Mundie Moms

Friday, May 27, 2016

WHATEVER AFTER: Sugar and Spice by Sarah Mlynowski / Cover Reveal / Giveaway

Today on Mundie Kids we had the honor of revealing the cover for the next book in Sarah Mylnowski's WHATEVER AFTER series! Check out the cover for Sarah's WHATEVER AFTER #10: SUGAR & SPICE below!


This cover is simply perfect! We have loved all the covers for this series, but this one might be our favorite one yet.

A Blurb from Sarah

I’ve had the seeds of the idea for Whatever After since I was six years old. I loved to write stories about a girl named Sarah (yup, I made myself the star of all my stories) who had magic stuff happen to her. In my favorite story, she had a magic fork that could turn broccoli into cotton candy. I also loved telling fractured fairy tales, such as the The Princess and the M&M, instead of The Princess and the Pea, because I wasn’t a fan of peas. Looking back, it seems like a lot of my inspiration stemmed from my distaste for vegetables. Anyway! When I became a writer, I thought: what if I combined these two types of stories? A regular girl could magically fall into a fairy tale, and the very act of falling into the tale would fracture it. And that’s how I came up with the idea for Whatever After.

My sincerest thanks to readers, parents, grandparents, bloggers, librarians and booksellers who have allowed this series to grow and find such a dedicated audience. It feels unbelievable to me that the ideas I had when I was just a kid would grow up to reach the milestone of a ten book series. And now, I am absolutely thrilled to share the cover of Sugar and Spice with you. Not only does the cover feature Jonah for the first time, but look at all that candy! Six-year-old me would be absolutely delighted.  

ABOUT THE BOOK

By: Sarah Mlynowski
Published by: Scholastic
To Be Released on: November 29th, 2016
Series: Whatever After #10
Pre-Order from: Amazon

That's the way the cookie crumbles!

Yum! Our magic mirror has dropped me and my brother, Jonah, into the story of Hansel and Gretel. If we're lucky, we may even get to taste the cake-house...

But we didn't count on accidentally getting trapped. The real Hansel and Gretel are on the run, and Jonah and I have taken their place. And the witch is making a kid casserole for dinner...

Now we have to:
- Avoid being eaten
- Pretend our dog is a cat
- Learn to make kale smoothies
- Befriend a talking duck

Or we may never make it back to our home sweet home!


When you pre-order it, be sure to purchase a copy of Upside Down Magic #2: Sticks and Stones, which Sarah co-wrote with Emily Jenkins and Lauren Myracle. It will be out next week on May 31st! You can find out more about the book on Sarah's website, here.

ENTER TO WIN

Thank you to Scholastic, 5 winners will each win 2 of Sarah's latest books (Whatever After #9 and Upside Down Magic #2). This is open to residents in the US only.
a Rafflecopter giveaway

An Ember In The Ashes by Sabaa Tahir / Book Review



By: Sabaa Tahir
Released on: April 28, 2015
Published by: Razorbill
Purchase it fromAmazonBarnes & NobleiBooksGoodreads
Add it to Goodreads
Rating: 4.5 Stars - I Really Enjoyed It!
Source: purchased book / arc from publisher to exchange for my honest review

Set in a terrifyingly brutal Rome-like world, An Ember in the Ashes is an epic fantasy debut about an orphan fighting for her family and a soldier fighting for his freedom. It’s a story that’s literally burning to be told.

LAIA is a Scholar living under the iron-fisted rule of the Martial Empire. When her brother is arrested for treason, Laia goes undercover as a slave at the empire’s greatest military academy in exchange for assistance from rebel Scholars who claim that they will help to save her brother from execution.

ELIAS is the academy’s finest soldier—and secretly, its most unwilling. Elias is considering deserting the military, but before he can, he’s ordered to participate in a ruthless contest to choose the next Martial emperor.

When Laia and Elias’s paths cross at the academy, they find that their destinies are more intertwined than either could have imagined and that their choices will change the future of the empire itself.

A mesmerizing debut! Sabaa Tahir has created a story that is vividly detailed, introduces readers to some remarkable characters, and beautifully combines it's elements of fantasy and dystopia, making this a story that stands out among of sea of out standing debuts. 

With it's terrifying, and extremely brutal world, Laia and Elias's destinies collide in the most dangerous way. In a world ruled by violence and vengeance, these two characters each carefully guard the hope they have for their future, while they each try to figure a way out of the endless brutality they both face. Laia, on a mission to save her imprisoned brother, risks it all when she's forced to work for the rebels as a spy. Forced undercover she finds herself as a slave to the ruler of the Martial Empire. Elias, an elite solider of the Martial Empire, and heir to it's brutal leader, struggles to accept his fate, and the violent way of life he's forced to live as a Mask. After their paths cross more than a few times, these two unlikely heroes will risk it all to save each other, and the hope they have for a better future for their empire. 


Told from alternating points of view between Laia and Elias, it was incredibly easy for me to be swept up into all that was going on in this captivating story. Elias is a character I liked from the get go. I love that while he's powerful in his own right, he's a broken character who secretly wants nothing to do with the Empire he's forced to serve for. I loved his strength, and passion for what he felt was right. He hides his true convictions about the Empire, and his haunted by what he's forced to do. He's a broken character in his own right, but I felt like that brokenness fueled his strength to be better than what he's forced to be. 


Laia herself grows into a such a strong, pillar of hope and strength. Not just for herself, but for the select few who are close to her. She has lost is all, and with not much else to lose, she is someone who risks it all for the one person she has left. No matter how much this world threatens to break her, and how much she brutally endures, she doesn't give up. I greatly admired that about her. She has an inner strength that I loved, which helps her endure all she does. This world is down right brutal, and deadly, and breaks anything that is good. I enjoyed seeing Laia defy it, which made her stronger. I really enjoyed her character growth through out the story.

This story is one that is fueled by danger and violence, and driven by hope. It was incredibly easy for me to root for the characters who were smart in how they went about their secret resistance. Many of them endured the violence that rules their empire, but despite it all, there's still hope found in the unlikely of places. I loved the way both Laia and Elias's destines collide, and the way their stories are told. This is a classic heroic tale with an epic battle of good vs evil at his core. It's story about survival, hope, and given the slightest touch of romance. That romance is so perfectly fitting for this story. Page 371 may be my favorite page.... With it's many twists, turns, betrayals, and deceptions, this is a book that was almost impossible to put down.


The #DashnerDash Kicks Off TODAY!


Get ready for the release of The Fever Code by James Dashner, by binge reading the entire Maze Runner series! Join Random House as they kick off the #DashnerDash TODAY with The Maze Runner! See the schedule above. 

Per Random House Kids:

The reread will kick off on May 27 with The Maze Runner—fans can submit questions via the James Dashner Facebook page. Selected questions will then be discussed by the author and his editor, Krista Marino, in a series of live Google Hangouts during the last week of each month. The first Google Hangout with Dashner and Marino will happen the week of June 27. Specific details will be posted on the Facebook page and shared via social media.

Rereads of The Scorch Trials begin on June 27, followed by The Death Cure on July 27, and The Kill Order on August 27. Questions can again be submitted via Facebook, and a book-club-style discussion will occur at the end of each month. The Google Hangout for The Kill Order at the end of August will lead right into the publication of The Fever Code on September 27.

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