Book Review: Splintered by A.G. Howard

Splintered by A.G. Howard

Published: January 1, 2013

Publisher: Amulet Books

Age Demographic: YA Fantasy

Pages: 384

For sixteen years, Alyssa Gardner has lived with the stigma of being descended from Alice Liddell—the real life inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s famed novel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. But cruel jokes about dormice and tea parties can’t compare to the fact that Alyssa hears the whispers of bugs and flowers... the same quirk which sent her mother to a mental institution years before.

When her mother takes a turn for the worse and the whispers grow too strong for Alyssa to bear, she seeks the origins of their family curse. A set of heirlooms and a moth tied to an unusual website lead Alyssa and her gorgeous best friend / secret crush, Jeb, down the rabbit hole into the real Wonderland, a place more twisted and eerie than Lewis Carroll ever let on.

There, creepy counterparts of the original fairytale crew reveal the purpose for Alyssa’s journey, and unless she fixes the things her great-great-great grandmother Alice put wrong, Wonderland will have her head.

To Purchase Splintered:  Amazon

Splintered is a deliciously engrossing beautifully warped re-telling of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland written by Carol Lewis. Grotesquely errie and beautifully marred, this epic journey into the madness of a wickedly wonderful and beguiling Wonderland, will have readers riveted to their seats until the last page has been turned. Filled with gorgeous imagery, stunning prose, and amazing world building this is a fantasy that is sure to entice the child in anyone. From beginning to end, it is stunningly beguiling and fantastically captivating. A.G. Howard has taken such a fantastical magical world and spun it into something hauntingly dark, edgey, and simply amazing.

The imagery and all of the wonderful mystical elements that made Alice's Adventures in Wonderland so visually stunning are ever present in this mondern re-telling. Wonderland is a fascinatingly dangerous world full of dark intrigue, daring adventure, and incredible suspsense and mystery. Dark and vividly haunting, Splintered, is filled with secrets and answers to hidden questions, a deep seeded family curse, and many of the whimsical characters that made Alice's Adventures in Wonderland so appealing to readers as a child.

It is a wonderfully delicious mad read that will not disappoint even the most hardcore fantasy reader. It is truly an entrancing magical story that brings so many dark agendas and mysterious secrets to life. They have this beautiful way of dancing on the pages before the readers eyes, drawing them in, and captivating them with their intrigue. This beguiling world is intricately woven and beautifully descriptive and alive with so much dark rich haunting energy that sparks to life. It's dark, gritty, and terrifying in all of the right Wonderland should be. It is rich in character development, originality, and compelling plot twists that will have any fan of fantasy cheering.

Splintered is an unpredictable fantastical new young adult debut novel full of wonder and so many unexpected suspsenseful twists and turns that is sure to wow! It is a book that is sure to mystify any reader. There is an amazing mystical power to this story, that is sure to take readers on a magical journey they won't soon forget. It is sure to leave them both thrilled and echanted. Splintered is such a delectable treat to any fantasy lover.

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A.G. Howard is most at home when weaving the melancholy and macabre into settings and scenes, twisting the expected into the unexpected. She was inspired to write SPLINTERED while working at a school library. She always wondered what would’ve happened had the subtle creepiness of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland taken center stage, and she hopes her darker and funkier tribute to Carroll will inspire readers to seek out the stories that won her heart as a child.

A.G.’s pastimes are reading, rollerblading, gardening, and family vacations which often include impromptu side trips to 18th century graveyards or condemned schoolhouses to appease her overactive muse.

Her debut YA fantasy, SPLINTERED, a dark Alice in Wonderland spinoff, is slated for release *Fall 2012 by Amulet.

Book Review: Pretty Girl-13 by Liz Coley

Pretty Girl-13 by Liz Coley

Published: March 19, 2013

Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books

Age Demographic: YA Contemporary Mystery

Pages: 352

Reminiscent of the Elizabeth Smart case, Pretty Girl-13 is a disturbing and powerful psychological mystery about a girl who must piece together the story of her kidnapping and captivity.

Angie Chapman was thirteen years old when she ventured into the woods alone on a Girl Scouts camping trip. Now she's returned home…only to find that it's three years later and she's sixteen-or at least that's what everyone tells her.

What happened to the past three years of her life?

Angie doesn't know.

But there are people who do-people who could tell Angie every detail of her forgotten time, if only they weren't locked inside her mind. With a tremendous amount of courage, Angie embarks on a journey to discover the fragments of her personality, otherwise known as her "alters." As she unearths more and more about her past, she discovers a terrifying secret and must decide: When you remember things you wish you could forget, do you destroy the parts of yourself that are responsible?

Liz Coley's alarming and fascinating psychological mystery is a disturbing-and ultimately empowering-page-turner about accepting our whole selves, and the healing power of courage, hope, and love.

To Purchase Pretty Girl-13 by Liz Coley: Amazon

Pretty Girl-13 is a disturbing emotionally gripping young adult novel, that will break reader's hearts. Full of painful mystery and intrigue, it is one of the year's most touching and heart breaking stories told. Liz Coley introduces readers to a world, so tragic and filled with frightening despair, that it almost has nowhere else to go but up with the power of hope, love, and strength of oneself. She doesn't let her audience down, by introducing a wonderfully beautiful and painfully scared broken young girl, who has to find a way to piece back together the fabric of her mangled psyche. It is both harrowing and tremendously fascinating.

The strength, that Angie possesses and the depth of her character is extremely complex, creating the portrait of such a gorgeous complicated girl trying to exist in an equally disturbing world of suffering and confusion. This is a novel that touches on many dark elements that plague reality and brings them to life in such a gorgeous horrific way that readers can relate to. For Angie, life isn't easy as she tries to stitch together the pieces of her mind that are frayed, worn, and damaged too make them whole again. The problem with this is, the horribly terrifying dark secret that she unearths. The devil lies in the details, it seems as she has to decide that in remembering the terrible things that she would like to forget, will she ultimately have to destroy the parts of herself that are responsible for them? It's a deep soul-searching dilemma that she will have to dig down deep within herself to summon up the emotional strength to deal with.

Liz Coley has penned such an incredibly powerfully emotionally captivating and ultimately disturbing psychological mystery that is sure to wow many readers. Emotionally empowering, full of love, hope, pain, misery, and self-discovery, Coley socks it to readers like a punch in the gut. It will leave them reeling with so many questions and a desire to seek out the answers, as this is such an incredibly poingant and extremely unputdownable novel of the year! Filled with the healing power of courage and self-acceptance, this is a book that will absolutely take readers breath away.

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Liz Coley writes fiction for teens and for the teen in you.

Her first published work was science fiction short stories, published in Cosmos magazine and several anthologies.

Self-published YA novel "Out of Xibalba" features a contemporary teenager thrown back to ancient Mayan times. "The story starts when the world ends."

Upcoming "Pretty Girl-13" from HarperCollins will be released in at least ten languages and audiobook."There are secrets you can't even tell yourself."

Liz lives in Cincinnati, Ohio with her husband, her teenaged daughter, a snoring dog, and a limping old cat. When she's not involved in writing-related activities, she can be found sewing, baking, shooting photos, playing tennis, and singing.

Liz loves reading aloud.