June Wrap Up

I just realized I didn’t do a June wrap up for you all. I didn’t get to read very much sadly and I suspect July will be the same.

1. The Astonishing Color of After
2. Tell Me No Lies
3. Her Dragon’s Fury
4. Dragon Got Your Tongue
5. The Darkest Minds

Gunslinger Girl

This book gets FIVE stars! When I first saw it on bookstagram I was skeptical but I decided to read the synopsis and decided to give it a try. It is a book that is set like a western while also trying to be set in the future. The main character comes from a rough house and sets off to find a future without that house. By the time the book is over she is far from that life and finding new things out about the world that she was sheltered from. She learns new things about her deceased mother and learns to use her talents for what is necessary.

The Darkest Minds

It is three am EST and I am writing this blog post with tears in my eyes. I need a warning label put on books that are going to rip your heart open and stomp on it at the end. Thank whatever god I can think of that I started this series when the next book is already out because I could not do the waiting game on this!

So basically in this book the children start dying off suddenly and the ones that survive have supernatural abilities. I think there were five different groups? And the survivors go through some tough crap. Well, adventures happen and suddenly we have this HEARTBREAKING ENDING! Like I need to understand! I need the second book stat!

This book gets a five out of five all the way!

Every Last Word

This book has quickly found its place in my heart right next to Speak. I love novels that open your mind up to new things. This book opens your mind to OCD on a whole other level! Everyone misuses OCD and they have common misconceptions which this book addresses.

I loved this book. The main character struggles with OCD and always wants to be normal. Her thoughts bring her spiraling down but they also bring her to her boyfriend and her poetry. It was a wonderful book I would read again.

Five out of five stars! 🙂

A Court of Wings and Ruin

Oh my gosh! This book needs to come with a box of tissues! I could not put it down! The end had me bawling my eyes out and calling Maas the new R.R. Martin! She had me about to cry my eyes out thinking noooooo! I read the synopsis for her next book before I got to the end so I was thinking the absolute worst. The worst came to be and somehow was fixed. That’s some crooked stuff right there! Authors are why I have trust issues. I recommend this whole dang series with no shame! I need someone to rant and rave about it with!

Five out of five stars!

April Wrap Up

I picked up 12 books at the beginning of April hoping to read all of them. I only got through eight.

1. Tempests and Slaughter
2. A Court of Thorns and Roses
3. The Dancers Dancing
4. The Voting Game
5. The Gospel According to Blindboy
6. A Court of Mist and Fury
7. A Court of Wings and Ruin
8. Long May She Reign

A Court of Mist and Fury

This book was crazy. The ups and downs throughout the book were attention holding. Maas throws a curveball at every corner. The end really messed me up because Feyre FOUND HERSELF woot woot! She was totally worthy of her title and claim. Feyre is one tough lady and is an amazing addition to Maas’ dominant women she is creating. I really hope she continues as I continue this series to gobble up book three before the next one comes out.

Five out of five stars! 🙂

Misplaced Monday #8

Oh my gosh, I loved this book. It was a level of crying I haven’t reached in a long time. It was sad but brought to light a whole new problem. This book is infamous. I decided to do this book because I feel like it needs more and more credit. Laurie Anderson wrote a book that was probably hard to write and understand in a way that most people won’t shun it.

The synopsis says all:

“Speak up for yourself–we want to know what you have to say.” From the first moment of her freshman year at Merryweather High, Melinda knows this is a big fat lie, part of the nonsense of high school. She is friendless, outcast, because she busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so now nobody will talk to her, let alone listen to her. As time passes, she becomes increasingly isolated and practically stops talking altogether. Only her art class offers any solace, and it is through her work on an art project that she is finally able to face what really happened at that terrible party: she was raped by an upperclassman, a guy who still attends Merryweather and is still a threat to her. Her healing process has just begun when she has another violent encounter with him. But this time Melinda fights back, refuses to be silent, and thereby achieves a measure of vindication. 

In Laurie Halse Anderson’s powerful novel, an utterly believable heroine with a bitterly ironic voice delivers a blow to the hypocritical world of high school. She speaks for many a disenfranchised teenager while demonstrating the importance of speaking up for oneself.

 

Five out of five stars!

Long May She Reign

I had high hopes for this book. I loved the synopsis and the cover. But after a couple of chapters, it just did not hold for me. The main character didn’t catch my attention like I had hoped. I tried to give it more than a couple of chapters to hold on to my interest but I could not even make it there.

The main character, Freya, is 23rd in line and suddenly becomes queen by the fact everyone gets poisoned and only wants to conduct experiments and be a scientist. It is a great idea but there was no hold for me. I think this book should have been a sci-fi novel and a couple of things should have changed. Sadly I cannot recommend this book.

