Month: October 2014

Review: Black Ice by Becca Fitzpartick

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Black Ice by Becc16059938a Fitzpartick
Genre: Thriller, Contemporary
Published by: Simon & Schuster
Pages: 400
Format: E-Book
Rating: ★.5
Where to Find: Goodreads | Amazon

This book was completely not what I was expecting. In many ways it reminded me of Gone – you know, that movie with Amanda Seyfried? I’m not the biggest fan of thrillers, and Black Ice was the first one I’ve read, so it was exciting in that sense. Black Ice also happens to be the October Booksplosion book of the month, and I am definitely interest in watching the live show discussion, because I have a feeling there are going to be some pretty diverse opinions.

The main problem I had with this book was how weak the main character, Britt, was. I know that was kind of the whole point of the plot, but I’ve read weak girl gets saved by handsome stranger before. What I wanted to read was more along the lines of kickass girl who says she’s been preparing for backpacking trip actually turns out to be good and gets herself out of the situation without the need to some guy. That would have been a very different story. Britt wasn’t unlikeable, but she was super dependant on other people and although she was supposed to have changed by the end, I didn’t really get that. Yes, she was brave, but she was still naive.

I liked guessing who the real bad guy was, but found myself disappointed when my suspicions were actually true. I wanted to have believed one thing and then be told it was something completely different. In retrospect, I guess it was sort of predictable. I was making assumptions about the real bad guy from the very beginning, and even said to Maddie that I thought it was him – and what do you know? It was.

I often have trouble ascertaining the length of time that these kind of books are supposed to take place. What I thought was over a week, turned out to be four days! Four days! That doesn’t sound nearly as bad as ‘we were trapped in the forest for two weeks.’ However, other than that I didn’t really find that I had a problem with the pacing. I mainly wanted to keep reading so that I could find out who the killer was. I’d gotten 60% through and they’d already been kidnapped  and someone had been murdered and I thought, ‘what else could possibly go wrong.’

The romance element was okay, but perhaps unnecessary. I did really like the dynamic between Britt and her love interest, but she was too quick to judge him and I found myself rolling my eyes quite a bit at her actions. She was too caught up in trying to love Calvin, her ex, and I was just screaming ‘why why why’  at her. Move on! Because he obviously has.

I liked the slow reveal, and though that the ending was satisfying. Just the right amount of closure I needed, even if it was a bit mushy and really changed the tone of everything that came before it. I can’t say that I’ll be reading any more thrillers in the future, but Black Ice was certainly an experience, and despite feeling on edge the whole time, and despite my harsh judgement I did enjoy it, and would give the book about three stars. Especially considering I don’t have any other thrillers to compare it to. However, I definitely prefer Fitzpatrick’s Hush, Hush!

Review: A Little Something Different by Sally Hall

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A LittlA Little Something Differente Something Different by Sally Hall
Genre: Contemporary, Romance
Published by: Swoon Reads
Pages: 273
Format: E-Book
Rating: ★★★★★
Where to Find: Goodreads | Amazon

What’s not to love about this book? I completely adored it and am going to spend the next four hundred words fawning over it.

The premise of the novel is that it’s a love story, between Lea and Gabe, told from basically everyone’s perspective expect Lea and Gabe’s. This includes a squirrel and a bench. A BENCH. An inanimate object has a part to play in Gabe and Lea’s love story. Genius.

Although there are fourteen different perspectives, all of them completely work and all of them I loved, which is odd because I normally have a favourite when it comes to multiple points of view. If I had to pick one, it would probably be Victor, a student in Lea and Gabe’s creative writing class that wishes the two of them would get together already so he wouldn’t have to deal with the sappy looks they give each other. Lea and Gabe are both his NO-TP and his OTP, I think.

I think it’s such a beautiful idea that people in all different kinds of situations can be invested in two people and want them to get together. It makes me think if teachers really do ‘ship’ their students together, or whether waitresses do create their own couples from their customers.

Of course, this really was the worst book if you get annoyed when characters can’t make the moves on each other. I did find myself, at points, being like ‘Gabe, just say you like her!’, ‘Lea, just kiss him!’. But this wasn’t a game of Sims. I couldn’t control their actions and for that I am glad, because otherwise the book would have been very short and Lea and Gabe would have got married.

They really were perfect for each other. I have nothing bad to say about them because it was literally the most ‘aw’dorable book I’ve ever read. Ingenious, humorous, real. Brilliant, beautiful and original. Higher praise could not be given.

