But the time has finally come. I decided to start with a small read-a-thon and April’s 24 Hour Dewey’s Readathon seems like a great choice. It’s small, it doesn’t require reading a certain amount of books and a lot of people are participating so it should be a great chance to meet new people. Plus I might finally make some progress on my reading, which has fallen a bit behind lately .

I’m planning to make progress in two books: Heir of Fire by Sarah J. Maas , which I’ve already started, and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han. No way am I finishing both books because it’s about 600 pages, so no. I want to set a realistic goal of reading 300 pages from any of he two books (I’m planning to alternate according to my mood).

The readathon starts at 3 p.m. on Saturday (in my time zone) and ends 24 hours later. I will be doing most of my reading on Saturday, since I have plans for Sunday.

It would be awesome to get to know more people and get some inspiration/encouragement/motivation! So let me know if you’re participating.

P.S. I’m still kind of scared, but I hope that writting this post will increase my commitment and decisiveness about doing it!

Title:

Goodreads 

“I think a lot of people want to be someone, but we are scared that if we try, we won’t be as good as everyone imagines we could be.”

Review

I’ve never read about a character that needs psychotherapy more than Laurel does. I’m so confused about this book. I loved some aspects of it and I hated some others.

Let’s start from the beginning. I started reading the book and I read about 100 pages in one sitting, which I almost never do. I was intrigued by the story, but at the same time I was so annoyed by the main character, Laurel. I felt like she wasn’t a real person because she was thinking very lyricaly and abstractly and at the same time some of the things felt like they were coming from a 10-year-old instead of a teenager. She had a completely black-and-white way of thinking, which is definitely not how a teenager normally thinks.

Another thing that bugged me about the book was how nobody noticed that Laurel was acting strange. She was trying to mimic her sister and was wearing her clothes, going to parties etc and neither her father nor her aunt or her friends or anyone seemed to notice it. On the contrary people were telling her how proud they were and how well she was dealing. It made absolutely no sense to me.

The mimicing part though was quite thought-provoking for me. It was an interesting idea that she would try to mimic her sister in order to somehow keep her still alive. On the other hand it was so strange that she could only see her sister as a perfect person and not recognise any of the mistakes or the bad things she used to do. Again it was like she was 10 years old and couldn’t realize that a person can have good and bad sides and it’s not an either-or kind of thing.

Another part that I liked were several of the other characters in the book like Laurel’s friends and even Sky (the love interest) although he was seen by Laurel as someone so perfect without ever being explained why. He did have his moments, though, were I thought he was quite mature, in contrast to Laurel, which is why I didn’t ship them at all.

All in all it was a good idea for a book, it also had some interesting plot-twists, it was easy to read and kept me interested all the way through. However the childish way of thinking, which didn’t match with the supposedly profound thoughts that Laurel was having made me roll my eyes a few times. In the end, though, I did enjoy reading the book which is why I gave it 3.5 stars.

Opening Line

Dear Kurt Cobain, Mrs Buster gave us our first assignment in English today , to write a letter to a dead person.

Recommend it for…

• fans of “If I Stay”
• anyone looking for a light, but not cheesy YA contemporary novel

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Goodreads 

“The rest of the world quieted into nothing. In that moment, after ten long years, Celaena looked at Chaol and realised she was home.”

Review

This series is turning into one of my favorite series of all time!

I love the world it takes place in. I don’t read a lot of high fantasy because I always find the world too complicated and there are usually too many characters to keep up with, but this world is just right for me. Not too complicated and not too plain and there’s also a normal amount of characters so that I don’t have to flip back to remind myself who is who.

One disadvantage is that it takes a lot of time for something really important to happen. There are plenty of things happenning, but every time I was thinking “ok, this is it. We’ll get a major clue about what’s going on” it turned out to just put more questions into the story. I had no idea how it was going to end though, and I loved that about it!

I can honestly not decide if I’m team Dorian or Chaol. I’m leaning more towards Chaol, but it’s so hard to choose!

Anyway, I recommend this series for anyone who is hesitant about reading high fantasy and I’ll definitely continue with the next book soon!

Opening Line

“The shutters swinging in the storm winds were the only sign of her entry.”

Recommend it for…

• Hesitant high fantasy readers
• Fans of strong female characters

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Goodreads 

“I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.”

