Books I'm Thankful For...

Inspired by a post on the MacTeenBooks blog, I wanted to spotlight some of the books that I'm thankful for this year (this includes old and new favorites)!

 The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani and The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer (Pictured:Scarlet, Book 2). Both have become my favorite things of the year. I've been completely pulled in by both, and they have amazing (and unique) perspectives on fairy tales.

 

 Slimed by Mathew Klickstein brought up all my 90's kid nostalgia, and because of it I revisited a lot of old memories and shared stories with the friends I've had since grade school. Plus, the author just seems cool in general.

 

The Heroes of Olympus series by Rick Riordan (Pictured: The House of Hades, Book 4) & Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling (Pictured: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone). Two great series. Harry Potter was something that brought my entire family together, as we each read them and discussed theories. Amazingly, Rick Riordan's books have done the same. Plus, I'm never going to complain about well-written stories revolving around mythology.

 Matilda by Roald Dahl and 45 Pounds by K. A. Barson. I know that these two seem an unlikely pair, but they both have amazing characters that I related to. My local bookstore is doing a drive where you can donate a book to a child in need, and I chose Matilda. It's a classic childhood book, and what kid hasn't been upset over the power that adults have (especially when they point out that there's nothing kids can do about it). 45 Pounds was a different read for me. I thought that the book described what life is like as a teen who struggled with food. Ah, loved it!

What books are you grateful for this year?

Guest Post: Book Review of Cinder by Marissa Meyer

My name is Amanda and I'm guest reviewing on Cornucopia of Reviews. I am a junior in college and, like my sister, I really enjoy reading. Typical genres that interest me are adventure, comedy and horror. My sister has attempted to get me to read many books that she enjoys. However, I rarely finish them or even read them. But when my sister purchased Cinder by Marissa Meyer I had the opposite experience. 

In order for me to finish reading a book, it needs to draw me in fairly quickly. This book drew me in within the first chapter. In the beginning the reading learns about cinder, a cyborg mechanic, a handsome prince and, a mysterious plague. Normally, I don't pick up books that include romance because I find that romantic novels can portray romance in an unrealistic manner. Cinder was different because the prince, Kai, didn't know that Cinder was a cyborg and he saw them as lesser than humans. The romance in the story was not typical romance because it wasn't shallow drama. The issue is that Cinder can't tell the prince what she is because he will reject her. 

Another aspect of the story that I liked was the queen. She was one of my favorite characters in the novel for many reasons. The queen first appears kind but the reader soon learns that she is truly evil. Her ruthlessness emerges when she controls and manipulates people's thoughts. 

The whole world that the story took place in was extremely different from the world of the original Cinderella story. It was not a typical European world; Citizens had ID chips, there was a threat of a lunar society, a plague struck fear among people and cyborgs. I loved the book and was surprised with the amount of plot twists. The farther I got into the book, the more I wanted to keep reading because each twist added another dimension of mystery. The romance was balanced with strong character development. I am very excited to read Scarlet because it is based on a fairy tale that I personally enjoy more than Cinderella because it is creepier!


*Thanks to my sister for stopping by with a review. Now that I know she'll say yes to me, expect me to harass her into reviewing every so often. 

The Gift of Cinder

This is my sister, holding the copy of Cinder, by Marissa Meyer, that I bought for her. Yes, I literally bought her a copy, since I'm pretty sure that I've loaned out my copy...and I can't remember which friend has it.

We have fairly different tastes in books. She's totally prepared for the creepy, scary, and the attention-grabbing. I can only handle that in small doses before I have to sleep with the light on and a Disney movie playing on a TV. It's not pretty.

There are some books that we do have in common. Harry Potter, Howl's Moving Castle, The Hunger Games...these are all books with strong characters and adventure. That's why I thought that she would like Cinder. It's got kick-ass female characters (good and evil), and a romance that doesn't overpower the story. My sister is also someone that needs to be grabbed within the first 25 pages to really get through and enjoy a book. I knew that this one was perfect for that. When I read it, I couldn't set it down!

I imagine that she'll be picking up Scarlet soon, too. Although, I'm going to let her buy that one on her own. Her review will be guest-posted this week, so look forward to a new voice on the blog :)

Stacking the Shelves (November 23)

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.

It's been a quiet month, mostly because I've been doing well not buying books on a whim! Hurrah, I'm actually following through with a book-buying ban. 

