Genre: Young Adult

Blog Tour | Cover Colors: Ask Me How I Got Here

Posted May 13, 2016 / Book Reviews, Cover Colors, Features / 6 Comments

MORE LINKS: Indiebound | iBooks | The Book Depository Cover Colors I ended up doing two different book-based looks here. I couldn’t resist doing my usual one based on the cover of the book. She’s on the beach and it has that great red color. I chose a beachy look using those colors first. Outfit based on the cover Ask Me How I Got Here Beach by bookmarklit featuring John Robshaw Outfit based on the character Then, the main character runs cross-country in the story and decides to stop running after her experience. I’m not a runner by any means, but I knew I needed to make a cute running/workout outfit for her when I saw those SHOES. Loooove. (She references purple Sauconys in the book but I loved these too much!) Ask Me How I Got Here Run by bookmarklit featuring flower pattern shoes Mini Review I was so excited about Poisoned Apples last year and it truly didn’t disappoint. Clearly I can count on Christine Heppermann to write stories and poetry that appeal to my feminist soul. This story, written in verse, definitely did. Abbie is a cross country runner who gets a new boyfriend, gets pregnant, and decides to have an abortion. Pretty heavy stuff! Abortion is not a topic discussed often in general, let alone in a YA novel. I would love to see this told in a standard novel format instead of verse, but I think she did such a great job with it regardless. I never […]

ARC Review: Unrivaled

Posted May 9, 2016 / Book Reviews / 4 Comments

This was a super super super addicting read! I don’t know how else to explain it, except I’ve never said “okay just one more chapter” more times in my ENTIRE life. I planned to read up to the 200 page mark before bed and ended up staying up for 2 more hours to just finish. I kid you not, every. single. chapter. I kept saying I would quit and I couldn’t. I needed to see what was going to happen! So aside from the addictiveness, there wasn’t a heck of a lot of substance. My gut reaction is to give this book like 5 stars because I was so enthralled while reading, but I can’t ignore some major issues. First of all, I didn’t like the characters at all. None of them had any qualities or personality traits that resonated with me and they absolutely felt like cardboard cut-outs. I don’t need to LIKE a character to like a book, but I at least need to understand them and feel like they’re more than a stereotype. These people were walking stereotypes of a wannabe journalist (Layla), wannabe actress (Aster), and wannabe musician (Tommy). I liked the chapters with Madison the best because she had a secretive, mysterious past that I was determined to figure out. Overall, they weren’t great people. They were all attracted to fame and fortune, plus winning the competition… so yeah. Not perfect. AGAIN this is fine for me usually, but they were too blah for me to care […]

Reviews: Blue Lily, Lily Blue and The Raven King

Posted May 6, 2016 / Book Reviews / 4 Comments

Despite the fact that this book ended up with the same rating as the first two, it’s definitely my favorite of the bunch. This is absolutely a series that gets better and more interesting with each installment. I spent most of the first two books confused and then completely enamored because of the ending. This book was actually opposite: I loved the entire thing, but was confused towards the end instead. I loved reading the Recaptains for the other books as I read, but this one didn’t exist when I read it 🙁 Regardless, I went surfing around Tumblr to get myself ~IN~ this fandom, now that spoilers aren’t an issue. It was a lot of fun and definitely helped clear up some questions! I don’t exactly know what to say about this series – or this book in particular – that hasn’t already been said by SO many trusted friends and reviewers. Some highlights? Blue + Gansey FEEEELZZZ Ronan + Adam (even though I don’t really like Adam) Piper – what an interesting, weird character Persephone 🙁 Some questions being answered or at least kind of explored THE ENDING CLIFFHANGER WHAT EVENNNNnnnnnNNn I am overwhelmed. I felt overwhelmed through every single page of this final book. I don’t even know if there are other words to describe how I felt. I cannot think of a time in recent memory where I’ve been so emotionally involved in every single character – their feelings, actions, futures.. everything. I just felt things so […]

