Five Friday Favourites: Favourite Authors Of 2014 So Far

Five Friday Favourites is a weekly event hosted by Book Badger, where once a week, a five favourites subject is posted and everyone is welcome to join in. You can find out more about Five Friday Favourites and the future subjects here.

Favourite Authors of 2014 So Far

I've tried a lot of new to me authors in 2014, so I could say that's the reason it was hard to be five. It would be half true. I just really suck at picking five of something. But I have done it, I have actually stuck to picking just five! Amanda, I hope you're proud of me.

Sarah J. Maas

Could there be anyone else in that top spot? Nope! If you follow my reviews at all, you'll already know that I have become totally obsessed with Maas and her Throne of Glass series. I want to be able to meet her so I can thank her and shout at her, all at once. Her books are beyond amazing, with characters I can't help but adore, and I romance I ship so hard it's embarrassing. She earned herself a spot on my auto-buy list and her books are now on my favourites shelf, where they belong. For gushy, embarrassing reviews go here, here, here and here.

Abigail Haas

If I wasn't fangirling over Maas and her series, I was probably going on and on about this woman and her books. They're the most amazing YA psychological thrillers. If you haven't read them yet, what are you waiting for. Go pick them up! I guarantee you won't be disappointed. These books will mess with your mind, have you second guessing everything and suspecting everyone. You can read my review for Dangerous Girls here, and for Dangerous Boys go here.

E. Lockhart

I have actually only read one book by her this year, but it was a beyond amazing book and one of my top reads of the year so far. I can't even properly recommend this book to people, because you can't tell them anything about it. It's just best to go into it knowing absolutely nothing. That made reviewing it hilariously fun to do, trying to be as vague as possible - result can be seen here.

Veronica Rossi

I had wanted to read the Under the Never Sky series for so long, but kept putting it off. I was actually really worried that it was a series that wouldn't live up to the hype. I was nervous I would read it and just be left disappointed, wondering what all the fuss was about. Thankfully, I loved it. I binge read the series in less than a week and was itching to get my hands on more books by the author. She even co-wrote a New Adult novel, which was a lot of fun to read. You can read my trilogy reviews here #1, #2 & #3 and my review of Boomerang.

Kasie West

She writes some of the cutest contemporary romances. I just love the characters she creates, I find them so easy to relate to. Her books are full of such brilliant witty banter between the characters, I can't get enough of it. Her characters always have hilarious sense of humours, very similar to my own. I can't help but smile when reading a Kasie West book. I've reviewed four books by West this year - The Distance Between Us, Pivot Point, Split Second and On the Fence.

My Weekly Book Haul: 06/09/14

Mini Reviews: Anatomy of a Misfit and Rites of Passage

Book Blogger Problems #1: The Never Ending TBR Pile
Top Ten Tuesday: Top Underrated Books and Authors
Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan: 3/5 Review

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan: Review

Title: Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief
Author: Rick Riordan
Publisher: Puffin Books
Buy This Book: Amazon / Book Depository

Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood. I never asked to be the son of a greek god.
I was just a normal kid, going to school, playing basketball, skateboarding. The usual. Until I accidentally vaporized my maths teacher. Now I spend my time battling monsters and generally trying to stay alive.
This is the one where Zeus, God of the Sky, thinks I've stolen his lightning bolt - and making Zeus angry is a very bad idea.(Goodreads summary.)

I finally decided to start the Percy Jackson series, only to discover that I had apparently already started it. According to Goodreads, I'd already read it about 2 or 4 years ago, and hadn't thought very highly of it. It had only got 2/5 stars from me and I had obviously felt no desire to continue the series. I decided to disregard that and start it again anyway, all of the love for the series had be itching to see what all the fuss was about. My final rating did improve, but only slightly.

If this series didn't have such a large amount of praise heaped upon it, and it hadn't been recommended by people I trust, I would not continue on after The Lightning Thief. In my opinion, it's just not that strong a start to the series. I will be continuing on in the hopes that it gets better the further into the series you get. I also had to think about the fact it's technically middle grade and, apart from my never ending rereads of the Harry Potter series, I don't really read middle grade books any more.

When I started it, I started to remember parts of it and realised that I had in fact read it before. I was really enjoying the book though, I couldn't understand why I had only given it 2/5 stars the first time I read it. I liked Percy as a character, I thought he had a lot of potential and I could see why so many people loved him. The story was coming along nicely, everything was introduced quite quickly and there was a lot of action. Why had I disliked it so much that first time?

