My Weekly Book Haul: 21/12/2013

Friday Finds is something that was started over on ShouldBeReading and Stacking the Shelves over at TyngaReviews, I am in love with all of these as I love finding other blogs to follow and books to read through these! So check them all out and see what you find, Stacking the Shelves has a lot of participants as well which is great. This is basically a way for me to show what books I have received, borrowed or bought each week. All book covers and their summary come from back of book or Goodreads.

TWO WEEKS OFF WORK! 

That is all I can think about right now. I finally have loads of time off where I can try and get back on track with my reading. Plus I can't wait to see if the boyfriend has paid any attention to my numerous hints and gotten me books, books and more books for Christmas. Only time will tell.

Saw the Desolation of Smaug and was left utterly disappointed. Peter Jackson, what have you done? For more info, you can find my thoughts on it here.

The Physical Haul

This Week I Bought:

Vampire Academy & Frostbite by Richelle Mead

St. Vladimir’s Academy isn't just any boarding school—it’s a hidden place where vampires are educated in the ways of magic and half-human teens train to protect them. Rose Hathaway is a Dhampir, a bodyguard for her best friend Lissa, a Moroi Vampire Princess. They've been on the run, but now they’re being dragged back to St. Vladimir’s—the very place where they’re most in danger. . . .

Rose and Lissa become enmeshed in forbidden romance, the Academy’s ruthless social scene, and unspeakable nighttime rituals. But they must be careful lest the Strigoi—the world’s fiercest and most dangerous vampires—make Lissa one of them forever.

They have finally released less ugly covers,  though not by much, for the VA series. So I think I will finally give this series a go. 

This Week I Borrowed:

Between the Lines, Where You Are, Good For You & Here Without You by Tammara Webber

Young actress Emma is starring in her first ever major film role, opposite well-known teen heart-throb Reid. The exclusive clubs, snapping photographers and screaming fans are all a normal part of life for Reid but it's all new to Emma. The other actors befriend her - and Graham in particular seeks her out - but Emma isn't sure she's really comfortable in this scene. Reid is also experiencing something new - girls throwing themselves at him is an everyday occurrence but genuinely falling for his co-star? That's not what he expected to happen . . .

Looks promising and I have heard some good things. But the title and cover for the final book seems really depressing, and I hate depressing. The covers in general are also really awful. 

Unwind, Unwholly, Unsouled by Neal Shusterman 

In a society where unwanted teens are salvaged for their body parts, three runaways fight the system that would "unwind" them.

Connor's parents want to be rid of him because he's a troublemaker. Risa has no parents and is being unwound to cut orphanage costs. Lev's unwinding has been planned since his birth, as part of his family's strict religion. Brought together by chance, and kept together by desperation, these three unlikely companions make a harrowing cross-country journey, knowing their lives hang in the balance. If they can survive until their eighteenth birthday, they can't be harmed -- but when every piece of them, from their hands to their hearts, are wanted by a world gone mad, eighteen seems far, far away.

I've heard really great things about this series, very excited for this one! 

Missing Ellen by Natasha Mac a'Bhaird

Ellen and Maggie have been best friends for as long as they can remember - sharing clothes, passions and secrets. But now Ellen's now there and Maggie's left alone. Looking back over the events before Ellen's disappearance, Maggie tries to make sense of her friend's actions. At school and at home, she feels no one understands what she is going through - except maybe Liam, the boy next door who has always had feelings for Ellen.

Can Maggie get used to missing Ellen?

The Digital Haul

This Week I Received For Review:

16 Things I Thought Were True by Janet Gurtler

Heart attacks happen to other people #thingsIthoughtweretrue

When Morgan's mom gets sick, it's hard not to panic. Without her mother, she would have no one—until she finds out the dad who walked out on her as a baby isn't as far away as she thought...

Adam is a stuck-up, uptight jerk #thingsIthoughtweretrue

Now that they have a summer job together, Morgan's getting to know the real Adam, and he's actually pretty sweet...in a nerdy-hot kind of way. He even offers to go with her to find her dad. Road trip, anyone?

5000 Twitter followers are all the friends I need #thingsIthoughtweretrue

With Adam in the back seat, a hyper chatterbox named Amy behind the wheel, and plenty of Cheetos to fuel their trip, Morgan feels ready for anything. She's not expecting a flat tire, a missed ferry, a fake girlfriend...and that these two people she barely knew before the summer started will become the people she can't imagine living without.

Released on 4th March 2014

The Last Best Kiss by Claire LaZebnik

Anna Eliot is tired of worrying about what other people think. After all, that was how she lost the only guy she ever really liked, Finn Westbrook.

Now, three years after she broke his heart, the one who got away is back in her life.

