Lefty's Lowdown: Infinity by Jus Accardo

Infinity by Jus Accardo
(The Infinity Division #1)
Published: November 1, 2016 by Entangled Teen
Source: I received a free e-galley via Netgalley, but all opinions in this review are 100% my own.

Summary from Goodreads: 
Nobody said being the daughter of an army general was easy. But when her dad sends a teenage subordinate to babysit her while he’s away… That’s taking it a step too far.

Cade, as beautiful as he is deadly, watches Kori with more than just interest. He looks at her like he knows her very soul. And when he saves her from a seemingly random attack, well, that’s when things get weird.

Turns out, Kori’s dad isn’t just an army general—he’s the head of a secret government project that has invented a way to travel between parallel dimensions. Dimensions where there are infinite Koris, infinite Cades…and apparently, on every other Earth, they’re madly in love.

Falling for a soldier is the last thing on Kori’s mind. Especially when she finds herself in a deadly crossfire, and someone from another Earth is hell-bent on revenge…

 I'll be honest, reading this kind of made me feel like I was back in 2010, in the heart of the paranormal romance craze. And, well, I wasn't mad about it. While perhaps not the greatest novel of all-time, Infinity is interesting and addicting.

I'll be honest, I found the beginning of this book to be kind of frustrating. Kori, the protagonist, is almost killed and everyone knows why except her, it seems. So she's out there basically begging the people who saved her what's going on and they have the audacity, over and over again, to be like, "lol can't tell you, sorry." Like, just tell the damn girl why she is being ATTACKED. However, once we got past all that nonsense, the sailing was much smoother.

Going into the novel, it seems like there's going to be a bit of insta-love, but there's really not. Instead, we have a complicated, slow-burn romance. It feels doomed and impossible so of course I was alllll about it. Nothing like good ol' star-crossed lovers.

The characters themselves could be a bit annoying at times (might I direct you a couple paragraphs up), but all-in-all, they were well-developed and I was eager to learn more about them as the story progressed. Kori, an artist and military child grieving her mother's death, is quite kick ass. In the beginning, she gets rescued by Cade and his friend Noah, but she definitely makes up for it in the end. Cade is kind of forgettable, quite frankly, but he's sweet and broken-hearted, and I loved him a lot while I was reading. Noah, though, is my favorite character, I think. He's such a cold asshole in the beginning but his character grows so much. I really adored seeing the way the dynamics between these 3 characters shifted and evolved throughout the novel.

Despite what I said in the beginning of this review, this book is more than a cliche paranormal romance. The story is incredibly interesting and there is so much emotion and growth throughout. Infinity definitely kept me hooked and made me eager to read the sequel. This is the kind of book I'd recommend if you're looking for something to just take your mind off life.

My rating: 

3/5

Lefty's Lowdown: I'm Not in the Band by Amber Garza

I'm Not in the Band by Amber Garza
(standalone)
Published: June 12, 2017 by Entangled Teen (Crush)
Source: Received an electronic copy for review from the publisher via Netgalley, but that did not influence my review in any way.

Summary from Goodreads:
I like Kassidy Milton. There, I said it. She’s funny, beautiful—even though she doesn’t know it—and my favorite kind of weird. But I can’t tell if she’s into me or just trying to get close to me for a chance with my famous twin brother instead. I mean, it has to be me. I am the better-looking one.


But Kassidy has some demons, and she’s not good at letting people in. That happens when you’ve been hurt by someone close to you. I can relate. Trust is a funny thing; it’s hard to gain but easy to lose. I might just learn that the hard way.


Disclaimer: This Entangled Teen Crush book includes a snarky heroine, a swoon-worthy hero, crazy best friends, your favorite music, and lots of feels.

So it seems, recently, that I have A Thing for books that feature some sort of celebrity aspect. Thus, despite knowing how cheesy this looks and sounds, I requested a review copy. In the end, this book as just an okay read for me. There were a lot of little aspects I was not particularly fond of, but I was invested enough to see the story through and figure out where the characters end up. 

This book is, more or less, told from two points of view. I actually really enjoyed how Garza divded the narratives here. First there's Kassidy, who has a mysterious trauma in the near-past and isn't like Other Girls because she wears t-shirts and converse (ughhhh). Her story is told in a traditional formatting, but Archer's point of view was told entirely in facebook statuses, tweets, and text messages. I'm a sucker for mixed media, and this really worked for me. Was robably my favorite part of the novel, actually. 

While I liked Kassidy well enough, I didn't love her. In fact, she's utterly forgettable. Archer, on the other hand, was a controlling nozzle. Like, I get that he has Reasons to be so insecure, but that doesn't make it okay. I thought he was really sweet at first and then Kassidy literally interacts with his brother in the most innocent way and he frickin goes berserk. I'll admit, though, I did enjoy the way he interacted with his brothers and his friends. Some of their banter made me smile. But I lost all my respect for him the second his melodrama started waving its freak flag. 

