Yearly Archives:: 2016

Monday, October 17, 2016

Exclusive Cover Reveal for This is How it Happened by Paula Stokes + ARC Giveaway

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I know its a Monday and everyone is like UGH, weekend come back again, but today we are hosting an exclusive cover reveal for THIS IS HOW IT HAPPENED by Paula Stokes so I am actually excited about it being a Monday (*gasp*)

 

Not only is Stokes a wonderful human, she is also a wonderful writer and having read four of her books, I can say this with confidence. Girl Against the Universe is one of my favorite books of 2016 and Vicarious is an equally amazing action filled novel that came out this year so there are books by her out in the world that you could already be checking out and fangirling over.

 

Anywayy (I am quite the talker, aren’t I?) I am REALLY REALLY excited for THIS IS HOW IT HAPPENED and you guys should be too beacuse the cover is gorgeous and it sounds even better. Over to Paula!

 

Paula: Hiiiii 😀 I am so excited to be here on Xpresso Reads, sharing the cover of my 2017 HarperTeen contemporary novel with you. THIS IS HOW IT HAPPENED will release next July, and once again it’s quite different from all of my other novels. I’m thrilled that Rashika is revealing the cover for me, because I was lucky enough to meet her at the Anderson’s YA Lit Conference and it’s always nice to put a face and a smile with an awesome bookish person 😀

 

I’ve been pretty quiet about this book because I drafted it in just a few weeks after I crashed and burned on JACK OF HEARTS (Sorry Copenhagen lovers) and it wasn’t until recently that I was sure it was going to be finished in time for a 2017 release. But thankfully the ARC faeries are hard at work making the ARCs while I make the inevitable ARC fixes, and the book is basically all ready to go.

 

5 Fun Facts about THIS IS HOW IT HAPPENED:

1. This story takes place part in St. Louis, where I grew up, and part in Springdale, Utah, one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. (And if you know me, you know I’ve been lucky enough to visit a lot of beautiful places!)

springdale

2. This book starts with a blog post and goes on to include a lot of tweets and comments. Some of the blogger and commenter names are secret homages to personal friends and fictional characters I love. Look closely and you’ll find little references to stuff like The Crow and the TV show UnReal.

3. Main character Genevieve has divorced parents, one of whom has remarried. I know that isn’t exactly a “fun fact” but it’s meaningful to me because my own parents underwent a pretty harsh divorce when I was eighteen and this book gave me the opportunity to tap into and explore some of the pain and conflict from that time.

4. Genevieve is a runner who also becomes a bit of a hiker when she finds herself in gorgeous Zion National Park. The hike Genevieve and Elliott go on together is called Angel’s Landing and it’s a real hike that I’ve done several times. It’s also a hike where several people have died.

5. One of the first people Genevieve meets when she arrives in Springdale is Elliott, a nineteen-year-old park guide with two amazing dads, one of which is a competitor on American Ninja Warrior. Do you guys know how much I love American Ninja Warrior? Do you?? I will spare you a long speech about how good that show is and how it’s the epitome of triumph over adversity and focus over distraction and good sportsmanship and camaraderie and, well, I guess I won’t spare you the speech after all. But there’s a little bit of ANW in this book and I did so much Warped Wall research that I’m almost ready to give it a try myself 😉

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Fresh Batch (October 16th – 22nd)

Fresh Batch (October 16th – 22nd)

Posted by on 10/15/2016 • 4 Comments

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

Flavor of the week:

What Light Jay Asher Publication date: October 18th 2016by Razorbill

Goodreads Purchase

From Jay Asher, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Thirteen Reasons Why, comes a romance that will break your heart, but soon have you believing again. . . . Sierra’s family runs a Christmas tree farm in Oregon—it’s a bucolic setting for a girl to grow up in, except that every year, they pack up and move to California to set up their Christmas tree lot for the season. So Sierra lives two lives: her life in Oregon and her life at Christmas. And leaving one always means…

Review: The Hating Game by Sally Thorne

Posted by on 10/14/2016 • 12 Comments

Feels in a gif:

I usually find it hard to express all my feels about a book in a singular gif but with The Hating Game, it was quite easy. Actual pic of me after I finished the book.

