10 Books I Feel Differently About After Time Has Passed!

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish…AND…

This week’s topic is: Top 10 Books That We Feel Differently About Now!

 

1.House of Night series by P.C. Cast- I thought this series was amazing when I was younger, so much drama; my pre-teen heart couldn’t take it. I feel as if I couldn’t read it again now because my taste has changed but I appreciate the memories.

2.The Mortal Instruments Series by Cassandra Clare- The reason I started reading this series was because of all the hype and when I finished the series I thought it was alright. Now I realize I didn’t really like them to begin with.

3. The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken- You know she has to be mentioned at least once, you seen it coming. I love this series 10x more now. (PS: That’s a lot of love)

4. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky- The first time I read it I enjoyed it. The second time I loved it. Every time I read it my love increases. I recommended 10/10 – it definitely deals with important topics in life.

5. Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell- I stood home from school one day and read this book and I absolutely did not like it. I wanted to love it because the cover was so pretty. At this moment, I’m indifferent to it but I do want to try another book of hers just to see.

6. Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin- I enjoyed this book but now the more I think about it, it kind of creeps me out.

7. Its Kind of A Funny Story by Ned Vizzini- I liked this book but then I saw the movie adaptation and it kind of put me off a bit.

8. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger- I swear I read this every year in school and I disliked it but now I appreciate it a little more.

9. Angelfall by Susan Ee- I found this book entertaining and fun but now not so much, I’m not sure why I liked it before. I’m going to try and reread it though.

10. This Song Will Save Your Life by Leila Sales- This book is fun and I really enjoyed it. I love it even more because it put me on to some great music.

Where are the YA Characters that are interested in STEM?

Hey everyone! Welcome to my second discussion post!

Waiting on Wednesday #9

WAITING ON” WEDNESDAY IS A WEEKLY EVENT, HOSTED BY BREAKING THE SPINE, THAT SPOTLIGHTS UPCOMING RELEASES THAT WE’RE EAGERLY ANTICIPATING.

 

Written by: Stephanie Garber

Release Date: January 10, 2017

Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

 Synopsis:

Before you enter the world of Caraval, you must remember that it’s all a game . . .

Scarlett has never left the tiny island where she and her beloved sister, Tella, live with their ruthless father. Now Scarlett’s father has arranged a marriage for her, and Scarlett thinks her dreams of seeing Caraval, the legendary, once-a-year performance where the audience participates in the show, are over.

Then, Scarlett’s long-dreamt of invitation to Caraval finally arrives. So, Tella enlists a mysterious sailor’s help to whisk Scarlett away to this year’s show. But as soon as the trio arrives, Tella is kidnapped by Caraval’s mastermind organizer, Legend.

Scarlett has been told that everything that happens during Caraval is only an elaborate performance. But she nonetheless soon becomes enmeshed in a game of love, heartbreak, and magic with her sister, with Legend, and with the other players in the game. And whether Caraval is real or not, she must find Tella before the five nights of the game are over, a dangerous domino effect of consequences is set off, and her sister disappears forever.

I HAVE A MIGHTY NEED FOR THIS BOOK. So sad that release is so..so far away. But I was talking on Twitter yesterday about how some of the greatest and funnest (let’s assume that’s a word) books to read are ones with games/competitions. They’re SO exhilarating. And I just love the summary. So, please hurry up January!

10 Books That Will Make You Laugh/Cry

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish…AND…

This week’s topic is: Top 10 Books That Will Make You Laugh/Cry!

Books What Will Make You Laugh

1. Galgorithm by Aaron Karo – Could NOT stop laughing while reading this book.
2. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews – Boys in high school are bound to make you laugh. It’s a bittersweet kind of humor sometimes though.
3. The New Guy and other Senior Distractions by Amy Spalding- Such a fun book! Definitely made me laugh.
4. Boomerang by Noelle August- New adult romance that starts off with a hangover. Bound to make you chuckle and laugh and feel the feels.
5. Maximum Ride series by James Patterson- Such a fun and quick series. Also, the sarcasm is so laugh out loud worthy.

