Review: Throne of Glass

One of the top books on this summers TBR list is checked off. Proud to say I did so two days before the end of school –Look whose on top of things now.

In all seriousness, I came into this book with every part of me knowing I would love it. What would you know? I did.

Throne of Glass, By Sarah J. Maas

“Nothing is a coincidence. Everything has a purpose. You were meant to come to this castle, just as you were meant to be an assassin.”
When magic has gone from the world, and a vicious king rules from his throne of glass, an assassin comes to the castle. She does not come to kill, but to win her freedom. If she can defeat twenty-three killers, thieves, and warriors in a competition to find the greatest assassin in the land, she will become the King’s Champion and be released from prison.
Her name is Celaena Sardothien.
The Crown Prince will provoke her. The Captain of the Guard will protect her.
And a princess from a foreign land will become the one thing Celaena never thought she’d have again: a friend.
But something evil dwells in the castle—and it’s there to kill. When her competitors start dying, horribly, one by one, Celaena’s fight for freedom becomes a fight for survival—and a desperate quest to root out the source of the evil before it destroys her world.

Throne of Glass contained all that I crave in a YA novel; action, adventure, a hot love interest, and a fiery protagonist.

Celaena is what I strive to be. I mean aside from the whole assassin thing. You know, I really could go without that complex.

Otherwise, this girl was fierce, passionate, dedicated and kind. I loved her progression towards strengthening her weakened body from a years in the mines, and any athlete is sure to be inspired by her dedication as well. Enough said; this character is flawless.

If Maas had anything else down in this book, it was pacing.

Throne of Glass is brimming with countless details revealed in a way that holds the story together in perfect suspense. Even after finishing book one, and being partway through book two, the mystery behind all that Celaena has gone through still has me teetering at the edge of my seat. I JUST NEED TO KNOW HER SECRETES.

As with every Mass book, the secondary characters were on par.

Well developed, strong motives, and unique personalities -My heart ❤️️.

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Ooran Host Club Book Tag

I LOVE BOOK TAGS.

That said, I absolutely suck at them, and have to whole-heartily scroll through my Goodreads to actually remember each beloved book character. But that doesn’t matter, cus in the end, this fangirling between you and me? It’s worth it 🙌

So on with the show:

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Rules:

• Thank the person who tagged you!
• ALWAYS PINGBACK TO CREATOR (check icebreaker694 out here) she wants to see your post.
• Answer all the questions below! (You don’t have to watch the show to answer them.)
• Tag 8+ bloggers!

Huge thank you to book dragon 1017 for tagging me in this post. Check out her gorgeous blog!!!

Forewarning: Gotta say, I’m not much of an anime person, but the categories are still rockin’.

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Theme song -A misleading character.

Mare from Red Queen. I could never expect all the twists and turns, and I can’t wait to see where King’s Cage leads our ever-changing heroin.

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Haruhi -A character every other character loves.

Mor from A Court of Mist and Fury. This girl has power and confidence running through her veins, pairing that with her compassion and major sass, nobody can not love her. This by the way, totally shows through the friends she has in every court.

Yes, as you’ll soon discover, I am cheating by using two characters from the same book in this tag. BUT YOU KNOW, IT’S NOT MY FAULT THEY’RE BOTH TOO DANG CUTE.

Review: Unplugged by Donna Freitas

I haven’t the clue on what drew me to Unplugged. Typically, I shy away from the whole dystopian world. That genre has run its course and then some. This book however, filled with thrilling and unexpected twists led to such a unique read, that I may have to reconsider this genre as a whole.

UNPLUGGED, by Donna Freitas

Humanity is split into the App World and the Real World—an extravagant virtual world for the wealthy and a dying physical world for the poor. Years ago, Skylar Cruz’s family sent her to the App World for a chance at a better life.

Now Skye is a nobody, a virtual sixteen-year-old girl without any glamorous effects or expensive downloads to make her stand out in the App World. Yet none of that matters to Skye. All she wants is a chance to unplug and see her mother and sister again.

But when the borders between worlds suddenly close, Skye loses that chance. Desperate to reach her family, Skye risks everything to get back to the physical world. Once she arrives, however, she discovers a much larger, darker reality than the one she remembers.

Unplugged is basically an extended metaphor for the influence of technology on our lives, while the book depicts Skylar breaking from society’s norm, and learning about life outside the App world.

I know, it sounds like twelve different kinds of cheesy, and a couple chapters in, I was terrified it was. However, the plot, which may carry this book, makes it all worthwhile.

No doubt this book’s writing isn’t Sarah J. Maas art, but it’s also far from beginner.

