52 Books in 52 Weeks – April

I’m still going along at a very decent pace 🙂 I actually read a LOT this month! There are some spoilers here I have to be honest with you, but I have tried to minimise it as much as possible.

15. Pushing the Limits – Katie McGarry

I really liked this book, it was a nice break from the crazy weirdness that I have been accidently subjecting myself to lately (see last months post for details). Granted there was some supposed crazy going on there and both main characters come from seriously damaged backgrounds, but I liked that their connection stemmed from a sense of feeling that they were kindred spirits and both felt a little battered and bruised and that none of the jock or pop princesses would or could understand why what they went through changed who they were. Slight spoilers: I think my favourite part about the book was that though both characters knew they did not fit in and were in some cases ostracised by their peers they ultimately decided not to try and change who they were to fit in to what other people (even her family) wanted them to be. In surrendering and choosing to feel the pain and working through that and being themselves and accepting that, they came a lot further mentally than they would have had they continued, “faking it”.

A quote I loved from the book, “Luke used to give me butterflies. Noah spawned mutant pterodactyls.”

16. Teardrop – Lauren Kate

This was okay, honestly I LOVED the idea behind it. Not enough people write about Atlantis so that aspect of it was a refreshing change. The female protagonist was not bad, I had a hard time understanding her, whilst grief is a very powerful thing her reactions to some situations just didn’t ring true to me. There is also a lot of negativity towards female characters in this book, Eureka’s hate on Maya Cayce, a bunch of people’s hate on Eureka (that name!), Eureka’s hate on Rhoda – ladies, ladies… what is with all the hating? Then we turn around and almost all the guys in the book… all glowing reviews, even when she is angry with them, even when they are the enemy, sigh. The cover of this book is in a word… gorgeous! To be honest at first glance I figured I was dealing with water nymphs or mermaids or something. My secret fantasy about Atlantis has always been that the people survived by evolving into mermaids… is this just me? Does anyone else want to read a book like that? Also I am pretty sure that as a young girl if I was crying and someone smacked my face and told me to stop I would probably wail louder. My favourite character in this book was Brooks, I really liked his character, he had depth and seemed well thought out. Finding out his deal is likely the sole reason I will continue with this series.

17. Waterfall – Lauren Kate

HEAPS OF SPOILERS GUYS!!!

Wow, this lady knows how to have a GORGEOUS cover. Even her Fallen series covers I liked. Seriously nice job on the cover. I am really kind of confused post reading this book. Who died? Did they all die? What was that? Why were a whole bunch of people fighting in a brain at one time, it was supposed to be suspenseful I am sure, but I was actually laughing out loud at the absurdity of it all.

I’ll say it… Eureka is a selfish kid. She truly is. She is told not to do certain things and it is explained to her what the risks are if she does do them… so the stupid tart does them anyway which pretty much indirectly leads to horrible things happening to her family and friends. Yet they keep treating her like she is precious and sensible, LOCK. HER. UP.

Then she is with Ander and she loves him so, so much you guys. Until there is another and then basically without even discussing it with him she basically abandons Ander even after promising she wouldn’t and abandons the plan because the hot evil guy dressed in a Brooks suit asks her to get on a flying horse. My fave characters in this book were Cat who has great spunk and the twins. I have never been so disappointed in a sequel. It was total limbo basically the entire book, seriously, okay, have you seen the second last Harry Potter movie where they spend the majority of their time transporting around sitting in the tent listening to the radio? It was like that, but you read it!!!

18. Cinder – Marissa Meyer 

I kind of put this book off for some time. Then I caved as more and more people told me to give it a go citing that I would love its quirky take on an old tale and damn them if they weren’t right. The basis of this story is based on Cinderella as you can probably guess from the uber hot pumps on the cover. I have one phrase for you to sum up the mad awesomeness of this book, ‘Cyborg Cinderella in New Beijing, China’, how cool is that? Yay for a fresh take on a classic. The bones are there, you know, nasty ass stepmom, one biyatch of a step sister (the other is a doll), huge hunk of a prince 🙂 But pretty much everything else is new, dealing with plague and antidotes and avoiding World War V are elements that appear in the tale. I have to say also that there were a couple of plot twists that I didn’t see coming and damn if this author didn’t George R. R. Martin us… no one is safe 🙂

This is a seriously inventive YA novel, colour me impressed 🙂

The book did leave you with a big reveal and a HUGE cliff hanger!!

