ARC Spot: Happy Release Day To: Masque of Red Death

Masque of Red Death
Bethany Griffin releases today 4.24.2012

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Our Thoughts On Masque of Red Death:

Like an entertainment from Fools, a Prince sits high above a town covered in sickness, helping people little but charging a hefty fee to those who can afford a remedy, a mask. Behind ceramic masks the wealthy move through dangerous streets filled with the poor dying from a plague that is wiping out more than half a population. These working poor must watch the rich glide through the streets in steamwork carriages and fancy silks while they struggle to survive and keep their families alive. In a city where rife with danger and uprising who will lead the next generation of citizens when all seems lost and something deadly this way comes again.

       Masque of Red Death is a hauntingly beautiful novel of remorse and lost hope in a city filled in death and darkness. Where can hope spring forth when everything has been ripped from your arms and you have no one to turn to. With a tortured heroine in a girl named Araby Worth we see the faces of the plague while also we learn the truth and histories behind the masks. Araby is the daughter of the man behind the creation of the masks that help abate the sickness sweeping the world, but while her father had higher hops of giving the people the masks, the Prince has taken a heavy price from this family and charges hefty for the luxury of the masks. With the story of her brother’s death weaving throughout  the book, we find that Araby is blaming more of herself for his death, but also in the secrets she hides from her father.

    Araby had previously spend her time in clubs and under the influence of a variety of poisons to keep the world in oblivion but soon Araby finds herself at the cusp of a decision that can mean everything to a torn city. What cost will Araby have to pay in all of this, and what games come to those in power. In a struggle to help the ones she finds herself connected to, will Araby be able to forgive her past and live for her present future? Can Araby Worth be more than just a hero’s daughter even though that act of heroism of her father carries with it a horrible set of truths and a failing in the past?

    
    With a fabulous story and a dark and suspenseful world at her fingertips, Bethany Griffin beings readers into a brand new world filled with desires and death which is hitting a turning point or resurrection or utter chaos and destruction. Are people stronger and more resilient to propaganda than we would like to think, can a revolution be as dreamy as people would have it, or is the world really as dark and twisted as one might think on a lonely night. Masque of Red Death is like a ball, with secrets toiling inside the dancers and intrigue and debauchery behind every curtain. Bethany Griffin takes us into a world that only a few see that is playing at being carefree and flippant, while in the very same place undercurrent of strife, struggle, and a vision of a better future are brewing.  Will something seeping and red soon destroy them all as they act out the revolution that they so desire?  


Blurb from the Publisher:

A devastating plague has decimated the population, and those who are left live in fear of catching it as the city crumbles around them.So what does Araby Worth have to live for?Nights in the Debauchery Club, beautiful dresses, glittery makeup . . . and tantalizing ways to forget it all.But in the depths of the club—in the depths of her own despair—Araby will find more than oblivion. She will find Will, the terribly handsome proprietor of the club, and Elliott, the wickedly smart aristocrat. Neither is what he seems. Both have secrets. Everyone does.And Araby may find not just something to live for, but something to fight for—no matter what it costs her.

*received a copy of this book through edelweiss and the publishers on the amazing internet.  An honest review was typed out by me with at least three cups of coffee in my system and I hope all errors were auto-corrected or fixed by flying monkeys in residence.