2015 Book #74 – Atlantis Rising by Gloria Craw

Posted in Book reviews, Young Adult by rebeccabook17

Title: Atlantis Rising
Author: Gloria Craw
Date finished: 7/19/15 (12:20am)
Genre: Young adult
Publisher: Entangled: Teen
Publication Date: January 6, 2015
Pages in book: 295
Stand alone or series: Stand alone
Where I got the book from: Terryville Public Library

Blurb from Amazon:

I am different. I have always been different, but no one can know or my life will be in danger. So I hide in plain sight, wearing drab clothes and thick glasses and trying to be invisible. I’m so good at hiding, no one has ever noticed me. Until Ian…the mysterious and oh-so-cute boy I know I need to avoid.
Now I have been seen. And more terrifying still, I am wanted–by those who would protect me and those who would destroy everything and everyone I love. But if they’re all terrified about who I am, wait until they see what I can do…

My rating: 3.5 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: I really tend to enjoy books with supernatural elements but I haven’t really read anything before about the children of Atlantis. So when I saw this book recently, I definitely wanted to read it. So this book is about Alison McKye, a senior at Fillmore High School. She’s adopted and when she was fourteen, someone at a playground noticed she was using her “thoughtmaking” abilities on her brother. This random stranger told her that she is one of the children of Atlantis and that her ability is both very powerful and very sought after and that if she wanted to protect her human family, she must do everything in her power to go through the rest of her life unnoticed.
Cut forward to her senior year of high school and she’s done what she thinks is a decent job of remaining invisible. One of the helpful points is that even though she is dewing (the name for the children of Atlantis) since she was raised by humans she doesn’t give off the same vibrations as other dewing I guess so its easier for her to stay incognito. A lot of people are trying to find her though (for various reasons) and since she hasn’t actually done a great job of hiding in plain sight, she’s going to be found out. Luckily, she makes some friends who are going to help her.
I really liked this book. I thought Alison was great and the tension between her and her love interest (not spoiling it for you!!) is palpable and felt real. I thought the plot line was good but the climactic action scenes felt a bit short. Also I’m curious what happened to Nikki? Is there going to be a sequel? Usually when something ends kind of abruptly like that I at least like to know that yes the author realizes there are unanswered questions and is writing a sequel as we speak. But I couldn’t find anything online so I guess fingers crossed. Good book overall though and not a topic that I see a lot so it was different, which I liked.

The bottom line: I thought this was a good book, I would recommend it! Definitely interesting and unusual, the story line was great.

Link to author website
Click on the cover to go to the book’s Amazon page

13Jul2015

2015 Book #71 – Finding Audrey by Sophie Kinsella

Posted in Book reviews, Young Adult by rebeccabook17

Title: Finding Audrey
Author: Sophie Kinsella
Date finished: 7/12/15
Genre: Young adult
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Publication Date: June 9, 2015
Pages in book: 286
Stand alone or series: Stand alone
Where I got the book from: Terryville Public Library

Blurb from Amazon:

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Shopaholic series comes a terrific blend of comedy, romance, and psychological recovery in a contemporary YA novel sure to inspire and entertain.
An anxiety disorder disrupts fourteen-year-old Audrey’s daily life. She has been making slow but steady progress with Dr. Sarah, but when Audrey meets Linus, her brother’s gaming teammate, she is energized. She connects with him. Audrey can talk through her fears with Linus in a way she’s never been able to do with anyone before. As their friendship deepens and her recovery gains momentum, a sweet romantic connection develops, one that helps not just Audrey but also her entire family.

