Fia was born with flawless instincts. Her first impulse, her gut feeling, is always exactly right. Her sister, Annie, is blind to the world around her—except when her mind is gripped by strange visions of the future.

Trapped in a school that uses girls with extraordinary powers as tools for corporate espionage, Annie and Fia are forced to choose over and over between using their abilities in twisted, unthinkable ways…or risking each other’s lives by refusing to obey.

Hardcover, 237 pages  Published February 19th 2013 by HarperTeen  ISBN 0062135317 (ISBN13: 9780062135315)

Twins, Annie and Fia’s, story is told from alternating perspectives. The majority of the story unfolds in flashback sequences to give the reader the facts and help build the plot of the current day situation. 

Annie is blind but has visions of events. Not exactly events that predict the future, but things that could possibly happen if certain situations play out. Fia on the other hand has the power of intuition.

The story focuses on Fia saving Annie. They are very close and their first and foremost thoughts are always about each other’s welfare. Several times throughout the story Annie warns Fia of visions she has, but even though Fia has the power of instinct, she doesn’t observe Annie’s warnings.

The girls are highly flawed characters. They both seem lost and depressed, as if they are searching for something to replace the loss of their parents. Throughout the story, Fia is taught the skills of an assassin at the school they attend, but it’s against her will, as the school master keeps Annie to make Fia do their bidding.

I found this book very unusual and unique. The “abilities/powers” these girls have are not exactly laid in concrete. This does lead to some confusion in the storyline. Fia acts on initial feelings, but she herself is all over the place emotionally and at any time, may have the instinct to fight or flight. Being highly strung, she tends to act out her emotions by partying and trying to mentally escape her situation.

Many of you may recognize the author from her Paranormalcy series which has a lot of humour, fun antics, great characters and a kick ass heroine. While this story does have a bad ass girl at the fore-front, all the characters in this book are highly flawed, and there is very little humour. Definitely something different than other paranormal books that take place in a private-school setting. It’s dark and and full of emotionally driven characters.

Super cute and super sweet, these vanilla and raspberry cupcakes are topped with a home-made marshmallow that’s ridiculously easy to make (and soooo yummy!). Perfect for a girly afternoon tea or Sweet 16^th Birthday Party, they look fantastic grouped together on the table or a cupcake stand. ~Mandy Wrangles

First up, we’ll start with the marshmallows.

What you’ll need:

3 cups of sugar

2 tablespoons of gelatine

1 and a half cups of boiling water.

Vanilla essence

Food colouring

How it’s done:

Dissolve the gelatine into a bowl with the boiling water. You might have to help it melt by squishing with the back of a spoon.

In a large bowl, place the three cups of sugar. Add the water/gelatine mix to it and beat with an electric mixer until the mix is thick and creamy and the sugar is dissolved. 

 And after about 5 minutes, looks like this! Magic! 

It’s at this stage that you can add flavourings and colour. For this recipe, I used vanilla and a few drops of pink colouring to half the mix. Working fairly fast, spoon mixture into a piping bag with a wide round nozzle – be careful because it sets quickly and can be a bit sticky and messy! Onto a tray lined with baking paper, pipe coils of marshmallow.

Refrigerate for at least a couple of hours, or until cupcakes are baked and cooled.

Now, onto the cupcakes. This recipe makes around 24 cakes.

 What you’ll need:

200g softened, unsalted butter

1 teaspoon of vanilla essence

1 cup of caster (superfine) sugar

2 and a half cups of self-raising flour

1 cup of milk

3 eggs

1 cup fresh or frozen raspberries, mashed with the back of a spoon (I used frozen)

Vanilla buttercream icing. (You can make your own, but I’m all for cheating, so used a commercial brand – Betty Crocker)

How it’s done:

Preheat your oven to 175 degrees C. Line a muffin or cupcake tin with cases, or, you can use the self-structured ones shown in the pics. I like these because you can bake lots more at a time. My trays fit 25 cases.

With an electric mixer, whip the butter, sugar and vanilla until its light and fluffy. Then add your eggs, one at a time. The mixture can go a bit curdly at this stage, but don’t worry, it’ll all come back together. Then add half the flour, half the milk. Then more flour, more milk and keep mixing until it’s all combined. Add a couple of spoons of the mashed raspberries and give another quick mix – but only enough to swirl the raspberries in.

Fill your cupcake cases to about halfway. Add some more raspberry chunks if desired. This is a fairly thick and heavy mixture, so give the tops a bit of a smooth over. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, or until a skewer stuck in the middle comes out clean. Cool completely before decorating. (pic of cooked, undecorated cakes?)

Once cakes are cool, pull your marshmallows out of the fridge and roll them in icing sugar, or a mix of icing sugar and coloured decorator sugar. Try not to eat too many before they go on the cakes! With a piping bag and the same large nozzle as used earlier, pipe a round circle of vanilla buttercream around the edge of the cake. Add your marshmallow on top, and you’re done!

Hint: When making cupcakes for a special occasion, I find it really effective to use cupcake cases that match your colour theme, or, as you can see in these pics, two slightly different cases. It’ll make all the difference for the table display.

Reviewed by Lisa Smith

If you had the chance to spend the last half of the school year with you friend, without parental supervision, would you do it? Would you lie to do it? And if you got that past your parents, what would you spend those three months doing? In Ten Things We Did (And Probably Shouldn’t Have), April does exactly that.

