Publisher: Scholastic

Reread Review: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Posted January 21, 2015 / Book Reviews / 2 Comments

Luckily I started reading the Harry Potter series when the first three books had been released already. There wasn’t a lot of wait time in between those ones. I started book one in 1999 over the summer and got the next two books for Christmas that year. I remember actually laying underneath my Christmas tree and starting to read Chamber of Secrets almost instantly. It’s funny because a lot of people generally say that this book is their least favorite of the books. I don’t remember having a least favorite! When Andi was reading the books (for the first time!) recently, I saw quite a few people telling her not to be discouraged by this book because the next one gets much better. It started coming back to me that this book was a little slower than the rest. Of course, it’s still amazing, but it’s definitely not as fast-paced. At times, it’s also less interesting than the rest. I’ve said before how I’m generally not a big rereader of books. (Okay, I just started rereading a few months ago for the first time ever.) This series is the ONE that I said I would reread someday. The Reread Challenge this year is definitely helping motivate me to achieve this goal. I know so many people out there who have read the whole series countless times in their life… I just decided to start now. Oh well. Eeeeek. My instant reaction was being mad that the audio copy of Prisoner of […]

ARC Review: All Fall Down

Posted January 19, 2015 / Book Reviews / 8 Comments

AHH THIS WAS SO GOOD GUYSSSS. Throughout the whole book, I kept wondering when I would find a flaw. I really couldn’t, for the most part, until the very end of the book. My first impression was that this book had a more mature feel to it than the Gallagher Girls, which was nice. The one thing that’s recently bugged me during my GG reread was that Cammie felt too immature to me. I was really looking forward to seeing what Ally Carter could do with an older character. Of course, Grace has her own problems that did at times make her seem younger than her age. There were times when she got angry and pouty that were reminiscent of a bratty teenager… but when you think about everything she’s been through, you kind of understand why. She seemed overdramatic at times, but she always said what was on her mind and wasn’t afraid of the backlash. She was kind of a badass, while also being funny and very sarcastic. This book is about Grace trying to prove that her mother was murdered and not killed in the fire. She has very foggy memories of that night, but does vividly remember seeing the bullet holes in her mother’s chest. She tries to find the Scarred Man that she remembers from that night, as she believes he’s the one who killed her mother. I loved that Grace developed as an unreliable narrator in some ways; you start to doubt her memories […]

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 […]

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 […]

ARC Review: Can’t Look Away

Posted August 4, 2014 / Book Reviews / 5 Comments

Review: This book definitely hit me harder than expected. Based on the synopsis, I could tell I was going to possibly get misty while reading this one. My sister is about the same age as Torrey’s sister in this book, so I had a feeling I would be projecting some of the traits of their relationship onto my own with my sister. Nonetheless, I was intrigued by the topic of this book. Beauty vloggers are a newer trend and something that I watch pretty frequently on YouTube. Comments and criticism run rampant online, because it’s so much easier to talk negatively about someone through a screen instead of face to face. When Torrey’s sister dies, some followers offer words of sympathy while others blame her for the circumstances of Miranda’s death. Torrey is forced to move with her family from Colorado to Texas because they all need a fresh start, but her online fame follows her to her new school. Throughout the book, Torrey reflects on memories of Miranda and wonders “if only” about every event from that fateful day. If only she hadn’t rushed her during breakfast; if only she hadn’t forced her to come with her at all; if only, if only. The guilt she was feeling throughout the majority of the book made me so sad for her and her family. When you read a story like this, you start to reflect on your own life. I would think of my little sister and start to regret the times I […]

Review: The List

Posted July 18, 2014 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

Review: At first glance, this book seemed like it may be a little too “young” adult for me. I don’t discriminate though; any book with an interesting enough plotline is worthy of my attention. The basic plot summary is as follows: at some random high school, each year some unknown person makes The List. It includes the ugliest girl and prettiest girl of each grade level. So in total, eight girls’ lives are changed because high school is a place where only appearances matter. Sounds like a great premise. They each struggled with different (pretty serious, at times) issues. Let me tell you a little about each girl and their story, because it was kind of hard to keep up with the changing perspectives. Yes, of course this was one of those books where the author rotates through each girl’s story in different chapters…for eight characters that can be a bit challenging. The story follows these girls over the course of a week. Danielle is named ugliest freshman because apparently her swimmer’s body is a bit too big for some people. She has a boyfriend that she met at camp over the summer, and she wonders how he’ll react. Their story was comparatively boring, but I ended up liking her a lot in the end. Abby is named prettiest freshman and is a little bitch to her older sister about it. She sucks at school and her sister is smart and they’re just SoOoO different. She was pretty annoying but whatever, freshman usually are […]