Review

This book was the biggest surprise ever! Okay. Let me start by saying that I don’t like classics. I’ve read very few (and by that I mean less than 5) and haven’t liked any of them. In fact I’ve put most of them down and never bothered to pick them up again. But Pride and Prejudice was a HUGE surprise. I loved it. I absolutely loved it!

Usually my biggest problem with classics is the language. I find it hard to read in a language that is not modern, doesn’t have a lot of dialog and is generally not very familiar to me. And I’m not saying that this book didn’t use that kind of language, but it wasn’t as much of a deal as with other classics I’ve read. It didn’t get tiring with descriptions and whatnot, and even though it was quite a long book, I found it quite easy to read. For a classic, that is. Don’t expect it to be as fast as modern contemporaries.

As far as the plot goes I have to say I’m amazed. I’m sitting here right now thinking about what I liked about the plot and there’s really nothing extraordinary. And yet I loved the book! It’s a basic story of two people who hate each other and then slowly fall in love. Nothing new, nothing different, nothing special and still SO interesting. Hat off to Jane Austen.

The main thing about this book, the thing that makes it so remarkable are the characters. And more importantly the dynamics between the characters. I know it sounds cliché, but that’s the truth. The are so many characters in this book (seriously. It gets kind of confusing) and they’re all so different from one another, which makes it extremely interesting to see the way they interact. And although I think that most characters are quite overdone, I also think that that’s the whole point. I see it as a way of humor and maybe even satire, which made me enjoy the book even more.

Anyway, after this book I have to say that I will certainly try to read more classics from now on and definitely some of the “classic” classics, like Wuthering Heights or Sense and Sensibility. If you are hesitant with classics like me, but want to try reading some I highly recommend trying to read this one. It’s the best classic I’ve ever read. By far.

Opening Line

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

Recommend it for…

• classics newbies
• fans of classic romance
• fans of classic literature

Anyway… I don’t know exactly what happened! My best guess is I was blogging too much (almost daily for over a month) and I just fell into a huge blogging slump. Blogging slump? Is that even how we call it? I’m not sure! See? It really feels like I’m blogging for the first time in my life! Well, I have started really missing it for the past couple of weeks and so I decided to write this.

I’m still not 100% sure if I want to start blogging again. Definitely not as often as I used to. But I’m also not quite positive about what I want to blog about. Books are definitely still something I love (P.S. I have been reading in the past months even though I wasn’t blogging). Book reviews is something I definitely want to keep on doing. Most book bloggers find reviews to be their least favorite thing to blog about, but for me it was actually the best! So, yeah, reviews are definitely in. I also want to do book discussions, but it’s not always easy to find a topic. And I’ve also been thinking of writing about other stuff too! I have been watching a lot of vlog channels on youtube and I really want to talk about some stuff, I’m just not sure if it would “fit” in this blog. Maybe I could do a weekly non-book topic or something like that.

Yeah.. it’s all still very open. I just have a few ideas in my head and am not quite sure what to do with them. If anyone is even reading this post I would definitely appreciate some advice. Has anyone been through the same? What do you think I should do?

P.S. I know that this is more of a brain-storming than an actual post, but I just needed to start somewhere. Brain-storming is always a good place to start!

Title:

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Goodreads 

“No one knows for certain how much impact they have on the lives of other people. Oftentimes, we have no clue. Yet we push it just the same.”

Review

I went into this book expecting to either love it or hate it. I had noticed that most reviews were either 5 stars or 1-2 stars, so I thought it was this kind of love-hate book. But it turns out I really really liked it, but I can’t say I loved it.

This is the story of Hanna’s suicide. Before killing herself she recorded thirteen tapes containing the reasons she killed herself and mailed them to all the people that were involved. We follow Clay, one of the people that received a set of tapes as he is listening to them and unraveling the mystery of Hanna’s death.

I liked the beginning very much. I felt like the story was flowing and the writing style was very easy to get into. After about 50 pages, though it got kind of tiring. Because we have two people speaking, Hanna through the cassettes and Clay in real time, it can get a bit confusing. I was dealing with that pretty well in the beginning, but when Clay started thinking about things in the past and in the present I got a bit disoriented. It was something like this:

“I felt really bad after coming out of that room. I know Hanna, I saw your face right after that. Other people are walking into the cafeteria, none of them knowing what I’m going through.

It was a new kind of feeling I had never experienced before. They’re sitting all around me now.”

The letters in italics are always Hanna’s words, so you can differentiate. But Clay is speaking both about his feelings to the story and about things that are happening while he’s listening to the tapes. So it takes some time to get used to. It’s no problem after a while, though.

