Top Ten Tuesday: Halloween Fun!

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly event hosted by The Broke and the Bookish where we make lists about bookish topics.

This week is Halloween week. Halloween is seriously my favourite holiday, so I had to make sure I actually came onto my blog to make this list. This week is a freebie, so it's pretty much anything goes, so my list will be some fun, scary books that remind me of Halloween. Get ready to sleep with the lights on!

1. Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake - Part ghost story, part love story, this one kept me on the edge of my seat and scared me silly.

2. This Is Not a Test by Courtney Summers - Zombies at their best. Summers effortlessly weaves together a story that could be real. A girl who doesn't want to fight to survive, but ends up surprising herself by how hard she fights for her friends.

3. Rooms by Lauren Oliver - Told from many perspectives, two of which are ghosts, this tells the story of a dysfunctional family and the house they live in. Super cool and creepy.

4. Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma - This book is just creepy. After finishing it, I still wasn't sure what had happened and it stayed with me for nights after. Perfect for Halloween.

5. Hexed by Michelle Krys - Gotta have a witch tale on here. This one isn't really scary, but witches equal Halloween to me. This one has some Buffy elements and some cool witchcraft to make for an entertaining read.

6. The Way We Fall by Megan Crewe - A virus infects a small island and quickly spreads to the rest of Canada, then the world. Scary enough right?

7. The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan - A zombie book that takes place long after the apocalypse in a town that's starting over. Very old-fashioned and backwards and Mary will do anything to get out of it, even if that means crossing the fence into the unknown. Creepy at its best, and the sequels are amazing as well!

8. My Soul To Take by Rachel Vincent - Demons, pure evil, and a seventeen-year-old girl trying to stop them from destroying her high school. One of my favourite series still and perfect if you want a little creep factor in your life.

9. Dracula by Bram Stoker - Because you gotta get a classic in there. If there's any vampire to be scared of, it's Dracula. Old school creepy.

And lastly, one that's on my list to read this year...

10. The Fall by Bethany Griffin - Her retelling of The Mask of the Red Death was dark and creepy, so I'm sure this one, a retelling of The Fall of the House of Usher will be just as good. Just gotta find time to read it now!

I hope everyone will pick up a spooky book this week or at least watch something scary. Happy Halloween all!

Review: The Worlds We Make

The Worlds We Make
Author: Megan Crewe
Published: February 11, 2014
Hardcover, 288 pages
5 Gold Stars

(summary from Goodreads)

The virus has taken away Kaelyn’s friends, her family, her home.

And now a deadly enemy threatens to take the one hope she has left:THE CURE.

When Kaelyn and her friends reached Toronto with a vaccine for the virus that has ravaged the population, they thought their journey was over. But now they're being tracked by the Wardens, a band of survivors as lethal as the virus who are intent on stealing the vaccine no matter what the cost.

Forced onto the road again, Kaelyn and her companions discover the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta is their best hope for finding scientists who can reproduce the vaccine. But with the virus already spreading among them, the Wardens hot on their trail, and hundreds of miles to cross, Kaelyn finds herself compromising her morals to keep her group alive. Her conscience seems a small price to pay if protects them and their precious cargo. Unless even that is not enough...

In the final installment in Megan Crewe’s captivating the Fallen World trilogy, Kaelyn is on the run from her biggest adversaries yet. While she continues to face horrific loss, her resolve is still strong. But to survive this shattered world, will she have to sacrifice all that's left of the girl she was?

This series has taken my heart for a spin. There are moments of sheer terror, especially in the first book, The Way We Fall, where we're not sure if our main character will make it through. A virus threatening a small island, slowly escalating onto the main shore, seeping across Canada and creeping into the United States. When Kaelyn discovers a vaccine, she knows she must get it into the hands of the right people. Leaving the island with a small group of friends, she sets off across Canada, making her way to Toronto. The Lives We Lost reveals more challenges, more threats and more loss as the group gets closer to the CDC, hoping it can be the place to save them. The story concludes with The Worlds We Make, the final stretch and suddenly everything Kaelyn thought she knew about the CDC, those chasing her, and the vaccine, seems like a lie. There's no way to trust everyone and putting the vaccine into the wrong hands could be the end of it. 

