Category: Book Reviews

Review: Shadowlands (Series)

Posted July 22, 2014 / Book Reviews / 10 Comments

Review: Goddamnit Kate Brian, you never disappoint me. I can’t think of the last time I read one of her books and wasn’t completely shocked, intrigued, and/or baffled by the ending. Let me start out by saying that the only reason I read this book is because it was written by Kate Brian — I would usually never pick up a book that sounds this creepy. The other books I’ve read by her (primarily the Private series) can get a little freaky, but not this much. It took me a little while to get into, but that was mostly because I refused to read it at night and scare myself into thinking I was going to be murdered before bed. I just steamrolled through the second half of the book this afternoon because I could not put it down. I can’t even think of a good reason why this book doesn’t have five stars, but I kind of forced myself to give it 4.5. I like to reserve 5 stars for books that are completely lifechanging and/or would go on my “favorites” list. The book begins with Rory being chased by a serial killer through the woods and her escaping from him. Her family, which includes her father and her sister Darcy, is going into “witness protection” to the island of Jupiter Landing. Let me just say it is extremely unreasonable that the FBI had the family head off in a car by themselves while a killer was on the […]

Review: Before I Fall

Posted July 18, 2014 / Book Reviews / 16 Comments

Review: I haven’t had as many “holy shit that was an amazing book” books in a while. This book had me staying up late reading (which is something I haven’t been compelled to do in a long time either). And even after I decided to go to sleep, I couldn’t stop thinking about the book. It was truly the definition of a pageturner. I wanted to get all of that out of the way first. The plot of this book is that a popular teenager, Samantha, is killed in a car accident while driving with her friends. She wasn’t a nice girl to others in high school, which is pretty standard of “popular” girls nowadays. The book starts with her last day of life and outlines everything that happened leading up to the accident. When she inevitably dies, she wakes up in the next chapter and thinks the whole thing was a bad dream. Of course it wasn’t…she is actually dead and reliving the day over and over again, like Groundhog Day. She goes through the typical stages: disbelief, frustration, sadness, etc. Oliver does not try to make Sam a likeable character (at first). She’s a mean girl. Her friends are mean girls. As the book goes on, she tries to make amends for everything and live each day the best she can. She realizes what she needs to do in order to pass on to the afterlife. I don’t want to give too much away, but this book really had me […]

Review: Girls in White Dresses

Posted July 18, 2014 / Book Reviews / 4 Comments

Review: I’m not really sure where to begin with this one. It was one of those books that I wanted to read for MONTHS before actually deciding to read it… and it was such a let down. Frankly, I should probably give it less than three stars. It got three because I think it had some redeeming qualities. I’ll go with those first. In a lot of ways, this book was very relatable. Every girl in her 20s has experienced most of the situations in this book. Between friends getting married and having kids, moving away from home and/or college, losing friends, gaining friends, boyfriend problems, friend problems, etc… It touched on a lot of the basic issues that 20-somethings encounter at one point or another. I liked that. That’s really all I liked. The book ended very abruptly and offered literally a paragraph of “closure.” We find out a sentence about like three of the characters and we’re supposed to just wonder if things come through for them. I don’t remember almost any of the names of the characters, but two of the final two girls that the book discussed seemed to be the main ones. This was another book that switched characters for every chapter; this is something I normally don’t mind. But – this book had a million characters! Some of the bitches would only be in ONE chapter. What happened to them? Why even bother introducing them in the first place if they weren’t going to have […]

Review: The List

Posted July 18, 2014 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

Review: At first glance, this book seemed like it may be a little too “young” adult for me. I don’t discriminate though; any book with an interesting enough plotline is worthy of my attention. The basic plot summary is as follows: at some random high school, each year some unknown person makes The List. It includes the ugliest girl and prettiest girl of each grade level. So in total, eight girls’ lives are changed because high school is a place where only appearances matter. Sounds like a great premise. They each struggled with different (pretty serious, at times) issues. Let me tell you a little about each girl and their story, because it was kind of hard to keep up with the changing perspectives. Yes, of course this was one of those books where the author rotates through each girl’s story in different chapters…for eight characters that can be a bit challenging. The story follows these girls over the course of a week. Danielle is named ugliest freshman because apparently her swimmer’s body is a bit too big for some people. She has a boyfriend that she met at camp over the summer, and she wonders how he’ll react. Their story was comparatively boring, but I ended up liking her a lot in the end. Abby is named prettiest freshman and is a little bitch to her older sister about it. She sucks at school and her sister is smart and they’re just SoOoO different. She was pretty annoying but whatever, freshman usually are […]

Review: We Were Liars

Posted July 16, 2014 / Book Reviews / 13 Comments

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 […]