What I Read Wednesday: The Uber Late and Long Overdue Edition

Whoops!  I sort of read these books about 3 weeks ago.  I mowed through them during my week-long fall break.  I'm not sure why, but I've had trouble settling in to a book since then.  So, I am already counting down the days till winter break as if my life depended on it.

Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie by Jordan Sonnenblick | Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie did more for me than The Fault in Our Stars did...a book on a similar topic! It was less cerebral, in a very good way and it did not cut corners on emotional roller coasters. Granted, I didn't physically start tearing up until Steven and Jeffrey's dad gave his speech near the end. But I didn't cry while reading Stars either (I know, I'm weird vs. so many other people who have read it). I laughed and enjoyed those moments when Steven just told it like it was in his every day life as a boy navigating junior high. 

My husband made fun of me for reading a book with this title and I didn't get it either when I first put it on my to-read list a couple years ago. So...drums. Steven's huge talent (reminded me so much of my lil' bro) and his saving grace. And girls. Well...Renee and Annette. Gotta love 8th grade boys. Then there is Dangerous Pie. The beginning of the story and the start of the emotional roller coaster made by Jeffrey using Steven's favorite and most valued pair of drumsticks. This is when the family discovers what is wrong with Jeffrey...see? Emotional roller coaster.

Fans of Out of My Mind and more so, Wonder, will really attach themselves to this one. Or if you didn't quite find yourself enjoying The Fault in Our Stars the way others did, you will most definitely find yourself lost in this one! I don't know how to explain it exactly, but I can easily say the characters were more attainable in an every day sense!

I don't want to say much more than that because it will completely take away from your experience reading this one.  I couldn't stop thinking about it long after finishing it.  Come to find out, a sequel was written recently and at first I was excited.  But once I read the reviews and synopsis, I am determined not to read it.  It seems like one of those that will take away those feelings I had towards the characters by the end.

My rating:  5 out of 5 stars | |  Goodreads Average:  4.26

The Marbury Lens by Andrew Smith | I would rather NOT talk about this one.  But I should really make sure no one else has to waste their time with Marbury Lens.  It is THE first horror genre novel I have ever picked up.  

Why did I keep reading this book? I kept willing it and wanting it to get better and become what I hoped it would be when I read the synopsis. 

It started out so well...just as the synopsis did. A kid is in the wrong place, is kidnapped, and something bad almost happens to him. He tries to pick up the pieces but then he is given these strange glasses that take him to a strange land where horrific things happen. That is where it stopped being interesting.

There was so much repetition and roundabout events. The main character was hard to like as he didn't seem to love anyone except for his best friend. But even his best friend and Jack had the weirdest relationship...which brings me to my next dislike. What was with all the insanely ridiculous homophobia? From his kidnapper, to his best friend, to Marbury where everyone seems to be naked. I just didn't get it. 

I have never read a book from the horror genre, so I have nothing to compare it to. But, I can say that the only horror in this book was the way the author never seemed to get to the point...in Marbury and the real world. Ugh. I would hope he does so in the sequel...but do I want to read it? No! The only reason I didn't give this 1 star is because I actually did want to find out why Jack began talking to himself (in his head) in the 3rd person. I had my guesses...but did we find out in this book?! No! And do I care enough to find out in the 2nd book?! No! I wasn't invested at all in the characters because Jack was not the kind of character you get attached to.

My rating:  2 out of 5 stars | |  Goodreads Average:  3.59

Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins | Looooooooved this one!!  Sure the cover is super cheesy, but look past it, because this was such a sweet little story and way too much fun to read.  I am annoyed there isn't a second book.  Sure, it is really for young girls in high school, but I swear, I am not the grown adult obsessed with Anna and her friends.  This is a must read!  Let me explain by pasting in my Goodreads review I wrote right after I read it:  

I did not want this book to end!!! But yet, I HAD to get to the end to find out if Anna gets her French kiss. Ugh. I'm so sad this is over! 