19. Scarlet – Marissa Meyer 
Yup, I went back for seconds 🙂 And I was not disappointed.

This installment was based on Red Riding Hood. The thing I like about these books is that I want to say they are loosely based on the original fairytales because while the basis is in the original tale there are is so much more to the plot that I often did not even think about the fairytale as I was reading it. It was hard to put down, I was really interested to see how the stories of Scarlet and Cinder developed separately and to see how they were connected.

If the ages of the main characters was changed and therefore the language and reactions more mature this series could easily have been successful for an adult audience rather than a YA one. In fact I think it is successful for adults because technically I am one LOL. The important thing to remember reading this series is that they are teenagers, therefore they have hormones pumping all through them and their initial reactions are going to be emotionally based until they mature (hopefully really quickly). A couple of times I got a bit judgy with Cinder in both books with her mentioning all the time that she cannot cry, but then I realised that teenage girls are really emotional, they cry a lot, it is their way of releasing all those pent up emotions so once I thought about that it all made sense.

I liked the character of Wolf, he was intense and read as much older than he is supposed to be and I really loved the cocky Captain/Cadet Thorne – we needed some of that smart ass nature injected into the character mix.

20. Cress– Marissa Meyer 

Yup, I went back for thirds hahaha. In all seriousness you guys I read these books in 4 days. I was that into them!

Loosely based on Rapunzel this third instalment has so much happen in it, it is very fast paced and there are a lot of reveals. Many I had outright guessed or heavily suspected, but some were a surprise. In saying that there were parts where I felt we were waiting and in a bit of a stalemate, but there was reason behind it. I mean seriously Rome wasn’t built in a day and it certainly wasn’t built by a bunch of teenage misfits hahaha.

Cress as a character I enjoyed, this damsel had no time to be a princess and had a serious beating from the School of Hard Knocks, but she rose to the task each time. I am hoping she loses some of her meekness – lets be fair she is a very young girl who is brilliant, but I still want more out of her. In saying that she does become an integral part of the team and I LOVED the Rapunzel tie in, that was really well done. I was wondering how they were possibly going to do that and not have me groan.

I really want to get started on ‘Winter’ the next instalment which I assume is based on Snow White? In fact I messaged our YA Librarian on Goodreads and told her she needed to order it ASAP hahaha. Unfortunately it doesn’t come out until November NOOOOO.

20. The Rosie Effect – Graeme Simsion

Yay, I got it! I got it! Seriously the first book needs to be made into a movie… I see Hugh Jackman in the main role… who would you cast?

I loved this book as much as the first one. There were some great new challenges in Don and Rosie’s life. Again I truly admired the way Don’s brain works, even if at times I was shaking my head hahaha. I do have to pick on something with this book that is Rosie, at times I truly didn’t understand her behaviour towards Don, technically she did the wrong thing to begin with (a serious no, no for any girl to pull) so I wonder if her behaviour partly stems from guilt at times. I get that Don’s “eccentricities” would be frustrating at times (and to be honest, sometimes his problem solving is hilarious, but leaves much to be desired hahaha), but she does not help matters at all. From what I remember she does not even really try to approach things in a manner that would be considerate to his personality and the way his brain works which causes him much stress.

Sorry, I shouldn’t be writing so many negative things. Let me say again that I loved this second book. If I write too much about the second book you will end up with spoilers for both the first and second books and I know some of you were intending to read the first book so I don’t want to ruin it for you 🙂 Suffice to say I absolutely recommend this book 🙂

I actually read more books than this, but was unable to get all the reviews done so I might have to do an April volume 2 in a few days 🙂

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52 Books in 52 Weeks – March

I was keeping up the steam well in February. Unfortunately I am out of Belador books for now haha, perhaps more will come along. As I said I am looking to mix it up a bit this year so keep your eyes out for some non-fiction books coming up in this list soon as well as biographies.

9. The Rosie Project – Graeme Simsion

I really, really, really enjoyed this book! I totally gave it 5 stars on Goodreads! This story is about a brilliant Professor who happens to have undiagnosed Asperger’s and his journey through life and trying to locate a suitable life partner. I think part of the reason that I enjoyed this book is because I really respect that way that the brains and thought processes of “Aspies” work. I like their honesty, you never have to worry that they have another agenda going on and they are so often incredibly intelligent and great conversationalists. I once went on a date with someone with Asperger’s and had no idea until he sent back his thickshake sighting that they had provided him a milkshake not a thickshake because… he then sighted how thick it should be and the ratio of milk to icecream that should be included. The poor server… it was hilarious though 🙂 Good for him. It didn’t work out, we just weren’t that interested in each other, he told me upfront… awesome! No time wasted hahaha. This book is totally and completely worth your time, read it. I actually laughed out loud when he presented a talk about Asperger’s to Aspie’s, that is a great few pages. Please read it! Very bummed because my Library doesn’t have the second book, I sent through a suggestion for purchase 🙂

10. Fallen in Love (Fallen #3.5) – Lauren Kate

This book… hmm. I just, I could have done without this book. I get what she was trying to do here with explaining all the background of the other characters and their love experiences, etc., but I just felt like it didn’t work for me.

