Format: eARC

Book Buddies: Starry Eyes

Posted April 2, 2018 / Book Buddies Reviews, Book Reviews, Cover Colors, Features / 3 Comments

Book Buddies is a discussion-style “review” that takes place with Cristina from Girl in the Pages. (You can check out past posts here.) We both read the book, have a discussion, and post our conversation (plus other fun things sometimes!) here. Book Buddies is a seasonal feature that now happens four times per year. Be sure to check out the other half of our feature and discussion on Cristina’s blog (link below)! Check out Cristina’s post here! Review After absolutely loving both of Jenn Bennett’s other books, I was incredibly excited to get my hands on STARRY EYES. Cristina and I were both thrilled to get this one early and decided it would make for a fun Book Buddies post. In the book, there’s kind of a hate-to-love, Romeo and Juliet-style warring families, childhood-friends-to-more, stuck-in-the-wilderness-together plot… all of which are right up my alley. My boyfriend has been super into researching camping and hiking things for this spring (someone please help me) so it was actually a lot more timely and interesting than I expected it to be. I couldn’t get rolling at the beginning for whatever reason. Zorie and Lennon weren’t clicking with me at first, but with every page I read… I fell in love with them even more. The chemistry that Bennett wrote was so incredibly good and believable. I was shipping them so quickly and so hard. The book is incredibly sex positive, which is excellent and realistic as always. I love how Bennett was able to utilize so many […]

Blog Tour: Finding Felicity

Posted March 19, 2018 / Book Reviews, Cover Colors, Features / 8 Comments

I knew exactly what I wanted to do for a post when I saw this blog tour announced by the Fantastic Flying Book Club. Felicity is a show I’ve always wanted to watch. I was constantly watching Friends with my mom (when I was way too young to watch it), but I never saw Felicity because she didn’t watch it. I was only 7 years old when the show started so the college-aged main character fascinated me, but was out of my reach at the time. I loved the concept of Finding Felicity when I saw the book’s synopsis a long time ago, and vowed to watch the show before reading the book. As you might have guessed, my role in this fun blog tour is to watch Felicity for the first time and share my feelings before reading the book. I’m going to include a little late 90s outfit Polyvore collage with Cover Colors as well, because I can’t resist. A first time Felicity watcher binges the show The tour was announced at the beginning of March, so I knew I had a few weeks to get going on the show. I decided to keep my live-blogging to just the first episode because it would get out of hand for all the episodes (I learned this very quickly). I embarked on the binge the first weekend of the month when my boyfriend was working (and sleeping, due to his work schedule). Here are my thoughts on season one, starting with a live blog […]

Blog Tour: The Sweetest Kind of Fate

Posted February 16, 2018 / Book Reviews, Cover Colors, Features / 0 Comments

More purchase links: Book Depository | Kobo | iBooks | IndieBound Author links: Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads | Facebook About Crystal Cestari: With rainbows in my hair and stories in my head, I am a writer drawn to magic in the everyday world. My debut novel, The Best Kind of Magic, arrives May 16, 2017 from Hyperion. Follow Amber Sand, a magical matchmaker who can actually see true love, as she takes off on a fun and romantic adventure toward happily ever after. Cover Colors This is probably one of my favorite Cover Colors! First of all, I love the actual colors from this cover. They were a lot of fun to pull from for the outfit below. Amber is a baker and hoping to get into culinary school, so I was able to include some baking-related accessories for her, including a cupcake phone case, apron, and cute pan. I included a map of Chicago print for the wall, since that’s the setting of the book, and a winter coat to keep her warm during those winters. She’s a very casual dresser so I gave her some ripped jeans, sneakers, and a cute tank top. There are some matching beauty items and accessories too. Sweetest Kind of Fate by bookmarklit featuring chicago wall art Review Another cute installment in this series! I love the Windy City Magic store and all of the paranormal happenings around Chicago. Amber is approached by her enemy, Ivy, because her sister, Iris, is going […]

