Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Blog Tour Review: The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

Posted May 29, 2015 / Book Reviews / 5 Comments

The Summer of Chasing Mermaids by Sarah Ockler Publisher: Simon Pulse Release Date: June 2nd 2015 Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance, Retellings, Chick Lit The youngest of six talented sisters, Elyse d’Abreau was destined for stardom—until a boating accident took everything from her. Now, the most beautiful singer in Tobago can’t sing. She can’t even speak. Seeking quiet solitude, Elyse accepts a friend’s invitation to Atargatis Cove. Named for the mythical first mermaid, the Oregon seaside town is everything Elyse’s home in the Caribbean isn’t: An ocean too cold for swimming, parties too tame for singing, and people too polite to pry—except for one. Christian Kane is a notorious playboy—insolent, arrogant, and completely charming. He’s also the only person in Atargatis Cove who doesn’t treat Elyse like a glass statue. He challenges her to express herself, and he admires the way she treats his younger brother Sebastian, who believes Elyse is the legendary mermaid come to life. When Christian needs a first mate for the Cove’s high-stakes Pirate Regatta, Elyse reluctantly stows her fear of the sea and climbs aboard. The ocean isn’t the only thing making waves, though—swept up in Christian’s seductive tide and entranced by the Cove’s charms, Elyse begins to wonder if a life of solitude isn’t what she needs. But changing course again means facing her past. It means finding her inner voice. And scariest of all, it means opening her heart to a boy who’s best known for breaking them . . . This book was one […]

Book Buddies Review: The Program

Posted May 27, 2015 / Book Buddies Reviews, Book Reviews / 2 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. The first half our discussion will take place right here, and the second half will be on Kaitlin’s blog! (Link at the bottom) View Kaitlin’s part of the discussion here. Some spoilers ahead! A lot of dystopia books seem to offer some kind of warning or moral about today’s society. Do you think this society, with The Program and the suicide epidemic, could happen in our world? Kaitlin: This is a question I tend to ask often about the society when reading a dystopian book. Honestly, yes I do think that this could be a possible outcome of our society in the future. Suicide and depression is what I believe to be a national issue that is in our society. People killing themselves due to bullying, mistakes, a mental disorder, etc. There are things like therapy but does that seriously help? Obviously, therapy and other things won’t prevent all suicide, With technology advancing more and more, the pills people took during the Program could be invented. It really intrigues me as well because in this book, it seems that the people that are causing depression […]

Review: Something True

Posted March 20, 2015 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

Mild spoilers ahead if you haven’t read books one and two! Overall this book held my attention much better than the other two! I was super eager to finish the series just to see how everyone got together and True finished her tasks. I was itching for her and Orion to get back together finally. The setup of this book was a little different than the previous two. Usually the three points of view were True and the two people she was trying to set up. In this case, it’s True, Orion, and Darla. She’s trying to win back Orion while he dates Darla, and meanwhile True is trying to find someone for Darla. Because of the setup of this one, it was good to be in Orion’s head more and see his relationship with True. The previous two books mostly include her pining over him and the reader not getting to see their relationship in action. After book two, I was dying to get more True + Orion time, and this book delivered. I loved all of the characters for the most part. I mention below some reservations about Orion and Darla, but I really grew to like them. I also loved Hephaestus and True’s sister. The cameos from the first couples that True got together were great! I think it ended perfectly. I won’t say much more! Orion and Darla’s voices really bugged me for quite a bit of the book. They definitely got better as time went on, […]

Review: Complete Nothing

Posted March 18, 2015 / Book Reviews / 2 Comments

Mild spoilers ahead if you haven’t read book one! I liked that Orion showed up on earth and that he didn’t know who True was. It definitely added a little something to the plot and finally gave a bit of chemistry. It was hard to ship True and Orion when he wasn’t around! (Especially when the whole point of the book is for her to save him because she loves him) The second installment in the trilogy featured a couple (Claudia and Peter) breaking up and True trying to get them back together. I liked that it was a different situation than the couple in the first book. They were cute together and I shipped them even though they didn’t have a lot of time together. It was cool seeing True get some of her powers back, learn more about Heath, and learn even more about Mount Olympus and its intricacies. I wish I remembered more Greek mythology (so I could see if some of the stories are accurate!) – but it’s fun either way. The set-up for the next book was, as usual, perfect! It made me anxious to keep going and finish off the trilogy. I have a feeling that True and Orion will finally get some airtime (based on the fact that True, Darla, and Orion are the next POV’s) which will definitely be a great way to end things. Because of True’s sublplot gaining some interesting stuff, there was even more going on in this book than […]

Review: Only Everything

Posted March 16, 2015 / Book Reviews / 3 Comments

I really love the whole set-up of and idea behind this series. Eros, who chooses the human name of True, is Cupid up on Mount Olympus. She falls in love with Orion, who is a god-turned-mortal. Zeus finds out and gets pretty pissed, so he sends her down to earth without her powers and with a mission: she’s supposed to pair up three couples before she can come back home and hopefully save Orion. This is a trilogy, so she pairs up one couple per book. I was initially annoyed that the book had three points of view, but I think it ends up working. Because True has to pair up a couple, it does hear what’s going on in all three people’s heads. All three characters were equally important to moving the plot forward and had their own sets of issues. The three characters had distinct voices and experiences, so it was definitely easy to keep them straight. Katrina’s father died in an accident (which she hasn’t fully come to terms with yet), she has a horrible boyfriend, and her mother doesn’t pay her any attention. Charlie is trying to make friends at school because he’s moved around so much and does everything to try to please his father. True obviously has her own issues because of Orion, getting used to life on earth, and not having her powers to help her make matches. It was funny to see True getting used to life on earth; she didn’t understand basic common […]