While I can't quite put my finger on why I loved reading about Etienne and Anna so very much, I can tell you it was extremely fun to peek in on their developing friendship and what actually ends up happening. Not to mention...this all happened right in Paris. A place Anna didn't want to be in. A place she began to fall in love with. A place I began to fall in love with right along with her...all while she was learning how to deal with friendship, heartache, love, independence, and even patience. Well, the patience part was annoying, but that is what made me push and push to find out more. 

And that whole French kiss part? It felt like I was there watching it all develop and it gave me the butterflies and the chills right along with Anna. How Stephanie Perkins did this I am not quite sure? Her writing style flowed and was so entirely natural, I really did feel like I was there watching everything from beginning to end. Man that book was good! I want to go back and read it again...right now.

My rating:  5 out of 5 stars | |  Goodreads Average:  4.20

The Mockingbirds  by Daisy Whitney | This book, the first by Daisy Whitney, was definitely interesting.  At times, I felt it was a bit farfetched, but it was still intriguing enough to read on and find out exactly how this underground system at a private school worked.  

At a school where the faculty doesn't seem to believe students only good decisions, the students take it in their own hands and create an underground justice system based on its founder's favorite book, To Kill a Mockingbird. Even more interesting? This fictional story is based on the author's experience in college similar to the major character's.

From Goodreads:  "Some schools have honor codes.

Others have handbooks.
Themis Academy has the Mockingbirds.

Themis Academy is a quiet boarding school with an exceptional student body that the administration trusts to always behave the honorable way--the Themis Way. So when Alex is date raped during her junior year, she has two options: stay silent and hope someone helps her, or enlist the Mockingbirds--a secret society of students dedicated to righting the wrongs of their fellow peers.

In this honest, page-turning account of a teen girl's struggle to stand up for herself, debut author Daisy Whitney reminds readers that if you love something or someone--especially yourself--you fight for it."

My rating:  4 out of 5 stars | | Goodreads Average:  3.83

Please feel free to add me on Goodreads or follow my reviews there.  I absolutely love discovering new and interesting books that I may not have found otherwise.  

I'd love to know what you have been reading or have read lately!  Care to share?

Link up with Amy (last week's) to share your latest reads or what you are reading right now.  

What I Read Wednesday: A Random Mix

This week's What I Read is a bit of a mix, but with good reason!  I have had the first book on my to-read list for over a year and finally pushed it to the top of my list once I was done plugging through my summer reads.  It was a welcomed addition to my carry-on bag when I traveled back home to California last weekend too.  Books like this one make sitting in an airport and a claustrophobic airplane a much easier event to handle.  Now the other two, well, I am reading them because I won the 3rd book on Goodreads as a First Reads book...and there was no way I was going to read it until I read the first two in the series.  They seem to be a bit Indie looking, but worth it to try out.  I got both of them for $1.99 and $2.99 on my iPad Kindle.

I am really glad to be able to link up with Amy now that she is back to doing the linky for Wednesday. Definitely click over and see what she has read...as she has great taste, just like me!  That and several other people link up as well...so you can get triple the amount of book recommendations!  Whoops!  It's not till next week.  Check back then!

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green | Like I said, this one was a must-read for awhile for me.  Tons of my Goodreads friends had already read it and rated it quite high.  Not to mention, it is being made into a movie and I wanted to jump on it before it was too late.

At the same time, I put off reading this for so long because I was afraid of how sad it would be.  But, that wasn't so.  Green did a fantastic job of writing this in a way that made you hurt for the characters, yet understand they were on a different wavelength when it came to their terminal illnesses.  Was I expecting the twist that was thrown at me?  Certainly not.  To me, the twist made this much more intense than it would have been, had it ended the way I thought it would.  Of course, I won't say much more than that, so as not to give anything away.