This book is a game changer, as most finales are. Kaelyn is forced to act in ways she never thought she would, and her loved ones are dying around her. Fear of what's to come haunts everyone and there's no telling how long they will last in this new world. Trying to keep her group alive, they cross the border into the States, finding new means of surviving. Seeing the world change through Kaelyn's eyes is heartbreaking. She wants what's best for everyone, but she also knows she can't just let people walk all over her. She doesn't hesitate to use her gun on those that could cause her harm, and she vows to do anything to keep the vaccine safe. She does some things that she regrets, but don't we all when we are in life or death situations? Fear changes us, and in a world that is falling apart at her feet, it's hard for Kaelyn not to change with it. I understand all of her actions. I know it was hard for her to do some of the things she had to do, but she did it to survive, and in the end, she realized that that is not who she really is and she will do anything to make things right. 

Crewe has perfected the end of the world. Her virus is something that seems likely, a flu gone wrong, and the way that it has spread over the world into an epidemic is all too real. Think SARS or Swine flu and we know how quickly these things spread. The way humans act when suddenly they cannot get everything they want is haunting and truly realistic in the way she writes. We become animals, fighting for survival and not caring who we take down with us. Humans become enemies. Food is something you will kill for and knowing there is a vaccine could mean a certain death at the hands of someone who wants it. Kaelyn's life has changed drastically and suddenly she has to make some choices she never thought she'd have to make. She is brave, determined and eager to give the vaccine to someone who will use it for the good of the world. Crewe asks questions that we don't know the answers to until it's too late - how would you react if a flue took over? Would you stay the same or would you change into someone else? How do you hold on to humanity when there seems to be nothing left. 

You hope. You hold onto hope. And you try to survive.

“What was the point in being human, in having brains that could develop vaccines and organize people across a continent, if all we did was behave like animals? This world, where all that matters was being in the strongest, biggest pack - it wasn't a world I wanted to save.”

*If anyone lives in the Toronto area, Megan will be hosting a book release party this Saturday, March 8,  at Bakka-Phoenix Books. more details here!*

Review: The Lives We Lost

The Lives We Lost
Author: Megan Crewe
Published: February 12, 2013
288 Pages
5 Gold Stars

(summary from Goodreads)

A deadly virus has destroyed Kaelyn’s small island community and spread beyond the quarantine. No one is safe. But when Kaelyn finds samples of a vaccine in her father's abandoned lab, she knows there must be someone, somewhere, who can replicate it. As Kaelyn and her friends head to the mainland, they encounter a world beyond recognition. It’s not only the “friendly flu” that’s a killer—there are people who will stop at nothing to get their hands on the vaccine. How much will Kaelyn risk for an unproven cure, when the search could either destroy those she loves or save the human race?

Megan Crewe's second volume in the Fallen World trilogy is an action-packed journey that explores the resilience of friendship, the ache of lost love, and Kaelyn’s enduring hope in the face of the sacrifices she must make to stay alive.

It's not often I'm this impressed with the middle book of a series. Especially since the format has changed (the first book was written in diary form) and so much has already happened in the first book. The Way We Fall  introduced Kaelyn and her small island off the coast of Nova Scotia. One day everything is fine, the next there is a virus going around called the Friendly Flu that causes people to first get sick, become itchy, then move into a phase where they can't control what they say out loud and ends with violent hallucinations before death takes its toll. Kaelyn struggles to survive as most everyone on her island gets sick, including her family and friends. Each word shows her struggle and with every page, you're not sure what to expect. I finished it quickly because there was no stopping. 

The sequel begins with Kaelyn finding a vaccine her father created before he died and she knows she must find a way to get it to the people that can duplicate it and help the world. She thought the virus was contained to the island, but the whole world is infected and she knows it's up to her to get to Ottawa and give the government the vaccine. Suddenly Kaelyn is living on a deadly planet, holding the vaccine close and trying to survive every day. With her small group of friends, they start across the country, risking their lives to save others. This is one of the most realistic apocalypse books I've erad. Everything our group encounters feels so real. Whenever they ran into someone on the street I was scared for what would happen next. People act crazy when it comes down to only one surviving. It's not just about getting to Ottawa, it's about staying alive. 

