Abducted by a White Cat w/ Red Gloves

I have found that the worst part about not keeping up with my blog, is that, in turn, I don't really keep up with my google reader either! Which means not only have I not been posting, but I haven't been reading all the wonderful posts by all of my fellow bloggers! I'm so sorry guys! Well, tonight, I finally got my google reader completely cleaned out, and I tried to comment on as many pieces as I could, but now I figured it was time to start posting again myself.

Here is a quick post of two audio books I finished recently...

White Cat and Red Glove

The Curse Workers series is another collection of YA novels about high-schoolers that can do magic. There is trouble teens, lots of angst, love interests, secrets, family drama, a mob boss, basically all your normal fantasy YA fiction ingredients. But let me tell you my #1 reason for why I love this series... in this magical world there are consequences for ones actions. 

When you read a lot of fantasy novels where the leading cast of characters have all of these extraordinary powers, one can't help but be curious about which power they would want or what it would be like to have certain abilities. But, what would you do if every time you used your "special power", you had to deal with the "blow back"? Well, blow back is exactly what the curse workers have coming to them every time they do something magical, and I LOVE that!

It works like this... Let's say that your special power is the ability to give someone dreams, then your dreams become affected. Or if you have the ability to "curse" people to change their memories, you will start to loose some of your own. Oh, Oh, Oh, AND, if you have the power to kill someone, then when you curse them, a part of you dies as well! So, if you kill someone with your power, when the blow back hits one of your fingers (or your nose, or your ear, or your big toe...whatever) just decays and falls off! 

Now, stop for just a second and let that sink in...

Can you imagine how that will affect how you would use your powers? I mean you have no control of what happens to you when the blow back hits! You can't just make a list of which memories you want to loose so that the next time you curse someone you can just start knocking them off the list. And you never know that if you use your power to kill someone, if you will loose a finger or your whole arm! I mean seriously...what would you do? How do you use it? How do you control it?  

All the dynamics and layers that those consequences allow, those alone make me LOVE this series!

Before I forget, the Curse Worker series was yet another series forced upon me by fakesteph! She has a pretty good track record of recommendations going so far, if you haven't checked out her blog yet just click on her name.

I listened to both White Cat and Red Glove in my car and they were read to me by Jesse Eisenberg. He's not quite the Castle I had pictured in my mind, but he did a great job. White Cat, on its own, I did not give 5 stars to, but I feel that was because I love books that are more character based. However, any time you are starting a series that takes place in some form of a fantasy world, the first book in the series is always more about introducing the reader to that world as a whole. So, while I loved the world the book was set in, I didn't really connect to the characters. But then I immediately started Red Glove and that one got 5 stars hands down! It had its own story and mystery to solve, but there was more about the characters, so I did like it more. 

So far the series is just White Cat and Red Glove, but Black Heart will be released in April! It isn't necessarrily a novel that I'll be waiting on the edge of my seat for, but when I do finally pick it up on audio from the library, I know I'll be excited to get back into the world of the Curse Workers!

P.S. I forgot to give an update on my dad. In my last post (which was just under a month ago...God, Really?, sorry guys) I mentioned that my dad was in the hospital with shingles. Well, he is doing better, but he is still technically in the recover process. He was in the hospital for a week before I finally got to take him home. And what I have learned is that, when you or someone you know is affected by shingles, it isn't like they have the common cold or a really bad flu, or some other normal disease. Not only is the pain by far worse, but it can take months even years before you are back to your old self. My dad has one of those larger then life, jovial personalities that just draws people to him. So, having him now be so quiet and withdrawn has been very difficult. The adjustment has been challenging, but you just have to give it time. But it is frustrating because I see my dad so often, but in a way I still really miss him. Shingles is also highly contagious and so the entire time he was in the hospital we couldn't really hug him or touch him at all. Last Sunday, as I was leaving my parents house after dinner, that was the first time he let me hug him good bye. But he is getting better. His appetite is slowly starting to come back, and with that his strength and his energy. So, like I said, it will just take time.

P.P.S. I love how every time I start out writing a post by saying "I want to write a quick post..." it always becomes way super long! Ha, it makes me laugh :) usually I just go back and delete that line, but from now on I'm going to start leaving it in so that my regular readers will be able to notice just how often I do that.