My rating: 3.75 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: I haven’t read much by Sophie Kinsella but her Shopaholic series is on my TBR list. I saw the movie they made of the first book and loved it. So when I saw that Kinsella had a YA book coming out I wanted to read it.This story is (mostly) about Audrey, a young girl trying to learn how to cope with depression and anxiety after it appears she had a mental breakdown resulting from an “incident” at her school. I have to be honest, part of me finds it extremely frustrating that we never learn the specifics of this “incident.” There are vague references to what happened, and the reader is left to piece together what probably occurred. While I found this frustrating though, I thought it really spoke of some of the main points in the book. Audrey (the narrator) says multiple times in the book that she has learned through her therapy books that everyone has the right to privacy, your thoughts and feelings are your own and you have the power to say no to anyone. And towards the beginning Audrey says to us that she knows we (the readers) are curious but that the actual incident itself doesn’t really matter, what matters is what happened after that. Which is true of the book, the point of the book wasn’t to get into the gory details of why Audrey had the mental breakdown, it was about her road to recovery and about feeling more like herself again. So long story short, while I found it frustrating, part of me also appreciated that the author didn’t include exact details of the incident.
Along her road to recovery, Audrey becomes friends with her brother’s friend Linus. Linus ends up being a big support for Audrey and helps nudge her along on the experiences she needs to be more functioning in the regular world. They end up developing a romance which is very sweet. The mother’s fixation on Frank’s video games became frustrating at times, it felt almost a little overdone. That seems to have been the point though, for part of the story the family is a bit tense and edging towards shambles but they learn to appreciate each other more and as Audrey awakens from her shell of depression we see more of the family’s loving side.
Overall I thought this was a sweet and touching book. It was a fairly quick read but full of insight into the lives of those dealing with depression and how frustrating it can be to want to feel normal and just not be able to accomplish that due to some dumb chemical reactions in your brain. The characters were all funny and interesting, I found myself laughing out loud at multiple points in the book. Great read!

The bottom line: I thought this was a good book. Some parts were overly frustrating but overall I think this is a touching story and I would recommend it!

Link to author website
Click on the cover to go to the book’s Amazon page

21Jun2015

2015 Book #62 – I’ll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios

Posted in 2015, Book reviews, Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2015 checklist, Reading Challenges, Young Adult by rebeccabook17

Title: I’ll Meet You There
Author: Heather Demetrios
Date finished: 6/20/15
Genre: Young adult – romance-ish, coming of age tale
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Publication Date: February 3, 2015
Pages in book: 379
Stand alone or series: Stand alone
Where I got the book from: Terryville Public Library

Blurb from the cover:

If seventeen-year-old Skylar Evans were a typical Creek View girl, her future would involve a double-wide trailer, a baby on her hip, and the graveyard shift at Taco Bell. But after graduation, the only thing standing between straightedge Skylar and art school are three minimum-wage months of summer. Skylar can taste the freedom–that is, until her mother loses her job and everything starts coming apart. Torn between her dreams and the people she loves, Skylar realizes everything she’s ever worked for is on the line.
Nineteen-year-old Josh Mitchell had a different ticket out of Creek View: the Marines. But after his leg is blown off in Afghanistan, he returns home, a shell of the cocksure boy he used to be.
What brings Skylar and Josh together is working at the Paradise–a quirky motel off California’s dusty Highway 99. Despite their differences, their shared isolation turns into an unexpected friendship and soon, something deeper.

My rating: 4.25 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: This book will be counting towards my goal for the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2015 checklist under the “a book at the bottom of your to-read list” check box since it wasn’t even really on my to-read list to begin with. I saw this book in a BookPage publication earlier this year and while I thought it sounded interesting, I didnt add it to my TBR list at the time since the list is already just so overwhelmingly long. I did one of those calculator things and it was going ot take me like 15 years to read all the books on my current to-read list. And since I add more books to the list every week than I read and take off the list every week, its pretty much never going to end! But when I saw it at the Terryville Public Library a couple weeks ago I was on a YA rampage (I checked out 5 new YA fiction books that day) I decided to give it a try. And boy am I glad I did because it was excellent.
The main male character of the story was a Marine who was recently injured in combat and is home on leave while he recovers. Josh has always been a bad-boy and a ladies man in Creek View and even though he returns injured from the war, the town doesn’t really expect him to be any different. And Skylar is a straight-edge girl who is set on escaping this small ho-dunk town and plans to go to San Francisco for college in the fall. But these two can’t seem to stay away from each other and over the summer what used to be a casual friendship turns into something more.
Reading this book was an important experience for me. My husband is a Marine and spent some time overseas in Afghanistan, and while thankfully he came back uninjured physically, there are a lot of mental ramifications for experiencing what soldiers have to go through in a war. There were many times during the book during Josh’s point of view when I heard the parts in my husband’s voice, and (while I’ve never experienced what they experience personally and therefore can’t say this with certainty) I think the author did an outstanding job of capturing what it feels like when a soldier all of a sudden isn’t a soldier anymore. Transitioning back into civilian life is difficult and for some impossible. This book was moving and touching and talked about some extremely relevant topics. I think it was a great book and something everyone should read.

