The End

totally saved Alone for me.  Totally.  I don't want to say much more.  But it was a good one to read this time of year!  Cyn Balog is a writer I have come to enjoy very much! 

Creepy...

Cyn Balog wrote Sleepless and Fairy Tale and I really, really liked them so very much.  She is a creep-tasticly good author.  I should read more of her stuff.  I didn't love Unnatural Deeds as much as FT and Sleepless and I wonder if that is because I listened to it and it was hard to follow that way? Because I truly think that Balog is good good good!!!  The only thing is that I did figure this out before the end.  Which is really unusual for me!  I also wish I would have learned more about Z. Still, I would recommend it, but to read, not audio unless one is smarter than I- which is probably 99.99% of the population!

Wish, Change, Friend

I remember the book Wish, Change, Friend as being a book I really loved.  It has sweet, sweet pictures and a sweet little story.  This has nothing to do with Starstruck, except that one of the main characters has the nickname Wish, because his last name is Wishman. 
Wish is a great name.  And Wish is a good guy.  But maybe he has himself involved in something that he should have left alone.
The book is told from the POV of Gwen, nickname Dough, who has been having a email, text, phone, boyfriend/girlfriend relationship with Wish for the past three years.  She and Wish have been best friends since first grade and when he moved to California when they were thirteen, they kept up their long-distance relationship.  Gwen is kind of a behind the scenes girl.  She isn't very rich and she isn't very thin and she isn't popular at all, in fact, everyone pretty much ignores her.  Wish is living the dream in California, it seems.  His Facebook pictures are super-hot, he has tons of friends, everyone back in Jersey still keeps in touch with him.  He has more friends in Cellarton than Gwen does, and he doesn't even live there anymore.
Gwen has serious mixed feelings when she discovers that Wish is moving back to Jersey.  Will he reject her outright, because she isn't hot and cool like he is?  What will happen??!!!
When Wish comes back though...he doesn't seem to notice that Gwen is not the popular girl, to say the least.  And Wish is also acting kinda strange.  He hates stormes, he seems to worship the sun.  Is he a member of a star-worshipping cult?
This book is so bizarre and so so funny!  I love Balog's sense of humor and I have loved all of her books.  She is great!

Fairy Tale Football Players

Fairy Tale is a neat-o, different book by Cyn Balog, who wrote Sleepless, which I loved! If these two books of Balog's are any indication, this woman has a really crazy, cool imagination. She thinks very differently from a lot of people and can spin a great yarn.

Fairy Tale features soon-to-be 16 Morgan who has the gift of prophecy which makes her kinda popular at school. Another thing that makes her popular is the fact that she is one half of an "it" couple, the other half being Cam Browne, a very hot and very nice and very talented football player. He and Morgan have known eachother for ever. They share the same birthday and they share everything. They are a very sweet couple. Well, Morgan's not so sweet. She's not amazingly likable, but she is totally real, so I guess that does make her likable. Things start to go wrong a few weeks before Morgan and Cam are about to celebrate their Sweet 16s when Cam finds out that he is actually a fairy. Yeah, for real. The Brownes' real son, Pip, who has come back to help Cam ease his way back into fairy world and make his own way into Cam's life, was kidnapped at birth by fairies.
Pip has a hard time adjusting, but Morgan helps him out. Cam is having the worst time adjusting because he finds out that he must go the Otherworld (fairyland) to live forever, on the day he turns 16.

Last night I actually had a dream about the characters, that I was one of them and right inside the book. Crazy!

I really liked this book!

And it looks like another sleepless night

First, an aside....this is a great song. One of the coolest things I discovered this year was randombuzzers.com, Random House's site for teen books. You can get the news about upcoming books, join in on author chats, check out book trailers, participate in a bunch of cool activities to earn "bucks" and then spend them in the store and you can WIN stuff!

I've won my second book now! First was Gimme a Call which I LOVED!!!!! And then came Sleepless which I also LOVED!!!!

Sleepless is the story of the real Sandmen and Sandwomen who gals us fall asleep at night. You know, they even have a couple of their own songs. Enter Sandman and Mr. Sandman. And of course the comic book. The experienced Sandguy in this book is Eron. He died around 1910 and when he did, the lovely Chimere, an Original, offered him a deal. Work as a Sandman, putting folks to bed at night and watching over them while they sleep for one hundred years. Then you can be human again and finish your business. Any unfinished stuff you left on Earth. Since Eron was still a teen when he died in a factory accident, since he never had the courage to tell the woman he loved how felt about her, he jumps at the chance. He only realizes later that of course, when his hundred years of Sandmanship were up, the lady he loved wouldn't be around anymore. Unless she lived 120 years or so, which na she didn't. Anyway Eron does a great job being a Sandguy and he is about to end his century term. There's only one thing left for him to do, Chimere explains, and that's train his replacement. It should be simple. But it ain't. His replacement is also a guy who met an early death while falling asleep at wheel on his way home from his girlfriend, Julia's house. Julie also happens to be one of Eron's charges. So Eron's been watching over her since she was born. Julie's recently deceased dude is NOT having an easy time with the whole dead thing. Eron is having a hard time adjusting to the human world. And Julia thinks she's going nuts still sensing her boyfriend's presence and kinda falling for this odd dude named Eron who acts like he's stepped out of a time machine. This original book is both creepy and funny and all the way cool.