Review Round Up | Surprise Me and Gone Rogue

Posted February 8, 2018 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 2 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! I’ve been a fan of Sophie Kinsella since wayy before these books were “appropriate” for me. I read some of the SHOPAHOLIC series back before high school. I read a few more in 2014 and loved her latest release before this one, so clearly I was jazzed up for SURPRISE ME. I liked Sylvie and Dan as a couple, with them finishing each other’s sentences and managing to have a really solid relationship. When the whole “you have 65 years left together because you’re super healthy and will live LONG lives” thing comes up, they’re both thrown. How are they going to survive THAT many years together? It’s a reality check for them and even though there’s really not much wrong with their relationship necessarily, they second-guess everything. Sylvie develops this plan where they surprise each other with little things to keep everything interesting. Naturally, the surprises go awry and Sylvie learns that surprises aren’t the only key to a long and healthy marriage. The whole situation about Sylvie’s father that died and her weird mother was… interesting. She had the opposite of the traditional “daddy issues” thing – she was obsessed with her dad and thought he was a perfect hero. She had a very odd […]

Review Round Up | A Taxonomy of Love, Together at Midnight, and The Upside to Falling Down

Posted February 2, 2018 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 3 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! I finally read it, guys!! I’ve had this book in my clutches for months and finally made myself read it. I was really excited for it because I love Rachael Allen, but I just couldn’t get myself in the mood for it. I knew it might be a sadder, harder to read contemporary, so I think I was just avoiding that part. Spencer and Hope have been friends and neighbors since middle school, with countless ups and downs in between. It’s a neverending cycle of one of them wanting something more at the wrong time, and going back and forth for years. I love neighbors/friends-to-more stories so I was definitely hoping for a happy ending. I thought the two of them were a good pair, but it was a LITTLE hard to get the feels because of how up and down their relationship was. On top of that, the story is broken into sections for different ages, starting with 7th grade and working up until they’re 19 years old. I liked seeing the development over time, but it was also a little hard to keep up with their relationship developing in a linear way? Not sure how to describe it. The story has little taxonomies, online chat […]

ARC Reviews: Pretty Dead Girls and As You Wish

Posted January 18, 2018 / Book Reviews / 2 Comments

I was looking forward to this book but I’m always nervous about mystery/thrillers. I’ve said in the past how I’m not really great at figuring them out, so if I DO happen to determine whodunnit too early… the book gets a little ruined for me. Frankly it’s because I don’t read a lot of murder mysteries; I tend to think all of the ones I read are SO good because they always manage to blow my mind. I wish I could say that was the case here. So aside from that element, which I’ll get to after, I didn’t love a lot of the OTHER parts of this book either. The main character, Penelope, is characterized as this perfectionist with parents who push her into doing everything. She has siblings who suffered the same fate but they’re all apparently well-adjusted kids still. I thought this sounded like a recipe for disaster, but instead it was completely glossed over and barely discussed. It’s the kind of thing that could lead to some major character flaws or a showdown later in the book. Unfortunately, Penelope just completely fell flat for me. Her internal monologue and constant need to start fights with Cass was increasingly annoying with every fight she instigated. I totally get being cautious because you barely know the dude and there’s a murderer out there… but this was so excessive and REPETITIVE. She accused him of the same things and they had the same conversations all the time, as if […]

ARC Review: Meet Cute

Posted January 3, 2018 / Book Reviews / 2 Comments

Further down you’ll find reviews for each story with their own star ratings, but my overall feelings about the book are right below. I really loved all of these stories overall, and this anthology left me with a really positive feeling… compared to other anthologies I’ve read! Meet Cute anthology Some People are Destined to Meet Edited by Jennifer L. Armentrout Average rating: 3.75 stars Whether or not you believe in fate, or luck, or love at first sight, every romance has to start somewhere. MEET CUTE is an anthology of original short stories featuring tales of “how they first met” from some of today’s most popular YA authors. Readers will experience Nina LaCour’s beautifully written piece about two Bay Area girls meeting via a cranky customer service Tweet, Sara Shepard’s glossy tale about a magazine intern and a young rock star, Nicola Yoon’s imaginative take on break-ups and make-ups, Katie Cotugno’s story of two teens hiding out from the police at a house party, and Huntley Fitzpatrick’s charming love story that begins over iced teas at a diner. There’s futuristic flirting from Kass Morgan and Katharine McGee, a riveting transgender heroine from Meredith Russo, a subway missed connection moment from Jocelyn Davies, and a girl determined to get out of her small town from Ibi Zoboi. Jennifer Armentrout writes a sweet story about finding love from a missing library book, Emery Lord has a heartwarming and funny tale of two girls stuck in an airport, Dhonielle Clayton takes a […]