The bottom line: I thought this was a great book, I’m not sure if it meant more to me because I’m connected to a Marine but the characters in this story really moved me. I would definitely recommend this book.

Link to author website
Click on the cover to go to the book’s Amazon page

20Jun2015

2015 Book #60 – The Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard

Posted in 2015, Book reviews, Book series, Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2015 checklist, Reading Challenges, Red Queen series, Young Adult by rebeccabook17

Title: The Red Queen
Author: Victoria Aveyard
Date finished: 6/20/15
Genre: Young Adult – Dystopian/Fantasy
Publisher: Harper Teen
Publication Date: February 10, 2015
Pages in book: 383
Stand alone or series: #1 in the Red Queen series (#2 is The Glass Sword and will be released 2/9/16!!!!!)
Where I got the book from: Terryville Public Library

Blurb from the cover:

Graceling meets The Selection in debut novelist Victoria Aveyard’s sweeping tale of seventeen-year-old Mare, a common girl whose once-latent magical power draws her into the dangerous intrigue of the king’s palace. Will her power save her or condemn her?
Mare Barrow’s world is divided by blood–those with common, Red blood serve the Silver- blooded elite, who are gifted with superhuman abilities. Mare is a Red, scraping by as a thief in a poor, rural village, until a twist of fate throws her in front of the Silver court. Before the king, princes, and all the nobles, she discovers she has an ability of her own.
To cover up this impossibility, the king forces her to play the role of a lost Silver princess and betroths her to one of his own sons. As Mare is drawn further into the Silver world, she risks everything and uses her new position to help the Scarlet Guard–a growing Red rebellion–even as her heart tugs her in an impossible direction. One wrong move can lead to her death, but in the dangerous game she plays, the only certainty is betrayal.

My rating: 4.0 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: This book will be counting towards my goal for the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2015 checklist under the “a book with a color in the title” check box since (duh) the title has a color in it. Obviously I’ve heard a lot about this book in the past couple months. This book rocketed up the popularity scale even before it was released, and there are even talks right now to make it into a movie (Elizabeth Banks is rumored to be looking into producing the movie). With all of the recent dystopian young adult novels, I can understand why this book really caught on. This book tells the story of Mare Barrow, a Red who is sick to death of the Silver’s power. As a slight background, the Reds are the workers, the servants, the slaves and what not. The Silvers are the royalty and the important people, and their blood is actually Silvers. Oh and Silvers have powers. Like telekinesis and making plants grow and water nymphs and stuff like that.
So it turns out that Mare has powers as well. Even though she’s a Red, she can control electricity and can create it too. When the king finds out about this, he convinces Mare to portray to the population that she is a long lost Silver princess who was raised in a Red household. There is a rebellion rising up in the streets though, the Scarlet Guard, and they have a plot to over take the government. The population of Reds of tired of spending their whole lives working so hard to never get ahead and to watch their children and their children’s children toil away their lives in the same manner.
Overall I thought this book was very good. There was enough action to keep you consistently interested and there were enough plot twists to keep you on your toes. The main character (Mare) reminds me a lot of Katniss from Hunger Games. Mare is a very strong character and sometimes overly headstrong and a little tom-boy-ish. It was a solid book but it wasn’t my favorite book ever. Good story line though, I was interested throughout and honestly I didn’t want to put it down.

The bottom line: This was a very good book and I can see why it has gained a lot of popularity since it was released. I would definitely recommend that people give this book a try. It might not be for everyone but I thought it was great.

Link to author website
Click on the cover to go to the book’s Amazon page

17Jun2015

2015 Book #59 – Vanishing Girls by Lauren Oliver

Posted in Book reviews, Young Adult by rebeccabook17

Title: Vanishing Girls
Author: Lauren Oliver
Date finished: 6/17/15
Genre: Young Adult – Thriller
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication Date: March 10, 2015
Pages in book: 357
Stand alone or series: Stand alone
Where I got the book from: Terryville Public Library

Blurb from the cover:

New York Times bestselling author Lauren Oliver delivers a gripping story about two sisters inexorably altered by a terrible accident.
Dara and Nick used to be inseparable, but that was before the accident that left Dara’s beautiful face scarred and the two sisters totally estranged. When Dara vanishes on her birthday, Nick thinks Dara is just playing around. But another girl, nine-year-old Madeline Snow, has vanished, too, and Nick becomes increasingly convinced that the two disappearances are linked. Now Nick has to find her sister, before it’s too late.
In this edgy and compelling novel, Lauren Oliver creates a world of intrigue, loss, and suspicion as two sisters search to find themselves, and each other.

