Genre: Young Adult

Review: The Secrets of Lily Graves

Posted January 14, 2015 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

I had pretty low expectations when starting this book because I had seen a lot of pretty negative reviews. Most people said that it was glaringly predictable, but I am SO BAD at predicting things in books. Mysteries and thrillers always catch me off guard because I kind of try not to make theories about what’s going to happen because I would rather be surprised…. but even when I do make predictions, they’re wrong. I was thinking that I would be the black sheep and actually end up liking this one, but I was nervous about the ending. (I had a feeling this was going to a book that’s success hinged on the ending, and I was right.) I think the overall concept and setting was really cool. It was the epitome of a story that sounds GREAT in theory but was poorly executed. What Worked The fact that the main character, Lily, was in a family that ran a funeral home was pretty sweet. I thought that would be a good setup for an interesting story that obviously involved death. It was able to give Lily some insider information to help her solve the mystery. That whole aspect was interesting and kept me reading. In general I think Lily was veryyy generally characterized, which is obviously not a good thing, but there were a few instances where humor and feminism shown through. I liked that she stayed true to herself no matter what. The pacing was pretty good. It […]

Blog Tour Review & Favorite Quotes: Perfect Couple

Posted January 11, 2015 / Book Reviews / 3 Comments

Review This was a cute read that I finished in a day – not too bad for kick-starting my year of reading! It was an “opposites attract” story, much like what I’m assuming the next book in the series will be, which is always kind of fun. Harper is a unique main character that dresses in homemade retro clothes, who is (at the time) dating Kennedy. I really hated him throughout the book and never understood why she stuck with him for so long. He was obviously the wrong person for her; it was frustrating to see that play out longer than made sense. The premise of the Superlatives series is that when the senior class votes on their superlatives, a ripple effect occurs among the winners. In this case, Harper and the popular football player, Brody, are somehow voted Perfect Couple That Never Was. They find themselves kind of drawn together after the vote and things kind of heat up. I loved watching the two of them develop a relationship and have Harper see that there’s much more to Brody than she thinks. The story definitely got steamy, much like the first book in the series. I absolutely love that Echols writes sex-positive characters and isn’t afraid to show that part of high school. Harper had some great lines (you’ll see below in my favorite quotes!) that supported the feminist aspects of the book. Going against that though, Harper decided to change her retro style and get contacts because […]

Reread Review: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Posted January 8, 2015 / Book Reviews / 7 Comments

Let’s see. I started reading the series when book three was released, so that was back in 1999. I was eight years old. One summer, my friend was reading this book on our summer vacation (we were family friends that went to Cape Cod each summer together), and she started reading it out loud to us before bed. I remember being so fascinated by the series that I asked my mom for the books. I got this first book almost immediately after arriving home that summer. I only remember which year I started because I remember getting books two and three for Christmas that year, and book three had just been released. I remember being in love with it all. The whole world was just so amazing to me. When the movie came out a couple years later, it refreshed my memory on the whole plot of the book. I am really bad at remembering things that happen in books – hence the fact that I have to write all of my reviews within a few hours of finishing the books. I’ve pretty much always known I’ve wanted to reread this series at least a few times in my life. I am normally someone who does NOT reread books because there are so many out there I haven’t read before that I still want to read. I’ve always thought, why bother? BUT, Harry Potter was definitely a series that I wanted to reread. I knew it for a fact. The books […]

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 […]