I'm excited to be participating in a Book Blitz today for Plastic Hearts by Lisa De Jong, hosted by Xpresso Book Tours. If you don't know this book yet, it's the first in a New Adult Contemporary series. Take a minute to read all about it below and be sure to check out the excerpt!

Plastic Hearts (Hearts #1) by Lisa De Jong

Genre: Contemporary
Level: New Adult
Publication Date: February 27, 2013

Summary: My life has always been safe. I like it that way. I grew up in a fake society where plastic hearts rule. If our hearts are made of plastic, they can never be broken. My parents have expectations and I do everything I can to meet them, even if it means giving up on my own dreams.

Now, all I want is to be free to make my own choices.

Dane Wright is everything I have been warned to stay away from. We met one night while I was with my perfect, parent-approved boyfriend and I haven’t stopped thinking about him. I don’t want to like him. I am doing everything I can to ignore his pull, but my heart seems to want what it cannot have, what it has never had.

Can he measure up? He may think I am too good for him, but maybe he is too good for me.

Life is a series of choices and I have never been able to make my own. Until one day, when my heart decides to make a choice for me.

Recommended for mature readers due to sexual content and language

    

I personally haven't had the chance to read this one yet, but I definitely will be soon! Between the excerpts I got to read and all the great reviews it's getting on Goodreads and Amazon, I can't pass it up. Let me know if you've read it or if you're planning on picking it up!

I have one more giveaway for you wonderful readers this month! This one is for the Love in Bloom Hop and it focuses on Lighthearted/Contemporary Young Adult Romance. How could I pass up that?! I couldn't. So I've come up with a few YA Contemporary Romances that I've loved and am giving one winner their pick of the options below. I hope you'll find something on this list that you want to read!

The Rules for the Giveaway:

• You must be at least 18 years old or 13 years old with a parent's permission to enter.
• The contest is open to International readers, so long as The Book Depository ships to you!
• There will be one winner who can choose one of the books listed above.
• I will contact the winner via email and they must respond within 48 hours or I will have to choose another winner.
• I'm not responsible for items that may get lost or damaged during delivery.
• I will delete entries that don't follow the instructions. So read carefully and don't cheat.

The Rafflecopter: 
a Rafflecopter giveaway
The Hop:

It's time again for a New Release Giveaway and this month it's going to be easy. I'm giving one International reader the choice between Dare You To by Katie McGarry and The 5th Wave by Rick Yancy. These are two of my most anticipate May releases and I'd love to share one of them with you! Just make sure you enter with the Rafflecopter, following all of the instructions and rules of the giveaway, of course.

The Rules for the Giveaway:

• You must be at least 18 years old or 13 years old with a parent's permission to enter.
• The contest is open to International readers, so long as The Book Depository ships to you!
• There will be one winner who can choose between Dare You To and The 5th Wave.
• I will contact the winner via email and they must respond within 48 hours or I will have to choose another winner.
• I'm not responsible for items that may get lost or damaged during delivery.
• I will delete entries that don't follow the instructions. So read carefully and don't cheat.

The Rafflecopter:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Hop:

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted each week by The Broke and the Bookish as a way to combine our love of lists with our love of books. This week's topic is my Top Ten Books Dealing With Tough Subjects. In all honesty, I haven't read that many books on tough subjects because most of the time when I read I do it to escape. Not that my life is hard or anything, because I'm lucky enough that it is far from that. I just get dragged down easily and need to be in a very specific mood to be able to read heavy books. But I still came up with a list of books that I think are really good at dealing with these tough subjects and would recommend almost everyone read them whether you've dealt with the subject or not. So here are the books that I recommend on tough subjects (sorry about the pictures, they're sizing was giving me problems and I just couldn't work on it any longer):

• If I Stay/Where She Went by Gayle Forman: I think these two books together are a really interesting and beautiful look at grief and loss and anger. I highly recommend both of them.
• The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen: I haven't dealt with the loss of a parent yet, but this book seems to be a very honest look at how one teenager deals with the loss of her father.
• Easy by Tammara Webber: This book deals with sexual assault in a very upfront way. It puts it out there and doesn't gloss over any of it. Readers see the character fall apart and pick herself back up again. It's very empowering.
• Something Like Normal by Trish Doller: This is a great book that deals with a soldier's experience with PTSD and grief as well as family issues. I was blown away by this one.

• Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher: This one is pretty standard. It deals with suicide and loss. Told from two POVs, it shows how one girl falls deeper and deeper into hopelessness through recorded tapes of her last weeks and how one boy deals with learning all about her feelings and her reasons for no longer wanting to live. It's very difficult to read and brought out a lot of emotions in me. But I think it's a really important book to read as well.
• Wonder by R.J. Palacio: This is actually a middle-grade book about a boy born with a severe facial deformity. It's a beautiful story about his first year in public school, how people react to him, how the kids in school treat him, how his family supports him, and how he learns to accept himself. I highly recommend it, especially if you want a book that deals with tough subjects that is also very uplifting.
• The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls: This book gave me so many feelings when I first read it. I had just become a parent and was suffering from not feeling good enough. Who was I to think that I deserved to be a parent? Then I read this book and realized that I was good enough. While I certainly didn't want to live like her family and wanted to offer more stability for my kids, in the end, all I really needed to do was love them. I could screw up and if I was lucky enough, maybe one day my kids would love me the way Jeaneatte still loves her parents, regardless of how much she hated the things that went on in her childhood. This is a beautiful (and heartbreaking) book about family, love, growing up, taking care of yourself, and learning to accept our parents for who they are, not who we want them to be. I highly recommend it.
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky: Can there be a list about dealing with tough subjects without this book on it? Probably. But I'm putting it on mine. It deals with so many tough subjects, I would recommend that every teenager read it. I wish I had read it when I was younger. Also, the movie was really great.
• The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith: Okay, I realize compared to the rest of these books, this one seems really out of place. But I put it in here because I really related to it. TSPoLaFS deals with a semi-absent father, his second wedding, and all of Hadley's feelings about his new life. It has been one of the only books I've read about divorce where I really related to the character and understood what she was going through.

Honorable mention: I have to at least mention The Fault in Our Stars by John Green on here. While I'm not a huge fan of the book (or John Green's style), I do think that it does a great job dealing with the subject of terminal cancer in teenagers and I would definitely recommend this book to someone wanting to read about this subject.

Ok, those are the books I've got. Did you put any of these on your list? Let me know in the comments and be sure to leave a link to your post so I can come check it out!

As I posted earlier, I've joined up with the Bout of Books 7.0 read-a-thon. I'm so excited! It finally starts tomorrow so I've been scrambling to get my books all ready. This is the post that I will use to declare my goals for the read-a-thon as well as the post that I will be updating throughout the week with my progress. As a reminder, this is what the Bout of Books website says:

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, May 13th and runs through Sunday, May 19th in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure, and the only reading competition is between you and your usual number of books read in a week. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 7.0 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog.

My Goals

I'm a little behind on some review books, so I'll mostly be focusing on getting caught up. I've only got about 10% left of The End Games, so I want to finish that and then start of the others. I want to get at least three books read, but we'll just see how things go. Here are the books I'll be working on:

The End Games by T. Michael Martin
Golden by Jessi Kirby
Drowning in You by Rebecca Berto
The Book of Broken Hearts by Sarah Ockler
Dare You To by Katie McGarry

And if by some chance I finish all of those books, I'll read:

Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo
The 5th Wave by Rick Yancy
Boundless by Cynthia Hand

Updates

I'll update this post at the end of each day with how much I read of whatever book I'm on.

Monday

Reading Progress: Finished The End Games by T. Michael Martin
34% done with Golden by Jessi Kirby (I'm loving this! I wish I could stay up all night to finish it!)

Read-a-Thon Challenge: Book Spine Poetry: Hosted by Escape Through the Pages

Save Me
Before I Fall
Under the Never Sky
Gone
Forever...

Tuesday

Reading Progress: Finished Golden by Jessi Kirby (So Good!)
14% Done with Drowning in You by Rebecca Berto (Not so sure about this one. I'm having a hard time connecting to it right now. Hopefully it'll get better as I go along.)

Wednesday

Reading Progress: 23% Done with Drowning in You. (I had almost no time to read today, but I snuk in a few minutes at bed time. Also, I'm not completely sold on this book yet, so I'm having a hard time getting through it.)

Thursday

Reading Progress: 67% Done with Drowning in You. (The second half is much better than the first half.)
55 pages read of Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo. (I skipped a couple of books to start this one!)

Read-a-thon Challenge: Acrostic Poem Challenge: Hosted by Harley Bear Book Blog

Golden by Jessi Kirby:

G- Gorgeous Cover
O- Original Characters
L- Lockers
D- Destiny (kismet)
E- Engaging Mystery
N- New Favorite

Friday

Reading Progress: Finished Drowning in You by Rebecca Berto. I'll have a review for this up next week.

