Source: Owned

The Nostalgia Project | Gemma Doyle Trilogy

Posted May 26, 2017 / Book Reviews, The Nostalgia Project / 5 Comments

The Nostalgia Project is my way of revisiting and rereading old favorites from my young adulthood to see if they still resonate with me. Learn more here and read old posts or reviews here! I didn’t include the Gemma Doyle trilogy by Libba Bray in my original post about this project. Honestly it doesn’t really fit because it’s not the same kind of genre I was looking to analyze. However, if this trilogy is anything to me, it’s nostalgic. My book club decided to read this series for our meetings for March, April, and May, so it was finally the right excuse to make this reread happen! Man, this book. ? I love when rereads are a perfect mix of homey, nostalgic feelings plus a “brand new” story (because I forgot almost everything that happened!). It’s time like these where I love that my bookish memory is terrible. This was like revisiting an old favorite and being surprised at the same time. I think the biggest difference, looking back, is the pacing. I can see how some people may consider the story somewhat slow or even boring at times. The pacing is similar to a historical fiction book (which makes sense, because it is one), but there are some fantastical elements. The pacing is definitely not like that of a fantasy novel. I didn’t mind the slow-moving plot because my feels kept me going, not gonna lie. Gemma and her friends were worse to me this time around. I liked Gemma overall, even though she was definitely […]

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 […]

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 […]

Throne of Glass Series – Part One

Posted September 5, 2016 / Book Reviews / 7 Comments

I’ve been saying for literal years that I needed to get going on this series. I kept promising everyone “by the end of the year!!” and it never happened. Something just clicked the other day when I needed a new audiobook, and I just pressed play on the first book without thinking. I had actually planned to read the novella bind-up first because people are very passionate about doing that, but I completely didn’t think of it at the time. In any case, I hopped into it right after finishing book one and before heading to book two. SO, here you’ll find my reviews for the first book, the novella bind-up, and the second book. (The order below is in the order I read them, but technically you could definitely read the novellas first!) I finally did it, guys! I can’t believe it. After reading and loving both ACOTAR and ACOMAF, I thought it really was time to get to Sarah J. Maas’s first series. I obviously had built it up a little in my head because it’s so many people’s favorite series ever. Luckily, I also knew that this is a series that gets better with each book (supposedly). My expectations were held in check a little because of that; I knew if I didn’t LOVE the first book I could still likely love later books. That’s kind of what happened here! I was a little bit underwhelmed at times because it felt like not much was happening. I know […]

Mini Reviews: The Islanders #1 and Nantucket Red

Posted August 25, 2016 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

Beachy Backlist Reviews I wanted to read all of the books in THE ISLANDERS series this summer but… they weren’t binge-worthy. The characters weren’t so easy to relate to a lot of the time. I think I’d enjoy spreading them out a little more. I’m tossing in my review for NANTUCKET RED because I finally decided to catch up and finish this duo! I obviously needed at least one more ~summery~ book before the actual end of summer comes around!This book was legitimately exactly what I expected it to be. It reminded me right off the bat of the old books I’d read during middle school when hanging out at the library after school. I’d pull some teen drama from the 90’s off the shelf and love every dramatic minute. While I definitely loved the drama, it’s harder to stomach as an adult! In general I think books have come a looooong way since this series too. It has its insane amount of instalove (like, literally every single couple loves each other within the first day) and love triangles (yes, multiple – these kids change partners like nobody’s business!). I can’t deny that this book feels a bit realistic in that way. These kids live on an island with a total of 300 people and they’re the only teenagers. What more do you expect? I don’t have a favorite character. They all kind of blend together and there are quite a few people involved: Zoey, Jake, Lucas, Claire, Ben, Aisha, and Nina. Damn. […]

Rebel Belle Trilogy

Posted August 3, 2016 / Book Reviews / 6 Comments

When REBEL BELLE was selected for the Make Me Read It Readathon, I was a little nervous. I planned to binge Hawkins’ HEX HALL series previously and was stuck after book one. I just never had the burning desire to pick up the second book. However, something about this particular series kept me reading. I started the first book via audio and then finished it up with my physical copy. I immediately went on to the audiobooks for the next two stories. There won’t be spoilers from the current book in the current review, but there will be spoilers for the PREVIOUS book(s) – so don’t read beyond book one below if you haven’t read the series!! The biggest thing I can say about this book and its plot is that it’s super unique. It doesn’t feel similar to other paranormal romances I’ve read before. First of all, I’d never even heard of a Paladin before. Second, the southern setting really enhanced the story quite a bit. It took me a VERY long time to get used to the setting though, to be honest, because it seriously felt like historical fiction. Anytime she referenced Marvel or something else that happens in “present day,” I was thrown a little. Like, oh wait, this isn’t taking place in the early 1900s or something. It just felt old-school because of the southern vibes, cotillion, and all of her manners/lady-like behaviors. Not something I’m used to reading outside of historical fiction! Expanding a little […]

Review: The Fill-In Boyfriend

Posted July 28, 2016 / Book Reviews / 5 Comments

Kasie West is one of my all-time favorite authors. She’s never let me down. I’ve loved her contemporaries as well as her paranormal duo. I always like to have one Kasie West book waiting for me so I can read it whenever the mood strikes… AKA, once her newest book published, I read her last previously published book. This just happened with this particular book as well, but I have to say… I’ve finally been slightly disappointed. Gia’s friends don’t believe she has a boyfriend because there’s a big ol’ bitch in their friend group that is poisoning everyone’s minds. When he breaks up with her on prom night, she asks a nearby guy to be Fill-In Bradley. Of course, she ends up falling for FIB and all the lies go a litttttle too far. I loved this book for quite a while at the beginning, but the mean girl shenanigans got to be a bit much for me as time progressed. The concept and fake dating trope is one of my favorites, so that was nice… but there was something missing to make it a favorite Kasie West book. The mean girl stuff and lies got out of hand. I can generally understand Gia’s motivations for wanting to keep her friendship intact but I also wanted her to trust that her friends would have her back. (More on that later in the spoilery section though.) Gia and her friends were known as popular mean girls and that trope got […]

Mini Reviews: All the Summer Girls and The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend

Posted July 11, 2016 / Book Reviews / 3 Comments

I have a tendency to add adult fiction to my TBR alllll the time… and then never read it. I was randomly in the mood for some recently and a couple of them happened to be nice beachy reads. I spotted the first one on Hoopla and remembered being interested in it a few months ago. Then, I was browsing my Kindle for another read and remembered the eARC I’ve been putting off for no reason. It’s not nearly as summery or anything, but it is about a vacation (“holiday”) in general… so that counts.I saw mixed reviews for this one, but it seemed like a lot of my friends enjoyed it more than the random reviewers. I was quickly intrigued by the story but thought it was kind of heavy-handed at times. There wasn’t a lot going on and the secrets the characters were hiding seemed obvious to me. Kate felt like the main character even though it switched perspectives. She just got dumped and found out she was pregnant, so she uses her Bachelorette weekend to head to the Jersey Shore with her friends. Vanessa now is a stay-at-home mom who is getting feelings for an old boyfriend, despite being married. Dani is a free spirit kinda gal who kept moving west after losing 12 jobs in 7 years post-college. Needless to say, they’re all quite different. It was fun to see the friends get back into a rhythm after time apart, even though you knew tensions were […]