Welcome to a special edition of Unfinished Friday! Today I'm featuring some books that my guest reviewer River just couldn't quite get through. Read what she has to say about each!


Daughter of the Centaurs, Kate Klimo (Goodreads)

I honestly can't believe I even tried to read this book. I looked at the cover, and despite my obnoxious optimism, even I couldn't resist judging it by its cover. Still, I read the back of the book, was mildly interested and flipped it open to begin. I hadn't even finished the first paragraph and I already knew that this particular venture was doomed. Dear blog-reader, know that it was for you that I struggled on. I waded through three more pages of the book before I gave up and simply stared blankly at the pages with a bemused sort of expression on my face. It's been a while since I tried to read this book, but I needed time to heal from the weird tense, and style of writing that the book used before writing this review. I suppose if you were a book-hipster (I really don't even know what a book-hipster is, it just sounded appropriate) you could give it a try and perhaps enjoy it, but it's definitely not your regular novel....


The Pledge, Kimberly Derting (Goodreads)

"Strangely unremarkable for a promising book" would be my tag-line if I were a famous person who you would see quoted on the back of this novel (well, if publishers actually put criticism on the back of books...). I actually read the majority of this book, but even if it wasn't a tortuous read, it wasn't terribly enjoyable either. The setting was a weird mash-up of the middle-east and some post-apocalyptic world; the characters were tired; and the plot, however hard it tried, was rough at the edges, but thinning in the middle. I had less than a quarter of the book left to read before I was distracted by a hot football player. And in the books defense, he was really hot--I'm pretty sure this guy would have distracted me from finishing the last Harry Potter book even. But, even after my crush had died down, I didn't have the desire to return to the book in the slightest. In the end, it was just simply a boring story.


Glitch, Heather Anastasiu (Goodreads)

"Do, done, did" would be the tag line for this book, because it's short, catchy and it makes just enough sense that readers would be left wondering what the heck I meant by it. What I actually mean by it, is that this book's been done before. It's another post-apocalyptic world where everyone is controlled by little brain chips and some overarching leader with a complex and self-confidence problems. I got about a quarter of the way into this book, before it struck me that even I had written a story just like this when I was younger. Maybe I'm jaded and it's just too juvenile for me, but I ran out of interest before I realized the book hadn't even created interest in the first place. It wasn't that it was poorly written like the Centaur book, but it was boring like The Pledge. I ended up passing it on to my sister who practically swallows books whole (actually, she ate ten pages of my copy of "Anna Karenina" because she was mad at me once...), and even she couldn't summon the interest to read it.

So there you go! What do you think of these books? Have you read them? Did you like them?

Have a great Friday!

I read a ton of books that I don't ever finish for various reasons, and I never review them on this blog. But that's not fair! Maybe you guys want to read them, or want a warning not to read them. If you want to see what other books I started, but didn't finish, here's Unfinished Friday (1), Unfinished Friday (2), Unfinished Friday (3), and Unfinished Friday (4). As always, here's my preface to Unfinished Friday:

I rate a book kind of like a movie. I don't see R rated movies. Never. So I won't read "R" rated books. My only real problem is with the "F" word, or very heavy usage of unnecessary profanity(And I know we all have different definitions of "unnecessary"). If the story is good, and the profanity is something that really adds to the story, then I'm fine. But some authors use profanity flippantly, and I just can't stand that.

I don't believe that books should be suffered through. It's one thing to finish a book in emotional turmoil (some of the best books do that) But I don't believe they should leaving you feeling "dirty." I'd much rather write a "why I didn't finish" post and have someone else read it and love it, than write I "I really wish I hadn't read this" post and write a negative review that makes someone never touch the book.

And some of these books weren't inappropriate, they just didn't hold my interest for some reason or another.

I am under no authority to condemn a book. This is all just my opinion, please understand that I respect all books and authors. There are so many good books out there! I'm not going to suffer by skipping a few. I'm constantly branching out my horizons. But, in doing so, I've found genre's I don't like, just like everyone else. Some people don't like Sci-fi (crazy fools!), I don't like angsty books.

These are books that I haven't finished from March 2011 to present. I won't go into a ton of detail, but here they are:


The Scorpio Races, Maggie Stiefvater (Goodreads)

Meet the cause of my current reading slump. In a word, this book was SLOW. I said in my review of Shiver that Maggie's writing was so fantastic, her stories "could be about characters watching paint dry and I would be absolutely hooked." This book proved to me that this isn't quite true. You'd think man-eating horses would be pretty interesting, but this book DRAGGED along. I felt like I was reading the same thing over and over and I got tired of it. I was grateful it was a tour book, and had no choice but to send it on after a week. However, it has put me into a brain-fog throughout all this week as well. I don't think I'll be picking it up again.