Read-a-Thon Challenge: Resummarize a Cover: Hosted by Queen Ella Bee Reads
I'll be resummarizing The End Games by T. Michael Martin, the first book I finished during Bout of Books 7.0.

The End Games

A boy. His brother. Together. Alone.

At the end of the world.

At the beginning of the game.

Defeat the zombies. Win the game.

But watch out. They see you.

And they won't let you run.

Saturday

Sunday

I am very happy today to be participating in the Children's Book Week Giveaway Hop. I think reading is very important and I encourage my own children to read every day. So far they both love reading and I only hope that will continue as they get older. Today, to help encourage reading, I will be giving 2 winners their choice from the books shown below! Just make sure you read the giveaways rules first. And you must fill out the Rafflecopter to be entered! Good luck! And don't forget to spread the reading joy!

What is Children’s Book Week?

Established in 1919, Children’s Book Week is the longest-running literacy initiative in the country. Each year, books for young people and the joy of reading are feted for a full week with author and illustrator appearances, storytelling, parties, and other book-related events at schools, libraries, bookstores, museums, and homes from coast to coast!

For more information please visit: http://www.bookweekonline.com/

The Rules for the Giveaway:

• You must be at least 18 years old or 13 years old with a parent's permission to enter.
• The contest is open to International readers!
• There will be two winners and each may pick a book from the group shown below.
• I will contact the winners via email and they must respond within 48 hours or I will have to choose another winner.
• I'm not responsible for items that may get lost or damaged during delivery.
• I will delete entries that don't follow the instructions. So read carefully and don't cheat.

 The Books:

The Rafflecopter:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Hop:

Of Poseidon (Of Poseidon #1) by Anna Banks: This is the first book I read that was dedicated to mermaids, so I wasn't sure how I would like it or what I would think beforehand. But I'd heard a lot about this Galen character, so I knew I had to check it out. The book starts out with a bang, no build-up here, it jumps right into the drama and I really enjoyed that about it. I also liked the funny dialogue, I actually laughed out loud a few times. I was also a pretty big fan of a few of the supporting characters in the book. Unfortunately, I also had some problems with it. The alternating POV was weird because it went from 1st person with Emma to 3rd person with Galen. Since I was listening to this on audio, it was confusing the first few times it changed. I also wasn't a huge fan of Galen. Gasp! I know. He was a bit controlling and felt like another Edward Cullen, totally beautiful and allowed to tell Emma what to do and not to do because he just loves her so much and knows what's best for her. Ugh. I also had issues with the total lack of rights given to female Syrena and a couple stereotyped characters. And, of course, Of Poseidon leaves on a bit of a cliffhanger. But the next one comes out later this month, so you won't have to wait too long if you read this one now.  I thought Of Poseidon was cute and funny and the audio was pretty good but it just wasn't my favorite book ever. 3 Stars

Days of Blood and Starlight (Daughter of Smoke and Bone #2) by Laini Taylor: I loved Daughter of Smoke and Bone so much because it felt so different from anything I'd read before. I was nervous about not feeling those same things for a second book in the series, but I needed to know more about Karou and Akiva and what was going to happen. I need not have worried. Laini Taylor's writing is as beautiful and heartbreaking as ever in the sequel. I was on the edge of my seat for much of the book and the narrator did a wonderful job conveying all of the emotions.  I cannot wait to read the final book in this series when it comes out next year. It is guaranteed to be epic. If you enjoyed the first book in this series you should definitely read this one. (Suzanna is still one of my favorite characters!) I gave Days of Blood and Starlight 4 stars and highly recommend the series to fans of fantasy books. I also highly recommend the audio of both books.

The Selection (The Selection #1) by Kiera Cass: The Selection is a book that has been talked about a lot. When it first came out, I stayed away from it. I didn't want to get involved in the mess, support an author who would behave the way she did, and just wasn't that interested in the story. But after a while, when I saw the audio was available from my library, I thought why not? Turns out, I shouldn't have bothered. The Selection was originally said to be a cross between The Bachelor and The Hunger Games. I don't watch The Bachelor but I'm sure it is similar. But The Hunger Games? The only similarities I saw were the fact that The Selection is said to be dystopian and there is a competition that airs on TV. Otherwise, it is not even close. The Selection has about zero world building, a caste system that makes no sense at all, characters that are annoying and whiny, and a story where almost nothing happens. Except for a love triangle. Kind of. I don't know. I don't really have anything else to say about this book except that I really was not a fan. I don't often have books that I just don't like at all, but this was one. Also, the narrator on the audio sounded like a robot. I seriously stopped the audio after a couple minutes and looked it up because I thought it was a robot. It wasn't. I wouldn't recommend the book or the audio. I gave it 1 star.

