Reviews from a Bookworm: 2015

My Top Reads of 2015: You need to read these books!

Hey everyone! It has been forever since I posted anything on here. I'm not going to bullshit you and say that this is me finally returning to blogging frequently. It isn't. I do hope to be back in 2016 and posting much more often. Today I am here because I want to post my top reads of the year and that just happens to be the topic for this weeks Top Ten Tuesday hosted at The Broke & The Bookish.

Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton

This book is actually a 2016 release, but I was lucky enough to get a review copy. I didn't have many expectations when it came to this book, but I definitely wasn't expecting it to turn out to be one of my top reads of the year so far. This book reads like Arabian Nights/Aladdin meets a western, and the end result is incredible. This has the kind of slow burn romance that I absolutely love, where it takes a long time to develop. There's magic elements here, mythical horses, not to mention a sharpshooter heroine who knows how to kick some serious ass. I was in awe of this book and can't wait for whatever the author does next. I am going to be making grabby hands for the sequel all throughout next year.

You can enter to win a pre-order here:

Rebel of the Sands by @AlwynFJH - a 2016 must read. Follow & RT to enter to win a pre-order! (INT ends 18/12) pic.twitter.com/lOCos9su5a
— Charnell (@reviewbookworm) December 3, 2015

Golden Son by Pierce Brown

Red Rising was one of my top reads of last year and I'm happy to say that the sequel did not disappoint. I am counting down the days until the final book comes out next year. This book kept me guessing the whole time and the end just blew me away. It was a cliffhanger and then some, and now I just need answers. I need to make sure everything works out for my two favourite characters, but I'm not sure that Pierce Brown can be trusted not to kill everyone. You can read my full review here.

I Need A Time Machine, So I Can Go Forward And Watch These Adaptations

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted at The Broke & The Bookish.

This weeks topic is:

Movie Adaptations I Am Desperate To See

Mockingjay Part 2

Do I need to explain?!?!? I need to see it. I need to see if they still kill off a certain male character. I have the slightest hope that they won't, but then the trailer basically reveals a lot of the film and you see a scene which is basically just after that characters death. But... there is always hope. There is no hope! OH NOOOO... WHY!?!?! I need the emotional torture that is this movie in my life already.

The 5th Wave

I quite enjoyed the book, but I didn't love it as much as I had hoped It has a really creepy love interest that I still find disturbing to think about. It totally threw me out of the story when I was reading and stopped me loving it. I do really like the look of the trailer though and really hope this movie is a great adaptation. I have all my fingers and toes crossed.

Weekly Recap: This Is Halloween, This is Halloween!!! Disney Style

Hello! This is where I would usually write all the exciting things that I got up to in the last week, but literally only one thing of any interest actually happened.

HALLOWEEN!

I went to a Disney themed Halloween party and it was so much fun. We only had about two weeks to put costumes together, and I was working on a budget. So I bought a bunch of stuff really cheap on Amazon and was really impressed with how the costume came out. I decided to be human Ariel, and even convinced the boyfriend to be Eric, complete with scratchy black wig.

My sister went as Maleficent and her costume ruled! She made the staff herself using a shower pole, fake rope, a garden light and fake moss. It was really impressive and she looked so good.

Other than that, it has just been work, work, work and then more work. FUN!

Another giant haul this week, but I promise this is like two weeks worth of books as I split my haul. This one contains some review books, a few books I won, two books from my Owl Crate subscription, and then a whole bunch that I bought. A lot of these are New Adult, which is a genre I very rarely read. But I read The Sea of Tranquillity and loved it so much, I had to immediately go and buy any book anyone suggested was similar. I spent a small fortune on Amazon doing that, haha!

I can't celebrate my blogoversary without holding a giveaway for all of my amazing followers. One winner will win up to £30 worth of books from Book Depository. This will be open internationally, as long as Book Depository ships to your country.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Blogoversary Celebration & Giveaway

Eva Ibbotson: Queen of YA Historical Romance
Weekly Recap: Where I Basically Recap a Whole Month and Haul ALL the Books
I Need These Debut Authors Next Books... RIGHT NOW!

If you think this post was super short... you are right. But new COD is out and I'm off playing it! HAHA! LOVE YOU GUYS!

I Need These Debut Authors Next Books... RIGHT NOW!

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted at The Broke & The Bookish.

