Genre: Young Adult

Book Jar Review: Pivot Point

Posted January 7, 2015 / Book Reviews / 15 Comments

Twice a month, I’ll pick a slip of paper from my book jar and read a book that has been sitting around for a while. I don’t buy as many physical copies as I do e-books, but my bookshelves are still overflowing with far more unread books than ones I’ve read. A lot of these book jar picks will help with the TBR Challenge I joined for 2015, but some books I own are newer books that won’t qualify. Without further ado, here’s my review for the first book I drew from my book jar! This definitely qualifies as one of those books where I find myself asking WHY didn’t I read this sooner?? I absolutely loved The Distance Between Us by Kasie West and heard nothing but great things about this duology, too. I got it in my Uppercase box a few months ago and was really happy to finally own it… and even happier it was one of my first Book Jar picks! Anyways this book was AWESOME. Totally not what I was expecting – in a great way. I assumed it would be really similar to Just Like Fate, which I also liked, but this was definitely higher-stakes. It was a bit of a mystery and I absolutely could not put it down. First, I thought that Addie was a random girl with abilities. I didn’t realize she lived on a Compound full of people with abilities. That was SO cool and really made it much more […]

Blog Tour Review & Favorite Quotes: Gone Too Far

Posted January 4, 2015 / Book Reviews / 1 Comment

Review This is definitely a book that got stronger as it progressed. The first person perspective threw me off a little because I feel like most of the books I’ve read lately haven’t been. It’s a completely different reading experience, in my opinion. Some of the writing felt awkward at first because of that, but then I definitely got used to it. A lot of character names were introduced right away and I felt like they all blended together, but again I slowly got used to it and they all started to differentiate. Our main character, Piper, was definitely a character that developed over time. It was reminiscent of the character development in Dangerous Boys by Abigail Haas. The character starts out with pretty general characterizations, (she’s interested in photography and just your average high schooler) and then becomes more involved with some darker stuff. She isn’t a villain or anything that serious, but she gets mixed up in some bad things for a little while. It’s very cool to see a character develop and change in a non-traditional way. Also, there were some majorly swoony scenes with a cute boy… which is always a plus. I like when there’s a realistic romantic relationship included in mystery/thriller books. It adds a little something else to the plot. I like books where I’m suspicious of every character because it makes things more interesting. I’m normally very bad at solving the mystery before the end of the book. I had a lot […]

200 Word Review: Only the Good Spy Young

Posted January 1, 2015 / Book Reviews / 1 Comment

I finally made it to the first Gallagher Girls book that isn’t a reread! It was nice hearing a story I hadn’t read yet. DAMN this book got crazy, though! Just when you start to think it’s a fluffy story that is more romantic than spy-filled, you’re wrong. This book was definitely action-packed, which was certainly a breath of fresh air compared to the last book. Things are starting to get wild. Cammie’s spy activities are much more high stakes in this one. Instead of spying on her ex-boyfriend or other boys, she’s pretty much trying to stay alive. Part of me still doesn’t know who to trust or what’s going to happen. The one thing that continues to bug me is how immature Cammie seems. Maybe I’m so far removed from high school that I don’t remember what it was like, but I can’t help but feel like her voice is a bit more 12 year old than 17 year old. (I think part of this has to do with the audiobook narrator, though.) Regardless, I’m really excited to continue with the series and see what happens next! Pretty decent cliffhanger with this book.

200 Word Review: Don’t Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Posted December 29, 2014 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

So far this one is my least favorite. I guess I just feel like it was kind of boring and not much happened. It started out strong because the girls get involved with some kidnappers within the first few chapters, but then they’re just hanging around school and rehashing the event. I think it opened things up to get more interesting in the rest of the series, though. I didn’t remember anything about this book at all before rereading. Nothing ever came back to me as it got going either. My guess is that this one was my least favorite the first time around, too 😉 The romance aspect of this one was essentially nonexistent 97% of the book. I don’t remember much about what happens with Cammie and her love interests in the rest of the series and I honestly don’t know if I care which one she ends up with. However, all was not lost! Here are the things I enjoyed, as always: Strong friendship of Cammie and Bex/Liz/Macey Learning cool things about spies and seeing how their school-related lessons intertwine with what actually happens to the girls Crazy events at the end!

Book Buddies Holiday Review: My True Love Gave to Me

Posted December 25, 2014 / Book Buddies Reviews, Book Reviews / 5 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. Half our discussion will take place right here, and the other half will be on Cristina’s blog! (Link at the bottom) For this particular review, because it included short stories, we alternated the stories between the two of us and shared our thoughts on all of them. Because of that, I’m featuring six stories but will share my overall rating for the other six stories at the bottom of the page. Overall Thoughts I absolutely loved reading this anthology. There were quite a few stories that left me wanting more, for different reasons. Some of them had such great characters that I would have loved a full story with them. Others felt kind of rushed or unfinished, which unfortunately can happen with short stories. They would have benefited from a few more pages for characterization, wrapping up the stories, or just better developing it overall. Regardless, I would highly recommend this collection of short stories to anyone who enjoys the Christmas season. At the bottom of my post, you can see some of my story recommendations! Discussion #2- The Lady and the Fox by Kelly Link […]

