Month: June 2015

Announcements, ALA, and a Brief Hiatus

Posted June 26, 2015 in Miscellaneous/Announcements / 10 Comments

Hello my lovely readers! I hope your summer is off to a great start! Mine certainly is, but it’s a bit of a bittersweet blessing. Here’s The Sitch I am lucky enough to be going on a two week vacation that starts with ALA this weekend, traveling across country the next, and visiting my hometown and reconnecting with family members the week after that. However, due to so much travel and limited internet access, I am going to be going on a very brief two week hiatus from Friday, June 26- Friday July 10. It’s a decision that I really […]

Parents in YA Literature: Can’t Read With Them, Can’t Read Without Them

Posted June 25, 2015 in Discussions / 20 Comments

If you’re a long time reader of YA, you know the gripe: readers constantly complaining that the parents are never involved, too conveniently absent, or just nonexistent, period. However, I think there’s been a recent shift in the role of parents (at least in contemporary YA) where authors may be overcompensating by making parents who are TOO overbearing. A balance is nice and definitely makes for good family dynamics, but I find that this “helicopter parenting” in books, while sometimes part of the plot, tends to overwhelm the book as much as a lack of parental authority can. Some recent […]

Book Buddies Review: Even in Paradise

Posted June 22, 2015 in Book Buddies Reviews, Reviews / 4 Comments

Cristina & Lauren Read: Book Buddies is a discussion style review I participate in every other month with my friend Lauren who runs the blog Bookmarklit. We choose a themed book for the month, read it, and the have a discussion where we both discuss themes and aspects that really stood out to us.Book Buddy Reviews are posted during the last week of the month.You can see our review in a Q&A format with half posted here, and half on Lauren’s blog! 1)Did the Buchanans charm you? Do you think the author achieved the desired effect of making them a […]

Stacking the Shelves [23]

Posted June 20, 2015 in Top Ten Tuesday, Weekly Features/Memes / 17 Comments

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! So this week I ended up with a bit of an unexpected mini haul! My boyfriend found a bag of books at his office abandoned by some co-workers who had attended ALA midwinter. Upon noting that they were YA and that no one else wanted them, he was able to give them to me! I’m super excited about All The Bright Places (the cover under the book jacket is GORGEOUS) […]

Emmy & Oliver by Robin Benway | ARC Review

Posted June 18, 2015 in ARCs, Reviews / 10 Comments

*Thank you so much to HarperCollins and Epic Reads for this review copy! Emmy & Oliver holds a special place in my heart. The author, Robin Benway, is a wonderful, lovely human being and I found out from her via twitter that there was going to be an ARC giveaway of her newest title at the Epic Reads tent at YALLWEST, so it became one of my top priorities during the festival. I was so intrigued by the synopsis, as so often kidnapping is perpetrated by parents in a custody battle, and though the cover seemed like a YA romance […]

Just Listen by Sarah Dessen | Review

Posted June 16, 2015 in Reviews / 3 Comments

“There has to be a middle. Without it, nothing can ever truly be whole. Because it is not just the space between, but also what holds everything together.” *Thank you so much to Penguin Teen for the review copy! I’m no stranger to Sarah Dessen novels. Back in my much younger teen years, I devoured Sarah’s first seven novels, chronically checking them out from my local library every summer. The release of Saint Anything had me nostalgic for Sarah’s quietly profound contemporaries, and within one week I aquired three of her novels, fully intending to make my way through as […]

Sunday Funday: Week in Review [31]

Posted June 14, 2015 in Sunday Funday, Weekly Features/Memes / 11 Comments

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! June 8-14, 2015 Life This week has been exhausting, adjusting to a new full time work schedule and balancing blogging, reading, and other life commitments. BUT there was a light at the end of the tunnel, as on Saturday I attended the Scholastic Warehouse Book Sale! I did an in-depth post of it last year, but essentially it’s when Scholastic opens their warehouses to teachers and educators to come in and […]

Saint Anything by Sarah Dessen | Review

Posted June 12, 2015 in Reviews / 19 Comments

“You only really fall apart in front of the people you know can piece you back together.” If you’re an avid reader of YA, it’s no secret that Sarah Dessen is considered by many to be the Queen of Contemporary Summer Novels. I read a lot of Sarah’s work back when I was in middle school and high school, long before I started blogging, and I always appreciated the subtlety with which she wrote, while still making an impact with her plot lines and characters. I picked up Sarah’s newest book, Saint Anything, and though it’s been years since I […]

End of Days by Susan Ee | Review

Posted June 10, 2015 in Reviews / 8 Comments

“Power is best held by the ones who don’t want it.” I’ve been meaning to write this review for weeks, but for some reason have been unable to fully form my thoughts about this book into coherent sentences (a strange occurrence for me, as it’s common for my reviews to easily be 1000+ words). I think the dilemma of being able to form a concrete opinion about this book stems from the fact that I was equal parts satisfied and disappointed by the way that Penryn and Raffe’s story ended, an odd juxtaposition of individual scenes I really enjoyed that […]

Top Ten July-December 2015 Releases I’m Excited For

Posted June 8, 2015 in Top Ten Tuesday, Weekly Features/Memes / 35 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a fun weekly feature hosted by the fantastic blog The Broke and the Bookish. This week we’re looking forward to our top ten 2015 releases in the second half of the year (I cheated and added a novella I’m rally excited about, too!) These picks are in no particular order…except for Winter! This year has been amazing for covers…all ten of these are gorgeous! Are any of these your highly anticipated July-December 2015 list? 1) Winter (Lunar Chronicles #4) by Marissa Meyer 2) Firewalker (Worldwalker #2) by Josephine Angeline 3) Rowan (Worldwalker #1.5) by Josephine Angelini […]