Blog Tour | ARC Review: Down with the Shine

Posted May 2, 2016 / Book Reviews / 10 Comments

Review Whew, what a fun ride! This book was incredibly unique and awesome. I had almost no idea what to expect. I don’t read a lot (or any?) magical realism and this was such an insanely cool “introduction” to the genre for me. The premise definitely intrigued me – magical moonshine that could grant wishes?! I was picturing all of these crazy consequences and that’s exactly what the book delivered on. Lennie decides to get some popularity at a party by bringing along her uncle’s moonshine. She repeats the usual protocol that they do, thinking nothing of it. They ask the drinker to make a wish, she repeats it back, and says “may all your wishes come true, starting with this one.” She has no idea that this is not just a way of enjoying moonshine with someone. It’s a secret power the family possesses where they’re able to grant wishes to the drinker. Of course, like most wishes, they can’t be undone. After a drunken night full of wishing, Lennie realizes something has gone horribly wrong the next morning. Her uncles explain what happened and Lennie is on a path to make things right. There were so many different, interesting characters in this story. For her family, Lennie has her three uncles and their tough love approach, Lennie’s wanted-by-the-FBI-murderer-robber father, and her mother who is a shadow of her former self. There’s her longtime crush Smith, who also happens to be the twin brother of her recently murdered friend […]

ARC Review: The Way Back to You

Posted April 28, 2016 / Book Reviews / 3 Comments

So this is a really strong 4 stars for me. Sometimes I think I could round it up because I really loved it so much as I was reading it! The only issue I’m finding is that I finished the book last night and don’t feel as much of an impact as I expected. The book is about some generally heavier topics so I expected for the ~feels~ to last me a few days. I know my bookish memory is not great at all, but still. I don’t know what it is. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the many, many things I LOVED about this book: Characters I loved learning about Cloudy and Kyle. I thought they had an interesting dynamic and I was really interested to see what transpired between them (that led to their current non-friendship). I wish more was fleshed out surrounding that, or at least about their relationship before Ashlyn and Kyle started dating. I guess I just wanted all that spoiler-y stuff to be beefed up more. I didn’t feel some of it as much as I’d like to in that situation. Lots of telling and not showing. Road trip I love books involving road trips and journeys of any kind. This one had a unique reason (more on that in a second), so I was even more excited. There’s just something about being on the open road with someone, going from place to place, that makes me wanderlust-y. What […]

ARC Reviews: The Epidemic and Dream On

Posted April 25, 2016 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

I was SO excited to grab this one from ALA back in January, but OF COURSE I waited forever to finally sit down and read it. There’s something wrong with me, okay? But after the cliffhanger at the end of THE REMEDY, I knew I had to get to it as soon as there was a break in my reading schedule. Honestly, I kind of created a break in my schedule; I knew this book was one I could finish in three sittings or less because I get sooo addicted to Young’s writing. This was definitely the case with THE EPIDEMIC! It took a few chapters for me to be reminded of what happened in the previous book. Thankfully, there was a pretty solid amount of recapping THE REMEDY without feeling like too much information. I still loved Quinn and was wondering what would happen with Deacon, after the previous book’s major cliffhanger about him. The biggest question I had throughout the story was HOW. How is all of this happening? Does Virginia have something to do with it all? How is it possible that suicide became an epidemic – something contagious – instead of something just related to groupthink. I was so eager to get to the end see everything tie into THE PROGRAM and THE TREATMENT. It’s weird reading a prequel series because you know how the world ends up afterwards… and it’s not a pretty place to be. I knew that my final rating for this story […]

ARC Review: Queen of Hearts

Posted April 21, 2016 / Book Reviews / 7 Comments

This was overall an interesting retelling set in Wonderland, from the perspective of the soon-to-be Queen of Hearts, Dinah. Something happens very early in the book that still feels like a spoiler (it’s not said in the synopsis), so I won’t mention it… although it’s central to the rest of the plot. Anyways, I have mostly mixed feelings about this one? It’s kind of hard to explain this story… mostly because not much happens. I was about 60% of the way through and was able to explain the entire plot to my boyfriend within three sentences. Part of this is because it’s very info-dump-y in the beginning. There were little conversations where side characters would be explaining something to Dinah even though she already knew these random facts about Wonderland. I know these existed to cleverly explain things to the reader, but it felt SO forced. It really just read like an info-dump about the world. A lot of the early chapters involved this so the book had not a lot of action for a loooong time. Along those same lines, the pacing felt weird. The story seems to happen over the course of a year. The first scene happens, then the next chapter is six months later. Then another scene happens, and it jumps ahead a month or two. I don’t know why this was necessary because I feel like everything could have just happened in a more natural timeline? I saw Khanh’s review where she says the book feels like […]

