The Truth about Forever

The Truth about Forever

My rating 5/5
Summary (from Goodreads):  Sixteen-year-old Macy Queen is looking forward to a long, boring summer. Her boyfriend is going away. She's stuck with a dull-as-dishwater job at the library. And she'll spend all of her free time studying for the SATs or grieving silently with her mother over her father's recent unexpected death. But everything changes when Macy is corralled into helping out at one of her mother's open house events, and she meets the chaotic Wish Catering crew. Before long, Macy joins the Wish team. She loves everything about the work and the people. But the best thing about Wish is Wes—artistic, insightful, and understanding Wes—who gets Macy to look at life in a whole new way, and really start living it.

My review:

As a general rule, I don't read books without some sort of vampire, or witch, or angel, or fallen angel, or werewolf, or anything else like that.  This, though, was an exception.


I was sad at first; how horrible would it be to lose your father at such a young age?  But, of course, the book got better, starting with the Wish team.  I loved them so much!  The word they used to describe Delia, the head of the Wish crew, was 'frazzled', and that totally described her.  She never quite knew what she was doing, so their job normally ended up in complete and utter chaos, with about five things (not good things), at the very least, going on all the time.

I loved Wes!  He was a fun, nice character to read about.  I liked the twist with the Truth-telling, that was quite interesting and quirky!  I liked the game he and his brother Bert had going on.  The game was that they would jump out at each other and try and make the other scream.  I laughed every time that happened!

All in all, I loved the characters, the plot, and the ending, so I would definitely recommend The Truth about Forever to everyone!

The Hunger Games Movie!

This is just a quick post here, but I want to share to the world that the movie for The Hunger games now has a release date!  It will be coming out March 23 2012!  I can't wait to see it!

WoW - January 26th

WoW is a weekly meme hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.  It stands for Waiting on Wednesday, and the point is to share what book you want to read that week.  This week, I want to read:

Summary (from Goodreads):  The Summer King is missing; the Dark Court is bleeding; and a stranger walks the streets of Huntsdale, his presence signifying the deaths of powerful fey.
Aislinn tends to the Summer Court, searching for her absent king and yearning for Seth. Torn between his new queen and his old love, Keenan works from afar to strengthen his court against the coming war. Donia longs for fiery passion even as she coolly readies the Winter Court for battle. And Seth, sworn brother of the Dark King and heir to the High Queen, is about to make a mistake that could cost his life.

Why I want to read it:  I loved the other books in this series, and the latest one was my favourite.  I'm hoping this one is even better, though, too!!  And Keenan being missing?  Sounds fun!  (Never liked Keenan very much.)

WoW - January 19th

WoW is weekly meme hosted at Breaking the Spine that I do every week.  It stands for Waiting on Wednesday, and the point is to share what book you're most looking forward to that week.  This week, I can't wait for Ripple, by Mandy Hubbard.

Summary (from Goodreads):  Lexi is cursed with a dark secret. The water calls to her, draws her in, forces her to sing her deadly song to unsuspecting victims. If she succumbs, she kills. If she doesn’t, the pain is unbearable. To keep herself and those she cares about safe, she shuts herself off, refusing to make friends or fall in love—again. Because the last time she fell in love with a boy, he ended up dead.

Then Lexi meets Cole. Against her better judgment, she finds herself opening up again, falling in love when she knows she shouldn’t. But when she’s offered the chance to finally live a normal life, she learns that the price she must pay to be free of her curse is giving him up. 


Why do I want to read this book?  Well, it sounds a little creepy with the whole water calling and making her sing, but that sounds fun too.  It also has the interesting problem of her falling in love with a guy who she'll probably end up killing.  It just sounds like a really fun read!

Delirium

Delirium is a YA book by Lauren Oliver that will be coming out very soon.  Lauren Oliver is currently hosting a contest for a signed copy over at her blog.  It`s easy to enter, you get one entry if you comment on a post, two if you tweet about it, and three if you post a blog post.  Head over there to enter, the contest ends at the end of the month!

Nightshade

Nightshade by Andrea Cremer

My rating:  4/5
Summary (from Goodreads):  Calla Tor has always known her destiny: After graduating from the Mountain School, she'll be the mate of sexy alpha wolf Ren Laroche and fight with him, side by side, ruling their pack and guarding sacred sites for the Keepers. But when she violates her masters' laws by saving a beautiful human boy out for a hike, Calla begins to question her fate, her existence, and the very essence of the world she has known. By following her heart, she might lose everything— including her own life. Is forbidden love worth the ultimate sacrifice?


