Genre: Sci-Fi

Review Roundup | The Brothers Hawthorne, Project Hail Mary, and The Pumpkin Spice Cafe

Posted November 10, 2023 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 3 Comments

I’m really bummed by this one to be honest – it was really just FINE. I’ve loved this series so much and was excited to get into the heads of a couple of the brothers for this “spinoff” fourth book. It follows Jameson and Grayson as they embark on their own individual journeys. (It may have been more fun to follow Nash and Xander instead because they were featured less than Grayson and Jameson in other books.) Grayson’s part of the story was more interesting as he learned more about his father and the family that he never knew about. There was a little mystery there for him to solve and some lovable new characters introduced. Jameson is also dealing with his father and more games/riddles. I thought the concept behind his part of the book was good but not executed in a way that made me want to keep reading? It took me all of September to read this one because I just kept being more interested in other books. I did end up reading the final section pretty quickly and was curious to see how things would wrap up. I’m glad there’s another book and I’m hoping it’ll be more interesting than this one was. I really enjoyed THE MARTIAN despite not usually reading adult science fiction. (Even YA sci-fi is lower on my list unfortunately, despite enjoying them!) I kept seeing insanely positive reviews for this one and decided I should give it a try. The audiobook […]

Blog Tour: Cassandra in Reverse

Posted June 15, 2023 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

Review I’m a sucker for time travel books or anything involving parallel lives/universes, time loops, Groundhog Day… you name it – if the book messes with time in some way, I’m THERE. This book was on my list a long time ago so I’m thrilled to join the blog tour. CASSANDRA IN REVERSE centers around Cassandra, who is suddenly given the opportunity to time travel in the midst of a terrible day. Her boyfriend breaks up with her and then she’s fired from her job, so she goes home and takes a nap… only to wake up and it’s the previous morning again. She figures out how to choose when to travel and fix her mistakes. It’s not easy for her to interact with people and pick up on social cues, so having a second chance at certain conversations or situations really helps her figure things out. It was interesting to read a time travel story with someone who could control the power rather than just dealing with the Groundhog Day type of thing. I couldn’t put this book down and read the first half in one sitting. The second half was equally compelling. There was a portion in the middle where I was getting slightly bored with how she was using the time travel but it very quickly moved to something more intriguing. There were some twists near the end of the book that I didn’t love (and I wasn’t a fan of the final ending/scene very much), which […]

Review Round Up | Influence, This is Not the Jess Show, and Girls With Rebel Souls

Posted April 7, 2021 / 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! All Sara Shepard books are the same… and I mean that as a compliment. I know what I’m getting into and her books always hit the spot. They’re so easy to read, are super addicting, and always have a surprising ending. That’s all I ask for with my mystery/thrillers, to be honest, and reading her books feels like coming home for me. I remember the good ol’ PLL days and some of her older series. So good, so classic. This one involves influencers – a topic I personally haven’t encountered much in YA books yet. Just a little bit here and there. It goes between Delilah, Jasmine, and Fiona, with flickers of Scarlet’s live streams and vlog transcripts in between as well. Delilah just moved to LA and is a budding influencer after saving a puppy from a burning shed. Jasmine and Fiona are well-established influencers hiding major secrets, both trying to break out of their shells. I liked each of the points of view here but Delilah’s felt a bit young compared to the other two. Of course, because it’s Sara Shepard, there’s a mystery involved. The book starts with a prologue where one of the girls (we assume one of the MCs) ends up dying […]

Review Round Up | Aurora Burning, My Calamity Jane, and The Fell of Dark

Posted August 17, 2020 / 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! I enjoyed AURORA RISING enough, but I found myself constantly comparing it to ILLUMINAE. I really loved that format and despite that “disconnected” style (messaging longs, transcripts, etc.), really fell hard for the characters. Unfortunately I continue to feel disconnected from the AURORA series. It just doesn’t resonate with me like I expected or like I keep hoping. I really enjoy the characters and LIKE them, but I’m just not as emotionally connected to anyone or what’s happening. This book had some great twists though – there were a few moments that surprised and intrigued me. Even though I enjoy the audiobooks and think they’re really well done, I think that they don’t help me feel connected. The twists felt smaller hearing them instead of reading them? I don’t know why! The ending of the book was a pretty wild cliffhanger and I still was like… hmm okay I guess I’ll read the next one. And I definitely will! I’m happy to continue reading this even though it’s not my favorite series. I really did enjoy this, despite the fact that it look me two full months to read. I don’t know the last time that happened lol. I’ll blame it on the length, obviously, and my […]

ARC Reviews: Girls with Razor Hearts and In Five Years

Posted March 9, 2020 / Book Reviews / 3 Comments

Yup, this was just about as wild and powerful as expected, and the perfect way to kickoff my reading year. I chose it as my first book of 2020 because I love starting things off on a perfect note, or at least with a book I can safely assume will be in the 4.5-5 star range! Mena and the other girls have escaped Innovations, on the road to enacting their revenge against the evil corporation and academy that trained them to be obedient little girls like society wants. This is an incredibly feminist story, obviously, and offers dystopian-like connections to our own world. Young is masterful with this – she makes you realize immediately where she’s drawing inspiration from our world, but manages to make this near-future feel like a possibility. I think there are some elements of this that are possibly a little too on the nose and preachy but it really makes sense coming from Mena’s point of view (somewhat spoilery reasons if you haven’t read the first book – but I will say it’s primarily because Mena and the other girls haven’t been outside in the real world to know what it’s like. You’re seeing it through their inexperienced eyes.). I loved (and obviously hated because this book is not necessarily a walk in the park) the moments where they would think they could trust someone or think that a man would be helpful and then realize he may be almost as bad as the rest of […]

