Book Review: WANT by Stephanie Lawton

Title: Want

Author: Stephanie Lawton

Publisher: InkSpell Publishing (June 7, 2012)

Format: eBook Novel

Source: Publisher

Genre: Young Adult

Goodreads

Description: Julianne counts the days until she can pack her bags and leave her old-money, tradition-bound Southern town where appearance is everything and secrecy is a way of life. A piano virtuoso, she dreams of attending a prestigious music school in Boston. Failure is not an option, so she enlists the help of New England Conservatory graduate Isaac Laroche.

Julianne can’t understand why Isaac suddenly gave up Boston’s music scene to return to the South. He doesn’t know her life depends on escaping it before she inherits her mother’s madness. Isaac knows he must resist his attraction to a student ten years his junior, but loneliness and jealousy threaten his resolve.

Their indiscretion at a Mardi Gras ball—the pinnacle event for Mobile’s elite—forces their present wants and needs to collide with sins of the past.

Will Julianne accept the help she’s offered and get everything she ever wanted, or will she self-destruct and take Isaac down with her?

Review: Stephanie Lawton’s Want is a touching and dramatic story.

A young piano virtuoso, Julianne has her sights on the New England Conservatory. She wants nothing else than to attend school there and get away from her abusive home in Mobile, Alabama. But when her piano instructor suffers a stroke months before her big audition, she doesn’t know what she’ll do. Then, her instructor’s nephew starts teaching her. Isaac is mysterious, broody, and represents everything she wants. But her needs may cause her self-destruction, and she might take Isaac with her, if she can’t pull herself together before it is too late.

Want has many elements I enjoyed about it. The characters are dynamic, and their interactions are believable. The interaction between Julianne and her brother and Julianne and Dave are fantastic. The dialogue is perfectly young adult and delightful. The descriptions are beautiful and lyrical. Some of my favorite scenes were the music ones when Julianne is discovering how to play with passion beyond precision. This novel should come with a soundtrack. Although the plot was dramatic, something felt off to me while reading it. Perhaps it was a lack of tension. Maybe it was a pacing issue. This novel needed more oomph.

Even though I enjoyed reading this novel, I just wanted to love Want by Stephanie Lawton more.

Three Bookworms = I liked it!

TANGLED TIDES by Karen Amanda Hooper

Title: Tangled Tides

Author: Karen Amanda Hooper

Publisher: Rhemalda Publishing (November 25)

Format: eARC

Source: Publisher

To Purchase: Amazon  

Description: Yara Jones doesn’t believe in sea monsters—until she becomes one.

When a hurricane hits her island home and she wakes up with fins, Yara finds herself tangled up in an underwater world of mysterious merfolk and secretive selkies. Both sides believe Yara can save them by fulfilling a broken promise and opening the sealed gateway to their realm, but they are battling over how it should be done. The selkies want to take her life. The merfolk want something far more precious.

Treygan, the stormy-eyed merman who turned Yara mer, will stop at nothing and sacrifice everything to protect his people—until he falls for Yara. The tides turn as Yara fights to save herself, hundreds of sea creatures, and the merman who has her heart. She could lose her soul in the process—or she might open the gateway to a love that’s deeper than the oceans.

Young Adult fans of Mermaids, Selkies, Sirens and Gorgons will love this tale of the sacrifice one makes for genuine love. Love that could be lost at any moment to the ever-changing tides.

Review: Karen Amanda Hooper’s Tangled Tides will make readers wish they lived under the sea.

Yara’s eighteenth birthday isn’t about turning into an adult, but a monster. She’s transformed into a mermaid, and that’s only the beginning of what she discovers within our realm. Selkies, Sirens, and Gorgons also have a place, and she’s caught in the middle of being herself and saving sea monster-kind. Then, there is Treygan and Rownan. Two brothers who need her, but only one can have her. Yara has to discover what she is willing to sacrifice or they’ll all be doomed.

The beginning of Tangled Tides starts a bit slow for me and is a little confusing jumping in and out of three different points of view, but quickly the confusion clears up. Tangled Tides is an ingenious tale combining Greek myths and sea monsters, such as mermaids, selkies, etc. The characters swoop the reader up into their lives. Some parts brought smiles, laughter, and tears. I want to be a mermaid, then a siren, even a gorgon sounds pretty cool. Hooper unveils this magnificent world she created, and I want to live in it.

Despite the slight hiccups in the beginning, Tangled Tides by Karen Amanda Hooper has caught me by hook, line, and sinker. I can’t wait to delve below the sea in book two.