Publisher: Harper Collins

Review: The Boyfriend App

Posted April 8, 2015 / Book Reviews / 3 Comments

I received an ARC of The Pretty App, the next book in this companion series, a looong time ago. I tried to read it first without reading The Boyfriend App, but wanted to go through the whole series in order. I didn’t have a lot of expectations going into this one. I was hoping to breeze through and get the background info for the next book in the series. Well, that worked: this was a super quick and entertaining read! It’s certainly not perfect, but I definitely enjoyed it overall. The number one thing I liked about this book was the concept. There’s an app contest where the winner gets scholarship money and prizes for their school. Audrey, the main character, designs The Boyfriend App. First, it matches people up based on compatibility and distance. The second version of the app creates a lot of chaos, as it actually gets the other person to fall in love (but mostly lust). For a contemporary romance, the concept was unique. I loved that the MC was a geeky, super smart girl. I loved her group of friends: Aidan (the cute boy I shipped hard throughout), Lindsey (her fashion-obsessed cousin who always had her back), Mindy (her supportive friend with a speech impediment and didn’t talk), and Nigit (another super-smart geeky guy in the group). The book is split into two parts – one for each “version” of the app. The first part is Audrey brainstorming her app and figuring out what she wants […]

Review: Nowhere But Home

Posted April 6, 2015 / Book Reviews / 7 Comments

I have no idea how to review this book. I wasn’t really able take notes during this one, but just wrote down a few different words that I couldn’t forget: Poetic. Sad. Beautiful. Unique. Interesting. Amazing characters. It’s a book that usually wouldn’t be on my radar at all, aside from the gorgeous cover. I’m really picky about books and their subjects, and I’m even MORE picky with adult books. I honestly can’t even tell you what I look for in women’s fiction; usually there’s just a spark of something that interests me in the synopsis. The synopsis for Nowhere But Home is certainly interesting, but not my cup of tea. Following Hannah’s blog has brought a lot more adult titles to my attention, and Liza Palmer’s books were promptly added to my TBR. In fact, her review is actually a lot more coherent than mine is going to be, so I recommend reading that. After finishing Nowhere But Home, I took a reading break for a day. I wasn’t ready to part with the characters or the story. I felt like the next book I read would pale in comparison, and I didn’t want to ruin my next book because of this massive book hangover. This is a book I wanted to crawl inside and stay in forever. “It’s what we’re all trying to do, right? Remember a time that was better. Re-create a moment of that memory as we let the crisp Coke bubble down our throats. Riding bikes on […]

Review: Tease

Posted March 11, 2015 / Book Reviews / 8 Comments

I was really hoping to get to the end of this book and say “this is really an important book to read, even if it’s difficult at times “… I feel like this is partially true, because it offers a really different perspective – from the bullies point of view – but I wish there was a little bit more, you know? Throughout the vast majority of the book, Sarah is selfish and does not feel bad about anything that happened. I get that she was also hurt by things that Emma did, but her and her friends are the ones who took things way too far. It would’ve been nice to see her actually regret things especially early in the book. She spends 80% of the boat mostly just feeling sorry for herself. She wasn’t sorry about anything that she did to Emma: she only felt sorry about the impact it had on her life. I really don’t understand how somebody can be that stupid and selfish but apparently that’s what goes on in a bully’s head. At the beginning of the book I was actually thinking that the story was going to make me kind of feel sorry for her, but it really just made me hate just about every character. Including Emma. Like what was she even doing? What was everyone doing?? On top of that, this was not the kind of book that needed a romantic subplot. I like that there was someone to be there for Sarah, in […]

Review: On the Fence

Posted March 6, 2015 / Book Reviews / 9 Comments

Kasie West = auto-buy. I said that after I read just one book by her (The Distance Between Us). When I read Pivot Point, that was further proven to me. Now that I’ve finally gotten around to this one, I can definitely confirm it again. She’s one of my favorites. Her writing style and character development is the best out there (in both her contemporary and paranormal books). I loved the characters in this one from the minute I met them. Charlie, the “tomboy” main character, was poised to learn a lot about “being a girl” when she had to get a job at a boutique to pay back a speeding ticket. NOW, the sentence I just wrote is usually enough to turn me off from a book. I don’t like the tomboy trope, or the one that does anything to support gender norms in such a way. I don’t like using labels like that and/or assuming that because a girl like sports, she can’t wear makeup – and vice versa. This book does start out operating under those assumptions, but completely changes by the end. I wanted to shake Charlie a few times and get her to realize she was being closed-minded, but she was able to do it on her own. It was something I was able to look past and appreciate the character development by the end. Now that the only real “negative” is out of the way, this book was the cuuuutest. Charlie starts out being very anti-girl, […]

Review: Get Even

Posted February 20, 2015 / Book Reviews / 2 Comments

Pardon my language, but what the actual fuck? I struggled with this book because I alternated between loving it and hating it throughout. Rating this one is a struggle for me and is based purely on comparison. I literally went to my ratings page and compared the book to the books under the 2.5 stars and 3 stars categories. I was leaning strongly towards 3.5 throughout the book, but towards the end found it slipping to 3… and now based on the final ending, it’s dangerously close to 2.5 territory. (Endings are very important to me!) So ummm where do I begin? This book was interesting. It’s about a group of girls who start “Don’t Get Mad” (…get even) in order to right some wrongs committed by people in their school. They target bullies and as a result do some bulling themselves. Whatever. Okay. The hypocrisy of these kind of things don’t bug me that much. Then, someone turns up dead and the members of DGM are the main suspects. The school is trying to figure out who’s in the group, while the girls are trying to figure out who the murderer is. But let me tell you – these girls are kind of stupid and annoying. They have the typical group of “opposite” girls from each circle in the school. Olivia, the popular drama star with a crappy home life; Bree, the rebel with a politician father; Kitty, the “Asian girl who isn’t good at math” (that’s exactly how […]