December ARC Reviews: The Pretenders and Blitzed

Posted February 10, 2020 / Book Reviews / 2 Comments

I read THE SIMILARS super early, months before it came out, so I feel like I’ve been waiting for the sequel forever. I was soooo addicted to it and I’m pretty sure read it in one sitting. I think reading the first one so quickly and being super addicted meant that I overlooked some things with my rating? The writing here in THE PRETENDERS wasn’t particularly great and I definitely noticed it this time around because I read it much slower. It was moderately addicting when I really got going and pushed myself to read it though. I mostly enjoyed it but the writing and internal dialogue of the main character, Emma, got super repetitive. There was a love triangle, which I saw coming based on the ending of the previous book. I don’t mind them if they make sense and this sort of did, but it was also super weird. She was stuck between Ollie, her best friend from childhood, and his clone, Levi. So, basically the same dude with different personalities. Again, I could SEE the reason for its existence and how the two guys were different from each other, despite the clone stuff, but it annoyed me a lot. The ending was absolutely batshit and unexpected, so that took it to a different level! I’m not sure those twists were necessary (some things seemed like twists for the sake of them and not because they made the book better). Overall, I’m glad I read this duo. I’ve […]

Review Round Up | Supernova, American Royals, and One of Us is Next

Posted January 29, 2020 / Book Reviews / 4 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! Like with the other two books in this series, I wish this was shorter by about 100 pages. There were some repetitive internal thoughts throughout and it just makes me think that more editing would have removed some and gotten this to a reasonable length. There’s no reason for this series to be the length it is! The pacing is super off. I think the first two books had a bit more twists throughout to keep things interesting but this one really didn’t get going until the final third. My favorite thing through reading all three books was watching Nova slowly think for herself and realize what was important. She started out as a such a villain on the side of the world’s biggest anarchist, and then realized that maybe she didn’t have to be that way. It genuinely took a while and was spaced nicely and naturally throughout the trilogy. Other than that, everyone was so boring. They were all about their powers and that’s about it. I couldn’t tell you anything about their personalities or interests otherwise. Just boring superheroes. Overall though, this book was a really good conclusion to the trilogy. Definitely wondering if a spinoff will happen based off the ending… I’ll always […]

Reviews: Aurora Rising and Red, White & Royal Blue

Posted June 24, 2019 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

When this was added on Scribd, I knew I needed to listen to the audio and read this one way earlier than I thought I actually would. I loved the Illuminae books but for some reason I wasn’t in the mood for this right away. I think I felt like it’d end up being too similar somehow? Not exactly the case as I got reading because OBVIOUSLY LAUREN not all science fiction/space-oriented books are the same. Anyways, I also got the physical copy from the library because I knew I wanted to blaze through it a little faster. LOL at that – I took over a month to read this because other ~required reading~ things popped up and delayed things. It’s a bigger book too, of course, but still. I finally made it! There were a lot of characters but I do think they were fleshed out well enough to differentiate between them. Tyler is kind of the lead character because he’s the leader of their squad. On draft day, he was busy saving Aurora and being the goldenboy they all claim he is, which meant he got the leftovers to add to his squad instead of the top people he could have drafted. Scarlett, Tyler’s twin sister, is the best and so cute and flirty and fun. Kal is the kind of alien person? Something bad happened between his people and everyone else’s, so they don’t super trust him sometimes. Cat is in love with Tyler, Finian is in […]

Review Round Up | Archenemies, The Vanishing Stair, and Two Can Keep a Secret

Posted February 28, 2019 / 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! As usual, it took me a long time to read this one. The combo of me reading less physical copies AND the fact that this book was a million pages? Yeah, I spread this shit out. Luckily my book club was on the same page as me! We decided to read half of the book for our January meeting and finish the other half to chat about in February, just because we knew we’d struggle to finish. We procrastinate… it is what it is! After the first meeting on the 22nd, I kind of spread the rest of the book throughout the final 9-ish days of the month, reading a set number of pages per day. Interesting developments started happening near the halfway point too, which made me eager to read it… finally. (I got caught up a little bit trying to prepare for KING OF SCARS by reading CROOKED KINGDOM but I still managed to get this one done for the end of the month.) While it IS a long book, the story is super easy to read. I think this primarily speaks to the writing style of Marissa Meyer. Even though I enjoy her writing a lot, this book could have used a lot of […]

ARC Review: The Similars

Posted January 4, 2019 / Book Reviews / 1 Comment

Many thanks to Sourcebooks for sending over this free package of goodies and a finished copy of THE SIMILARS for me! Initial Excitement & Summary Clearly I was excited to read this one, because I decided to go for it back in early June! I was stuck in sort of a reading slump because I binge-read too many contemporaries in a row. Usually I need to mix in a few different genres throughout the month so I don’t fully burn out. I knew I needed something sci-fi or paranormal (because reading THE COMPLICATION at one point the previous month reset my burnout too). I loved the idea of clones coming to a school without a lot of explanation and learning why they were so special. It was set sort of in the near-future; everyone has fancy “phones” with digital assistants Storytelling, Setting, & Characters There’s actually a lot to unpack with this book and truthfully I’m not smart enough to do it! There were a lot of correlations to today’s society, where people who are “different” can be ostracized for all the wrong reasons. There are growing hate movements based on leadership today and a lot of that was reflected in this book through clone rights. It was fascinating but didn’t feel like a forced theme to make a bigger picture, if that makes sense? These messages didn’t take me out of the story at all. Hanover did a really great job of keeping me guessing and keeping me reading. […]