My dream is to buy hundreds of copies of this book and then throw them into the streets for people to read and feel happy as a result. Right now, I smiling as I write this review, just thinking about what happened in the book and how darn cute it all was.

My only problem with it, and this isn’t really a problem, is that it could have been looooonger. I would have definitely appreciated another fifty pages discussing Gabe and Lea’s relationship since they got together, but I guess that’s what fan fiction is for.

Overall, I’d give this book 5 out of 5 stars, because it just impressed me so darn much. I’d recommend it to fans of Rainbow Roweel and Morgan Matson – this is exactly the time of book that would fit in between ‘Fangirl’ and ‘Amy and Roger’s Epic Retour’.

Review: Famous in Love by Rebecca Serle

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Famous in Love famous-in-loveby Rebecca Serle
Genre: Contemporary, Romance
Published by: Macmillian Children’s Books
Pages: 309
Format: E-Book
Rating: ★★★.5
Where to Find: Goodreads | Amazon

I requested this book on  NetGalley because I thought it would be like ‘Hidden Gem’ by India Lee, as it was about a girl that became a movie star, (except Gemma became a popstar.) I kind of YA ‘Hannah Montana’.

This book definitely delivered on the promised ‘love’ of the title. The main character, Paige, gets to co-star with two guys, Rainer and Jordan, both of whom she falls in love with (although at different times.) We all know how hard it was for Bella to pick between two equally hot guys (and my guess is that Jordan is Edward in this scenario – the forbidden love) so as you can imagine, it was equally hard for Paige.

Can anyone imagine having two guys after them? The only time I’ve had two guys even talking to me was when I represented North Korea at a Model UN conference, and that was just to give me war threats. Paige doesn’t know how well she has it.

I did enjoy the book, in a cheesy ‘this is sweet’ kind of way, when it was easy to guess the outcome and the inevitable turmoil the protagonist would feel. However, this book really lacked in actual plot line. Apart from the romance, not much else went on, and if something fun was introduced in the plot (like a good ol’ book signing) it was skipped over in favour of a long car journey to the beach.

I felt that some of the things that happened to Paige, for example about half way through the book she nearly gets killed by a huge wave whilst swimming in the ocean, seemed out of place. Sure, it caught my attention, but I wasn’t expecting to have to contemplate death in the middle of a sappy romance book.

Neither of the love interests really appealed to me as much as they did for Paige. Secretly, I think they had very similar personalities, expect one was distinctly more moody than the other. Keeping with the Twilight parallels, we can all guess that the moody one was Jordan.

I was just glad neither boy was called Jake. It’s such a classic hot-guy name.

‘Famous in Love’ really didn’t take me long to finish and left me with a unsatisfying ending. Paige ended up with the guy I didn’t want her to end up with. The romance was for his sake, not hers and that seemed completely wrong. I don’t know if this book is going to be turned into a series or not but if so, I think I’d be very interested to see how the love triangle (ugh) unfolds.

Overall, I’d give ‘Famous in Love’ 3.5 stars as it didn’t do anything to wow me, but I still enjoyed the story enough to plough through it in under a week. Now, back to Shakespeare plays for me.

Review: Pushing the Limits by Katie McGarry

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Push10194514ing the Limits by Katie McGarry
Genre: Contemporary, Romance
Published by: Harlequin Teen
Pages: 392
Format: Paperback
Rating: ★★★★
Where to Find: Goodreads | Amazon

This book has an incredibly clichéd blurb that doesn’t do the story justice. The blurb on the edition I own seems like it was created to attract the Twilight audience, so I was a little apprehensive to pick it up. I bought Pushing the Limits almost a year ago, and decided that it had been gathering dust for long enough, and it was time to give it a chance.

The story alternates between the perspectives of Echo and Noah. Echo had a troubled past, because her mother is mentally ill and her dad has replaced her mum with Echo’s old babysitter who is expecting a baby. Echo’s brother Ares dies in Afghanistan, leaving Echo with no one. Her boyfriend tried to pressure her into sex, and her friends seem too obsessed with ‘normal’ to care about Echo’s problems. Noah is a rebel, with a reputation that speaks for itself. He’s a foster kid who is trying to gain custody of his brothers after his parents died. He, like Echo, has a problem with loving others – except for his two younger brothers. The two meet because of their counsellor, who asks Echo to tutor Noah.