Perhaps by the time I got to this book I was just kinda over the storyline or something? It was drawn out over many books and whilst with the Belador series I have just got more into it, that didn’t happen for me with the Fallen series.

By the end of the last book of the series I was kinda ready to walk away from the characters and story, plus I felt Cam got royally ripped off. The best book in this series was the one where she went through a bunch of her past lives with Bill.

I was kinda glad it was done to be honest.

11. Rapture (Fallen #4) – Lauren Kate

Okay, so this was the last of the series. I liked the Lucifer elements and the twists with he and Luce – they were good and well thought out. The characters of Daniel and Luce themselves really started p-ing me off bigtime. I get it okay you choose love, over and over again. In doing so you have put many Angels through years of torture and broken the hearts of how many thousands of families throughout time (meaning Luce’s families)? That seems incredibly selfish and then they just kept making the same mistakes. Just damn stupid. I was pretty dissatisfied with most aspects of this final book in the series. I would not recommend it. I also feel like Cam just got handed the sh*t stick over and over again throughout history. No wonder he went dark side!

12. Defiance (Defiance #1) – CJ Redwine

This book was kind of different, I actually liked the way it threw you straight into it without a tonne of back-story so you had to get the pieces of the story as you went along. I can see that a lot of people would hate it because it is not the conventional way to tell a tale, but I liked it. *SLIGHT SPOILERS* Damn there was a lot of death and psychological torture for a YA novel. At first when they talked about the Cursed One I was kind of reminded of that Kevin Bacon cult classic Tremors hahaha.

There is not a lot of world building which would normally annoy me except for the fact that the story is told from the points of view of the two main characters so you can only build the world as much as they understand or decide to think about it that day. To be honest it p’s me off when a character randomly decides to think of the entire history of their world… who does that? We are told enough to figure out that it is loosely set in the future where man mined too far into the ground searching for resources and they released the Cursed Ones that proceeded to destroy the planet and turn everything to ashes. A group of men were able to hold them back and those men created their own cities and became the leaders (or protectors). The impression I got was that the rules of each city are basically completely developed by the ruler and in this particular city he likes his women dumb and subservient, because… POWER blah blah blah. I am not surprised that at least one woman wants to rebel… wow I would find that kind of existence sooo suffocating. There is a reason they cut the umbilical cord at birth, you know?! Anyway I digress. I really liked how different this was, it seemed to take quite a bashing on Goodreads, but the things they were upset about (most of which I have discussed) were things I liked so I will leave it up to you.

13. To wed a wicked Earl (Devine & Friends #2) – Olivia Parker

I said I would try and read different sorts of books right? Well, this was one of those. I gave it a one on Goodreads, it just wasn’t my thing you guys. I mean it was okay and all, it wasn’t the worst romance novel I have ever read and at least there was no mention of someone’s “quivering member” so it has that going for it.

I just… can’t with this book. The characters were kinda likeable, the plot was kinda okay. The only real drama happened right at the end of the book and equaled all of 2 pages of text… wtf? Apparently this is the second in the series… oops. Just for the record I am not going back for the first. I need a bit more meat in my romances, not man meat… plot meat.

52 Books in 52 weeks – August

This month I read quite a bit actually, three books over my quota. Certainly not complaining though as it has been nice to immerse myself in reading 🙂

Here is the list 🙂

Number	Title	Author
32 – Aug 4-10	Good Omens	Pratchett, Terry & Gaiman, Neil
33 – Aug 11-17	The Last Book in the Universe	Philbrick, Rodman
34 – Aug 18-24	“Fallen”, “Torment” & “Passion”	Kate, Lauren
35 – Aug 25-31	Splintered The Giver	Howard, A.G. Lowry, Lois

I had the BEST month of reading!!!