I haven’t read a rom-com I loved this much in years and I think The Hating Game encompasses everything I love about good rom-coms and a good romance. It made me feel so mushy and happy on the inside and I am glad that The Hating Game found its way into my life. This book has already received so much hype and so many people are already loving it so instead of doing a review review, I thought I’d list 5 quick reasons that might make you want to pick this book up.

1. Main…

5 Books With Well-Written Unlikeable Main Characters

Posted by on 10/11/2016 • 5 Comments

I firmly believe that just because a character is unlikable doesn’t mean that they are not well-written. In fact, I love reading the occasional anti-hero because I love their character arcs and I love the struggle between good & evil present in books with well-written anti-heroes. With The Young Elites series coming to an end, I was inspired to compile a little list of some of my fav unlikable characters.

1. The Young Elites by Marie Lu

Since this post is inspired by the series, it makes sense that the first book I mention is The Young Elites. Adelina is NOT likeable but you sympathize with her and you hurt for her. Unfortunately, all that doesn’t magically make her good and over the course of the series, she spirals further down as her…

Fresh Batch (October 9th – 15th)

Fresh Batch (October 9th – 15th)

Posted by on 10/08/2016 • 1 Comment

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

Flavor of the week:

Still Life with Tornado A.S. King Publication date: October 11th 2016by Dutton Books for Young Readers

Goodreads Purchase

Sarah can’t draw. This is a problem, because as long as she can remember, she has “done the art.” She thinks she’s having an existential crisis. And she might be right; she does keep running into past and future versions of herself as she explores the urban ruins of Philadelphia. Or maybe she’s finally waking up to the tornado that is her family, the tornado that six years ago sent her once-beloved older brother flying across the country for a reason she can’t…

Review: The Twelve Days of Dash & Lily by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

Posted by on 10/07/2016 • 8 Comments

I KNOW IT’S TOO EARLY to be reading Christmas-y books but I am already getting into the mood for the holidays and I really wanted to be reunited with Dash & Lily so I READ THE BOOK and it was 100% worth it. Also, to be fair, this book comes out this month so I am allowed to read a christmas-y book in October.

The biggest issue I had with this book (because rarely is a book perfect) is that it was a lot more angsty than the original Dash & Lily. Lily was justified in being angsty but the lack of communication between Dash & Lily was so off-putting given that they had been good at in the first book. If Dash & Lily just talked to each other,…

Review: Frazzled by Booki Vivat

Posted by on 10/05/2016 • 3 Comments

I just started my last-ish year of college and the main character of Frazzled starts middle school in this book yet despite the clear age difference, never has a book been more applicable to my life.

Frazzled is absolutely adorable, quotable and extremely relatable. It’s about many things. Familial relationships, changing friendships and the need to find your “thing”. I think we can all agree that finding your “thing” is not as easy as it seems. It is actually quite stressful and Abbie Wu would agree with you.

Abbie is not at all excited to start middle school (I mean who would be?) because it is “the middle of all middles” and is thus guaranteed to suck. When school starts, she struggles with the change but her friends find…

Epic Cover Battles #13: Harry Potter Edition

Posted by on 10/03/2016 • 6 Comments

You’ve probably heard of Harry Potter unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past two decades. You either hate it, love it, have watched the movies or have some sort of opinion about the series (even if it’s “I DONT GIVE A FUCK”.) This series has been published in so many different languages and there are SO many editions available which means there are lots of pretty covers. Today we’re going to be battling different Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s/Philosopher’s Stone editions and you get to vote on which one is your fav. Have another fav that was not included (this is VERY likely)? Let me know in the comments so I can ooh and aah over it 😉

May the best cover win!