Cover Crush (27)

Cover Crush is my new meme here at On The Shelf where beautiful and eye-catching covers are spotlighted!  Any cover can be showcased whether it be old or new, read or still sitting in your TBR stack.  Please join in, link up and enjoy some beautiful covers!

My Cover:

All seventeen-year-old composer Ien Montgomery desires is an escape from his family’s rigid expectations for his life; someone to inspire his music. When he meets a beautiful violin-prodigy, Kiera McDougal, his life music takes on new life. With her, he imagines a future outside of his parents’ control. That is, until a horrible accident tears them apart. 

Sent to die in a sanatorium, Ien’s obsession for Kiera grows unbearable. Tortured by thoughts he can’t escape and the truth of his monstrous disfigurement, he flees, desperate to exact revenge on the people that ruined his life – his parents. But, vengeance is empty. Betrayed by those closest to him, Ien discovers that the price for his happiness may be his sanity.

Set amidst the landscape of New York’s Gilded Age, and inspired by Phantom of the Opera, TRANSCEND exposes the fine line between love and madness.

Why I’m Crushing:

I love The Phantom of The Opera so much!  This cover screams Phantom and it is obvious without reading the synopsis that it is.  So of course, I think the cover is perfect for the story and I love the detail in the mask; wish I had one to hang on my wall.  I haven’t been lucky enough to get my hands on a copy of this book yet, but hopefully I will soon.  I am only finding paperback copies and this is one I definitely want in hardcover.  What do you guys think of this cover?

Top Ten Tuesday (35)

 Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted at The Broke and The Bookish.  Each week a new top ten list is posted, and to participate all you have to do is fill in YOUR top ten for the list.

This week the topic is:

Top Ten Favorite Covers of Books I’ve Read

1. Tiger’s Curse – Colleen Houck

2. Wicked Lovely – Melissa Marr

3. Alice in Zombieland – Gena Showalter

4. Renegade – J.A. Souders

5. Incarnate – Jodi Meadows

6. Cinder – Marissa Meyer

7. Days of Blood and Starlight – Laini Taylor

8. Wither – Lauren Destefano

9. Matched – Ally Condie

10. The Peach Keeper – Sarah Addison Allen

I really love eye catching covers and I have bought numerous books just because of the covers.  These are definitely some of the most beautiful covers I have come across!

Cover Crush (26)

Cover Crush is my new meme here at On The Shelf where beautiful and eye-catching covers are spotlighted!  Any cover can be showcased whether it be old or new, read or still sitting in your TBR stack.  Please join in, link up and enjoy some beautiful covers!

My Cover:

No one knows why Juliette’s touch is fatal, but The Reestablishment has plans for her. Plans to use her as a weapon. But Juliette has plans of her own. After a lifetime without freedom, she’s finally discovering a strength to fight back for the very first time—and to find a future with the one boy she thought she’d lost forever.

Why I’m Crushing:  

I’m not really one for eyeball, they kind of gross/freak me out, but the covers for this series is exceptional.  I bought this book before they had the new cover and I wish I had this one instead.  Very beautiful.  Trees for eyelashes, a waterfall for tears, and the soft colors for clouds.  They even added birds flying around the tree tops.  The artist did a wonderful job and I look forward to seeing the rest of the covers!

The Great Gatsby!

Has anybody seen this movie yet?!  It was AMAZING.  I absolutely loved it.  Of course, I knew I would since Baz Lurhmann directed it.  My favorite movie of all time is Moulin Rouge, which is also by Baz, so of course I would love Gatsby.

This movie is so incredibly beautiful and sparkly and rich.  I have read The Great Gatsby, and though it was very well written, it just isn’t the style of book that I fall in love with, but the movie is so magical!  All of the characters were well portrayed and flashy and dramatic.  It also has a great soundtrack with  popular songs redone to fit the movie.

For those of you who have seen the movie what did you think of it?  For those of you who haven’t, you definitely need to!

I had been excited since last year for this movie and I certainly was not disappointed.  I can’t wait to see what he is going to do next.  Baz Lurhmann is beyond awesome!

Waiting on Wednesday (35)

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine that spotlights upcoming releases that we’re eagerly anticipating.

This week I am waiting on:

 Impostor
Susanne Winnacker

Release 5-28-13

Can Tessa pose as Madison . . . and stop a killer before it’s too late? 

