Rogue by Gina Damico blog tour and scavenger hunt with an awesome giveaway!

Hey guys, today I am super excited to be part of the blog tour for Rogue, the last book in Gina Damico's awesome Croak Trilogy! If you love reapers, sarcasm, craziness and countless death jokes, you should definitely give this series a try! You can read my review of Scorch, the second book, here.
Also, check out the trailer!

And now I'm handing the word over to Gina Damico herself to explain to you guys how this tour is a little different from what you usually see around the blogosphere.

Hey hey Croak fans! Welcome to my blog tour / photo hunt / Roguestravaganza!

From now until ROGUE's release on September 10th, each stop on the tour will reveal an image that represents a chapter in the book - could refer to setting, plot, an important object, mood, or whatever other diabolical visualizations with which I feel like tormenting my dear readers. Each image also contains a hidden letter...though really, they're not that well hidden. (If you have eyes, you should be able to spot them.) Collect the letters every day, and at the end of the tour I'll hold a contest, the winner of which will receive signed and annotated copies of the complete trilogy. (For a complete description of the contest, tour schedule, and links to the stops you might have missed, check out the blog tour page on my website.)

So! This photo is for Chapter 4. I will let the image do the talking.

Thanks for having me! Good luck everyone!

What could this wooden fish possibly mean? Does it mark a town? Is it an omen for dinner? Is it a red herring? Post your theories in the comments and don't forget to follow the tour in order to figure out the solution to the contest!


ABOUT ROGUE

Release date: September 10, 2013
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Format: Paperback, 336 pages

Plot Summary:
Teenage Grim Reaper Lex’s power to Damn souls is getting out of control. She's a fugitive, on the run from the maniacal new mayor of Croak and the townspeople who want to see her pay the price for her misdeeds. Uncle Mort rounds up the Junior Grims to flee Croak once again, but this time they're joined by Grotton, the most powerful Grim of all time. Their new mission is clear: fix his mistakes, or the Afterlife will cease to exist, along with all the souls in it.

The gang heads for Necropolis, the labyrinth-like capital city of the Grimsphere. There, they discover that the Grimsphere needs a reboot. To do that, the portals to the Afterlife must be destroyed...but even that may not be enough to fix the damage. Things go from bad to worse, and when at last the fate of the Afterlife and all the souls of the Damned hang in the balance, it falls to Lex and her friends to make one final, impossible choice.

AUTHOR LINKS

Website   Facebook   Twitter   Goodreads 

Amazon   Barnes&Noble   Indiebound 

GIVEAWAY

That's right! On every stop of the tour, Gina is giving away an awesome Croak prize pack! That's 3 signed bookmarks, 3 signed book plates, 3 magnets, and a scythe pendant! This is open internationally! Just follow the rules and enter the rafflecopter below :)

Rules:

• one entry per person/household
• you must be at least 13 years old
• winner will be emailed and has 48h to get back to me, otherwise I choose someone else
• I give the winner's info to the author, she sends you the prize
• cheating on one of your entries results in disqualification
• please read carefully what I actually want in the rafflecopter entry box! (For instance, don't copy-paste your tweet, give me its URL!)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Review: Scorch (Croak #2), by Gina Damico

Release Date: September 25, 2012
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Format: Paperback, 332 pages

From the back of the book:
Croak used to be the only place where Lex, a teenage Grim Reaper, felt like she fit in. But after she let the murderous Zara get away - and inadvertently transferred her ability to Damn souls to her on top of that - Lex is a pariah in the little town full of Grims. Her Junior Grim friends have stood by her, but that has only made them outcasts. Meanwhile, Zara is still out there Damning innocents, and no one is safe. It's up to Lex's Uncle Mort, mayor of Croak, to protect the townspeople. But when tragedy strikes, the Grims rise up against him,too.

To escape their wrath, Mort takes Lex and the other Juniors on a wild road trip to DeMyse, a glitzy Grim city, where they can hide out until the chaos in Croak subsides. Though this sparkling desert oasis is full of luxuries and amusements, Lex wants nothing more than to return to her simple little town and the good graces of its citizens. Her best chance at that would be to stop Zara once and for all - but how can she do that from DeMyse, where the Grims seem mysteriously oblivious to Zara's killing spree? Lex needs to track down the secret book that would make Zara even more dangerous. But she has no idea of the chilling lengths her nemesis will go to in order to find it first.

The following review is based on a copy I purchased with my own hard-earned money.

