Month: May 2015

Review: When

Posted May 6, 2015 / Book Reviews / 3 Comments
Review: When

I’m sorry for the inevitable rant that this review is going to become. I was immediately intrigued by the premise of this book before it was released and thought it’d be a solid one to listen to on Audible. I was definitely wrong in that, and now I’m wondering how much the format of the book impacted my rating and feelings. Would it have been different to read this in print, or did I reaaaally just not like the book at all? Anyway, this book was pretty painful to listen to for a variety of reasons: THE AUDIOBOOK NARRATOR. This is certainly my biggest gripe, hence the debate above. The narrator read so fucking slowly that I wanted to speed up the narration. (Yes, I know that’s possible on Audible, but then the person gets a squeaky mouse voice.) She had the weirdest inflection on certain words and characters’ voices that I cringed so often. It can always be awkward when narrators try to change their voice for different characters, but this was just so bad. THE MAIN CHARACTER. Maddie made me SO annoyed throughout the whole book. Coupled with the narrator’s young-sounding voice, Maddie was so damn immature and stupid sometimes I can’t even explain it. Her whining was so melodramatic; I rolled my eyes WAY too many times. I feel bad saying this because she went through so much, especially with the bullying from her classmates, but I can’t help it. Some examples where I wanted to punch my phone: Lady […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #38: Never Read

Posted May 5, 2015 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 20 Comments
Top Ten Tuesdays #38: Never Read

Top 10 Books I’ll Probably Never Read 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. Links go to Goodreads or my review. I feel like I’ve done a topic like this already, but I can’t think of it right now. There are a LOT of books I’ll probably never read, so I decided to go by some of the earliest books I added to my TBR on Goodreads. Most of these will probably never be read for a variety of reasons. Here ya go!

Bout of Books 13 Sign-Up, Goals, and Progress

Posted May 4, 2015 / Book Challenges, Features / 8 Comments
Bout of Books 13 Sign-Up, Goals, and Progress

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, May 11th and runs through Sunday, May 17th in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 13 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. – From the Bout of Books team WOO I am ready for my third Bout of Books! The past two times [here, here] I ended up overdoing it a little bit. I would set too many rules, chose too high of a goal, and tried to restrict the books on my TBR too much. This doesn’t work for me, so I’m learning my lesson this time. Simple goals, wide TBR to choose from, and a manageable goal! Finish four books – audio or regular. Since I can usually finish a book within 2-3 days, depending on the length and my investment in it, this should be a reasonable challenge! I’m going to try to finish whichever audiobook I’m listening to during the week too. Because I’m so bad at sticking to a real TBR, I decided instead to give myself a number of books to choose from. The only rule is that one book has to fall in each of the categories below… AND I have to already own the book! Here […]

Review: The Falconer

Posted May 4, 2015 / Book Reviews / 4 Comments
Review: The Falconer

The biggest thing I can say about this book is HOLY CLIFFHANGER. Good god, how am I supposed to wait until later this year for the sequel? Someone help me. I was really excited to read this book when I grabbed it from the library, because I’ve been super in the mood for fairy books lately. I will say up front though that it had some trouble keeping my attention. I’ve talked briefly before about how fantasy books can be kind of hard for me, because I get distracted so easily. I really don’t know why. Usually I think it has something to do with the mix of world-building and action; if this balance is off a little bit in either direction, I get bored or the book loses my attention. I’m not entirely sure if this was the issue with this one, but I actually had to take a break in between for a light, quick contemporary. This happened before with Red Queen too. Usually I burn out about halfway through the book, take a break to read something fluffy, and come back to it with renewed energy. Taking a contemporary break totally helped me get back into this. What did I love about this book? The setting and the characters. Loved, loved, loved. Aileana is a freaking badass and pretty damn fearless. Once she witnesses her mother get murdered by a faery, she starts tracking and killing any fae she sees. She is trained by Kiaran, a faery who actually […]

Book Buddies Review: These Broken Stars

Book Buddies Review: These Broken Stars

Book Buddies is a discussion-style review that takes place with one of my two buddies. (Learn more and see past reviews here) We both read the book and then have a private discussion about it. We post our discussion as a review on the last Wednesday of each month. You’ll be able to see our similar/different opinions on the overall book, characters, writing style, etc. – just like a regular review. The first half our discussion will take place right here, and the second half will be on Kaitlin’s blog! (Link at the bottom) View Cristina’s part of the discussion here. Some spoilers ahead, so proceed with caution. What past experience have you had with sci-fi books like this? If you’ve read some before, did you find this book easy to slip into, or was it a challenge from lack of experience? What did you think of the world-building? It felt a lot different than the world-building in fantasy books I’ve read. Lauren: I don’t think I’ve really read any book that falls into this category. I was kind of leery but extremely interested to see how it worked for me. To be honest, it took a while to get into. I was eager to see what happened with the characters but started off quite confused about their world. I couldn’t grasp the fact that (I think?) Earth didn’t exist to them. They were just floating around the galaxy on a ship and there were loads of other planets to explore. With fantasy books, they’re usually set […]