Bad Apple Books

Before I start this review I need to tell you guys that the kindle e-book version of The Girl In Between is free right now through Amazon, click here to get your copy if you haven’t already! So I added this book to my wishlist on Good Reads earlier last year and my boyfriend gave me a Kindle Fire for Christmas, this is where I discovered the magic that is the free book section and happened to find The Girl In Between on the list. I downloaded it and was so eager to start reading that it was the first book I read on my Fire!

The story sucked me in from the first page, it starts in a dream that Bryn is having…a dream she’s had countless times because she has a rare disease called Klein-Levin Syndrome (KLS).

Bryn randomly falls asleep and doesn’t wake up for days, weeks or months. Lately her sleeping spells have been lasting longer each time, her mother and grandmother are worried about her and spend much of their time waiting for her to wake up before pretending that everything is normal and waiting for the next spell.

In the first dream that we share with Bryn, we meet a boy that mysteriously washed up on the shore in Bryn’s dream state, a place that she is suppose to be alone. He doesn’t know his name, anything about his past or why he is in her dream. But Bryn is immediately weary of him, distancing herself before finally deciding that he might be there for a reason and that it’s up to her to find it.

“My hands trembled, afraid to move him, to wake him. Afraid he wouldn’t. Another wave spilled over him, the sand giving way, rocking him. I reached for his shoulder, pushing until he was on his back. He was the color of a hydrangea before it blooms, wilting like one too, every inch of him sunken and bruised.”

The story tilts and changes when Bryn is awake. Her life with her small family and two best friends is so normal compared to the beautiful and dangerous dream state. Her mother works hard together to find a cure while Bryn fights to maintain her independence and freedom, neither of them really know why she has KLS and how to cure it. Bryn definitely hasn’t told her mother what she dreams of or what happens when she sleeps, knowing that it would worry her if she knew.

The dream state is incredible, the way Kemp describes it in the series is so great. At times I can’t even imagine what I’m reading, but I liked the way it is written. Bryn’s dreams are her memories, she lives in a world where all of her childhood memories collide to make one strange mixture of events and places. From the coral reef, to the waves crashing against a field of sun flowers and a farm house set under a bright moon where the seasons are random and everything has meaning to her. It’s the same every time she has a sleeping spell until she returns to the dream and the boy is still there. He and Bryn spend their time together attempting to jog his memory, until they find that his memories and dreams are starting to show up in her dream state.

Bryn is familiar with the dark force in her dreams, they are growing stronger and making appearances in her waking life as she and her new friend find more and more pieces to the puzzle of his existence. When they finally reach the answers they’ve been looking for, reality and dream state collide and Bryn finds herself running to find the boy from her dreams in the real world.

This book was a great read, I especially enjoyed reading a bit of it every night before bed. Like I said earlier, it’s free and you can read it if you have a kindle or the kindle app so give it a chance!

I picked this little gem up on Audible during their two for one sale last month, sometimes I am that person who buys a book based on the cover. But I can’t help myself when almost every book I find has an eye-catchingly awesome cover. Sometimes I’m disappointed, sometimes I fall in love with the book and have to force myself to read the next one on the list. But this book doesn’t really fit into either category.

Twylla is a sixteen year old goddess embodied killer, nothing out of the norm there. She kills with a single touch and is forced to do so by the Queen of Lormere. Every month she drinks the poison that is suppose to be proof that she is Daunen Embodied, thus making her skin poisonous to anyone that she touches…other than members of the royal family.

“In the stories of old, a hero is the one who sweeps in with a drawn sword and noble face, to kill the Dragon and free the princess. In the stories of old it never seems to dawn on the princess that she should be careful not to put herself at mercy of those who would do her ill in the first place. I don’t live in the stories of old.”

Honestly, I felt bad for this girl. She spends the first twelve years of her life with her mother, the Sin Eater. Her mother goes to the families that have lost a loved one (usually those who can afford to pay her) and eats a meal on top of their casket while the family sits around her and grieves. It’s suppose to be some way of her taking in the sins of the departed and allowing them to move on with a clean slate. I did find the bits of information on sin eating to be pretty interesting, it’s much more than what I thought it would be. Anyway, at twelve, Twylla leaves her mother and sister to go serve the royal family of Lormere as their executioner and wait out her time to marry Prince Merek. So for the past four years she has had no contact with her family and just spends her time praying, sewing and killing people. She was being manipulated and brainwashed by everyone she knew, including her husband to be.

Everything changes for Twylla when her guard falls ill to a bee sting and she is left in the care of her second, and newest guard, Lief. She has been weary of him from the start, he doesn’t seem to have any fear of her terrible gift and once he is alone with her he gets even more comfortable. For Twylla, he opens a door to adventure, honesty, love and all the strings attached.

I didn’t dislike this book, the writing was nice and I was too busy feeling bad for the main character to hate her…though I hated everyone else, that’s new. I will probably read the rest of the series because I want to know who was knocking on her door! Also, the story was decent, it was one I hadn’t read before and I want to know what happens to Twylla, Merek and Lief.