Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers


Friday, May 11, 2018

What a Girl Wants with a Twist: Royals by Rachel Hawkins

Posted by 1 Comment

I received this book for free from in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

What a Girl Wants with a Twist: Royals by Rachel HawkinsRoyals by Rachel Hawkins
Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers on May 1st, 2018
Genres: Contemporary, Romance, YA
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
four-stars

Meet Daisy Winters. She’s an offbeat sixteen-year-old Floridian with mermaid-red hair; a part time job at a bootleg Walmart, and a perfect older sister who’s nearly engaged to the Crown Prince of Scotland. Daisy has no desire to live in the spotlight, but relentless tabloid attention forces her to join Ellie at the relative seclusion of the castle across the pond. 

While the dashing young Miles has been appointed to teach Daisy the ropes of being regal, the prince’s roguish younger brother kicks up scandal wherever he goes, and tries his best to take Daisy along for the ride. The crown–and the intriguing Miles–might be trying to make Daisy into a lady . . . but Daisy may just rewrite the royal rulebook to suit herself. 

Rachel Hawkins is an auto-read author for me so I barely even glanced at the Goodreads blurb before diving into this. I just saw her tweet a bunch about it and decided I definitely needed this book in my life. Anyway, so. I dove in. Fell in love and then realized I should probably look up the Goodreads blurb. ANYWAY. SO. A book about royalty!!!! Most books about royalty feature that one character who finds themselves amongst royalty because they have fallen in love with someone who is royal except that is absolutely, 110% not the case with Daisy. Daisy’s sister has fallen in love with the Crown Prince of Scotland. This is not ideal for Daisy, not because she has royal aspirations of her own but because she really really doesn’t like the toxic media attention that comes with it. 

Rachel Hawkins is truly a queen on writing things that evoke emotions because honestly, I found myself just as frustrated as Daisy even though, technically speaking, Ellie (Daisy’s sister) was also dealing with a lot and probably much more than Daisy. She inserts the reader so directly into Daisy’s POV and you’re taken on a journey to a WHOLE NEW WORLD but also an emotional journey as Daisy really absorbs the world her sister is about to become a part of. It’s exciting to be able to relate to a character so much that their emotions basically become your own so you’re on the same emotional journey throughout the book.

Clearly, I am super excited about this book but like honestly, Rachel Hawkins always fills my need for witty characters who make snarky comments and will tell people how it is. There is a reason why I basically read Hex Hall yearly now. And it’s even better because Daisy isn’t the soon-to-be princess, she is the girl who really doesn’t want to be caught up in the mess.

This book features Rachel Hawkins trademark humor as well as some amazing friendships, some characters I am looking forward to getting to know in the sequels, parents that are both supportive and laugh-out-loud hilarious and a Miles who I won’t say much else about. It also features a complex sibling relationship which I truly appreciated and enjoyed. 

My only critique of this book pertains to a minor thing that bugged me a little. There are like 3 or 4 jokes that imply that the Scottish were colonizers??? Which is not really true?? They were colonized and have a pretty complicated relationship with the English as a result. To be clear, I don’t really expect details about that history and relationship from the book, I just wish the jokes that framed the Scottish as colonizers hadn’t been made. UPDATE: My mini-rant on this subject was based on something that was discussed in one of my classes and upon further reading I’ve come to realize that the Scottish/English relationship is completely unlike the Irish/English one? None of this is truly relevant to the book but since I made a point to rant about the non-issue, I feel that I should also come back and correct myself. SO. Um. The Scottish weren’t necessarily colonized by the English in the same way the Irish were. The Scottish also colonized some parts of the world but there is still a lot of tension b/w the English and the Scottish in terms of the balance of power and such. 

Overall, Royals is absolutely delightful and if you are any sort of human who enjoys any fun in their life, you definitely need this book on your TBR. I cannot wait to read the sequel and get to meet the character who gets all of Hawkins’ husband’s bad geology jokes.

four-stars

4 Hot Espressos

A Raw and Poignant Exploration of Mental Health: A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares by Krystal Sutherland

Posted by on 09/27/2017 • 6 Comments

Everyone raved about Our Chemical Hearts when it came out last year but because my tbr is overflowing and I am always short on time, I never did get around to reading it. A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares immediately caught my attention because it had such a cutesy title, cover & blurb but don’t let any of that fool you because this book will fucking break your heart.

A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares is such a raw, poignant exploration of mental health and I don’t even know where to begin unpacking my feels for those books. (But also, can we all agree that unpacking feels for books you love is so much harder than talking about books you hate?)

Esther Solar believes her family has been cursed…

A Semi-Definitive List of My 5 Worst Fears/Nightmares

Posted by on 09/18/2017 • 3 Comments

Hey hey hey! A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares is an important book that addresses mental health/phobias so I decided to share some of my fears/nightmares with y’all. Things are about to get weirdly personal (but also a little silly because that’s just who I am so if you’re not into that, I say it’s time to close your browser or email and do something else.

A Semi-Definitive List of My 5 Worst Fears/Nightmares

1. When I was a kid, I developed an odd fear of heights that never went away. When I was a kid, it wasn’t that the height scared me but more that I would lose something or someone important to me. Now it’s both?

2. Dying alone. I know a lot of people will share this…

An Exhilarating Journey: Warcross by Marie Lu

Posted by on 09/07/2017 • 1 Comment

*exhales loudly*

Listen, this book is going to change everything. Are you a non-gamer and kinda wondering if this will really be your thing? The answer is YES. To be fair, I do play occasionally play multi-player Nintendo games with friends but, I am not a gamer and usually don’t have a long enough attention span to actually play anything on my own aside from Mario Kart. Warcross is amazing and has the ability to appeal to almost everyone (so it might not appeal to people who live under rocks and don’t know what books are *shrugs*)

The hype behind this book is INTENSE and honestly, that kind of hype is usually terrfiying to me and might even be terrifying to you but I read Legend by Marie Lu 6 years ago…

#PlayWarcross: My Dream Warcross Team

Posted by on 09/04/2017 • 0 Comments

Hello, hello friends. I’ve been sitting on this post for a while because life is hard but also because coming up with the perfect Warcross team is also hard. There are so many good characters to choose from for the individual roles but I really wanted to get together a team that would complement each other in terms of their personalities and help each other make up for their faults. SO. I PRESENT TO YOU:

THE RED HOT LONES

Team Captain: The captain has the most difficult task of leading a group of rag-tags so finding the person fit for the job requires a lot of thought and care. While there are many great people out there capable of being a leader, I went with Yelena from Poison Study because even…

ARC Review: Journey’s End by Rachel Hawkins

Posted by on 10/27/2016 • 4 Comments

Are you looking for a spoopy read for the Halloween season? Have you considered picking up a delightful middle-grade Halloween-esque novel? If so, consider reading this charming novel. I am a huge fan of Rachel Hawkins’ Hex Hall and Rebel Belle series’ so I was all about this book but it wasn’t quite what I expected (not in a bad way.) It has a lot of the fun feel from her YA books but the characters don’t sound the exact same and I LOVE that. They aren’t just the same characters but a little younger and in a different setting.

Journey’s End is a small town located in the middle of nowhere Scotland but it is unlike most small towns because of the magical fog. I think we’ve seen enough scary movies to…