Genre: Sci-Fi

Mini ARC Reviews: The Adjustment, Secrets of a Reluctant Princess, and At First Blush

Posted April 10, 2017 / Book Reviews / 2 Comments

Like I did last week, I’m rounding up three ARC reviews for today! Sooo many March and April titles to catch up on… good lord! There’s a bit of a mixed bag, enjoyment-wise. Some of them were really great while others were… not so great. I hope you enjoy these slightly smaller reviews 😉 S H O R T & S W E E T A R C R E V I E W S Honestly guys, I have no idea how Suzanne Young does it. She is totally the master for crafting an incredibly interesting series, where each book is just as good (sometimes better) than the last. I really can’t fathom it. I’m not ready to leave the world of THE PROGRAM yet and thank god there’s one more book! This story happens after the Program has come and “gone” from the world. (I recommend reading these in published order instead of chronological order because it keeps the suspense going!) There’s a new thing called the Adjustment, which allows for someone’s memories to be essentially implanted in another person. Tatum and her boyfriend Wes end up giving it a try. He comes back from the Program and doesn’t remember how much they loved each other before, so they start working with the Adjustment because he starts to get feelings for her again. Of course, there are plenty of problems and mysteries to work through. These books are a wild ride. I have to say that I did […]

Review Round Up | Dark Star, A Little Something Different, Wires & Nerve, and Bounce

Posted March 20, 2017 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 0 Comments

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 needed an Urban Fantasy for my Bookish Bingo card and Morgan recommended DARK STAR. I wasn’t sure how the book would work for me because the last demon-y book I read was very meh and I never continued with the series. I was pleasantly surprised by DARK STAR and enjoyed it more (despite the same rating lol)! I liked Audrey and pretty much all of the rest of the characters in this one. It was fun to see secrets be revealed from start to finish. Her mom, her friends, the other people with ~powers~ … they were all really interesting characters that I hope to learn more about going forward. There even was a BIT of romance near the end. It sucks because I honestly can’t think of much more to talk about? The book flew by, as I combined some audio hours with reading the ebook for the ending. I liked it enough but there’s not much to discuss. I can tell that there’s still SO much more left to cover in the upcoming books, without feeling like they’re stretching the story too much. The ending was closed enough to not feel like a cliffhanger but open enough to get that feeling of more coming soon. This is absolutely one of those books where the concept […]

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 […]

ARC Review: Replica

Posted December 7, 2016 / Book Reviews / 12 Comments

I usually break these reviews out into my typical categories below, but I decided to divide my review into the two “books” within one book. You can read this book in multiple ways. You can read Lyra’s story then flip the book around to read Gemma’s, or you could alternate chapters between the two books (as if it were one book with two alternating points of view). I decided to read all of Lyra’s story then all of Gemma’s because it was frankly easier than flipping between the two sides each chapter. TL;DR? I’m happy with how I chose to read this book. It was really interesting as certain events happened and I thought about what happened on the *other* side of the book during that time, and it did make me wonder how it would have been reading the other way. I wish it were easier to do; maybe I’ll reread it someday. I knew that Gemma and Lyra met up for a portion of the book, but they weren’t always with each other. This was helpful because otherwise it would have been really repetitive to essentially read the same story twice! I liked getting inside both of their heads – in the order I read them – to piece it all together. There wasn’t too much overlap between each point of view. So many big reveals and connections came together at each story’s end! I loved seeing how all of their research would crash together. When I read Lyra’s ending, […]

Review: The Unquiet

Posted November 14, 2016 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

Initial Excitement This book actually flew quite under the radar when it came out last year. I saw Jamie read it and mentioned how underrated it was, so I just added it to my TBR. My book club ended up picking it out randomly using our extremely scientific method of choosing books *cough* and it was really out of our comfort zone! (We use this infographic to choose. One of us picks one number 1-20 and that corresponds to the box/category, if we count them in order. Then, the other one of us picks another number 1-6 and that corresponds to the book within that box.) So, I was intrigued by the premise and excited to read this underrated story! Quick Summary In this book, there are two connected earths and each person has an “alternate” (aka identical twin kind of thing) that lives on the other earth. Because the second earth is dying, the people are training to take over the first earth. They learn everything about their alternate so they can eventually come across, kill them, and replace them on the main earth. (This is all somewhat hard to understand in the beginning but I don’t think anything I said can’t be inferred from the synopsis.) Storytelling, Setting, and Feels Sometimes getting thrown right into the action can be fun. Sometimes it can be confusing. And sometimes (okay, this time), it can be both! I liked getting off to a quick start and trying to piece things together […]

Review: The Thousandth Floor

Posted October 27, 2016 / Book Reviews / 11 Comments

Initial Excitement I mentioned this book way too many times on the blog before it came out, so clearly I was ready. I loved Gossip Girl and still enjoy reading about rich and terrible main characters. Call it a guilty pleasure if you must, but I don’t care – there’s something about it I love and it makes me nostalgic. This book promised to be a futuristic, sci-fi GG. Color me incredibly intrigued, okay? Quick Summary The main area of NYC that we know and love has been transformed into a thousand-floor tower, where everyone tends to work, live, and go to school. The higher the floor, the richer you are. Most of the main characters lived up towards the top, while a few were closer to the bottom. The story alternates between Avery, Leda, Eris, Watt, and Rylin as their lives become intertwined and secrets are revealed. Storytelling, Setting, and Feels I was promised a futuristic Gossip Girl and that’s what I got. The story itself was really intriguing because all of the characters had so many secrets. They were all certainly less-than-perfect and often ruthless in getting what they wanted. They broke the law and partied and spent insane amounts of money. Seriously, GG all over it. Adding in the futuristic elements and the tower itself was SO fun and a nice twist on the typical mean-rich-people-YA story. The setting of the tower was unreal. I wish I could picture it better, but it sounds like they just put everything in […]