Double Helix, Nancy Werlin (Goodreads)

Some of you may remember my vehement dislike of Werlin's Extraordinary. I wanted to give Werlin another go, so I picked this one up. I am sad to say that I was unable to get over my previous biases. The story felt predictable, and it just brought Extraordinary back into my mind (despite the fact that the books are very different). I put it down for no other reason than this, and I don't know when/if I'll read a Werlin book again. I feel petty.


Anna Dressed in Blood, Kendare Blake (Goodreads)
Fury, Elizabeth Miles (Goodreads)
The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer, Michelle Hodkin (Goodreads)

I'm clumping these three together because I didn't finish all of them for the same reason. Anna had the F-word used very casually twice in just the second chapter. The main character used it as an adjective rather frequently, so I stopped after 50 pages.

Fury begins with teens going to a very stereotypical teen party, which automatically gave me a bad feeling. After one of the PBR authors told me that it had numerous uses of the F-word, I decided that I wasn't going to keep going.

I'll admit that I didn't even start Mara Dyer. After seeing on PBR that there were 14 F-words and an [un]healthy smattering of other such obscenities, I decided not even to go there. I know this book is very highly anticipated, and I know the story is supposed to be brilliant, but I think it's better if I don't even try.

Nothing personal to any of these books. I just don't like casual or too-frequent use of the F-word.



So there you go. Please remember that I am not trying to attack these books. I hope that if one of them sounds interesting to you that you will pick it up. But I'm a reviewer, and I feel it's my job to not just let you know about the books I liked, but also about the books that I liked too little to finish.

Have a great Friday!

I read a ton of books that I don't ever finish for various reasons, and I never review them on this blog. But that's not fair! Maybe you guys want to read them, or want a warning not to read them. If you want to see what other books I started, but didn't finish, here's Unfinished Friday (1), Unfinished Friday (2), and Unfinished Friday (3). As always, here's my preface to Unfinished Friday:

I rate a book kind of like a movie. I don't see R rated movies. Never. So I won't read "R" rated books. My only real problem is with the "F" word, or very heavy usage of unnecessary profanity(And I know we all have different definitions of "unnecessary"). If the story is good, and the profanity is something that really adds to the story, then I'm fine. But some authors use profanity flippantly, and I just can't stand that.

I don't believe that books should be suffered through. It's one thing to finish a book in emotional turmoil (some of the best books do that) But I don't believe they should leaving you feeling "dirty." I'd much rather write a "why I didn't finish" post and have someone else read it and love it, than write I "I really wish I hadn't read this" post and write a negative review that makes someone never touch the book.

And some of these books weren't inappropriate, they just didn't hold my interest for some reason or another.

I am under no authority to condemn a book. This is all just my opinion, please understand that I respect all books and authors. There are so many good books out there! I'm not going to suffer by skipping a few. I'm constantly branching out my horizons. But, in doing so, I've found genre's I don't like, just like everyone else. Some people don't like Sci-fi (crazy fools!), I don't like angsty books.

These are books that I haven't finished from November 2010 to present. I won't go into a ton of detail, but here they are:


Trickster's Girl, by Hilari Bell (GoodReads)
I just wasn't getting into this book. The writing felt a little stiff and awkward, and I felt very little motivation to pick it up. It was causing a clog in my reading pile, so I just decided to stop.


The Floating Islands, by Rachel Neumeier  (GoodReads)
Pretty much the same story with this one. I received it on a tour and just didn't have enough time to finish it before it needed to be mailed out. But from what I read so far, I just didn't feel invested enough in the characters to be in a hurry to track this book down again anytime soon.


Darkness Becomes Her, Kelly Keaton (GoodReads)
This book has been getting a lot of buzz around the blogosphere. Unfortunately, it had a little too much profanity for my taste. If I'm remembering correctly, the main character used the F* word as a way of describing a dress(?). And myriad other curses. Far too casual for me.


Compulsion, by Heidi Ayarbe (GoodReads)
I really wanted to read this book. I don't know if any of you know this, but I actually have a [very, very mild] form of this type of OCD (so mild, it really isn't OCD, just O.). It's one of the reasons I'm a math-major. I'm obsessed with numbers (especially 2, 7, and 3. Whenever I use the microwave whatever I time I put in must end in 7), but I'm not "compulsed" by them (I'll still eat the food if it didn't end in 7 seconds). Unfortunately (and I was pretty sure this was going to happen) there was a lot of profanity in this book. Too much for me. Major bummer.

So there you go. Please remember that I am not trying to attack these books. I hope that if one of them sounds interesting to you that you will pick it up. But I'm a reviewer, and I feel it's my job to not just let you know about the books I liked, but also about the books that I liked too little to finish.

Have a great Friday!

Release Date: January 6th, 2011
Genre:  Mystery, Teen Drama, Suicide
Publisher: Quercus
Pages: 374
Rating: Not finished, no rating assigned
Goodreads Page: Click here
Summary: 

The same questions whirl round and round in my head:
What does he want from me?
How could I have let this happen?
AM I GOING TO DIE?

17-year-old Grace wakes up in a white room, with a table, pens and paper - and no clue how she got here.