Good Omens – Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

I actually started this book last month, I struggled to really get into the text and I am not sure why. It was more towards Pratchett’s way of writing which is right up my alley, but then you could see Gaiman’s style coming through too. To be honest I think the two together for me personally did not work. I did love the characters of Crowley and Aziraphale; their interactions were (for me) the best parts of the book. Really I should have loved this book and I can’t understand why I found myself disinterested, skimming and reading another book then coming back to it.

I feel that this book would be loved by someone who clicked with the writing, unfortunately it didn’t work for me which was quite sad because I do love Terry Pratchett’s other works.

The last book in the Universe – Rodman Philbrick

This book, wow. I found this book at a book sale, it was the end of the day and they were selling you a box for 50cents – you got to fill it with as many books as you could manage (I know, heaven right?!). This was one of the books I grabbed, it looked like the cover had never been cracked and read as though it would be a good book for young male adults. I am always on the lookout for books like this because some of the stuff out there for guys is garbage and I like to have a few ideas on what to suggest for clients.

I was so surprised by this book, the setting is in a post-disaster (of some kind of earthquake I think – let’s blame climate change) city, the protagonist is a teenage boy they call Spaz. One of the interesting things about this book is that this society basically does not read, quite a few of them do not even talk, this whole society basically learns and is educated by either observing or (if they talk) being told. The language that they do have is incredible literal, for example; Spaz is named thus because he has epilepsy, but all the others know is that he ‘spazzes out’. The city is called the “Urb” as in suburb. It is quite fascinating to see how this society functions, also interesting is the idea of “Eden” being a paradise where the “Proovs” (improved or genetically altered humans) live.

I quite enjoyed it, if you have a young man that you are trying to get to read maybe try him on this. It is not magic and broomsticks like Harry Potter, but it has great grit and I think young males will enjoy the language.

“Fallen”, “Torment” & “Passion” – Lauren Kate

Yeah I got a bit carried away here and read three of them haha. I did not really enjoy the first book until the last couple of chapters; there were quite a few times where I felt the characters were acting about 14 years old instead of the age they were supposed to be acting. Oh god dammit I have just read they are making a movie of this for 2015 release, sigh, I have never heard of the actors they have cast (even though I have seen some of the movies/shows they are apparently in) though one is an Aussie who looks like a member of One Direction so it will probably be a huge hit 🙂

The epilogue of the first book intrigued me so much that I went to get no. 2 (Torment) from the Library. This novel was much better than the first, I would still like to slap the female protagonist around because she is completely stupid at some points and is obviously nowhere near finishing puberty. I really liked the school Shoreline and the new characters that were introduced, I thought her roommate and new male friend were great characters. Ending was a solid-ish lead into no. 3.

Book 3: I really, really, really liked this book. I loved that there were these pinpoint references in time that the geek in me easily recognised like the fire at the Globe theatre and the Aztecs etc. It was pretty cool, teenage history buffs are going to be all over this one. It was the best of the series so far, so good that I am scared to read any more of them hahaha.

Splintered – A. G. Howard

Hilariously, I picked this book up because it had a pretty cover. Little did I know that I was about to discover this crazy amazing, slightly nightmarish hat-tip to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s adventures in Wonderland. Alyssa’s family can trace their lineage all the way back to Alice Liddell, the inspiration for the tale. I read this story in a day you guys! I was that swept away by it. I loved the characters, I adored the spin on the classic characters from Carroll’s book. Morpheus was an amazing character (my favourite), whilst reading I often pictured him somewhat similar to Adam Lambert dressed in costume as Starchild, kinda sexy, kinda scary, very trendy and kinda steampunk.

The Giver – Lois Lowry

I have had this on my “to read” list for a while now. I thought it was good, but to be honest I kind of felt like the story didn’t start until Jonas left the village and then the book ended just as I felt something was about to happen. This book really didn’t fit the norm when it comes to overcoming trials and adventures, very interesting. I liked the idea about a supposedly Utopian society and how the “sameness” slowly loses its appeal and the society is suddenly viewed as a Dystopia, to me it says a lot in relation to points of view. A lot is left up to your own interpretation of how something is possible which I suppose makes sense when you are reading it, but is still an odd thing for a young adult novel.

Oh my gosh I just read the cast list for the movie! This is going to be a money-maker guys! Seriously! We have Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, Alexander Skarsgård, Katie Holmes and Aussie Brenton Thwaites as Jonas, I haven’t seen much of him, but I hear good things. I have seen Odeya Rush in films before and quite enjoyed her so that’s a good pick too. My only casting question is, what the hell were they thinking casting Taylor Swift?

And so we go into September… so many books… so little time.