This weeks topic is:

Debut Authors Who Have Me Desperate To Read Their Next Book

Weekly Recap: Where I Basically Recap A Whole Month & Haul ALL The Books

I AM BACK! Yes, finally, it is happening. I have been absent from the blog for the longest time, what feels like months. It was more like a month to two, but it felt like almost a lifetime.
In that time I have:

Missed my actual blogoversary, so I celebrated it this week instead. I am doing a giveaway to celebrate as well, so be sure to enter!
Had two weeks off work! HALLELUJAH! It was glorious, I got to do all the reading, all the sleeping and all the Netflix binging.
I devoured enough books to complete my Goodreads challenge of 100 books. I'm now at 116. Go me!
I went to awesome book events. I got to meet Jennifer Donnelly, who is a sweetheart; Julie Mayhew who was as wonderful as the last time, and Leigh Bardugo who is fucking hilarious! I adored her.
Got my outfit together for a Disney Halloween Party. I am going as human Ariel and I am far too excited! You can probably expect lots of pictures next week, where I show off my adorably terrible, but cheaply put together costume.
Acquired far too many books! So many that I am splitting the haul. I am also running out of shelf space... And I have seven bookshelves.
I started a Book Tube channel and posted a few videos! I have actually had a lot of fun doing these, even if they take a lot of time.
I got sick... SUPER SICK! And I felt like I was dying. But I am all better now! Hurray for me!

Eva Ibbotson: Queen of YA Historical Romance

Title: The Morning Gift
Author: Eva Ibbotson
Publisher: Macmillan's Children's Books
Buy This Book: Amazon (UK) / Amazon (US) / Book Depository

Twenty-year-old Ruth Berger is desperate. The daughter of a Jewish-Austrian professor, she was supposed to have escaped Vienna before the Nazis marched into the city. Yet the plan went completely wrong, and while her family and fiancé are waiting for her in safety, Ruth is stuck in Vienna with no way to escape. Then she encounters her father’s younger college professor, the dashing British paleontologist Quin Sommerville. Together, they strike a bargain: a marriage of convenience, to be annulled as soon as they return to safety. But dissolving the marriage proves to be more difficult than either of them thought—not the least because of the undeniable attraction Quin and Ruth share. To make matters worse, Ruth is enrolled in Quin’s university, in his very classes. Can their secret survive, or will circumstances destroy their love?

Her books feel almost magical.

I did not know what to expect from Eva Ibbotson's books. I had seen them a lot whilst working in libraries, but had never picked them up and did not know anything about the author herself. I had assumed she was a young writer, not a woman who died in 2010, at the age of eighty-five, with such a rich history behind her. Having now finished five of her books, I can now say that I completely understand why she is an author who is held in such high regard. She weaves history and romance together so effortlessly, and they all have such a magical feel about them. I finish them with a smile on my face, and a warmth in my heart that is so hard to truly explain.

Blogoversary Celebration & Giveaway!

I have been blogging for TWO YEARS! Which feels rather amazing to me. I know I have been absent from the blog for quite some time now, but I plan to come back with a vengeance, starting with a blogoversary celebration!

My first blogoversary came round so quickly, it hardly felt like it had been a year at all. Two years feels so different, it feels like I have been blogging for so much longer than that now. Now blogging can be so much fun, but it can also be a lot of work. It's the wonderful community that makes blogging worthwhile, and what makes me keep writing posts. I have got to know so many amazing bloggers and they have made blogging a million times easier for me.

My Weekly Book Haul: 26/09/2015

It feels nice to finally be back on the blog, after I took some unplanned weeks away. I'd been struggling really badly with insomnia, caused by a medication I am currently taking. It is horrible! I thought I'd suffered from it before, but clearly I had absolutely no idea what I was talking about before. It has been really hard and I had started to feel like a bit of a zombie. But I am finally getting used to the medication, which means the insomnia is getting better. So I hope to get back to blogging now.

I've been feeling the urge more and more to do book review/discussion videos, as well as tag videos. I love discussing books and I just find it easier talking about them, rather than trying to get my thoughts typed up. But editing videos is actually hard as hell. How do people do it?!?! But it is also so fun to film them and do them. Then it is just hard to watch them. It's very cringe worthy. But it is A LOT of fun, so I will definitely be continuing doing them from now on.

In my break I managed to complete my reading goal for the year, I have now read over 100 books and I am really happy. I have also become a little bit (seriously!) addicted to this show my sister showed me, called Switched at Birth. I am now addicted. I've watched almost 40 episodes in 4 days. I can't stop. My Daphne and Wilke feels are far too real.