Kaelyn is one of the bravest protagonists I've seen in awhile. No one is forcing her to take this vaccine anywhere. She could keep it for herself and live on her small island with her boyfriend, Gav, and her other friends. But she risks everything to do something about it and not a lot of people would do that. There are times when she thinks about giving up, like she did in the first book, but she finds the strength to keep going, and it's amazing. I don't know if I would be able to hold up as long as she does, especially with the group following her when she knows she can give in and just do as they want. Everything she does feels so believable. Her actions, her reactions and how she deals with what comes her way. She's smart and never puts herself above others. She's the perfect role model for the teenagers reading this series. 

Crewe's writing stands out in a subtle way. She doesn't go out of her way to write pretty prose or extreme scenes. She writes so real that it's hard to imagine that the friendly flu isn't a real virus. Her sentences blend together perfectly and softly, lingering after you've read the words and leaving you craving more. The pacing is perfection. The end of every chapter made me read the next and so on until I just had to keep going until I was finished the book. Her characters jump off the page and stay with you even when you've closed the book. I can't get over the intensity I felt reading this, an intensity I haven't felt in awhile. After certain events happened, I had no idea where she would end this book, how far she'd go before giving us a break from the madness, so of course she ends it too soon as usual, and I'm stuck waiting a year for the final chapter, The Worlds We Make, and needing to know what happens to Kaelyn and her vaccine. 

The real world is scary, with or without a virus spreading and Crewe has captured the brutality of the human race exquistly. I can only hope I've done this book justice with this review and that I too can create a world within a world as well as she has. 

In the lives we'd lost, we would both have been hanging out in cafeterias with friends and arguing with parents who were still alive and not worrying about whether we might die tomorrow. But this was what we had.

13. The Way We Fall

Book #13: The Way We Fall

Author: Megan Crewe

Published: January 24, 2012

309 Pages

4 gold stars

(summary from Goodreads)

When a deadly virus begins to sweep through sixteen-year-old Kaelyn’s community, the government quarantines her island—no one can leave, and no one can come back.

Those still healthy must fight for dwindling supplies, or lose all chance of survival. As everything familiar comes crashing down, Kaelyn joins forces with a former rival and discovers a new love in the midst of heartbreak. When the virus starts to rob her of friends and family, she clings to the belief that there must be a way to save the people she holds dearest.

Because how will she go on if there isn’t?

It starts with a itch. Then you start sneezing. Then you get super friendly with your neighbours but none of them want to go near you because you're sick. But how do you say no to someone that's smiling and saying everything you want to hear? Well if you're smart, you find a way. Megan Crewe has taken a small vacation island and turned it into the breeding ground for a new virus. Our heroine, Kaelyn, wants to help in anyway she can but it's not as easy as it seems. Told through a series of letters to her friend Leo, who is no longer living on the island, we follow Kaelyn's journey as she discovers the virus, sees the virus and feels the virus affect everyone around her.

She breaks my heart and I was rooting for her the entire time. The journal entry format made this book hard to put down. With its fast paced, action packed plot, with every turn of the page you wonder if she'll make it to the end. Her emotions are real and heartfelt and her reactions to the terrifying events taking place around her are believable. The minor characters react in every way you would think people might react in a situation like this. Some get angry and try to fight their way off the island. Some get even more angry and try to kill the virus through violence. Some hide, hoping to survive. Some help where they can to help others survive. Some die trying. A lot of the characters are too calm at points, points where I know if this was happening to me, I'd be screaming or too terrified to leave the house. But I'm not as brave as Kaelyn, I guess, who in the light of danger and death, keeps a cool head and continues to struggle to survive. She's not a quitter, that's for sure.

I'm excited to read the sequel, now that the virus is spreading it will be interesting to see what Crewe does to advance this new disease. Her voice, dialogue and descriptions put me right onto the island with Kaelyn, and wondering when or if I will ever make it to the other side.

"Most people think the scariest thing is knowing that you’re going to die. It’s not. It’s knowing you might have to watch every single person you’ve ever loved – or even liked – waste away while you just stand there."