Diary Entry #0043: Everything, Everything Was Everything I Was Looking For In A Book—A Book Review

Title: Everything, Everything

by Nicola Yoon

Date of Publication: September 1st 2015

Genre: Young Adult | Contemporary

My disease is as rare as it is famous. Basically, I’m allergic to the world. I don’t leave my house, have not left my house in seventeen years. The only people I ever see are my mom and my nurse, Carla. 

But then one day, a moving truck arrives next door. I look out my window, and I see him. He’s tall, lean and wearing all black—black T-shirt, black jeans, black sneakers, and a black knit cap that covers his hair completely. He catches me looking and stares at me. I stare right back. His name is Olly. 

Maybe we can’t predict the future, but we can predict some things. For example, I am certainly going to fall in love with Olly. It’s almost certainly going to be a disaster.

“Love is a terrible thing and its loss is even worse. Love is a terrible thing and I want nothing to do with it.”

It.

Was.

Everything.

Diary Entry #0041: ARC Review—UNTIL FRIDAY NIGHT by Abbi Glines

Title: Until Friday Night (The Field Party, #1)

by Abbi Glines

Date of Publication: August 25th 2015

Genre: Young Adult | Contemporary

To everyone who knows him, West Ashby has always been that guy: the cocky, popular, way-too-handsome-for-his-own-good football god who led Lawton High to the state championships. But while West may be Big Man on Campus on the outside, on the inside he’s battling the grief that comes with watching his father slowly die of cancer. 

Two years ago, Maggie Carleton’s life fell apart when her father murdered her mother. And after she told the police what happened, she stopped speaking and hasn’t spoken since. Even the move to Lawton, Alabama, couldn’t draw Maggie back out. So she stayed quiet, keeping her sorrow and her fractured heart hidden away. 

As West’s pain becomes too much to handle, he knows he needs to talk to someone about his father—so in the dark shadows of a post-game party, he opens up to the one girl who he knows won’t tell anyone else. 

West expected that talking about his dad would bring some relief, or at least a flood of emotions he couldn’t control. But he never expected the quiet new girl to reply, to reveal a pain even deeper than his own—or for them to form a connection so strong that he couldn’t ever let her go…

“In life we often have to make decisions that aren’t easy. But it doesn’t mean they aren’t right.”

The decision I made on whether I should read this book or not was a pretty easy one. Of course, I’d read this and share my thoughts about it to other people. It’s Abbi Glines. ‘Nuff said.

Diary Entry #0040: ARC Review—SUSTAINED by Emma Chase

Title: Sustained (The Legal Briefs, #2)

by Emma Chase

Date of Publication: August 24th 2015

Genre: New Adult | Contemporary Romance

A knight in tarnished armor is still a knight. 

When you’re a defense attorney in Washington, DC, you see firsthand how hard life can be, and that sometimes the only way to survive is to be harder. I, Jake Becker, have a reputation for being cold, callous, and intimidating—and that suits me just fine. In fact, it’s necessary when I’m breaking down a witness on the stand. 

Complications don’t work for me—I’m a “need-to-know” type of man. If you’re my client, tell me the basic facts. If you’re my date, stick to what will turn you on. I’m not a therapist or Prince Charming—and I don’t pretend to be. 

Then Chelsea McQuaid and her six orphaned nieces and nephews came along and complicated the ever-loving hell out of my life. Now I'm going to Mommy & Me classes, One Direction concerts, the emergency room, and arguing cases in the principal's office.
Chelsea’s too sweet, too innocent, and too gorgeous for her own good. She tries to be tough, but she’s not. She needs someone to help her, defend her…and the kids. 

And that — that, I know how to do.

Amazon | iTunes | Barnes & Noble

Emma Chase has done with Sustained what she does best—made me laugh and at the same time, shed a tear for her characters.

Diary Entry #0038: ARC Review—THE ACCIDENT SEASON by Moïra Fowley-Doyle

Title: The Accident Season

by Moïra Fowley-Doyle

Date of Publication: August 18th 2015

Genre: Young Adult | Contemporary | Mystery

For fans of We Were Liars and How I Live Now comes a haunting, sexy, magically realistic debut about a family caught between a violent history, a taboo romance, and the mysteries lurking in their own backyard.

