes Leelynn Reads 