Honestly, the melodrama was quite prevalent in this book, and I was not a fan. A lot of stuff just seemed over the top--even the romance. It had its cringe-worthy moments and kinda reeked of insta-love. No thank you. But at the same time, I was interested in seeing how everything was resolved and I enjoyed the characters' growth. 

The bottom line is that this was a quick read, and it kept my attention sufficiently, but it was nothing extraordinary. It's something I won't remember in a few months from now. The premise is appealing (at least in my opinion), but it's trope-y and just a bit much at times. 

My rating: 

3/5

Lefty's Lowdown: Psi Another Day by D.R. Rosensteel

Psi Another Day by D.R. Rosensteel
(Psi Fighter Academy #1)
Published: December 3, 2013 by Entangled Teen
Source: Purchased

Summary from Goodreads:
THERE’S A NEW SUPERHERO IN TOWN.

By day, I'm just another high school girl who likes lip gloss. But by night I'm a Psi Fighter—a secret guardian with a decade of training in the Mental Arts. And I'm about to test those skills in my first battle against evil.

BAD GUYS BEWARE.

When I was six, the Walpurgis Knights, our deadliest enemy, murdered my parents. The Psi Fighters put me into hiding, and all traces of my existence evaporated. Then I went through the most accelerated Psi Fighter training possible. And now I go to your school.

’CAUSE I WILL TAKE YOU OUT.

Unfortunately, so do the bad guys. My parents’ killer has sent his apprentice to infiltrate the school to find me. And everyone is a potential suspect, even irresistible new kid, Egon, and my old nemesis-turned-nice-guy, Mason. Fingers crossed I find the Knight before he finds me…

I would most likely usually never give this book the time of day based on the cover & title, if I'm being honest. However, I interned for Entangled Teen very briefly a few years ago, so I read the manuscript of this novel, and I really enjoyed it back then, so I decided to buy the finished product. Unfortunately, this time around I did not enjoy it as much as I had back then, but I still thought parts of this were a delight!

Parts of this book really confused me. Basically, the protagonist Rinnie is a Psi Fighter, which are top secret super heros who uses their brains and their fists as weapons (which, I gotta say, is an A+ premise). Recently in Rinnie's town, there has been a creep kidnapping little kids, and the Psi Fighters conclude that there is a major link to the kidnapper in Rinnie's high school, so Rinnie is assigned to investigate her school and try to discover who the kidnapper is. It sounds simple, but it's a bit convoluted because there is a drug ring, and a secret villain society, and I had a really hard time keeping track of how it all connected. I didn't always understand the line of reasoning that led the characters to the conclusions they drew. That is really my main complaint, but I more-or-less understood it all by the end of the novel. I did wish there was a bit more worldbuilding, because I got slightly confused about how their mental weapons work.

Other than that, I found this to be a really fun story. Okay, so the writing could be a bit cheesy, but there were so many funny and clever lines throughout the novel that I just adored! I'd say this has a bit of a younger YA vibe, but it was still a cute, interesting read, and the ending definitely left me wondering what is going to happen in the next book!

3/5 stars

Live and Let Psi Book Blitz: Giveaway & Interview with D.R. Rosensteel

Hi everyone! I'm really thrilled that Entangled TEEN allowed me the opportunity to participate in the book blitz for D.R. Rosensteel's Live and Let Psi. This is the second book in a lesser-known series that I believe deserves much more attention than it gets. Here's the schedule, so you can follow along with the rest of the tour!!

Live and Let Psi by D.R. Rosensteel

(Psi Fighter Academy #2)

Published: July 11, 2016 by Entangled TEEN

Genre: YA superhero/romance

Pages: 340

Summary: 
Rinnie Noelle would rather kick some creepy villain butt than go on a date. As a Psi Fighter trained in the Mental Arts, she can’t be distracted by emotion. Her nemesis, Nicolaitan, is manipulating students from her school, using them as puppets to carry out his new plan to find the infamous Morgan Girl, and he doesn’t care who becomes collateral damage in the process. People’s lives are depending on Rinnie’s ultimate focus.

But Mason Draudimon keeps slicing into her soul sharper than a Thought Saber, and her feelings for him knock her off her game with the strength of a psionic War Hammer. Mason insists on helping Rinnie take down Nicolaitan for his own reasons—to avenge his mother—and the closer they get to the truth, the more dangerous the dance between mind and heart, life and death, logic and love.

Goodreads | Amazon | B&N | iBooks | Kobo

You can find an excerpt on the Entangled website!

INTERVIEW

Welcome, D.R. I'm so excited to have you on The Left-Handed Book Lover today!

Thanks, it’s a pleasure to be here!

