It's Been Too Long...

Soooo, ummmm.... haha, I'm not sure how to start out this blog post.

Soooo, the last time I wrote a review was last November!  Wowzers.  I'm graduating high school in about 2 weeks, and I'm extremely excited about that!

School sort of consumed all of my time, and I wasn't really feeling the whole reviewing and blogging faze anymore, so I quit.  I'm deeply sorry if any of you are disheartened by this, but if you're not, then great!  

This was just a quick, little sign-off post.  I may post again, or I may not.  You never know.

Bye! :)

Stacking the Shelves #5

Stacking the Shelves is a meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews that allows us to showcase our recently received books.  Let the 'To Be Read' lists pile!

Hey, guys!
Oh my gosh, you all have no idea how excited and ecstatic I am that it's almost Thanksgiving!  The one day a year I can stuff my belly to my heart's delight and not give a damn what anyone thinks!  Such.  Freedom.
Haha, anyway, I just went to B&N and picked up some long-awaited titles that I can't wait to dig into, and when I say "long-awaited," I mean, like, many difficult months.  Months of obsessively checking certain authors' blogs in the hope of getting juicy information on said "long-awaited" books.  I'm just a liiiittle obsessed.....

~ Pawn 

~ Crash Into You 

~ Very Bad Things (Kindle format)

Submerged Book Blitz!

After a mysterious virus makes its way into the United States, the government demands that states seal themselves off from one another and do their best to protect their surviving residents. When the state of Florida is bordered off from the surrounding states, Taylen Fincher, a seventeen-year-old girl with a yearning for her former life finds herself wondering how much of what they’ve been told is true.

When Troum took control of the state, he told the residents that the other states had fallen to the virus and that he wouldn’t allow the same thing to happen to them. But Taylen doesn’t believe it. She insists that there is still life outside of the state, and she is going to do whatever it takes to prove it… but her actions will cost her more than she ever expected.

Troum kidnaps Taylen’s sister, Penelope, in hopes of coaxing her into behaving – into being a submissive resident, much like the others. But Taylen isn’t one to give in that easily.

Eager to rescue her sister, Taylen will set out on an adventure that’ll force her to open her heart to the unexpected and to uncover secrets that will change everything.

SUBMERGED is the first book in a YA dystopian duology.

~ Goodreads

  

About the Author

Nicole Sobon is the author of the Emile Reed Chronicles, Capture, No Place Like Home, and various short stories.

   

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Book Blitz Hosted by:

Better

Title: Better (Too Good #2)

Author: S. Walden

Genre: NA/Romance

Release Date: November 19, 2013

My Rating:
♥♥♥♥♡

Their relationship has been exposed, and now their lives are changed forever. 

 For Cadence Miller, the fast track to adulthood proves intimidating and frustrating.  She’s a little girl lost—abandoned by her family and uncertain of her future.  She doesn’t think she “fits” anywhere. She’s eighteen.  She wants to be older.  And the result is both comical and heartbreaking. 

 Mark Connelly will do anything to provide Cadence a stable, loving home—to be her protector.  But he’s just as broken and lost, and his heart won’t let go of his past so easily. He knows he should share his secret with Cadence.  He should trust that she’ll understand. But what if she doesn’t?  What if their love doesn’t grow stronger?   What if it doesn’t get better?

~ Goodreads

Noooo!  Now that I've finished Better, I've finished the series *sniff sniff*  I was hoping for at least one more book in the Too Good series, but I'm just glad that Better ended on a wonderful note.

Cadence Miller and Mark Connelly are forbidden lovers.  The world wanted to separate them, but they overcame the odds and pushed through only to end up in a personal struggle.  Mark's been keeping major secrets about his past from Cadence, and she doesn't take it well.  Cadence completely spirals out of control, and it's up to Mark to put the fragmented pieces of their relationship back together.  Will he be able to do it before Cadence loses all of her faith in their relationship?