If I Stay (If I Stay #1) and Where She Went (If I Stay #2) by Gayle Forman: Oh my goodness, you guys, these books are so good. So. Good. (And nothing like Twilight, no matter what the cover says.) These are both contemporaries but the first has a sort of paranormal element because Mia has been in a car accident with her family and is telling the story as a sort of ghost while her body is in a coma in the hospital. She is trying to decide if she will stay and wake up or move on to whatever comes next. It is heartbreaking and raw but there is also hope and love. It is truly amazing. Where She Went is told from Adam's POV, Mia's boyfriend from If I Stay. It explores grief from a different POV and is also amazing and emotional. Both of these are also great examples of books that incorporate flashbacks and memories really well. I listened to these on audio back to back and they were better than I even imagined. I wasn't sure I could handle the emotions, but these books are beautiful and I highly recommend them. I also highly recommend the audios. They were each only about 5 hours, so they are very short and I promise you won't want to put them down! I gave If I Stay 4 stars and Where She Went 5 stars. Check them out!

It's time again for the Bout of Books Read-a-Thon. This is actually the first time I'll be participating in this particular read-a-thon but I'm really excited to be joining in. It'll be the last big reading spree I get before school gets out for the summer, so I'm really hoping to get a jump on my summer books. The read-a-thon runs from Monday to Sunday. Also, this is a really relaxed read-a-thon where you set your own goals and read at your own pace. Check this out from the Bout of Books website:

If you want to join in, just head over to the website, make your own sign-up post, and link up! Later on, you can state your goals, the books you want to read, and how much to want to read. You can participate in the challenges or completely sit them out. It is all up to you. The only requirement is that you write a post that says you are signing up. So go do it! And check back next week for a list of my goals and to see my progress during the week. I hope to see you there!

Feature and Follow is a weekly meme hosted by Parajunkee's View and Alison Can Read as a way to find new blogs and gain new followers. If you want to participate in Feature and Follow as well, make sure you check them out for all the rules of the hop and the featured blogs of the week.

This week's question: Give us a sneak! What are you reading? Tell us about a fun or fail scene in your current read.

I've actually got two books going right now: Partials by Dan Wells and The End Games by T. Michael Martin. I'm listening to Partials on audio (so far it's pretty good!) and reading The End Games on my e-reader. Partials is a dystopian set in the future after a war with engineered "humans" has killed almost all of the real human population and a virus has left the remaining humans unable to keep newborns alive and The End Games is a zombie book video game mashup sort of story that I just started but is already scaring me enough to make me only want to read it during the day. Needless to say, neither of these books has had any real 'fun' scenes.

Okay, now that I've failed to provide a real answer for this week's question I'd love to see your answers! Leave me a link so I can come visit and give you a follow!

Now, let's take a look back at April. The posts, the books I got, and my progress on all of those reading challenges!

The Books

Blackout by Robison Wells - eARC from HarperTeen via Edelweiss
Not a Drop to Drink by Mindy McGinnis - eARC from HarperTeen via Edelweiss
The Program by Suzanne Young - Purchased Hardcover
The Disenchantments by Nina LaCour - Purchased Paperback

This is What Happy Looks Like by Jennifer E. Smith - Borrowed from Library
Croak by Gina Damico - Paperback Traded via YA Book Exchange
Venom by Fiona Paul - ARC from ARCycling
Light by Michael Grant - ARC won from Epic Reads

The Posts

Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare
Welcome, Caller, This Is Chloe by Shelley Coriell
Life After Theft by Aprilynne Pike
Apollyon by Jennifer L. Armentrout
How Zoe Made Her Dreams (Mostly) Come True by Sarah Strohmeyer
Anticipated May 2013 Releases
Top Ten Book Crushes
Ten Books I Liked More or Less Than I Thought I Would

2013 Reading Challenges Progress

Standalone Reading Challenge 8/15

This Is What Happy Looks Like
How Zoe Made Her Dreams (Mostly) Come True
Life After Theft
The Distance Between Us

Paranormal Reading Challenge 7/12

Life After Theft - Ghosts
Days of Blood and Starlight - Angels
Of Poseidon - Mermaids

TBR Pile Reading Challenge 13/21

Of Poseidon
Days of Blood and Starlight
The Selection
Welcome, Caller, This Is Chloe
If I Stay
Where She Went
For Darkness Shows the Stars
The Raven Boys

Goodreads Reading Challenge 35/100