Review (no spoilers):
I read this quite a long time ago but I want to review it anyway. I absolutely loved Croak and I didn’t get around to reviewing that one so I want to do better this time. I might have left out something awesome due to muddled memory though…

Scorch picks up pretty much right where Croak left off. Lex is a mess after her sister’s death at the hands of Zara, a reaper who has stolen her ability to Damn as well as one of the ‘loopholes’ that allows her to Crash (e.g. scythe to anyplace she wants and basically kill at will and off schedule). Once Lex gets back to Croak with her uncle Mort, many of the locals aren’t exactly happy to see her, blaming her for everything that’s happened and afraid of her abilities. They suspect her of basically going wherever and Damning whoever she wants – and there is plenty of Damning being done by Zara, who seems to be completely out of it. The town turns against pretty much all of the juniors, taking away their freedoms and rights and eventually forcing uncle Mort to abdicate as mayor after a terrorist bomb attack. Everything in me bristled at how they were treated and at the way certain members of the community manipulated everyone else!

Through all of those grim things there was still Gina Damico’s incredible sense of humor to lighten up the gloom and doom. When Lex finally dares to visit her twin sister in the Afterlife, Cordy is not mad at her as she had feared! Instead, she’s travelling and enjoying herself and even managed to snatch a pharaoh as a sort-of-boyfriend. Also, Lex and Driggs continue their relationship, finding ever-new places to make-out without Mort noticing. I really love the snark and dynamics between those two, they always manage to crack me up!

Mort is just plain awesome, definitely one of my favorite character (I hope we get to know more about his past! A novella-flashback thing of Mort as a teen would be cool!). He makes decisions quickly and doesn’t beat around the bush or sugarcoat his words, and he’s ready to flaunt the rules if his moral compass points him that way. When things go south, he grabs the juniors and whirls everyone away to DeMyse (gotta love those Grim town names!) which is basically a grim reaper Las Vegas – glitzy, shrill, way-out-there. It was interesting to see the different effect the city had on the juniors and how they eventually got their act back together.

The last part of the book was incredibly fast-paced as twist after twist was added, secrets exposed, things explained… and injustice after injustice was done to my favorite characters. I really hurt for them, but I also have hope. And that one final plot twist!! I never saw that one coming, I swear, but it’s plain awesome genius! I can’t really say much without spoiling it for everyone.

What I didn’t expect was to feel sorry for Zara at times. I really liked her in the first book before her betrayal was revealed. I sort of hated her then for a moment, but after what she’s been through… I could understand how she got to the place she ended up at. And the times she shows up in Scorch, she’s just so… damaged. As she gets worse and worse I really did feel for her even though she was supposedly the enemy.

Another thing I really enjoyed in the novel was getting to know more about the Grimsphere and how it works. DeMyse is extremely different from Croak and I liked comparing the two. The world-building is really expanded in this book and the problems being a reaper brings with itself (e.g. Lex’s parents, basically having lost two daughters since Lex isn’t around anymore) are not simply left out.

Gina Damico’s books are the perfect combination of humor and dark, deadly themes (don’t read this if you have problem with jokes about death!) and even though my review might make the book look quite heavy, I can’t count the times I laughed out loud while I was reading in public places! I read Scorch in a day, the writing flows really easily and the pace never drags. The characters all gained more depth than in the first book, and by the end, the whole plot is so much ‘bigger’ than I ever expected! Also, you can’t go wrong with a book that has a map in it. I need the next book, which will be called Rogue, asap! In the meantime, check out Gina Damico’s blog because it’s awesome and will give your laughing muscles a workout.


And because I like them so much, here are the trailers for Croak and Scorch:

Have you guys read either of these books? What did you think? Do you like Reaper books in general? Let me know in the comments :)

Top Ten Tuesday: Rewind, aka Books I Loved But Never Wrote A Review For

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted at The Broke and the Bookish. Every week the participants have to post a top ten list to a certain topic. Anyone can participate and link up!

This week's topic is a rewind, that means we can pick a past topic that we missed or want to do again. I chose my Top Ten Books I Loved But Never Wrote A Review For. I don't know why I didn't. Some are because I read them before I really had the blog, some out of laziness, some because I feared that I could never do them justice or would just ramble and gush. Some I meant to but something happened and then it was too long ago that I'd read them. Oh well, here goes.

No particular order. Slideshow because I couldn't layout the pics the way I wanted and it's something different for once - in short, I felt like it.