As for the story, I really liked it. I knew from the moment I first read the synopsis that it would be really interesting. It’s like nothing I’ve ever read before and it was very intriguing. I really wanted to learn about all the people involved in Hanna’s death and see to what conclusions all those cassette tapes would lead to.

I don’t have that much to say about the characters. I liked how much Clay sympathized with Hanna, but that’s the only thing I can say about him. I don’t feel like I really got to know any characters very well and I didn’t feel very emotionally connected to any.

As for Hanna, I wanted to like her from the beginning. I wanted to find out what had gone wrong in her life and how hard everything must have been for her, so much so that she ended up killing herself. But I can’t say I really liked her. I felt like she was overreacting quite a bit and I can’t really say I completely understand the reasons behind her suicide. This is also the reason why I decided to give this book 4 stars instead of five. I feel like the main goal of the book was for us to understand why Hanna committed suicide. And I can’t say I do. I can partly understand it, but I cannot grasp it completely. I mean different events affect people differently and maybe because everything that happened to her is not something that would bother me to such a degree as to kill myself. Maybe that’s why I feel like I don’t understand her completely.

All in all I really enjoyed this book. I expected it to be a lot heavier, but it’s a relatively easy read. Maybe the fact that it’s quite short also plays a role here. But I would certainly recommend it and I really want to read some more books that contain “psychological” issues (suicide, abuse etc). Can’t say I’ve read a lot of those and it’s a genre I would be very interested in.

Opening Line

“Sir?” she repeats.

Mini Review

I really liked the story!
The writing style needs some getting-used-to, but after that it’s great
I would have liked to understand Hanna’s story a bit better

Recommend it for…

• fans of books with “psychological” issues
• a more “serious” book that still remains light

Title:

Rating: 

Goodreads 

Review

This is the first fairy tale retelling book I’ve read and I’m excited to dive more into this genre! I picked up this book mainly because it’s the cutest, most beautiful book I’ve ever seen. It’s a little hardcover (only 202 pages) without a dust jacket and it has some amazing illustrations in it. I just couldn’t resist. But it turned that I really liked the story too!

It’s the basic Snow White story. I’ve read a few reviews saying that the story is very different than the original one, but I have to say I disagree. The first 2/3 of the book were very similar to the Snow White story and only in the end there was a turn of events. It also takes place in that same time period, which I also consider as “staying close to the original”.

So, naturally we have the evil queen. What I liked about her was that she was described as being stunningly beautiful. I keep getting the disney version in my head, but the truth is that in the original story the queen is supposed to be beautiful. Apart from that, I liked that she wasn’t just evil, just like that. There was a back story and a reason why she had become like that. I also liked reading from her perspective the most. The points of view were changing throughout the book, but I was always most excited to read from the queen’s perspective. I generally find her the most interesting character. I don’t know, maybe I have a thing for villains! Lol!

I can’t say I learned very much about Snow White‘s character. She was more “quiet”, I think and I felt like the focus was more on the queen and maybe even the prince that it was on Snow. I was surprised by some of her decisions, though, because they were quite different than what I expected, but it wasn’t a negative surprise. Or a positive. It was just different.

Another thing I liked about the book was that the prince had a bigger role than usual. In the Snow White fairy tales I’ve read the prince usually only appears at the end of the story, kissing Snow White and living happily ever after. In this version of the story he appears much sooner and we get to know him a bit better. Can’t say I liked what I saw. The prince was definitely not “The Knight in shiny armor”, but I didn’t mind this version of the story. I quite enjoyed the change.

Another important and original thing about this book is the sexiness of it. It’s in the first sentence of the synopsis, so I expected it to have some hot scenes and I really liked that. To me almost every fairy tale has some hidden sexual messages and I really enjoyed bringing those to the surface. My inner Freud was nodding with approval while I was reading some of those scenes. But for that reason I might not recommend this book for people who are under 15 years old. Just to be safe.

So in general I rather enjoyed this book! I decided to give it 3.5 stars because it isn’t one of the books that are going to stick in my memory for a long time. I wasn’t really mind-blown. But I thoroughly enjoyed it and I will pick up the other two books for sure! They’re about Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty and I’ve heard that they’re actually even better.

Opening Line

“She’s too old for that nickname,” the queen said.