My review:

I loved Nightshade!  Starting from the cover, it had a certain way of keeping me wanting to read more about all the characters.

I immediately found my favourite wolves from the pack, and they continued to be favourites throughout the whole book.  For example, I liked Bryn as soon as she came into the story, and loved her all the way until the end.  Bryn is the second-in-command in the Nightshade Pack, Calla's pack.  She seemed like such a young and sweet little kid, while, at the same time, she was a fierce werewolf. 

Calla was also a great character to read about; she, like Bryn, was a strong wolf, but she was also so unsure of her decisions.  Unfortunately, I didn't like either of the male protagonists very much, and to completely love a book, the two main characters both need to be fun to read about, not just one.  Another thing that I admit I didn't like too much was the plot.  It started off great, it made me totally curious.  That curiosity started to leave me, though.  The plot was too slow, and it didn't pick up until near the end.  I didn't quite feel the anxiety that the characters felt, because I knew that everything would turn out okay in the end.

I'm not saying that Nightshade was a bad book at all.  In fact, it was fantastic.  I think it was Bryn and Calla who saved me from boredom, and also the vivid detail.  In my mind's eye, I could see the mountain that the pack of wolves controlled: all the nature, the sky, the other wolves.  I can`t wait until Wolfsbane comes out; the end of Nightshade was a huge cliffhanger!

WoW - January 12th

WoW is a weekly meme started by Jill at Breaking the spine.  It stands for Waiting in Wednesday, and the point is to share the book you're most anticipating that week.  For me it's got to be. . .

Tempest!

The book cover has not yet been released, but the expected publication date is Oct 13.  Why do I want to read it?  Because it's the third in the Hush Hush series, and the ending of Crescendo is just killing me.  There are so many questions that need to be answered, and it's just. . . driving me crazy!

Passion

This is just a quick post, but I want to share some great news:  the cover for Passion, by Lauren Kate, has been published!  The covers for these books are my absolute favourites.

It has a flash of colour the other ones don't.  Love it!

Halo

Halo by Alexandra Adornetto

My rating:  4.5/5
Summary (from Goodreads):  Three angels- Gabriel, the warrior; Ivy, the healer; and Bethany, the youngest and most human- are sent by Heaven to bring good to a world falling under the influence of darkness. They must work hard to conceal their luminous glow, superhuman powers, and, most dangerous of all, their wings, all the while avoiding all human attachments.

Then Bethany meets Xavier Woods, and neither of them is able to resist the attraction between them. Gabriel and Ivy do everything in their power to intervene, but the bond between Xavier and Bethany seems too strong.

The angel’s mission is urgent, and dark forces are threatening. Will love ruin Bethany or save her?

 My review:


I'm utterly amazed, especially given the fact that the author is only 18 years old.  It was written gorgeously, crafted out of pure imagination.


The cover always creates an impression for me.  If the cover is dark, then I'll think of it as a cold, spooky, gothic story.  If the cover is bright, then I automatically think of it as a bright, romantic, sappy sort of book.  So, for this book, I immediately thought of the latter.  I was right and wrong.  It is bright, romantic, and kind of sappy, in a way, but it also had a bit of a creepier tinge to it.

 I loved how the it was written in the point of view of the angel, instead of the normal person.  It added a very different touch to it, and you could see what it would feel like to be an angel come down to earth.  In Halo, they think of it as very different.  Although it would seem like this in any other novel, this book had a very particular way of describing the smells, sounds, sights, and every other thing humans experience, like different emotions and feelings.  As I was reading, I felt like I was Bethany, and all these things didn't seem right to me, either.


I really liked Xavier.  He was one of those guys who wanted to get caught up in something he shouldn't know about, and was quite happy to.  He wasn't dark and scary, like lots of other boys from books, but warm and innocent.


I keep on comparing Halo to other novels, but I guess I can't help it, it wasn't just another book about angels, and I want to prove it.  It was as beautiful on the inside as it was on the outside!

Revolution

Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly

 My rating: 4.5
Summary (from Goodreads):  BROOKLYN: Andi Alpers is on the edge. She’s angry at her father for leaving, angry at her mother for not being able to cope, and heartbroken by the loss of her younger brother, Truman. Rage and grief are destroying her. And she’s about to be expelled from Brooklyn Heights’ most prestigious private school when her father intervenes. Now Andi must accompany him to Paris for winter break.

PARIS: Alexandrine Paradis lived over two centuries ago. She dreamed of making her mark on the Paris stage, but a fateful encounter with a doomed prince of France cast her in a tragic role she didn’t want—and couldn’t escape.

