In My Mailbox (12/14 to 12/19)

In My Mailbox was started by The Story Siren.

For Review:

The Lonely Hearts Club by Elizabeth Eulberg (Already read it and it was so fantastic! I'm really looking forward to reading more by Elizabeth!)

Penny is sick of boys and sick of dating. So she vows: no more. It's a personal choice. . .and, of course, soon everyone wants to know about it. And a few other girls are inspired. A movement is born: The Lonely Hearts Club (named after the band from Sgt. Pepper). Penny is suddenly known for her nondating ways . . . which is too bad, because there's this certain boy she can't help but like. . .

Mia the Meek by Eileen Boggess

Mia Fullerton has entered her freshman year at St. Hilary s with a goal: to lose her nickname Mia the Meek, and soar into a confident high school career. Unfortunately, her transformation is made harder by her English-teacher mom, bratty little brother, already popular nemesis, and new neighbor. Although she s prepared herself for the battle by reading Excruciatingly Shy: How to Defeat Public Fear and Become Popular, her freshman year remains a series of uphill battles. The week before school starts, Mia wakes up to discover new neighbors have moved in next door. Forced by her mother to take them her special chocolate chip cookies, Mia first encounters Tim the handsome yet seemingly arrogant oldest son of the family. Their relationship develops based on competition, from literature to the basketball court, and Mia s got her work cut out for her. School begins and Mia immediately meets with all sorts of (often humorous) challenges from having a locker right next to her arch-enemy Cassie, to being paired with Tim for science lab, to having her mom as her very own English teacher. Before she knows it, her best friend has nominated her for class president, and, what s worse, she s running against Cassie! Mia embraces her nomination when she learns that her crush, Jake Harris, has seconded it. After all, what better way to emerge from her shell? As the year goes on, Mia deals with all the things girls her age face. She becomes class president with the help of an improvised speech and unconventional catch phrase dates Jake Harris, helps lead her team in the Academic Quiz Bowl, and tries to balance her new friends with the old. In the end, Mia emerges a far different person than when she set out, though it may not be the person she had imagined that first day at St. Hilary.

Mia the Melodramatic by Eileen Boggess

Summer has finally arrived, but Mia Fullerton does not have much to celebrate. Her best friend, Lisa, is spending the summer at a Mensa camp, and her boyfriend, Tim, will be at his grandparents house in Maine. So, stuck with a choice of spending the next two months hanging out with her younger brother, Chris who has declared a prank war on her or taking a job on the stage crew at a local children s theater group, Mia chooses the lesser of two evils and begins working at Little Tyke. The moment she meets the other student members of the stage crew, Mia realizes she is not at St. Hilary s anymore. There is Zoë, a Goth punk rock singer with fifteen facial piercings; Henry, a caffeine addict with the self-declared ability to predict people s coffee preferences; and Eric, a former childhood friend who has definitely outgrown his shy ways and geeky appearance. In this sequel to the much-loved Mia the Meek, readers will again enjoy spending time with Mia Fullerton, watching as she navigates the next stage of adolescence, one humorous and memorable fiasco at a time.

Mia the Magnificent by Eileen Boggess

*I can't find a summary or cover for this ANYWHERE. So, this will have to do for now.*

Magic Under Glass by Jaclyn Dolamore ( Can't wait to read this one!)

Nimira is a music-hall performer forced to dance for pennies to an audience of leering drunks. When wealthy sorcerer Hollin Parry hires her to do a special act - singing accompaniment to an exquisite piano-playing automaton, Nimira believes it is the start of a new life. In Parry's world, however, buried secrets stir. Unsettling below-stairs rumours abound about ghosts, a mad woman roaming the halls, and of Parry's involvement in a gang of ruthless sorcerers who torture fairies for sport. When Nimira discovers the spirit of a dashing young fairy gentleman is trapped inside the automaton's stiff limbs, waiting for someone to break the curse and set him free, the two fall in love. But it is a love set against a dreadful race against time to save the entire fairy realm, which is in mortal peril.

The Returners by Gemma Malley

London teenager Will Hodge is miserable. His mother is dead, his father’s political leanings have grown radical, and his friends barely talk to him. To top it off, he’s having nightmares about things like concentration camps. Then Will notices he's being followed by a group of people who claim to know him from another time in history. It turns out they are Returners, reincarnated people who carry with them the memory of atrocities they have witnessed in the past. Will realizes that he, too, is a Returner. But something about his memories is different, and with dawning horror, Will suspects that he wasn’t just a witness to the events, he was instrumental in making them happen. Set in the near future, with the world on the verge of a new wave of ethnic cleansing, Will must choose to confront the cruelty he's known in his past lives, or be doomed to repeat it . . . again.