The first thing that I loved about this novel is how hard hitting it is. It deals with incredibly serious topics in an engaging way. I was also surprised at the shear amount of swearing, drug and sexual content considering it’s written for a primarily young adult audience. However, I think that is exactly why I enjoyed this book so much, because it was just so different from everything else I have read before.

Throughout the novel Echo is trying to work out her past, because she has supressed the memory of the night that she got her scars and this was extremely intriguing to read. As Echo learnt more and more about her past so did we. The same went for Noah and his life. Both reveals were quite slow, but not slow enough that you would get bored and put the book down. In fact, once I actually got started I found it hard to stop! I just wished that there was a bit more closure, an development on Echo’s side of the story, because I feel like her family have a lot left to work for, but I do believe that there is a sequel novella that I will have to get my hands on to fill in some of the gaps. I wanted Echo to be more forgiving; I felt like she changed a lot when she got together with Noah, I’m not necessarily saying that this was a bad thing, but I feel that we’ve only just scratched the surface of Echo’s personality and I would definitely be interested in reading more about what happens to her in the future. Noah, on the other hand, had quite a lot of closure, but again there was a shocking reveal at the end of the novel that could change everything, so I need more more more.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I cried at least three times whilst reading, and it was always Noah’s adorable brothers, and his relationship with them, that got the tears streaming down my face. It’s supposed to be a light contemporary, but oh no! It’s so much more than that, and I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in reading something a little bit different.

Another main point is the fact that all of the secondary characters seemed relevant to the story. They weren’t forgotten. Granted, we don’t know everything about their lives, but it was still satisfying enough to make me want to read the sequel which is from Beth’s point of view – one of Noah’s best friends – and I do believe that the third book is Isaiah’s story. Heck, I’d probably even read Pushing the Limits from Mrs Collins’ perspective and still love it. I’m invested in these characters, I’ll miss Echo and Noah, but they’ve had their sort of happy ending now, so I want to know what happens to the other misfits who deserve as much love as anyone else.

Overall, I have decided never to judge a book by its cover again, otherwise I never would have read this amazing story! I would rate Pushing the Limits four out of five stars.

 

Review: Since You’ve Been Gone by Morgan Matson

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Since You’ve18189606 Been Gone by Morgan Matson
Genre: Contemporary, Romance, Adventure
Published by: Simon & Schuster
Pages: 449
Format: Paperback
Rating: ★★★★★
Where to Find: Goodreads | Amazon

If you are a frequent watcher of mine and Maddie’s videos, then you may already know that Morgan Matson is probably my favourite standalone author. Although, I would not complain if Amy and Roger got a sequel. In fact, it might be my greatest wish. Therefore, I was extremely happy when Amy and ‘her boyfriend’ – pause for cuteness overload – got a small mention. (Apparently Amy and her boyfriend are backpacking around Europe! So I would like Amy and Roger’s Epic Hike to be a thing. Please.) However, the fact that my OTP got a mention in Since You’ve Been Gone was not the only thing I likes, and it certainly wasn’t the only reason why this book was awarded five stars and made it to my favourites shelf.

Once again, Matson delivered on character development. I went from sighing at the beginning of the novel thinking ‘oh no. It’s going to be another one of those stories.’ You know the ones. The ones where our protagonist is super weak and can’t do anything on her own and so seeks out a dark, moody and protective boyfriend. I could not have been more wrong. Okay, so Emily is very weak at the beginning, but thanks to some extremely high quality character development and planning she ends up as this super awesome girl who can do anything she sets her mind to. Although, this revelation is helped by her beautifully charming love interest, it is not – I repeat, it is not – as a result of him. It’s partly to do with her, but partly to do with Sloane, who I will talk about more later.

I loved the premise of Since You’ve Been Gone, the mystery is so engaging, and the chapters with elusive titles mean you won’t be able to put this book down. If you are unaware of the premise for Since You’ve Been Gone, then I will sum it up by saying girl’s best friend abandons her leaving only a list of things that she has to complete over the summer. Some of these things are easy, some extremely difficult, and some illegal. Every chapter is dedicated to one of these things, which is quirky, but also means that you know what’s going to happen OR DO YOU? There were some items on the list such as ‘ride a dang horse, ya cowpoke’ and multiple times throughout the book Emily tries to do this but I was thinking ‘Em, ride a horse isn’t the name of the chapter, you’re not doing it yet.’ Some of the items were deliciously woven in, because they were figurative rather than literal, which I will admit led to some happy exclamations on my part when everything clicked.