Holiday Reviews: We’ll Always Have Christmas and The Afterlife of Holly Chase

Posted December 24, 2017 / Book Reviews / 5 Comments

Story Tis the season for my favorite holiday author! I always wait until it’s VERY close to Christmas to embark on my Jenny Hale book of the year, because they’re usually the most atmospheric. This one was a little different, which I’ll get into later. Noelle takes on a new job helping an elderly man in a local mansion while trying to fix up her family’s bakery to improve business. She falls for Alex, the man’s grandson, while staying there with her son. She has mixed feelings because Alex is the landlord for the bakery and is the one “pushing them out” with higher rent. Noelle has close friends, Phoebe and Jo, and a tight-knit family between her parents, grandfather, and sister. It was a really well-rounded story, even if some of the plot pieces were kind of annoying. There was a whole side thing that I predicted earlier with the grandfather’s lost ~first love~ and the fact that Noelle was thinking of moving to LA with Phoebe. The second thing there wasn’t needed in the story and took up an unnecessary amount of her headspace. The first one made sense even if it was predictable. Wintery Setting & Holiday Feels I feel like this is the first time I’ve given a Jenny Hale book less than “full-on holiday cheer” on my cheer-o-meter. The book takes place in the month or two leading up to Christmas, so there were bits of the holiday sprinkled throughout. The cozy bakery setting and […]

ARC Reviews: A Dangerous Year, The Key to Everything, and The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett

Posted November 6, 2017 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

I immediately saw comparisons to Ally Carter’s books, plus a little bit of Pretty Fierce by Kieran Scott, when I first saw this book on Goodreads and Netgalley. I was definitely intrigued, as I love the whole teen-spy genre. Add in the fact that this takes place at a Connecticut boarding school and I was HERE FOR IT. I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book. There were some potentially problematic sentences that really rubbed me the wrong way, and I initially felt that this book would definitely be under the three-star mark as a result. The author said things like “hooker red lipstick,” which is rude, and didn’t understand how something like Man Crush Monday or Woman Crush Wednesday worked. I know that one is small potatoes but it still definitely bugged me as I was reading. If you’re going to write for teens and about teens, you should run those passages by a couple of them. The cab driver said his name was Steve and the MC thought, because of his accent, it should be more like “Tariq or Malik.” And one other thing that bugged me, more in terms of the MC as a friend or human: Aside from those things, the book was sub-par until the very end. The last 10% was an absolute whirlwind. I thought I had everything figured out pretty early on, but there were a LOT of twists. The ending was definitely a cliffhanger too, so I’m really curious to […]

ARC Review: The Nowhere Girls

Posted October 9, 2017 / Book Reviews / 3 Comments

Initial Excitement & Summary I was over the moon when I got approved for this book. It ended up being one of those digital ones you can’t use on your Kindle, so I added it to my other ebook app. Loooong, annoying story: the book was set to expire on 9/13 (and I just happened to open the book up that day, thinking maybe I’d read it). I decided to binge it in one day to finish before it expired, updated Goodreads, and made my reading plans for after work. The next time I opened the book that day, it had expired. I spent a good 30-45 minutes trying to figure out if I could redownload it and screaming at my computer. I ended up just having to go to Netgalley and redownload it onto my iPad. SIGH. ANYWAYS, all of these issues led up to me just reading the book anyways. The story is about three girls from very different backgrounds who band together against the horrible boys in their high school. A former student was gang raped and no one believed her. Grace, Rosina, and Erin start “The Nowhere Girls” to take on the school’s sexist, lopsided views of what happened and try to make it a better place. Storytelling & Characters The chapters focus on the individual girls, plus a bunch of chapters called “Us.” I thought those chapters were incredibly powerful, as they focused on various girls around the town and what they were feeling. Those […]