1. Sweet Evil, by Wendy Higgins
   I LOVED this one! It kept me up into the night because I just couldn't stop. But somehow the review just never happened, I don't remember why but I have a bad conscience.
2. Anna Dressed in Blood, by Kendare Blake
   Also a total favorite! I was determined to review, already writing parts in my head. But someting came up and I never got around to it :(
3. Daughter of Smoke and Bone, by Laini Taylor
   One of my favorites I read this year, but this was before I had the blog.
4. Hunger, by Jackie Morse Kessler
   I wanted to, but it just hit too close to home and I would have had to go into personal stuff in the review, which I didn't want because well... this is the internet, and my name and face are on this blog.
5. Blood Bound, by Rachel Vincent
   Inconvenient timing and laziness combined with fear of not being able to do it justice because it was just that good.
6. The Wood Queen, by Karen Mahoney
   Victim of procrastination and lack of blog.
7. Bridger, by Megan Curd
   I was on the road and had loads of stuff to do when I got back from that ten-day interrail trip to three different cities. Read it on the drive to Prague and later to Hamburg and Amsterdam.
8. Croak, by Gina Damico
   Big love, but lots of life going on. I really want to review Scorch though!
9. The Devil's Graveyard, by Anonymous
   Third in the series. To be honest I didn't know how to approach a review of this book, plus it doesn't really fit into what I usually review here.
10. Bloodlines, by Richelle Mead
    I don't remember why this didn't happen, but I'm sure it was one of my ususal lame excuses :P

Comments on my list? Also, what topic did you choose for today?

Book Trailer Thursday: Scorch, by Gina Damico

I don't post book trailers very often because many of them don't work for me. And I don't know if I like the media transfer from printed word to short film or section of pictures that much, especially if they end up relying heavily on text after all - what's the point of the clip in that case? Then again, there are very well-done trailers that have made me crave a book.

Aaaanyway, I love the Croak series by Gina Damico! And the book trailer for Croak was actually one of the main things that made me want to read this book as soon as possible. So when she released the Scorch trailer a few days ago, I was glad that she kept it in the same style and picked up on the previous one. I also like that the humor and voice of the book totally transfer to the trailer!

And just in case you haven't seen it or don't know the series, here's the one for Croak:

Oh, and you can check out Gina Damico's blog and original post here.

So what are your thoughts? Love? Hate? You can also share what you thought of the book(s) if you've read it/them and would rather comment on that than on the trailers.

GIVEAWAY (Int)! Blogoversary and 200 follower-celebration

I know I know, I've been talking about this forever. By now, you've probably been thinking I'd never actually follow it up... but here it is, my joint 200 follwers and 3 month blogoversary celebration giveaway! To be precise, the blogoversary of my first post was on August 24, but since I only started blogging somewhat seriously in mid-June, I guess I can be forgiven for being a bit late. Right? This giveaway is going to last for all of September!

I can't believe it's been three months already! For that amount of time, I don't think I've posted enough reviews *squirms* I'm not used to reading on a schedule or having to immediately write about what I've read yet, and while I probably won't review every book I read, I still hope to get the reviewing frequency up a bit. It's just that writing them up actually takes me ridiculously long because I want to do justice to the book without spoiling too much or being super vague.

Also, I never thought I'd have so many awesome followers by now! Seriously, I'm happy about every page-view and comment on one of my posts! Especially the reviews, since I love to exchange impressions and discuss :)

I'm also curious to hear you guys' opinion about this blog. What do you like? Dislike? What kind of post would you like to see more of? One of my regrets three months into blogging is that I don't really feel part of a community. Where do bloggers 'hang out'? I'm a bit shy when it comes to striking up a conversation first and I'm afraid that I'd just bother people... but I love it when people talk to me :)

But now, without further ado,


The Prizes

Paperback Bundle

Ebook Bundle

Each bundle will go to ONE winner, who will receive ALL the books in it! The paperbacks will be ordered from the Book Depository, the eBooks from amazon, so you'll need a kindle or kindle app to receive them. (I even switched from amazon.de to amazon.com for this, since the German store doesn't have a give-as-gift function). Anyone the Book Depository ships to and anyone able to receive kindle books can enter, no matter where you live! Note on ebooks: if you already have one of the books, you can also choose another installment of the same series.
Also, I won some Origin swag from author Jessica Khoury and have some (though sadly not much) swag (some of it signed) lying around and if I receive that Origin swag by the end of September, I will put together a swag bundle for one runner up and add it to the rafflecopter!