Tessa is a Variant, able to absorb the DNA of anyone she touches and mimic their appearance. Shunned by her family, she’s spent the last two years training with the Forces with Extraordinary Abilities, a secret branch of the FBI. When a serial killer rocks a small town in Oregon, Tessa is given a mission: she must impersonate Madison, a local teen, to find the killer before he strikes again. Tessa hates everything about being an impostor—the stress, the danger, the deceit—but loves playing the role of a normal girl. As Madison, she finds friends, romance, and the kind of loving family she’d do anything to keep. Amid action, suspense, and a ticking clock, this super-human comes to a very human conclusion: even a girl who can look like anyone struggles the most with being herself.

Why I’m Waiting:

This is a different kind of “going under cover” and it gives a completely new look at what it could take to catch a killer.  I think it will be really interesting to see how she gets through everyday as someone else.  It’s definitely a cool idea and I can’t wait to see how it plays out.

 

*Review* Asunder – Jodi Meadows

 Asunder (Newsoul #2)

Jodi Meadows

406 pages

ISBN: 9780062060785

Read 4-30-13

Format: Hardcover

Source: Library

Add it on Goodreads!

DARKSOULS
Ana has always been the only one. Asunder. Apart. But after Templedark, when many residents of Heart were lost forever, some hold Ana responsible for the darksouls–and the newsouls who may be born in their place.

SHADOWS
Many are afraid of Ana’s presence, a constant reminder of unstoppable changes and the unknown. When sylph begin behaving differently toward her and people turn violent, Ana must learn to stand up not only for herself but for those who cannot stand up for themselves.

LOVE
Ana was told that nosouls can’t love. But newsouls? More than anything, she wants to live and love as an equal among the citizens of Heart, but even when Sam professes his deepest feelings, it seems impossible to overcome a lifetime of rejection.

Jodi Meadows writes some of my favorite book scenes and she writes some of the best musical scenes!  I can almost hear the music swirling around me when I read those passages.  Her descriptions are really wonderful and magical; love it.  The first book was mostly very beautiful, but this book takes quite a different turn and is full of angry people and scenes that make me really angry, but it does show how ugly people really can be just because someone is different.

I really like Ana.  She is very strong and fights for whatever she believes in.  She has a good heart and wants the best for everyone, even after everything the people of Heart put her through.  Much of this book left me feeling very angry because how Ana is treated and it really made my blood boil.  I don’t like when people discriminate the way they do.  Sam is great also, I still love him and he is still one of my top book boyfriends.  He is just so amazingly sweet and loyal to Ana.  Dear Council, I hate you.

There were some interesting story twists along the way and I really can’t wait until the third book, which is sometime next year, and see how everything works out.  Religion is not something I seek out in a book, but I like how this book has a religious aspect without it being overkill.  This book is definitely easy to get yourself lost in and I didn’t want to put it down; it just really sucks you in.

Beautiful descriptions, bubbles emotion, great characters, didn’t want to put it down!

Cover Crush (25)

Cover Crush is my new meme here at On The Shelf where beautiful and eye-catching covers are spotlighted!  Any cover can be showcased whether it be old or new, read or still sitting in your TBR stack.  Please join in, link up and enjoy some beautiful covers!

My Cover:

Eva was never supposed to have survived this long. As the recessive soul, she should have faded away years ago. Instead, she lingers in the body she shares with her sister soul, Addie. When the government discovered the truth, they tried to “cure” the girls, but Eva and Addie escaped before the doctors could strip Eva’s soul away.

Now fugitives, Eva and Addie find shelter with a group of hybrids who run an underground resistance. Surrounded by others like them, the girls learn how to temporarily disappear to give each soul some much-needed privacy. Eva is thrilled at the chance to be alone with Ryan, the boy she’s falling for, but troubled by the growing chasm between her and Addie. Despite clashes over their shared body, both girls are eager to join the rebellion.

Yet as they are drawn deeper into the escalating violence, they start to wonder: How far are they willing to go to fight for hybrid freedom? Faced with uncertainty and incredible danger, their answers may tear them apart forever.

Why I’m Crushing:

I really like how the covers are done for this series!  It is an awesome way to portray two people being in one body.  I also really like the soft colors.  Both covers are pretty simple, with simple fonts, but I think they are perfect for what the story is about.  So, have any covers you’re crushing on this week?

*Review* Mockingjay – Suzanne Collins

 Mockingjay (The Hunger Games #3)

Suzanne Collins

390 pages

ISBN: 9780439023511

Read 4-1-13

Format: Audiobook

Source: Library

Add it on Goodreads!

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has survived the Hunger Games twice. But now that she’s made it out of the bloody arena alive, she’s still not safe. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge. Who do they think should pay for the unrest? Kat, her family, friends, and entire District 12.

