Blog Tour: Giveaway & Guest Post: ALPHA GODDESS by Amalie Howard

Today, I am happy to join in Amalie Howard's blog tour for her upcoming release, Alpha Goddess. Amalie has come to Book Jems with a guest post and giveaway! You can view the rest of the tour stops here!

Alpha Goddess by Amalie Howard

The blurb as seen on Goodreads:
Release Date: March 18, 2014
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
384 Pages

In Serjana Caelum’s world, gods exist. So do goddesses. Sera knows this because she is one of them. A secret long concealed by her parents, Sera is Lakshmi reborn, the human avatar of an immortal Indian goddess rumored to control all the planes of existence. Marked by the sigils of both heaven and hell, Sera’s avatar is meant to bring balance to the mortal world, but all she creates is chaos. A chaos that Azrath, the Asura Lord of Death, hopes to use to unleash hell on earth.

Torn between reconciling her past and present, Sera must figure out how to stop Azrath before the Mortal Realm is destroyed. But trust doesn’t come easy in a world fissured by lies and betrayal. Her best friend Kyle is hiding his own dark secrets, and her mysterious new neighbor, Devendra, seems to know a lot more than he’s telling. Struggling between her opposing halves and her attraction to the boys tied to each of them, Sera must become the goddess she was meant to be, or risk failing, which means sacrificing the world she was born to protect.

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WHY I WRITE

I’ve always loved writing. Even at a very young age, I was always scribbling some story or another into a journal. I remember writing a story in pencil about a young girl covered in magical tattoos when I was about nine. Seriously, what did I know about tattoos at nine years old? Still, I remember it being a pretty interesting little story. My protagonist’s name was Xaviria (cool name, right?) and she was one tough, sassy chick. I liked my female heroines capable and clever from way back. 

I wrote a ton of poetry during my teen years—for me, writing was cathartic, especially during some of those tougher teen times (first crush, peer and parent pressure, etc.,) and whenever I had any strife in my life, I just got it all out on paper. I had my first poem published when I was twelve and I won an award in a global youth writing competition when I was fifteen for a short story. The story was about a man whose daughter’s soul lived in a weeping willow, and he could only communicate with her through his violin. Even back then, my imagination had a fondness for fantasy. Over the years, the pencil may have evolved into a laptop, but writing was and still is a huge form of escapism for me.

My passion for writing stories came from reading great stories. I’ve been a voracious reader all my life, devouring pretty much anything I could get my hands on. I loved being able to dive into someone else’s life, whether it was via a pixie or a redheaded, willful orphan or a talking lion. My love affair with fantasy and science fiction began with Grimm’s Fairy Tales and continued with books like The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe, Lord of the Rings and Dune. Given that, it’s really no surprise that that’s where I feel most comfortable exploring my own writing voice. With fantasy and scifi, I love that you can construct whole worlds with elements that may not exist in real society. I like being able to create something different with interesting multi-layered characters, especially ones with those paranormal or supernatural elements. I especially like being able to redefine myself in those characters. They are all different versions of me in different worlds with infinite possibility at their fingertips. What’s not to love about that?

Still, my road to author-dom wasn’t always clear. I was passionate about it but I wasn’t sure it was … the one. So I took a bit of a hiatus after I graduated college to pursue a global sales career in corporate telecommunications for thirteen years, and I travelled the world building that career. I did pay the bills, but eventually, I realized I wasn’t satisfied. Something was missing. In response, those writing embers buried deep down started to rekindle, and I started writing the story that became Bloodspell in 2011 (an urban fantasy witch tale from Langdon Street Press). I remember feeling excited and terrified, but alive. It was like an epic epiphany (cue choral voices here)—this is what I was meant to do, what I was always meant to do. It was as if once I started, I couldn’t stop. After Bloodspell, then came Alpha Goddess (an East Indian mythology story which releases today, March 4^th, from Sky Pony Press), then The Almost Girl (a scifi cyborg adventure from Strange Chemistry—available now), which was followed by Waterfell (an undersea fantasy romance from Harlequin Teen—also available now). I have two other novels forthcoming this year—both sequels—Oceanborn, the sequel to Waterfell, in August 2014, and The Fallen Prince, the sequel to The Almost Girl, in November 2014. 

