Stacking the Shelves (March 8)

Stacking the Shelves is a meme hosted by Tynga at Tynga's Reviews! It's a way to highlight the books that everyone got throughout the week.

Borrowed (Thanks Jenn!): 

I've Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella

I’ve lost it. :( The only thing in the world I wasn’t supposed to lose. My engagement ring. It’s been in Magnus’s family for three generations. And now the very same day his parents are coming, I’ve lost it. The very same day! Do not hyperventilate, Poppy. Stay positive :) !!

Poppy Wyatt has never felt luckier. She is about to marry her ideal man, Magnus Tavish, but in one afternoon her “happily ever after” begins to fall apart. Not only has she lost her engagement ring in a hotel fire drill but in the panic that follows, her phone is stolen. As she paces shakily around the lobby, she spots an abandoned phone in a trash can. Finders keepers! Now she can leave a number for the hotel to contact her when they find her ring. Perfect!

Well, perfect except that the phone’s owner, businessman Sam Roxton, doesn’t agree. He wants his phone back and doesn’t appreciate Poppy reading his messages and wading into his personal life.

What ensues is a hilarious and unpredictable turn of events as Poppy and Sam increasingly upend each other’s lives through emails and text messages. As Poppy juggles wedding preparations, mysterious phone calls, and hiding her left hand from Magnus and his parents . . . she soon realizes that she is in for the biggest surprise of her life.

The Perfect Match by Kristan Higgins

What if the perfect match is a perfect surprise?

Honor Holland has just been unceremoniously rejected by her lifelong crush. And now — a mere three weeks later — Mr. Perfect is engaged to her best friend. But resilient, reliable Honor is going to pick herself up, dust herself off and get back out there…or she would if dating in Manningsport, New York, population 715, wasn't easier said than done.

Charming, handsome British professor Tom Barlow just wants to do right by his unofficial stepson, Charlie, but his visa is about to expire. Now Tom must either get a green card or leave the States — and leave Charlie behind.

In a moment of impulsiveness, Honor agrees to help Tom with a marriage of convenience — and make her ex jealous in the process. But juggling a fiancé, hiding out from her former best friend and managing her job at the family vineyard isn't easy. And as sparks start to fly between Honor and Tom, they might discover that their pretend relationship is far too perfect to be anything but true love…

Book Review: The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant

So many secrets for such a small island. From the moment Anne Merchant arrives at Cania Christy, a boarding school for the world’s wealthiest teens, the hushed truths of this strange, unfamiliar land begin calling to her—sometimes as lulling drumbeats in the night, sometimes as piercing shrieks.

One by one, unanswered questions rise. No one will tell her why a line is painted across the island or why she is forbidden to cross it. Her every move—even her performance at the school dance—is graded as part of a competition to become valedictorian, a title that brings rewards no one will talk about. And Anne discovers that the parents of her peers surrender million-dollar possessions to enroll their kids in Cania Christy, leaving her to wonder what her lowly funeral director father could have paid to get her in… and why.

As a beautiful senior struggles to help Anne make sense of this cloak-and-dagger world without breaking the rules that bind him, she must summon the courage to face the impossible truth—and change it—before she and everyone she loves is destroyed by it.

*I originally wrote this article and Blogger had a bit of fun and totally deleted it. Good times. This review isn't as well-written because I was trying to recapture what I originally had written and was happy with. I'm off to sulk now.

Best Bits: What I really appreciated about this book was the meta moments. About halfway through she has this moment where she realizes how unreal her experiences have been. Anne attends a dark and creepy school (*thunder crashes and lightning flashes*) filled with the world's elite. You don't often find characters who are self-aware enough to say, "That's more than enough Crazy for one lifetime, never mind one week." These moments were peppered throughout the book, and were a nudge and a wink to the reader. That tone kept the book from being too over-the-top and cheesy.

I'm not sure that many readers will have seen the movie that I'm about to reference, and if you haven't then I fully suggest that you don't. The divide between the school and the villagers reminded me a bit of The Wicker Man (the 70's Christopher Lee version, not the even more ridiculous Nicholas Cage version). The reader sees some creepy rituals that the villagers partake in, and although it felt really sinister I wanted to know more about why the villagers were doing these things. Seriously, don't watch the movie. I had to watch it for school and write a paper about it. I'm having awful flashbacks. I digress...

Nit Picks: I think that this one was more of a NA than a YA read. I don't feel like it's spoiling too much to say that at Cania Christy the race for valedictorian depends on an individual's abilities (i.e. seduction). This is an area where I feel that the book missed it's potential. Why not give the girls abilities (there are a few that are also learning how to manipulate via seduction), and make them vastly different? This piece of the plot had the opportunity to be great, but it missed the mark. I also thought that this one took a long time to get going. It did take over a hundred pages to get through the first week of school, in which not a lot happened. Yes, the second half was suspenseful, and allowed the reader to figure out the motives behind many characters, but if it hadn't been for the humor I'm not sure it would have kept me reading.

The Unseemly Education of Anne merchant
By Joanna Wiebe
Published by BenBella Books
272 Pages
Received for Review

Waiting on Wednesday (March 5)

Waiting on Wednesday was started by Jill at Breaking the Spine. This weekly meme shares the upcoming books that I'm most excited about.

Reckoning by Kerry Wilkinson

The first book in a new trilogy by UK author Kerry Wilkinson, Reckoning is the story of one girl's determination to survive the whims of a cruel king whom she has been chosen to serve. 

One girl. One reckoning. One destiny.
In a far-off future, after years of war and famine have eliminated all technological advancement, returning society to a fuedal system, in the village of Martindale, hundreds of miles north of the new English capital of Windsor, sixteen-year-old Silver Blackthorn takes the Reckoning. This coming-of-age test not only decides her place in society – Elite, Member, Inter or Trog – but also determines that Silver is to become an Offering for King Victor.
But these are uncertain times and no one really knows what happens to the teenagers who disappear into Windsor Castle. Is being an Offering the privilege everyone assumes it to be, or do the walls of the castle have something to hide?
Trapped in a maze of ancient corridors, Silver finds herself in a warped world of suspicion where it is difficult to know who to trust and who to fear. The one thing Silver does know is that she must find a way out . . .

Published by St. Martin's Griffin
Release Date: July 1, 2014

Teaser Tuesday (March 4)

What is teaser tuesday?
It's a meme hosted by Should Be Reading and here are the rules: 

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! 

"'Obviously they don't trust us." 
'Or it's a new computer and they didn't put anything on it yet.'"
-Liv, Forever, Page 43, by Amy Talkington

February Comment Contest Winner!

The Winner Is....

Monique M.

I've sent a message with the details. Remember, you're automatically entered to win every time you comment on a non-meme post (reviews, cover reveals, etc). You can choose from any book I have reviewed during 2014!