Holiday Review: Coming Home for Christmas

Posted December 22, 2014 / Book Reviews / 3 Comments

I’m going to try a new kind of review occasionally, where I make notes as I read and use them as a quick review of the book! Here’s my first go at this. I’m seeing a lot of similarities between this book and the previous Christmas book I’ve read by Jenny Hale. The main characters have similar personalities, are dealing with somewhat similar situations with the love interest, the love interests have similar personalities to each other, etc. I like it though; she’s really mastered this kind of story. It’s interesting reading this book AFTER A Christmas to Remember, because Allie and Robert were featured in that book and it takes place after this one. It’s nice to know where they’re headed actually. There was a slight difference that just came up… I won’t spoil anything too much, but be warned it could be heading into somewhat-love-triangle territory. I actually feel like I’m reading about the same main character in some ways. In ACTR, the narrator was incredibly self-conscious and anxious, which annoyed me a lot, but she still (eventually) stuck up for herself and just told her employer exactly what she was thinking. Allie, in this book, is not really anxious or self-conscious, but goes through the same things with her employer – she calls him on his bullshit. I like it, because they’re strong and just do what they want, but I can’t help feeling like it’s a little too similar to me. The love triangle situation is […]

Holiday Review: Snowed In

Posted December 19, 2014 / Book Reviews / 7 Comments

Let me start out by saying that this is a very cute winter read. I’m not sure why I chose it for my “holiday reads” this season because realistically I could have read this in January and enjoyed it too. The holidays weren’t even mentioned, which was fine! It did a good job of putting me in the mood for snow. (Good thing, too, because the morning I finished this book I woke up to snow coming down.) This book made me feel pretty nostalgic. I used to go to the library all the time after school, before I could drive, and read old-school paperbacks from the young adult section. You know the kind – they’re small, have pretty big font that takes up the entire page, and were more than likely broken on the spine. This book (and Love on the Lifts, which is coming up here soon) just have that old feel to them. And I loved that! Unfortunately I had this one figured out about a quarter of the way through. I’m not entirely surprised because it felt like it would be quite predictable, but it was definitely one where I didn’t mind the predictability. It was really cute, had some nice characters, and an overall great general concept. I think that’s what I liked most about it – the setting and how that fed into the overall plot of the book. Ashleigh and her mother move from Texas to a small island up north, where they decide […]

Review: A Midsummer’s Nightmare

Posted December 18, 2014 / Book Reviews / 7 Comments

The Story I feel…weird. This is probably an odd start for a book review that I rated four and a half stars. I am trying really hard not to feel somewhat weird about the ending of this book. Sorry to kick this off with major spoilers, but that is truly the only thing I had reservations about. I wish it weren’t the case. ANYWAYS, onto the other stuff! Essentially this story is about Whitley, a party girl who wakes up in the same bed as her one night stand, and later finds out he’s her soon-to-be stepbrother. As the family tries to navigate a summer together, some major relationship-building and breaking happens. This story was much more than just a romance, or a friendship story, or a family-based novel. It was an amazing mix of everything I love in books. The characters were flawed and relatable. The feelings were raw and relatable. The entire book was just so damn relatable. The Characters Main character: Oh man I LOVED Whitley. She was sassy and generally did not care about the haters. She loved tequila, which is what makes her even better . Even at the parts of the book where she was being melodramatic, she was the first person to admit that she was acting that way. Being a flawed character but KNOWING that you are is something I find interesting to read about. I hate the people that think the world is out to get them and refuse to admit that […]

200 Word Review: The Death Cure

Posted December 17, 2014 / Book Reviews / 2 Comments

This book made me want to pull my hair out most of the time, and yet I somehow finished it. I can’t tell you how tempted I was to just Google how this book ends and be done with it all. The trilogy certainly got progressively worse for me. I LOVED the first book, didn’t like the second book as much, and pretty much loathed this last one. Here’s a summary of this book series (basically book 2 and 3): Walking and/or running around, trying to figure shit out Separating from friends Trying to find friends Separating from friends again Trying to find friends again Making a lot of dumb decisions and being stubborn Some fighting and/or killing I just got so sick of the same shit happening allllll the time. The ending honestly didn’t bother me that much but at the same time I wish there was a little more to it. The whole book felt like a cop-out. Did he plan the series in advance or make it up as he went along? I really don’t know.

Holiday Review: Mistletoe

Posted December 15, 2014 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

This compilation has been on my TBR for a loooong time. The authors in this one are some that I read back in middle school/early high school and haven’t really heard from since. Regardless, I was excited to embark on these stories. I wish I could say that I was impressed, but I definitely wasn’t. Most of the stories were juvenile and superficial. They definitely were not “delectable tales of love and lust” or “juicy” or “steamy.” They were all really bland and I’m sad. I certainly rounded up in my rating because I tried not to let the one story’s DNF affect the other ratings. Working in a Winter Wonderland by Aimee Friedman I feel like I’m being generous with this rating, but I guess the story was pretty entertaining throughout. The main character, Maxine, is a Jewish girl who gets a Christmas-related job in a department store. Seems like a kind of weird way to start a Christmas anthology, no? A girl who doesn’t even celebrate Christmas? The main thing that bugged me about this story was how transparent it was. I predicted what was going to happen completely. That’s okay with me sometimes, but I didn’t get a lot from the characters or really even learn anything from the story. It felt rushed (even more so than short stories normally do). The love interest throughout the story, Heath, really rubbed me the wrong way. A lot of the story was wasted on him when he was a […]