All Anna wants is a chance to relive their last kiss again (and again and again). But Finn obviously hasn’t forgotten how she treated him, and he’s made it clear he has no interest in having anything to do with her.

Anna keeps trying to persuade herself that she doesn’t care about Finn either, but even though they’ve both changed since they first met, deep down she knows he’s the guy for her. Now if only she can get him to believe that, too....

Released on 22nd April 2014

Me Since You by Laura Wiess

Laura Wiess captures the visceral emotion of a girl’s journey from innocence to devastating loss and, ultimately, to a strange and unexpected kind of understanding—in this beautiful and painfully honest new novel.

Are there any answers when someone you love makes a tragic choice?

Before and After. That’s how Rowan Areno sees her life now. Before: she was a normal sixteen-year-old—a little too sheltered by her police officer father and her mother. After: everything she once believed has been destroyed in the wake of a shattering tragedy, and every day is there to be survived.

If she had known, on that Friday in March when she cut school, that a random stranger’s shocking crime would have traumatic consequences, she never would have left campus. If the crime video never went viral, maybe she could have saved her mother, grandmother — and herself — from the endless replay of heartache and grief.

Finding a soul mate in Eli, a witness to the crime who is haunted by losses of his own, Rowan begins to see there is no simple, straightforward path to healing wounded hearts. Can she learn to trust, hope, and believe in happiness again?

Released on 18th February 2014

On Blog

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug - My Thoughts

Onyx by Jennifer L. Armentrout: Review

Feature & Follow Friday

Obsidian by Jennifer L. Armentrout: Review

Top Ten Tuesday: New To Me Authors of 2013

Weekly Review Roundup

This Song Will Save Your Life by Leila Sales: Review

Giveaway

I am helping Book Fever celebrate it's 2 year blogoversary and have donated a prize (a book of choice from TBD up to £15.) A ton of authors and publishers have also donated prizes, so make sure you check it out!

New Weekly Meme

I wanted a weekly roundup of my reviews, but short and sweet ones. For all the details please go here. Link up and join in.

There's also a giveaway, which you can get entries for every week you link up till the start of Jan.
a Rafflecopter giveaway


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The White Unicorn, Smoking Hot Books, Christy's Book Addiction,
Ode to Jo and Katniss, The Obsessive Bookseller, The Book Maidens,
My Heart Hearts Books, Feisty Little Woman, Always YA At Heart,
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YA Book Nerd & Story Envy

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug: My Thoughts

It's back to Middle Earth and time to pull out the one ring again. It's about time!

I love, love, love The Lord of the Rings. So you can probably imagine my excitement when I first found out that Peter Jackson was making The Hobbit. I did, however, get very nervous when I found out he was turning a 300 and so page book into three 2 1/2 hour movies. It didn't seem to make any sense to me, but more Middle Earth is always a good thing. Or so I thought.

The first Hobbit film was quite enjoyable; I liked it but I didn't love it, not in the same way I loved LOTR. It did immerse me back into the world of Middle Earth, which Peter Jackson does so well. But it left me feeling like I just really wanted to watch the original trilogy. I did love the dwarves though, all of them but especially the introduction of the ridiculously attractive, yet ridiculously elf-like, Kili. It must be something to do with long, dark hair and beards because I felt the same way about Aragorn in the original trilogy. But I don't find either actor attractive with their usual clean cut, short hair appearance. Strange! The power of Middle Earth. 

I am soooo glad they included elves in this. Mainly because, LEGOLAS! I had such a crush on him in the first three films but it seems to have all gone down hill since then. I think it's the weird freaky eyes. In the first films his eyes were sometimes light blue and sometimes brown, but in Hobbit they just look creepy. They're very elfish but I'd rather they looked similar to the other films as it really threw me off. He still kicks ass with a bow, and Evangeline Lily was really great at that too. I felt a lot of his scenes kind of stole the film, I'd missed all the Elf action!

I think the hard thing to deal with is how much of this movie is just made up. Tauriel's character was one that didn't exist in the original book, and I didn't really get why she was needed. Her moments with Kili were just a bit odd, where she seemed to be doing him with her eyes. I thought she was going to be a love interest for Legolas, if I am completely honest. She kind of was but kind of wasn't and it was all rather strange to me. But, as I have said, she does provide some amazing fighting sequences and is nifty with a bow.

Now I have seen rave reviews for The Hobbit. Some say it is so much better than the first movie, that they feel the first film had so many issues. I have to believe that we were seeing a different film. Both myself and my friend were bored to death by the end. It starts of strong but begins to drag. Peter Jackson should have stuck to two movies at the most, there quite clearly wasn't enough material to go around. It takes Smaug about an hour just to get a sentence out and that grows old really quick.

