Format: Audiobook

Review: None of the Above

Posted February 19, 2016 / Book Reviews / 5 Comments

I think this book is so incredibly important and, a lot of the time, super powerful. I’ve never read a book about an intersex character and I don’t know of any others that exist. The only time I’ve even heard of the term is in the show Faking It. I’m always happy to learn more about the letters across the QUILTBAG spectrum, so this was great for that purpose. Before I get into the characters and plot events aside from the intersex aspect, I’ll just say that this book is really interesting throughout. I wanted to see how Kristin would react to the hand she was dealt and she didn’t often disappoint me. I think it was a super realistic chain of events (unfortunately) that could happen to anyone in her situation. Learning more about AIS was great and for that reason, I’m glad I read this one. It was super informative, without feeling too forced. I think my biggest issue was with the audiobook narrator? While she had a great voice that I liked listening to, she felt really detached from the story emotionally… This made me feel like the MC didn’t have a lot of emotional reaction at times. That’s why I say it didn’t feel TOO forced or clinical, but at times it did. There was one thing that Kristin did that REALLY annoyed me towards the end of the book and I can’t get it out of my head. It involves her friends and determining who spilled […]

Review: Bossypants

Posted February 17, 2016 / Book Reviews / 4 Comments

I love Amy Poehler a lot. Parks & Rec is one of my all-time favorite shows and her book, Yes Please, was so fantastic. I’ve always admired her friendship with Tina Fey and as a result, had a nice soft spot for Ms. Fey. But honestly, I haven’t seen a lot of her work (aside from when they host the Golden Globes together and Mean Girls of course). I bought Bossypants a few years ago in a little indie bookstore because I really wanted to make a purchase. Like most celebrity memoirs I read, though, I decided to go with the audiobook to hear her deliver the jokes. I’m happy I did, because she was awesome. It was like she was talking with you. She had so many smart and hilarious comments about EVERYTHING – motherhood, SNL, hollywood, Photoshop, her childhood, and more. It was awesome. I think it essentially reads like a series of funny essays that she put together in one book, which was nice. It was just a smattering of her thoughts on everything. I’ve always wanted to watch 30 Rock but my interest is even higher after reading this book. I couldn’t give it a full five stars for some reason, but it was so so good. I think I just have little to no interest in Saturday Night Live, which was a huge part of Fey’s book as well as Poehler’s. I appreciated some of the stories but just generally don’t like the show too much. I’ll leave […]

Mini NA Reviews: Faking It and The Score

Posted February 1, 2016 / Book Reviews / 2 Comments

After really despising the previous book in this series (and DNFing it), I couldn’t decide if I wanted to read the rest. Because this is a companion series, I was tempted! New characters but the same Cora Carmack writing I generally enjoy? Why not?! I finally decided to go for it via audio (after testing out a sample, because the narrator ruined it last time). I have to say, this book was the complete opposite for me! The narrators were perfect and didn’t feel like young children reading books about sex. The characters were so fun and the narrators did an awesome job of capturing their personalities. I knew from the first few chapters that this one would give me a totally different experience. Thank god! I’ve been feeling annoyed by anything resembling instalove lately, and unfortunately SOME of this fell in that category. I rolled my eyes a bit throughout but it’s because I’m bitter about romance, and have been for the past few months. I liked their chemistry from the very beginning and fake dating is a trope I looooove. It was also a case of opposites attracting, so that was fun. Beyond the romance, Max had a lot of complicated personal and family-related things going on. Cade did too but they weren’t really addressed at all. It was focused a lot on HER and her problems, and I wish he got more attention. As far as characters are concerned, I wished for more about him and less […]