First thing's first: Are you right- or left-handed? 

Depends. I use a sword in my right hand and a shield in my left.

Now, word on the street is that before writing this series, you were a research consultant. I'm not exactly sure what that entails, but it sounds a lot different than writing a YA novel. What was it like to transition from technical papers to YA adventure stories? Did you face any major challenges?

The transition from writing boring, technically-abundant facts and figures to exciting, action-filled battle scenes and snappy dialogue was invigorating, revitalizing, inspiring, and all those other synonyms for “WOW, this is a blast!” The major challenge was learning a different form of writing. A well-written technical paper has tight sentences with clear, concise wording. That’s necessary for writing YA adventure, but I also had to learn how to put a story together, how to create characters that people could relate to, and how to write dialogue that doesn’t suck.

Bullying is a major element of your series. What do you hope the teens reading will take away from this?

My message to kids who feel different is simple. Stick together. We have the rest of the world outnumbered. Bullies are cowards. They don’t like it when their victims stand together. My message to bullies is also simple. You have a choice. Use your powers for good, not evil. Stand up for people who can’t stand up for themselves.

Can you tell us a little bit about what the Psi Fighters and Mental Arts are?

The Psi Fighters are a secret society of protectors. They wear high-tech masks and armor to keep their identities secret and their bodies unharmed (usually). Over the years, the Psi Fighters have taken on covert missions against dictators, evil organizations, and crime lords. They operate from a training complex hidden hundreds of feet beneath the city in a section of the abandoned mines which, according to official records, doesn’t exist. It requires years of intense training in the Mental Arts before a Psi Fighter is awarded a mission. Rinnie Noelle is the youngest Psi Fighter ever to achieve a black belt and take on a mission.

The Mental Arts are the source of a Psi Fighter’s power. Unfortunately, they are also the source of a Walpurgis Knight’s power. They can be used to hurt or heal. Kung fu, aikido, jujitsu, yoga, acupuncture, shiatsu, reiki, all have their origins in the Mental Arts. Sad to say, so do black magic and voodoo. The real power of all these arts comes from the mind. As the Kilodan says, “The ability to break inanimate objects is irrelevant. It requires nothing more than a bit of brawn. Breaking an opponent who is physically superior to you requires quite another talent.” Masters of the Mental Arts make weapons from their thoughts and emotions. Each Psi Weapon is unique. Some disrupt the opponent’s perception. Others affect their memory or distort their reasoning. All tug at emotion in one form or another. The Psi Fighters have invented a technology to help them form Psi Weapons. They call it the Amplifier. It looks like a fountain pen or some other ordinary, everyday object. Easy to carry, easy to hide, completely undetectable. For a long time, only Psi Fighters who had mastered the Mental Arts could turn their thoughts into physical weapons. But with the invention of the Amplifier, the fledgling black belt has the ability as well. The technology behind it is very intricate, from the silver and gold encephalographic electrodes to the resonating core, which amplifies the Psi Fighter’s thoughts. Pure Emotions form Psi Weapons that are used for good. Dark Emotions are the choice of the Walpurgis Knights, the Psi Fighters’ fiercest enemy. Psi Fighters don’t do Dark Emotions.

Once this series is finished, do you think you'll be working on more YA fiction? 

The manuscript for the third book in the Psi Fighter series, titled The Psi Who Loved Me, is scheduled to be completed by October 1. The book will be released in early 2017. That’s the final book in the trilogy, but I have three more Psi Fighter stories in the works.

I’m also working on a totally new series tentatively titled “Geek Wars.” It’s a modern-day sci-fi thriller romance series for teens, where the main characters are absolutely brilliant with science, but totally clueless when it comes to boy-girl relationships. A top-secret government agency called ORDER asks three brainiac brothers to team up with three girl geniuses to help fight a war of the minds. A group of equally intelligent teens known as HAVOC has stolen sensitive US government information to invent a machine capable of destroying a city. Plenty of action, romance, and comic relief. Imagine The Big Bang Theory characters with James Bond missions.



LIGHTNING ROUND!!
Salsa or guacamole? Guac. I just like the sound of it.

Pet dragon or pet unicorn? Unicorn. Better magic.

Gif: soft 'g' or hard 'g'? Potato, potawto

What was the last book you read? Touching Fate by Brenda Drake

Do you have any pets? Yes, I have a tank full of minnows.

What are your plans for world domination? 

Once the Psi Fighter Academy series is on the Big Screen, the villains of the world will turn themselves in willingly for a chance to star in one of the films. After they play the part of a Psi Fighter, they’ll understand why Good will always conquer Evil. Then they’ll fill their social media with messages to the other bad guys who haven’t seen the movies, and evil will finally go the way of the dodo bird.

That's all I've got! Thanks for stopping by. I look forward to more Psi Fighter awesomeness!

