{ Poke by Dalya Moon }

Poke by Dalya Moon

January 23, 2012

Source: from author for review

Format: ebook

From Goodreads:

Zan is a teenage boy with a talent for discovering any girl’s secrets. If he asks a girl to poke her finger into his navel, he gets a psychic trip to Secret Town. Zan never likes what he finds.

When he meets mysterious, beautiful Austin, with her waist-length hair and mature laugh, he wants to get acquainted with her the slow way. Austin, however, can’t resist her curiosity, and when she pokes her finger into Zan’s belly button, he sees … nothing.

Austin dashes out of Zan’s house and out of his life, leaving Zan heartbroken and confused. To find peace, he must unravel the secret of his power. Is it a gift, or a curse? How can Zan love someone with no future? How can he not?

Poke is a fast-paced story about Zan's adventurous summer, as he battles witches, experiments with astral projection, and discovers the secret of his strange power, all to be with the girl he loves.

My Review:

I will admit that going into this one, I was expecting to not really enjoy myself. The whole 'finger in the belly button' thing really turned me off. You know what? If you put aside the silliness of that aspect? This story is really quite entertaining. I found myself really enjoying it.

The characters were all fairly believable and likable. The relationship between Zan and his best friends, James and Julie, was real and a nice change from most YA stories. The love story between Zan and Austin was sweet. It was not a really love at first sight in the true meaning of the sense. Yes, Zan was head over heals and yes they had a rather quick physical connection, but it did not seem forced as a lot of relationships in YA right now.

I found the paranormal aspects of the story to be interesting. I may have been a bit confused at times, but perhaps due to the story being as short as it was(only about 140 pages) there just was not sufficient time to fully develop the storyline enough.

All in all, Poke was an enjoyable read aside from the actual 'Poke' aspect. It was enjoyable enough, that I am interested to see where author Dalya Moon will take the story and these characters.

Rating: 3 stars

{ Practice Cake by Dalya Moon }

Practice Cake by Dalya Moon

Published Oct 25, 2011

Source: from author for review

Format: ebook

From Goodreads:

There’s one thing Maddie finds more tempting than red velvet cake: her coworker, Drew. All it takes is one of his sly winks or a playful hip-check by the cooler, and she’s incinerating the cookies. Her boyfriend would not approve.

When a reality TV crew descends upon the bakery, her simple summer job gets even more complicated. Maddie could become the Bakery Network’s next breakout star, if she can handle the heat of being cast as a show villain. Drew has an alternate idea: run away from everything, with him and his sexy tousled hair. She decides to take the leap, but when she finds out Drew’s been hiding a shocking secret, Maddie looks down at her packed suitcase and takes a moment to think. Should she fly off to Australia with a guy she hardly knows, or should she pick up her suitcase and hit him with it?

Chock full of imperfect people behaving badly, Practice Cake is for readers who enjoy a good laugh.

My Review:

First off, I must admit that this is certainly not my genre of choice. However, as I have said before, I think it is good to go outside your comfort zone once in awhile.

Practice Cake sounded like a cute, quick read and the author is from Canada! Thus, I agreed to take it on for review. Sadly, it did not deliver for me. While the storyline would have made for a quick, fun read, the writing lacked in most areas. I am assuming this book is being pushed out as a YA Contemporary as the main character, Maddie, is a young 18 year old girl fresh out of High School. However, through most of the book I found her to be much younger. This one is hard to classify for me. I think it would be more enjoyable to a younger teen, but there is some subject matter that is more suited to an older teen.

I also had some difficulty with the slang used throughout the book. Maybe coming from an Adult prospective has tainted my opinion, but I just found it annoying. Overall, I just had a very hard time connecting to these characters. I also had a hard time with the pacing and flow in general. I found myself turning back the pages to see if I had missed something. I kept thinking that perhaps Maddie had ADD or something of that nature. I just found the dialogue and scenes bouncing around too much and did not flow with any normalcy.

I must admit, however, that author, Dalya Moon, redeemed herself in the final chapter. It was wonderfully written. The pacing, the internal dialogue and just the general depth of characterisation was spot on. This final chapter was so well written that I have no doubt that Dalya Moon's next book will only get better.

In the end? While this may have not been my cup of tea, I am sure someone out there would enjoy this nice light read. However, if YA Contemporary is not your thing? You may want to pass on this one.

Rating: 2 stars