While some concepts had me rolling my eyes, (like Lacy, our mean girl), most were fascinating and well thought out, with intricate quotes such as these scattered within the book:

Library Haul – I’m back!

Heeellooo my bookish friends. It is so good to be back.

The blogging process has been put on hold for far longer than I have anticipated. It’s not that I haven’t been so excited to come back. I have. It’s just that I’m procrastinating blogging for fear that I’m gonna suck.

If you haven’t guessed, I am a perfectionist through and through. My blog however is far from what I envision it to one day be. That being said, I’ve got to stop planning to make things happen, put on them big girl panties, and actually make them happen.

So, today I’m finally bringing to you the good stuff: The book content.

Gosh, we are nerds aren’t we?

On with the haul:

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A Court of Wings and Ruin, Sarah J. Maas

A nightmare, I’d told Tamlin. I was the nightmare.

Feyre has returned to the Spring Court, determined to gather information on Tamlin’s maneuverings and the invading king threatening to bring Prythian to its knees. But to do so she must play a deadly game of deceit—and one slip may spell doom not only for Feyre, but for her world as well. As war bears down upon them all, Feyre must decide who to trust amongst the dazzling and lethal High Lords—and hunt for allies in unexpected places.

I’m totally cheating with putting this book here, cus I did not get it from my public library, mostly because I did not have the patience to wait for them to get it.

Update: Where the heck have I been? And 5 things that have changed

I couldn’t tell you the last time I posted on this blog. It’s definitely been awhile

Lets get this straight though, by awhile I am not being like all those cutesy organized bloggers who say that apologizing for a missed week. Nope, this girl means it’s been over three months. If we’re lucky….

So, I though rather than leaving you all in the dark for another month, I’d take this time to catch you up on five things that have changed recently, all the things that have occurred within the “awhile.”

Let’s begin:

New Year’s Resolutions: Bookish Edition

HAPPY NEW YEAR MY BOOKISH FRIENDS!!!

Peppy enough for ya? I thought we’d start the New Year off right 😉

I’ve always gotten way too excited over this whole “fresh slate, new me” attitude that the New Year brings about. So, instead of hiding my resolutions in a corner like I always do, I’m metaphorically screaming them across the mountains. Meaning I’m telling you; same difference…

So here are my top five bookish resolutions, along with a bonus resolution from my other book-lacking life (yes, I am living a double life here. Call me… *Dramatic pause* bookgirl: normal teen by day, mad book lover by night) 

On with the show:

Review: Plus One

With warm cookies in my belly, and a chill outside, I’m so happy to be back again. To add to this excitement, here we are, ready to review one of my most anticipated reads!

Two years ago, I fell in love with the cover of Plus One, yesterday I finished this brilliant book, and guys, I think I’m in love 😍😱!

Plus One, By Elizabeth Fama

Rating: 4.5/5

A dying wish. A family divided. A love that defies the law.

Sol Le Coeur is a Smudge–a night dweller in an America rigidly divided between people who wake, live, and work during the hours of darkness and those known as Rays, who live and work during daylight. Impulsive, passionate, and brave, Sol concocts a plan to kidnap her newborn niece–a Ray–in order to bring the baby to visit her dying grandfather. Sol’s violation of the day/night curfew is already a serious crime, but when her kidnap attempt goes awry, she stumbles on a government conspiracy to manipulate the Smudge population. Sol escapes the authorities with an unexpected ally: a Ray who gets in her way, a boy she might have hated if fate hadn’t forced them on the run together–a boy the world now tells her she can’t love.

Plus One is a breathtaking novel that emphasizes the beauty of yin and yang, inspiring readers to take confidence in all they believe in, all while appreciating the small moments that make up our lives.

There is no better way to summarize this book than simply stating that I am breathless. This book was the jack hammer to my heart, smashing it into a thousand pieces, and it just keeps on drilling. Maybe I’m just over emotional ‘cus it’s been forever since my last review… Or maybe this book is just that perfect 😍

There’s no better place to start  than our protagonist: Sol Le Coeur

Review: An Apple A Day

For some reason there’s a stigma associated with reading for school projects. Why is beyond me.  I mean designated time to read a new book, especially that ABOUT BIOLOGY sounds like my kind of paradise. Not to mention, the fact that we’re given classroom time to review said book? COUNT ME IN.

An Apple A Day, by Joe Schwarcz

4 /Five stars

Eat salmon. It’s full of good omega-3 fats. Don’t eat salmon. It’s full of PCBs and mercury. Eat more veggies. They’re full of good antioxidants. Don’t eat more veggies. The pesticides will give you cancer.

