31 December 2015

Finishing the Series Challenge 2016


Hi again! My next challenge is a new one I found this year, Finishing the Series 2016 challenge. The reason I picked this is because I have a never ending list of series that I have started and have not finished! P.S. This challenge is hosted by, Bea's Book Nook so click the link to check this challenge out and or sign up!

There are several levels and I really feel confident to go for Level 2 which is 2-4 series, but again since I am trying to get back into the swing of things and so for that reason I will start with Level 1 which is 1 series and if I do better than that I will feel accomplished! 

The series I want to catch up on is....

*Drum Roll Please*

The Mortal Instrument Series by Cassandra Clare!!

The reason I choose this series is because I have read the first two and have not gotten past that point for whatever reason. But I feel determined that this year I will get through the rest of the books!
 

30 December 2015

Contemporary Romance Reading Challenge 2016


I feel like its been awhile since I've posted anything but one of my new year resolutions is to put my blog back together and start posting regularly again. I did not put all of the hard work into this to just give up. So any followers that have not heard from me in awhile stay tuned because 2016 will be great! 

Included in my resolution to be better at posting, I am also going to actually participate in the challenges that I sign up for. The first one being the, Contemporary Romance Reading Challenge hosted by Gone With the Words or Love at First Page (Amazing names for blogs by the way!) To sign up for yourself or see what goes into this challenge head over to either of the pages above! 

There are several different levels to choose from, and normally I would be overly ambitious but since I want to be successful and also be apart of several other challenges I am going to go for the first level which is, 1st Base! this means my challenge is to read somewhere between 1-5 books. 

Thanks so much for everyone who stopped by! Question for everyone before you go, what Contemporary Romance books would you recommend for me? I have an idea but I really do not know what to pick! 

 


21 December 2015

Review: MARY: Unleashed by Hillary Monahan

MARY: Unleashed by Hillary Monahan
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Release Date: September 8, 2015
Book Format: Hardcover
# of Pages: 245
Synopsis: Mary in the mirror.
Mary in the glass.
Mary in the water.

Mary lurks in the emptiness, in the darkness . . . in the reflection. That is, until Jess unleashes her into the world. Now Mary Worth is out and her haunting is deadlier than ever.

No one is safe.

Shauna, Kitty, and Jess must band together to unearth the truth about Mary's death to put her soul to rest for good. Their search leads them back to where it all began-to Solomon's Folly, a place as dangerous as the ghost who died there a century and a half ago. Quick sand, hidden traps and a phantom fog are the least of their worries. To stop Mary, they need to follow a dark string of clues and piece together a gruesome mystery that spans generations.

But time is running out.

As chilling facts come to light, Mary inches ever closer to her prey. Can Jess, Shauna, and Kitty break Mary's curse before it's too late? Or will history repeat itself until there is no one left to call her name . . . ?



Meet Hillary, (Taken from Goodreads)
 
Hillary Monahan is Eva Darrows is also an international woman of mystery. Holed up in Massachusetts with three smelly basset hounds, she writes funny, creepy things for fun and profit. 

(I absolutely love this intro that is why I used it!)











My Review:

I borrowed Mary: Unleashed by Hillary Monahan from work and this is my honest review.

This book is the much-anticipated sequel to Monahan’s first book, Mary which is about a group of girls who decide to summon the legend of “Bloody Mary.” One girl in particular, Jess decides to summon Mary because she happens to be an ancestor of hers, and Jess wants to learn more about her. The problem is, her and her three friends get a lot more than they bargained for when Mary latches on and terrorizes them throughout the whole book, she even kills a few people along the way.

The second book follows the two surviving friends, I will not release names so as not to spoil the first book. But this sequel is these two girls adventure in trying to solve Mary’s death in order for her to stop terrorizing the human world forever. The process of these two girls finding, and collecting clues as to how Mary died, and ways to possibly get rid of her was intriguing. Between many chapters there were old letters for us readers to read, so we felt almost as if we were apart of the hunt too.

Even before hearing about these books I was extremely interested in the legend of Bloody Mary. This story brought back memories, to back when I was in camp as a little girl. My friends and I used to lock ourselves in the camp bathroom, turn the lights off and play around with calling out bloody mary. Nothing ever happened, but I remember being so scared every time I walked into the bathroom, for fear that she was going to pop up. Thank god that phase didn't last long.