I’m a writer. And that’s why I write.  

Big thanks to Amalie for the lovely post, and to Sami from JKS Communications for asking me to partake in this tour!

Book Review: Bloodspell (Bloodspell #1) by Amalie Howard

The blurb as seen on Goodreads:
Release date: June 1, 2011
Publisher: Langdon Street Press
394 Pages

The spell was simple...

Cruentus Protectum (Defend the Blood)

But what do you do if your blood is your enemy?

Victoria Warrick has always known she was different. An outcast at school, she is no stranger to adversity. But when she receives an old journal for her seventeenth birthday, nothing prepares her for the dark secrets it holds -- much less one that reveals she's a witch with unimaginable power.

What's more, when she meets the dazzling but enigmatic Christian Devereux, she has no idea how much her life is about to change. Enemies will hunt her. Friends will turn on her. The terrible curse that makes her blood run black will stop at nothing to control her. And Christian has a sinister secret of his own...

Without knowing whom to trust, can Victoria survive her blood's deadly desires? Or will she lose everything, including herself?

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Review:

I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. I mean, look at that cover! It’s so pretty! But alas, Bloodspell did not live up to its prettiness.

The book seemed to have an interesting premise: girl discovers that she’s not only a witch, but a cursed witch. With her new powers comes her family history and all of the sworn eternal enemies as well, not to mention, she bleeds black blood.

Interesting, right? Well, kinda.

This book follows the premise of tons of other YA books out there. New girl meets mysterious boy on her first day of school. They have an instant attraction to where they can’t stay away from each other, or can’t stop thinking about each other. The first time they touch it’s electrifying (I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be electrocuted by a boy).There’s hinting’s to a love triangle.

Then…there’s the Twilight aspect. New girl meets mysterious vampire on first day of school. Her blood calls to him like none other has before. But then, for no apparent reason, he’s a jerk to her. But wait, then he’s nice. But the he says they can’t be friends (whiplash anyone?). Victoria even at one point tells Christian to “stop looking at me like I’m something to eat.” He tells her that he’s a monster and they can’t be together. They even have the myth or fact conversation about vampires. Sigh…

Once I accepted the above and moved past them, the story itself was okay, but unfortunately, it all just fell flat to me. I enjoyed the history between the vamps and witches. It wasn’t just the vamps and witches hate each other for no reason. No, the author created a very intriguing backstory.

There were things about this book that I really did like: Christian, despite his Edward-like tendencies, was a good character toward the last half of the book. His background and history with his family was one of the more interesting parts of the story. His feud with his brother, Lucien, could have taken up the whole book and I would have been happy about it. I also liked that the author had Victoria use a familiar. I loved her familiar. For those of you who don’t know what a familiar is, it’s basically a supernatural being that helps guide a witch.

Victoria I was kind of eh about. At times she was fine, other times she was whiney and annoying, and she kept putting herself in these situations where she had to be saved or ended up needing help.  I didn’t root for the love story like I should have, but I honestly didn’t really feel it. And while I thought the ending was building to something different, the one that we ended up getting felt very melodramatic. Kind of like a grown child throwing a hissy fit.  I will say here that I went into this book thinking it was a standalone and not a series, so looking back, I can see why the ending I was looking for didn’t happen.

Another issue I had was the writing style itself. Using third person omniscient was very jolting. There were no breaks, it just kept switching. I feel like it would have worked better using the chapters as breaks.

Will I continue this series? Maybe…probably, just to see how things turn out with Christian and Lucien because that was the only thing that really held my interest.

Side note: at one point, Gabriel says “I changed everything for you.” WHAT DOES HE MEAN?? It’s never explained! Gah, drove me nuts!

JENN 

Thanks to Netgalley and Langdon Street Press for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.