Month: April 2015

The Creative Blogger Award!

Posted April 30, 2015 in Blog Awards / 15 Comments
The Creative Blogger Award!

The lovely Holly over at The Nut Free Nerd and Alina at Radiant Reads recently nominated me for the Creative Blogger Award! I’m especially honored to be nominated for this award because I do try my best to produce a variety of content, especially in choosing themes for features and discussions! These lovely ladies both run amazing book blogs and you should be sure to check out all of their creative content as well! The Rules: Nominate 15-20 blogs and notify all nominees via their social media/blogs Thank and post the link of the blog that nominated you (very important) […]


Cristina’s Close Look [3]: Gender-Bending Villains

Posted April 29, 2015 in Cristina's Close Look, Discussions / 8 Comments
Cristina’s Close Look [3]: Gender-Bending Villains

This post was in part inspired by Cait @ Paper Fury’s post “Are You a Fan of Gender Swaps?” Thinking about her post made me start looking at which characters in popular stories transcend their gender boundaries, or exhibit traits of different genders, which I found to almost always be villains. If you like this post, go check out Cait’s discussion as well! Looking at popular stories, villains always have more of a license to break social norms and taboos, as they’re already “bad,” and such “misbehavior” won’t cause readers too much discomfort because they’re not supposed to root for […]


Top Ten Books Which Feature Characters Who Challenge Societal Norms & Expectations

Top Ten Books Which Feature Characters Who Challenge Societal Norms & Expectations

Top Ten Tuesday is a fun weekly feature hosted by the fantastic blog The Broke and the Bookish. I’m also thrilled that I’m participating in my first TTT on my new blog! Hooray! This week you could choose any topic that completed the sentence: “Top Ten Books That Feature Characters Who ____.” I’ve read a LOT of fantastic books lately with protagonists who really, deeply challenge their society’s structure, and grapple with the shades of grey between what’s right and wrong, what’s tradition vs oppression, etc. I love reading about characters who struggle with their society in a real and […]


Just One Night by Gayle Forman | Mini Review

Posted April 27, 2015 in Books, Reviews / 0 Comments
Just One Night by Gayle Forman | Mini Review

“The truth and its opposite are flip sides of the same coin.” I’m so glad I was able to read this series when it was completed, because if not the wait for finding out how Willem and Allyson’s story concluded would have been excruciating. This novella is short and sweet, and finally gives life to that agonizing ending of both Just One Day and Just One Year when Allyson and Willem are finally reunited again. The narrative is told through a third person perspective, which is a little jarring since the previous books were narrated by either Allyson or Willem. […]


Sunday Funday: Week in Review [28]

Posted April 26, 2015 in Sunday Funday, Weekly Features/Memes / 8 Comments
Sunday Funday: Week in Review [28]

Sunday Funday is a weekly(ish) post I’ve started to recap the bookish (and sometimes not-so-bookish) happenings in my life the past week! Feel free to participate, just link back! April 20-26, 2015 Life Well obviously this week has been full of BIG CHANGES, namely that I moved from WordPress.com to WordPress.org! I’m going to do an in-depth post about my transition once I finally get all the bugs worked, and if you have any questions about how my move went feel free to ask me in the comments or email me! Pretty much everything went smoothly with the move. All […]


Stacking the Shelves [20]

Stacking the Shelves [20]

Stacking the Shelves is a weekly feature hosted by  Tynga’s Reviews where bloggers share the books that they’ve added to their shelves this week, whether borrowed, bought, virtual, physical, etc! Well, it’s about 4am my time and I’ve been up all night finishing The Royal Wedding by Meg Cabot (it’s SO good you guys), so I figured why not get my STS post up while I’m at it? Bought: I was recommended this after finishing The Wrong Side of Right which I adored for it’s political aspects (I hear the mom’s a senator in this one). I also got it […]


YALLWEST Tips, Tricks, & Giveaway

Posted April 24, 2015 in Travel / 4 Comments
YALLWEST Tips, Tricks, & Giveaway

Thinking about attending YALLWEST next year? Last week I posted all about my experience at the first ever YALLWEST, the companion festival to the east coast’s Yallfest. It was my first time going to a convention/festival as a blogger, and while I had a great time with a lot of fun surprises, I also did quite a bit of planning and preparing! After attending, I decided to compile a post with tips and tricks to make sure you get the most out of your YALLWEST (or any other bookish event, really) experience, as well as things I wished I had […]


Princess on the Brink (#8) by Meg Cabot- Reread Mini Review

Posted April 24, 2015 in Books, Reviews / 3 Comments
Princess on the Brink (#8) by Meg Cabot- Reread Mini Review

*This review will contain spoilers. This is the installment in The Princess Diaries where all of the long standing tensions and plot points really implode. While a lot of readers may see this as a tragic ending to a lot of long-standing features of the series, I found it really refreshing. Sure, Mia’s neurosis is in full force in this book, and she acts pretty immature about certain things, but I actually think beneath Mia’s obsessing she has some really valid points. Mia is faced with the earth-shattering proposition at the beginning of the installment of being in a long-term […]


Test Post

Posted April 23, 2015 in Uncategorized / 0 Comments

Hello there! This is just a quick test post to ensure my posts are still showing up in RSS feeds such as the WordPress.com reader.   Thank you! -Cristina


The Princess Diaries Reread: Volumes 6-7

Posted April 22, 2015 in Books, Reviews / 2 Comments
The Princess Diaries Reread: Volumes 6-7

This is the second installment in my Princess Diaries Re-Read self-challenge in order to prepare for The Royal Wedding, which comes out in June! In this post I’ll be bundling my reviews for books 6, 6.5, 7, 7.5, and 7.75 Princess in Training (6): This book kicks off Mia’s sophomore year, and centers around another one of Lily’s insane plots she drags Mia into (nominating her to be class president against her will…for Lily’s own benefit of course). While I actually liked the presidency plot because it was nice to see Mia grow into herself more and become more confident […]