My rating: 3.25 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: This book was a little weird. Dara and Nick are supposed to be best friends and sisters and then an accident supposedly marks their separation and they don’t talk to each other for months. Its really what happens right before the accident but you’ll find all that out. Anyway, their supposed to be such good friends but the description of their relationship is awful. Also there is a LOT of underage drinking in this book. Like every person you are introduced with who is in high school is getting drunk on a regular basis. Where are they getting all this alcohol? And do their parents really just not notice that their kids are drunk every weekend? There are a lot of heavy drugs mentioned in connection with Dara as well. I know when parents get divorced they can sometimes become a little more absent in their children’s lives but still, no one besides Nick noticed that there were weird pills in Dara’s room?
Besides the drug thing and the slightly intense sibling rivalry for “best friends,” this book was pretty good. I was hooked fairly quickly, though the first half of the book was a little slower than the second half. I liked the story line and I was interested in what the reason for the accident was and where Madeline Snow was and what the hell was really going on. I can 100% say that I never saw the twist at the end coming and to be honest when it was revealed my first thought was “no way you read that right, better go backwards a little and read it over.” But turns out I read it correctly, it was just a little confusing. The plot twist at the end was a great twist but the way it was done was a little far-reached to me. Still very good though, I usually can see twists coming but I never saw this one coming.

The bottom line: Eh. It was ok. Not my favorite but wasn’t awful either. There were some things about it that bothered me I little. You could try it I guess.

Link to author website
Click on the cover to go to the book’s Amazon page

16Jun2015

2015 Book #58 – The Wrath & The Dawn by Renee Ahdieh

Posted in 2015, Book reviews, Book series, Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2015 checklist, Reading Challenges, The Saga of Shahrzad and Khalid, Young Adult by rebeccabook17

Title: The Wrath & The Dawn
Author: Renee Ahdieh
Date finished: 6/16/15 (12:02am so technically the 16th, lol)
Genre: Young Adult – Fairy tale retelling, romance
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: May 12, 2015
Pages in book: 388
Stand alone or series: #1 in The Saga of Shahrzad and Khalid

Blurb from the cover:

Every dawn brings horror to a different family in a land ruled by a killer. Khalid, the eighteen-year-old Caliph of Khorasan, takes a new bride each night only to have her executed at sunrise. So it is a suspicious surprise when sixteen-year-old Shahrzad volunteers to marry Khalid. But she does so with a clever plan to stay alive and exact revenge on the Caliph for the murder of her best friend and countless other girls. Shazi’s wit and will, indeed, get her through to the dawn that no others have seen, but with a catch . . . she’s falling in love with the very boy who killed her dearest friend.
She discovers that the murderous boy-king is not all that he seems and neither are the deaths of so many girls. Shazi is determined to uncover the reason for the murders and to break the cycle once and for all.

My rating: 4.5 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: This book will be counting towards my goal for the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2015 checklist under the “a book with a love triangle” check box since there is a love triangle between Shazi and Khalid and Shazi and Tariq. Just as a quick aside, I never understood why its a love triangle. If you think about it, both boys are in love with Shazi but they’re not like in love with each other so why are they technically connected in the last leg of the love triangle? I think it makes more sense just to call it a love angle. I don’t know, this has bothered me. Anyways, I saw this book listed in a few recent publications, including a recent BookPage newsletter, and here and there on listings of books to read this summer or books to look out for. This is the author’s first book and it was just great!
So this book was inspired by A Thousand and One Nights which is a collection of stories and folk tales, also known as the Arabian Nights. I think that these stories are fairly widely heard of, and the premise is well known. The connection between the inspiration and the resulting novel is obvious, though this story is entirely its own and I thought it was very creative. I can honestly say I don’t think I’ve ever read anything else like this. And not only was it creative but it was beautifully written and the descriptions of the clothing and the scenery and just everything was wonderfully done. I was hooked into the story from the beginning, dying (ha) to know why a bride had to die each morning. I love Shazi’s character and her growth through the novel was easy to follow and enchanting to experience. I really don’t want to talk too much about the plot because I don’t want to give anything away. There are a lot of different pieces in play in this novel and I had no idea that the story was going to continue after this book. I think it was my lack of knowledge that left me feeling overly frustrated in the end, especially since we will have to wait a year for the second book to be released. Overall I really just loved this book though and I will wait patiently (or at least try to) for the next book to come out.

