Category: Book Reviews

Review: Something True

Posted March 20, 2015 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

Mild spoilers ahead if you haven’t read books one and two! Overall this book held my attention much better than the other two! I was super eager to finish the series just to see how everyone got together and True finished her tasks. I was itching for her and Orion to get back together finally. The setup of this book was a little different than the previous two. Usually the three points of view were True and the two people she was trying to set up. In this case, it’s True, Orion, and Darla. She’s trying to win back Orion while he dates Darla, and meanwhile True is trying to find someone for Darla. Because of the setup of this one, it was good to be in Orion’s head more and see his relationship with True. The previous two books mostly include her pining over him and the reader not getting to see their relationship in action. After book two, I was dying to get more True + Orion time, and this book delivered. I loved all of the characters for the most part. I mention below some reservations about Orion and Darla, but I really grew to like them. I also loved Hephaestus and True’s sister. The cameos from the first couples that True got together were great! I think it ended perfectly. I won’t say much more! Orion and Darla’s voices really bugged me for quite a bit of the book. They definitely got better as time went on, […]

Review: Complete Nothing

Posted March 18, 2015 / Book Reviews / 2 Comments

Mild spoilers ahead if you haven’t read book one! I liked that Orion showed up on earth and that he didn’t know who True was. It definitely added a little something to the plot and finally gave a bit of chemistry. It was hard to ship True and Orion when he wasn’t around! (Especially when the whole point of the book is for her to save him because she loves him) The second installment in the trilogy featured a couple (Claudia and Peter) breaking up and True trying to get them back together. I liked that it was a different situation than the couple in the first book. They were cute together and I shipped them even though they didn’t have a lot of time together. It was cool seeing True get some of her powers back, learn more about Heath, and learn even more about Mount Olympus and its intricacies. I wish I remembered more Greek mythology (so I could see if some of the stories are accurate!) – but it’s fun either way. The set-up for the next book was, as usual, perfect! It made me anxious to keep going and finish off the trilogy. I have a feeling that True and Orion will finally get some airtime (based on the fact that True, Darla, and Orion are the next POV’s) which will definitely be a great way to end things. Because of True’s sublplot gaining some interesting stuff, there was even more going on in this book than […]

Review: Only Everything

Posted March 16, 2015 / Book Reviews / 3 Comments

I really love the whole set-up of and idea behind this series. Eros, who chooses the human name of True, is Cupid up on Mount Olympus. She falls in love with Orion, who is a god-turned-mortal. Zeus finds out and gets pretty pissed, so he sends her down to earth without her powers and with a mission: she’s supposed to pair up three couples before she can come back home and hopefully save Orion. This is a trilogy, so she pairs up one couple per book. I was initially annoyed that the book had three points of view, but I think it ends up working. Because True has to pair up a couple, it does hear what’s going on in all three people’s heads. All three characters were equally important to moving the plot forward and had their own sets of issues. The three characters had distinct voices and experiences, so it was definitely easy to keep them straight. Katrina’s father died in an accident (which she hasn’t fully come to terms with yet), she has a horrible boyfriend, and her mother doesn’t pay her any attention. Charlie is trying to make friends at school because he’s moved around so much and does everything to try to please his father. True obviously has her own issues because of Orion, getting used to life on earth, and not having her powers to help her make matches. It was funny to see True getting used to life on earth; she didn’t understand basic common […]

Review: Just One Year

Posted March 12, 2015 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

This book was simultaneously exactly what was expected but not necessarily what I wanted. In Allyson’s story, we see her grow and develop into this person who actually has bits and pieces of Lulu in her. She takes more chances and tries to live her life by what she wants to do instead of what her parents want her to do. She becomes a better person and more true to the self she wanted to be. I was hoping that Willem’s story was also transformative (as the synopsis suggests) like Allyson’s. I really don’t think it was. The main point of Just One Year is to show what Willem was doing in the time that Allyson was searching for him throughout that following year. It was exactly what I expected – he travels around like a nomad, hooks up with girls (more on that later), and looks for her in a very half-ass way. I loved learning more about his family, which remained a mystery in the first book, and seeing what made him the way he is – a traveler seemingly without a home. It was awesome to read about the missed connections they had throughout that year. I didn’t like the fact that the two ways Allyson and Willem dealt with their heartbreak was completely different. He couldn’t stop thinking about her but still went out and reacted by sleeping with other girls. In her story, she falls into a depression and it takes quite a lot to get […]

Review: Tease

Posted March 11, 2015 / Book Reviews / 8 Comments

I was really hoping to get to the end of this book and say “this is really an important book to read, even if it’s difficult at times “… I feel like this is partially true, because it offers a really different perspective – from the bullies point of view – but I wish there was a little bit more, you know? Throughout the vast majority of the book, Sarah is selfish and does not feel bad about anything that happened. I get that she was also hurt by things that Emma did, but her and her friends are the ones who took things way too far. It would’ve been nice to see her actually regret things especially early in the book. She spends 80% of the boat mostly just feeling sorry for herself. She wasn’t sorry about anything that she did to Emma: she only felt sorry about the impact it had on her life. I really don’t understand how somebody can be that stupid and selfish but apparently that’s what goes on in a bully’s head. At the beginning of the book I was actually thinking that the story was going to make me kind of feel sorry for her, but it really just made me hate just about every character. Including Emma. Like what was she even doing? What was everyone doing?? On top of that, this was not the kind of book that needed a romantic subplot. I like that there was someone to be there for Sarah, in […]