For Review: 

 Going Rogue (Also Known As 2) by Robin Benway

Being permanently based in a local New York City high school as an undercover operative has its moments, good and bad, for 16-year-old safecracker Maggie Silver. Pros: More quality time with her former mark-turned-boyfriend Jesse Oliver and insanely cool best friend, Roux. Getting to spend quality time with her semi-retired and international spy honorary uncle, Angelo. Cons: High school and the accompanying cliques, bad lunches, and frustratingly simple locker combinations. But when Maggie's parents are falsely accused of stealing priceless gold coins, Maggie uses her safecracking skills to try and clear their names. Too bad it only serves to put her and everyone she loves in danger. Maggie and her "new team" flee to Paris where they must come up with a plan to defeat their former allies.

Published by Walker Children's Books
Release Date: January 14, 2014

Third Lie's the Charm (The Liar Society 3) by Lisa & Laura Roecker

New friend into old, the bond of the Sisterhood will never grow cold.

Life at Pemberly Brown is a whirlwind for Kate Lowry. Determined to finally destroy the secret society responsible for her best friend Grace’s death, Kate joins the Sisterhood hoping to go all Trojan Horse on their asses. But the night of her initiation another student at Pemberly Brown dies in what looks like tragic accident.

Kate knows better.

Kate and her faithful ginger, Seth Allen, immediately uncover a connection to the boy’s death and the secret societies that rule Pemberly Brown. But it’s not until Kate begins receiving pages from Grace’s old journal that she begins to piece together what really happened the night she died and how it connects to Pemberly Brown’s most recent tragedy.

Meanwhile, Kate’s ex-boyfriend Liam is following her around like an angry guard dog and she’s falling hard for the mysterious Bradley Farrow. Both boys are tied up in the mystery that surrounds Pemberly Brown, but only one of them can truly be trusted.

In this chilling conclusion to The Liar Society series Kate will fight to save her school from the evil that lurks beneath its hallowed halls. But will her quest destroy her or finally lead her to true love? She can only hope her third lie’s the charm.

Published by Sourcebooks Fire
Release Date: December 3, 2014
 

Book Review: The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani

The first kidnappings happened two hundred years before. Some years it was two boys taken, some years two girls, sometimes one of each. But if at first the choices seemed random, soon the pattern became clear. One was always beautiful and good, the child every parent wanted as their own. The other was homely and odd, an outcast from birth. An opposing pair, plucked from youth and spirited away.

This year, best friends Sophie and Agatha are about to discover where all the lost children go: the fabled School for Good & Evil, where ordinary boys and girls are trained to be fairy tale heroes and villains. As the most beautiful girl in Gavaldon, Sophie has dreamed of being kidnapped into an enchanted world her whole life. With her pink dresses, glass slippers, and devotion to good deeds, she knows she’ll earn top marks at the School for Good and graduate a storybook princess. Meanwhile Agatha, with her shapeless black frocks, wicked pet cat, and dislike of nearly everyone, seems a natural fit for the School for Evil.

But when the two girls are swept into the Endless Woods, they find their fortunes reversed—Sophie’s dumped in the School for Evil to take Uglification, Death Curses, and Henchmen Training, while Agatha finds herself in the School For Good, thrust amongst handsome princes and fair maidens for classes in Princess Etiquette and Animal Communication.. But what if the mistake is actually the first clue to discovering who Sophie and Agatha really are…?

Best Bits: Oh SfGaE, how I love thee. I know that I shouldn't, but I have a grocery list for things that I love in YA books. Your standard YA book usually has one or two items checked off, but this one seems to have it all: strong female characters (that don't fit into typical good/bad roles, despite what the title implies), a fairytale aspect, a focus on friendship (and a potential for interesting romances in books to come), and a big surprise at the end that I genuinely didn't see coming...it was a glorious read. The world-building was impressive, too. Due to the opposing natures of Agatha and Sophie, we get to see exactly what the differences are between the two schools. The courses are imaginative "Beautification" vs "Uglification", and they even have a class where the two school mix. Amazing drama ensues.

With the hours that I work I find that I get into reading slumps more frequently than I used to. This book, however, really motivated me. I found time each day to read, and it felt like a treat to myself. Plus, indulging myself in a good book is probably a bit better than eating all that Halloween candy that is left over. 

Nit Picks: I'm at a loss for this one. It's been a while since I read this one, yet I still can't think of any issues with it. It even has a believable reason for insta-love...I just can't, it's too good!

Chainani has created a world with characters to root for, and I can't wait for more!