April finds out that her dad has applied and been accepted for a new job far away, and is planning on moving there with her step mother. But April doesn’t want to leave behind the only life she’s ever known, her sweet boyfriend Noah, her friends, and not even her school.

So when trying to figure out a way to be able to stay, April and her best friend Vi, come up with having her live with Vi. Knowing that Vi’s mom is off on Broadway, and that April’s dad would never let her stay with Vi without any parental supervision, the two lie to both of their parents. April explains to her dad that she’ll be staying with Vi and her mom, and Vi tells her mom that April’s dad is okay with having April live with Vi alone. To make things seem more truthful the two girls created fake emails for both of their parents and exchange them.

They gave Vi’s mom, April’s dad’s fake email. And they gave April’s dad, Vi’s mom’s fake email. (Was that confusing?)

After getting all that squared away, the two girls can finally relax and have some fun! Do things they would never even have imagined doing!

The entire book is organized by the ten crazy and adventurous things the two girls do together; including skipping school, buying a hot tub, and losing their virginity (This book doesn’t go into much detail, and isn’t  very explicit).

Everything is going good until April’s kitten is run over by a car, Vi and April throw a crazy insane birthday party, and April’s dad is due to visit early the next morning! And to make things worse (like that’s possible), April discovers she had gotten a sexual disease from Noah.

April’s life quickly changes and becomes out of control. Her boyfriend Noah is lying and cheating (and her friend even knew about it but never cared to inform her), her cat is injured, and April doesn’t know what to do. She wants nothing more than to leave, and move back in with her dad. But can’t.

Ten Things We Did (And Probably Shouldn’t Have) goes from two girls just wanting to have fun, to things going sour. But the ending is happy, and things turn out well for April. I had a lot of fun reading this book, and I’ll make sure to buy a hot tub next time my parents are on vacation!

I felt every emotion possible. I went from laughing to crying, to being angry, to loving one very sweet sweet guy! The characters were all lovable, and realistic. The story line was fun, but also filled with drama and romance. The ending was happy, and I was satisfied. There were no lose ends or anything left unsaid! Ten Things We Did (And Probably Shouldn’t Have) is the perfect light and fun read for the summer!

Baking with Mandy Wrangles

Too Easy Carrot Cake

This is a really simple recipe (it’s never failed me yet) but there are a number of ingredients. I find the best way to make sure I don’t forget something is to have all my ingredients organised, measured and on the bench waiting to be thrown into the mixture.

What you’ll need:

1 cup of brown sugar tightly packed

1 cup of vegetable oil

3 large eggs

A pinch of salt

Half a teaspoon of Bicarb Soda

2 cups of self-raising flour

2 cups of finely grated carrot – about 4 big carrots

Half a cup of chopped walnuts (optional)

2 teaspoons of cinnamon

1 teaspoon of nutmeg

How it’s done:

Pre heat your oven to 180 degrees C. Grease and line two loaf tins with baking paper. Preferably use an electric beater to beat the sugar and oil together until they’re thick. Of course you can use an old-fashioned hand beater, but you might end up with a dead-arm afterwards.

Once the sugar and oil are combined and thick, add the eggs one at a time. Keep beating. Then, add the salt, bicarb, carrots, flour, walnuts and spices and mix together by hand with a wooden spoon – otherwise the carrot and walnuts get all tangled in the beaters.

Divide the mixture evenly between the two loaf tins and bake for about 35 or 40 minutes. The cakes should be a light golden brown colour, and spring back when you touch them in the middle.

Icing:

Okay, I have to admit, this Carrot Cake rarely makes it to the icing stage at my place because it gets devoured warm. But, if you can resist temptation, here’s the recipe I use:

 1 cup of icing sugar

100 grams of softened cream cheese

45 grams of softened unsalted butter

1tsp of lemon juice

Finely grated rind of 1 lemon

Again, I use an electric beater to combine, but you could use a wooden spoon to mix this. Just make sure the cream cheese and butter are at room temperature before you start.

Belinda talks watches.

Watch It!

I have this awful tan line happening on my left arm right now thanks to my watch. This wouldn’t be happening if I changed up the type of watches I used during the week (or used more sunscreen). I figured I’d take a look at a few different styles of watch to see what you all thought would be kinda cool to use.

When I was in high school, the must-have watch was a Baby G by Casio.  They never really did anything for me back then, nor do they now because my arms are so thin. What can I say? It’s a curse.

The other most famous type of watch going around when I was a kid was a Swatch watch  and believe me they’ve come a LOOONG way from slapping a branded piece of plastic to your arm. There are actually some on there I would love to wear. However the online store isn’t available to Australia. Booo!

For the classical look you can go with a fob watch, or a pocket watch. These would make a nice day to day look. For a dramatic addition to a steam punk outfit you can try and find one that has all the moving parts visible. Check them out on E Bay. *sigh* So pretty.

To get really picky you can always just do away with the watch all together and rely on the clock on your mobile phone. But since my battery is always flat, I’d do better with a sun dial on a cloudy day.

Anyway, I hope I’ve triggered a fashion trend change. If none of these worked for you I’d love to hear which watches are making you tick.