Publisher: Harper Collins

Reviews: Monstrous Beauty and Snow Like Ashes

Posted January 5, 2017 / Book Reviews / 8 Comments

This book was a very spur-of-the-moment choice! I needed a book to fit the “sea creatures” square on my fall bingo card, and Carrie recommended this one to me. I found it on Hoopla and started right away before Thanksgiving. I found myself drawn to it, turning the audio back on in the office while I worked (since I was alone that week). I rarely read blind recs like this because I’m more likely to add them to my TBR and maybe read them eventually, but I’m SO glad I listened to Carrie and went for it. The story was very interesting, as it alternated back and forth across time. I’ve read maybe one book about mermaids and am definitely thinking I should get going on a few more now. The audiobook narrator was SUPERB with all of her accents and the ability to sound like both time periods she was narrating. She was seriously a difference-maker for this book. I predicted a few elements throughout, but was overall very impressed with how the author wove together the story and both timelines. There were mermaids and ghosts and all sorts of things I didn’t see coming! I don’t want to give too much away about the plot itself, but I thought there was a good mix of action throughout. I was always eager to see what was happening in the other timeline, which kept me enthralled most of the time. It’s really hard for an audiobook to consistently keep my […]

Reviews: This Is Your Afterlife and The Burning Sky

Posted December 28, 2016 / Book Reviews / 2 Comments

I had no idea this book was less than 200 pages when I started reading, so that was actually a pleasant surprise! I was on a roll reading at the time and was damn happy to keep the reading going. I ended up finishing it up within two sittings on the same day. It was really fun and easy to read! When I added it to my Must Read in 2016 Challenge TBR, I think I completely forgot what the premise was and mixed it up with The Catastrophic History of You and Me (seriously look at the covers and you can see why I made this mistake!). So, needless to say, the book wasn’t what I expected when I started reading. This wasn’t a bad thing! I really enjoyed the premise. Reading about spirits, communicating with the dead, tarot cards, and seances was REALLY interesting. I don’t have a lot of experience with this outside of witch-related books. The characters were pretty fantastic in my opinion. I liked Keira a lot and Jimmy was excellent too. Dan was okay and the romance aspect was fine. I always root for best-friends-to-more and in this case it was ex-best-friends-to-more… so that’s fun! I could have totally read about them in a longer story and/or sequel. I am apparently getting much better at predicting whodunnit in YA mysteries. I knew who the killer was within the first half of the book. I did dampen my enjoyment a little bit because I was hoping […]

Holiday Book Buddies: Top Ten Clues You’re Clueless

Posted December 23, 2016 / Book Buddies Reviews, Book Reviews / 6 Comments

Book Buddies is a discussion-style “review” that takes place with Cristina from Girl in the Pages. (You can check out past posts here.) We both read the book, have a discussion, and post our conversation (plus other fun things sometimes!) here. Book Buddies is a seasonal feature that now happens four times per year. Be sure to check out the other half of our feature and discussion on Cristina’s blog (link below)! Check out Cristina’s post here! We’ve decided to bring some new elements into our Book Buddies posts, so it will be less Q&A discussion between the two of us, and more personal applications to the book. Because this book featured a bunch of lists the main character keeps in her head, we decided to channel the same thing for our post! The lists below are generally related to the book too. Chloe gets stuck at work in a grocery store on Christmas Eve, so you’ll see some place and food-related questions below! 5 Things About This Book This book made me so nostalgic for my grocery store days. I worked at Geissler’s Supermarket, a family-owned chain only in Connecticut and Massachussets, throughout the end of high school and beginning of college (on breaks). This book is incredibly accurate for what it’s like to work in a grocery store, from scheduling breaks to weird relationships with coworkers to having to work on Christmas Eve. Chloe and her coworkers were a bit presumptuous. I didn’t like so many of the assumptions they made about fellow […]

