Month: July 2014

Top 10 Summer Reads

Posted July 16, 2014 / Book Lists, Features / 5 Comments

Top 10 Books to Read in the Summertime My best book season is the summertime. There’s nothing better than sitting outside under a tree or on the beach reading a book. I love stories about girls who head off to some beachy destination, fall in love, and make new friends. I’m a sucker for a summer YA novel. Here are my top picks for summertime. Some of them are book series and some are standalones, listed in no particular order. Enjoy! Summer series by Katherine Applegate  ||  This series includes Beach Blondes, Spring Break, Tan Lines, and Sun-Kissed Christmas. For some reason, they were published out of order; I recommend reading them as I listed them here. Beach Blondes and Tan Lines technically contain three books apiece, so they look huge. The stories go by very quickly and are a little less fluffy than they seem. The gist is that the main character, who is of course named Summer, heads down to Florida for the summer/spring break/summer again/Christmas. She meets three guys: Adam, the rich guy; Diver, the mysterious guy; and Seth, the guy with a girlfriend. Add in the typical YA drama and a little more serious stuff, and you’ve got this series that’s perfect to read on the beach. Summer series by Jenny Han  ||  Apparently these two series’ have unoriginal names. This series includes The Summer I Turned Pretty, It’s Not Summer Without You, and We’ll Always Have Summer. I could not stop reading these. I wish […]

Review: We Were Liars

Posted July 16, 2014 / Book Reviews / 13 Comments
Review: We Were Liars

Review: Well, I decided to make my first review about a book I didn’t like too much. I have mixed emotions about this book, so let me try to work through them here. I have to admit, I was extremely interested in the book based on the cover. I don’t know who is making all these cool, graphic book covers lately, but I love them. I was fascinated by the small amount of plot-related information that was out there and it kept getting rave reviews, so I decided to try it out. The general plot, without giving anything away, is that a rich family goes to their own private island every summer. The kids play while the adults get drunk. Sounds about right for my family gatherings (minus the private island thing). The book goes back and forth between past summers and the current summer, which surprisingly wasn’t too confusing. The main character loved to repeat the same effing phrases over and over again. If I read “Gatt… my Gatt” one more time, I think my head would have exploded. The writing style was choppy and not what I normally like. She wrote paragraphs that seemed literal but were actually figurative. At one point, she says something along the lines of “my father shot me; my brains were all over the grass,” or some shit. As I’m reading, I was like holy shit this dude just shot his daughter… Oh wait, that wasn’t literal. Unfortunately, this was one of the first scenes […]