So, I love, love, love Good passionately.  It's one of those books that ends with you tucked in a ball and bawling your eyes out (or at least I was...).  But Better didn't do that to me.  I mean, sure there were a lot of sweet and monumentally swoonful scenes, but Cadence was just..... ugh.... truthfully, she acted like a little bitch.  You'd think that since she's totally and completely in love with Mark that she'd forgive him for not being ready to tell her an enormous revelation about his past, but no.  The exact opposite.  Cadence goes berserk, and that's where my problem comes in.  Mark cannot undo his past, and besides, she wasn't even a part of his life at that point, but she gets pissed off anyway!  Cadence was the one acting like a child and being completely immature.  Those scenes drove me insane because I just wanted to reach through the screen of my Kindle and shake some sense into her.  Conclusively, the only problem I had with Better was Cadence's selfish behavior in the middle of the book.

I seriously want my own Mark after reading the epilogue.  Oh my gosh, the flawless epilogue completely unwound my emotions, and I was crying tears of joy and happiness and sadness because Better is the last book in the series.  But, anyways, Walden must have put a lot of heart into that scene because it was so perfect and lovely.

The romance was as sweet as ever, showing just how much Mark and Cadence love each other through their many tender moments.  Better is explicit, so I would only recommend it to anyone 16+!  But other than that, it was wonderfully romantic and Mark had me swooning in my shoes.  Gosh, why can't I have my own Mark?!  Because I would really like one....

The dialogue did drive me crazy, what with its incessant usage of "wanna" and "gotta."  Okay, one, that's not proper grammar (correct grammar, please!), and two, those words made the characters sound younger than they actually were.  I mean, Mark's an English major, right?  He should know better!  "Wanna" coming out of his mouth sounds just plain wrong.

Overall, I'm giving Better a 4.5/5 because it's a sweet and pleasant ending to the series, but Cadence drove me a little crazy.

The Coldest Girl In Coldtown Mini-Review

Title: The Coldest Girl In Coldtown

Author: Holly Black

Genre: YA/Paranormal

Release Date: September 3, 2013

My Rating: 
♥♥♥♥♡

Tana lives in a world where walled cities called Coldtowns exist.  In them, quarantined monsters and humans mingle in a decadently bloody mix of predator and prey.  The only problem is, once you pass through Coldtown’s gates, you can never leave. 

 One morning, after a perfectly ordinary party, Tana wakes up surrounded by corpses.  The only other survivors of this massacre are her exasperatingly endearing ex-boyfriend, infected and on the edge, and a mysterious boy burdened with a terrible secret.  Shaken and determined, Tana enters a race against the clock to save the three of them the only way she knows how: by going straight to the wicked, opulent heart of Coldtown itself. 

 The Coldest Girl in Coldtown is a wholly original story of rage and revenge, of guilt and horror, and of love and loathing from bestselling and acclaimed author Holly Black.

~ Goodreads

Oh goodness... I though Better by S. Walden was going to be released on Tuesday (19th), but apparently it's been out since Sunday (17th), so I'm going to make this a quickie so that I can start Better!

The Coldest Girl In Coldtown is just.... wow.  I definitely was not expecting such a punch from a book about vampires!  Although, the vampires in TCGIT are much edgier and fiercer than the vampires in Twilight.  Oh, and more blood-thirsty.

Tana lives in a world where becoming a vampire is the norm.  A horrible and painful norm, but a norm nonetheless.  Enormous towns are dedicated to vampires and are sealed off, keeping the vampires from spreading the infection any further.  But some vampires have escaped the Coldtowns and are prowling the streets when they come across a high school party, putting Tana and her friends in the vicious vamps' line if sight.  It's a mix for catastrophe, love, and lots of bloodshed.

Edgy, dark, and carnivorous.
Tana, the main character, is so fierce and bad-ass that you immediately love her.  Her adventure in Coldtown in definitely a unique one!  There was so much action that it became a bit difficult to keep up, what with all of the gore and knives and daggers.  There was also a little bit of a romance thrown into the mix, which made me very happy.  I was practically drooling when it came to Gavriel and all of his hotness.  I mean, really, who wouldn't?  Tana and Gavriel are a match made in Cold (if you haven't read the book, you're probably what the hell I'm blabbering about).

TCGIC is beautifully lyrical, enchanting readers with more than just mesmerizingly gorgeous vampires.  I was sucked in from the beginning!  Tana's narration is hypnotic with just a hint of a gothic tone.  In other words, flawlessly perfect.

Overall, I'm giving TCGIC a 4.5/5 because I loved this refreshing take on vixen vampires!