Yearly Archives:: 2014

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Giselle’s Stacking the Shelves [Feb 23]

Posted by Giselle • 34 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.

Woot only a few more weeks until the beginning of spring and I don’t know about you but I am ready for this winter to be over! We got about 40cm of snow just this past week and now it’s raining! What a mess! I took a picture of my view from my car in the driveway here O_O Yeppers! So on the blog this week Jenni and I talked about why we loved being bloggers and readers – you can check that out here. And there’s also time to enter the Birthday Cover Madness giveaway here! I got some birthday bookish gifts this week, and then some review copies as well! So let’s go see the pretties!

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

I received for review:

–The Cellar by Natasha Preston
–Love Letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira
–Sekret by Lindsay Smith
–The Summer I Wasn’t Me by Jessica Verdi
–Stormbringer by Shannon Delany

*Big thanks to Macmillan Publishers, St Martin’s Press, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Karina Halle, and Random House Children’s books for these pretties!*

Gifted:
I got these books for my birthday from Jennilicious! Thanks, muffincups!

–Perfect by Ellen Hopkins
–The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams
–Waiting by Carol Lynch Williams

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That’s all for me this week!
XOXO

Fresh Batch (New Releases February 23rd – March 1st)

Posted by Giselle on 02/22/2014 • 12 Comments

Fresh Batch, posted weekly, keeps you up to date on the hottest releases of the upcoming week.

Flavor of the week:

Faking Normal Courtney C. Stevens Publication date: February 25th 2014 by HarperTeen

Goodreads Purchase

An edgy, realistic, and utterly captivating novel from an exciting new voice in teen fiction.

Alexi Littrell hasn’t told anyone what happened to her over the summer. Ashamed and embarrassed, she hides in her closet and compulsively scratches the back of her neck, trying to make the outside hurt more than the inside does.

When Bodee Lennox, the quiet and awkward boy next door, comes to live with the Littrells, Alexi discovers an unlikely friend in “the Kool-Aid Kid,” who has secrets of his own. As they lean on…

Review: The Winner’s Curse by Marie Rutkoski

Posted by on 02/21/2014 • 35 Comments

I was quite nervous going into The Winner’s Curse. It was one that I was quick to request solely on that gorgeous cover, but upon getting it and looking into what it was about I didn’t think it would be for me. I am happy to report that it worked incredibly well for me and ended up being a book that I was actually angry at for ending. Fantasy is most definitely not my thing, especially when you mix that with a historical-like society, but this book was AWESOME.

The world of The Winner’s Curse isn’t the most upbeat of worlds. There is a war that is leading to the Valorian people taking over most of the world. Where we meet our MC Kestral is in the land that once…

Review: Panic by Lauren Oliver

Posted by Giselle on 02/20/2014 • 32 Comments

I’m left feeling torn on this one. On the one hand I though it was an exciting and well written story about desperation, friendship, and wanting to prove yourself. On the other hand, the game Panic’s frail, yet apparently enduring, nature was not very realistic considering the risks, keeping me emotionally detached, and I did find the plot ended up being fairly predictable.

Panic is a game where facing often life-risking fears can win you a small fortune – 50,000$ worth. Absolutely interesting and full of adrenaline, but you do have to suspend disbelief in some areas. Mostly by how poorly managed it seems. For a game that wins you over 50k and involves you playing Russian roulette among other things, who are these people trusting? Kids do stupid things…

Review: Fire & Flood by Victoria Scott

Posted by Giselle on 02/19/2014 • 40 Comments

Does it bother you to think about being covered in bugs, bugs that eat your flesh and blood? Then prepare yourself because this book is nightmare-inducing! I’m not sure what it says about me to know that this is part of why I enjoyed it so much. I guess a book that can prompt such horrific images in my head to the point of making me shudder is up there with the awesome. Or maybe I should be on medication. That’s up for debate.

Fire & Flood surprised me in many ways. At first it had a lot of similarities with The Hunger Games, which for me is a complete turn-off, so it’s with pleasure that I can say these parallels fade early on, leaving us with an original,…

Why We Love Being Bloggers (and Readers)!

Posted by Giselle on 02/18/2014 • 40 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme that is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish where every week there is a new top 10 topic where we list bookish things.

Blogger Lovin’! Readers are the New Black – Duh! Readers are now the coolest kids on the block (in case you didn’t know) and that makes being a blogger of books the bestest and most sought after thing there is. Sharing is Caring! Who doesn’t love to shove their opinions into other people’s faces? Having a blog is like getting an outlet for our intense, often fangirly, sometimes snarky opinions where people love to agree or disagree and have these awesome discussions about nerdy bookish things! Socializing for us Introverts! This may surprise you, but we…

Review: Impulse by Ellen Hopkins

Posted by on 02/17/2014 • 19 Comments

Oh Hopkins, what have you done?! I became a huge fan of Ellen Hopkins last year. Impulse is the 5th novel I have read by her and the first that has left me so torn on my feelings for it. Basically what it boils down to is that I liked the idea behind the novel and I think that the way the mental issues and suicide were approached was done very well. What didn’t end up working quite so well for me was a lot of the interactions between the characters.

So first, what I liked here. Well I really liked that Hopkins stayed true to her brutally honest self. There are things that I read in this book that were so ugly that I had to read them twice…

Jenni’s Stacking the Shelves [Feb 16]

Posted by on 02/16/2014 • 27 Comments

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

Books Mentioned in Vlog (click title for Goodreads): Torn Away by Jennifer Brown The Haven by Carol Lynch Williams My Life Next Door (My Life Next Door #1) by Huntley Fitzpatrick Perfect by Ellen Hopkins World After (Penryn & The End of Days #2) by Susan Ee Second Chance Summer by Morgan Matson Evertrue (Everneath #3) by Brodi Ashton The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson Cress (Lunar Chronicles #3) by Marissa Meyer The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion Glimmer by Phoebe Kitanidis Smart Girls Get What They Want by Sarah Strohmeyer Partials (Partials Sequence #1) by Dan Wells Fragments (Partials Sequence #2) by Dan Wells Pivot Point (Pivot Point…