Format: Hardcover

Boyfriend Book Reviews | There’s Someone Inside Your House

Posted October 30, 2017 in Reviews / 9 Comments

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! So as I’m sure if you’ve read one of my reviews before you know I’m a fan of the horror genre. When this one crossed my proverbial desk I will confess I was excited. “And so it begins,” I thought. Using my advanced knowledge of the “Teen Slasher” genre, I was ready to dig into […]

Windfall by Jennifer E. Smith | Review

Posted August 14, 2017 in Books, Reviews / 14 Comments

I’ll admit I succumbed to major, major cover love with the purchase of Windfall. I had seen a LOT of mixed reviews, but the greens and blues were so my #aesthetic so I decided to buy it (I mean, if all else failed, I got a gorgeous Instagram photo of it). I was also intrigued to see how Jennifer E. Smith portrayed the winning the lottery premise, as another YA book released this year, Lucky in Love, also dealt with the same theme. There’s something so fun about wistfully talking about all of the things you’d do if you won […]

Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices #1) by Cassandra Clare | Review

Posted July 24, 2017 in Reviews / 4 Comments

Be still my Shadowhunter heart. It’s been seven years since I picked up my first book set in Cassandra Clare’s Shadowhunter world, and I have to say the first book in her Dark Artifices series has reminded me of exactly why I fell in love with the Shadowhunter world in the first place. Her characters are diverse and dynamic, the Institutes are interesting and vibrant settings, and the West Coast setting in Lady Midnight so perfectly captures what it’s like to live in Southern California…this book is a beautiful tribute to LA and so uniquely Californian. I’m in love. Now […]

Rereading Sarah Dessen | Once and For All Review + Dessen Favorites!

Posted June 29, 2017 in Features, Reviews / 7 Comments

Most readers and bloggers can agree that Sarah Dessen is the Queen of Contemporary. Her books have been around long before YA was a well-known genre and I remember her books being some of the first I ventured into in middle and high school summers when the YA section at my local library was lacking and I didn’t even really know what a contemporary novel was. Over the past 12+ years I’ve read and loved almost all of her books, and with Once and for All out this Sarah has surely been on everyone’s mind! Lauren from Bookmark Lit and […]

Alex, Approximately by Jenn Bennett | Review

Posted June 26, 2017 in Reviews / 6 Comments

It took me a while to get into this one, but when I finally did, I fell hard. I was actually feeling super into the romance, which let me tell you, is getting harder and harder for me with high school settings these days (#I’mgettingold). I will admit I pre-ordered this book mainly due to a combination of cover love and succumbing to the hype since EVERYONE seemed to have read it early, but I’ve never seen You’ve Got Mail (I know, I know) so I really didn’t know what to expect, or why people were flailing so hard. However, […]

Caraval by Stephanie Garber | Review

Posted April 3, 2017 in Reviews / 11 Comments

Caraval was heavily marketed as pretty much THE BOOK of 2017, coming out in the first month of the year with an outrageous amount of hype. Usually I would be super wary of any book released under such circumstances, but I found myself SO excited to read this one after meeting Stephanie, attending the launch, and seeing how genuinely excited she was about her book finally making it into readers’ hands. I’m happy to report that I found Caraval to be utterly enchanting and strangely unique, and it’s nearly topped the list of fantasy worlds that I would eagerly volunteer […]

Holding Up the Universe by Jennifer Niven | Review

Posted February 10, 2017 in Reviews / 6 Comments

I missed the All the Bright Places bandwagon, so Holding Up the Universe is my first encounter with Jennifer Niven’s writing. While it featured two interesting protagonists who had unique circumstances surrounding them, it was an enjoyable contemporary read that didn’t exactly blow me away in the sea of options available in YA. I remember when I first read the synopsis, I was sort of shocked, as Niven was using rather a rather extreme physical condition for her protagonist (Libby, who was at one point so overweight that she had to be lifted out of her house with a crane) […]

Roseblood by A.G. Howard | In Which My Phantom Obsession is Rekindled

Posted February 2, 2017 in Reviews / 13 Comments

Full Disclaimer: I was hooked on this book from the moment I heard it was being released because I spent a pivotal portion of my pre-teen years obsessed with The Phantom of the Opera. The movie version with Emmy Rossum came out when I was in middle school and I was introduced to it by my choir teacher and my obsession was born (it wasn’t hard considering the protagonist’s name is CHRISTINE and then there was me, aspiring little alto, CRISTINA). A few years later my mom took me to see the live stage production in Las Vegas that was […]

Truthwitch by Susan Dennard | Review

Posted January 30, 2017 in Reviews / 7 Comments

I finished Truthwitch just in the nick of time, about 4 hours before I saw Susan on tour for Windwitch’s release. I am so happy to report that despite procrastinating reading Truthwitch for a literal year (due to hesitation regarding how much insane hype surrounded its release and not wanting to forget everything before its sequel came out) I really enjoyed Truthwitch and love Susan’s writing just as much as I hoped I would. Truthwitch is a high fantasy YA series starter that yes, you guessed it, focuses on main characters who are witches. At the forefront of the novel […]

The Secret of a Heart Note by Stacey Lee | Review

Posted January 25, 2017 in Reviews / 14 Comments

Many thanks to the wonderful Lauren @ Bookmark Lit for this book! Stacey Lee has built herself a reputation of writing strong YA female protagonists with very distinct personalities, and The Secret of a Heart Note is no exception. The story follows Mimosa, one of the last living aromateurs, and her mother as they mix elixirs to help their clients win the affections of their crushes. The entire novel has a bit of a magical realism feel, with the beautiful and wild garden Mimosa and her mother cultivate, their rambling cottage they live in, and their seemingly magical sense of […]