Review: On the Fence

Posted March 6, 2015 / Book Reviews / 9 Comments

Kasie West = auto-buy. I said that after I read just one book by her (The Distance Between Us). When I read Pivot Point, that was further proven to me. Now that I’ve finally gotten around to this one, I can definitely confirm it again. She’s one of my favorites. Her writing style and character development is the best out there (in both her contemporary and paranormal books). I loved the characters in this one from the minute I met them. Charlie, the “tomboy” main character, was poised to learn a lot about “being a girl” when she had to get a job at a boutique to pay back a speeding ticket. NOW, the sentence I just wrote is usually enough to turn me off from a book. I don’t like the tomboy trope, or the one that does anything to support gender norms in such a way. I don’t like using labels like that and/or assuming that because a girl like sports, she can’t wear makeup – and vice versa. This book does start out operating under those assumptions, but completely changes by the end. I wanted to shake Charlie a few times and get her to realize she was being closed-minded, but she was able to do it on her own. It was something I was able to look past and appreciate the character development by the end. Now that the only real “negative” is out of the way, this book was the cuuuutest. Charlie starts out being very anti-girl, […]

Review: Landline

Posted March 4, 2015 / Book Reviews / 7 Comments

I feel like this past month has been full of books that I wasn’t sure how to rate, and this was no exception throughout most of the book. The ending REALLY sealed the deal for me (in a good way). I don’t think I have too much to say here, so I’ll break it down short and sweet. This book just felt so real: the feelings, the thoughts, the reactions. It reminds you that all relationships take work. You can’t take things for granted. There were lots of little lessons that make the reader really understand how things just can slip away undetected until you don’t even know how you arrived at where you are. Rainbow Rowell’s writing + the narrator = perfect. Highly recommend the audio version. The ending of the book brought a major smile to my face. I wasn’t sure how I felt about things for a while, because of all the reasons below, but I think the ending totally made up for all of it. Adorable. There were SO MANY great quotes. Some of my favorites are scattered around the post! I really didn’t even like the characters… that seems like an awful big negative, eh? Well, throughout the whole book, Georgie made decisions and said things that just made her seem so selfish and self-destructive. She constantly took Neal for granted, worked too much, and just didn’t seem to care about any dreams but her own. Neal was totally too good for her… and […]

Review: My Last Kiss

Posted March 2, 2015 / Book Reviews / 1 Comment

This was a highly anticipated read for me and I’m not sure why it took me so long to get to it! I finally got around to checking it out from the library recently and I’m so glad I did. I’d seen somewhat mixed reviews on this one, so I was hesitant to buy it outright (even though the cover is perfect). I absolutely love books that involve that in-between space between life and death – the main character has some kind of unfinished business on earth that needs to be resolved before they can move on. I had pretty high hopes for this one as a result. It starts off kind of confusing with the different timelines and flashbacks. I did continue to be a little confused at times throughout because I was thinking that she’d have flashbacks to slowly piece together the night, in order, but it also had scenes from much earlier than the event. The book is about Cassidy, who dies at seventeen. Obviously the book involves kissing and cheating of some kind, hence the title/summary, but the reader tries to figure out what happened to Cassidy in her final minutes along with her. Her death is ruled a suicide but most signs point to the fact that it was either an accident or she was killed. Regardless, I could not figure out what happened for the life of me. I’m usually bad at figuring out books like this, but I’m always glad when I can […]

Book Buddies Review: Just One Day

Posted February 27, 2015 / Book Buddies Reviews, Book Reviews / 5 Comments

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 Cristina’s blog! (Link at the bottom) What made you initially add this one to your TBR and what were you expecting from it? Did it meet your expectations? Lauren: I read If I Stay and Where She Went by Gayle Forman and was really captivated by her writing style. I liked the second book in the duology better than the first, but regardless enjoyed her style. I was honestly not THAT interested in Just One Day when I initially heard of it, but there were so many bloggers who said it was pretty life-changing. I ended up asking for it for Christmas and my dad came through. I was expecting the same beautiful writing as I’ve previously experienced from Gayle, but wasn’t sure of much else! She seems to write a lot of different kinds of stories, so it’s hard to draw parallels between all of her work. Overall this book completely exceeded any expectations I did have. I couldn’t believe how swept up I was in the […]

ARC Review: When Joss Met Matt

Posted February 23, 2015 / Book Reviews / 2 Comments

Alright I am a big new adult fan lately, but this one definitely lends itself more towards the young adult side. Don’t get too excited about lots of graphic sexytimes, because it’s not gonna happen. This one is purely classified as new adult because of the age range. Now that that’s out of the way, let me tell you how freakin cute this book was. I love Liz Czukas (here writing as Ellie Cahill) so I requested this one immediately when I saw it. It’s been sitting on my Kindle since October and I finally decided to dive in. I’m so glad I did because February is my big lame Valentines Day contemporary binge month, and this one fit right in. I absolutely loved the way this story was put together. It alternates between present day and some of their experiences during college. You essentially get to travel back in time throughout the various times they’ve called each other for some sorbet sex. It’s a bit unorthodox, though, to learn about all of their other relationships while you’re just kind of anxiously waiting for them to get together. It works for a lot of reasons, but mostly because you get to see how wrong everyone else is for them. It would have been cool to see Matt’s perspective throughout the book, but it definitely would have involved too much switching around (between people and timeframes). I found myself wishing it was from Matt’s POV a lot of the time because […]