The bottom line: EVERYONE GO READ THIS BOOK RIGHT NOW. I don’t know how I will be able to continue living until the next book comes out NEXT YEAR! I loved this book. Just loved it.

Link to author website
Click on the cover to go to the book’s Amazon page

5Jun2015

2015 Books #52-54 – Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins

Posted in 2015, Book reviews, Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2015 checklist, Reading Challenges, Young Adult by rebeccabook17

Title: Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay
Author: Suzanne Collins
Date finished: 5/31/15, 6/3/15, 6/4/15
Genre: Young adult – dystopian
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Publication Date: September 14, 2008; September 1, 2009; August 24, 2010
Pages in book: 374, 391, 499 (large-print)
Stand alone or series: Series (trilogy to be specific)

Blurb from the cover:

Hunger Games
In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before – and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.

Catching Fire
Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the annual Hunger Games with fellow district tribute Peeta Mellark. But it was a victory won by defiance of the Capitol and their harsh rules. Katniss and Peeta should be happy. After all, they have just won for themselves and their families a life of safety and plenty. But there are rumors of rebellion among the subjects, and Katniss and Peeta, to their horror, are the faces of that rebellion. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge.

Mockingjay
Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has survived the Hunger Games twice. But now that she’s made it out of the bloody arena alive, she’s still not safe. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge. Who do they think should pay for the unrest? Katniss. And what’s worse, President Snow has made it clear that no one else is safe either. Not Katniss’s family, not her friends, not the people of District 12. Powerful and haunting, this thrilling final installment of Suzanne Collins’s groundbreaking The Hunger Games trilogy promises to be one of the most talked about books of the year.

My rating: 4.25, 4.5 and 4.0 stars out of a scale of 5, respectively

My review: This book will be counting towards my goal for the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2015 checklist under the “trilogy” check box since it is a trilogy. I know everyone is astounded I haven’t read this series yet given its popularity and the fact that there are now three movies out based on the series with the last movie coming out in November of this year. To be honest when I first heard about the books and even the first movie, I couldn’t get into it. The idea of kids killing kids was so abhorrent to me that I couldn’t imagine how I would end up liking the books. So I avoided it. And then it became wildly (and I mean wildly) popular and I tend to avoid that as well (not really sure why but fads seem to put me off). So we get to this year and after watching the movies for books 1, 2, and Part one of 3 and loving all the movies, I decide its finally time to read the books.
And it turns out I should’ve read them a long time ago. I absolutely loved this series, though I have to admit I cried so hard at the end of the third book that I felt hollowed out and empty when it was over. I’m writing this right after finishing the third book, only giving myself enough time that I can finally see through the tears again. I think the glass of wine helped but I feel absolutely devastated. I loved the series but so many people die in the third book, a lot of people that I really liked too, that I just can’t find the wherewithal to continue forward (to normal people this will sound pathetically crazy, but I know my fellow book nerds will understand). What I thought was weird when I considered it was that I didn’t feel this way in the first two books even though plenty of characters I felt I knew died in those books too. But I think the difference is that I knew people I liked were going to die in the first two books because of the Hunger Games.
I can’t talk about my emotions too much without giving away spoilers but in some ways the third book ended exactly how I wanted it it. I felt almost like the ending was a little rushed though. The whole book was a little confusing, I think because we were seeing everything through Katniss’s fractured mind. I found the difference in Katniss’s voice as it develops between books 1, 2 and 3 very interesting. You can feel her character growing and changing through the series by the way she talks. I loved the series though and I think everyone should read it immediately, if nothing else but to warn us all of what could happen in the future if the government goes all whack-a-doo. Go! Read it now!!!

The bottom line: I would highly recommend that everyone read this series. It will ensnare you and drag you under but it is an excellent series.