Green is quite the talented author as he weaved a beautifully sad and powerful story together of a teenager who was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, which became something more.  She is shut off in her house surrounded only by her parents.  Despite having friends still, she just can't relate and they can't relate to her.  That is what makes this story that much better.  She evolves, despite her large setback.  What occurs is a beautiful love story most adults still only dream of. I was surprised I didn't cry, as I thought I would...but I also found some of my Goodreads friends didn't either.  I didn't need the passengers on the plane wondering what was wrong with me anyway.

From Goodreads:  Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.

My rating:  5 out of 5 stars  ||  Goodreads Average:  4.41stars

Abducted by T.R. Ragan | Would I ever have picked this up on my own?  Nope!  After stumbling upon the third in the series, called A Dark Mind, on the First Reads giveaway page and reading the synopsis, I was intrigued and entered to win...and won a copy! But there's no way I was going to skip the first two, especially when I read the synopsis of this series starter.  

If you are a fan of movies such as Silence of the Lambs and/or Seven, you will love this one!  I don't normally read books like this, but yet, this is a new favorite.  It reads just like the above-mentioned movies...there may even be a bloody body part sent to someone in a box!  Maybe.  

Lizzy Gardner is a private investigator in Sacramento, California. (Shout out to my college years!...well, at least I was 1.5 hours north of it)  But flashback to 14 years prior to and you learn she was the lone survivor of a crazy serial killer who goes by the name of Spiderman.  You see, he thinks he is some kind of vigilante getting rid of teenage girls who don't respect their elders and the like.  Let me just put it to you this way...he's a crazy freak who loves his spiders way too much!  Gives me the willies just thinking about why they call him this though.  Anyway, back to the present...he suddenly begins contacting Lizzy again even though everyone thought he was in prison behind bars.  Think again.  

My rating:  4 out of 5 stars  ||  Goodreads Average:  3.89 stars

Dead Weight by T.R. Ragan |  I had high hopes for this one since the first was so darn good!  Sadly, it left a lot to be desired.  While Abducted read like some of my favorite thriller/suspense movies, this one reminded me a bit too much of a Scooby Doo cartoon. You know the moment when they are chasing some crazy person who is wearing a mask and they seem to go back and forth between whodunnit?  It wasn't nearly as cheesy or horrible, but it certainly lived up to its title a bit too much...dead weight.  But the great news is that the reviews for the 3rd are way better.  Phew!

This one picks up a couple months after the first one.  All the characters are trying to come to terms with what happened to them surrounding the Spiderman serial killer.  In other words, they are all a bit messed up in the head.  Yet, the plot never seemed to get moving enough and the side story about Hayley (one of the important characters in the first) felt like it didn't quite fit.  But her story is a large part of the 3rd it seems.  

If it wasn't for the 3rd book being sent to me, I may have glazed over the rest of the series.  Stay tuned for the next post and I'll let you know how the 3rd turns out.  

From Goodreads:  Hoping murder and mayhem are behind Lizzy, she delves into her first cold case: twenty-one years ago, a girl went missing and the girl’s dying mother is more desperate than ever to know what happened to her only child.

My rating:  3 out of 5 stars  ||  Goodreads Average:  3.70 stars

Please feel free to add me on Goodreads or follow my reviews there.  I absolutely love discovering new and interesting books that I may not have found otherwise.  

I'd love to know what you have been reading or have read lately!  Care to share?

If you feel up to it...link up with Amy.  She is hosting the linky party every other week.    That of course...being next week.  :-)

What I Read Wednesday: Summer Edition

I'm finally getting trying to get back in to my reading groove after finishing up a 2-year long journey through National Boards!  It's a slow going process, almost as if I have forgotten how to read or sit and read for a long period of time.  My brain and body may have misplaced its ability to sit and relax without thinking I have something else I need to be writing or typing (FYI, I finished my Boards work officially on June 21)...so maybe I'll be back to normal in another month?  

Despite having a rough time getting back to reading for enjoyment, I have read several good books in the last month and a half.  So, this is a perfect time to share them in case someone else is looking for a nice book to settle into.

