April Wrap Up & May TBR

Enormous April Book Haul 50+

It took me three days to edit it down but it's finally live!!  

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My YouTube channel is now live!

I recently decided that I wanted to venture into the deep and scary waters of YouTube and start my own BookTube channel. 

https://www.youtube.com/user/Cloudbug57

 

 

As of this post I have two - not so great quality, videos up. 

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March Wrap-Up

March was nothing short of a fantastic reading month.  I had been in an epic slump since 2014 began.  I don't know if something in the Spring air(or forever summer, I live in Miami afterall) made me devour books at the rate I did.  But I can honestly say, I am never happier than when I read a great book and this month was FULL of great books.  In total I read 17 books: 3 Children's Books, 2 Novella's, 1 Adult Contemporary re-read, 8 YA books, 1 Lady Porn,  and 1 Middle Grade.

 

All ratings can be found on my Goodreads profile.

 



 

The Kissing Booth by Beth Reekles

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

Destroy Me by Tahereh Mafi

Unravel Me by Tahereh Mafi

Fracture Me by Tahereh Mafi

Ignite Me by Tahereh Mafi

 

Dream Animals: A Bedtime Story by Emily Winfield Martin

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore by William Joyce

The Dark by Lemony Snickett

My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick

Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms: Magic, Mystery and a Very Strange Adventure by Lissa Evans

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

The Trouble With Being a Duke by Sophie Barnes

Austenland by Shannon Hale

Prom and Prejudice by Elizabeth Eulberh

Adorkable by Sara Manning

Better of Friends by Elizabeth Eulberg

The final chapter in The Goddess Test series did not deliver

My goodreads review can be found here.

 

I really do not like to post negative reviews, I try to avoid them as much as possible.  But being that I have talked about my love for this series so many times before I felt like I needed to wrap it up in some small way.

I picked up this book mid-way through March, excited that I was finally getting around to finishing up the series.  I could tell from the moment I started that it was not going to deliver the thrills that I had anticipated.  I felt the story was predictable, the main character annoying and worst of all the death(s) in the story unnecessary. It took me 3 weeks to read and I had to force myself to open my Nook to read it.  I think the only reason I actually finished was because I told myself I would not read another book until I finished.  So I finished it. And it was just okay. And that is so dissapointing after following this series for as long as I have.

Rounded up from 2.5

 

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

 

Review originally posted on Examiner

 

To be honest, I'm a bit over vampire stories.  If I'm being really honest, I am entirely over them.  I actually picked this up not knowing what the premise of the story was, but because I felt that it was high time I read a Holly Black book.  I recall several years ago when I was originally getting into The Mortal Instruments Series, her books were considered on par with Cassandra Clare's.  I made a mental note at the time to give her books a shot.  And then I never did.  The other reason I picked this book up was the cover. Simple and it manages to draw you in.

 

All that being said, I started the book and was immediately sucked into this dark world.  Vampires are typically romanticized in YA but this story painted a grim picture of what our world could be if it was overrun with blood thirsty creatures of the night.  I think my favorite bit of world building was the foreshadowing about the dangers of leaving the windows open at night.  Even if one just needed a bit of air.  An absentminded crack of the window is all it would take to change your life forever.

 

Holly Blacks, character building and writing style are wonderful and the only complaint I had on that front was that Gavriel wasn't as fleshed out as I would have liked him to be, but fot the sake of keeping a bit of mystery where he is concerned I can see why she chose to leave us a bit in the dark.  Tana, is a sympathetic main character and I found myself trying to stear her away from bad decisions with my mind.  Ms. Black really makes you feel like you are on this dark and twisted adventure with Tana and her companions. 

 

The other aspect of the story that I loved is how modern it is.  This is a story that is written for the world we live in.  A world where all races, genders and sexual orientations are represented and Holly Black made sure to give them all space. 

 

Overall, this was a great read and one that I would recommend to lovers of dark YA stories.

 

 

The Fault in our Stars...an incredibly late review.

via redbubble

This review originally appeared on Examiner.com 

As an avid reader, I have often been told to read John Green. As a Young Adult reader, I have been shamed multiple times for not being a fan. I tried once, in my eyes reading 70 pages of An Abundance of Katherines, was more than enough time to decide wether or not I liked his work. I'm sure it's quite obvious that I did not, in fact, enjoy An Abundance of Katherines (AAoK). For the next few years, anytime someone would mention John Green to me I would rage at them that I really didn't get what the fuss was all about. I would explain how I not only found AAoK uninteresting but just plain boring. I would always end the conversation the way I do when I discuss authors that don't interest me, "They aren't for me."

I have never been happier to be wrong. After dragging my feet for almost a year, I sat down late this summer to read The Fault in our Stars (TFioS). I knew the premise of the book going into it, honestly, a story about a teenager fighting cancer did not seem like something I wanted to subject myself to. But for some strange reason, I decided to read it on my birthday of all days. Aside from it being a hugely busy day for me, and one that would not allow for a ton of free time, I thought that being so overwhelmed with plans would prevent me from getting overwhelmed by the emotion of the book. And I was right. Thank the lord. 

I cannot imagine how incredibly sad I would have been had I sat down to read TFioS in one sitting. The story itself is not, in my opinion, meant to be sad. The tone of the story is more hopeful than doom and gloom. Hazel and Gus are full of life and love despite the harshness of the reality they live with. And somehow, despite how sad the story actually is, it leaves you feeling optimistic and in my case raring to take on the world. I think that with TFioS, John Green did the impossible, he wrote a cancer book that isn't actually about cancer, but about the joys of living your life despite it. A book, that I thoroughly recommend to all readers, not just the YA fans. And even though I am sure it goes without saying, I'm going to anyway: I am a John Green fan. DFTBA.