Link to author website
Click on the cover to go to the book’s Amazon page

28May2015

2015 Book #50 – Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Posted in 2015, Book reviews, Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2015 checklist, Reading Challenges, Young Adult by rebeccabook17

Title: Eleanor & Park
Author: Rainbow Rowell
Date finished: 5/27/15
Genre: Young adult – romance
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
Publication Date: February 26, 2013
Pages in book: 325
Stand alone or series: Stand alone

Blurb from the cover:

Eleanor… Red hair, wrong clothes. Standing behind him until he turns his head. Lying beside him until he wakes up. Making everyone else seem drabber and flatter and never good enough… Eleanor.
Park… He knows she’ll love a song before he plays it for her. He laughs at her jokes before she ever gets to the punch line. There’s a place on his chest, just below his throat, that makes her want to keep promises… Park.
Set over the course of one school year, this is the story of two star-crossed sixteen-year-olds – smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try.

My rating: 4.25 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: This book will be counting towards my goal for the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2015 checklist under the “a book set in high school” check box since it is in fact about two high school students. I had heard a lot of good things about this book and after reading Fangirl recently, I definitely wanted to get my hands on this one. I saw it a couple weeks ago at my local library and snatched it right up. Almost from the very beginning I was hooked on this book. I have to be honest in saying that I find some young adult romance novels overwhelmingly frustrating because everything is so angst-y all the time and it ends up feeling like the characters are just whining a lot. I have never in my life before had a book make me feel what this book did. I had a high school love, most people do, and even if you didn’t necessarily have a love, most people have felt the thrill of having a crush. Does he like me too? And then once you think he does, there is the thrill of the first time he holds your hand and the first time you kiss and just the thrill of being young and in love. This book dug deep inside my memory banks and brought back all those feelings I experienced in high school to the forefront. It really was astounding for me.
Eleanor has a lot of family issues (Park has some too I guess but Eleanor has way more and they’re more serious) that are discussed in the book. An abusive stepdad, a mom that won’t stand up for herself or her 5 children, an absentee dad, I could just go on and on. She doesn’t have a toothbrush until halfway through the book for goodness sake. Eleanor’s life and her family as it is described in book added a darkness to the book. The harshness of Eleanor’s life really was a great contrast to the joy and light blossoming inside her as she develops her relationship with Park. I mean her home life is awful and I was frustrated with her mom for pretty much the entire book but the fact that Eleanor was able to trust Park was unexpected and it shows how her character grows throughout the novel.

Overall I very much liked this book. I couldn’t put it down, it was one of those that sucks you in and two hours you look up and think “where am I?” The feelings that will consume you while reading this book are overwhelming, so just be prepared. They’re good feels though so don’t panic. The characters both grew a lot in the novel, Park specifically learned that you shouldn’t care what everyone else thinks, which I think was a great life-lesson for him. There are many parts of their relationship that seemed so realistic, especially for high school students, like Park being embarrassed about the way Eleanor dresses only because of how other people think of it. The ending I think is as it should be but I can see how some might like a more neat and defined ending. I like to think that in the future, Eleanor and Park end up together forever and get married and are happy throughout their marriage like Park’s parents.

The bottom line: I would definitely recommend this book. Falling in love for the first time all over again is not something that can usually be duplicated, but this book does a damn good job. Go buy it now, you want to have these emotions!

Link to author website
Click on the cover to go to the book’s Amazon page

29Apr2015

2015 Book #39 – To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han

Posted in 2015, Book reviews, Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2015 checklist, Reading Challenges, Young Adult by rebeccabook17

Title: To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before
Author: Jenny Han
Date finished: 4/28/15
Genre: Young Adult
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: April 15, 2014
Pages in book: 355
Stand alone or series: There is a sequel to this book coming out next month (P.S. I Still Love You)

Blurb from the cover:

What if all the crushes you ever had found out how you felt about them…all at once?
Lara Jean Song keeps her love letters in a hatbox her mother gave her. They aren’t love letters that anyone else wrote for her; these are ones she’s written. One for every boy she’s ever loved—five in all. When she writes, she pours out her heart and soul and says all the things she would never say in real life, because her letters are for her eyes only. Until the day her secret letters are mailed, and suddenly, Lara Jean’s love life goes from imaginary to out of control.

