Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton

Rebel of the Sands wasn't on my original book list. In fact, I was walking through the library on my way out from picking up a couple of books on my list when the title stopped me in my tracks. Does that ever happen to you? You don't mean to look, in fact you purposefully avert your eyes from the bookshelves so you don't end up at the library or bookstore for hours at a time... You know... because your family needs to eat dinner and there's laundry to do or you're late for work. But this one caught me, snagged my eye and I suddenly found my feet taking me right to it.

This book is great. It has a sci-fi/fantasy feel, which I don't usually go for but I decided to go for it anyway. In it's place I've removed Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (which turned out to be something I dropped after the first five or six pages due to explicit material).

So... Rebel in the Sands... the front cover reads:

Mortals rule the desert nation of Miraji, but mythical beasts still roam the wild and remote areas, and rumor has it that somewhere djinn still perform their magic. For humans, it's an unforgiving place, especially if you're poor, orphaned or female.
Almani Al'Hiza is all three. She's a gifted gunslinger with perfect aim, but she can't shoot her way out of Dustwalk, the backcountry town where she's destined to wind up wed or dead.
Then she meets Jin, a rakish foreigner, in a shooting contest, and sees him as the perfect escape route. But though she's spent years dreaming of leaving Dustwalk, she never imagined she'd gallop away on a mythical horse - or that it would take a foreign fugitive to show her the heart of the desert she thought she knew.

Pretty intriguing right? Opens up on Almani, orphaned like it said and living with her aunt and uncle. Her uncle is a weirdo and has multiple wives and is considering marrying Almani. Ew. So, she either marries her uncle or finds someone else to marry. We'll come back to that.
She wants out of Dustwalk. Before her mother was killed, she would tell Almani about an aunt that lived in another town far from Dustwalk, in a "promised land" kind of story. So Almani dresses up as a boy, enters a shooting contest and meets Jin, the foreigner. They meet multiple times throughout the book, enemies one second and partners the next. But Jin isn't who you think he is. And neither is Almani, who always thought she was a "normal, boring" girl. Almani has a secret that she doesn't even know she has and to top it off, let's add warring countries, an evil sultan with a master plan to dominate the world, mythical beings that are only reigned in with iron as their tether and creatures of magical porportions. It's really great and intriguing.
I read this book all the way through in about two days. It's not a creepy or evil magic that one assumes would be the case, especially these days. But it's one that is on the underlying surface and peeks out once in awhile for the good of those around the characters themselves.

So, if you happen to pick up this book, take a moment and read it through. Because the author is in a hurry to get to the storyline, she doesn't stop and explain what exactly the "djinn" are or what other mythical creatures are or what they can do. So read it it slowly, but enjoy. It's a great one that I'll probably reread eventually.

Now - The next book on my list is War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. It's a huge book but it's a classic so you might not hear from me for awhile. Peace out, friends.

See Me by Nicholas Sparks

See Me by Nicholas Sparks was a really good read. It was intriguingly and definitely mysterious. I don't remember having read another Nicholas Sparks book with as much mystery in it as this one. 

Bad boy in trouble with the law versus lawyer. It was pretty interesting. The lead characters have alot of chemstry and charisma and you're cheering for them to get together and... Obviously they will or it wouldn't be a Nicholas Sparks book. But it goes back and forth. He has an anger management problem and can't afford to get in trouble with the law even once or it's to prison for ten plus years. And she is a young lawyer who has a stalker related to a case that didn't work out years ago because the victim in the incident was killed in a brutal and inhumane way.

So the two of them get to know each other, but she has a stalker so they're trying to figure it out. There's alot of ring around the rosie as they try to nail down the guy with the gun so to speak only to find out the stalker is the brother of the victim in said case above. And he is in cohorts with someone you wouldn't suspect. And they're not actually after her... They're after someone she loves and she doesn't know it until it's almost too late.

Go get this book. It's a must read Nicholas Sparks novel. And it gives you that fuzzy good feeling at the end. You know you like that. 

Again, disclaimer - there is sex before marriage suggested. But it's tactfully addressed without going into detail.

