Author: Alyson Noel

Review Round Up | Infamous, The Chaos of Standing Still, and Sweet Southern Hearts

Posted April 18, 2018 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 0 Comments

In an effort to cut down on posts and burnout, my Review Roundups will feature 2-4 books I’ve read or listened to recently. Sometimes they’re newer releases and sometimes they’re all backlist titles. My ARC reviews usually get the solo treatment. Enjoy the mini reviews! Let me do a little plug here about Scribd again (link gives us each a free month if you sign up!) – I was hoping this book would be added because some of the others were on there, but I kept checking and didn’t see anything yet. I went on Scribd late in the day on April 3rd (its release day!) and found it, when I was super in the mood to read it. I love that they have new releases THAT day! So overall, this was a pretty good series finale. I didn’t find it quite as captivating as other books in the trilogy (and honestly I’m probably rounding up my rating a bit because of how much I enjoyed the series overall). There have been a couple of book series that I liked but didn’t love, where I thought about it a lot in between books and highly anticipated each release, but they never blew me away. This is definitely one of those series. I never connected with any of the characters and wish this book had more recap in the beginning. I forgot SO much of what happened in the previous book and there aren’t any recaps anywhere, so I just tried to re-learn […]

Review Round Up | Blacklist, Once and For All, Blood of Wonderland, and The Hate U Give

Posted June 23, 2017 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 4 Comments

In an effort to cut down on posts and burnout, my Review Roundups will feature 2-4 reviews of already published books (either older/backlist or newer releases) that I’ve read or listened to recently. My ARC reviews usually get the solo treatment. Enjoy the mini reviews! After enjoying UNRIVALED and being incredibly interested to see what would happen next, it felt like BLACKLIST would never arrive. I checked it out from the library and stashed it under my bed (where I unfortunately keep and forget about all of my library books). I finished up what I was reading and suddenly remembered that I had BLACKLIST to dive into. Let me tell you, it was exactly what I needed at the time. Like its predecessor, I couldn’t put this one down. I don’t see many differences in my feelings between the two books, to be honest. I felt the same way about the characters (didn’t really care about or for them). I felt the same way about the pacing (awesome). I felt the same way about the mystery (really interesting; I have a few theories!). I don’t know why but I think I liked this book more than the first. Maybe it’s because the stakes feel higher? I can’t put my finger on it. Long story short, I stayed up late to finish one night and had to wake up at 4:30 AM the next day. On my way home that evening, I was so excited to think I had more to read when I […]

ARC Review: Unrivaled

Posted May 9, 2016 / Book Reviews / 4 Comments

This was a super super super addicting read! I don’t know how else to explain it, except I’ve never said “okay just one more chapter” more times in my ENTIRE life. I planned to read up to the 200 page mark before bed and ended up staying up for 2 more hours to just finish. I kid you not, every. single. chapter. I kept saying I would quit and I couldn’t. I needed to see what was going to happen! So aside from the addictiveness, there wasn’t a heck of a lot of substance. My gut reaction is to give this book like 5 stars because I was so enthralled while reading, but I can’t ignore some major issues. First of all, I didn’t like the characters at all. None of them had any qualities or personality traits that resonated with me and they absolutely felt like cardboard cut-outs. I don’t need to LIKE a character to like a book, but I at least need to understand them and feel like they’re more than a stereotype. These people were walking stereotypes of a wannabe journalist (Layla), wannabe actress (Aster), and wannabe musician (Tommy). I liked the chapters with Madison the best because she had a secretive, mysterious past that I was determined to figure out. Overall, they weren’t great people. They were all attracted to fame and fortune, plus winning the competition… so yeah. Not perfect. AGAIN this is fine for me usually, but they were too blah for me to care […]