Two out of five stars. 😦

Secondhand Origin Stories Excerpt

 

Excerpt

2 AM. The house was quiet. She couldn’t even hear the city, far below. The light streaming into Jamie’s window was as dim as Chicago could get, and augmented only by the pale blue light of her tablet. She still hadn’t slept. She’d tried, right around midnight. But she couldn’t.

She’d kept thinking about Jenna, and about Isaac’s reaction.

There was nothing about Jamie that would let her do anything about it. The gauntlet she’d worn all day couldn’t do anything about this. And trying to problem-solve her way out of it was just putting angry knots in her brain.

She’d tried a distraction: just a quick peek, to see if Opal had any public social media.

That was not what she found. Opal’s name only came up in reference to an eight-year-old court case – her dad’s. That seemed like a likely conversation-ruiner, so she’d started reading, wanting to find potential landmines ahead of time.

But reading about the trial was so confusing, she’d gone looking for a reason in adjacent trials. That didn’t make any more sense, and she’d ended up reading old articles online for hours.

In retrospect, her plan to cure her insomnia was flawed.

Now it all made sense, except that she couldn’t understand how this could be allowed! How had nobody fixed this yet?

The whole system was a disaster, and Detroit was a microcosm of every single way it was broken. Detroit had no superhero team and never had, though it was by far the most altered city in the US. Instead, it had a police force with army-grade gear and military tactics. The bureau had never endorsed the protective actions of any altered civilian in the city. There was trial after trial for altered who had protected people, and every one of them was convicted and jailed. The sentences so much longer than they should be.

That led her to read how thoroughly that mirrored racial issues in the larger criminal justice system. Racial minorities were, across the board, hugely more likely to be arrested than given warnings. More likely to serve longer sentences. More likely to be arrested young. Really young. More likely to be fatally shot by police. More likely to die in prison. More likely to have their kids taken away forever because they were locked up.

With the altered, a lot of the charges were especially nonsensical. Anyone who wasn’t white was ten times more likely to be imprisoned on drug charges. But since most drugs didn’t even work normally in the system of an altered, they were all automatically charged with intent to sell, which was a felony. As far as Jamie could tell, a black person found in the same house as drugs could be convicted of a felony for just that. And they kept arresting whole households at once, even taking in anyone who was just visiting the house. The trials were short and didn’t seem to matter much.

And Jamie had exposed Opal to it. Put her in the path of APB guards with guns, made her look like a suspect to anyone who expected to see a suspect, instead of someone who’d just wanted to help.

Even Jamie had reacted to her with fear at first. How must that have felt to Opal?

And the APB, who owned Jamie’s home, who controlled the superheroes, was embedded right in the heart of it. They were the ones who kept pushing for new laws for altereds. Longer jail times, more aggressive charges. There was a new bill expected from Secretary Bridgewater within the week aimed at “lowering recidivism rates”, tightening restrictions even further. There were hints that it was going to be something dramatic. Jamie felt sick.

She didn’t understand how her family could be involved with this. How Opal could want to be.

Did she know her family as well as she thought? What did the gauntlet even mean? It wouldn’t let her do anything about any of this!

Blog Tour Schedule

23 April (Monday)

• Secondhand Origin Stories blog tour launch (via That Bookshelf Bitch)
• Feature post from Candid Ceillie
• Review and feature post from The Backwards Bookshelf
• Review from Crimson Blogs
• Review from Samantha House
• Review from Stuffed Shelves

24 April (Tuesday)

• Excerpt from Not Just Fiction
• Excerpt from Utopia State of Mind
• Feature post from Unputdownable Books
• Review from That Bookshelf Bitch
• Review from Bookish and Awesome
• Review from Cliste Bella
• Review from wallflower’s plight

25 April (Wednesday)

• Excerpt from The Nerdy Elite
• Review from BookMyHart
• Review from Candid Ceillie
• Review from F A N N A
• Review from forthenovellovers
• Review from Igniting Pages
• Review from Spines in a Line

26 April (Thursday)

• Excerpt from Provocatrix
• Review from Bookish Wanderess
• Review from bookishwisps
• Review from Flying Paperbacks
• Review from TheHufflepuffNerdette
• Review from My Reading List
• Review from Unputdownable Books

27 April (Friday)

• Author interview on That Bookshelf Bitch
• Feature post from Cliste Bella
• Review from Afire Pages
• Review from The Book Maiden
• Review from The Little Miss Bookworm
• Review from Reader Fox and a Box of Books

Review from The Youngvamp’s Haven