Genre: Contemporary

Blog Tour Cover Colors | Chloe Snow’s Diary: Confessions of a High School Disaster

Posted March 15, 2017 / Book Reviews, Cover Colors, Features / 0 Comments

Hello friends! I’m here today for my stop on the blog tour for Chloe Snow’s Diary: Confessions of a High School Disaster! I read the book in one afternoon and couldn’t put it down. I loved Chloe so much; she reminded me of myself in my freshman year of high school. Below you’ll see my Color Covers post for the book’s cover, as well as the outfit I made for Chloe that represents various aspects of the book. I also included a small review down below, near all of the blog tour information. Hope you enjoy and want to read the book ASAP 😉 It’s no secret that I’m obsessed with book covers. I love the colors, the typography, the different designs that cover artists can create. I even have a guest post feature where people share their favorite book covers and bookmarks! I decided to start up this random feature where I draw color inspiration from my favorite book covers. I may create an outfit, pick out some nail polish, or design a quote graphic. Today’s cover is… Chloe Snow’s Diary: Confessions of a High School Disaster by Emma Chastain I have to say, this outfit below was probably one of the most fun to make! I put it together almost immediately after finishing the book so everything was super fresh in my mind. You’ll see a lot of different details below that directly correspond to things Chloe does, sees, wears, and receives. Some examples: the copy of Sense and Sensibility from Christmas […]

Review Roundup | PS I Like You, The Forgetting, Kiss Cam, and Reunion

Posted March 8, 2017 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 6 Comments

Before the regularly scheduled programming… Happy International Women’s Day! In an effort to cut down on posts and burnout, my Review Roundups will feature 2-4 backlist books I’ve read or listened to recently. My ARC reviews usually get the solo treatment. Enjoy the mini reviews! I think you’re aware of the fact that I tend to hoard my favorite authors’ books so I always have at least one to read when I REALLY need it. Kasie West is one of those authors. Sometimes I just need to read her words because I know she won’t let me down. For PS I LIKE YOU, my sister had been hounding me to read it and lent me her copy. I went ahead and got the audiobook from Hoopla to crank it out and MAN do I love Kasie West still. I read it just as BY YOUR SIDE was coming out and I was borrowing LUCKY IN LOVE from a friend. So, it was safe to read this one finally ? The story was cute, albeit incredibly predictable. I don’t mind the formulaic nature of many YA books because it’s comforting to get that HEA at the end. I knew who the secret pen pal was literally within the first chapter or two of the book and the rest of the story was equally predictable from there. I know my romance tolerance is lower than usual, so I tried to not let it sway my opinion of this fluffy book by a favorite author. There was […]

Review Roundup | Take the Key and Lock Her Up, One Paris Summer, and Hope Was Here

Posted February 2, 2017 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 7 Comments

In an effort to cut down on posts and burnout, my Review Roundups will feature 2-3 backlist books I’ve read or listened to recently. My ARC reviews usually get the solo treatment. Enjoy the mini reviews! I’m a big Ally Carter fan… You can tell from all the books listed above that I’ve read by her. While the Gallagher Girls series is one of my favorites, Embassy Row didn’t really disappoint until this final book. Many people were annoyed with Grace before but I kind of liked her closed-off ferocity. She had been through SO much; I really understood why she was so hardened to the world and how she didn’t trust easily. That was a non-issue for me in the first two books, but really took a turn in TAKE THE KEY AND LOCK HER UP. I will admit that SO much of this had to do with the audiobook narrator. She over-acted and over-exaggerated her reactions to everything, so Grace was even more whiny, irritating, and hardheaded. The story itself was lacking in some areas, but my issues with Grace really distracted me from anything else going on. She jumped headfirst into really stupid things… and then didn’t understand why certain people would be mad at her for them. Seriously, such a moron! Her selfishness in this book astounded me. I don’t know why it surprised me so much, but it did. I thought the first half of the book dragged on a little bit because they were essentially on the […]

Last Book of 2016 & First Book of 2017 | Reviews: The Night Circus and The Secret of a Heart Note