I cannot say much else about this book without giving away spoilers, but I must say it was very well written, and extremely intense. I was biting my nails, and hanging onto the end of every page the whole time I was reading. I also loved the fact that I got the chills every time Mary was described in the book, or when the girls knew she was around by hearing her moans or smelling her, that brought me back to being scared at camp too and I loved every second of it!

 

09 December 2015

Release Day Blitz: A Cross The Divide by Stacey Marie Brown

  

 
  Across the Divide by Stacey Marie Brown
Synopsis: The hunter is now the hunted. Zoey Daniels is becoming the very thing she once despised. Fae. After Zoey and Ryker finally found their way to each other they are torn apart by an ex-girlfriend, a stone, and mortality. Ryker’s powers have fully adapted to Zoey, slowly killing him. Now the mysterious feared demon, Vadik, has discovered their location in Peru and has taken Ryker and sold Zoey back to DMG. The very place which gave her life now might take it away. Or someone she loves… Dr. Rapava is so obsessed with building an army against the fae he will do anything to control Zoey and her new found powers. Zoey’s has to become an unfeeling brainwashed soldier to survive. But when her survival depends on torturing one to keep another alive, she is forced to make the ultimate sacrifice.   


    
Haven't started reading the Collector's series yet? Start with City In Embers! It's FREE!
 
Synopsis: Zoey Daniels has been tossed from foster home to foster home, where she grows up fast and tough. When she is placed in her “last-chance” home, she finds a reason to stay and turn her life around: her foster sister, Lexie, who is paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. Zoey will do anything to keep her safe.
After high school, Zoey is hired by a special government agency, the Department of Molecular Genetics (DMG), where she meets the other reason to remain: Daniel, her co-worker. The man she loves. But there is something unique about Zoey. She can see fae. Because of this, the DMG hires her to work as a Collector: catching, researching, testing, and using the fae to save human lives. The work never registers on her sympathy radar. She was raised to think of fae as beasts that feed on humans and want to destroy them. When devastation hits Seattle, Zoey's whole world is turned upside down. The electric storm connects her to a ruthless fae, a Wanderer named Ryker, whose dealings expose them to even more trouble and danger. They embark on a journey, running and hiding from both the government and fae, both of which threaten their lives and those they love.
  About Stacey Marie Brown
Stacey Marie Brown is a lover of hot fictional bad boys and sarcastic heroines who kick butt. She also enjoys books, travel, TV shows, hiking, writing, design, and archery. Stacey swears she is part gypsy, being lucky enough to live and travel all over the world. She grew up in Northern California, where she ran around on her family's farm, raising animals, riding horses, playing flashlight tag, and turning hay bales into cool forts. She volunteers helping animals and is eco-friendly. She feels all animals, people, and environment should be treated kindly.


 

08 December 2015

Review: Islands at the End of the World by Austin Aslan

The Islands at the End of the World by Austin Aslan
Publisher: Wendy Lamb Books
Release Date: August 5, 2014
Book Format: Paperback
# of Pages: 384
Synopsis: Right before my eyes, my beautiful islands are changing forever. And so am I ...

Sixteen-year-old Leilani loves surfing and her home in Hilo, on the Big Island of Hawaii. But she's an outsider - half white, half Hawaiian, and an epileptic.

While Lei and her father are on a visit to Oahu, a global disaster strikes. Technology and power fail, Hawaii is cut off from the world, and the islands revert to traditional ways of survival. As Lei and her dad embark on a nightmarish journey across islands to reach home and family, she learns that her epilepsy and her deep connection to Hawaii could be keys to ending the crisis before it becomes worse than anyone can imagine.

A powerful story enriched by fascinating elements of Hawaiian ecology, culture, and warfare, this captivating and dramatic debut from Austin Aslan is the first of two novels. The author has a master’s degree in tropical conservation biology from the University of Hawaii at Hilo.


