Publisher: Speak

Mini Reviews | One Great Lie & The Moon and More

Posted October 4, 2021 in Books, Reviews / 0 Comments

There’s something about the way Deb Caletti writes that completely transports me. I am taken from my time and place and I am truly IN the protagonist’s mind. So with One Great Lie, I embarked on a dark summer adventure in Venice with protagonist Charlotte as she navigated the cruel, often heartbreaking truths of being a woman in society, both in the past and in the present. Caletti’s YA novels often seem to tackle current social issues, and One Great Lie is no exception. Charlotte wins an incredible, once in a lifetime opportunity to participate in a summer workshop abroad […]

Sarah Dessen Mini Reviews: Keeping the Moon & This Lullaby

Posted December 3, 2018 in Books, Reviews / 4 Comments

I can’t believe that Keeping the Moon is almost 20 years old! Every summer I set out to reread a Sarah Dessen book or two (the goal being that I’ve reread all in recent memory) and it always blows me away that Sarah’s been writing for so long, and how her stories do feel so timeless despite their age. Keeping the Moon is no exception, and I was curious to see how I would like it as I barely remembered anything since the last time I read it was probably back in 2004 and I remembered it not being my […]

Shades of London by Maureen Johnson | Series Review

Posted November 20, 2017 in Reviews / 13 Comments

The first book of Maureen Johnson’s paranormal series had been collecting dust on my “shelf of shame” for several years after I picked it up from a Scholastic warehouse book sale, not completely sure what it was about but remembering that the title sounded familiar. This fall I’ve been going through a bit of a “spooky” reading phase (spooky being a highly subjective term as I do not do horror) and decided to pick up The Name of the Star on a whim one October weekend. I was enthralled by the books and by this introduction to Maureen’s writing (which […]

Dreamland by Sarah Dessen | #ReadADessen Tour and Giveaway

Posted April 27, 2017 in Blog Tours, Reviews / 6 Comments

It’s just a few weeks until the Queen of Contemporary YA, Sarah Dessen, has a new book hitting shelves! While eagerly waiting for my copy of Once and For All to arrive, I’m joining Penguin Teen’s #ReadADessen campaign for week 2 reviewing on of my FAVORITE Dessen novels of all time- Dreamland. Note: I was provided a finished copy of Dreamland by Penguin Teen to read, review, and feature on my blog as a #PRHPartner. Many, many years ago I read Dreamland for the first time. It was one of my first, if not THE first, Sarah Dessen novel I […]

Sarah Dessen Mini Reviews | Along for the Ride & Lock and Key

Posted February 20, 2017 in Reviews / 12 Comments

Along for the Ride is one of the best Sarah Dessen books that I’ve read in a long time. While many of her books focus on flawed family dynamics, this one gave such an intimate view on so many specific issues: divorce, second marriages, half-siblings, parenting gender roles and responsibilities, and age differences in marriages, just to name a few. These are all witnessed and/or experienced by Auden, the protagonist who goes to visit her father and his new wife and baby in Dessen’s well-loved seaside town setting of Colby. Though Auden isn’t a warm protagonist (at least at first), […]

Third Time’s the Charm

Posted July 8, 2016 in Reviews / 14 Comments

“Phones are distracting. The internet is distracting.The way he looked at you? He wasn’t distracted. He was consumed.” By the time I read Anna and the French Kiss, I was pretty much the last book blogger I knew to start Stephanie Perkin’s adorable companion series, and at that time everyone was anxiously awaiting the arrival of Isla. Over the past two years I’ve slowly made my way through the series, savoring each book yet being disappointed that I hadn’t quite found that magic that everyone else seems to see in them. I love the lush settings, the captivating characters, but […]

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 […]

Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins | Review

Posted March 13, 2015 in Books, Reviews / 13 Comments

“There are some people in life that you can’t get over.” Companion series are my new favorite thing. I love the idea of being able to have distinct, separate stories set within the same universe, and being able to see glimpses of characters from other books in them. It’s like getting to wave to a friend you haven’t seen in a while but miss terribly. Lola and the Boy Next Door is the second installment in Stephanie Perkin’s Anna and the French Kiss companion series, and it did indeed have the unique charm of introducing me to new memorable […]

Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins- Review Proving I am Probably the Last Person on the Planet to Read This Book

Posted October 7, 2014 in Books, Reviews / 18 Comments

“How many times can our emotions be tied to someone else’s – be pulled and stretched and twisted – before they snap? Before they can never be mended again?” Anna and the French Kiss was a book that I’ve been hearing about in the YA contemporary genre for years. It sounded fluffy, and the cover was so cute yet so cheesy, that I never felt motivated enough to add it to my pile when book buying. Recently the series received a cover-redesign which is absolutely gorgeous, and this coupled with the rave reviews of Isla and the Happily Ever after […]