Month: February 2015

ARC Review: Red Queen

Posted February 9, 2015 / Book Reviews / 8 Comments

Where do I even begin with you, Red Queen?! Let me start by saying for the millionth time that it’s pretty cool that the author’s hometown is right next to mine and that we have a mutual friend I went to college with. Okay, moving on. I think this one is mostly tough to review for one major reason: it took a lot of power to stay engaged for most of the book. I found that I would get distracted after only reading a few pages. I’m okay with a series-starter that’s focused on world-building, as long as it keeps me interested. I don’t need a lot of action (until the end, that’s when I NEED it) to keep me going most of the time. This wasn’t really the case here, BUT I enjoyed it. Weird, right? It couldn’t hold my attention for more than a few pages at a time but it was really interesting. I needed to know what was going to happen but I couldn’t just get going with it. There’s a good chance I was having some fantasy-related burnout for this book, if I’m being honest. I took a break part of the way through to read a quick contemporary and it re-engerized me. The characters were also a bit MEH for me. Mare was kind of boring. She didn’t feel like a strong badass lady, which is how I like my fantasies. I couldn’t exactly connect with her for some reason. I’m not saying she was […]

NEW Guest Post Feature Announcement: Inside and Out

Posted February 6, 2015 / Features, Inside and Out / 10 Comments

A new feature to admire pretty book covers and bookmarks, shared by YOU! I am so excited to announce that I’ve finally found a guest post feature that reflects me and my blog. Welcome to INSIDE AND OUT. This feature will include two of my absolute favorite book-related things: bookmarks (inside) and book covers (out)! What’s it about and why? Bookmarks are such a fun and easy thing to collect. You can get them to represent places you’ve been, books you’ve read, characters you love, quotes about reading and from books, etc. Literally anything. I think most bloggers and bookish people at least have a few tried-and-true bookmarks – and even some that are never used because they’re TOO special. Either way, they’re necessary and everyone has a bookmark preference! Book covers are something I’ve featured on the blog a couple of times. It’s no secret I am a major sucker for pretty covers. I’m more than happy to judge books by their covers all the time. To me, a cover should represent what’s inside the book. It should give you a FEEL about what you’re going to read. A good cover reflects the story in same way that the plot summary does. So now you can see why bookmarks and book covers are so important to me, and helped define this feature! How can I help? I’d love to make this a regular feature on the blog. I’ll decide exactly how often the post will appear based on the amount […]

Read-Bait: “Private School”

Posted February 5, 2015 / Book Lists, Features / 16 Comments

Here is my first post in a new series here at the blog: Read-Bait! Over the coming weeks, I’ll be featuring different words or phrases that catch my eye in book descriptions, the books I’ve read under those categories, and the books I plan on reading. I hope it shares some insight about my reading preferences and interests. As always, feel free to recommend any books you’d think I like! You know how it goes: you’re browsing Goodreads, clicking on books that look interesting, and checking out their summaries. All of a sudden you see a certain word or phrase in the synopsis that triggers an automatic reaction to click that “Want to Read” button. I call this “read-bait” – any word(s) that make you instantly think that you MUST read this book. One example for me is… The minute I see a plot summary for a book involving some kind of special school, I’m on board. I loved the idea of attending boarding school when I was younger: living with your classmates, walking to class like you’re at college – it all sounded awesome. My first foray into this category was the Private series by Kate Brian. It featured a girl who attended private school on scholarship and got involved in some pretttttty crazy shit, including murders, mean girls, and boy drama. Along that same vein, when Gossip Girl by Cecily von Ziegesar branched out and gave Jenny her own series, The It Girl, I was in heaven. Jenny was headed […]