Posted January 23, 2017 / Book Reviews / 10 Comments

I thought it would be appropriate to put my reviews for my last read of 2016 and the first read of 2017 together. I ended up cutting it very close with my Goodreads goal because I decided to be lazy with my final book. I ended up finishing it 20 minutes before I had to leave for New Jersey for my NYE plans… whoops. That’s what happens when you tell yourself to meet your Goodreads goal exactly – no more, no less. I started my first book of 2017 on New Years’ Day while Chris and I were hanging out at home before bed. I was hoping to spend a good portion of the day reading but I ended up watching lots of football (duh). In any case, here are the books that ended one year and started another! I had pretty high expectations for this book. It ends up on a LOT of people’s all-time-favorites lists. I bought this on Scribd forever ago with one of my credits, solely because it was narrated by Jim Dale. The story itself intrigued me because I find circus settings to be fascinating, but I really only went through with the purchase because of Jim Dale. He is perfection. His narration did end up being a major highlight for me. It was jarring at times because he used similar voices to the Harry Potter characters (like one character in this book sounded a lot like Dumbledore) and the book had some similar words I […]

ARC Review: History Is All You Left Me

Posted January 9, 2017 / Book Reviews / 8 Comments

I’m not totally sure where to begin with this review, but let me just say – Adam Silvera is now on my list. (That sounds bad, but I obviously mean must-read-all-this-author’s-books list.) HISTORY IS ALL YOU LEFT ME is the first book I’ve read by him, but I’ll definitely be going back and reading his debut sometime soon. Do yourself a favor and do the same, if you haven’t read him yet. I’m already predicting I’m going to love that one too. The synopsis honestly wasn’t super appealing to me, compared to the books I usually read, but I decided to try it out for some reason. I’m obviously glad I did. Griffin has OCD (something I was kind of nervous to read about) and recovering from the sudden death of his ex-boyfriend/best friend (something I also don’t do as well with). I like reading books where characters are moving on from grief, but those books generally take place months later when the person has had to some time to cope. This book completely exceeded my expectations. Literally within the first paragraph, I loved his writing style. I don’t know why but there’s just something about it that clicked with me instantly. The rest of the book was very much the same – such an engaging style that’s easy and enjoyable to read. Griffin was an interesting character. His OCD was actually quite interesting to read about and wasn’t overwhelming *there* to make it feel like a book exclusively about […]

Holiday Mini Reviews: Winter Storms and What Light

Posted December 24, 2016 / Book Reviews / 1 Comment

Story Winter Street swept me away pretty quickly for some reason. I was instantly intrigued by the Quinn family and wanted to get to know all of them. Once I finished with the bit of a cliffhanger, I moved on fairly quickly to Winter Stroll. The characters, over the course of the year between stories, regressed so much. They went back on decisions they already made and then made stupid ones. I didn’t like it nearly as much, but you know I was ready for the final book in the WINTER trilogy to arrive at the library. It unexpectedly did last week, so I was quick to hop right into it to finish it off. This book was definitely worse than the first one but better than the second one. I was incredibly annoyed by Ava mostly, with her love triangle that turned into a square. (Yep.) I thought she became much snootier and more guarded than necessary. I think her character “developed” in the wrong direction. The other characters were their usual selves and I didn’t mind them as much. I love where the story went for Kevin and Isabelle, Margaret and Drake, and somewhat for Patrick and Jennifer. The ending was very abrupt and I kind of hated it. I think things were left too open-ended for my liking. So, there was some good closure with a few characters but not all of them. Wintery Setting and Holiday Feels This story was interesting because it started in the spring […]

Holiday Book Buddies: Top Ten Clues You’re Clueless

Posted December 23, 2016 / Book Buddies Reviews, Book Reviews / 6 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! We’ve decided to bring some new elements into our Book Buddies posts, so it will be less Q&A discussion between the two of us, and more personal applications to the book. Because this book featured a bunch of lists the main character keeps in her head, we decided to channel the same thing for our post! The lists below are generally related to the book too. Chloe gets stuck at work in a grocery store on Christmas Eve, so you’ll see some place and food-related questions below! 5 Things About This Book This book made me so nostalgic for my grocery store days. I worked at Geissler’s Supermarket, a family-owned chain only in Connecticut and Massachussets, throughout the end of high school and beginning of college (on breaks). This book is incredibly accurate for what it’s like to work in a grocery store, from scheduling breaks to weird relationships with coworkers to having to work on Christmas Eve. Chloe and her coworkers were a bit presumptuous. I didn’t like so many of the assumptions they made about fellow […]