DNF Review: Losing It

Posted February 18, 2015 / Book Reviews / 11 Comments

When did you decide to DNF? I was at the 60% mark. I know, I know. I could have just finished. But I just got so frustrated! Why did you quit? Sigh. I really wanted to like this book, but I could almost tell from the first few minutes that I wasn’t going to. The characters were just so BLAH to me. Bliss was as annoying and stupid as her name. She continued to lie, lead on her best friend, and make dumb choices despite knowing that she was doing that. I just was not at ALL invested in them. I truly didn’t care about anything. Garrick was irritating and overly possessive for no reason. It struck me as insta-love the vast majority of the time and I didn’t feel the chemistry. There was a whole lot of nothing happening too; there were multiple chapters around Bliss getting drunk with her friends that seemed to drag on with little reason. The bottom line is that I just couldn’t make myself care. I can safely assume that Garrick and Bliss end up together… I’m just not interested in hearing how or why. Another huge aspect was the audiobook narrator. There’s a good chance I would consider returning to this book and read the physical copy. The narrator sounded like she was 12 years old and thus made Bliss sound WAY too young – especially when the topic of the book was losing her virginity. It felt creepy. What was the last […]

ARC Review: Red Queen

Posted February 9, 2015 / Book Reviews / 8 Comments

Where do I even begin with you, Red Queen?! Let me start by saying for the millionth time that it’s pretty cool that the author’s hometown is right next to mine and that we have a mutual friend I went to college with. Okay, moving on. I think this one is mostly tough to review for one major reason: it took a lot of power to stay engaged for most of the book. I found that I would get distracted after only reading a few pages. I’m okay with a series-starter that’s focused on world-building, as long as it keeps me interested. I don’t need a lot of action (until the end, that’s when I NEED it) to keep me going most of the time. This wasn’t really the case here, BUT I enjoyed it. Weird, right? It couldn’t hold my attention for more than a few pages at a time but it was really interesting. I needed to know what was going to happen but I couldn’t just get going with it. There’s a good chance I was having some fantasy-related burnout for this book, if I’m being honest. I took a break part of the way through to read a quick contemporary and it re-engerized me. The characters were also a bit MEH for me. Mare was kind of boring. She didn’t feel like a strong badass lady, which is how I like my fantasies. I couldn’t exactly connect with her for some reason. I’m not saying she was […]

Review: All Broke Down

Posted February 2, 2015 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

I honestly don’t have much to say about this book except for one word and any words that have the same definition as it: STEAMY STEAMY STEAMY Seriously though. People weren’t lying about this book. It was s-e-x-u-a-l. Aside from that, this book was a lot of great things. I really did love it more than the first book, and I think the main reason was the characters. Dallas was very meh for me in All Lined Up but Carson was the BEST. It was a little too unbalanced. (And even so, the fact that he was way to overprotective/territorial over her in this book bugged me. I’m NOT the kind of person who things that type of behavior is cute. It’s a bit too controlling when you flip out about anyone talking about your girlfriend. I get where he’s coming from, but let’s relax a little bit.) DALLAS AND SILAS THOUGH. I loved them. Both of them. For very different reasons. It’s a typical opposites-attract kind of story, and the main drama point of the book is obviously: can these two ever be a successful couple if they’re so different? Silas is a guy who was a major dick in the previous book but came a very long way in this one. He has a bad history with his family and feels like he’s constantly going to fall into bad habits. Dylan, on the other hand, is a part of a wealthy family that expects her to be a perfect […]

Review: Yes Please

Posted January 26, 2015 / Book Reviews / 7 Comments

God Amy Poehler is the coolest. I absolutely loved every second of this book. Luckily I had adjusted my expectations a little bit when I saw some reviews that this wasn’t completely a humor book. She mixed in some serious stuff and actual advice too, which I ended up loving just as much. (Well, maybe not just as much. It would be great to have a whole book on the hilarity that is Parks and Rec.) I loved how authentic this book felt. She doesn’t sugar coat anything – her advice or her stories. She gives sex advice and talks about doing drugs; she’s fearless. Even before starting the audiobook portion of my read, I was reading everything in her voice. It felt like she was talking directly with me as if we were friends (like the synopsis says). I really enjoyed the variety of the content, too. Nothing was stiff or formal. It felt more like a scrapbook than a memoir. She had random haikus, handwritten notes, personal photos, chapters from people like Seth Meyers, and lots of lists. I think that was a major reason that this held my attention better than other nonfiction books do; I was anxiously awaiting the next topic because I had NO idea what it could be about. She had a lovely chapter full of her friends and coworkers…followed by a chapter that’s subtitle was “things I learned on mushrooms.” It kept me on my feet and intrigued. I can’t emphasize enough how […]

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 […]