Mini Review

As the synopsis says ” a beautiful, sexy retelling of Snow White”!
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and especially the queen’s character.
In my opinion it isn’t very far from the original version, apart form some sexy scenes

Recommend it for…

• Snow white fans
• fans of retellings

Tour Page and Schedule

Broken Arrows by Chelsey Butler

Page Count: 174 pages
Released Feb. 6, 2014
Adult Romantic Fantasy

Cari Harris lives what should be a charmed life. She owns a quaint bed and breakfast in a charming southern town, is surrounded by loving friends and family, and possesses magical powers. Most of the residents in Fable, GA, are descended from mythical creatures straight out of fairy tales, and Cari is no exception. As a descendent of Cupid, she has the ability to see when two people are soul mates and the power to make sure they fall in love. However, this power is sometimes more of a curse than a blessing, because Cari is also the town screw up.

While hosting a murder mystery weekend at her inn, she tries to match a young couple and makes a huge mistake. Now she must fix her mistake before the guests leave at the end of the weekend, all while making a bigger mess of things along the way, in her typical fashion.

As if Cari didn’t have enough to worry about already, her old boyfriend just moved back to town. Years ago, she forced herself to stop thinking about Mike, but now that he’s back, there is no avoiding him. It’s a small town and she keeps running in to him, no matter how much she hopes to avoid it. When she stumbles across some unexpected secrets, and Mike helps her with her current matchmaking dilemma, all of her feelings from the past come flooding back.

Goodreads | Amazon

 

Review

So when I read the Title and the Synopsis of the book it immediately reminded me of the TV show “Once Upon a Time” (which I love by the way) and it actually turned out to be kind of similar to it. Yay!

The whole story takes place in this town where everyone has some kind of a fairy tale ancestor. Like tooth fairies and friggin’ Santa Claus! It was really super cute! Cari, our protagonist, is the daughter of Cupid. So her job is to see the aura between couples and bring them together. Unfortunately she seems to be a bit too clumsy to do the job and we follow her as she’s trying to fix one of her spells gone wrong, while managing her guests at the inn she owns, trying to find time for her family and friends and dealing with her ex boyfriend who just came back to town.

Cari’s character was my favorite part of the book. She’s so relate-able and she has the best job ever! She runs a little inn in a cute little town. Seriously this books is so so cute! I could honestly describe it in this one word. So, back to Cari. She’s also incredibly funny and I couldn’t help but laugh at her clumsiness and all the things going wrong. I liked how she tried to figure everything out and make everything right again. I also loved how much she cared about everyone and tried to bring other people together.

The story of the book is quite interesting. I couldn’t figure out who the love interest was going to be. We have the ex boyfriend who came back to town after having left Cari some years ago to go study and then we have the guest in the inn who has accidentally fallen head over heals for Cari. I wouldn’t characterize it as a love triangle, though, as Cari didn’t seem to care about any of them at first, so that’s the only reason I was a bit confused. It was an interesting sort of situation and all of that during a mystery theme weekend with the inn being full of guests and people trying to solve the “mystery”.

This book is very short (only 170 pages) and I actually think it could use a few more. Especially in the ending. The ending of the book was actually a downside for me mainly because it was so abrupt. I was actually asking myself if there were a couple of pages missing (Lol). I would definitely like to find out what happens next and I will be anxiously awaiting the sequel.

So to sum it all up, I really loved the main idea behind the book and the character of the protagonist. I would like for the book to be a bit longer so that I could get to know the characters a bit better and become more invested in the story. But I’m looking forward to the sequel and how the story will continue from there. Did I mention this is a series? It’s called “The Cupid Chronicles”. How cute is that?

About the Author

Chelsey Butler was born and raised near Fort Worth, Texas. She still lives in north Texas with her husband and four daughters, but she rebels against the Texan stereotype. She loves God, her family, and all things involving books, and is a self-proclaimed nerd, a history buff, and vintage enthusiast. She also writes young adult fantasy under the name S.G. Tillery. Chelsey loves hearing from her fans and encourages them to find her on Facebook.

Facebook | Twitter

Giveaway:

$10 Gift Card

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This tour was organized by CBB Book Promotions.

Title:

Rating: 

Goodreads 

“Well, don’t expect us to be too impressed. We just saw Finnick Odair in his underwear.” 

Review

Ahh… the last book in the trilogy. I have very mixed feelings about this book. Or maybe I don’t have very nice feelings about this book would be more accurate. I was quite disappointed, to be honest. I really wanted this series to end with another amazing book and a lot of plot twists, but that is not exactly what I got.

