Inside & Out #11: Andi from Andi’s ABCS

Posted July 27, 2015 / Features, Inside and Out / 8 Comments

Admiring book covers and bookmarks, shared by you! Welcome to INSIDE AND OUT. This feature includes two of my absolute favorite book-related things: bookmarks (inside) and book covers (out)! I’ve invited guest posters to share their favorite book covers and bookmarks here on the second and fourth Mondays of each month. Sign-ups are always open (see bottom of post)! Check out past posts here. Andi from Andi ABC’s Twitter: @andiabcs| Instagram: @andiabcs| Facebook | Pinterest Tell me a little about yourself: I am always so bad at this! Um, I’m a mid 30 year old YA reading gal and proud of it. I hail from the fabulous city of Boston, MA and I’m a HUGE Patriots, Red Sox and Bruins fan. I’m a shopaholic and proud. And yes I have a strong Boston accent. Oh and I’m a huge pusher of Anna and the French Kiss (Lauren will tell you! It was the first thing I made her do. <–truth) Talk about your blog (what you blog about/kinds of books, features, etc.): My blog is my baby. It consists of YA books for the most part. I review fantasy, contemporary, Sci-fi, dystopian, romance. I also have a weekly feature called The ABCs where a guest poster selects an accessory, book and clothing item they are lusting after and tells my readers why they want each. Favorite genre: I love a lot of different kind of books but I have to go with contemporary. I love a good love story with real life issues and circumstances in […]

Read-a-Thon Wrap-Up: Make Me Read It

Posted July 26, 2015 / Book Challenges, Features / 8 Comments

Starts at 8:00am on July 20th and ends at 12:00am on July 27th #MakeMeRead tag on Twitter/Instagram Check out the intro pages (Val’s or Ely’s) and the rules below: Look at the books you own, either physical, e-book or ones you’ve borrowed from the library and pick out a few you really want to read, or feel like you should read. It’s up to you how many you pick, personally I’d pick a few more than you expect to be able to read in a week. Example: if you think you’ll only read two, pick out five books or if you think you can read seven, pick out ten. Make a list of these books on your blog, or make a video, or a Goodreads shelf or post a picture on Instagram—whatever is easiest for you. Then get friends, other bloggers/booktubers etc. to vote on which books you HAVE to read. When the read-a-thon comes along, you read the books in the order of most votes. For example, if one book gets 10 votes—you read that first, then the one that got 7 and so on. If there’s a tie, then it’s your preference. The goal is to read as many as possible. Wrap-Up The read-a-thon started on Monday of last week and ends late tonight, so here is my wrap-up! I had a few obligations to read during it, so I didn’t do as well as I hoped in the beginning… but I’m glad I forced myself to read some […]

ARC August Sign-Up

Posted July 25, 2015 / Book Challenges, Features / 11 Comments

One of my favorite ladies, Cristina at Girl in the Pages, signed up for this event and encouraged me to do so when I commented on her post. I took a look at some of my ARCs and found that most of them had the scary September release date. Realistically, this challenge is very timely! Without further ado, here’s my sign-up post for ARC August, which is hosted by Read Sleep Repeat. Here are the rules: It may be a physical ARC or and eARC but it MUST be an ARC Yes it can be an ARC that has released as long as it’s an ARC I’m not going to nitpick much HAVE FUN WITH THIS! Feeling like you are being “forced” to read is the best way turn a fun event into a yucky obligation. Update post! I personally will do a post for each Saturday in August but that’s just me. You can update once a week, every other week or once for the whole darn event. This update can be in the form of a blog or tumblr post, vlog, link to your “ARC August 2015″ shelf or even an instagram pic! I want to make this as easy and low pressure as possible for you. Personal Goals Because I have a really big potential TBR below, I honestly don’t expect to finish all of these. My goal is to finish about half of the books in each category: At least 3 books from my BEA haul At least 2 books […]