Review: The DUFF

Posted February 4, 2015 / Book Reviews / 7 Comments

OH MAN. This makes the second book by Kody Keplinger that I read in basically one sitting over the course of one day. I kept trying to put it down and go to sleep but I just couldn’t. Her stories just grab me in a way that makes me want to keep reading and reading until I reach the end. It’s basically a contemporary romance with the addiction level of a mystery/thriller. I had this book on my radar for a while, even before I heard there was going to be a movie. My dad got it for me for Christmas and I’ve been anxious to get started ever since. The Read The Duff Read-a-long motivated me to get my butt in gear after finishing up a few review books. BUT I DIGRESS. I seriously loved this book. I’m not surprised. It has everything I generally enjoy reading in a YA romance book: the banter, love-hate relationship, realistic main character, perfect writing and pacing, great friendships, family relationship building… the list goes on. I’ve found both books I’ve read by Keplinger to include all of these elements, which is why she is my queen. She just has an addicting writing style and compulsively readable storylines. Bianca is given the name “Duff” by the school’s playboy, Wesley. When he comes up to her and calls her that, she throws her Coke in his face. He wants to use her to get close to her friends. The nickname sticks with her for a long […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #27: Long Overdue

Posted February 3, 2015 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 24 Comments

Books I Can’t Believe I Haven’t Read… Because Everyone Else Has! Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, where we make LISTS of our top ten books based on that week’s prompt… and then we stalk other people’s answers to add a million books to our TBR. The topics are provided ahead of time and can be found here. This week’s topics are books you can’t believe you haven’t read yet, like certain YA staples in a specific genre. There are so many books and series out there that I feel like EVERYONE has read. I feel a little out of the loop! There are staples within the YA genre that everyone also has a strong feeling about (sometimes good, sometimes bad!). Many of these I plan to read at some point – someday – but some of them I’m not sure if I’ll ever bother with. I decided to keep the genre wide open because there are so many different ones across different genres that I need to get going on. (And yes, there are a couple more than ten. Not sorry!) Which of these have you read? Are you a black sheep like me and haven’t read any? Which live up to the hype and which don’t? Jellicoe Road / The Selection / Throne of Glass / City of Bones / Vampire Academy / Divergent / Cinder / Uglies / Percy Jackson / Delirium / Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour / Obsidian

February TBR and Books & Bloggers Swap Reveal

Posted February 2, 2015 / TBR Lists, Uncategorized / 15 Comments

In honor of being home “working” on this snowy day, I had plenty of time to mess around on the computer and do bloggy things. (Primarily this means making lots of graphics for posts and trying to whittle down that 300-post Bloglovin feed!) I haven’t shared a TBR post in a few months so I figured today would be a great day – especially because of the holiday approaching this month that’s all about LOOOOVE. You can clearly see that I’m planning on packing in the contemporaries this month. I’m currently in the middle of Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard and I’m enjoying it… for the most part. I’m definitely invested in the story and interested to see what’s going to happen, but my attention span is struggling. I can only read a few pages before letting myself get distracted by the internet. I’m not sure if it’s just because January was a big fantasy month for me and I’m over it (for now), or because of the book itself. Regardless, today I started Meant to Be by Lauren Morrill and am hoping that’s a nice contemporary break. It should only take me a few sittings to finish it. I have two swoony E-ARCs to read this month too and I’m super excited! Promposal by Rhonda Helms sounds cute and right up my alley; I always am interested to hear how people get asked out to dances! “Promposals” were just starting to get big while I was in school and I […]

Review: All Broke Down

Posted February 2, 2015 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

I honestly don’t have much to say about this book except for one word and any words that have the same definition as it: STEAMY STEAMY STEAMY Seriously though. People weren’t lying about this book. It was s-e-x-u-a-l. Aside from that, this book was a lot of great things. I really did love it more than the first book, and I think the main reason was the characters. Dallas was very meh for me in All Lined Up but Carson was the BEST. It was a little too unbalanced. (And even so, the fact that he was way to overprotective/territorial over her in this book bugged me. I’m NOT the kind of person who things that type of behavior is cute. It’s a bit too controlling when you flip out about anyone talking about your girlfriend. I get where he’s coming from, but let’s relax a little bit.) DALLAS AND SILAS THOUGH. I loved them. Both of them. For very different reasons. It’s a typical opposites-attract kind of story, and the main drama point of the book is obviously: can these two ever be a successful couple if they’re so different? Silas is a guy who was a major dick in the previous book but came a very long way in this one. He has a bad history with his family and feels like he’s constantly going to fall into bad habits. Dylan, on the other hand, is a part of a wealthy family that expects her to be a perfect […]