Review: The Vanishing Girl by Laura Thalassa

*I received a copy of this from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review*

Title: The Vanishing Girl

Author: Laura Thalassa

Genre: YA, paranormal, fantasy

Publisher: Amazon Children's Publishing

Release Date: January 27, 2015

Blurb: Every night after Ember Pierce falls asleep, she disappears. She can teleport anywhere in the world—London, Paris, her crush’s bedroom—wherever her dreams lead her. Ten minutes is all she gets, and once time’s up, she returns to her bed. It's a secret she’s successfully kept for the last five years. But now someone knows.

A week after her eighteenth birthday, when frustratingly handsome Caden Hawthorne captures her, delivers her to the government, and then disappears before her eyes, Ember realizes two things: One, she is not alone. And two, people like her—teleporters—are being used as weapons.

Dragged off to a remote facility where others like her live, Ember’s forced to pair up with her former captor, Caden, to learn how to survive inside until she can escape. Only Caden’s making escape seem less and less appealing.

But even as Ember falls for the boy who got her into this mess, she knows that she is running out of time. Because the government has plans for those like her, and those plans might just cost Ember her life.

REVIEW:

The Vanishing Girl was a good read, but the romance left a bit to be desired.  As much as I love a cocky love interest that only has eyes for the main character, his movements were a little too predictable.  Caden was sweet but there were quite a few moments that just made me go "come on, seriously?".  Of course, he was constantly trying to catch Ember naked (which happened quite a bit I might add), and there were some not-so-sublte hints that he loved her.

Romance aside, however, The Vanishing Girl had a good mystery about it.  I was constantly trying to figure out exactly what was going on when Ember kept teleporting to strange/dangerous areas with only a sentence to instruct her what to do, and it wasn't the government sending her there.  Thalassa did a good job keeping everything a secret through the novel!

Other than that I didn't feel one way or the other about the book.  It featured a good heroine that didn't take anything lying down, and had a nice "evil government" feel about it. 

Review: The Astrologer's Daughter by Rebecca Lim

*I received this book from the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review*

Title: The Astrologer's Daughter

Author: Rebecca Lim

Publisher: Text Publishing

Genre:YA, Paranormal

Release Date: June 9, 2015

Blurb: Avicenna Crowe’s mother, Joanne, is an astrologer with uncanny predictive powers and a history of being stalked. Now she is missing.

The police are called, but they’re not asking the right questions. Like why Joanne lied about her past, and what she saw in her stars that made her so afraid.

But Avicenna has inherited her mother’s gift. Finding an unlikely ally in the brooding Simon Thorn, she begins to piece together the mystery. And when she uncovers a link between Joanne’s disappearance and a cold-case murder, Avicenna is led deep into the city’s dark and seedy underbelly, unaware how far she is placing her own life in danger.

REVIEW:

The mystery is intriguing, and you go through Avicenna's investigation into her mother's death.   The entire novel was a large setup to an intense ending.  However, it left the main plot unresolved.  Avicenna spends the novel worried about her missing mother, the entire plot is about what could have happened to her mother, as well as a cold case murder.  In the end the murder is solved and wrapped up but her mother isn't exactly.  Without getting into too many spoilers, it leaves it open-ended, with almost a cop-out, leading to an unsatisfactory ending.  It's not happy but not sad either.  It doesn't appear that there's going to be a second book, so what you get in book one is it.

Of course, as many YA books do, there's a love triangle.  In the beginning Avicenna is focused on Simon, who disappears for a while only to come back and sort of win her heart.  However half way through Avicenna suddenly falls for a guy she just met, Hugh.  It was odd how quickly she fell for him, and it seems rather superficial; she only ever talks about how she likes how this guy looks, and how rich he is, or how nice his car is.  She never states she likes anything else, but calls him her "dream guy".  I think the story tries to justify her feelings with her pain; she's never had anything handed to her and this is her chance to be with a rich guy that seems to like her.  No matter the reasoning, I thought less of her, and they way it's resolved in the end was rather quick and unusual.

Overall, a good mystery with some paranormal aspects to it.  The details and second mystery were what saved this book for me; the way it delved into the astrological charts and kept the story moving was what kept me reading.  That said, if you read the author's review on Goodreads it sheds a little light into what she was doing with her non-ending.  I was going to give this book a 3.5/5, but once I read her review I decided to give it a full 4/5.