Every October Cara and her family become inexplicably and unavoidably accident-prone. Some years it's bad, like the season when her father died, and some years it's just a lot of cuts and scrapes. This accident season—when Cara, her ex-stepbrother, Sam, and her best friend, Bea, are 17—is going to be a bad one. But not for the reasons they think. 

Cara is about to learn that not all the scars left by the accident season are physical: There's a long-hidden family secret underneath the bumps and bruises. This is the year Cara will finally fall desperately in love, when she'll start discovering the painful truth about the adults in her life, and when she'll uncover the dark origins of the accident season—whether she's ready or not.

I was enchanted.

Diary Entry #0033: Book Review—THE NIGHT WE SAID YES by Lauren Gibaldi

Title: The Night We Said Yes

by Lauren Gibaldi

Date of Publication: June 16th 2015

Genre: Young Adult | Contemporary

A fun, romantic read, perfect for fans of Sarah Dessen and Susane Colasanti!
Before Matt, Ella had a plan. Get over a no-good ex-boyfriend. Graduate from high school without any more distractions. Move away from Orlando, Florida, where she’s lived her entire life.

But Matt—the cute, shy, bespectacled bass player who just moved to town—was never part of that plan. 

And neither was attending a party that was crashed by the cops just minutes after they arrived. Or spending an entire night saying “yes” to every crazy, fun thing they could think of. 

Then Matt abruptly left town, and he broke not only Ella’s heart but those of their best friends, too. So when he shows up a year later with a plan of his own—to relive the night that brought them together—Ella isn’t sure whether Matt’s worth a second chance. Or if re-creating the past can help them create a different future.

In alternating then and now chapters, debut author Lauren Gibaldi crafts a charming, romantic story of first loves, lifelong friendships, uncovered secrets, and, ultimately, finding out how to be brave.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound | Books a Million

I must admit, my expectation with this book was very low. It was not personal, though. It’s just that YA Contemporary hasn’t been that good lately. I guess, having low expectations with this book was a good thing because I ended up actually liking it.

Diary Entry #0031: ARC Review + Author Q&A + Giveaway—THE EDGE OF FOREVER by Melissa E. Hurst

Title: The Edge of Forever

by Melissa E. Hurst

Date of Publication: June 2nd 2015

Genre: Young Adult | Sci-Fi

In 2013: Sixteen-year-old Alora is having blackouts. Each time she wakes up in a different place with no idea of how she got there. The one thing she is certain of? Someone is following her. 

In 2146: Seventeen-year-old Bridger is one of a small number of people born with the ability to travel to the past. While on a routine school time trip, he sees the last person he expected—his dead father. The strangest part is that, according to the Department of Temporal Affairs, his father was never assigned to be in that time. Bridger’s even more stunned when he learns that his by-the-book father was there to break the most important rule of time travel—to prevent someone’s murder. 

And that someone is named Alora. 

Determined to discover why his father wanted to help a “ghost,” Bridger illegally shifts to 2013 and, along with Alora, races to solve the mystery surrounding her past and her connection to his father before the DTA finds him. If he can stop Alora’s death without altering the timeline, maybe he can save his father too.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | Book Depository | IndieBound

Diary Entry #0021: ARC Review—CITY LOVE by Susane Colasanti

Title: City Love

by Susane Colasanti

Date of Publication: April 21st 2015

Genre: Young Adult | Contemporary

Diary Entry #0019: ARC Review—AN EMBER IN THE ASHES by Sabaa Tahir

Title: An Ember In The Ashes

by Sabaa Tahir

Date of Publication: April 28th 2015

Synopsis:

Set in a terrifyingly brutal Rome-like world, An Ember in the Ashes is an epic fantasy debut about an orphan fighting for her family and a soldier fighting for his freedom. It’s a story that’s literally burning to be told. 

LAIA is a Scholar living under the iron-fisted rule of the Martial Empire. When her brother is arrested for treason, Laia goes undercover as a slave at the empire’s greatest military academy in exchange for assistance from rebel Scholars who claim that they will help to save her brother from execution. 

ELIAS is the academy’s finest soldier—and secretly, its most unwilling. Elias is considering deserting the military, but before he can, he’s ordered to participate in a ruthless contest to choose the next Martial emperor. 

When Laia and Elias’s paths cross at the academy, they find that their destinies are more intertwined than either could have imagined and that their choices will change the future of the empire itself.