My rating: 2.75 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: This book will be counting towards my goal for the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2015 checklist under the “a book you can finish in a day” check box mostly since I finished this book in a day. I had seen this book on a lot of other blogs with rave reviews so when I saw it at the Harwinton Public Library I decided to give it a try. I have to be honest though, this was not one of my favorite books. I mean the book itself was a fine book and I can see why many people like it. It was just a little too much teen angst for me, which is one of the reasons I haven’t read many young adult novels since I was in high school. I am trying to get back into them because many of them have only a medium, tolerable amount of teen angst and that’s fine. This book though just had a little too much for me, I was so frustrated with Lara-Jean in the beginning of the book that I just wanted to scream.

I wasn’t a fan of this book in the beginning and then as the story progressed things seemed to get better. I began to like the story more and I was slightly hooked and wanted to keep reading. About 50 pages before the end though, things started going downhill for me again. I guess I just don’t get the point. I started to think that the point was that we liked Peter. But he cheats on his tests, he is continually hanging out with his ex-girlfriend that he’s still in love with (umm can anyone say red flag??) and he did not make an effort to dispel Gen’s evil rumor that he and Lara-Jean had sex in the hot tub on a school trip. Excuse me, but this doesn’t exactly sound like a stand up guy to me. Certainly not one I would want to date. But then after Lara-Jean’s mad for awhile she pretty much just let’s it go and starts writing Peter a letter. Is she doing this to get back with him? To be done with him for good (my vote)? The book just ends there. And I get that there is a sequel but honestly I was kind of mad. I put all this time and effort into reading the story and I can’t even leave off with the heroine being happy with a good guy? It was just too much frustration for me.

The bottom line: Was too much angst and not enough resolution for me. Although this is altogether a popular book, I would probably not recommend.

Link to author website
Click on the cover to go to the book’s Amazon page

20Apr2015

2015 Book #34 – Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

Posted in #ReadingMyLibrary Reading Challenge, 2015, Book reviews, Reading Challenges, Young Adult by rebeccabook17

Title: Fangirl
Author: Rainbow Rowell
Date finished: 4/20/15
Genre: Young Adult
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
Publication Date: September 10, 2013
Pages in book: 433
Stand alone or series: Stand alone

Blurb from the cover:

In Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl, Cath is a Simon Snow fan. Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan, but for Cath, being a fan is her life–and she’s really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it’s what got them through their mother leaving.
Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.
Cath’s sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can’t let go. She doesn’t want to.
Now that they’re going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn’t want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She’s got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words . . . And she can’t stop worrying about her dad, who’s loving and fragile and has never really been alone.
For Cath, the question is: Can she do this?
Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? Writing her own stories?

My rating: 4.25 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: This book will count for the challenge I am participating in for April, the#ReadingMyLibrary reading challenge. I checked out this book from the Simsbury Public Library. I saw this book awhile ago, can’t remember where, but it looked good so I added it to my TBR list. I saw it at the library and decided to pick it up. I’ve never read anything by this author before, but I have heard a lot of good things.
There were a lot of things I liked about this book. I loved almost all the characters in this story. All of them evolved so much through the book I felt like I was growing and changing with them. Cather is such a great character and I really connected with her on her anxiety issues since I suffer from similar issues a lot of the time. I couldn’t necessarily connect with her on her shyness with boys but overall she was just such an easy character to connect with. And oh my gosh, Levi. If I could pick any of the characters I’ve read about that I would want for a boyfriend, it would be Levi. He is just amazingly sweet and so happy its disgusting and awesome at the same time.
One of the characters I really just didn’t like in the book (mostly because I think I wasn’t supposed to) was the mom, Laura. She was so disinterested in her own daughters and she leaves them when they’re 8 and never contacts them again. But she goes on to get remarried and she has step-kids and that’s ok? And what the hell is with the thing that when she ended up with twins instead of one baby, she didn’t even pick a second name she just split up the one name she had already picked out (Cather + Wren = Catherine). I mean it ended up being cute names for the girls but the mom was just being lazy and it just makes me dislike her more.

There was a good amount of teen angst in this book which is why I stopped reading young adult books a few years ago, it just became too frustrating. This book was not overwhelmingly teen angst though and the story line I still found to be solid and interesting. I couldn’t put this book down yesterday, I was up reading til I finished it at 1am. Great story, great characters, great feels. I will definitely be reading more by this author in the future.

The bottom line: Great book, lots of feels. Sweet characters. I would definitely recommend.

Link to author website
Click on the cover to go to the book’s Amazon page