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★★★★★ So grateful  for all my wonderful November reads! Got in some re-reads and some 5 and 4 stars!  ★★★★★ (Descending from pure awesomeness to horrible awfulness) 1. The New Hunger ~ Isaac Marion  (reread)  ★★★★★ 2. The Raven Boys ~ Maggie Stiefvater   ★★★★★ 3. Delirium ~ Lauren Oliver   ★★★★★ 4. Gossamer ~ Lois Lowry   ★★★★★ 5. Carve the Mark ~ Veronica Roth   ★★★★ 6. Gemina ~ Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff   ★★★★ 7. The Battle of the Labyrinth ~ Rick Riordan (reread)  ★★★★ 8. The Titan's Curse ~ Rick Riordan (reread)  ★★★★ 9. Warm Bodies ~ Isaac Marion (reread)  ★★★★ 10. The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner ~ Stephenie Meyer   ★★★★ 11. Vampire Academy ~ Richelle Mead   ★★★★ 12. Six of Crows ~ Leigh Bardugo   ★★★★ 13. Autoboyography ~ Christina Lauren   ★★★★ 14. Caraval ~ Stephanie Garber   ★★★ 15. Penpal ~ Dathan Auerbach   ★★★ 16. Eclipse ~ Stephenie Meyer ...

★★★☆☆ Me to this book: "Spare me your self-centered teen angst." So this improved on the overall plot of the series but still suffered from plotholes and unresolved and unsatisfying plotlines. The world and people did not feel real at all and the time travel mess only confused the lore without adding any explanations. The climax held no tension; so much happened where Penryn wasn't there to narrate that I once again felt like I was reading only half of the book. Raffe and Penryn's relationship was so wishy washy. Like, one moment, Penryn was like "ooh baby let's get it on" and Raffe was like "sure thing babe" and then suddenly he'd be like "oh wait heck no" even though he's constantly flirting with her (view spoiler) [and KNEW THE WHOLE TIME that Daughters of Men and angels don't make demon babies but never thought to think about the implications of that in the politics of his world for longer than two s...

★★★★★ (re-read and original) A dead man lies near a river, and the forest watches him. Gold clouds drift across a warming pink sky. Crows dart through dark pines that hover over him like morbid onlookers. In the deep, wild grass, small living things creep around the dead man's face, eager to eat it and return it to the soul. Their faint clicks mingle with the rush of the wind and the screams of the birds and the roar of the river that will wash away his bones. Nature is hungry. It is ready to take back what the man stole from it by living. But the dead man opens his eyes. Every time I read those lines, chills go down my spine and my hairs stand on end. This is truly something spectacular. The New Hunger expands upon the ideas of Warm Bodies, giving insight into the lore and the origins of this world and its inhabitants, but it can be read as a standalone just as well; it is powerfully meaningful and substantial. Its lyrical prose spins a tale of surv...

★★☆☆☆ “She wasn’t made to be alone.” “I guess none of us are.” I've had the sudden realization that this series is the girl-version of The Maze Runner by James Dashner. It's "fast-paced" aka rushed to the extreme and lacks appropriate characterization and tension. It's probably very fun for a younger reader but for someone who needs a bit more quality to really enjoy myself unironically, it tends to feel like I'm reading the abridged version of a much longer, better paced book. This sequel had all the issues from the first book and even had the initiative to add some issues that didn't exist before. The unnecessary and obnoxiously sexist military guys (not to mention the borderline sociopathic and strangely opportunistic Dee-Dum, who seem to actually enjoy the apocalypse) serve the same plot convenience purposes as last time and the plot revolves once more around Paige's sudden disappearance. This time it held no tension whatsoever,...

★★★★☆ "Percy, lesser beings do many horrible things in the name of the gods. That does not mean we gods approve. The way our sons and daughters act in our names... well, it usually says more about them than it does about us." This is probably the most coherently novel-like in the series. By this, I mean that it has themes and foreshadowing, and slower, calmer moments to balance out the action. There are more characters with greyer morality and interesting motivations than in previous books. Solidly good. "Remake the wild, a little at a time, each in your own corner of the world. You cannot wait for anyone else, even a god, to do that for you." Buy the book here: Amazon Book Depository Barnes & Noble

