Genre: Young Adult

Blog Tour Review: Kissing in America

Posted May 22, 2015 / Book Reviews / 7 Comments

I really, really enjoyed this book. I couldn’t put it down. I love when a book can completely set the scene and give me plenty of things to relate to. I’ve been liking the format of “five reasons to read” for reviews sometimes, so without further ado… Five Reasons to Read Kissing in America 1. The Road Trip This is definitely the kind of book that gets me in the mood to travel. I love the idea of taking a cross-country road trip and am absolutely determined to do it someday. I have to say, I wouldn’t enjoy the exact same trip that these girls had, but it definitely gave me some inspiration! The story centers around Eva and her best friend Annie traveling to California. They’re headed to a TV competition for Annie to win scholarship money, but Eva organizes the trip with the purpose of visiting Will, a boy she’s been falling for. I loved reading about the two of them traveling the country, stopping and meeting some interesting characters, and exploring a lot of feelings. I love when books motivate me to get up and DO SOMETHING. 2. The Friendship Annie and Eva had a really strong relationship. I loved that they were both incredibly smart and talked about way more complex things than people their age. Eva made some mistakes, especially at the end, but Annie was always there to listen and help her. I can’t imagine Eva being an easy person to be friends with, but […]

Review: Saint Anything

Posted May 20, 2015 / Book Reviews / 18 Comments

It wasn’t until I started filling out my rating report that I knew that this book could be considered a favorite. I got to the end of it and was completely impressed, AS USUAL, but just didn’t feel like it had a SPARK that made me say “this is hopping onto my favorites shelf.” It’s the kind of quiet YA book that I’ve been absolutely loving lately. (Read Emmy & Oliver by Robin Benway as soon as its released; you’ll know exactly what I mean.) It has some really heavy themes but there’s not a lot of your typical drama that gets associated with some young adult contemporary books. It was so refreshing. Her family has issues that they need to deal with – A LOT more issues than your average family – but it was still a very subtle (maybe that’s not the right word) story that impressed me regardless. I can completely see why Dessen has said this book took her a long time to write and was particularly challenging. I’ve always thought that Sarah Dessen was the queen of contemporary because she could perfectly blend family, friendship, and romance all into a perfect story about imperfect characters. This book was no exception to that, although the romance part was definitely subdued compared to the rest – which I loved! It was built up organically through little glances at each other and moments of “what-if,” but didn’t compare to the themes of friendship and family. It had its rightful […]

Review: Split Second

Posted May 18, 2015 / Book Reviews / 4 Comments

I read Pivot Point back in January and absolutely loved it. Kasie West is probably my #1 auto-buy author. There are two reasons it took me so long to read this book: (1) I preordered the paperback version so my set would match, which meant it wouldn’t arrive until two months after reading the first book, and (2) This is the last published Kasie West book I could read! I didn’t want to run out 🙁 I didn’t realize this book was going to feature dual POV’s between Addie and Laila; the first book had two POVs but it was the two different timelines of Addie’s search. I was happy to see some more time with Laila, even though things were kind of awkward after what happened in the previous book. In dual-POV books you can sometimes expect that you’ll prefer one person’s storyline to the others; I found myself enjoying both perspectives equally for the most part! Laila did frustrate me at times because I felt like she wasn’t making the right decisions. Her relationship in this one was a hate-to-love situation that took her SO LONG to figure out. I was okay with their banter but didn’t ship them as hard as I usually would in that kind of relationship trope. Even though the book was split between Addie and Laila, Addie is still the “main character.” I felt like her personality wasn’t as developed in this book for some reason. I missed that. The same thing goes for […]

Reread Review: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Posted May 15, 2015 / Book Reviews / 5 Comments

This is the first book I had to anxiously await reading! Since I finished the first three books before this one’s release, I had to wait and wait for it to come out. My parents were pretty good about letting me preorder the books (especially because they were addicted to them at this point, too!) and I remember being so damn excited for it to arrive. This book is huuuuge in size and I remember walking around everywhere with it in my hands, barely able to fit. I also loved the Triwizard Tournament aspect of this book. It was such a cool idea and kept the action dispersed throughout the book. I knew that this was kind of the “turning point” in the series, where Voldemort is officially back; the books get much darker from here on out. Duh, Harry Potter! I always wanted to reread this series. Beyond that, though, I was almost the most anxious to reread this one out of all of them. I knew that #3 and #4 were close favorites of mine, but I always said Prisoner of Azkaban was my favorite. I wanted to reread this one to see if my reigning favorite would remain, or if this one would take its place! Well, I’m pretty sure this one has officially become my favorite! It feels weird to say that, but I guess my tastes have changed. I just LOVED the whole tournament, the new characters, and the fact that this book is THE book […]

Review: All the Bright Places

Posted May 14, 2015 / Book Reviews / 14 Comments

Oh lord. How am I ever going to get through this review without crying? That’s the only thing I can think of right now. Usually I write my reviews less than 24 hours after finishing the book, but I just couldn’t do it that quickly for this one. I’m still barely ready to talk about it without tearing up. Not too much happened in the vast majority of the book, to be honest. I felt like it was slow but engrossing at the same time somehow. I couldn’t stop reading because I was desperate to see where the story went and what was going to happen with my little babies Violet and Finch. They were extremely interesting characters. Violet lost her sister in an accident and was trying to move on and leave for college, while Finch was always consumed by thoughts of death and how he might kill himself. It was really heavy most of the time, but they were pretty adorable as their relationship grew and time went on. Finch was kind of an enigma throughout the book. He had some mental health issues and it wasn’t totally clear what he was going through. I also felt SO BAD for Violet because she went through SO MUCH and she didn’t deserve it. I don’t know how to say it except that this book completely broke me. I was literally Tobias (below) for the last fifty pages straight. I couldn’t read through my tears and my boyfriend kept bringing me […]

