Source: Purchased

Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo | A Long Overdue Review

Posted February 12, 2018 in Reviews / 7 Comments

I pre-ordered Crooked Kingdom a LONG time ago, but when it came it became lost in my never ending TBR pile, usually being passed over for shorter books because at 500+ pages, it was a book I was frankly scared to commit too. However, after many months of insistence from my bf who read and loved it, and after recently listening to a podcast featuring Leigh Bardugo, I was in the mood to dive back into her fantasy duology. After reading various recaps to job my memory on the happenings in Six of Crows, I cracked open Crooked Kingdom one […]

Book Buddies Review: Bittersweet by Sarah Ockler

Posted December 18, 2017 in Book Buddies Reviews, Reviews / 4 Comments

Book Buddies is a fun, collaborative review feature that I participate in once a season with my friend Lauren who runs the blog Bookmarklit. We choose a themed book for the season, read it, and then answer fun questions that pertain to the book’s themes and each feature the book in our own way! Check out the second part of our feature on Lauren’s blog! Check out Lauren’s post here! Mini Review While I enjoy Sarah Ockler’s writing, I once again seem unable to truly find my groove with them. I was enticed by Bittersweet from the gorgeous cover, the […]

Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu | Review

Posted November 27, 2017 in Reviews / 8 Comments

It seems like no matter what social media platform I was on at the beginning of fall this year, Moxie was everywhere- Instagram, Twitter, news articles, etc. The punchy hot pink and black cover screamed feminism! in a way that I haven’t seen a YA book do in such a headstrong way before. I was thrilled to see Moxie was taking the internet by storm, and it took me back to my college days where I took several Women’s Studies classes and, like Viv in the book, truly understood what feminism was for the first time and learned about its […]

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 […]

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 […]

The Wrath and the Dawn by Renee Ahdieh | Review

Posted October 23, 2017 in Reviews / 10 Comments

So I promised myself that this fall I would make more of an effort to read fantasy books, especially ones that I own. I decided to start this initiative with a book that’s been on my radar for years, The Wrath and the Dawn. Armed with the paperback that I had preordered over a year ago and the First Draft podcast featuring the author, I embarked on a journey into Eastern fantasy and folklore and indulged in this A Thousand and One Nights retelling. Now, I was saving this book in a sense, as literally almost every single one of […]

Made for You by Melissa Marr | This is How You Put the Thrill in Thriller

Posted September 25, 2017 in Reviews / 4 Comments

I’ve been really let down with thrillers lately. The Girl on the Train almost bored me to tears, and I felt like I kept waiting for the “thrill” to kick in with Dangerous Boys. I LOVE reading thrillers, especially in the fall, so I’ve been on the hunt for a quality thriller to kick off my fall reading. I thankfully found it in a book that’s been hanging out unread on my shelves for a while now, Made for You by Melissa Marr. I’ll admit, I was a bit skeptical going in, because the only thing I had read by […]

Dangerous Boys Aren’t Nearly As Dangerous As Girls

Posted August 21, 2017 in Reviews / 10 Comments

I have to admit, I bought Dangerous Boys several years ago and had been waiting to read it for a time when I really wanted a treat, as I loved Dangerous Girls so much that I thought another thriller by the author would DEFINITELY deliver. And while Dangerous Girls will still hold a place in my heart as one of the greatest YA thrillers of all time, I was just so disappointed by Dangerous Boys. Perhaps it was the lack of the courtroom drama/unsolved crime element to the book, or perhaps I was comparing it too much to the author’s […]

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 […]