★★★★☆ I'm gonna start by saying that the movie is one of my favorite guilty pleasures, that I watch it almost regularly and have a blast every single time. Part of that is the sheer stupidity of much of the plot, as well as the actually sort of interesting and cool lore. Having now read the book, I can say that the movie was surprisingly accurate. Shame we didn't get the rest of the series. Now, the book itself was great in the way reading Twilight was great: I already found the movie silly and enjoyable, so the book wasn't that much of a stretch, but there were some things that bothered me upon reflection. First, we meet Professor Severus Snape—I mean Guardian Stan Alto—who publically ridicules Harry Potter—I mean Rose Hathaway—on her lack of Dhampir knowledge in a classroom setting. Then we hear tell of Professor Sybill Trelawney—I mean Sonya Karp—who was an eccentric teacher who said vaguely threatening and ominous things but was generally regarded as a ...

★★★★★ This was way better than I thought it would be. Mama, Mama, help me get home I'm out in the woods, I am out on my own. I found me a werewolf, a nasty old mutt It showed me its teeth and went straight for my gut. Mama, Mama, help me get home I'm out in the woods, I am out on my own. I was stopped by a vampire, a rotting old wreck It showed me its teeth and went straight for my neck. Mama, Mama, put me to bed I won't make it home, I'm already half-dead. I met an Invalid, and fell for his art He showed me his smile, and went straight for my heart. -From "A Child's Walk Home," Nursery Rhymes and Folk Tales So, this is for all intents and purposes the same idea and some of the same plot as Scott Westerfeld's Uglies , and yet it somehow utilized that same idea and plot to make something much more profound and frankly more coherent. This book has actual motifs and themes. I adored the writing style and lov...

★★★★★ (original) ★★★★☆ (re-read) The world has been distilled. Being dead is easy. This is a fantastic book. I watched the movie first because I thought it looked funny and now it's one of my favorite films. I decided to read the book, because as the old adage goes, "The book is always better than the movie." Oh how that's true. This humanized (quite literally) the zombies and their plight, while making epic comparisons to the state of survival versus living. What does it mean to be alive? What does it mean to be undead? This book is so much more than a Romeo and Juliet zombie drama. This is so much more than the Twilight with zombies. It's about how love is what makes us human, sometimes quite lite R ally. "You should always be taking pictures, if not with a camera then with your mind. Memories you capture on purpose are always more vivid than the ones you pick up by accident." Buy the book here: Amazon Book...

★★★★★ OH MY GOODNESSAKDLGKAJGOAJROTJLGJAFLG At night, Henrietta felt like magic, and at night, magic felt like it might be a terrible thing. Every time I read the description of this book, I was even more confused about what it was about. It came across as a ghost version of Twilight (and with Maggie Stiefvater's track record with Shiver , no wonder) but the constant hype surrounding it, even after all these years, finally won me over. The cover helped too. I LOVED THIS! The characters are all amazing, and even when a certain character's existence felt unnecessary at first, by the end they were properly justified and I felt an emotional connection to them. I LOVE the boys themselves. They're all such wonderful, well-rounded characters. I really liked Blue as well, and her wacky family stole my heart. Can we just talk about how Ronan -  Ronan of all people; the scary angst king - is the mother of a baby raven? Because MY HEART CAN'T TAKE ...

★★★★☆ "When everyone knows you’re a monster, you needn’t waste time doing every monstrous thing." It's hard to place exactly what it is about Leigh Bardugo's writing that makes it seem...simply okay to me. There's nothing wrong with it at all, but every book of hers that I have read as had that same level of "this is okay but that's all" to it. It isn't bad at all, and I find no fault in it, but it just doesn't excite me. It isn't styleless and the style that is there is good. It's really just an unnamable thing. I just don't particularly love her writing for some reason. "The life you live, the hate you feel—it's poison. I can drink it no longer." I went into this with very high expectations, and I feel like that was part of the reason why I found myself getting bored with this book very soon after starting it. While its themes were interesting and everyone loves a good heist, it wasn't as hard...

★★☆☆☆ I received this eARC from Bleeding Ink Publishing on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of this book in any way. You know those books that are so generic that it's clear the author just wanted to have a book written but didn't care what it was about as long as it sold? Well, this is the opposite. It's an author who really wanted to tell a story but had no idea how to actually write a book. Obligatory Summary Genesis and her band of faceless masses all live in a world with unpredictable weather, left there by some unseen entity to fight for their survival. Our world runs in cycles that change like a person shaking one of the snow globes we found in the storage room in the bunker when we were kids. Two days of Spring, a week of Summer, four days of Fall, followed by a month of Winter. Most days, I wouldn't mind if our world fell off whatever shelf it is sitting on, smashing the cycle. She and ...