Forget your dinner jacket and put on your lab coat: you have to be a nutritional scientist these days before you sit down to eat—which is why we need Dr. Joe Schwarcz, the expert who’s famous for connecting chemistry to everyday life. In An Apple a Day, he’s taken his thorough knowledge of food chemistry, applied it to today’s top food fears, trends and questions, and leavened it with his trademark lighthearted approach. The result is both an entertaining revelation of the miracles of science happening in our bodies every time we bite into a morsel of food, and a telling exploration of the myths, claims and misconceptions surrounding our obsession with diets, nutrition and weight.

An Apple A Day is a book based on nutrition written by Doctor Joe Schwarcz. It covers numerous health topics through four different parts:

Part One: Naturally occurring substances in our food

• Talking about apples, tomatoes, and every molecule in between, this book covered almost every carcinogen you could think of that is found in our everyday foods. Most importantly however, it also covered the various cancer fighting agents that are also found in each of these foods.

Did you know that Oatmeal directly reduces cholesterol?! Well now we both do.

• This chapter was the longest part of the story. And I do mean I thought it would never end.This was both a pro and con.

Part Two: Manipulating our food supply

• This part basically covered that breakfast cereals are a bowl full of additives and milk.
• However, you may be surprised at how important this vitamin soup is to your overall health.

Part Three: Contaminants in our food supply.

• We determined that sixty minutes is not a reliable source for anything health related.
• We also learned the importance of Risk vs Reward, and the importance of pesticides within our foods- which are not as bad as society makes it out to be.

Part Four: Tough to swallow

• This section covered diet fads ranging from Acai berries to detoxes.
• I loved this topic, so much so that I wanted to delve much more into the subject than we did. The ideas here all seemed very surface level.
• The reoccurring theme of this section being “the world is full of idiots; these fads are crap”(in not so many words of course).

Basically this book was my slice of heaven.

Bookish Quotes

I suck.

I know, I’m sorry. Not only have I been lacking in normal content these past two weeks, but I’ve also missed last weeks read-along, and this weeks? Not going so hot either.

Seriously, just nominate me for worst blogger award; setting the lowest of standards since 1999.

Or should it be 2016? Am I supposed to go with the year I was born? Or the year I started the blog? Maybe right in the middle? like 2007.5?

Or maybe I should just get back on track?

Yeah, thought so…

Immortal city may not have been a favorite read, but it was a pretty good for one of those those”let’s get over a book hangover”reads: Simple, a little cheesy, and oh, so quotable.

Check out my review here, and let me know of your opinion bellow!

On another note, as anyone who’s been stalking me on the insta would know, I’ve started rereading The Darkest Minds.

OMG GUYS, I FORGOT HOW GOOD THIS WAS 😱😍 Review to come!

See you at the bookstore,

 

Library Haul: Halloween edition

With Halloween just around the corner  headed to my local library set on getting at least on creeptastic book. This year’s Halloween TBR include: The Turn of the Screw, and The Long Walk. Sadly, my library had neither, but it did
have three other books that came in a solid second.

White Space, Ilsa J. Bick

 Seventeen-year-old Emma Lindsay has problems: a head full of metal, no parents, a crazy artist for a guardian whom a stroke has turned into a vegetable, and all those times when she blinks away, dropping into other lives so ghostly and surreal it’s as if the story of her life bleeds into theirs. But one thing Emma has never doubted is that she’s real.

Then she writes “White Space,” a story about these kids stranded in a spooky house during a blizzard.

Unfortunately, “White Space” turns out to be a dead ringer for part of an unfinished novel by a long-dead writer. The manuscript, which she’s never seen, is a loopy Matrix meetsInkheart story in which characters fall out of different books and jump off the page. Thing is, when Emma blinks, she might be doing the same and, before long, she’s dropped into the very story she thought she’d written. Trapped in a weird, snow-choked valley, Emma meets other kids with dark secrets and strange abilities: Eric, Casey, Bode, Rima, and a very special little girl, Lizzie. What they discover is that they–and Emma–may be nothing more than characters written into being from an alternative universe for a very specific purpose.

Now what they must uncover is why they’ve been brought to this place–a world between the lines where parallel realities are created and destroyed and nightmares are written–before someone pens their end.

I can’t say I’ve ever heard of this series before, but after reading the synopsis, I was so excited to dig in. I’m three pages in so far, (yep totally had to pull myself away to write this Haul) and Loving it! I was expecting it to be paranormal , but in no way this dark. This definitely counts as a Halloween book.