Monthly Archives:: March 2014

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Giselle’s Stacking the Shelves [March 23]

Posted by Giselle • 29 Comments

Stacking the Shelves is a meme hosted by Tynga’s Reviews featuring the books we got this week, and I also mention blog news/happenings of the past week.

How is spring treating everyone so far? Are you still getting snow like us? What gives, mother nature? Don’t you have a calendar? >.< And has anyone watched The 100 pilot? I thought it was pretty meh, but pilots sometimes are so it still has potential. What about Divergent? That any good? I won’t be able to watch it for a couple of weeks *sobs* So on to the bookish pretties I got this week! 🙂

THIS WEEK’S BOOK HAUL:
(Click on covers for Goodreads)

I received for review:

Ebook haul:

And I got this colorful package from Penguin Canada.

–End Times by Anna Schumacher
–Take Back the Skies by Lucy Saxon

*Big thanks to Macmillan Publishers, St. Martin’s Press, Harlequin Teen, and Penguin Canada for these pretties!*

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That’s all for me this week!
XOXO

Fresh Batch (New Releases March 23rd – 29th)

Posted by Giselle on 03/22/2014 • 13 Comments

Flavor of the week:

Nearly Gone Elle Cosimano Publication date: March 25th 2014by Kathy Dawson Books

Goodreads Purchase

Bones meets Fringe in a big, dark, scary, brilliantly-plotted urban thriller that will leave you guessing until the very end.

Nearly Boswell knows how to keep secrets. Living in a DC trailer park, she knows better than to share anything that would make her a target with her classmates. Like her mother’s job as an exotic dancer, her obsession with the personal ads, and especially the emotions she can taste when she brushes against someone’s skin. But when a serial killer goes on a killing spree and starts attacking students, leaving cryptic ads in the newspaper that only Nearly can decipher, she confides in the one person she…

Review: The Here and Now by Ann Brashares

Posted by Giselle on 03/21/2014 • 25 Comments

What a disappointment. And an unexpected one since I was such a fan of her Sisterhood in the Traveling Pants series (which rocked my socks off!). I didn’t dislike this one right away; at first I was very much into it. We start by learning of their dystopian-like community that has formed in the past (our present), after having escaped from a plague ravaged future. A future that is, quite frankly, not at all unrealistic, making it all the more terrifying. Once we get down to business, though, things go downhill fast. From underdeveloped characters, to random – often boring – plot detours, to unemotional insta-love romance.

Prenna starts out as a great character – stubborn and determined. She’s from a future where touching meant death, and is now controlled…

Review: Far From You by Tess Sharpe

Posted by Giselle on 03/20/2014 • 31 Comments

An emotionally raw story that combines mystery and romance, Far From You offers more than I expected. It’s a poignant look into the life of a girl who’s lived through tragedy after tragedy, which led her into a deep pit filled with pain, secrets, and addiction.

Told in alternating past and present timelines, we slowly learn exactly who Sophie is, what her relationship with Mina was like, and how it all led to today’s misery. While I’m not always a fan of rotating past and present POVs, especially those that send us at different points in time with seemingly no chronological order, but in this case it really worked. We aren’t meant to follow a strict timeline, but rather to witness the brief moments that founded their relationship. It’s…

Review: Plus One by Elizabeth Fama

Posted by Giselle on 03/19/2014 • 27 Comments

I had high expectations for Plus One, especially with how much I enjoyed Monstrous Beauty last year, but unfortunately I didn’t click with this one. I won’t fault the writing itself, Fama still has a way with words. My problems mostly lay with the plot and world building.

While the setting itself is interesting in many ways – involving a society divided by night and day, characterized with social divides and discrimination – I found its raison d’être quite flaky. The idea of a whole epidemic being stopped by a simple night and day solution feels improbable, and many questions about the overall workings of this world still remains. The brief explanations we do get require some suspension of disbelief that a world like this could successfully establish itself….

Our Spring Reading List!

Posted by Giselle on 03/18/2014 • 32 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish where we list top bookish things. Note that Giselle and Jenni often decide to split it and each do a Top 5.

Our TBR list is heating up with the weather! Jenni

The Treatment (The Program #2) by Suzanne Collins: I loved The Program so much last year and it left me wanting so much more of Sloane’s story and to find out more about this twisted world. I haven’t seen many reviews for this one because I have been hiding from them, I hope I love it! Sunrise (Ashfall #3) by Mike Mullin: This is one of my favourite series of all time. The world building and just Mullins’ writing…

Review: Love Letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira

Posted by on 03/17/2014 • 31 Comments

There’s always some nervousness in a reader when they finally begin to read a book that they have been highly anticipating. I had that nervousness going into Love Letters To The Dead, I mean any book that mentions Kurt Cobain is exciting to me because he is in my top 5 favourite artists of all time. After reading the novel I think that the nervousness was warranted because I did struggle through much of it, but in the end everything that I waded through paid off in a huge way.

Love Letters to the Dead is told as a series of letters that Laurel writes to dead celebrities. This starts out as an English assignment and she kind of just keeps going with it. She starts off writing to Cobain…

Jenni’s Stacking the Shelves [Mar 16]

Posted by on 03/16/2014 • 25 Comments

Stacking the Shelves is a meme hosted by Tynga’s Reviews featuring new additions to our bookshelves.

I haven’t gotten much in the past two weeks but what I did get is super exciting!

Big thank you’s to Macmillan and Egmont USA this week! I am super excited for all of these books!

I also got this awesome Breaking Bad mug in the mail from Giselle but it doesn’t look like the mailman took the “FRAGILE: HANDLE WITH CARE” notice on the package too seriously. They are sending out a replacement mug though so that’s great. Thank you Giselle!!!!!!