 

Books What Will Make You Cry

1. Me Before You by Jojo Moyes- I’m not even going to say anything. Just read it.
2. Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys- Historical Fiction WW2 story. Heartbreak. That is all.
3. The Darkest Minds trilogy by Alexandra Bracken- Alex has a tendency to break all of her readers’ hearts. And that’s exactly what she does in this trilogy. So tears are inevitable.
4. Allegiant by Veronica Roth- Hahahhaha. Not going to say anything about this one. All you need to know is that I bawled for a week.
5. Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling- Another obvious one. OF COURSE.

Waiting on Wednesday #8

WAITING ON” WEDNESDAY IS A WEEKLY EVENT, HOSTED BY BREAKING THE SPINE, THAT SPOTLIGHTS UPCOMING RELEASES THAT WE’RE EAGERLY ANTICIPATING.

 

Written by: Brianna R. Shrum

Release Date: September 6, 2016

Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

 Synopsis:

Sixteen-year-old Renley needs three thousand dollars for the math club’s trip to New York City, and she knows exactly how to get it: she’s going to start a how-to blog where people pay for answers to all of life’s questions from a “certified expert.” The only problems: 1) She doesn’t know how to do anything but long division and calculus. 2) She’s totally invisible to people at school. And not in a cool Gossip Girl kind of way.

So, she decides to learn to do . . . well . . . everything. When her anonymous blog shifts in a more scandalous direction and the questions (and money) start rolling in, she has to learn not just how to do waterfall braids and cat-eye makeup, but a few other things, like how to cure a hangover, how to flirt, and how to make out (something her very experienced, and very in-love-with-her neighbor, Drew, is more than willing to help with).

As her blog’s reputation skyrockets, so does “new and improved” Renley’s popularity. She’s not only nabbed the attention of the entire school, but also the eye of Seth Levine, the hot culinary wizard she’s admired from across the home-ec classroom all year.

Soon, caught up in the thrill of popularity both in and out of cyberspace, her secrets start to spiral, and she finds that she’s forgotten the most important how-to: how to be herself. When her online and real lives converge, Renley will have to make a choice: lose everything she loves in her new life, or everyone she loves in the life she left behind.

Honestly, this just sounds like my kind of book and Brianna is an amazing person so I can’t wait to read this one! This sounds like it’ll be the perfect contemporary read for anytime!

 

F.R.I.E.N.D.S. Book Tag!

So recently I binge watched the entirety of FRIENDS and I loved every single second of it. So I decided to google if there were any book tags dedicated toward the show, and alas! THERE IS! So without further ado…here’s the FRIENDS book tag! (Got this tag from Jo!)

Do you Prefer Shorter or Longer Book Summaries?

Hey there everyone! Welcome to my first discussion post! I’m hoping this is the first of many ones to come. Today I want to be discussing whether we like shorter or longer descriptions to books. Do you like a lot of detail and plot explanation? Or do you like something short, sweet and mysterious?

Personally, I like shorter summaries! With shorter summaries, the reader is left to interpret where the story can go and doesn’t give too much information about the book! I’ve noticed that most fantasy books have lengthier summaries compared to contemporary books (Which makes sense) but I like short summaries that are concise and aren’t too broad or cliche. Something that separates the novel among others in the genre.

Although I’m still very new to the fantasy genre, there IS one summary (or rather, PART of a summary that’s short) of a contemporary book that got my attention:

“Never ask about the past.
Don’t expect a future.

They think they can handle it, but realize almost immediately they can’t handle it at all.

Hearts get infiltrated.
Promises get broken.
Rules get shattered.
Love gets ugly.”

The excerpt of the summary is from Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover, and while I have mixed feelings about the book now, over 5 months after reading it, I think the summary is AMAZING. Short. Interesting. And  promising.