This had a lot of promise, but as soon as the dwarves reach Lake-town it really slows down and I got really bored. I started doing a lot of googling of random Hobbit related things on my phone because I was that bored. I was so excited to see this and was left feeling really disappointed.

I'm hoping it's just a case of not having enough material for three films and this is like the filler film. I'm hoping the third film is such an epic conclusion that I forget all about the horror that was Desolation of Smaug. If you've seen it then I would love to know what you thought? If you loved it, then what did I miss?

Now to cheer myself up!

Onyx by Jennifer L. Armentrout (Lux #2): Review

Title: Onyx (Lux#2)
Author: Jennifer L. Armentrout
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Buy This Book: Amazon / Book Depository

Being connected to Daemon Black sucks…
Thanks to his alien mojo, Daemon’s determined to prove what he feels for me is more than a product of our bizarro connection. So I’ve sworn him off, even though he’s running more hot than cold these days. But we’ve got bigger problems.
Something worse than the Arum has come to town…
The Department of Defense are here. If they ever find out what Daemon can do and that we're linked, I’m a goner. So is he. And there's this new boy in school who’s got a secret of his own. He knows what’s happened to me and he can help, but to do so, I have to lie to Daemon and stay away from him. Like that's possible. Against all common sense, I'm falling for Daemon. Hard.
But then everything changes…
I’ve seen someone who shouldn’t be alive. And I have to tell Daemon, even though I know he’s never going to stop searching until he gets the truth. What happened to his brother? Who betrayed him? And what does the DOD want from them—from me?
No one is who they seem. And not everyone will survive the lies…

I am loving the Lux series and thought this was a pretty good sequel, but have to admit to not liking it as much as Obsidian. The plot didn't run so smoothly for me and I felt a lot of the sexual tension that made the first book so amazing was absent for most of the second half of this book.

Katy and Daemon are still great characters. They keep me flipping the page till ridiculous-0'clock in the morning just so I can see what happens between them. So it's kind of unfortunate that the sexual tension/amazing passion between them seems to disappear for so long in the second half of this book. But, on the super positive plus side, Daemon is less of a dick in this one. YAY! Gah, I kind of love that boy.

The storyline was something I enjoyed but also had issues with. It seemed to just plod along in places and I got a little bored. The introduction of Blake, a guy who seems to know a lot about what has been happening to Katy since Daemon healed her, was something that worked really well. He helps her train and was great for the story because it was so fun to see Daemon get all jealous. However, I felt there were way too many chapters that had Katy and Daemon arguing over her training with Blake, I got super bored of it super quickly.

This one didn't remind me of Twilight at all, but did have some obvious references - referring to Dee, who is so incredibly Alice, as a pixie at one point, and the whole irrevocably in love thing. Made me think the author was doing it on purpose and it made me smile!

This one had a really action-packed, exciting ending that had me flipping the pages so fast my fingers hurt. I was left kind of devastated as well, because the ending was really sad and really shocked me. If you enjoyed Obsidian than I definitely recommend this. It's a solid sequel, yes I was bored in parts but I love these characters and the story picks up again at the end.

3.99/5

I gave Obsidian 4, but I enjoyed this less and felt I needed to score it lower.... not that much lower though! 

Feature & Follow Friday: 20/12/2013

 

Feature & Follow Friday is a weekly blog hop hosted by Parajunkee and Alison Can Read, each of whom feature a chosen blog of the week. It is a way for blogs to gain exposure but also so you can check out and follow other blogs

If you want to take part you must follow both hosts and both featured bloggers. Then add your own link and go visit and follow some bloggers. If someone follows you, you follow back. Simple.

This weeks question:

Pick a book in your favourite genre that you'd recommend to a reluctant reader.

My favourite genre is dystopian, and there are so many different books and series within that genre that I love. So it's really hard to pick one, but I have to go with the series that first got me into that genre. The Hunger Games, it's amazing and I don't see how you can not love that series. Katniss is such a strong female lead and I just love her. Plus it has the added bonus of having adaptations that don't suck, in fact, they are kind of amazing.




Plus these too:

The Declaration by Gemma Malley
Divergent by Veronica Roth (avoid Allegiant like it's the plague)
Legend by Marie Lu
Matched by Ally Condie


I'm well behind on dystopian and have loads of new series that I still need to start. If you have any great recommendations then I would love to hear them.

