Genre: Sci-Fi

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 […]

Review: Cinder

Posted September 18, 2015 / Book Reviews / 11 Comments

Let me start out by saying, YES I finally read this book! Yes, for the first time. No, I’m not sure what took me this long. When Brittany mentioned a Lunar Chronicles readalong for this year, in preparation for the newest release, I knew that this would be my reason to finally read the series. I’ll say quickly: I’ve never had this much trouble coming up with a Friends connection for my GIF below! It usually takes me forever to find or create the right GIF, but the reference itself comes right into my brain. Regardless, I think this book is just so unique and hard to classify that – for once – my Friends-obsessed brain had some trouble! Well, what did I think? This was a really great series-starter! I’m so intrigued with this world and can’t wait to see what happens in the next installment. Cinder was an interesting character – she’s a cyborg who dealing with the prince’s sudden interest in her and her sister’s sudden illness, all while slowly learning some insane things about herself and her past. I didn’t fully connect with her for some reason, but that didn’t really damper my enjoyment for the book overall. It seems like her story is going to be the one carried through the rest of the series, all while highlighting new characters and, probably, locations. There’s this phenomenon that happens to me sometimes while I’m reading that I call being “mockingbirded.” When I was in high school reading To […]

Book Buddies Review: These Broken Stars

Posted May 1, 2015 / Book Buddies Reviews, Book Reviews / 3 Comments

Book Buddies is a discussion-style review that takes place with one of my two buddies. (Learn more and see past reviews here) We both read the book and then have a private discussion about it. We post our discussion as a review on the last Wednesday of each month. You’ll be able to see our similar/different opinions on the overall book, characters, writing style, etc. – just like a regular review. The first half our discussion will take place right here, and the second half will be on Kaitlin’s blog! (Link at the bottom) View Cristina’s part of the discussion here. Some spoilers ahead, so proceed with caution. What past experience have you had with sci-fi books like this? If you’ve read some before, did you find this book easy to slip into, or was it a challenge from lack of experience? What did you think of the world-building? It felt a lot different than the world-building in fantasy books I’ve read. Lauren: I don’t think I’ve really read any book that falls into this category. I was kind of leery but extremely interested to see how it worked for me. To be honest, it took a while to get into. I was eager to see what happened with the characters but started off quite confused about their world. I couldn’t grasp the fact that (I think?) Earth didn’t exist to them. They were just floating around the galaxy on a ship and there were loads of other planets to explore. With fantasy books, they’re usually set […]