ARC Review: Two Summers

Posted April 15, 2016 / Book Reviews / 7 Comments

I really enjoyed this one. It wasn’t exactly what I was expecting in a lot of ways, but it was a super fun and summery read. I love parallel life books SO much. Just waiting to see what happens at the end is my favorite part. You always wonder – will the two lives/paths/choices leave them to a different result? Will their life end up the same in the end? Every book has this question and I’ll admit, I haven’t read many that led to two very different outcomes. No spoilers here though. I definitely didn’t LOVE this as much as I hoped. It sounded right up my alley and I’ve enjoyed Aimee Friedman’s books in the past, so it was nice to be with her writing again. The premise is that Summer is planning to go to Paris to see her dad for the summer. She’s having second thoughts and then her phone rings with an unknown number the moment before she steps on the plane. Her life splits into two different directions – what happens when she answers, and what happens when she doesn’t. Like most parallel life books, the story alternates between the two choices and how her summer turns out. Summer in Paris vs. Summer in New York Instead of switching between the two parallel storylines every other chapter – like most books do – this one has longer “parts” so you only switch between the two a handful of times. In some ways, I liked […]

ARC Review: Dreamology

Posted April 7, 2016 / Book Reviews / 11 Comments

I knew I needed this book the moment I saw it – starting with the cover and ending with the synopsis. It sounded right up my alley because it seemed parallel universe-ish and dreamy and did I mention that cover?? I somehow didn’t grab it at ALA because I’m a chicken about talking to publishers, but luckily I was able to grab it from an ARC tour. I seriously seriously loved this book. The concept and storyline was incredibly unique. Basically, Max and Alice have been dreaming about each other since they were kids. Then, she moves to Boston, finds out Max is a real person, and things! develop! I shipped these two literally immediately, during the first dream we got to see. The characters were just SO funny, adorable, and charming. Alice and Max were cute cute CUTE. I loved all of the secondary characters as well: the humor that Oliver brought to the story, Alice’s friendship with Sophie, the inclusion of Celeste, and Jerry the awesome dog. The story definitely had some sciencey elements because obviously these two are legit sharing dreams, but I like that it didn’t get too bogged down with the details as they started figuring THINGS out. It’s very much a contemporary romance – not a lot of sci-fi or paranormal as you may think. A few other things I loved? They were teens who sometimes went to a party and had some drinks. I always think it’s refreshing when there are party-like scenes that […]

ARC Review: When We Collided

Posted April 6, 2016 / Book Reviews / 14 Comments

I have a ridiculously large amount of mixed feelings on this book. It’s a tough one to rate for me, because what am I supposed to go by – the way it made me feel and my level of enjoyment? The quality of the story and its importance? These two ratings are insanely different. I talked with Angie about it after finishing and she helped me put it to words. The book itself – the story, the portrayal of mental illness – is VERY important. It’s so well-done. However, it just isn’t a book that I like reading about. It was frustrating, sad, and kind of disappointing because of it. I didn’t go into it expecting something super fluffy, like Lord’s other books, but I also didn’t expect to be so upset throughout the whole thing either. I was hoping for a mix of the two. The first third of the book was utter perfection, like the entirety of Lord’s other books that I’m obsessed with. The setting of Verona Cove was amazing and reminded me of all the Sarah Dessen books that happen in Colby. Jonah was fucking adorable and Vivi was vivacious. (See what I did there?) I loved them right away. The book had some instalove but for some reason it felt right. I don’t necessarily have an issue with it because I really think some people do hit it off right away. I have no issue with people feeling like they’re meant to be. I don’t know; […]