The School for Good and Evil 
By Soman Chainani
Published by HarperCollins
488 Pages

Waiting on Wednesday (November 20)

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

 To All the Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny Han


To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is the story of Lara Jean, who has never openly admitted her crushes, but instead wrote each boy a letter about how she felt, sealed it, and hid it in a box under her bed. But one day Lara Jean discovers that somehow her secret box of letters has been mailed, causing all her crushes from her past to confront her about the letters: her first kiss, the boy from summer camp, even her sister's ex-boyfriend, Josh. As she learns to deal with her past loves face to face, Lara Jean discovers that something good may come out of these letters after all.

Published by Simon & Schuster 
Release Date: April 22, 2014

Gratitude Giveaway Hop

Welcome to the Gratitude Giveaways Hop hosted by I Am A Reader, Not A Writer! Enter the contest on the rafflecopter below, but please make sure to read the rules before entering!



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Waiting on Wednesday (November 13)

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

 Going Rogue (Also Known As #2) by Robin Benway

Being permanently based in a local New York City high school as an undercover operative has its moments, good and bad, for 16-year-old safecracker Maggie Silver. Pros: More quality time with her former mark-turned-boyfriend Jesse Oliver and insanely cool best friend, Roux. Getting to spend quality time with her semi-retired and international spy honorary uncle, Angelo. Cons: High school and the accompanying cliques, bad lunches, and frustratingly simple locker combinations. But when Maggie's parents are falsely accused of stealing priceless gold coins, Maggie uses her safecracking skills to try and clear their names. Too bad it only serves to put her and everyone she loves in danger. Maggie and her "new team" flee to Paris where they must come up with a plan to defeat their former allies.

Published by Walker Childrens
Release Date: January 14, 2014

*I won't let myself read the synopsis just in case there are spoilers. I'm currently reading the first book and it's got me laughing hysterically. Can't wait for this one! 

Teaser Tuesday (November 12)

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! 

"He's always giving good advice, too, especially about safecracking and lock picking. It's like if Tim Gunn and James Bond had a baby, and that baby was Yoda."

-Also Known As, Page 4, by Robin Benway

Book Review: Relativity by Cristin Bishara

If Ruby Wright could have her way, her dad would never have met and married her stepmother Willow, her best friend George would be more than a friend, and her mom would still be alive. Ruby knows wishes can't come true; some things just can't be undone. Then she discovers a tree in the middle of an Ohio cornfield with a wormhole to nine alternative realities.

Suddenly, Ruby can access completely different realities, each containing variations of her life—if things had gone differently at key moments. The windshield wiper missing her mother’s throat…her big brother surviving his ill-fated birth…her father never having met Willow. Her ideal world—one with everything and everyone she wants most—could be within reach. But is there such a thing as a perfect world? What is Ruby willing to give up to find out?

Best Bits: This book reminded me of the film Sliding Doors. It's based around the concept that even small differences in what happens to us can have a great impact on our lives. I really enjoyed how Bishara crafted a believable story about alternate realities. I never thought I would say that, and at the start of the book I wasn't sure how real Ruby's story would feel. I found that she was easy to relate to (what person hasn't had difficulty adjusting to something new), and I really felt for her as she struggled to say goodbye to her mother and brother. I also liked the way that Bishara explained the existence of the alternate realities. While I read science fiction, I don't always feel like I understand the subject matter. In Relativity I actually was pretty confident that I could explain how it worked.

Nit Picks: I think that the toughest part for me was knowing that Ruby is extremely intelligent, but being unable to see the negative impact that she was having on many of the alternate realities. Granted, she's still a teenager...so I'm sure that trying to find a place she thought was perfect sort of outweighs the concept of the consequences for the Ruby that she's displaced. It did provide me with some interesting philosophical questions about what I would do in that situation.

Relativity
By Cristin Bishara
Published by Walker Children's
288 Pages
Received via Netgalley

Waiting on Wednesday (November 6)

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

 Liar of Dreams (The Diviners 2) by Libba Bray


After a supernatural showdown with a serial killer, Evie O'Neill has outed herself as a Diviner. Now that the world knows of her ability to "read" objects, and therefore, read the past, she has become a media darling, earning the title, "America's Sweetheart Seer." But not everyone is so accepting of the Diviners' abilities...

Meanwhile, mysterious deaths have been turning up in the city, victims of an unknown sleeping sickness. Can the Diviners descend into the dreamworld and catch a killer?