Thanks for having me!

D.R. is such a funny, entertaining guy, and that definitely shines through in his books. I'm currently read the first book in the series Psi Another Day and it's a lot of fun. Quick, witty, and fun! 

Live and Let Psi Gift Basket Giveaway, featuring: a signed copy of Psi Another Day, a Psi Fighter tshirt, a Psi Fighter hoodie, a Psi Fighter backpack, and a Psi Fighter Amplifier, a device that allows Psi Fighters trained in the Mental Arts to create weapons out of their thoughts!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Lefty's Lowdown: The Sound of Us by Julie Hammerle

The Sound of Us by Julie Hammerle
(standalone)
Published: June 7, 2016 by Entangled Teen
Source: I received an eARC for review from the publisher via Netgalley. This has not in any way, shape, or form affected my review of the book.

Summary from Goodreads: 
Kiki Nichols might not survive music camp.

She’s put her TV-loving, nerdy self aside for one summer to prove she’s got what it takes: she can be cool enough to make friends, she can earn that music scholarship, and she can get into Krause University’s music program.

Except camp has rigid conduct rules—which means her thrilling late-night jam session with the hot drummer can’t happen again, even though they love all the same TV shows, and fifteen minutes making music with him meant more than every aria she’s ever sung.


But when someone starts snitching on rule breakers and getting them kicked out, music camp turns into survival of the fittest. If Kiki’s going to get that scholarship, her chance to make true friends—and her chance with the drummer guy—might cost her the future she wants more than anything.

 When I got accepted for this book, I was unbelievably excited because SINGING BOOK. In my opinion, there needs to be way more singing YA books in this world. And also TV shows. So basically, this book contained two of my favorite things in the entire world. I had high hopes for this novel, and there were some parts that  really enjoyed, but, ultimately, there were quite a few major things that annoyed me, making this just an okay read.

I will say, the first half of the novel is solid af. We're introduced to Kiki, the narrator, who has a really fun voice. She's nerdy, insecure, a TV-lover, and she has more friends on Twitter than in real life. I think she is a character a lot of people of my generation can relate to. She has been accepted into an elite opera music camp--the same one her sister went to and is basically a celebrity at. She wonders if she even deserved to get in, or if her sister pulled some strings for her because she's used to being in the background, not receiving attention for her abilities. When she gets to camp, she meets a whole slew of really talented musicians, and she lets her social anxiety come out to play. Instead of going to hang out with them, she hides in a basement, which, for whatever reason, has a piano in it. That's when she meets Nutty Bar Guy and they have the most soul-awakening jam session.

And let my rant begin: 
At that point, all is well. It's a fun story, and I like all the little musical details thrown in. But then one of the teachers issues a ruling, which essentially states that if a camper is caught singing anything other than opera, they will get kicked out of camp. And that's where things start going downhill, because this rule becomes a major obstacle for Kiki, meaning it plays a relatively significant role in the story, and let me tell you--IT IS THE MOST RIDICULOUS RULE I'VE EVER HEARD. I've been to music camps, conventions, workshops, and all that jazz, and no one would ever tell singers they can't sing anything other than one specific genre. The justification in this novel was that it could ruin their voices. Uh, no? Good singers can sing almost anything (maybe not death metal, but you get the point) without hurting their voices. Trained singers know how to apply the same techniques to different genres. All that being said, this rule made no sense to me. It just seemed like a plot device to add angst to Kiki's life. "Oh, I can't sing pop songs in the basement with hot Nutty Bar guy because I don't want to get kicked out, but how my heart just longs to make music with him." (Not a real quote, but that basically sums up a large chunk of Kiki's mental discourse.) It was just a little...stupid, I guess.

Aside from that, the second half of the novel just got overly dramatic. Kiki has become obsessed with Jack (aka Nutty Bar guy) and then something happens [SPOILER] Kiki finds out he has a girlfriend [END SPOILER], which was really predictable to me. And it all just becomes so meh. I don't want to say anything else because I don't want to spoil the whole second half of the novel, but it's cheesy and cliche and all overly dramatic and I found myself rolling my eyes SO many times. And, in some aspects, I began to lose a lot of respect for Kiki because she was whiny and so woe-is-me, as if she was the first person anything bad has ever happened to. She literally compares her situation to someone dying.

Rant over.

With all my anger towards certain parts of this book, like I said, there were some elements I did really enjoy, and I don't want those to be overlooked. I liked that it dealt with body image and social anxiety. I liked the little tweets before each chapter. I loooved the element of friendship and girl empowerment (though even some of those moments felt so Hallmark to me). I liked the nerd-pride and self-discovery. These are all very important. By the end, I was satisfied where the story ended up. Despite the problems I had with this book, I'd recommend it if you are looking for a lighter, fluffier read.

3/5