★★★★☆ There was a hunger inside me, and there always had been. That hunger was stronger than pain, stronger than horror. It gnawed even after everything else inside me had given up. It was not hope; it did not soar; it slithered, clawed, and dragged, and it would not let me stop. And when I finally named it, I found it was something very simple: the desire to live. This book is just Divergent with a face lift and some eyeshadow; it's just Divergent with better worldbuilding and better characters, and set in space this time. New and improved. Divergent 2.0 This is told in two perspectives, which only started working about halfway through the book, once Cyra actually started doing things. The first perspective, Akos', is told in third person, and was very well done. Honestly, if someone told me that Cyra's first person was written by a different author, I would believe them. Akos immediately hooked me, and Cyra immediately bored me. I cannot fathom wh...

★★★★☆ But this is your life, and it will stretch out before you, and you are the only person who can make it whatever you want it to be. I went into this book expecting to hate it. I even put it on my dreaded "all-aboard-the-nope-train" shelf where only the books I have no intention of ever reading go, but a challenge in a group challenged me to read a book I thought I wouldn't like, and this one came immediately to mind. Now, let me explain my reasons for finding this book's mere concept--nay, mere existence--originally unsavory: I am a Mormon, as most people call us; a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , as we prefer to be called. We have a rather sordid history in media representation; we're either the vile, cultish villains (practically twirling our moustaches and sacrificing babies to the devil in our sinister temples) when in media made by non-members , or quirky, unintentionally bad actors in media made by members ...

★★★☆☆ Here's an out of context quote: Please, please don't make him take his shirt off. The Writing and Worldbuilding I've been intrigued by this book since the moment I found out about it. It's basically what happens when The Hunger Games and The Mortal Instruments are popular at the same time. However, I found it somewhat lacking. It definitely could have been executed better. The biggest issue was the first person narration. It had that snarky wit prevalent in YA and MG fiction and unfortunately, instead of adding necessary humor to lighten the darker themes, it lessened the darkness. It felt tonally unbalanced--tone deaf, if you will. Much of the plot felt juvenile and unrealistic (namely the "cat-fight" with Anita) and much of what happened ultimately could have been cut. The book does not wax philosophical and therefore has no central themes. It says nothing on the human condition, the state of society, and morality, whi...

★★★★☆ Patience and Silence had one beautiful daughter. And her name was Vengeance. < error > I have to admit that I wasn't nearly as into this one than I was with Illuminae . It just didn't click as much, and I found much of the conflict to be convoluted and too conveniently resolved, which makes for crappy tension. I didn't even feel any kind of connection to the main characters until around halfway through, and this book is long. Most of the issue was the sheer obnoxious similarities between Kady Grant and Hanna Donnelly (that are even referenced in-universe, they are so prevalent)--and unfortunately, it took a great deal of murder and sadness to make me like Kady, and nothing on that scale happens to Hanna ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ < error > Most of the emotions I felt were more for the shock-value of the situations, not necessarily because I had grown attached to specific characters. After a while, the plot armor was obvious. The only character I ...

★★★★☆ In this installment, we meet the redeemable group of men-hating crazy women, Artemis's hunters. I remember hating these girls like crazy when I was younger (and I still think Bianca's a little jerk, but whatever) but found them a lot more reasonable this time around. Also, this one actually made me shed a tear, which is crazy because I never cried in this one before; I only ever cried in The Last Olympian in Luke's backstory scenes (I sob like a baby in those scenes). Also, I just have to Rachel: The heck? Percy: You can see me? Buy the book here: Amazon Book Depository Barnes & Noble

★★★☆☆ The resemblance is uncanny. I found this final installment to be the best written one but also the most mind-numbingly boring, which is especially disappointing when both halves of the movie version are my favorite in the franchise. It did not have to be nearly as long as it was. The so-called climax was one of the most anticlimactic things I've ever read. Too much talking! [And I'm pissed off that the movie ending is not the book ending. I was patiently awaiting a battle scene in which everyone gets brutally murdered, and yet nothing of the sort happened! They have a trash Scooby-Doo ending where it was all one big misunderstanding and no one but Irina dies! 😠 (hide spoiler) ] Some of my dislike of this book stems from the entire part dedicated to Jacob's perspective. I've made it fairly clear that I'm about as far away from a Team Jacob supporter as one can be (#TeamMikeNewton all the way #AllMericanBoi) and his whiny, entitled, douchebag...

