Author: Lauren (Bookmark Lit)

Review: Princess of Thorns

Posted January 22, 2015 / Book Reviews / 11 Comments

There is no salvation without sacrifice, no light without darkness, no triumph that doesn’t carry the seeds of its own destruction bouncing in its pocket. GUYS holy crap! This story is just beyond words. But I am going to try to use some words anyways. The book started out very complicated and confusing. I was fascinated by the world that was being built, but you are definitely thrown right into the middle of the action. It starts with Aurora and her brother Jor as small children with their mother. It explains some of the curses on their lands and on them. Then it flashes forward 10 years and Aurora (disguised as her brother) is suddenly woken up by a guy named Niklaas and we learn everything else from there. I will admit that the first 100 pages or so were slow. Maybe I just wasn’t in the right mindset at the time. Regardless, I kept feeling like I was going to be the black sheep and not end up liking this one. How could a book that moved so slowly for the first 100 pages ever get better? Well. It did. There was gradual world-building, which is nice, but there just wasn’t much action. I was admittedly kind of bored as the two traveled along and didn’t encounter anyone else. Once a few more characters and some action was introduced, I was hooked. I read 2/3 of the book in one night. I absolutely loved the gender-bending aspect of the book, where […]

Reread Review: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Posted January 21, 2015 / Book Reviews / 2 Comments

Luckily I started reading the Harry Potter series when the first three books had been released already. There wasn’t a lot of wait time in between those ones. I started book one in 1999 over the summer and got the next two books for Christmas that year. I remember actually laying underneath my Christmas tree and starting to read Chamber of Secrets almost instantly. It’s funny because a lot of people generally say that this book is their least favorite of the books. I don’t remember having a least favorite! When Andi was reading the books (for the first time!) recently, I saw quite a few people telling her not to be discouraged by this book because the next one gets much better. It started coming back to me that this book was a little slower than the rest. Of course, it’s still amazing, but it’s definitely not as fast-paced. At times, it’s also less interesting than the rest. I’ve said before how I’m generally not a big rereader of books. (Okay, I just started rereading a few months ago for the first time ever.) This series is the ONE that I said I would reread someday. The Reread Challenge this year is definitely helping motivate me to achieve this goal. I know so many people out there who have read the whole series countless times in their life… I just decided to start now. Oh well. Eeeeek. My instant reaction was being mad that the audio copy of Prisoner of […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #25: Books that Evoked Strong Feelings (Freebie)

Posted January 20, 2015 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 30 Comments

FREEBIE: Books I Have Very Strong Feelings About 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. Because I am not the most creative at coming up with my own things (you can tell this by the lack of lists I’ve been posting on my blog in general), I browsed the Broke and Bookish site to see what some old topics for this were. Since my blog is newer, I’ve missed out on many years of TTT’s. I chose the topic of “books I have very strong feelings about.” Two categories here are good feelings and books I enjoyed. The other two…not so much.

ARC Review: All Fall Down

Posted January 19, 2015 / Book Reviews / 8 Comments

AHH THIS WAS SO GOOD GUYSSSS. Throughout the whole book, I kept wondering when I would find a flaw. I really couldn’t, for the most part, until the very end of the book. My first impression was that this book had a more mature feel to it than the Gallagher Girls, which was nice. The one thing that’s recently bugged me during my GG reread was that Cammie felt too immature to me. I was really looking forward to seeing what Ally Carter could do with an older character. Of course, Grace has her own problems that did at times make her seem younger than her age. There were times when she got angry and pouty that were reminiscent of a bratty teenager… but when you think about everything she’s been through, you kind of understand why. She seemed overdramatic at times, but she always said what was on her mind and wasn’t afraid of the backlash. She was kind of a badass, while also being funny and very sarcastic. This book is about Grace trying to prove that her mother was murdered and not killed in the fire. She has very foggy memories of that night, but does vividly remember seeing the bullet holes in her mother’s chest. She tries to find the Scarred Man that she remembers from that night, as she believes he’s the one who killed her mother. I loved that Grace developed as an unreliable narrator in some ways; you start to doubt her memories […]

Sunday Post #4

Posted January 18, 2015 / Sunday Post, Weekly Memes / 10 Comments

The Sunday Post is hosted by The Caffeinated Book Reviewer, where you share news about your blog on a weekly basis. It can include what you’ve been reading, what you’ve posted, what’s coming up next, and any books you added to your shelves! I haven’t done one of these in a while, because I usually don’t blog on the weekends much. It’s not exactly a post you can create ahead of time either, because you never know what books you might finish after you schedule it! Regardless, here’s what I did this past week and what’s coming up next week. Random Bookish Thoughts on blogging (some tips for newbies) Top Ten Tuesday: Books I meant to read in 2014 but didn’t Bookmark Lit Bulletin for Mid-January wrap-up Blog Tour Review: Perfect Couple by Jennifer Echols Review: All Lined Up by Cora Carmack Review: The Secrets of Lily Graves by Sarah Strohmeyer Book to Movie Review: The Maze Runner (Book by James Dashner) I am loving The Darkest Part of the Forest right now. I love her writing style, but it’s definitely not for everyone. I was reading Yes Please in hardcover form for a while, but I switched to the audiobook because a) she narrates it herself and it’s awesome and b) I needed to fill the time before my next HP audiobook comes in at the library! I’ve wanted to read The DUFF for a while and I’m finally going to do it next! I’m in a great […]