Novella Reviews: Harmonic, Happy Again, Secrets and Lies, and Just One Night

Posted July 24, 2015 / Book Reviews / 5 Comments

I’m usually not a huge novella fan, but I really enjoyed all four of these! I figured I would share some very brief thoughts on each novella, so you can judge if they’re worth the time. THIS WAS SO GOOD. I absolutely loved reading from Del’s sister’s point of view for this 100 page novella. It was nice because it felt really like a mini book, instead of just a few pages. Addison’s story picks up right where the previous book left off and gives us a little taste of what’s been happening recently. I suspect that some of the issues from this book will continue into the next one, so I highly recommend reading this. Beyond that, I looooved Addie’s relationship with Laurel. Yay, for LGBTQ! This was a perfect thing to hold me over until Resonance‘s release. (At the time of writing this, it hasn’t come out yet.. but at the time of this is posting.. YAY IT’S HERE) Honestly, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the first book. When I saw this novella was coming out, I was actually pretty excited! I actually ended up liking the novella even more than the original story. It was a super cute, quick read. I’d definitely recommend it if you’re looking to know what happened next with the characters. I shipped them way more the second time around. I definitely wish I took a few notes on this one before deciding to write my review much, much later! Oh well. This […]

A Love Affair with Scribd

Posted July 23, 2015 / Discussions, Features / 17 Comments

If you listen to audiobooks or read ebooks at all, you really need to check out Scribd. I’m kind of obsessed, and I’m here today to tell you ALLLLL about it. Similar to my lengthy love-filled post about Book Host, this will give you the details about Scribd and why it’s the freakin’ best. Also, I was definitely not paid for this – I just want to shre the love. If you’d like to ignore most of this post and get down to the TL;DR, click here! What is it? Scribd is a monthly subscription that offers ebooks and audiobooks. The best part is that it’s UNLIMITED. There are very few, if any, that offer the feature of unlimited. You can download the app on your phone or tablet, or use the internet browser on your computer. The best part is that it’s only $8.99 a month. If you’re thinking about joining, sign up here and I get free days! (You da best.) Why is it better than other options? With a subscription like Audible, you spend $15/month and get ONE audiobook. With Kindle Unlimited, you get unlimited books and some audio for $9.99 a month – but the book selection is pretty bad. The reason I love Scribd is because the selection is actually pretty great. They have a lot of new releases and backlist, both for ebooks and audiobooks. I was surprised to see some pretty great new releases on there, and they’re updated quite a lot. You […]

ARC Review: All We Have Is Now

Posted July 22, 2015 / Book Reviews / 5 Comments

This book definitely made me think. I have to say that I’ve had a lot of “end of the world” books on my radar in the past, but this is the only one I’ve read. (Unless you count Station Eleven, which was more post-apocalyptic.) You know it can end in three ways: (1) the world actually doesn’t end, (2) the world actually does end, or (3) you don’t know what happens because the book ends before you find out. I wasn’t sure what to expect with this one, but I was pleased with the ending overall. Sorry, I got ahead of myself. I’ve also never read a book involving kids that are runaways/homeless. Emerson and Vince were really likable characters, but I feel like they were somewhat underdeveloped. We got a bit of their story and background, but a lot of the story was focused on some random memories mixed in with the current happenings. I’m not sure why, but I just wanted a bit more. I loooved the whole “pay it forward” concept that drove the first half of the book. Carl, a man they meet on the suicide bridge, grants them one wish and asks that they pay it forward if they can. I don’t want to spoil too much about that, but it was a great plot element. Carl’s chapters were actually incredibly enjoyable and I was wishing for more of him all the time. Towards the end, when they meet the skeptics, I really started to […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #48: Diversity

Posted July 21, 2015 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 17 Comments

