Review: Someone Else's Life

Author: Katie Dale

Pages: 485

Publisher: Random House Children's Books

Source: NetGalley (Thank you!)

Synopsis: When 17-year-old Rosie's mother, Trudie, dies from Huntington's Disease, her pain is intensified by the knowledge that she has a fifty percent chance of inheriting the crippling disease herself. Only when Rosie tells her mother's best friend, "Aunt Sarah," that she is going to test for the disease does Sarah, a midwife, reveal that Trudie wasn't her real mother after all. Rosie was swapped at birth with a sickly baby who was destined to die.

Devastated, Rosie decides to trace her real mother, joining her ex-boyfriend on his gap year travels, to find her birth mother in California. But all does not go as planned. As Rosie discovers yet more of her family's deeply buried secrets and lies, she is left with an agonizing decision of her own, one which will be the most heart breaking and far-reaching of all.

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Someone Else's Life was one of those books that completely surprised me. A lot of drama happens in it, so much more than you could imagine based on the synopsis and I got a different story than the one I was expecting. That's not a bad thing. I did think the storyline was really unique and I seldom read book like it.

There's not much I can say about the book without spoiling it, so this review will probably be a lot shorter than usual.

Character wise, I found I didn't have as much of a strong relation to the characters as you'd hope to have in such an emotional story. It wasn't as much a fault of the story than the fact that I have never experienced anything close to what any one of the characters goes through. (I'm so lucky.) They have to deal with so much and I really enjoyed reading about their thoughts and reactions. We meet the characters at a time of great difficulty so the characters all make many mistakes or just show off their imperfections. It's great because they're so real, but at the same time it's a bit heavy to read.

This book is not a light, amusing read. A lot happens that will make you think, and the atmosphere within is very gloomy at times. It shows a part of life that is the reality for some people who have to deal with genetic diseases. Frankly, it was pretty hard to read at times because there was no clear answer to the characters' problems. The situation was a tangled mess, which turned out to be surprisingly reflective of life. The story felt pretty believable. There were some events that were really unlikely to happen, but overall everything that happened has the possibility of happening in real life. That helped with the believability of the story.

I read this book while I was in a pretty bad reading slump. This kind of meant that I didn't read very much or very frequently, so it took me longer than usual to read the book and there was pauses in between reading. That being said, while I did enjoy the concept and how the story was handled, nothing really sparked for me. It may have been my mood while reading but I didn't feel compelled to just keep reading till the end. I wouldn't describe this book as a page turner.

Overall, the story will always stick with me, plus I feel a little bit more educated after reading Someone Else's Life. I think it's a pretty good contemporary read and I like that it informs readers about Huntington's Disease, something I had never heard of before. I liked it, 3.5 stars,

*** & 1/2 *

Review: Allegiance

Author: Cayla Kluver
Pages: 490
Publisher: HarlequinTeen
Source: Netgalley (Thank you!)
Sequel to: Legacy
Synopsis: An eighteen-year-old queen in love with the enemy as their countries pass the point of no return...


 Bound to a man she cannot love, Queen Alera of Hytanica must forget Narian, the young man who holds her heart. For Narian is destined to conquer Hytanica at the behest of his master, the powerful magic-user known as the Overlord. Alera doesn't truly believe Narian will fight against Hytanica-until Cokyrian troops attack with Narian commanding the charge.


 Faced with the greatest betrayal a heart can know, Alera must set aside personal feelings and lead her kingdom through its darkest time. And when all hope, will and courage seem lost, she must find strength and remember that even the blackest night must have a dawn....

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Since getting an ereader for Christmas I've vowed to try e-books and Netgalley. The first book I was approved to read and have read is Allegiance by Cayla Kluver, the sequel to Legacy, which I absolutely adored.

Cayla's series is my guilty pleasure. Once I start a book I can't stop reading it. The magic, the world, the danger... It's all so enticing for me. I'm not a huge fantasy fan but Alera's world is one of my favorites to visit.

At almost 500 pages the book feels very complete. There is a certain story being told and it ends at the end of the book. You can tell however, that the overall storyline is not over. I never found that the story dragged. While every page wasn't filled with main events, I loved reading about every aspect of Hytanica and Alera's bickers with Steldor or her struggles with learning how to be Queen. Little by little the plot picked up until the satisfying end.

I like Cayla's writing style a lot. I felt like it's detailed without being boring and the writing is fun for me to read since it reflects Alera's upbringing. The words aren't always those of casual and everyday use so I found that fun. It's great voice.

The story itself has a bit of everything and it works. There's romance for the romance fans, war for the action fans, mystery for the mystery fans, and etc. There are definite themes I get from the writing (sexism is one of them) and I'm curious to see how Cayla will wrap it up.

Now on to my favorite part of the story: the characters. One of my English teachers once said that to love a book, you must love the characters. This has been true for every series I've ever adored.

This series has some of the most well developed characters I've ever read. Every character has a different side to them and they all felt so real. I need that in a story to get credibility, but this was something else. It feels like Cayla has this brilliant ability to see characters as people and so she writes all the layers of them.

Alera, for example, is our protagonist. She's different from the other girls in Hytanica. She's a bit more independent, a bit more stubborn. But she's NOT a warrior queen. She's not as independent or as resourceful as she could be. She lets people protect her. Though her character desires true equality of genders, she never really does much about it. This would be infuriating except for the fact that it's more real for Alera to desire something like that but not know what it means in a society where men are dominant, than to be some crazy warrior queen. She's taking steps and maturing. She makes rash decisions, but there are also moments where she shows true strength. I'm not sure if I've explained this well but the complexity is one of my favorite things about this book. Every character has it.

All the good stuff being considered, there is one thing I don't like and that is entirely up to my personal preferences. There is a love triangle and I don't think it feels clichéd here since it's needed for the plot. My issue is that I'm supporting the guy that's going to lose. Well, I assume by reading Allegiance he will lose. There's still hope, right? Anyway, that makes me sad because I really like this character, and his growth. He's definitely not perfect but I can see him being a good match for Alera if he got the chance. This isn't really a complaint against the book, it's more something I wish would happen. At the same time it does factor into how much I enjoyed Allegiance. I'm not going to hate the series now or never read the sequel, it's just my one little nitpicky complaint.

All in all, I like this series a lot. Allegiance caters to all my tastes and it's a real page turner. I liked it even better than Legacy and I'm going to be sad to read the end of this series. It's very hard to review Allegiance since there's so much in it, but I'll end off with just encouraging readers to give the series a try. 4.5 stars,

**** & 1/2 *