Some other great summaries include Vicious by V.E. Schwab, Red Rising by Pierce Brown and Court of Fives by Kate Elliott all listed in the following respectively:

Victor and Eli started out as college roommates—brilliant, arrogant, lonely boys who recognized the same sharpness and ambition in each other. In their senior year, a shared research interest in adrenaline, near-death experiences, and seemingly supernatural events reveals an intriguing possibility: that under the right conditions, someone could develop extraordinary abilities. But when their thesis moves from the academic to the experimental, things go horribly wrong.

Ten years later, Victor breaks out of prison, determined to catch up to his old friend (now foe), aided by a young girl whose reserved nature obscures a stunning ability. Meanwhile, Eli is on a mission to eradicate every other super-powered person that he can find—aside from his sidekick, an enigmatic woman with an unbreakable will. Armed with terrible power on both sides, driven by the memory of betrayal and loss, the archnemeses have set a course for revenge—but who will be left alive at the end?

The Earth is dying.
Darrow is a Red, a miner in the interior of Mars. His mission is to extract enough precious elements to one day tame the surface of the planet and allow humans to live on it.
The Reds are humanity’s last hope.

Or so it appears, until the day Darrow discovers it’s all a lie.

That Mars has been habitable – and inhabited – for generations, by a class of people calling themselves the Golds.
A class of people who look down on Darrow and his fellows as slave labour, to be exploited and worked to death without a second thought. Until the day that Darrow, with the help of a mysterious group of rebels, disguises himself as a Gold and infiltrates their command school, intent on taking down his oppressors from the inside.

But the command school is a battlefield – and Darrow isn’t the only student with an agenda.

Break the chains.

Live for more.

On the Fives court, everyone is equal.

And everyone is dangerous.

Jessamy’s life is a balance between acting like an upper-class Patron and dreaming of the freedom of the Commoners. But away from her family, she can be whomever she wants when she sneaks out to train for the Fives, an intricate, multilevel athletic competition that offers a chance for glory to the kingdom’s best competitors.

Then Jes meets Kalliarkos, and an improbable friendship between the two Fives competitors—one of mixed race and the other a Patron boy—causes heads to turn. When Kal’s powerful, scheming uncle tears Jes’s family apart, she’ll have to test her new friend’s loyalty and risk the vengeance of a royal clan to save her mother and sisters from certain death.

Now you’re wondering what makes a bad/long summary in my eyes, right? Usually one that gives an over-detailed plot explanation. For some strange reason, I can’t think of any, but I’ve noticed that fantasy books tend to go into A LOT of detail and sometimes it just gives too much detail.

So which do you prefer? Do you like to be left guessing or do you need an idea of what you’re reading before you start a book? Let me know! 🙂

Ryan Graudin – Author of Wolf by Wolf Interview!

Hey everyone! So as you all may or may not know…I recently held a read along for Wolf by Wolf by Ryan Graudin and 99% of us loved the book! You can read my review of it here.

So after reading the book, I thought it’d be really cool to interview Ryan so without further ado…here are Ryan’s A’s to my Q’s!

The Sound of Us by Julie Hammerle COVER REVEAL & EXCERPT!

The Sound of Us by Julie Hammerle

Pages:  304

Publisher: Entangled Teen

Release Date: June 7th, 2016

GoodReads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Amazon UK | Amazon CA | The BookDepository | Books a Million

Synopsis:

Driven by a social-media-addicted, nerdy heroine, this charming, thought-provoking coming-of-age story is PITCH PERFECT at opera camp.

@kikeronis Turns out the best opera camp in Indiana is more like boot camp. Goodbye, #GameofThrones #TheWalkingDead #ProjectEarth

@kikeronis Silver lining to having your best friend stab you in the back: you’re no longer her constant tag-along. I can kick ass here.

@kikeronis What if you meet a hot nerdy drummer who understands your soul, but res hall basement jam sessions are forbidden & can get you kicked out?

@kikeronis I, sweatpants enthusiast & perpetual chorus girl, have to be ruthless enough to win 1 of the 7 scholarships, or no music school for me.

@kikeronis Forget opera domination, I’m headed for “opera camp disaster & cautionary tale.” If I don’t give up either music or the guy, I’ll lose both.