Let me start from the beginning. The second book ended with quite a major cliff-hanger. Katniss gets rescued from the hunger games and finds out that Peeta got captured by the Capitol. On top of that District 12, her home, has been destroyed and she is heading to District 13, which everyone thought had been utterly destroyed.

In contrast to the previous two books, I actually liked the beginning of this one. I was anxious to see where the story would go now that the whole county was in a revolution and I wanted to find out more about District 13. Unfortunately, my excitement subsided quite quickly. The first thing that started annoying me was, once again, Katniss. Highlight text to view spoiler: I had some issues with her from the second book already, but in the third one she got more and more annoying. I honestly couldn’t deal with her whining anymore! I get that most of you probably don’t agree with me since Katniss is a favorite character of so many people, but I’m really fed up with her after the third book. I don’t get why everyone thinks she so selfless. I found her to be exactly the opposite. Ok, she was worried about Peeta, but there was so much more at steak. Lives of millions of people were about to change and she was thinking about the people she killed in the hunger games. When everyone else was killing each other because of the war anyway! And all they wanted her to do was become the “mascot” and help the revolution that way. And she couldn’t even agree to that, even though it seems like she was agreeing with the idea of overthrowing the Capitol.

Enough about Katniss, though. The other thing that I found very confusing was the situation in District 13. It seemed very weird and I couldn’t quite understand it. It’s very hard to describe without spoilers, so if you’ve read the book highlight the text to view spoiler: They all had this schedule that they HAD to follow, everyone was assigned a certain activity whether they liked it or not and they were even controlled on what and how much they would eat. Excuse me, but they’re supposed to be trying to create a better life for themselves, right? What the heck? This seems like complete lack of freedom and the even weirder thing was, I didn’t see anyone complaining about it! What is going on?

Moving on with the book, there were some parts that I found entertaining, like some action scenes. There were also some plot twists (mostly the one regarding Peeta) that I really enjoyed, but other than that I can’t say I found anything positive in the book. While reading it I was thinking it would be an “ok” book, but the ending completely pissed me off! Highlight text to view spoiler: Katniss gets married and has children? What? That was the one thing she said she didn’t want to do from book one! And why did she do it? Not because she changed her mind. Not because the hunger games were no more. Not even because the world had become a better place. But because Peeta wanted to. Ok. That makes total sense. Just do what the man tells you to do. Am I the only one who finds this misogynistic and completely anti-feministic? I was absolutely furious when I read that and decided to rate the book 2 stars instead of the 3 it would probably get from me if it weren’t for that.

And just one last thing I would like to discuss regarding the new state of things. Highlight text to view spoiler: What the hell is the new system exactly? Katniss killed president Coin because she was apparently exactly the same as Snow. Can’t say I disagree with that. But what happens then? In the end we see Katniss living in District 12 along with a few people, but what happens to the whole system? Because up to that point it didn’t seem like they had found anything better than the one that already existed? Is this supposed to have some deeper meaning of “the world never changes – people never change”? Or what is it exactly? I was quite confused about this aspect of the book.

So, all in all I can’t say I liked this book at all. The only reason I gave it 2 stars instead of 1 was because of how much I liked the previous books. It had a couple of redeeming aspects, but if it were a standalone it would probably get 1 star from me.

P.S. Sorry for the many spoilery parts. I found it very difficult to write a non-spoiler review about this.

Opening Line

I stare down at my shoes, watching as a fine layer of ash settles on the worn leather.

Mini Review

Completely disappointed by the last book.
I didn’t like neither the story nor the characters anymore.
I would say I liked the series as a whole, but the last book was just so bad!

Recommend it for…

• fans of dystopians

Top 10 Tuesday is a feature/weekly meme created at the broke and the bookish

This week’s topic is to list the top 10 books whose covers you would frame.

I love today’s topic! I have so many covers that I love and would have no problem to hang on my walls.

Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn

Η Κόρη του Φεγγαριού (Daughter of the moon) Νικόλ – Άννα Μανιάτη

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

The Edge of Never by J. A. Redmerski

Alice in Zombieland by Gena Showalter

Mind Games by Kiersten White

Perfect Ruin by Lauren DeStefano

Fates by Lanie Bros

Stray by Elissa Sussman

Skylark by Meagan Spooner

What do you think of all these? Which ones do you like?