Published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Release Date: August 15, 2014

I'm not a fan of the cover, but I can't wait to read this one!

Teaser Tuesday (November 5)

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 teaser sentences from somewhere on the page

Don't include spoilers.

"I was just as horrified. The last thing I wanted was to dissolve into thin air in front of the entire class."
-Ruby Red, Page 87, Kerstin Gier

Stacking the Shelves (November 2)

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.

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black

 Tana lives in a world where walled cities called Coldtowns exist. In them, quarantined monsters and humans mingle in a decadently bloody mix of predator and prey. The only problem is, once you pass through Coldtown’s gates, you can never leave.

One morning, after a perfectly ordinary party, Tana wakes up surrounded by corpses. The only other survivors of this massacre are her exasperatingly endearing ex-boyfriend, infected and on the edge, and a mysterious boy burdened with a terrible secret. Shaken and determined, Tana enters a race against the clock to save the three of them the only way she knows how: by going straight to the wicked, opulent heart of Coldtown itself.

 Published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani


This year, best friends Sophie and Agatha are about to discover where all the lost children go: the fabled School for Good & Evil, where ordinary boys and girls are trained to be fairy tale heroes and villains. As the most beautiful girl in Gavaldon, Sophie has dreamed of being kidnapped into an enchanted world her whole life. With her pink dresses, glass slippers, and devotion to good deeds, she knows she’ll earn top marks at the School for Good and graduate a storybook princess. Meanwhile Agatha, with her shapeless black frocks, wicked pet cat, and dislike of nearly everyone, seems a natural fit for the School for Evil.

But when the two girls are swept into the Endless Woods, they find their fortunes reversed—Sophie’s dumped in the School for Evil to take Uglification, Death Curses, and Henchmen Training, while Agatha finds herself in the School For Good, thrust amongst handsome princes and fair maidens for classes in Princess Etiquette and Animal Communication.. But what if the mistake is actually the first clue to discovering who Sophie and Agatha really are…?

Published by HarperCollins

 
Doon by Carey Corp & Larie Langdon

Veronica doesn't think she's going crazy. But why can't anyone else see the mysterious blond boy who keeps popping up wherever she goes? When her best friend, Mackenna, invites her to spend the summer in Scotland, Veronica jumps at the opportunity to leave her complicated life behind for a few months.

But the Scottish countryside holds other plans.

Not only has the imaginary kilted boy followed her to Alloway, she and Mackenna uncover a strange set of rings and a very unnerving letter from Mackenna's great aunt—and when the girls test the instructions Aunt Gracie left behind, they find themselves transported to a land that defies explanation. Doon seems like a real-life fairy tale, complete with one prince who has eyes for Mackenna and another who looks suspiciously like the boy from Veronica's daydreams. But Doon has a dark underbelly as well. The two girls could have everything they've longed for...or they could end up breaking an enchantment and find themselves trapped in a world that has become a nightmare.

Published by Zondervan

 

Of Beast and Beauty by Stacey Jay




In the domed city of Yuan, the blind Princess Isra, a Smooth Skin, is raised to be a human sacrifice whose death will ensure her city’s vitality. In the desert outside Yuan, Gem, a mutant beast, fights to save his people, the Monstrous, from starvation. Neither dreams that together, they could return balance to both their worlds.

Isra wants to help the city’s Banished people, second-class citizens despised for possessing Monstrous traits. But after she enlists the aid of her prisoner, Gem, who has been captured while trying to steal Yuan’s enchanted roses, she begins to care for him, and to question everything she has been brought up to believe.

As secrets are revealed and Isra’s sight, which vanished during her childhood, returned, Isra will have to choose between duty to her people and the beast she has come to love.

Published by Delacorte Press

 

The Program by Suzanne Young


Sloane knows better than to cry in front of anyone. With suicide now an international epidemic, one outburst could land her in The Program, the only proven course of treatment. Sloane’s parents have already lost one child; Sloane knows they’ll do anything to keep her alive. She also knows that everyone who’s been through The Program returns as a blank slate. Because their depression is gone—but so are their memories.

Under constant surveillance at home and at school, Sloane puts on a brave face and keeps her feelings buried as deep as she can. The only person Sloane can be herself with is James. He’s promised to keep them both safe and out of treatment, and Sloane knows their love is strong enough to withstand anything. But despite the promises they made to each other, it’s getting harder to hide the truth. They are both growing weaker. Depression is setting in. And The Program is coming for them.

Published by Simon Pulse