Review: Little Black Dresses, Little White Lies

Posted November 18, 2016 / Book Reviews / 6 Comments

Initial Excitement Do you ever NEED a book so much, you just can’t believe how perfectly it fits in to your mood? I have been in such a weird reading mood/slump for the past month and a half, for essentially the first time since I started blogging. I was intrigued by this book from the moment I saw it because it sounds exactly like a rom-com I’d love. However, when I sat down to pick up this book for the first time, I just knew it would break my slump and make my reading heart happy again. I was right, thank god. Quick Summary Harper finds out that her summer is going to be better than expected. She ends up getting an internship with Shift magazine (kind of like a Seventeen) in New York City as a dating blogger. She didn’t apply for that internship and has essentially zero dating experience, but she goes for it anyways. She lives with her awesome aunt in a gorgeous, huge apartment, makes new friends at the office, and deals with the “little white lies” she has to tell about her dating history. Storytelling, Setting, and Feels Harper was definitely the classic “clumsy and often clueless” main character that can be really irritating for me to read about. I have to say, the author pulled this character off better than I expected. I hardly ever found myself annoyed with Harper – with a few exceptions of course – and that made for some fun, light reading. […]

ARC Review: The Sun is Also a Star

Posted October 24, 2016 / Book Reviews / 6 Comments

Initial Excitement Any book involving fate or destiny in some capacity will immediately make it onto my TBR. Of course, any book by Nicola Yoon was also going to make it onto my TBR right away as well. I loved her debut so incredibly much and remember blazing through it in one afternoon. She became an auto-read author after just one book. So, needless to say, I had high hopes and expectations for this book… and it didn’t let me down! Summary in a Second Natasha’s family is on the verge of being deported back to Jamaica. Daniel is headed to a Yale admissions interview because his Korean parents are forcing him down that particular path. The two meet by chance (or perhaps by fate) and spend a whirlwind day together in New York City. The story has countless instances where destiny brought them together; if certain things didn’t happen or happened a few minutes later, their paths never would have crossed. This is something I’m always interested in, but the concept usually is found in my favorite parallel life/universe books instead of straight contemporary stories. Storytelling & Setting The story alternates between Natasha, Daniel, and other people and concepts they come across. I loved reading random chapters here and there from other people involved, like the lawyer or their parents. There were even some chapters that were just about certain things, like African American hair care or scientific concepts. It all just worked together so seamlessly. I’ll be so sad if […]

ARC Review: If I Fix You

Posted October 17, 2016 / Book Reviews / 16 Comments

God I have so many thoughts on this book and no idea where to begin. I feel incredibly conflicted because there are some things I really loved about this book. But, unfortunately, there were MANY more things I was not a fan of. AT ALL. It definitely left a lot to be desired and way more angst than expected. Overall, ugh. The Good Main character who works on cars with her dad. I loved the father-daughter dynamics in this story. If all of the rest of the things in my “bad” section didn’t exist, this relationship alone would have made this a much higher-rated book. Jill works on cars with her dad nonstop in his shop. They have a really good relationship that was awesome to read about. Her mom left them after some THINGS went down that I won’t spoil. They had to try to move on and live their lives without her, which wasn’t easy, but they always had each other. I’ve always been close to my dad so I just love these kinds of relationships in books. No filter when it was needed. I know it’s never a great idea for a teen to mouth off at their parent, but I was rooting so hard for Jill when certain things happened. That conversation made me so angry I was literally gritting my teeth while reading. The Bad Terrible romantic prospects. Just… terrible. I don’t want to get into some of the nuances here because very spoilery, so […]