Doll Bones by Holly Black | Many of my Twitter friends were talking this one up quite a bit.  Since I'm always looking for a book my 5th graders will find freaky, I wanted to find out for myself if this one was just as scary as people were saying.  Hmmmmm...it definitely had its moments, especially if you get frightened by haunted dolls.  This would have been perfect for my group of kids last year who taught me all about a haunted doll island in Mexico for one of their Unsolved Mysteries projects!  I digress...as an adult, Doll Bones didn't have me shaking in my boots, but I want to read it to my kids to see if it scares any of them.  I'm thinking this will be my next October read-aloud.  Normally, I switch between The House on Hackman's Hill or Wait Till Helen Comes. Let's get to it...

I have never read any other books by Holly Black, but she is a great writer of her creepy craft. This one comes with a ghost story from East Liverpool, Ohio in which a father supposedly creates a porcelain doll out of his deceased daughter's bones and somehow this doll ends up in a display cabinet in Poppy's house. Zach, Poppy, and Alice have wild imaginations (the kind I wish so many more kids still had these days) and are very good at creating and weaving a story in which the doll is The Queen and creepily rules over their story. But one night The Queen apparently voices her "story" to Poppy and the kids set out to help put her to rest so she won't haunt them anymore. The kids go on a quest and encounter many roadblocks along the way until they eventually learn the truth about the ghost story.

My rating:  4 out of 5 stars  ||  Goodreads average:  3.82 stars

Drinking & Tweeting by Brandi Glanville | I'm not ashamed to say that I am a fan of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Mindless TV makes me happy after working all day!  Feel free to hate on me for reading such a fluff book...but it's my summer break and I looooove me some Beverly HIlls Housewives literature. Out of the 3 who have written books, Brandi's was the best. She may not be my favorite housewife, but I can definitely appreciate where she has come from way more. All in all, this was a great fluffy summer read that I enjoyed reading! While I sometimes hate her candor on the show, it was very very fun to read in this book. Thanks for the entertainment Brandi!  Beware for those who aren't into people with potty mouths or dirty minds though, because Brandi goes there over and over in this one.  

Here's the synopsis from Goodreads to give you a little more on this fine memoir:  Brandi Glanville tells all in this hilarious, no-holds-barred memoir. Fans have been waiting for Brandi’s scoop on one of the biggest divorces of the decade, since her husband of eight years abandoned her and their two sons to marry country singer LeAnn Rimes. Not only does Brandi spill the beans about her side of the split, the lovable housewife shares the incredible wild ride that took her from a life in the ghetto to Hollywood’s most elite circles. For the first time, Brandi talks about how she escaped a rough neighborhood on the outskirts of Sacramento and stumbled into a successful modeling career that swept her into a world of Paris Fashion Weeks, private jets, and uncircumcised penises. Before she knew it, Brandi was the perfect Hollywood trophy wife—at least until her marriage exploded.

My rating:  4 out of 5 stars || Goodreads average:  3.56 stars

I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb | You may have 
read one of Wally's more well-known books called She's Come Undone.  I have read one of his other books, and I can definitely say that he is very talented at getting his readers to be invested in the characters.  He really knows how to develop the plot through crazy minute details, but not in a way that will bore the living daylights out of you.  This one has been on my to-read list for 2+ years and I have put off reading it because, well...it's 800+ pages. But I decided...I'm on summer break and I finished an insanely grueling process!  I thankfully got the e-book version of this because come on...who wants to break their wrists holding up what seems like a paper weight?  

Lamb does such a nice job of detailing out his characters' lives, that this lengthy style works for him. Poor Domenico, the main character, went through so many ups and downs in this one, starting with his twin brother of course (I won't go into details, because it is part of what reels you in). But because of the catalyst, what happens in the library, he is able to grow so much and learn way more than he ever would have thought possible. I did find myself skimming through all the pages of his grandfather's "legacy," which were extremely detailed and extremely boring and anger-inducing. What a bonified jerk! He has a real knack for writing endings to his books though and like his other two that I have read, just when I was starting to get sick of the length of this one, he reeled me right back in with the wrap-up of all the loose ends.