Excerpt:

From the music app on my phone, Ani DiFranco belts out a choice insult just as Brie bursts through my dorm room door, crosses the room, and plops a giant cardboard box on the other bed.

“I guess we’re roommates,” she says. There were a bunch of boxes in the room when I arrived, and I wondered who they belonged to. I suppose that mystery is solved. I scramble to stop Ani from singing anything else we both might regret later and I look up just in time to see Seth Banks crossing the threshold into my dorm room, carrying another larger, heavier box over to Brie’s side.

“Hi,” he says. “Kiki, right?” He knows my name. Seth Banks somehow knows my name. I nod, and sneak a glance at the mirror on the wall next to my bed, assessing myself against the two model-caliber people in my dorm room. I’m still wearing the cat dress. My frizzy hair is up in a messy bun, but the effect actually works with my blue-plastic glasses. I look eccentric, but artsy, which may not be the best look of all time but it is, in fact, a look.

(You’re probably wondering who my celebrity twin is. Well, there aren’t a lot of women in pop culture who have my body type, i.e. dumpy. I’m too fat to be thin and too thin to be fat. Head-wise, I have the glasses and mouse-like features of Mary Katherine Gallagher from Saturday Night Live with hair like Hermione before someone gave her hot oil help between the second and third movies.)

Brie cocks an eyebrow at me and tucks her bottom lip under her top teeth as she picks up my backpack and drops it on the ground with a perfunctory thud. I had tossed it onto the blue papa-san chair in the middle of our room after I got back from the auditions. “That’s my chair,” she says. “My. Chair.” And then she proceeds to place a six-pack of Diet Coke into the fridge—My. Fridge.—because apparently that’s how fairness works.

Brie puts her hands on her hips and surveys my side of the room, which, honestly, does look like a tornado ripped through it. I came back to our room after auditions with the plan of unpacking all of my things, I really did. But instead I felt so overwhelmed, I had to take a few minutes to listen to Ani and decompress by writing horrible, secret poetry in my journal. But the few minutes turned into an hour, turned into me skipping dinner, turned into all of a sudden it’s 7:00 and my clothes are still strewn around the floor like party guests who refuse to leave.

To prove a point to Brie or something, I grab a stack of pictures from my desk and start sticking them up on the bulletin board. I don’t really want the pictures on my wall. I don’t need them, but I feel like they’re obligatory college student falderal, and that’s what I’m pretending to be this summer, a college student. My eyes linger over the pictures as I pin them, memories that seem so distant already. High school is a million miles away, which is kind of the point of my being in Indianapolis, so, success.

About the Author:

Julie Hammerle is the author of The Sound of Us, which will be published by Entangled Teen in the summer of 2016. Before settling down to write “for real,” she studied opera, taught Latin, and held her real estate license for one hot minute. Currently, she writes about TV on her blog Hammervision, ropes people into conversations about Game of Thrones, and makes excuses to avoid the gym. Her favorite YA-centric TV shows include 90210 (original spice), Felicity, and Freaks and Geeks. Her iPod reads like a 1997 Lilith Fair set list. She lives in Chicago with her husband, two kids, and a dog. They named the dog Indiana.

Author Links:

Website│Twitter│Facebook│Goodreads

Top Ten Characters We Love That Everyone Hates/Hate that Everyone Loves!

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish…AND…

This week’s topic is: Top Ten Characters We Love That Everyone Hates/Hate that Everyone Loves!

Ashley’s Picks:

Five I hate that everyone loves

1. Cath from Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell– Really didn’t enjoy the book and absolutely did not enjoy the main character, I just thought she was immature and uninteresting. This is just my opinion and I know tons of people love this book.
2. Mal from Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo– I just don’t like him, Id rather the story just be about Alina and have no love interest.
3. Dorian from Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas– I’m a Chaol girl… that explains everything haha.
4. Jude from Never Fade by Alexandra Bracken– LOVE LOVE Alex and her writing but Jude came off as dull too me.
5. Augustus Waters from The Fault in Our Stars by John Green– Just don’t care for him.