I am excited today to have the blog tour for Barbie World by Heidi Acosta, hosted by Xpresso Book Tours, on the blog today. I have a review and giveaway to share with you all!
To follow the rest of the tour, click on the tour banner above.
Identified
The Maya Price Story
Author: Faith A. Rice-Mills
Publication Date: December 3, 2012
~Synopsis~
Maya Price
is a typical eighteen-year-old girl without many worries. Her biggest problems
include getting ready to leave her hometown for college, figuring out how to
avoid her ever-so-strange stepmother and trying to muddle though her feelings
for her best friend, Pete. Yet, one of her last nights in her hometown, she and
Pete are in a car accident. A stranger pulls Maya from the accident, leaving
Pete behind, and takes her out of this world and into another dimension. Maya
soon discovers that she has been taken to a dimension called Leets by a group
of people that call themselves shifters.
Shifters are of mixed human and onyx blood and have various abilities. These shifters are able to travel between dimensions, control the four elements (fire, earth, wind, water) and the five senses (sight, sound, smell, touch and taste). Their leader, Victoria, informs Maya that she, too, is a shifter and that she must choose to join them or risk being sought out by their greatest enemy, a shifter named Leonas. Maya joins Victoria and her ragtag group of rebel shifters at a training camp called Level One. he is teamed up with a group of seven other shifters, including a streetsmart girl named Luz, who is especially adept at controlling fire, her twin sister Espy, and a nervous boy named Lamar, who can manipulate sound better than any other shifter.
Together, Maya’s team trains for the battles that will soon be inevitable. However, Maya soon learns that her purpose is not to just move the earth or send water flying into the air. There are rumors of a hidden prophecy and that the prophecy mentions Maya by name. Supposedly, the prophecy says that Maya will one day have to choose a side and will be essential in bringing her chosen ally to power...
Shifters are of mixed human and onyx blood and have various abilities. These shifters are able to travel between dimensions, control the four elements (fire, earth, wind, water) and the five senses (sight, sound, smell, touch and taste). Their leader, Victoria, informs Maya that she, too, is a shifter and that she must choose to join them or risk being sought out by their greatest enemy, a shifter named Leonas. Maya joins Victoria and her ragtag group of rebel shifters at a training camp called Level One. he is teamed up with a group of seven other shifters, including a streetsmart girl named Luz, who is especially adept at controlling fire, her twin sister Espy, and a nervous boy named Lamar, who can manipulate sound better than any other shifter.
Together, Maya’s team trains for the battles that will soon be inevitable. However, Maya soon learns that her purpose is not to just move the earth or send water flying into the air. There are rumors of a hidden prophecy and that the prophecy mentions Maya by name. Supposedly, the prophecy says that Maya will one day have to choose a side and will be essential in bringing her chosen ally to power...
~Prelude~
I signed up for the blog
tour for Identified because I thought the synopsis was interesting and I like
changing up my reads a bit. Normally, I read a lot of new adult and
contemporary romance so I liked the idea of reading something out of the norm.
This was an excellent choice for that.
~Review~
Identified was a very
interesting read. It started out really slow for me and I had some trouble
getting into it. However, once I was able to get into the storyline, it became
very intriguing and I found myself wanting to know more.
Maya Price is an average 18
year old girl, or so it seems. She just graduated high school and is preparing
to enter college when she is suddenly taken from her world to another dimension
know as Leets. Maya is a shifter, half human/half Letian, which means she can travel
between the two dimensions. Maya learns
of a prophecy that mentions her and decides she must search for the prophecy to
defeat Leonas, bring peace to Leets and protect her loved ones. Along with her
friends and team, she goes in search of the prophecy. However, not everything
is as it seems. Lives are endangered and everything will be changed.
This book was written in
the third person but it is Maya’s story so she is the primary character
involved. I liked Maya as a main character. She wasn’t too whiny and she was
super smart. She was very powerful and I liked that she caught on quickly when
introduced to her powers. She cares deeply for her friends and family and will
do anything to protect them. Leaving her family and Pete behind was extremely
hard for her but she knew it was the best way to protect them. My heart broke a
little when she said goodbye to Pete.
This book was definitely
more about plot development than character development but it worked for me.
Normally, I’m all about the characters but there were so many different
characters in this book and the plot was super intricate so it definitely
shined more. It was a little slow at first but when they started training to
hone in their powers and begin searching for the prophecy, it got a lot more
interesting. As the plot moved forward, there were chapters that jumped ahead
to the future with journal entries looking back on the present. They were very
ominous and suspenseful, hinting at things that hadn’t happened yet but not
giving enough information to give anything away. That definitely intrigued me
and made me want to keep reading. Of course, this is a series so while my
apetite was wetted, it still isn’t satisfied.
Overall, I actually really
enjoyed this book. I was nervous in the beginning since I struggled to delve
into it but it finally grabbed my attention and really held it to the end. The
writing was really well done and I loved the way the author wove in journal
entries, letters and testimonies into the present plot that was occurring.
While it didn’t leave on a major cliffhanger, there are definitely questions
that were left unanswered and I know I will continue to the end because I
really need to know what happens.
AUTHOR BIO
Faith A. Rice-Mills is the author of Identified: The Maya Price Story and a handful of short stories. She moonlights as a Spanish teacher, but has wanted to be a writer since she wrote the poem “The Jackowhipp’s Wail” as an eight-year-old. Her writer’s spirit resides somewhere between Narnia and Mount Doom, but her physical body lives in Texas with her family. Besides writing, she loves reading (and will take recommendations!), yoga, coloring with her daughter, and watching Parks and Recreation with her husband. She dislikes snakes, the word “literally,” and teaching double object pronouns in Spanish. She is currently working on Burdened, the second book in The Maya Price Story series and is writing whatever short story she has to get out of her brain.
LINKS:
Website: http://writesofwoman.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/
*An e-copy of this book was provided to me for a fair and honest review. All opinions expressed are my own and unbiased.*
Great review, Chelsea! Glad it eventually grabbed you a slow beginning can be hard sometimes. I'm also a big character reader but if the plot is really compelling I don't really mind a more plot oriented read. Happy you liked it! :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the review! Just so you know, I am taking all of these recommendations and critiques very seriously as I write Burdened. I appreciate the feedback!
ReplyDeleteFaith A. Rice-Mills
Thanks! I think now that it has it's rhythm, I'll be able to jump right into book 2.
ReplyDeleteHappy to be on the tour! Really looking forward to Burdened. :-)
ReplyDeleteI was like you too, the beginning was slow for me but I think now that the world is set up, it'll be easier to jump in with Burdened.
ReplyDeleteI agree, I am really curious to read Burdened and see if it flows quicker.
ReplyDelete