As Grace pours her tangled life onto the page, she is forced to remember everything she's tried to forget. There's falling hopelessly in love with the gorgeous Nat, and the unravelling of her relationship with her best friend Sal. But there's something missing. As hard as she's trying to remember, is there something she just can't see?

Grace must face the most important question of all. Why is she here?

Review: You may have noticed that I did not give this book a rating because I did not finish it. I usually don't review books I don't finish, but I have a few things I'd still like to say, especially since so many people want to read this book. However, I think these three things (since they don't have anything to do with story line, per say) are still warranted.

1. This book is VERY British. I had a really hard time understanding what Grace was saying because she used so much British slang. The ARC I read seemed like it had come from the UK, so I don't know if any of that will change when it is published in the US.


2. Grace is not likeable. Sure, maybe I could be sympathetic towards her and her unfortunate situation. But I could. not. like her. She's an underage-alcoholic, she sleeps with anything that will hold still long enough, she's suicidal, she's bitter and nasty, and she swears like a sailor, which brings me to my next point.


3. It is EXTREMELY profane. This is what stopped me from reading it. At the beginning you only see the f-word about once every twenty pages, but after you hit page 100 you start seeing it ALL THE TIME. I can't read a book like that. I was just flinching all the time, and it distracted me.

If neither of those bother you(and the British thing didn't really bother me, it just made the book hard to understand), then you'll probably like Entangled. It has a FASCINATING story with a great ending. I had someone give me a plot summary, because even though I skimmed the last 200+ pages, I had NO idea what was happening. This is not a book you can skim. Very convoluted. I can see this being a movie, and a really good one.

I read a ton of books that I don't ever finish for various reasons, and I never review them on this blog. But that's not fair! Maybe you guys want to read them, or want a warning not to read them. If you want to see what other books I started, but didn't finish, here's Unfinished Friday (1), and Unfinished Friday (2). In #2 I describe why I have such a strong issue with profanity.

These are books that I haven't finished over the last year(from October '09 to present). I won't go into a ton of detail, but here they are:

A Touch Mortal
I stopped this one at page 20 because I had read 3 F-words by then, along with a smattering of other curses. Not necessary at all. But I really want to know what this was about. Anyone who's read it want to give me a synopsis?





Accomplice
Casual swearing, and a story that wasn't interesting enough to make it worth it.




Rising Shadow
This was a self-published book, and while I liked the pretense, it needed a firm editor's hand. Too many writing issues for me to spend the time to finish.




The Mark
I really, really wanted to enjoy this. Really. But the writing sounded liked something I could have written. It was very 1st-draft-esque. I stopped after 50 pages because I knew I wasn't going to be able to give it a good review. However, I do intend to pick it up again later. Maybe it's just because I'd been reading some really heavy hitters at the time.




Numbers
Stopped because of profanity. However, I had a trusted source ask me to give it another go, so I'm going to give it another go when I have time.



The House of Dead Maids
I did not know this was a Wuthering Heights prequel when I picked it up. I strongly dislike WH, and so it made reading the measley 160 pages of this book a chore. Someday, when I'm more mature, I'll realize that this book is NOT Wuthering Heights and I'll give it another try.


Please keep in mind that I am not trying to "attack" these books IN ANY WAY. I have often said that I believe that every book has a place, even if it's not on my shelf.

Derby Girl (Now called "Whip It"), Shauna Cross
Secrets of My Suburban Life, Lauren Baratz-Logsted

Both unfinished due to profanity and just not being my style of book.

Now, Jo asked a wonderful question when I said that I wouldn't stand for profanity. Her question: Why?

I rate a book kind of like a movie. I don't see R rated movies, ever, so I won't read "R" rated books. My only real problem is with the "F" word, or very heavy usage of unncessary profanity(things that don't add to the story at all). If the story is good, I will tolerate one "F", but if it's not, I'm done. With Skinned I went through 3 before I finally put it down.

And I think maybe I should state that I didn't not finish all of these books just this week. These are books that I haven't finished over the last 18 months. This will probably be my last "Unfinished Friday" for a while, because these are the last of the books I didn't finish. I usually stick with a book. And if I do set it down for reasons other than profanity, I'll probably pick it back up later.

I don't believe that books should be suffered through, or that they should leaving you feeling "dirty." I'd much rather write a "why I didn't finish" post and have someone else read it and love it, than write I "I really wish I hadn't read this" post and write a negative review that makes someone never touch the book.

Plus, there are so many good books out there! I'm not going to suffer by skipping a few. I'm constantly branching out my horizons. But, in doing so, I've found genre's I don't like, just like everyone else. Some people don't like Sci-fi (crazy fools!), I don't like angsty books.

All right, now I read a ton of books that I don't ever finish for various reasons, and I never review them on this blog. But that's not fair! Maybe you guys want to read them, or want a warning not to read them. Either way, I'm going to start posting about books I didn't finish. I won't go into a ton of detail, but here are some: