Posts Tagged: Young Adult

Thursday, September 14, 2017

Superhero Beginnings: Wonder Woman: Warbringer by Leigh Bardugo

Posted by 4 Comments

I received this book for free from Random House Children's Books in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Superhero Beginnings: Wonder Woman: Warbringer by Leigh BardugoWonder Woman: Warbringer by Leigh Bardugo
Published by Random House BFYR on August 29th, 2017
Genres: Action, Adventure, YA
Source: Random House Children's Books
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
four-stars

Daughter of immortals.

Princess Diana longs to prove herself to her legendary warrior sisters. But when the opportunity finally comes, she throws away her chance at glory and breaks Amazon law—risking exile—to save a mortal. Diana will soon learn that she has rescued no ordinary girl, and that with this single brave act, she may have doomed the world.

Daughter of death.

Alia Keralis just wanted to escape her overprotective brother with a semester at sea. She doesn’t know she is being hunted by people who think her very existence could spark a world war. When a bomb detonates aboard her ship, Alia is rescued by a mysterious girl of extraordinary strength and forced to confront a horrible truth: Alia is a Warbringer—a direct descendant of the infamous Helen of Troy, fated to bring about an age of bloodshed and misery.

Together.

Two girls will face an army of enemies—mortal and divine—determined to either destroy or possess the Warbringer. Tested beyond the bounds of their abilities, Diana and Alia must find a way to unleash hidden strengths and forge an unlikely alliance. Because if they have any hope of saving both their worlds, they will have to stand side by side against the tide of war.

I want this review to start on an honest note and I would like to admit that I haven’t read any of the Wonder Woman comics or watched the movie that recently came out (for reasons I am not going to dive into for the purposes of this review.) However, I’ve always been fascinated by her and when I found out that Leigh Bardugo was the one writing the Wonder Woman origin story for the D.C. Icons series, I knew it was TIME.

The reason I even bother mentioning all of that is because I know that I won’t be able to speak to whether or not Leigh Bardugo did Wonder Woman justice (although, I am sure she did.) However, I ~can~ speak to this as an origin story and as a book in general and can I just say that, unsurprisingly, it was amazing?

I had so much fun reading Wonder Woman: Warbringer and now I REALLY wish I had read the comics so that I could better appreciate Leigh Bardugo’s YA adaptation.

This book follows Diana before she becomes Wonder Woman and Aila, the Warbringer. The two find themselves in a situation where they are each other’s only allies. Diana is the princess of the Amazons but has never felt like she has belonged. Aila’s overprotective brother and the streak of bad luck that follows her wherever she goes has always made her feel like an outcast. Together, these kiddos must join forces and take over the world. Just kidding, they are trying to save the world.

Again, I cannot speak to anything regarding the comics but I LOVE how Bardugo sets Aila and Diana as foils for one another. They are similar and yet different at the same time. Their hesitant friendship blooms over the course of the novel and I love that this isn’t just Diana’s story. Aila isn’t just the black sidekick. She gets a voice and chapters and this Wonder Woman origin story is ALSO her story.

There is also a great slew of secondary characters that bring this origin story to life. Aila and Diana are not just two teens in the world, all by themselves with just each other to rely on. THEY GET TO HAVE friends and siblings (although not Diana as much but Diana makes friends.)

This is a superhero origin story though so unsurprisingly, we get a lot of action and a lot of adventure. Both of which I am so here for. My only issue is that there are some small plot holes that we are just meant to go along with for the purposes of the story. While I understand that for the most part, they are unavoidable, I am annoying and cannot get over them? Nothing major though and the plot does hold up for the most part.

Overall, Leigh Bardugo’s Wonder Woman: Warbringer is so FUCKING GOOD and really, there is a reason why its on the NYT bestseller list. #justreadit

 

four-stars

4 Hot Espressos

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…

17 Books With Summer in the Title

Posted by on 07/12/2017 • 3 Comments

To continue with my summer book-list theme I have going on, I BRING TO YOU 15 books with summer in their titles!!! Read through summer by reading books with summer in their titles! Go forth and add books to that summer TBR pile. Or don’t. DO WHAT YOU WANT.

1. This One Summer by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki 2. The Summer I Became a Nerd by Leah Rae Miller 3. Second Chance Summer by Morgan Matson 4. Sixteenth Summer by Michelle Dalton 5. The Summer of Skinny Dipping by Amanda Howells

6. Open Road Summer by Emery Lord

7. The Summer of Firsts and Lasts by Terra Alan McVoy 8. The Summer My Life Began by Shannon Greenland 9. How My Summer Went Up in Flames by Jennifer Salvato Doktorski 10….

5 Books to Cool Down With in the Summer Heat

Posted by on 06/13/2017 • 2 Comments

🎶It’s getting hot in here so take the dust jackets off all your books🎶

It was 90+ degrees here today and I cannot deal with anything in this heat so TODAY, I am bringing you a list of 5 books that look like a good way to cool down in this summer heat.

1. Love & Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch 2. See You at Harry’s by Jo Knowles 3. The Summer of Firsts and Lasts by Terra Alan McVoy 4. Rocky Road by Rose Kent 5. Shug by Jenny Han Do you have any book recommendations for this heat? Please tell me because I will die soon from being overheated and want to get some reading done before that happens.

Explores the bizarre & complex social environment of high school: Say No to the Bro by Kat Helgeson

Posted by on 05/18/2017 • 3 Comments

Doesn’t this book have the best title ever? If a title alone had the capacity to sell a book to anyone, it was be the title to this book. I was certainly sold before I even saw the cover or read the blurb for the book because who can resist a book titled Say No to the Bro?

Does the book actually live up to its amazing title? I don’t really know how to answer that question and should probably not start all my paragraphs in this review with a question because I am told that is bad writing. Say No to the Bro was not at all what I expected and I don’t know if I mean that in a good or bad way. It is somewhere in the middle to be…

Giveaway: Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray

Posted by on 04/19/2017 • 15 Comments

Today we are partnering with the lovely people over at Little, Brown to bring you a fabulous giveaway for Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray. Alert: THIS BOOK IS SET IN SPACE. <– important fact because all books set in space are always on my tbr since I’ve kind of been obsessed with space since I was a bb8 and wanted to do that astronaut as a career thing (now I am a lit major so that didn’t technically work out.)

About the Book About the Author

Claudia Gray is the author of the bestselling Evernight series, Fateful, the Spellcaster trilogy, and the Firebird trilogy. She is also the author of the young adult Star Wars novels Lost Stars and the forthcoming Bloodline. She has worked as a lawyer, a journalist, a…

4 Reasons to Read Geekerella by Ashley Poston

Posted by on 04/04/2017 • 6 Comments

GEEKERELLA is everything it promises to be. It is incredibly cute and adorably nerdy. Did you grow up kind of obsessed with the Another Cinderella Story movies? Do you want to read a book that is at least the first movie in book form? YOU’VE COME TO THE RIGHT PLACE. GEEKERELLA is everything you will ever want from a modern adaptation of a Cinderella retelling. It reminded me so much of why modern retellings of fairy tales are some of my favorite things to read.

Elle grew up watching Starfield (a Star Trek-esque show) with her father. It is one of her few connections to him now that he is gone and it is also one of her only form of escapes. It has allowed her to connect to…