Ten Books That Celebrate Diversity/Diverse Characters (Examples: minority/religious minority, socioeconomic diversity, disabled MC, neurotypical character, LGBTQ etc.) Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, where we make lists of our top ten books (or something else!) based on that week’s prompt. The topics are provided ahead of time and can be found here. Book links bring you to Goodreads or my review. Like a lot of people, I want to read more diverse books! I can’t lie, though – I’m not always successful and I don’t always make it a priority. I honestly don’t think about it too much and I’d like for that to change. I have read a decent number of books recently that fall under the general “diverse” category, but there are still quite a bit on my TBR! I’ll be sharing both here. The One Thing by Marci Lyn Curtis | blind main character Ah, I loved this book. If someone were to ask me to recommend #QuietYA, this book would be one. It comes out in September but it’s definitely worth mentioning now. I’ve seen some great reviews, so I don’t think I’m the only one who loved it! What a touching story, centered around a main character who goes blind from meningitis complications. Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell | two diverse main characters | review Woo, lots of diversity in this one I feel like! The book takes place in the 80’s and follows around – obviously – Eleanor and Park. Eleanor comes […]

Find Me Tag

Posted July 20, 2015 / Personal / Information / Etc. / 6 Comments

“Find Me” Tag Created by Novel Ink! I saw this tag making its way around the blogosphere a while ago and always wanted to use it as an excuse to take some bookish pictures. I finally got off of my lazy butt and took some! Here are my findings for the Find Me tag! 1. A book with “gone” in the title 2. A book with a weapon 3. A book with a moon 4. A book with a girl in a white dress 5. A book with a couple kissing 6. A book with a sunset 7. A book with headphones 8. A book with water 9. A book with flowers 10. A book with a heart

Read-a-Thon TBR: Make Me Read It

Posted July 19, 2015 / Book Challenges, Features, TBR Lists / 14 Comments

Starts at 8:00am on July 20th and ends at 12:00am on July 27th #MakeMeRead tag on Twitter/Instagram Check out the intro pages (Val’s or Ely’s) and the rules below: Look at the books you own, either physical, e-book or ones you’ve borrowed from the library and pick out a few you really want to read, or feel like you should read. It’s up to you how many you pick, personally I’d pick a few more than you expect to be able to read in a week. Example: if you think you’ll only read two, pick out five books or if you think you can read seven, pick out ten. Make a list of these books on your blog, or make a video, or a Goodreads shelf or post a picture on Instagram—whatever is easiest for you. Then get friends, other bloggers/booktubers etc. to vote on which books you HAVE to read. When the read-a-thon comes along, you read the books in the order of most votes. For example, if one book gets 10 votes—you read that first, then the one that got 7 and so on. If there’s a tie, then it’s your preference. The goal is to read as many as possible. Votes have been tallied – here are the results! The read-a-thon is starting TOMORROW and I cut off voting a few days ago, so I could prepare myself (and this post, lol). Here are the books I’ll be reading in rank order. As the rules suggest, you […]

Review: Lying Out Loud

Posted July 18, 2015 / Book Reviews / 8 Comments

I am definitely a Kody Keplinger fangirl. I’ve now read three of her books, with just one more YA one to go, and they’re all superb. She uses the formula of flawed character + hate-to-love romance like a goddamn pro. I love the way she takes these extremely REAL teenagers and gives them some opportunities to grow and learn. They’re not perfect by the end, but they’ve been changed in some way and learn to be better people. Lying Out Loud is definitely no exception. Compared to the other two I’ve read, the main character is probably the most flawed of all. Sonny is a liar. She has a terrible “home” life and uses lying as a defense mechanism for just about everything in her life. Her best friend Amy, the younger sister of Wesley from The DUFF, is pretty much a saint. These two are definitely in a codependent relationship, but in the best possible way. (I shipped them even more than the romance, which is saying a lot!) When her and Amy get mixed up in this lie with the new boy in school, Ryder, Sonny risks destroying her relationship with both of them because of her lies. What I Loved The chemistry and banter: As Debby calls it, the banterfluff in this book was perfection. Ryder and Sonny hate each other at the beginning, but then feelings start to grow. (At least, they do for Sonny!) I loved it. Keplinger’s hate-to-love romance is always the best because it’s […]