ARC Review: Replica

Posted December 7, 2016 / Book Reviews / 12 Comments

I usually break these reviews out into my typical categories below, but I decided to divide my review into the two “books” within one book. You can read this book in multiple ways. You can read Lyra’s story then flip the book around to read Gemma’s, or you could alternate chapters between the two books (as if it were one book with two alternating points of view). I decided to read all of Lyra’s story then all of Gemma’s because it was frankly easier than flipping between the two sides each chapter. TL;DR? I’m happy with how I chose to read this book. It was really interesting as certain events happened and I thought about what happened on the *other* side of the book during that time, and it did make me wonder how it would have been reading the other way. I wish it were easier to do; maybe I’ll reread it someday. I knew that Gemma and Lyra met up for a portion of the book, but they weren’t always with each other. This was helpful because otherwise it would have been really repetitive to essentially read the same story twice! I liked getting inside both of their heads – in the order I read them – to piece it all together. There wasn’t too much overlap between each point of view. So many big reveals and connections came together at each story’s end! I loved seeing how all of their research would crash together. When I read Lyra’s ending, […]

Review: The Unquiet

Posted November 14, 2016 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

Initial Excitement This book actually flew quite under the radar when it came out last year. I saw Jamie read it and mentioned how underrated it was, so I just added it to my TBR. My book club ended up picking it out randomly using our extremely scientific method of choosing books *cough* and it was really out of our comfort zone! (We use this infographic to choose. One of us picks one number 1-20 and that corresponds to the box/category, if we count them in order. Then, the other one of us picks another number 1-6 and that corresponds to the book within that box.) So, I was intrigued by the premise and excited to read this underrated story! Quick Summary In this book, there are two connected earths and each person has an “alternate” (aka identical twin kind of thing) that lives on the other earth. Because the second earth is dying, the people are training to take over the first earth. They learn everything about their alternate so they can eventually come across, kill them, and replace them on the main earth. (This is all somewhat hard to understand in the beginning but I don’t think anything I said can’t be inferred from the synopsis.) Storytelling, Setting, and Feels Sometimes getting thrown right into the action can be fun. Sometimes it can be confusing. And sometimes (okay, this time), it can be both! I liked getting off to a quick start and trying to piece things together […]

Review: The Thousandth Floor

Posted October 27, 2016 / Book Reviews / 11 Comments

Initial Excitement I mentioned this book way too many times on the blog before it came out, so clearly I was ready. I loved Gossip Girl and still enjoy reading about rich and terrible main characters. Call it a guilty pleasure if you must, but I don’t care – there’s something about it I love and it makes me nostalgic. This book promised to be a futuristic, sci-fi GG. Color me incredibly intrigued, okay? Quick Summary The main area of NYC that we know and love has been transformed into a thousand-floor tower, where everyone tends to work, live, and go to school. The higher the floor, the richer you are. Most of the main characters lived up towards the top, while a few were closer to the bottom. The story alternates between Avery, Leda, Eris, Watt, and Rylin as their lives become intertwined and secrets are revealed. Storytelling, Setting, and Feels I was promised a futuristic Gossip Girl and that’s what I got. The story itself was really intriguing because all of the characters had so many secrets. They were all certainly less-than-perfect and often ruthless in getting what they wanted. They broke the law and partied and spent insane amounts of money. Seriously, GG all over it. Adding in the futuristic elements and the tower itself was SO fun and a nice twist on the typical mean-rich-people-YA story. The setting of the tower was unreal. I wish I could picture it better, but it sounds like they just put everything in […]

Review: Cruel Beauty

Posted October 13, 2016 / Book Reviews / 8 Comments

Initial Excitement I was really intrigued by this book when it was first released, but I hesitated on reading it for a while. Cristina and I chose Crimson Bound by the same author for one Book Buddies month but I ended up DNFing it (so we chose another book). That made me nervous for this story. However, it was randomly picked by my book club using our new book selection method and I was ready for the push to read it finally. I was cautiously optimistic because I know a lot of people loved this one compared to Crimson Bound or really any others by Hodge. Summary in a Second Nyx has been set to marry the Gentle Lord, Ignifex, since she was a baby. Her father made a selfish deal with him and Nyx’s plan is to kill him to set her people free. (It’s kind of a long, complicated story, so I’ll let you investigate that on your own.) It’s a Beauty and the Beast retelling so there are definitely similar elements woven through – the castle, being kind of a prisoner, the non-human man thingy keeping you hostage, etc. Storytelling & Setting I have to say, I’ve never read a story quite like this one. The world was so vast and explored piece by piece. The writing was gorgeous and somehow way more interesting than Crimson Bound‘s prose. The plot itself was unveiled slowly as Nyx uncovered new secrets and opened hidden doors throughout the castle. She found herself falling for a […]