My rating:  4 out of 5 stars || Goodreads average:  4.12 stars

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore:  A Novel by Robin Sloan | I read this little treasure for my book club's July pick.  Not sure if I would have picked this one up if it had not been for my book club, but I am definitely happy I did.  Fans of books, bookstores, and even Google will really enjoy this one!  And don't even THINK of getting it as an e-book!  Just kidding, even this book endorses e-readers in its own little way.  But really, if you do get the e-book version, you won't be able to take it into your bathroom, turn off the lights, and check out the glow-in-the-dark cover...really!!

It is in fact an intriguing read that reminds me of Angels and Demons or a trek to find the holy grail with Monty Python (or maybe even Nicholas Cage in National Treasure). This was a book about books and a bit of a "treasure hunt" with a lot of Google weaved in, which I loved! It takes place in San Francisco and eventually travels to New York into the bowels of an ooooooold library.  Um hello!  Book nerds unite!  I haven't met someone yet who did not enjoy this tome.  You'll have to read this one yourself if you want to go on the journey with Clay and Mr. Penumbra...because I don't want to take away from your treasure hunt of sorts.  

In case you don't believe me, or want to know a little more than I'm willing to give up, here is the synopsis from Goodreads:  The Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon out of his life as a San Francisco Web-design drone—and serendipity, sheer curiosity, and the ability to climb a ladder like a monkey has landed him a new gig working the night shift at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. But after just a few days on the job, Clay begins to realize that this store is even more curious than the name suggests. There are only a few customers, but they come in repeatedly and never seem to actually buy anything, instead “checking out” impossibly obscure volumes from strange corners of the store, all according to some elaborate, long-standing arrangement with the gnomic Mr. Penumbra. The store must be a front for something larger, Clay concludes, and soon he’s embarked on a complex analysis of the customers’ behavior and roped his friends into helping to figure out just what’s going on. But once they bring their findings to Mr. Penumbra, it turns out the secrets extend far outside the walls of the bookstore.

My rating:  4 out of 5 stars || Goodreads average:  3.79 stars

The Elite (The Selection #2) by Kiera Cass | Have you ever finished a book and not wanted to pick up another one because you don't want to spoil the feelings or thoughts you have roiling around in your head?  That's what The Elite did for me.  I know a lot of dystopian fiction people aren't keen on this series because it doesn't necessarily follow the "rules" of the genre, but I was looking past that when I read these.  The 2nd book does, however, hint more at the dystopian side, in case someone who hated the first book is reading this.  For those who have not read the first book, this series is a mix of The Bachelor and The Hunger Games (without the killing).

It's been awhile since a series had me wanting to read the next RIGHT NOW! I did not want to put this one down even though I had all kinds of other tasks I had to get to. The last 2/3 of the book were devoured by moi in one day and when I got to the end I slammed the book down on my lap in a hissy fit...because I probably have to wait another year to read the final book! Nooooooooooooo!!!  Without giving away too much, I have a pretty good idea of who is responsible for all the rebel battles in this one.  Ah yes, this book involves a castle, secret rooms, and rebel attacks.  The ups and downs of the characters in this one had me wanting to read and read and read. Gah! Why can't the next one be out already?! The killer cliff hanger of this 2nd book is way more harsh versus the first one.

My rating:  5 out of 5 stars || Goodreads average:  3.96 stars

I have so many books I still want to devour before heading back to work in a week.  Yes, a week!  Waaaaaaaah!!!  I haven't run into any horrible books this summer, so it seems here like I rate all the books I read 4 or 5 stars, but I purposefully picked books I knew I'd like this summer, since I anticipated not having much time to relax and read.  

Please feel free to add me on Goodreads or follow my reviews there.  I absolutely love discovering new and interesting books that I may not have found otherwise.  

What have you been reading lately?  Any standouts or duds?  Tell me about them!