Elizabeth Norris - Unraveling (2012)

This book started out poorly - Janelle Tenner gets hit by a truck, dies and is brought back to life by a boy in the same grade at her high school, Ben Michaels. As she is magically healed she shares his memories of her and realises he has loved her since he was 10 years old - sound familiar? It's book 1 of the Roswell series.

Then everything got interesting - radiation deaths, an explosive device counting down, earthquakes, multiverse and a murdered FBI father. It started to become a really good book and I'd actually forgiven Norris for the beginning. Until I got to the ending. That was just AWFUL.

Talk about deus ex machina.

Mysterious men from a parallel universe pop in and shoot the bad guy just in time, the same teenage bad guy who'd murdered Janelle's father and best friend. His other two friends, one of whom is Ben, are just allowed to go home to their parallel universe AFTER killing hundreds of people in Janelle's universe. Everyone just left Janelle in a remote location with the body of her best friend even though she couldn't phone for help because the city was destroyed by an earthquake and everyone was struggling to survive. Worse - Janelle just happily sits there and thinks how wonderful life is and how much she wants to live it with Ben. Hopefully the FBI found her and locked her up as an accessory to getting hundreds of people dead because she withheld so much information from them because of her "love" for Ben.

As endings go that one really sucked. What an utterly disappointing book.

Lilith Saintcrow - The Iron Wyrm Affair (2012)

The Bannon & Clare series is an interesting mix of magic and steampunk. The world is very dark, but that's usual for a Saintcrow novel. Clare is the deductive of the pair - think Sherlock Holmes. Bannon, though, is no Dr. Watson. She's a powerful sorceress in the employ of the Queen. A distant and controlled woman, intent on her duty at the expense of everything, even herself.

This series is fun - and not just because there are dragons! But, seriously, DRAGONS!!! The Iron Wyrm Affair is a search for conspirators who are killing off Mentaths, the only people with the ability to locate and stop them before they achieve their aim - taking over the Empire. The dialog is a bit naff - Saintcrow is trying for Victorian mannerisms and sounding stiff and mocking. Other than that, I really enjoyed the book. I'm so glad Saintcrow has written another strong woman character who doesn't need a man, doesn't give in to men's insecurities, doesn't give a damn what men think. That's my favourite part of her books - all the strong capable women who do what has to be done, almost without emotion, because it's the only way they survive the dark worlds.

Sadie Jones - The Uninvited Guests (2012)

The book begins in early 1900s rural England at a house named Sterne. The Torrington-Shift family are close to losing the house financially and are spending the day wallowing in the despair of oh-who-will-save-us whilst preparing for eldest daughter Emerald's birthday.

That evening, just before the party begins, there's a train accident on a nearby line and the survivors are re-routed to Sterne until the railway can bus them on their way. The family are a fairly self-involved lot and don't cope very well with having to do the right thing towards fellow human beings. Especially when the survivors bring with them someone from their mother's disreputable past who shows the family the cruelty hiding in their shallow selves.

The book was well-written, but not to my taste. I found the storyline and characters repugnant. I know that it is very easy for people to behave that badly as long as the majority are in agreement - it's how mobs turn into mass-murderers. But, I don't want to read about it. The synopsis made me believe it was a ghost story, which it is. A ghost story with a fairly severe look at how wicked and heartless humans can be.

Kelly Moore - Amber House (2012)

This is the first book in the Amber House series and was co-written with Moore's two daughters Tucker and Larkin Reed.

The premise of this book was interesting, a house that absorbed the echoes of the past that members of the family could see by touching items belonging to their ancestors. I liked the whole one-action-changes-everything idea. The theory that a relative's past choices could shift the course of future family is very real, but not often noticed in real life, except for people who are researching their ancestry.

I think if we knew enough of the past we could avoid a lot of today's problems. But, people choose to forget, and, as in this book, misfortunes keep perpetuating themselves - just like in the echoes that Sarah keeps seeing, and using, to repair her families unhappy past-present.

The alternative timeline was fun - who hasn't looked back and thought if-only-I-had-done-that-differently? This is a book that makes that if only come true.