NA Reviews: Rebound and The Goal

Posted October 6, 2016 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

My thoughts on this book compared to Boomerang could not be more different. I loved the banter of the first book and literally laughed out loud on multiple occasions. I couldn’t put it down and read the book in one day. Unfortunately, Rebound had a lot to live up to. I’m not sure if my expectations were too high or if too much time passed between me reading the books, but it just didn’t have the same witty magic by any means. Adam and Allison were good characters and I sort of felt their spark, but so much of the chemistry was telling instead of showing. I believed it, but only because the two of them kept repeating how attracted to each other they were. I wanted to feel the chemistry through their conversations but it just didn’t happen that much. Much of the plot and conflict was incredibly predictable. I know this happens in a lot of YA or NA books (especially because I’ve read so many of them), but sometimes it frustrates me more than others. The setup of the story is that Allison’s father is looking to invest in Adam’s company, Boomerang, so he sends her out to get some information on him. Meanwhile, Adam is covering up some secret from his past. You can probably see where I’m headed here but I won’t give blatant spoilers. Just too predictable (and too angsty at times) for me. This is really a low three star book for me. There […]

Mini Adult Contemporary Reviews: Nine Women, One Dress and The Hating Game

Posted September 28, 2016 / Book Reviews / 12 Comments

I recently checked out a few adult contemporary fiction books from the library – both very recently released. I have been reaching for this genre (target age group?) so much lately for some reason. I think I needed somewhat of a break from YA. Both of these books were fantastic and I highly recommend them. I didn’t have super high expectations going into this book but I was really excited for it. I let the library fines pile up a little bit and decided to just go for it. I have to say, NWOD really impressed me. Most of the reviews implied a rom-com-style book that wouldn’t really blow your mind. I completely agree that this book would make a PERFECT romantic comedy movie. Seriously, I hope that happens. The plot summary reminded me a little of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, but the story wasn’t really set up that way. THE little black dress of the season, size small, gets passed around between multiple ladies who don’t know each other throughout the course of the book. Each chapter features the POV of one character – some are those women who wear the dress, the salespeople, the men they’re dating or want to date, the maker of the dress, etc. I was pretty nervous I wouldn’t be able to keep track of everyone or let the story impact me, but that wasn’t the case at all. I honestly can’t remember every single character anymore but am left with a great overall impression. […]

ARC Review: Diplomatic Immunity

Posted August 31, 2016 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

I liked this one overall I guess. When I saw the synopsis, it definitely went onto my “jazzed up for this shelf” right away. I love reading about rich kids doing bad things, and this one held a lot of promise for those kinds of shenanigans. I was picturing some of my favorite old-school nostalgia-making books like Gossip Girl or Private. This didn’t exactly happen, but I think it’s okay. Piper was a hard main character to get close to. I could understand her motivations in a general sense but it didn’t make her any less difficult to vibe with. Her family was having money issues so she was determined to get a scholarship to cover the cost of college. She would really stop at nothing to get a good story for that reason. I definitely predicted how that plotline would go 100% so it was a little frustrating. It seriously made me cringe though because in terms of the “issue” or climax of the story, the stakes were really high for this one (compared to other contemporaries). Otherwise, Piper was kind of just weird? She blurted out whatever she was thinking most of the time and was incredibly awkward. She definitely grew on me a little bit throughout the story, but not one of my favorite main characters by any means. I was expecting a bit more of a Gossip Girl feel with parties and drugs and all sorts of things, but that was definitely understated. There was more development with her relationship(s) […]