Wolf by Wolf by Ryan Graudin | ARC Review

Posted December 9, 2015 in Boyfriend Book Reviews, Reviews / 13 Comments
Wolf by Wolf by Ryan Graudin | ARC Review

Boyfriend Book Reviews is a feature where my book-loving boyfriend, Max, reads and reviews YA that I either haven’t yet read or is outside of my current TBR. If you want a thorough and thoughtful perspective on a guy’s take on YA, keep reading!   “Once, just once, Henryka had been thoughtful enough to ask Yael what she really looked like… Yael opened her mouth to answer and realized, with a start, that she did not remember. She did not remember. She did not remember. What kind of person forgets her own face?” –Graudin, 44-45. I don’t think I can […]


Top Ten New to Me Favorite Authors I Read in 2015

Posted December 7, 2015 in Top Ten Tuesday, Weekly Features/Memes / 16 Comments
Top Ten New to Me Favorite Authors I Read in 2015

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by the fantastic blog The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s topic is focusing on the top ten favorite authors that are new to YOU, no matter how long they’ve been on the literary scene. I found that this year I read fewer books by “new to me” authors than last year, as I really focused on the authors who had impressed me during my first year of blogging. In backwards chronological order (starting with the most recent new to me authors I’ve enjoyed all the way back until January 2015), here […]


The Transatlantic Book Project: Stop 2 for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone [1]

Posted December 6, 2015 in Features / 12 Comments
The Transatlantic Book Project: Stop 2 for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone [1]

I am so, so excited to announce that I am 1 of 10 bloggers participating in the Transatlantic Book Project! The brain child of Alicia @ A Kernel of Nonsense and Rachel @ Confessions of a Book Geek (both lovely bloggers who I first “met” when I started blogging almost two years ago on wordpress.com), it’s sort of a traveling book club/pen pal/secret santa project. Two books will circulate the United States and the UK/Ireland, with each blogger reading and annotating the book along the way. You can view all of the details in the project’s launch post on Alicia’s […]


I’m Starting to Feel My Age: Top 5 Adult Fiction Books on My TBR

Posted December 4, 2015 in Features, TBR / 29 Comments
I’m Starting to Feel My Age: Top 5 Adult Fiction Books on My TBR

Lately I’ve been going through a phase where I find myself semi-tired of my beloved YA. Titles that I thought I would CERTAINLY be on the edge of my seat reading have ended up being a chore to read (I’m looking at you, Winter). Perhaps because I’ve recently been thrust into adulthood in my real life, I find myself craving characters with more mature relationships, life challenges, and goals. While I don’t see myself ever turning away from YA or even demoting it from my number one preferred genre of books, I think incorporating more adult fiction into my TBR […]


5 Thoughts on Mockingjay Part 2

Posted November 27, 2015 in Film Reviews / 9 Comments
5 Thoughts on Mockingjay Part 2

Last weekend I went to see the final film in the Hunger Games trilogy (which had it’s last movie split into 2 films as has become customary for YA book to movie adaptations since the Harry Potter films started the trend). I had a LOT of expectations (especially since 2 tickets cost $27 for a matinee!), as there are so many intense plot twists and dramatic irony in the last act of the Mockingjay novel. The second half of the novel also has the death that hit me the hardest in the series (RIP Finnick). Now that I’ve had some […]


Nightfall by Jake Halpern and Peter Kujawinski | ARC Review

Posted November 23, 2015 in Books, Challenges, Reviews / 7 Comments
Nightfall by Jake Halpern and Peter Kujawinski | ARC Review

Boyfriend Book Reviews is a feature where my book-loving boyfriend, Max, reads and reviews YA that I either haven’t yet read or is outside of my current TBR. If you want a thorough and thoughtful perspective on a guy’s take on YA, keep reading! “They soon reached the flag stone path leading to Deep Well House. They could see the white paper hanging from the front door, but it was only when they were a foot away they could read what had been written. It was a single word scrawled in a childlike script: HIDE.” -114 I wanted to like […]


The Gift of Fear: Non-fiction that can save your life

Posted November 18, 2015 in Features, Guy in the Pages / 7 Comments
The Gift of Fear: Non-fiction that can save your life

Since graduating from college, I don’t read nearly as much nonfiction as I used to. While the break from monotonous texts in exchange for all of the fiction I want has been great, it also means I’ve been missing out on critical, thought provoking reads that I was often exposed to in college. Max is a recent college graduate in psychology and for his birthday earlier this year asked me to gift him with a non-fiction book that he had read excerpts from in his upper level psychology classes: The Gift of Fear by Gavin De Becker. This text is […]


You Won’t Catch Me Extending My Stay Anytime Soon

Posted November 16, 2015 in Reviews / 4 Comments
You Won’t Catch Me Extending My Stay Anytime Soon

Hotel Ruby was another coveted addition to my collection thanks to ALA this summer in San Francisco. I had heard some buzz about the book prior to the event, and the cover was absolutely stunning. When I found out that Suzanne Young was going to be signing ARCs of either Hotel Ruby or her “The Program” books, I knew I wanted to opt for Hotel Ruby because it has a total Tower of Terror Vibe to it from the synopsis (I am a huge fan of the Tower of Terror ride at the Disney resorts, and I love the haunting […]


November, November: the beginning of the most wonderful time of the year

Posted November 8, 2015 in Features / 11 Comments
November, November: the beginning of the most wonderful time of the year

November may be my new favorite month. This year, November’s brought with it the first hints of fall (the weather has literally dipped twenty degrees over the course of two weeks) new holiday traditions, and a return to a state of calmness in my life. At the end of August I experienced some major life changes, and have moved to a new town, started a new job, and gone on an epic vacation in the course of the past two months. This has led to a decrease in posting and reading, but an increase in amazing life-changing opportunities. However, mid […]


Nantucket Red by Leila Howland | Review

Posted November 4, 2015 in Books, Reviews / 4 Comments
Nantucket Red by Leila Howland | Review

My Review There’s something about Leila Howland’s writing that makes it compulsively readable among the huge selection of YA contemporaries on the market today. I think it’s due to a combination of the dreamy, beachy setting of Nantucket along with her willingness to go just a little farther than other YA authors in her heavier content, from sex to grief to bullying. There’s a rawness around Cricket’s experiences that makes the narrative hit home a little more without compromising its status as a fun, beachy read. The first thing that I, (and many other reviewers, I’m sure), have to bring […]