I also want to try something new and creative for you guys to get more entries. Jessica Khoury's contests for swag and ARCs brought the Pinfiction phenomenon to my attention, and I'd like to try this here as well! How does it work? Easy. Just go to my Pinboards (you don't need a Pinterest account), pick a pin that you like, and write a 500 character (including spaces) story/scene to it! When you've done that, email the story and a direct link to the pin you picked to shelfspaceneeded(at)hotmail(dot)com. Attention: 500 characters are the limit, not 500 words! Enter your email address into the provided space of the rafflecopter form so that I know which entry is yours. Sounds fun, right? Something other than just sharing on twitter/facebook/whatever :)

The Rules

• One entry per person / household
• International as long as Book Depository ships to you and you can receive kindle gifts from amazon
• You must be at least 13 years old
• This is a follower-appreciation giveaway, so you must follow me by GFC or email
• Cheaters will be disqualified and all their entries deleted. Believe me, I will check ALL entries before picking a winner, because cheaters falsify the odds for everyone and it's not fair.
• Contest ends midnight September 30th, but I reserve the right to end it early
• I also reserve the right to add/subtract/substitute prizes before the end of the giveaway
• As soon as the Book Depository ships your books, I'm no longer accountable for them
• Winners will be emailed and must respond within 48 hours, or I'll pick someone else.

If there are any questions, put them in the comments or tweet me (@Butterfly_Ghost) :)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Waiting on Wednesday: Scorch, by Gina Damico

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill at Breaking The Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

My pick this week is:

Scorch (Croak #2), by Gina Damico 

Expected publication: September 25, 2012
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Format: Paperback, 352 pages

The goodreads blurb:
Sixteen-year-old Lex Bartleby is a teenage grim reaper with the bizarre ability to damn souls. That makes her pretty scary, even to fellow Grims. But after inadvertently transferring her ability to Zara, a murderous outlaw, Lex is a pariah in Croak, the little town she calls home. To escape the townspeople’s wrath, she and her friends embark on a wild road trip to DeMyse. Though this sparkling desert oasis is full of luxuries and amusements, it feels like a prison to Lex. Her best chance at escape would be to stop Zara once and for all—but how can she do that from DeMyse, where the Grims seem mysteriously oblivious to Zara’s killing spree?

 I enjoyed Croak, the first book in this series, so much! I love me some morbid sense of humor and sarcastic death jokes. I breezed through it in about a day or two, and I'm glad I don't have to wait a whole year for the sequel! I'm curious about where this is all going and I can't wait to see Lex and Zara face off, haha.

Have you read Croak? Do you have other awesome reaper books to recommend?

NOTE: I've prescheduled this post to publish while I'm sitting in a train to Prague... so it might be awhile before I can respond to comments / check out everyone else's WoW. Sorry 'bout that. The hotel should have Wlan though.

Stacking the Shelves

Stacking the Shelves is a weekly meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews to showcase what books we got, traded or bought to clutter those ever-expanding bookshelves.

Bought but not yet read:

Born at Midnight, by C. C. Hunter
Demonglass, by Rachel Hawkins
The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern
A Beautiful Evil, by Kelly Keaton

I'm really late in buying The Night Circus, but I'm excited to finally read it! I've had A Beautiful Evil on the pile for a couple weeks but somehow haven't picked it up yet... I think I'll have to re-read the second half of Darkness Becomes Her first to get into the that world again. Same goes for Demonglass. I'm also curious for Born at Midnight because I'm a sucker for books set in boarding schools.

Books I won:

The Immortal Rules, by Julie Kagawa

The Poison Eaters and Other Stories, by Holly Black

Witch Eyes, by Scott Tracey

Blood Bound, by Rachel Vincent

Hunger, by Jackie Morse Kessler

Yup, I was lucky enough to win the Participation Post giveaway in Fiktshun 's Soul Screamers Reading Challenge :D I just got them in the mail today and now I'm really in a pinch for what to read first... ironically, the one book that I asked for and that didn't arrive yet is Before I Wake, the new Soul Screamers novel whose book birthday is today of all days...

In case you missed the SSRC, Rachel is also hosting a BIW mini-challenge on her blog! You can sign up for that here.

Finally, my current read:

I'm more than halfway in and probably gonna finish today. It's hilarious XD I love it! It's got some of my favorite comparisons and turns of the phrase ever. Not to mention the many death related puns ^^ I love funny morbid.


Have you read any of these books? What's new on your shelves?