2nd Blog Anniversary/ 18th Birthday Celebration Day 1: Guest Post by J.A. Huss

JA Huss Fangirls on her Favorite Paranormal Authors

When Brooklynn asked to be part of her blogaversary I was like, hell yeah!  I’m an author first these days, but I’m also a pretty hard-core book blogger, so I know this anniversary stuff is sort of monumental in the blogging world.  And since Brooklynn likes paranormal books, I thought it would be fun to talk about the ones I fangirl over.  I’d stand in line to get signed copies of these at Bookbash or make a special trip to a con in order to meet the author.

OK, my first fangirl moment goes to Laini Taylor, the author of Daughter of Smoke and Bone and Days of Blood and Starlight.  I’m anxiously waiting for the third book, Dreams of Gods and Monsters.  I read DOSB when it first came out back in 2011.  I was captivated by the first half of the book, but the second half… I was like eh.  But I still enjoyed the book enough to pick up the DOBS when it came out in 2012. 

Since it had been a (very long) one year wait for book two, I read book one again. And for some reason, the second half of the book was not so annoying. In fact, I sorta loved it.  And then when I actually started reading DOBS, I just fell in love with this story.  I loved all the things that drove me crazy in the first one.  Plus, I think the plot was much stronger in book two.  I am like super stoked to read book three when it releases in April 2014.

This trilogy has angels and demons, which I love when they’re done in a very unconventional way like this, and it really has some pretty prose. Normally I’m not a fan of pretty prose, but Taylor’s style just makes those words flow. She’s able to use the words, their syllables, and the beats in the sentence to weave them together so they roll off the tongue in your mind, it’s just really pretty. Her take on the whole good and evil thing is something I quite like – namely, that there’s not much difference.  I write a lot about this in my own angels and demons science fiction series, I Am Just Junco.  Taylor and I do very similar things with his trope – play with the notion that there’s no such thing as good and bad when you’re at war, because it’s all based on perspective.

DOSB Trilogy makes you think, it’s well written, it’s original, and it’s captivating.  I love it.

The second one is the Shatter Me series by Tahereh Mafi. I won this book in a blogger contest in January and it sat on my desk for months.  It had a pretty cover and I ran a few contests of my own that had a book of choice option, and people kept picking his book. So I thought, what the hell, I have it on my desk, I should just read it.

This book had me on page one.  ONE.  It was so bizarre with the strikethroughs, the erratic sentences (which I LOVE) and (again) unconventional storytelling.  I adored everything about the character building of Juliette.  And the worked building in the beginning was absolutely brilliant.  Once again, the trope of what is good and what it evil rears its ugly head. You think you know who’s good – but then there’s this guy named WARNER! 

I fangirled hard over this book dude.  Like Hard.  He even gets his own novella between books one and two (Destroy Me), and I did enjoy that, but really it was book two, Unravel Me, that hooked me to this series.  Some of the later world building in Shatter Me was not so good, so this book was not as perfect as DOSB, but still, I got hooked on Warner and forgot all about everything else.  So it hardly mattered.

These two series are really the only one’s I’m hardcore waiting to finish. I have lots of books and series that I like, but not many that will make me want to read them more than once. I fully plan on reading all the books in each series a third time before the final book is released.

So there you go.  Welcome to Brooklynn’s Anniversary week and I hope you enjoyed my fangirl moments!  If you like paranormal books and have not yet read these two fantastic representatives of the genre, I urge you to find the time before the final books are released next year.

Thanks a bunch for having me on your blog, Booklynn!  :)

-Giveaway-

Rules:

• Open to anybody 17+
• International . 
• Giveaway can end suddenly and without notice without ANY fault to Celestial Review or authors who provided the prizes.
• Any winner deemed "unworthy" of the prize(s) due to cheating or lying in entries will be removed from the winners list and a new winner will immediately be chosen, or in the case a winner does not step forward to claim their prize within 48 hours, a new winner can and will be chosen without notice.

I do check the entries, and I will consult the authors on any entry that involves them! Thanks so much J.A. Huss for providing this wonderful guest post and for providing a prize for this giveaway!

There are going to be multiple winners and no choice. I will pick winners according to the order the prizes are listed. September 26 will be the day I giveaway 2 boxes of books (one YA, one Mature) and a pack of swag. Each prize will get a couple of bookmarks and a Breedmate tattoo from Lara Adrian. 

Hope you come back! Tomorrow is a spotlight from author Lisa Eugene!

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