Genre: Family

The Boy Most Likely To by Huntley Fitzpatrick | Review

Posted December 28, 2016 in Reviews / 6 Comments

I think everyone goes into reading The Boy Most Likely To with two thoughts in mind: they can’t wait to see more of the Garretts, and they can’t wait to hear more of Tim’s cutting sarcasm. The novel definitely hits the mark on both counts- the Garretts are an ever present entity in Tim’s life as he tries to refocus and reevaluate his life. Huntley Fitzpatrick is so gifted at bringing such a large and vibrant family to life in her stories, and it juxtaposes so well with lost and lonely souls such as Tim, or Samantha from My Life […]

Mini Reviews: My Life Next Door and What Happened to Goodbye

Posted August 12, 2015 in Reviews / 9 Comments

Feeling like one of the only bloggers who had yet to read and love Huntley Fitzpatrick’s debut novel, I eagerly started it while on my vacation this summer. I expected a light, fluffy read with perhaps some slight shades of dysfunction, similar to a Sarah Dessen novel. However, I found My Life Next Door to be much more nuanced than I anticipated and found it really lived up to the hype and expectations I had for it. While the book is often primarily seen as a romance, and the romance is very present and very well done, this book managed […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Making Pretty by Corey Ann Haydu | ARC Review

Posted May 12, 2015 in Reviews / 2 Comments

Making Pretty captivated me by throwing a curve ball at me within the first 70 or so pages that I could not ignore; a plot twist so disturbing that I had to keep reading the book even though there were several things about it that did not work for me. So instead of DNF-ing it, I plowed through 300+ pages of seventeen year old Montana’s narrative to find myself at the end of it feeling a lot of things, though “liking” this book is unfortunately not one of them. While Haydu crafts a story with intensely messy family dynamics and […]

The Wrong Side of Right by Jenn Marie Thorne- My New Favorite Contemporary Novel

Posted April 14, 2015 in Books, Five Star Reads, Reviews / 16 Comments

“It’s amazing how much one person can change the world, even if they don’t know they’re doing it.” This is the BEST contemporary YA novel I’ve read so far in 2015! I don’t say this lightly. I requested this book on a whim from my library when I saw this novel was being compared to The Princess Diaries (and you all know what a weakness I have for Meg Cabot). The novel follows a teenage girl, Kate, who finds out her absentee dad is a senator, specifically a senator who is running for president. Kate is thrust into the […]

I’ll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios | Review

Posted March 9, 2015 in Books, Reviews / 7 Comments

“…as if my sorrows and joys had conspired to birth me.” I’ve seen a lot of readers project that 2015 was going to bring a shift in trends toward the popularity of grittier contemporaries, and I’ll Meet You There definitely proves such predictions. This book was darker than I anticipated, following the lives of two teenagers from a dead end town in central California, one a former marine who’s landed back where he started, the other a budding artist with every ounce of determination focused on getting out of the desolate area. This book is not just an extremely […]

I Was Here by Gayle Forman | Review

Posted February 25, 2015 in Books, Reviews / 10 Comments

“You had a pile of rocks, and you cleaned them up pretty and made a necklace. Meg got jewels, and she hung herself with them.” In all honesty, I wasn’t sure what to expect from I Was Here. It was my first time reading a novel by Gayle Forman and it dealt with the loaded topic of not just a suicide, but a suicide that already happened. So I embarked on this reading journey with a lot of curiosity and a dash of hopefulness, and I was a bit surprised by what I found. I Was Here was not romantic […]