Unbreakable by Kami Garcia

**** 1/2

From Little Brown:

I never believed in ghosts.  Until one tried to kill me.

When Kennedy Waters finds her mother dead, she doesn't realize that paranormal forces are responsible - not until mysterious identical twins Jared and Lukas Lockhart break into her room and destroy a deadly spirit sent to kill her.

Kennedy learns that her mother's death was no accident, and now she has to take her place in the Legion of the Black Dove - a secret society whose five members were all murdered on the same night, leaving the Legion in the hands of the next generation: a misfit group with unique skills.  

As the new members race to find the only weapon capable of destroying the demon, they use their individual talents to battle paranormal entities and earn their rightful place in the Legion - except for Kennedy.  

If she is truly the missing piece of the puzzle, can she stay alive long enough to find out - without losing her heart in the process?

Protect Yourself.  What you can't see can hurt you.

I'll be honest, I haven't read the Beautiful Creatures series.  I tried the first one, but never really got into it.  I've met Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl a couple of times and they are awesome, which makes me feel totally guilty for not reading their stuff, but I got my chance with Unbreakable, thanks to Little Brown.  

Unbreakable had me from the very beginning.  It's a haunting, edge-of-your-seat good time, that made it impossible for me to sleep, what with the nightmares and all.  Completely creepy and exactly the kind of book that is so fantastic this time of year.

More than that though, Kami Garcia's writing is nearly lyrical in parts and always mesmerizing.  Her characters are fun and interesting - I especially enjoyed Priest, the Hephaestus-like engineering wiz-kid.  The only thing stopping me from giving Unbreakable a five-star rating is Kennedy, the heroine of the story and even then, I can't pinpoint what about her that bothers me, but something about her character felt off to me.  Besides that one sticking point (and the unwanted bad dreams), Unbreakable is one of the most surprising books I've read this year.  

A huge thank you to Little Brown for the galley, because I don't know that I would have picked this book out for myself and that would have been a shame.      

~Shel

A Peek in the Biblio-Bin (14)

In My Mailbox is a weekly meme hosted by The Story Siren. It is a way for bloggers to share what books they have won, received for review, bought from the bookstore, borrowed from the library or friend, etc.

This week Nat gives you a Peek in the Biblio-Bin.

Big-hearted Chloe Camden is the queen of her universe until her best friend shreds her reputation and her school counselor axes her junior independent study project. Chloe is forced to take on a meaningful project in order to pass, and so she joins her school’s struggling radio station, where the other students don’t find her too queenly. Ostracized by her former BFs and struggling with her beloved Grams’s mental deterioration, lonely Chloe ends up hosting a call-in show that gets the station much-needed publicity and, in the end, trouble. She also befriends radio techie and loner Duncan Moore, a quiet soul with a romantic heart. On and off the air, Chloe faces her loneliness and helps others find the fun and joy in everyday life. Readers will fall in love with Chloe as she falls in love with the radio station and the misfits who call it home.

Ethan Wate used to think of Gatlin, the small Southern town he had always called home, as a place where nothing ever changed. Then he met mysterious newcomer Lena Duchannes, who revealed a secret world that had been hidden in plain sight all along. A Gatlin that harbored ancient secrets beneath its moss-covered oaks and cracked sidewalks. A Gatlin where a curse has marked Lena's family of powerful Supernaturals for generations. A Gatlin where impossible, magical, life-altering events happen.

Sometimes life-ending.

Together they can face anything Gatlin throws at them, but after suffering a tragic loss, Lena starts to pull away, keeping secrets that test their relationship. And now that Ethan's eyes have been opened to the darker side of Gatlin, there's no going back. Haunted by strange visions only he can see, Ethan is pulled deeper into his town's tangled history and finds himself caught up in the dangerous network of underground passageways endlessly crisscrossing the South, where nothing is as it seems.

What's in your Biblio-Bin this week?