This was a very exciting ending to The Hunger Games trilogy!  This book had the most action in it of all three and several ups and downs.  There are things I liked and things I definitely think should have been different.  Katniss is as strong as ever and we can see at several points how hurt and traumatized she is from everything the Capitol has put her through.  President Snow is a disgusting man and I imagine him as a horrible snake that was transformed human since he has that kind of personality.

Peeta’s change is quite surprising and it really hurt my heart that he was so different, but with what happened to him, yeah I would be different, too.  There is just so much going on in this book!  Things getting blown up, people dying, more things getting blown up, disturbing Capitol bred creatures showing up, explosions and more dying.  There are not many slow points during this book.  My biggest complaint, though, would have to be the way the uprising ended.  It was a bit anticlimactic for me the way everything went down.  I was hoping it was going to build for this huge blow out, but it didn’t have the bang I wanted it to.

I know this book is going to be hard to watch on the big screen.  For those of you who have already read this book, you guys know what I’m talking about.  I’m glad they will be splitting Mockingjay into two movies, so hopefully they will get everything the way it should be.  I’m very excited for the movies and I really enjoyed this trilogy!

Action, hurt my heart, strong heroine, anticlimactic uprising.

 

 

Waiting on Wednesday (34)

 Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine that spotlights upcoming releases that we’re eagerly anticipating.

This week I am waiting on:

 When You Were Here
Daisy Whitney

Release 6-4-13

Danny’s mother lost her five-year battle with cancer three weeks before his graduation-the one day that she was hanging on to see.

Now Danny is left alone, with only his memories, his dog, and his heart-breaking ex-girlfriend for company. He doesn’t know how to figure out what to do with her estate, what to say for his Valedictorian speech, let alone how to live or be happy anymore.

When he gets a letter from his mom’s property manager in Tokyo, where she had been going for treatment, it shows a side of his mother he never knew. So, with no other sense of direction, Danny travels to Tokyo to connect with his mother’s memory and make sense of her final months, which seemed filled with more joy than Danny ever knew. There, among the cherry blossoms, temples, and crowds, and with the help of an almost-but-definitely-not Harajuku girl, he begins to see how it may not have been ancient magic or mystical treatment that kept his mother going. Perhaps, the secret of how to live lies in how she died.

Why I am Waiting:

This sounds like it is going to be a very beautiful book.  Beautiful emotionally and descriptively.  I am probably going to cry for this one, and hopefully really love it!

*Review* Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac – Gabrielle Zevin

 Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

 Gabrielle Zevin

288 pages

ISBN: 9780374349462

Read March 2013

Format: Audiobook

Source: Library

Add it to Goodreads!

If Naomi had picked tails, she would have won the coin toss. She wouldn’t have had to go back for the yearbook camera, and she wouldn’t have hit her head on the steps. She wouldn’t have woken up in an ambulance with amnesia. She certainly would have remembered her boyfriend, Ace. She might even have remembered why she fell in love with him in the first place. She would understand why her best friend, Will, keeps calling her “Chief.” She’d know about her mom’s new family. She’d know about her dad’s fiancée. She never would have met James, the boy with the questionable past and the even fuzzier future, who tells her he once wanted to kiss her. She wouldn’t have wanted to kiss him back.
 
But Naomi picked heads.

Well, here I am still catching up on some of my older reviews.  I was on 3rd shift for the entire month of April, which really threw off my days!  I couldn’t keep up with what day it was since I was at work on 2 different days.  Tomorrow was today and today was yesterday, I’d think it was Tuesday, but really it was Friday; it was a jumbled mess when it came to when it actually was.  I decided I like my M-F schedule much better than the alternating 12 hr workdays for 3rd.  Anyway, here is my next catch up review!

This book was really well written and one of the most realistic reads when it comes to amnesia.  Naomi was an interesting character, when we meet her, it’s right before the accident has happened and her personality is different than before the accident, so we don’t get to know how she was before hand really unless somebody was talking about how she was before.  I really liked Will.  He was fun and funny, plus he knew Naomi the best of anybody and was really there for her, though there were points where Naomi wasn’t fair to him and some other people, but I can imagine 4 years of lost memory can really be quite stressful.

There is a lot of stuff that happens to her while she has amnesia and a lot of questions she must ask herself and decide on what she wants since she doesn’t know what she wanted before since she can’t remember it.  She makes several mistakes and almost loses people she is close to.  Her life becomes a crazy ride for a girl who is missing a big chunk of memory.  The story was a bit on the slower side, but I liked the way everything ended. It wasn’t an incredibly amazing story, but it was still enjoyable.

Well-written, on the slow side, realistic, good characters.