Book to Movie Review: The Maze Runner

Posted January 16, 2015 / Book to Movie Reviews / 7 Comments

The Maze Runner by James Dashner Read my review of the book here. True to Book: Casting: Enjoyability: Overall Score: Goodreads Book Plot Summary: If you ain’t scared, you ain’t human. When Thomas wakes up in the lift, the only thing he can remember is his name. He’s surrounded by strangers—boys whose memories are also gone. Nice to meet ya, shank. Welcome to the Glade. Outside the towering stone walls that surround the Glade is a limitless, ever-changing maze. It’s the only way out—and no one’s ever made it through alive. Everything is going to change. Then a girl arrives. The first girl ever. And the message she delivers is terrifying. Remember. Survive. Run. I’m not happy. Aside from the general outline of the plot, this was nothing like the book. The way events transpired was just…not the same. I’m okay with creative liberties being taken when needed, but it just makes a movie very hard to watch when you’re literally taking notes on what is different from the book. Be cautious with reading this review if you haven’t read the book yet. Mild spoilers ahead. True to the Book Just no. Not at all. Some things may seem nitpicky, but I really wanted to record everything so that I could show just how many differences there were. Here are all the ways (that I could remember!) the movie failed compared to the book: Movie: Thomas didn’t remember his name until he randomly starts fighting with Galley. Book: Galley and him didn’t tussle […]

Bookmark Lit Bulletin – Mid-January 2015

Posted January 15, 2015 / Bookmark Lit Bulletin, Features, Wrap-Ups / 8 Comments

The Bookmark Lit Bulletin is a bi-monthly feature where I look back on everything I did and everything I plan to do next. Instead of participating in some of the popular weekly memes, I combine it all into two bulletins per month: one at the mid-month mark and one on the final day of the month. I’ll also be updating my 2015 challenge progress here. You can learn more and see past Bookmark Lit bulletins here! It’s been a good month so far! We spent a low-key New Years at my friend’s house, where we just watched the balldrop and some of the performances afterwards. It was amazing having so much time off from work the weeks of Christmas and New Years… which made for a rude awakening on January 5th when I had a full week of work. Last weekend was full of football, as it should be. I hate when the season starts coming to an end because then I may as well not even pay for cable. On Friday, I took my dad, stepmom, and boyfriend to a blues concert (Ronnie Earl) at a new theater in Hartford. It was so much fun and he can REALLY kill it on guitar. My dad was so happy and excited the whole time; it was awesome. I went to my friends’ apartment for breakfast on Sunday because I hadn’t seen them in a while. Her son is SO BIG – I spent the whole morning showing him pictures of […]

Review: The Secrets of Lily Graves

Posted January 14, 2015 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

I had pretty low expectations when starting this book because I had seen a lot of pretty negative reviews. Most people said that it was glaringly predictable, but I am SO BAD at predicting things in books. Mysteries and thrillers always catch me off guard because I kind of try not to make theories about what’s going to happen because I would rather be surprised…. but even when I do make predictions, they’re wrong. I was thinking that I would be the black sheep and actually end up liking this one, but I was nervous about the ending. (I had a feeling this was going to a book that’s success hinged on the ending, and I was right.) I think the overall concept and setting was really cool. It was the epitome of a story that sounds GREAT in theory but was poorly executed. What Worked The fact that the main character, Lily, was in a family that ran a funeral home was pretty sweet. I thought that would be a good setup for an interesting story that obviously involved death. It was able to give Lily some insider information to help her solve the mystery. That whole aspect was interesting and kept me reading. In general I think Lily was veryyy generally characterized, which is obviously not a good thing, but there were a few instances where humor and feminism shown through. I liked that she stayed true to herself no matter what. The pacing was pretty good. It […]

Random Bookish Thoughts: Blogging

Posted January 13, 2015 / Discussions, Other Memes / 27 Comments

Thoughts on Book Blogging I am by no means an expert on the book blogging community. I only created my blog in July 2014 and I know that there are countless bloggers out there who have been in the community for many, many years. But, there have been many recent events that have added a bit of drama and controversy. I wanted to take a few minutes to reflect on the community in general and what I’ve learned from this community as a newbie. Most of this was based on Anna’s decision to leave the community and some of the amazing tweets she posted recently on her opinions and choice to leave blogging behind. I’ve been wanting to make a post with tips for newbie bloggers, from a newbie blogger, but this seemed like a good time to combine all of my thoughts and advice into one big ol’ discussion post. On ARC-Envy and Pressure There is no greater thing than free books, right? Of course. When I started up my blog I had NO idea that ARCs were possible. Book bloggers got free copies of books before they were released? I was in heaven! I knew this was the place for me. But, of course, there’s a catch. There are so many side effects from ARCs that you almost wonder if it’s worth it. I used to get very envious of other people’s ARCs because I wanted to feel needed and popular like that. ARC-envy is understandable for books […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #24: Meant to Read in 2014

Posted January 13, 2015 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 19 Comments

Books I Meant to Read in 2014…and Didn’t 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. OKAY so oddly enough, I prepared this post for last Friday, thinking it would be a neat little graphic to share for a discussion post… then I went on and found out it was the topic for this week’s TTT! The original topic is the top 10 books released in 2014 that I meant to read but didn’t. I tweaked it a little, so mine includes 14 books and may also include books from before 2014. Honestly too lazy to see when they were released! Sometimes I look at my TBR and wonder how it’s possible that I haven’t read a certain book yet. When it was first released or I first heard of it, I was the most eager person in the world to get my hands on it. Maybe I even bought it. There are some books that have been at the forefront of my mind for months. I’ve pined over them. I’ve whispered “I’ll read you next” when I pass it in my list or in a store. I’ve read countless reviews on it. And yet…. I still haven’t read it. Here are some of the books I cannot believe […]