There was no way that I would be able to get through this review without talking about Frank. Frank, Frank, Frank. He was wonderful, extremely nice, and extremely wonderful – twice for emphasis. Emily picks up a few friends along the go to help her with the quest, Frank being one of them. Frank is someone that Emily’s seen around school, and thinks she knows, but like most people, he is completely different outside the school environment. Emily is the sort of girl who is invisible at school and is known solely as ‘Sloane’s friend’ but would you believe it, Frank knows her name! Their relationship develops slowly, but surely, at just the right pace for a novel of its size. There was no insta-love, and their ending is as ambiguous as Amy and Roger’s, which although I really don’t like as soon as I finish the book, I love in hindsight, because you can come up with your own happy ending. Sometimes it’s nice not to have everything spelled out for you, I like to piece these things together myself.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t slightly worried, and maybe even a little bit unnerved, by Sloane and Emily’s friendship. At first I thought that Sloane was a bad influence, and that she was just using Emily. I think it’s hard, even with best friends, to know if that person likes you and depends on you as much as you like and depend on them. That was my favourite relationship that was explored in Since You’ve Been Gone, because it showed a realistic friendship dynamic.

Although there were certain plot points that made me want to give the characters a stern talking to, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The ups and the downs, the slow and the fast paced bits; when Emily was on her own, when Emily was with Frank, when Emily was with her family and when Emily was with Frank, Collins, and Dawn. I liked the flashback elements, which was where we got to find out more about Sloane before she left, even though I’m not really partial to that kind of layout. In Since You’ve Been Gone, it worked well, and helped the flow of the story, and didn’t interrupt the pacing, every flashback was relevant.

Overall, I loved every second of it and would highly recommend Since You’ve Been Gone. I just can’t wait to see what Morgan Matson does next!

Review: Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi

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Under the NeveUnder the Never Skyr Sky by Veronica Rossi
Genre: Fantasy, Supernatural, Romance
Published by: Atom
Pages: 374
Format: Paperback
Rating: ★★★★★
Series: Through The Ever Night (#2) | Into the Still Blue (#3)
Where to Find: Goodreads | Amazon

This book has definitely made its way on to my favourite shelf (the hypothetical one on GoodReads because this is actually Bee’s book!) ‘Under the Never Sky’ definitely fulfilled the expectations I had for it after seeing that people were labelling this series as addictive as a class B drug.

Continue reading “Review: Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi” →

Review: Blood Wars by Brenda Pandos

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BloBlood Warsod Wars by Brenda Pandos
Genre: Supernatural
Published by: Obsidian Mountain Publishing
Pages: 96
Format: E-Book
Rating: ★★
Where to Find: Goodreads | Amazon

I didn’t actually realise that ‘Blood Wars’ was a continuation of a series that Brenda Pandos had already written called ‘The Talisman Series’, so in that respect, I can’t write a lot about this book because it wasn’t the first time readers were supposed to have met the characters or the situation.

However, the events of the series were explained throughout in bite sized chunks that didn’t make the continued series feel to laboured. I was able to grasp what was going on fairly quickly and didn’t have too many questions. Good.

The plot unfolded quickly, with motives behind each character’s actions easy to understand. The relationships between the characters, especially Julia, Phil and Nicholas were obvious, which was definitely a great thing, as I hadn’t read the series. Personalities were simple to read as well, which made this book an effective short story.

I’d definitely call this book a short story, as it was under one hundred pages, but no less enjoyable than a three hundred page book. If anything, I enjoyed it more because it was too the point. With a short story, there’s not a lot that you, as the reader, feel needs to be cut out because of irrelevance. Everything was relevant, everything was explained: the perfect package.

The book completed one of its functions in making me want to read the original series, although I’m pretty spoiled on what happens! 🙂 One of my only complaints, as an unqualified reader, was the lack of vampires. More vampires. (Of course, that was the plot for there to be no vampires in a previous vampire world, but more subtle hints of their continuous existence would have been nice!)

Overall, I’d give this book 2 stars, because it did have substance, but having not read the original series, I could not become as attached to the characters and the romances as I’d have liked to. Also props for the dramatic cover. Blood red was a nice touch.

Review: The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion

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The Rosie EThe rosie effectffect by Graeme Simsion
Genre: Contemporary, Adult
Published by: Penguin
Pages: 411
Format: ARC E-Book
Rating: ★★★
Series: The Rosie Project (#1)
Where to Find: Goodreads | Amazon

I finally did it! It feels like I’ve been reading this book for ages and now it’s finally over. Am I relieved? Maybe.