Top Ten Tuesday: Underrated Books And Authors

 

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted at The Broke & The Bookish. Each week they host a different top ten topic.

This weeks topic is:

Top Underrated Books And Authors

Abigail Haas

Dangerous Boys and Dangerous Girls

This author is completely underrated, and it's criminal. She writes the best YA psychological thrillers, they're absolutely fantastic. Dangerous Girls and Dangerous Boys are two of my top reads of this year. I can't recommend them enough. They will both mess with your heads, keep you up all night reading them and will have you second guessing everything! You all need to read these books.

Book Blogger Problems #1: The Never Ending TBR

I decided, quite a while back now, that I wanted to do a post on the problems with blogging and being a book blogger. As my fellow book bloggers will know, there are quite lot of them. Once I started to draft the post, I saw just how ridiculous it was to try to fit them all into just one. So I've decided to let each of the problems have it's own post. And so, today we are looking at the never ending TBR.

This is essentially what happened to my TBR:

Back in February, I counted up all of the physical books that I owned but had not read yet. I didn't include Kindle books, books from publishers or eARCs. I just counted books I had on my bookshelves. That was a grand total of 299 physical books that I own but have not read yet. 

Here's what that looks like:

How many of those have I read in the 5 months since I did that post: 5

That's right, I have only read 5 out of the 299 books. I have read way more than 5 books since then, I just haven't got to any of these. That's because there are just so many more books that you see that you want, books come out or you go crazy on Netgalley or Edelweiss and request for too many. It's terrible!

The important question though is how many books have I bought since I did the last count, and then proceeded not to read. After that first count up, I had told myself I would get my book buying under control because it was a little ridiculous now. Well... I lied. So here's the answer:

Mini-Reviews: Anatomy of a Misfit by Andrea Portes and Rites of Passage by Joy N. Hensley

Title: Anatomy of a Misfit
Author: Andrea Portes
Publisher: Harper Children's
Buy This Book: Amazon / Book Depository

This emotional, hilarious, devastating, and ultimately triumphant YA debut, based on actual events, recounts one girl’s rejection of her high school’s hierarchy—and her discovery of her true self in the face of tragedy.
Fall’s buzzed-about, in-house favorite.
Outside, Anika Dragomir is all lip gloss and blond hair—the third most popular girl in school. Inside, she’s a freak: a mix of dark thoughts, diabolical plots, and, if local chatter is to be believed, vampire DNA (after all, her father is Romanian). But she keeps it under wraps to maintain her social position. One step out of line and Becky Vilhauer, first most popular girl in school, will make her life hell. So when former loner Logan McDonough shows up one September hotter, smarter, and more mysterious than ever, Anika knows she can’t get involved. It would be insane to throw away her social safety for a nerd. So what if that nerd is now a black-leather-jacket-wearing dreamboat, and his loner status is clearly the result of his troubled home life? Who cares if the right girl could help him with all that, maybe even save him from it? Who needs him when Jared Kline, the bad boy every girl dreams of, is asking her on dates? Who?
Anatomy of a Misfit is Mean Girls meets The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and Anika’s hilariously deadpan delivery will appeal to readers for its honesty and depth. The so-sad-it’s-funny high school setting will pull readers in, but when the story’s dark foreboding gradually takes over, the devastating penultimate tragedy hits like a punch to the gut. Readers will ride the highs and lows alongside funny, flawed Anika — from laughter to tears, and everything in between. (Goodreads summary.)

I usually like to do a full review for every book that I read, but I honestly don't have that much to say about Anatomy of a Misfit. It was a book that frustrated me, then bored me and then made me wonder why I had bothered. But it didn't make me really feel anything, it barely got one page worth of notes out of me. I will do a short review for it, followed by one for Rites of Passage, a book that I eventually had to DNF.

I had a lot of issues with Anatomy of a Misfit and reasons why I just couldn't get into it, enjoy it or connect to the characters. My main reasons that I really didn't get along with this book were:

The unspecified year it's set it: The blurb makes no mention of the fact that this book is set in the past, and it's never actually mentioned in the book. I would have much rather have known that going in. It's not clear when exactly this book it's set, but I highly doubt it's set recently. From the racism, to the language used and cultural references, it's clear that it's set sometime in the past. I would rather have known when this was set, it was getting on my nerves that I couldn't figure out when it was supposed to be set.