E-Books for review:

Inside Out by Maria V. Snyder

Keep Your Head Down. Don't Get Noticed. Or Else.

I'm Trella. I'm a scrub. One of thousands who work in the lower levels, keeping Inside clean for the Uppers. I do my job and try to avoid the Pop Cops. The Trava family who rules our world from their spacious Upper levels wants us to be docile and obedient, like sheep. To insure we behave, they send the Pop Cops to police us.

So what if I occasionally use the pipes to sneak around the Upper levels? Not like it's all that dangerous--the only neck at risk is my own.

Until a lower level prophet claims a Gateway to Outside exists. And guess who he wants to steal into the Upper levels to get the proof? You’re right. Me. I alone know every single duct, pipe, corridor, shortcut, hole and ladder of Inside. It’s suicide plain and simple. But guess who can’t let a challenge like that go unanswered? Right again. Me.

I should have just said no...

Tagged by Mara Purnhagen
Kate Morgan is just as confused as the rest of her classmates when she arrives at Cleary High to find six life-size gorillas spray painted on the side of a building. Could the culprit be one of her friends or classmates? And is the kind-of-amazing creation really vandalism, or a work of art? She's tempted to stay out of it, mostly because, as the police chief’s daughter, she's always accused of being a snitch. But when gorillas start appearing throughout the state, her investigative instincts kick in.

Now Eli, Kate’s favorite co-worker at the local coffee shop, is MIA. With her best friend, Lan, preoccupied with her own boy troubles, Kate needs to figure out some things on her own. Like why she can’t stop thinking about Eli. And what she will do when all clues about the graffiti point to someone she knows...

The Repeats:

The Dark Divine by Bree Despain (Hmm, is that CONEST bells I hear?!? Well, I'll guess you'll have to wait to find out. In the meantime, though, you can check out my review of it here.)

One ARC Tour:

Girl on the Other Side by Deborah Kerbel

Tabby Freeman and Lora Froggett go to the same school, but they live in totally opposite worlds. Tabby is rich, pretty, and the most popular girl in her class. But behind closed doors, her 'perfect' life is rapidly coming apart at the seams.

On the other side, Lora is smart, timid, and the constant target of bullies. While struggling to survive the piranha-infested halls of her school, she becomes increasingly nervous that somebody might discover the unbearable truth about what's been happening to her family.

Despite their differences, Tabby and Lora have something in common - they're both harbouring dark secrets and a lot of pain. Although they've never been friends, a series of strange events causes their lives to crash together in ways neither could have ever imagined. And when the dust finally settles and all their secrets are forced out into the light, will the girls be saved . or destroyed?

From Tundra Books:

Word Nerd by Susin Nielsen

Twelve-year-old Ambrose is a glass-half-full kind of guy. A self-described “friendless nerd,” he moves from place to place every couple of years with his overprotective mother, Irene. When some bullies at his new school almost kill him by slipping a peanut into his sandwich — even though they know he has a deathly allergy — Ambrose is philosophical. Irene, however, is not and decides that Ambrose will be home-schooled.


Alone in the evenings when Irene goes to work, Ambrose pesters Cosmo, the twenty-five-year-old son of the Greek landlords who live upstairs. Cosmo has just been released from jail for breaking and entering to support a drug habit. Quite by accident, Ambrose discovers that they share a love of Scrabble and coerces Cosmo into taking him to the West Side Scrabble Club, where Cosmo falls for Amanda, the club director. Posing as Ambrose’s Big Brother to impress her, Cosmo is motivated to take Ambrose to the weekly meetings and to give him lessons in self-defense. Cosmo, Amanda, and Ambrose soon form an unlikely alliance and, for the first time in his life, Ambrose blossoms. The characters at the Scrabble Club come to embrace Ambrose for who he is and for their shared love of words. There’s only one problem: Irene has no idea what Ambrose is up to.

In this brilliantly observed novel, author Susin Nielsen transports the reader to the world of competitive Scrabble as seen from the honest yet funny viewpoint of a boy who’s searching for acceptance and for a place to call home.

Overall: What a fantastic week. Much thanks goes to the differnt authors/publishers/ exc. that sent me these books! :)