I really did enjoy ‘The Rosie Project’, the first book in this series. It was different, fresh and new (and one of the only new adult books I’ve read so I didn’t have much to compare it too!) But this book…well, it didn’t spend five years in the making.

Things I loved about this book include:
– Don’s consistent personality: just because he got his Rosie happy ending didn’t mean he lost any of the quirkiness he had before Rosie.
– The introduction of George, Dave and Sonia: lovely additional characters, who all helped Don grow as a person in some way.
– The gradual progression of the relationship between Don and Rosie: Data – check. Marriage – check. Pregnant – check.
– Some humorous episodes, like the Plane Incident: sometimes I wonder how Simsion researched these things….

Things I didn’t love about the book:
– How one person’s opinion defined Don’s capability to be a father.
– The distance between Don and Rosie that did not coincide with a year of marriage.
– The web of deceit that was created: it felt kind of like a Shakespeare play, complete with pretending to be someone else!
– Rosie’s inability to accept Don for who he was and actually pay attention to all the effort he was making to improve his chances of being a good father, no matter how many court trials were drawn up against him.

That’s a pretty balanced list! (and definitely something Don would appreciate.) There were a lot of elements within the book that reminded me of ‘The Rosie Project’ and showed great continuity between the characters. I was a little confused, in ‘The Rosie Project’ to how long Don and Rosie were actually together (it turned out to be six months or something!) and a year of marriage on top of that did little to show how much they understood each other.
I guess that’s the problem with loving someone who is so different from you. Sometimes you won’t see eye to eye. I just wish that Don and Rosie were able to reach more of a compromise, rather than doing what Rosie wanted the majority of the time.

I’d recommend this book to people that liked the first (we all know how risky a sequel is!) and to anyone that’s interested in reading about a more adult relationship. Overall, I’d give this book about 3 stars, because the negatives drew a lot from the positives.

(The UK haven’t got a very interesting cover for this series!)

Review: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews

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me earl and the dying girlMe and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews
Genre: Contemporary, Humor
Published by: Allen & Unwin
Pages: 295
Format: Paperback
Rating: ★★.5
Where to Find: Goodreads | Amazon

To like this book, I think you have to really enjoy certain types of humour:
a.) Self-depreciating – the main character, Greg, cannot accept a compliment and loves to make comments along the lines of ‘goodness, I hate myself”
b.) Gross – was it Jesse Andrews mission to reference stomach bile as many times as possible
c.) Sexual – ew.

Unfortunately, I’m not a fan of these, at all. I found the things that Greg said, that were meant to be funny, not hilarious at all. However, I did enjoy the blunt way Greg had no self belief about ‘his’ book. It made me keep reading, just to prove to him (and myself) that I could.

As far as characters go, Greg, Earl and Rachel were fairly two dimensional. Greg makes a point at the end how he didn’t really get to know either of his friends, but was this just a cover up for plot-holed writing? I didn’t connect with any of the trio and I especially think Rachel should have played a bigger part in the novel. But, I guess she’s just labelled ‘the dying girl’, so at least she serves a purpose.

The minor characters within the book felt very forced to fit certain stereotyped groups (though I have a feeling that was Andrews’ intention.) My favourite character was probably Greg’s mother but only because she reminded me of my mum occasionally.

Did I just stick it out with this book because it was under 300 pages? Maybe.

One advantage to this book is that it does what it says on the tin…or cover. You get Greg (me), Earl and a dying girl but literally not much else. Greg struck me as someone I would not like to be friends with, but also gave me an epiphany. I usually describe myself, as does Bee, as ‘the funny one’ in social situations. We’re a witty duo that thrive from laughter. However, Greg made me realise that there’s so much more to me than that. Greg doesn’t have any true friends because he relies to much on his humour and social invisibility. I have a lot of friends, but not just because I can crack a joke or two. There are other, better, qualities that people admire about me (hopefully) that make them want to be my friend and Greg’s depreciation made me appreciate that my personality doesn’t rely on one trait to be well liked.

Woah, that was a tangent. Normally I’d try and write more about a book that 400 words, but I’m going to leave it there. I’d give this book somewhere between 2.5-3 stars. (2.75 stars?) because it just really wasn’t my cup of tea (although I don’t drink tea, so the phrase should be ‘this wasn’t my flavour of water’ and if you say water has no flavour, go to Cornwall.)