My haul this week is rather huge, but that is because I won an amazing giveaway that Maximum Pop Books was running on Twitter. I retweeted a picture of this massive pile of books... AND ACTUALLY WON! I couldn't believe it, especially when hundreds of people had retweeted it. I even decided to post an unboxing haul when it arrived.

Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott The Martian by Andy Weir
Flawed by Kate Avelynn

I absolutely had to buy myself The Martian. I need to hurry up and devour that book before the movie comes out, as I am rather desperate to see it.

HOW AMAZING WAS THAT WIN!?!? SOOOO MANY BOOKS!!! I admit that I actually have quite a lot of these, so any I already have will probably be given away at some point.

I also want to show off the incredibly cool book necklace that Cait from Paper Fury sent me! She not only sent me this beautiful ACOTAR one, she also sent me a Half Bad/Half Wild one that you can flip. I LOVE THEM!!! She does these, as well as so many other amazing things, over on her Etsy store.

Films for Thoughts on Thursday: The Scorch Trials

Films for Thoughts on Thursday: The Scorch Trials

This is a weekly meme that I am hosting here at Reviews from a Bookworm. To take part all you have to do is share a movie review once a week, link back to Reviews from a Bookworm and add your link to the linky tool.

This weeks movie review will be for:

The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials

I went to see The Scorch Trials last week, and I am happy that I can say I really enjoyed it. I was excited, but also very nervous, about seeing it. I had really enjoyed the first film, but I was scared because I didn't want this to be a disastrous sequel like Insurgent was. But it wasn't. It was really good and I can't wait for the final movie...

Queen of Shadows by Sarah J. Maas: Review

Title: Queen of Shadows (Throne of Glass #4)
Author: Sarah J. Maas
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Buy this book: Amazon (UK) / Amazon (US) / Book Depository

Everyone Celaena Sardothien loves has been taken from her. But she's at last returned to the empire—for vengeance, to rescue her once-glorious kingdom, and to confront the shadows of her past . . .She will fight for her cousin, a warrior prepared to die just to see her again. She will fight for her friend, a young man trapped in an unspeakable prison. And she will fight for her people, enslaved to a brutal king and awaiting their lost queen's triumphant return.Celaena’s epic journey has captured the hearts and imaginations of millions across the globe. This fourth volume will hold readers rapt as Celaena’s story builds to a passionate, agonizing crescendo that might just shatter her world.

It's finally time for me to review Queen of Shadows and it's impossible! I finished this book and felt like one conflicted bookworm. It took me on a rollercoaster of a journey, and left me with no idea how I actually felt about the book. Did I love it? Did I hate it? Or was I somewhere in between.

This was basically me by the time I reached the end of this book:

Top Ten Tuesday: Completed Series I Own But Haven't Read Yet

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted at The Broke & The Bookish.

This weeks topic is:

Completed Series I Own But Haven't Read Yet

I decided to go through my bookshelves and find every complete series that I own, but have yet to even start. I thought it would be good to also let you guys vote on which series you think I should get to first. I have a lot of complete series I haven't started yet, over twenty series on my shelves right now. So I have just picked eleven series to make it easier to choose between, and I picked the eleven I am most curious about or excited to read.

The Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare

I did actually read City of Bones years ago, but then I never continued the series. I wasn't a a big fan of book one, but I have heard the series gets better as it goes along. I got bought the whole series for Christmas, so definitely want to try and read them at some point.

Why I Am Team Chaol, And Why My Ship Will Sink

* Note: Since writing this, I have seen Chaol spoilers for QoS, but I don't care, I'm posting it anyway!

I am Team Chaol. I have been Team Chaol from book one. I will continue to be Team Chaol till the end of the series. Even if he isn't end game. Even if Sarah J. Maas kills him off. I will always be Team Chaol. I adore Dorian as a character, but I just don't see him with Celaena. I think it seems obvious that he isn't the end goal for Celaena. Then we have Rowan... Just, NOPE! I don't want to see it and I will refuse. I am scared for Queen of Shadows, I feel it's going to be gearing more towards Rowan and Celaena. But that guy is hundreds of years old, and he has already had his mate. Celaena is like a newborn baby in comparison to him. An idea of a romance between them just creeps me out. Why can't Celaena have him just as a friend!?! I don't want to see her get in to romantic relationships with every single male she comes across - Sam, Dorian & Chaol. Can we please avoid adding Rowan to that list! SPARE ME, MAAS, SPARE ME!!! And then we have Aedion, who I still feel slightly worried about. But he's technically her cousin, so I'd like to assume that is not going down the romance route.