Obsidian by Jennifer L. Armentrout: Review

Title: Obsidian (Lux #1)
Author: Jennifer L. Armentrout
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Buy This Book: Amazon / Book Depository

Starting over sucks.
When we moved to West Virginia right before my senior year, I'd pretty much resigned myself to thick accents, dodgy internet access, and a whole lot of boring.... until I spotted my hot neighbor, with his looming height and eerie green eyes. Things were looking up.
And then he opened his mouth.
Daemon is infuriating. Arrogant. Stab-worthy. We do not get along. At all. But when a stranger attacks me and Daemon literally freezes time with a wave of his hand, well, something...unexpected happens. 
The hot alien living next door marks me.
You heard me. Alien. Turns out Daemon and his sister have a galaxy of enemies wanting to steal their abilities, and Daemon's touch has me lit up like the Vegas Strip. The only way I'm getting out of this alive is by sticking close to Daemon until my alien mojo fades. 
If I don't kill him first, that is.

My review in simple terms, would be this, I loved it. The characters were strong, the storyline was solid and, oh my god, the sexual tension is intense. It made me think of Twilight, so so much but I didn't even care. Will definitely be recommending this over and over again!

I have to thank the blogosphere for introducing me to this amazing series. Now I completely understand why people kept telling me how amazing this book is. I loved it!

Katy, our main character, finds herself moved from Florida to West Virginia, and if that wasn't bad enough, she finds herself living next door to the biggest jerk ever. Katy was an enjoyable character, although I kept completely forgetting what her name was throughout the entire book. I adored that she could see how much of a dick Daemon was, even though she still found him attractive. I liked that she wasn't blinded by his amazing abs, well maybe she was slightly, but at least she was still aware that he was not a nice guy.

Daemon... Where do I even begin with Daemon? He might have one or two sweet or redeemable moments in this book, but for the most part he is exactly what Katy calls him - a dickhead. Plain and simple. He is a jerk of the highest order, which is just not attractive. I have to believe he has much nicer moments in books to come or I will have no respect for Katy if she gets with him. But, let's be honest, there is just something about him! I think it's all the sexual tension that Jennifer L. Armentrout puts across so well. She is, quite clearly, the queen of sexual tension. But, Daemon is infuriating and I have full sympathy with Katy. I would want to bitch slap him too.

Katy runs her own book review blog, which is obviously something myself and other bloggers can understand and relate to. All her talk of review posts and waiting on Wednesday posts was oh so familiar. And I adored the following quote because I'm sure a lot of us have felt the same:
'If anything, his expression took on a mask of grudging acceptance, probably how I looked when I had to give a book I'd been excited about a less than stellar review." 

The storyline, to me, seemed a bit slow going at times but was solid. It seemed to take so long to get into the action and most of that came right at the end. I think it annoyed me that it took so long for Katy to find out what Daemon and Dee were, especially since you know straight away just from reading the blurb. I did love the idea of the Luxen, I really loved the alien aspect of this and especially loved the evil Arum! They made this very interesting.

I have to mention that Katy got bonus points from me for being scared of children; mainly because I can totally relate to that. And her explanation why is, pretty much, exactly what I tell people when they ask me: 'They jabber and stuff, and I have no idea what they are saying.' I feel the exact same way, having to do story-time at work is especially horrific for me, children seem like an alien species to me.

I can't finish my review without mentioning Twilight. If you have read both then I am sure you saw the similarities too. Once you start seeing the similarities, it's really hard to stop. It's different in how it's written, the characters are different but they are strikingly similar at times. I can only show a couple because I don't want to ruin anything from the story:

• Daemon acts like a jerk to her, pushes her away because she poses a risk to them all if she finds out what they are - the exact same thing Edward does to Bella in Twilight.
• Daemon's unbelievably cheery sister wants to be bestest best friends with Katy, despite what her brother thinks - just like super happy Alice does with Bella in Twilight.
• There are 5 aliens at her school in total, 3 boys and two girls - Twilight there are 5 vampires, 3 guys and 2 girls. 
• Every alien is absolutely gorgeous for some unknown reason - all vampires are gorgeous in Twilight. 
• Ashley is ridiculously mean and horrible to Katy for no good reason - she is basically the Rosalie of this story.
• Luxen don't need to breathe - exact same for vamps. 
• Plus Katy is always having to be saved by Daemon - exactly like Bella and Edward

There are more but I can't mention them without ruining plot points. But the end storyline is ridiculously similar to the end storyline in Twilight, like really, really similar. But, to be honest, Twilight was ridiculously similar to other vampire books at the time. The similarities didn't stop me from enjoying the book, I just couldn't help but notice them.

I also need to mention the names. There are twins names Daemon and Dee, and then we have the triplets Ashley, Andrew and Adam. I could not stop laughing, the names are normal but the whole idea was just ridiculous to me.

I feel like I have in no way put across how amazingly awesome this book is. So seriously, if you take away nothing else from this review, make sure you know that this is incredible and you need to read it.

4/5 Stars

Great characters and storyline. Makes you want to immediately pick up the sequel - which I did. Only loses a star because I found it a bit slow going and prefer my male leads to be less arseholeish!