Tom Haverford Giffy Review: Modern Romance

Posted January 21, 2016 / Book Reviews / 6 Comments

I am a huge Aziz Ansari fan and knew I would happily read one of his books, regardless of the topic, if he ever wrote one. I loved Tom in Parks and Rec and his stand-up was always so funny and so real. It doesn’t hurt that he actively calls himself a feminist and makes fun of dudes for being so shitty. I mean, he’s perfect and that’s all there is to it. The topic of modern romance is an interesting one because clearly things have changed a lot, even within the past 5-10 years. I was intrigued to see what kind of conclusions he would come to. Sociology is one of my favorite subjects (and one of my minors in college!) so I knew that even if this book was more nonfiction-like than humor, I would be happy with it. That ended up being the case! I have to admit, I was warned by some early reviews that the book had a lot of numbers and wasn’t really traditionally funny. I was hoping for some humor throughout (which I got) but expected more of a research-oriented book. Somehow he managed to bring both of those aspects together in a perfect combination. “When you hear a Flo Rida song at first you’re like, ‘What is this, Flo Rida? It’s the same thing you’ve always done. I’m not listening to this song.’ And then you keep hearing it and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, Flo Rida. You’ve done it again! This […]

Review: The Boy Most Likely To

Posted October 16, 2015 / Book Reviews / 10 Comments

I AM SAD AND DISAPPOINTED. I don’t know how else to start this review. 🙁 In the first book, I didn’t really like Tim at all. He grew on me, for sure, but not enough to make me say “hey I’d love to read a book about him.” Regardless, when I saw this one on Scribd, I thought it’d be a perfect audiobook to start. I was pretty interested at the beginning and Tim continued to grow on me even more. And then the TWIST happened (which happens so early in the book that it feels weird to call it a spoiler?) and everything went downhill. Don’t worry, I’ll be spoiler-free for a while. In the most general terms I can say, I didn’t MIND this turn of events. It’s not what I was expecting when I set out to read this book, but it also wasn’t surprising. I knew exactly what was going to happen when certain things started happening. Sorry for the vagueness, but go with it. Regardless, I don’t think this particular element of the story (which turned into pretty much the entire plot) bothered me like it may have bothered others. I didn’t care about Tim much so it didn’t upset me that this was happening to him. I was intrigued but slowly that interest waned. I had a big feeling of what was going to happen by the end of the book, so it all felt pointless to me. There were some pretty big glaring holes that […]

Reread Review: What Happened to Goodbye

Posted August 12, 2015 / Book Reviews / 4 Comments

I read this book for the first time, I think, during the summer of 2012. It may have been a few years earlier, to be honest. I’ve been iffy about which of her books I’ve actually read – there are so many and they all sound similar (even though they aren’t) when I read the synopsis again – but I knew I did read this one back in the day. Honestly, not much. The mini town model is the one thing I remembered the most from this book. The restaurant itself also seemed familiar. For some reason, the Dessen books that take place in restaurants always stick in my mind the most. I’m so glad I revisited this one, especially because I barely remembered anything from the first time I read it. I’m so terrible with remembering book details; rereading is ideal for someone like me. I remember loving the restaurant, the model, the characters, and the whole plot, actually. I also had a vague idea of how the book ended.When Cristina mentioned that she was rereading this one soon, I knew I had to hop on board. I’ve been aiming to read more Sarah Dessen this summer (somewhat failing, I guess) and this was a perfect one to add to the mix. I will say, I miss Colby (as a setting) and hope to get into some of those books by her during the duration of the summer. There was a glimpse at Colby in this book, which was nice, but I need […]

Review: Get Dirty

Posted August 3, 2015 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

I had suuuuper mixed (okay, fine, more negative) feelings about the first book, but was absolutely determined to read this one. All other issues aside, I NEEDED to know who the killer was. I had a few people in mind after the first book… and that cliffhanger GOOD GOD. I figured I should give this one a slightly better rating than the first one because for some reason I kind of liked it a bit more, but it technically all comes down to the same issues. The pacing was still an issue, the girls still felt like cardboard cut-outs of typical high schooler stereotypes (except maybe even worse this time around because there was pretty much no personality at all), and… the worst thing of all… my theory was correct. If you know me at all, you’d know that (a) I don’t read a lot of mystery/murder/thriller books and (b) I am ridiculously AWFUL at falling for red herrings and can literally never figure out who the killer is. Ever. Well, except in this case. In summary, if I’m able to figure out who the killer was in your mystery book, then it wasn’t that great of a mystery. I liked how everything wrapped up but essentially everything else from the book wasn’t very memorable. I just finished the audio this morning (July 2nd, at the time of writing this DUH) and I can’t even remember what the fuck happened throughout the book. I feel like there was even LESS of […]

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 […]