★★★☆☆ How far can you go into the woods? This book had a great deal of potential, and I think that it did what it intended well enough, but I found it lacking towards the end and did not feel that many of the events toward the end were entirely necessary. Much of the plot felt convoluted and unbelievable, which took me out of the mystery and made me question the entire premise of the story. The writing was interesting because sometimes, especially in the beginning, I thought it was actually quite excellent, but as the story went on, it dragged and I often had to re-read entire paragraphs just to understand what was even happening. Generally, the philosophical waxing was done well but the actions were done terribly. One thing this book did very well was suspense. I was very intrigued by the mystery and really wanted to know how everything fit together. The world is a cruel place made crueler still by man. The story followed a nonlinear plot which often made the...

★★★★★ TW: child abuse, domestic abuse, nightmares For fans of A Monster Calls , Gossamer tells the tale of a dream-giver and the young boy she bestows dreams upon. He is a troubled child with an unsettling past, and he needs all the good dreams he can get, especially with the Sinisteed Horde that is fast approaching him, intent on giving him horrible nightmares. "Sad parts are important ... you must include the sad parts, because they are part of the story, and they have to be part of the dreams." The book is short and bittersweet, with darker themes than most of Lowry's work. I wish that there was more in this world, as it is very interesting and unique. I love sandman-esque stories. The worldbuilding was well done and the characters were all excellent. I thoroughly enjoyed it. "Change means leaving things behind, and that's always sad." Buy the book here: Amazon Book Depository Barnes & Noble

★★★★★ Spooktober didn't end up being super spooky for me, but I did read some gold, which was great!!  ★★★★★ (Descending from pure awesomeness to horrible awfulness) 1. Illuminae ~ Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff   ★★★★★ 2. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows ~ J.K. Rowling  ★★★★★ 3. How Far We Go and How Fast ~ Nora Decter  ★★★★★ 4. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War ~ Max Brooks  ★★★★ 5. The Sea of Monsters ~ Rick Riordan   ★★★★ 6. Twilight ~ Stephenie Meyer   ★★★★ 7. New Moon ~ Stephenie Meyer  ★★★★ 8. The Lightning Thief ~ Rick Riordan  ★★★★ 9. The Coldest Girl in Coldtown ~ Holly Black   ★★★★ 10. Shearwater ~ D.S. Murphy  ★★★ 11. The Fever Code ~ James Dashner  ★★★ 12. The Kill Order ~ James Dashner  ★★★ 13. The Death Cure ~ James Dashner  ★★★ 14. The Scorch Trials ~ James Dashner  ★★ 15. Vengeful ~ V.E. Schwab  ★★ See you in November!

★★★★☆ Honestly, way better than I thought it'd be. If Bree had been the main character of the Twilight saga, and if the series had followed this plot, only longer so things weren't so rushed, Twilight could have been legitimately good. There are deeper thoughts here, and darker themes, that made things feel more real and gritty. I enjoyed Bree's character immensely, and genuinely liked Diego. Riley was interesting too, and I appreciated his dynamic with all the other characters. It felt very much like a slightly better version of The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black. My only problem with this was how rushed it was, being a novella. Diego and Bree didn't have ample time to form a believable and realistic romantic bond, but their friendship felt real. Really shows how Stephenie Meyer can be pretty good when she tries. Buy the book here: Amazon Book Depository Barnes & Noble

★★★★☆ Love the aesthetic! The candle smells divine and so fresh! It was the first thing I noticed when I opened the box. And it's so cute! The earrings are super cute (and I'm magically not allergic to them!) The magnets are adorable! Material feels just a little strange, like sticky or something, but it's not a big deal. The book bag is so great!!! I love how it's padded and the design is perfect! Fits my new copy like a glove. The card with the quote has character art on the back! The quote is one of my favorites from the book! And speaking of the book, it's great to have my own copy! I just love the cover so much! Plus, it's signed!! The box also comes with a promo for Anela's next book, featuring an exclusive first look at the cover and a full synopsis, and it is so cool! The cover and font are fantastic! I'm hyped! Norse mythology and the ocean are two of my favorite things! Here's the next book ...