Meet Austin, (Taken from Goodreads)
Austin Aslan has been an EMT, a community organizer, a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras, and he once ran a Congressional campaign in Oregon. He was inspired to write his debut novel, The Islands at the End of the World, while living on the Big Island of Hawaii. He earned a master’s degree in tropical conservation biology at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. His research on rare Hawaiian plants located on the high slopes of Mauna Loa won him a pair of destroyed hiking boots, a tattered rain jacket, and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. He lives outside Tucson, Arizona, deep in the Sonoran Desert, where he pets scorpions and hugs saguaro cacti with his high-school-sweetheart wife and their two young children. Austin is pursuing a PhD in geography at the University of Arizona and thinking up new stories while conducting ecosystem resilience research atop the Peruvian Andes. He continues to write fiction and looks forward to the publication of his "Islands at the End" sequel, "The Girl at the Center of the World" in the fall of 2015.


My Review:
 I received, Island at the End of the World by Austin Aslan from the publisher and this is my honest review.

This novel is about a girl named Leilani who lives in Hawaii with her native mother, younger brother, and American father. Lei is only half Hawaiian so she gets a lot of crap from the people at school. They did not feel that she fit in, and because of this they bullied her often. Leilani also suffers from seizures, and at the beginning of the book her and her father are traveling to another part of Hawaii so Lei can take part in a medical trial to hopefully help her with her seizures.

In the middle of this trial, the world decides to end which makes it really hard for Lei to get medical treatment so she and her father decide it is time to make the trek home. The only problem is since the world is coming crashing down pretty much on top of them, there are no planes flying home, nor are there boats sailing toward their home. Lei and her father are stuck bargaining, and fighting their way out of the town to get home to their family.

I enjoyed this book for so many reasons, most adventure books incorporate some sort of hardship, or distraction along with the adventure. For example, a love interest or a death. There was a unique hardship in this book which was Lei’s epilepsy. Not only was her disease a hardship, but it was actually a very important part of the whole story for Leilani and her world.

We did not get to know the characters of Lei’s mother, brother, and grandfather (hopefully in the second book) but we did get to know Lei, and her father in great detail and both of them are extremely strong characters. She and her father have a very strong bond, and I admire that. They have the ability to joke around and be friendly, but her father also can be authoritative without a problem. I could not stop turning the pages of this book from the first page to the very last. I loved it to pieces and I cannot wait to read the second book!

01 December 2015

Book Tour: Next Door to a Star by Krysten Lindsay Hager


Next Door to a Star
 by Krysten Lindsay Hager
Release Date: September 1st 2015

Publisher: Limitless Publishing


Synopsis from Goodreads:


Hadley Daniels is tired of feeling invisible.

After Hadley’s best friend moves away and she gets on the bad side of some girls at school, she goes to spend the summer with her grandparents in the Lake Michigan resort town of Grand Haven. Her next door neighbor is none other than teen TV star Simone Hendrickson, who is everything Hadley longs to be—pretty, popular, and famous—and she’s thrilled when Simone treats her like a friend.

Being popular is a lot harder than it looks.

It’s fun and flattering when Simone includes her in her circle, though Hadley is puzzled about why her new friend refuses to discuss her former Hollywood life. Caught up with Simone, Hadley finds herself ignoring her quiet, steadfast friend, Charlotte.

To make things even more complicated, along comes Nick Jenkins…

He’s sweet, good-looking, and Hadley can be herself around him without all the fake drama. However, the mean girls have other ideas and they fill Nick’s head with lies about Hadley, sending him running back to his ex-girlfriend and leaving Hadley heartbroken.

So when her parents decide to relocate to Grand Haven, Hadley hopes things will change when school starts…only to be disappointed once again.



Cliques.


Back-stabbing.


Love gone bad.


Is this really what it’s like to live…


Next Door To A Star?


Check out the Trailer:




Meet Krysten,
Krysten Lindsay Hager is an obsessive reader and has never met a bookstore she didn’t like. She’s worked as a journalist and humor essayist, and writes for teens, tweens, and adults. She is also the author of the Landry’s True Colors Series (True Colors, Best Friends…Forever?, and the soon to be released, Landry in Like) and her work has been featured in USA Today and named as Amazon’s #1 Hot New Releases in Teen & Young Adult Values and Virtues Fiction and Amazon’s #1 Hot New Releases in Children’s Books on Values. She’s originally from Michigan and has lived in South Dakota, Portugal, and southwestern Ohio. She received her master’s degree from the University of Michigan-Flint.




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