ARC Review: Promposal

Posted February 11, 2015 / Book Reviews / 6 Comments

I have some mixed feelings here. Promposal and I are not friends, but we’re certainly not enemies. There’s nothing really wrong with this book per se; nothing that got my blood boiling. But there also wasn’t really ANYTHING that made me smile, either. It’s one of those books that you read that just doesn’t affect you in any way. “Promposals” are the new phenomenon that involves asking people to prom as if they were proposing marriage, with big/extravagant gestures. These started to become big back when I was in high school and my boyfriend at the time actually did a great job of asking me to dances. We dated for three years so it wasn’t really necessary, but it was still thoughtful and appreciated by me. When I saw this one on Edelweiss, I requested it immediately. I’ve always been fascinated by the different ideas people came up with and was looking for a book full of them. That’s not exactly what I ended up with. The book alternates points of view between two best friends, Camilla and Joshua. Camilla is pining over a boy in class who has never spoken to her, but ends up saying yes to an extravagant promposal from someone else. Josh is in love with his best friend, Ethan, but then Ethan asks him to plan a promposal… for another guy. I enjoyed the two separate (but connected) storylines, for sure, but it was like reading the same thing. The two characters were given absolutely no […]

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 […]

Holiday Review: Ex-Mas

Posted December 5, 2014 / Book Reviews / 5 Comments

I’ve had my eye on this book for a long time, considering how much I love Kate Brian. Up until this year, I never really considered reading holiday-themed books and just never picked this one up from the store. I’m glad I finally did! I sat down the day after Thanksgiving and read it in under two hours. Lila is a popular girl, dating her best friend’s older brother, and about to throw the party of the year while her parents are out of town. Her brother and his best friend decide that they need to venture to the North Pole to save Santa in light of global warming, and Lila is forced to travel with her ex-boyfriend (Beau, her brother’s friend’s brother) to get the boys back before her parents come home. I absolutely loved the road trip that they took. It was fun reading about their mini-adventures and mishaps along the way. The book was predictable, but still had some cute, unique parts. Kate Brian is one of my favorite authors, so I wasn’t surprised that she crafted a well-written holiday tale. There is somewhat of a love triangle, but it was well-done in the sense that you know who she’s going to end up with It was a great story of second chances, both romantically and family-wise. Lila was kind of annoying at first because you can tell that she really had to prove herself and change herself to become popular. I didn’t like that about her […]

Review: Biggest Flirts

Posted November 28, 2014 / Book Reviews / 3 Comments

What Worked I liked that Tia, our main character, wasn’t afraid to be herself. She would party, have fun, and not worry about what anyone thought of her. I’m not used to main characters that are more sexually experienced or open about hooking up. I prefer that in books and wish I could see it more often. I loved Will. As far as love interests go, he was so cute and great. He pretty much kept me going with his book and was the only reason I cared to finish because I wanted to make sure he ended up happy. And I liked his earring. I haven’t read any other books by this author, but I give her major props for this series. The Superlatives is such a cute idea! The next books in the companion series feature some of Tia’s best friends, who win other superlatives. Overall I’m excited for the series despite some of the reservations below. The ending was really cute. It was very hopeful and not completely closed off. I like when endings leave something up to the imagination while implying that things are headed in the right direction. What Didn’t Work As great as Tia was in her sex-positive ways, she really annoyed me most of the time. My least favorite book trope is when the main character is emotionally closed-off and refuses to entertain the idea of a serious relationship. Normally it’s because they’ve been hurt in the past; in this case, Tia watched […]

200 Word Review: Private series

Posted September 29, 2014 / Book Reviews / 5 Comments

In honor of my intentions to finally finish the Private series by Kate Brian, I’m going to post a brief review here for the first 12 books of the season. Yes, somehow I’ll review all twelve books in less than 200 words. I want to play catch up a little bit because I know once I read the final books, I’ll want to post those reviews. It’ll feel too weird posting them without having some other semblance of a review for the rest of the series. Without further ado, here are my thoughts on the entire Private series so far… The series is about one of my favorite topics: boarding schools. Reed heads off to Easton Academy, where she falls in with a group of rich girls in a sorority-esque “club” called Billings House. LONG, LONG story short – a lot of crazy shit happens with her and her friends over the course of their school years, like people getting murdered or going missing, vacations, fires, friend drama, administration trying to shut them down, breakups and makeups, etc. I won’t get too spoilery, but there was a major TWIST at the end of the last book I read (#12 – Vanished). It didn’t really make a lot of sense and I wasn’t overly eager to get into the following books. Regardless, I have to finish the series off since it’s been an important part of my reading life since middle school. If you like books about boarding schools and “mean girls,” this […]