The Jessica Darling Series Binge-Read

Posted May 8, 2015 / Book Reviews / 1 Comment

I somehow missed the memo when I was younger to read the Jessica Darling series. I’m not sure why, because the synopsis sounds like something my young self would have been very excited to read. When I saw the whole series at my library, I randomly decided to get to it. I’ve been seriously lagging behind in my Series-A-Month challenge, so I thought these quick reads would be an awesome long one to get to. Instead of individually reviewing all five of these really old books, I figured I’d share my thoughts here on the series as a whole! THE GIST | Jessica essentially has an existential crisis when her best friend, Hope, moves away. She spends most of the book complaining and missing her. She’s left with “The Clueless Crew,” or three girls that she barely likes but continues to be friends with for some reason. She mostly just sits with them at lunch and doesn’t do much of anything else. I couldn’t stop reading this book and was pretty curious about where it was going to go, especially because not much happened plot-wise for a while. It took me a little too long to realize this was literally a diary. THE GOOD | MARCUS FLUTIE. I love him. I shipped it so hard for some reason. The end of the book made me incredibly anxious for the next one and I was pretty pissed that the library I finished the book in didn’t have the series. I had to […]

Review: When

Posted May 6, 2015 / Book Reviews / 3 Comments

I’m sorry for the inevitable rant that this review is going to become. I was immediately intrigued by the premise of this book before it was released and thought it’d be a solid one to listen to on Audible. I was definitely wrong in that, and now I’m wondering how much the format of the book impacted my rating and feelings. Would it have been different to read this in print, or did I reaaaally just not like the book at all? Anyway, this book was pretty painful to listen to for a variety of reasons: THE AUDIOBOOK NARRATOR. This is certainly my biggest gripe, hence the debate above. The narrator read so fucking slowly that I wanted to speed up the narration. (Yes, I know that’s possible on Audible, but then the person gets a squeaky mouse voice.) She had the weirdest inflection on certain words and characters’ voices that I cringed so often. It can always be awkward when narrators try to change their voice for different characters, but this was just so bad. THE MAIN CHARACTER. Maddie made me SO annoyed throughout the whole book. Coupled with the narrator’s young-sounding voice, Maddie was so damn immature and stupid sometimes I can’t even explain it. Her whining was so melodramatic; I rolled my eyes WAY too many times. I feel bad saying this because she went through so much, especially with the bullying from her classmates, but I can’t help it. Some examples where I wanted to punch my phone: Lady […]

Review: The Falconer

Posted May 4, 2015 / Book Reviews / 4 Comments

The biggest thing I can say about this book is HOLY CLIFFHANGER. Good god, how am I supposed to wait until later this year for the sequel? Someone help me. I was really excited to read this book when I grabbed it from the library, because I’ve been super in the mood for fairy books lately. I will say up front though that it had some trouble keeping my attention. I’ve talked briefly before about how fantasy books can be kind of hard for me, because I get distracted so easily. I really don’t know why. Usually I think it has something to do with the mix of world-building and action; if this balance is off a little bit in either direction, I get bored or the book loses my attention. I’m not entirely sure if this was the issue with this one, but I actually had to take a break in between for a light, quick contemporary. This happened before with Red Queen too. Usually I burn out about halfway through the book, take a break to read something fluffy, and come back to it with renewed energy. Taking a contemporary break totally helped me get back into this. What did I love about this book? The setting and the characters. Loved, loved, loved. Aileana is a freaking badass and pretty damn fearless. Once she witnesses her mother get murdered by a faery, she starts tracking and killing any fae she sees. She is trained by Kiaran, a faery who actually […]

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 […]

ARC Review: A Court of Thorns and Roses

Posted April 29, 2015 / Book Reviews / 12 Comments

This review was written immediately upon finishing the book (February 13th), so pardon any nonsensical flailing (AKA the whole review. Okay bye.) MY THOUGHTS? WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS, STUPID REVIEW GRAPHIC???? I DON’T KNOW HOW TO MAKE WORDS. This was my first Sarah J. Maas novel (don’t yell at me) and I can certainly now see what all the fuss is about. I decided to approach this one before Throne of Glass because honestly the synopsis of ToG didn’t appeal to me NEARLY as much as this one did. I love faeries! Love, love, love. Always have. When the lovely Andi lent me her ARC, I started reading it immediately because I was just so in the mood for it. I finished it in three days, which is a little longer than usual for me… BUT not that long considering it was over 400 pages and I pretty much read it in a few loooong sittings. I could not stop reading, folks. Even when there wasn’t much happening as far as plot-moving action, I couldn’t stop. So damn engrossing. Fantasy books can be very hit or miss with me; for some reason they don’t hold my attention as much as contemporaries do. I find myself getting distracted. Nope. Not with this book. I was drawn in immediately as I learned about Feyre, her family, and their history. I despised her sisters right off the bat and was hoping that there’d be some redeeming qualities eventually. No matter how poorly her family members treated her, […]