Review:

“There are two kinds of guilt,” I say softly. “The kind that’s a burden and the kind that gives you purpose. Let your guilt be your fuel. Let it remind you of who you want to be.”

An Ember In The Ashes is one of my most anticipated reads of this year and I’m beyond thankful to Penguin FirstToRead for granting me a review copy. It has not, in any way, influenced my thoughts about this book.

To say that I was awed by An Ember In The Ashes is a great understatement. I don’t even know how or where to begin with this review because there were so many points in this book that floored me and left me reeling, making it impossible to form coherent thoughts. Nevertheless, I will try my best to give this book a review it deserves so I’m gonna dissect each aspect of it.

Worldbuilding. This book was set in a fictional city called Serra. Most of the scenes happened inside the military school, Blackcliff Academy. This is where children were trained to become Masks, which I guess is the equivalent of high ranking military generals in today’s time. I’m a reader with a very vivid imagination and the way the author described the city, the school and other places made the world of this book come alive in my mind. It was not overly detailed, but someone with the imagination level of a rock will be able to see pretty clearly in their own imagination the picture that Ms. Tahir painted with her words.

Diary Entry #0017: ARC Review—THINGS WE KNOW BY HEART by Jessi Kirby

Title: Things We Know By Heart

by Jessi Kirby

Date of Publication: April 21st 2015

Genre: Young Adult | Contemporary

Synopsis:

When Quinn Sullivan meets the recipient of her boyfriend’s donated heart, the two form an unexpected connection. 

After Quinn loses her boyfriend, Trent, in an accident their junior year, she reaches out to the recipients of his donated organs in hopes of picking up the pieces of her now-unrecognizable life. She hears back from some of them, but the person who received Trent’s heart has remained silent. The essence of a person, she has always believed, is in the heart. If she finds Trent’s, then maybe she can have peace once and for all.

Risking everything in order to finally lay her memories to rest, Quinn goes outside the system to track down nineteen-year-old Colton Thomas—a guy whose life has been forever changed by this priceless gift. But what starts as an accidental run-in quickly develops into more, sparking an undeniable attraction. She doesn't want to give in to it—especially since he has no idea how they're connected—but their time together has made Quinn feel alive again. No matter how hard she’s falling for Colton, each beat of his heart reminds her of all she’s lost…and all that remains at stake.

• Amazon
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• Book Depository
• Add it on your Goodreads shelf

Review:

Sometimes there’s a book that when you start to read, you just know in your heart that it’s something unique and you would never forget about it. This book is one of those.

Diary Entry #0015: ARC Review—THE WINNER'S CRIME by Marie Rutkoski

Title: The Winner's Crime (The Winner's Trilogy #2)

by Marie Rutkoski

Date of Publication: March 3rd 2015

Genre: Young Adult | High Fantasy

Synopsis:

Book two of the dazzling Winner's Trilogy is a fight to the death as Kestrel risks betrayal of country for love. 

The engagement of Lady Kestrel to Valoria’s crown prince means one celebration after another. But to Kestrel it means living in a cage of her own making. As the wedding approaches, she aches to tell Arin the truth about her engagement…if she could only trust him. Yet can she even trust herself? For—unknown to Arin—Kestrel is becoming a skilled practitioner of deceit: an anonymous spy passing information to Herran, and close to uncovering a shocking secret. 

As Arin enlists dangerous allies in the struggle to keep his country’s freedom, he can’t fight the suspicion that Kestrel knows more than she shows. In the end, it might not be a dagger in the dark that cuts him open, but the truth. And when that happens, Kestrel and Arin learn just how much their crimes will cost them.

• Amazon 
• iBooks
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• Book Depository
• Add it on your Goodreads shelf

Review:

The god of lies must love this book because The Winner’s Crime is full of lies, treachery and deceit.

First of all, I would like to thank Bloomsbury Publishing UK for providing me a review copy of this book. It has not, in any way, affected my thoughts about the book.

So, before reading The Winner’s Crime, I was re-reading The Winner’s Curse in order to refresh my feels and my memory about Kestrel’s story. Then, I tweeted Ms. Marie Rutkoski saying that I’m having “too many feels” and asked her if book 2 is going to invoke as much emotion from me. She then replied, “Well, many readers report lots of feels for The Winner’s Crime. But ‘gimme Kleenex and chocolate’ feels. You’ve been warned.” I was not expecting that—at all. But I’ll tell you what: she’s right.