Saturday, March 12, 2016

Fresh Batch (March 13th – 19th)

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

Flavor of the week:

The First Time She Drowned
Kerry Kletter
Publication date: March 15th 2016
by Philomel Books

Goodreads Purchase

The beautiful struggle of a girl desperate for the one relationship that has caused her the most pain

Cassie O’Malley has spent the past two and a half years in a mental institution—dumped there by her mother, against her will. Now, at 18, Cassie emancipates herself, determined to start over. She attends college, forms new friendships, and even attempts to start fresh with her mother. But before long, their unhealthy relationship threatens to pull Cassie under once again. As Cassie struggles to reclaim her life, childhood memories persist and confuse, and Cassie must consider whose version of history is real, and more important, whose life she must save.

A bold, literary story about the fragile complexities of mothers and daughters and learning to love oneself, The First Time She Drowned reminds us that we must dive deep into our pasts if we are ever to move forward.

Other releases this week:
* In no particular order *


– Love, Chloe by Alessandra Torre [Purchase]
– Hawke (Cold Fury Hockey #5) by Sawyer Bennett [Purchase]
– The Last Mortal Bond (Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne #3) by Brian Staveley [Purchase]
– A Drop of Night by Stefan Bachmann [Purchase]


– Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E.K. Johnston [Purchase]
– Right of First Refusal (Radleigh University #2) by Dahlia Adler [Purchase]
– The Other Side Of Gravity (Oxygen #1) by Shelly Crane [Purchase]
– Death Weavers (Five Kingdoms #4) by Brandon Mull [Purchase]


– The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle by Janet Fox [Purchase]
– Liars and Losers Like Us by Ami Allen-Vath [Purchase]
– Yellow Brick War (Dorothy Must Die #3) by Danielle Paige [Purchase]
– Storm and Silence (Storm and Silence #1) by Robert Thier [Purchase]


– The Girl on the Run (Vengeance #1) by Gregg Olsen [Purchase]
– Ashes in the Sky (Fire in the Woods #2) by Jennifer M. Eaton [Purchase]
– Breaking Big by Penny Draper [Purchase]
– Everyday Hero by Kathleen Cherry [Purchase]


– Divah by Susannah Appelbaum [Purchase]
– Love in B Minor (Broken Dreams #3) by Elodie Nowodazkij [Purchase]


What are you most excited for this week?

 

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Find previous Fresh Batch posts here!

 

Blog Tour: Red: The True Story of Red Riding Hood by Liesl Shurtliff – Review

Posted by on 03/11/2016 • 4 Comments

 

Hello everyone!! I am honored to be participating in this huge blog tour for Red: The True Story of Red Riding Hood. I adore fairy tales and I love retellings, so naturally I had to take part. This tour has been running for about a month and there is plenty more to come. You can refer to the tour schedule that will be at the end of this post. Don’t forget to check out the other stops for really great guest posts and fun things! For my post I am doing a review of this book.

This book was all sorts of fun. The characters were fantastic and the storyline was great. There was a bit of mystery to it as well as magic (of course), friendships, and adventure….

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Epic Cover Battles #: US vs UK Edition

Posted by on 03/06/2016 • 17 Comments

One of my favorite things to do is compare covers and occasionally bitch and moan about how I wish I owned a certain edition of a book because it is prettier in my opinion. So, I decided I wanted to do a cover feature where covers ‘battle’ against each other and you guys can pick which cover you like better! This feature is inspired by the Cover Fever feature done at The Readers Den.

Let the Games Begin…

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Fresh Batch (March 6th – 12th)

Fresh Batch (March 6th – 12th)

Posted by on 03/05/2016 • 2 Comments

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

Flavor of the week:

The Steep and Thorny Way Cat Winters Publication date: March 8th 2016by Amulet Books

Goodreads Purchase

A thrilling reimagining of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, The Steep and Thorny Way tells the story of a murder most foul and the mighty power of love and acceptance in a state gone terribly rotten.

1920s Oregon is not a welcoming place for Hanalee Denney, the daughter of a white woman and an African-American man. She has almost no rights by law, and the Ku Klux Klan breeds fear and hatred in even Hanalee’s oldest friendships. Plus, her father, Hank Denney, died a year ago, hit by…

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Fresh Batch (Feb 28th – Mar 5th)

Fresh Batch (Feb 28th – Mar 5th)

Posted by on 02/27/2016 • 4 Comments

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

Flavor of the week:

A Study in Charlotte Brittany Cavallaro Series: Charlotte Holmes #1 Publication date: March 1st 2016by Katherine Tegen Books

Goodreads Purchase

The last thing sixteen-year-old Jamie Watson–writer and great-great-grandson of the John Watson–wants is a rugby scholarship to Sherringford, a Connecticut prep school just an hour away from his estranged father. But that’s not the only complication: Sherringford is also home to Charlotte Holmes, the famous detective’s enigmatic, fiercely independent great-great-granddaughter, who’s inherited not just his genius but also his vices, volatile temperament, and expertly hidden vulnerability. Charlotte has been the object of his fascination for as long as he can remember–but from…

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Review: After the Woods by Kim Savage

Posted by on 02/26/2016 • 2 Comments

My feelings about After the Woods are complex. I think it is a great novel on the whole but there are also bits about it that bothered me. Either way, if you are looking for a psychological thriller with a potentially unreliable narrator, After the Woods is for you.

The reason why I am not completely ready to say I loved this book though is that I am not satisfied (I’ll never be satisfied.)  There are so many questions left unanswered by the end of the novel. It feels unfinished, like there is more of the story to be had. Not necessarily in terms of plot but in terms of character development and understanding the motives. Also what actually happened in the woods.

Don’t get me wrong, I love books…

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Fresh Batch (February 21st – 27th)

Fresh Batch (February 21st – 27th)

Posted by on 02/20/2016 • 4 Comments

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

Flavor of the week:

The Forbidden Wish Jessica Khoury Publication date: February 23rd 2016by Razorbill

Goodreads Purchase

She is the most powerful Jinni of all. He is a boy from the streets. Their love will shake the world…

When Aladdin discovers Zahra’s jinni lamp, Zahra is thrust back into a world she hasn’t seen in hundreds of years — a world where magic is forbidden and Zahra’s very existence is illegal. She must disguise herself to stay alive, using ancient shape-shifting magic, until her new master has selected his three wishes.

But when the King of the Jinn offers Zahra a chance to be…

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Religion in Books and Why I Am Not Always Okay With It

Posted by on 02/17/2016 • 18 Comments

Religion in books makes me uncomfortable. There, I said it. It’s not because I have anything against religion, it’s just that in a lot of my experiences, books that are based on some sort of religious myth tend to draw heavily from Christian mythology and that’s really where I start feeling uncomfortable. It’s not that these myths cannot be done well but in a lot of my experiences what ends up happening is that all other religions become excluded from this world found on one kind of myth and as a reader who isn’t Christian or really aware of many of these myths, I am excluded from the novel.

I realize this isn’t unintentionally done but this brings us back to the issue of diversity in literature. BECAUSE DIVERSITY. Religious…

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