Two girls, two centuries apart. One never knowing the other. But when Andi finds Alexandrine’s diary, she recognizes something in her words and is moved to the point of obsession. There’s comfort and distraction for Andi in the journal’s antique pages—until, on a midnight journey through the catacombs of Paris, Alexandrine’s words transcend paper and time, and the past becomes suddenly, terrifyingly present. 

My review:

Wow.  What a sad, beautiful story.  I almost cried at some points as I read it, and that's saying something, because I rarely ever cry when I'm reading a book.


The cover definitely isn't one of my favourites, so, since I judge books by their cover, I wasn't sure that I would like Revolution.  The first few pages didn't do much for me.  Not with Beezie, and Nathan, and the way Andi acted.  She wasn't the same as she was when she was in Paris.  And was I ever happy and when she went to Paris!   The first thing I noticed when she arrived there was that the style of writing seemed to change.  It wasn't as modern as it had been back in Brooklyn, so it was like she was in an older city.  


I loved the diary entries of Alexandre/Alexandrine.  They were so vivid, I felt like I actually knew the character.  I felt connected to Louis, and so I was very sad when I found that the heart was his, because I didn't want him to die.  I was also surprised to hear that the story about his heart was real, and that it actually was taken and is not in his body.


I can't think of much to say about Revolution (probably because it was such a great book!), but I can say that I'm now very interested in the French Revolution.  Loved it!

Beautiful Darkness

Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stoll

My rating: 4.5/5
Summary(from Goodreads):  Ethan Wate used to think of Gatlin, the small Southern town he had always called home, as a place where nothing ever changed. Then he met mysterious newcomer Lena Duchannes, who revealed a secret world that had been hidden in plain sight all along. A Gatlin that harbored ancient secrets beneath its moss-covered oaks and cracked sidewalks. A Gatlin where a curse has marked Lena's family of powerful Supernaturals for generations. A Gatlin where impossible, magical, life-altering events happen.
Sometimes life-ending.
Together they can face anything Gatlin throws at them, but after suffering a tragic loss, Lena starts to pull away, keeping secrets that test their relationship. And now that Ethan's eyes have been opened to the darker side of Gatlin, there's no going back. Haunted by strange visions only he can see, Ethan is pulled deeper into his town's tangled history and finds himself caught up in the dangerous network of underground passageways endlessly crisscrossing the South, where nothing is as it seems.

My review:

As a general rule, I don't like reviewing books that aren't number one in series, but this is one where I had to make an exception.  I loved Beautiful Darkness.  It, like the first in the Caster Chronicles, pulled me into Gatlin, and into Ethan's point of view.  I could feel everything like I was right there.  I could feel Ethan's love, Lena's pain, Ridley's sorrow.

As with Beautiful Creatures, I loved the plot.  It was obvious the authors knew what they wanted, and how to write it in an enjoyable way.  They did a good job of keeping me in suspense and wanting to read more.  Unfortunately, when I started, I hadn't read Beautiful Creatures in a long time, so it kept mentioning Sarafine.  I (I can't believe this), had forgotten who Sarafine was.  Huh.  Turns out she was the main bad guy (well, girl).  I was quite horrified that I'd forgotten that.

I'm quite surprised with the characters.  Ethan was the same as ever, but I suddenly liked Lena a lot less and her cousin, Ridley, a lot more.  Ridley is a Siren, and not a very nice one, at that, but something (I'm not giving away any major plot points) happened to her to make me feel bad for her, and that's when I saw the other side to her.  Maybe she wasn't so horrible after all.  She began to seem more like a helpless girl than a strong Siren.  She is all of a sudden my favourite character in the book, right after Ethan.  But Lena. . . I don't even want to get into her.  She just started to frustrate me.

I'm looking forward to the rest of the books in the Caster Chronicles, and can't wait to read more about Ridley!

Quick Quotes - January 1st - Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! 

Quick Quotes is a weekly meme that I do, where I'll put just a couple lines I really like from a book every Saturday.  The lines can be as long as you want (I tend to do them fairly short), and can be funny, dramatic, sad, or anything in between.  Feel free to join on your blog!!!

"Is falling in love with someone's story the same thing as falling in love with the person himself?"
~Ally Condie, Matched

I'm not exactly sure why I like this one.  Maybe it's because it's from one of my favourite books?  Maybe it's because it's a really deep thing to say?  I think that if I had to pick one reason, it would be because it's actually a really good question, that I don't have an answer to.  When I read this line in Matched, I couldn't get it out of my head.