ARC Review: Gemina

Posted October 10, 2016 / Book Reviews / 6 Comments

Initial Excitement Unlike most people, I wasn’t utterly blown away by ILLUMINAE. I definitely REALLY enjoyed it and gave it four stars, but it wasn’t perfect like it was for so many other people. I was pretty excited for GEMINA when I saw some early reviews roll in and the lovely Wendy let me borrow her copy. Summary in a Second This book is a companion to ILLUMINAE and seems to take place right after the events of the first book. There are different main characters, which was sad at first but got much better. GEMINA follows Hanna, the attractive daughter of the ship’s captain, and Nik, a criminal from a criminal family doing criminal things a lot of the time. Their ship (Hypatia) is the next victim of BeiTech’s siege of all the ships and space things I don’t know how to describe. Storytelling & Setting Like ILLUMINAE, this book is told through various documents, files, IM chats, radio transmissions, and video camera footage (transcribed). Because I read an ARC, there were some final drawings and pictures missing from the book but it didn’t make much of a difference for the actual story itself. The space setting is really fun because it pulls me right out of my comfort zone. I don’t do a lot of sci-fi because I get confused, and honestly this series is no exception, but I just enjoy these more because of the format. The actual plot for this book was incredibly engaging. It featured […]

Review: We Are the Ants

Posted March 21, 2016 / Book Reviews / 13 Comments

You know you really loved a book when you find yourself immediately tracking down other books by the author. I did end up checking two out from the library (and was planning on doing an author binge review), but didn’t read them in time. The joys of being a mood reader, amirite? So that’s why there’s a bit of a delay on this book review that I actually read a few months ago. But here we go! What a book this was! I wasn’t sure what to expect from this story, but I admittedly had high expectations from all the glowing reviews. There aren’t many reviews, but the ones that do exist are damn perfect. This was a really honest, interesting, and heartbreaking book. It covered every possible topic, fully fleshed out every character, and made me feel all sorts of things. I admittedly do not read a lot of books that fall under the QUILTBAG umbrella, and I plan to change that this year. Really. I think that books about coming out are REALLY important and helpful to those in that situation, but there is much to be said about books that don’t involve that element of the community. It was nice to read a book like this, where the character was already out to his family and it was really never brought up as an “issue.” (You know what I mean; I don’t know what other word to use there.) I could spend all day talking about the characters. […]

Mini Novella Reviews: Fairest and Stars Above

Posted March 2, 2016 / Book Reviews / 7 Comments

I don’t have a lot to say about this one overall. I liked it and am glad it exists, because Levana’s point of view is fucking crazy, but it wasn’t at the same level of the rest of the books. Obviously the entire series is ridiculously epic and twisty and turny. This book was really just a summary of Levana’s life before Cinder technically takes place. I think this would make more sense as a 0.5 instead of 3.5, but what are ya gonna do? My Goodreads review successfully sums up my feelings on this book: I’ve been looking forward to this epilogue foreeeeever. Oh yeah, and the rest of the novellas in there 😉 I actually hadn’t read any of the existing novellas for this series yet, so the whole book was new to me. It was an absolutely great way to wrap up the series. Here are some very mini reviews on each novella included: The Keeper: I loved seeing Michelle and Scarlet’s relationship develop! Getting a little background about how everyone came together pre-Cinder was awesome. And I loved seeing her become Cinder (and why that name!) Glitches: I’m pretty sure this one was previously released, but I’m reading all of these novellas for the first time! It was heartwarming to see how Garan and Peony really did care for her, unlike the rest of them. Made me sad/happy. Also IKO! The Queen’s Army: Really interesting (and terrible) to learn about how the queen acquired her army. I felt […]

ARC Review: Illuminae

Posted October 14, 2015 / Book Reviews / 9 Comments

I feel weird calling myself a black sheep about a book I still gave four stars, but it seems like I definitely am. Everyone else who read this (especially the early reviews back when I read it in July) was literally blown away by how epic it was. Don’t get me wrong – it’s REALLY GOOD. Intense and interesting and crazy and unique. But for some reason it just didn’t have that same WOW factor that everyone else saw. Kady and Ezra broke up right before the book started, when their planet was invaded and they were taken onto different space shuttles. Honestly I’m still a little unclear about what happened and why, but it was crazy and bad I guess. It’s actually impossible to explain much about the plot of this though because (a) not much really happens, if you think about it, and (b) the major plot points are super spoilery. I REALLY LIKED THIS A LOT, I PROMISE. Like I said, there was just a bit of wow factor missing for me. I loved the drawings and the format: so many interesting things to read and look at. It made it pretty fast-paced and intriguing. You really never knew what the next page’s format was going to be. It’s totally unique and adds a lot to the story. I loved following the different chat conversations and official documents towards the beginning, and the format towards the end got fucking intense. I can’t even really pinpoint what parts […]