The Winner's Crime & The Winner's Kiss

The sequels to The Winner's Curse are really good. They were not originally on my booklist simply because I hate to commit to a whole trilogy before I've read the first book. However, based on my opinion of the first book, The Winner's Curse, I couldn't get these other two fast enough and ended up reqding both (over 800 pages) in three days.
Now let me be clear... Based on my knowledge of what I can handle and what I choose to read... It may be different than your own. While I would happily read this trilogy again, many wouldn't make it past the first book.
The first book is relatively clean. The second and third have some suggestive material as well as gruesome war and torture scenes.
All this to say - you've been warned and it's up to you. No judging here and I'd appreciate it if you'd return the favor.

Spoilers to follow:
The Winner's Crime is the second installment. When we left the end of the first book, Arin's countrymen had taken hold of the Herran peninsula. He had let Kestrel escape knowing it could mean further war with the Valorian empire.
She had sailed across the sea and returned with a contract, a treaty of sorts, that stated the Herran country could be an "independent" country only answering to the Valorian emporer with Arin as governor in exchange for Kestrel's marriage to the emporer's son, Verex. She agreed to save Arin.
For the second book, their encounters and exchanges involve her being insufferably cold and distant, cruel
 She doesn't want him to know she does love him and her marriage to the cruel emporer's son is the only way to keep him free.
Arin is confused beyond a doubt. He doesn't know if she's lying or if he made up the whole charisma between them.
She becomes a spy for Arin's country, Herran, and works with Tensen, a friend and important minister of agriculture for Herran. But Arin has no idea. She keeps it a secret, especially when she learns that the emporer is actually starving the Heran people along with poisoning their water supply. So, she relays the information to Tensen, who keeps her identity a secret from Arin. Poor middle man situation. Long story short, Arin has come and gone a couple times from the emporer's palace in Valorica, having traveled to make a peace treaty and alliance with the eastern nation of Draca to fight against Valorica. He returns to the palace, intent on knowing the truth but doesn't see how Kestrel wants to tell him the truth and sends him signals all the while telling him cruel lies because her father is listening in on the conversation! Ugh! Frustrating! (In casw you forgot - Kestrel's father is General, the highest ranking military officer in Valorica and second to the emporer). Arin leaves, disgusted and hurt and Kestrel writes him a letter explaining everything from her true feelings to the truth about her role as a spy for his country. She gives the lettet to Tensen to give to Arin but the man doesn't. *facepalm* And ends up being killed by Kestrel's father. So she visits Tensen's rooms, finds him dead and finds her father and the emporer present and fully aware of her role as a spy for the enemy.
Her father disowns her and the emporer sends her to a labor camp up north with the rumor spreading that she and Prince Verex had married in secret, went to the Southern Isles, where she got sick suddenly and died. Convenient.

The Winner's Kiss is even more difficult to unravel in a simple paragraph, but the essence off it all is, Arin finds out about five chapters in that Kestrel wasn't as cruel as she sounded, that she was a spy for his country and that Tensen is dead. He takes off for the labor camp and breaks her out of it only to find out that while she'd been imprisoned, she'd been drugged everyday for the month she'd been there. Meaning her memory was as good as useless, she craved her drug to aleep. She didn't know what was real and wasn't. She didn't know who Arin was. Eventually he brings her home to Herran where she recovers slowly but her memory is a work in progress. Meanwhile, Herran and Valorica go to war. Kestrel ends up helping with the strategic aspect of war and some of the action too. There is alot of back and forth battles and Arin almost gets killed.
She ends up playing a gambling game of Bite and Sting with the emporer. If he wins, he gets whatever he wants. If she wins, the war is over and the Valorians sail home no questions asked. So she is playing a game with the emporer while Arin is in a fierce battle against the General and his forces.
Panic creeps in and she starts to lose... Indeed she does lose the game and you're about to think all hope is lost when the emporer keels over and dies necause four of the tiles in Bite and Sting have been painted with a glossy texture. Poison. You're led to believe thay those tiles are marked for Kestrel's benefit because they are good tiles to win. But they are poisoned, the emporer dies, and the war comes to an end.

The general is wounded, taken prisoner, but won't talk to Kestrel. She and Arin live happily ever after. Finally.

Obviously there's alot more than that but remember, each book is over 400 paes and that's about as quick as I can sum up. I would read them again in a second.