About Me

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Hello readers! My name is Kate and I'm a 20 year old English/Writing major with a passion for reading and writing. I read so many young adult book blogs and I've decided to start my own!

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Weekend

So how was everyone's weekend? Mine was boring: reading and saw two movies, along with working a little bit. What did you guys do?

Saturday, May 21, 2011

In my Mailbox (well, technically Kindle)

After receiving my final grades with a 3.325 GPA, I've decided to treat myself and buy some new books! First up is:

Title: Perfect You
Author: Elizabeth Scott
Pages: 282 Pages
Summary: Kate Brown's life has gone downhill fast. Her father has quit his job to sell vitamins at the mall, and Kate is forced to work with him. Her best friend has become popular, and now she acts like Kate's invisible.
And then there's Will. Gorgeous, unattainable Will, whom Kate acts like she can't stand even though she can't stop thinking about him. When Will starts acting interested, Kate hates herself for wanting him when she's sure she's just his latest conquest.
Kate figures that the only way things will ever stop hurting so much is if she keeps to herself and stops caring about anyone or anything. What she doesn't realize is that while life may not always be perfect, good things can happen -- but only if she lets them.... --Amazon
Buy here
My Thoughts: I hear plenty of good things about Elizabeth Scott, but still haven't gotten around to buying anything of hers. Now that I have time and the money, I'm thinking this might be my summer of Elizabeth Scott! 

Title: Stolen
Author: Lucy Christopher
Pages: 304 Pages
Summary: Drugged and kidnapped from her parents at the Bangkok airport, English teen Gemma wakes to find herself in the weirdly beautiful but desolate Australian outback. Her only company is her captor, a handsome young Australian named Ty, who is obsessed with her. Indeed, he tells her that he has been watching her since she was a child and now plans to keep her with him forever. Told in the form of a letter Gemma is writing to Ty, Christopher’s first novel is a complex psychological study that is also a tribute to the hypnotic beauty of the outback, which Ty passionately loves and feels has been “stolen” by those who would exploit it for gain. Though Gemma at first hates both her kidnapper and the landscape, she gradually begins to warm toward both. Some readers may feel the novel is weighted down by too much symbolism (if the outback is Edenic, watch out for a serpent!) and find Ty to be too sympathetic a character, but at the same time these potential drawbacks offer ample opportunity for thought and discussion. -- Amazon
Buy here!
My Thoughts: I've been dying to get this book for sometime now. I have this weird fascination with kidnapped victims and people who has suffered from Stockholm Syndrome, so when I heard of this book and saw that it was a runner up in the 2011 Printz Award, I knew I had to pick it up!

Title: Looking for Alaska
Author: John Green
Pages: 256 pages
Summary: Sixteen-year-old Miles Halter's adolescence has been one long nonevent - no challenge, no girls, no mischief, and no real friends. Seeking what Rabelais called the "Great Perhaps," he leaves Florida for a boarding school in Birmingham, AL. His roommate, Chip, is a dirt-poor genius scholarship student with a Napoleon complex who lives to one-up the school's rich preppies. Chip's best friend is Alaska Young, with whom Miles and every other male in her orbit falls instantly in love. She is literate, articulate, and beautiful, and she exhibits a reckless combination of adventurous and self-destructive behavior. She and Chip teach Miles to drink, smoke, and plot elaborate pranks. Alaska's story unfolds in all-night bull sessions, and the depth of her unhappiness becomes obvious. Green's dialogue is crisp, especially between Miles and Chip. His descriptions and Miles's inner monologues can be philosophically dense, but are well within the comprehension of sensitive teen readers. The chapters of the novel are headed by a number of days "before" and "after" what readers surmise is Alaska's suicide. These placeholders sustain the mood of possibility and foreboding, and the story moves methodically to its ambiguous climax. The language and sexual situations are aptly and realistically drawn, but sophisticated in nature. Miles's narration is alive with sweet, self-deprecating humor, and his obvious struggle to tell the story truthfully adds to his believability. Like Phineas in John Knowles's A Separate Peace(S & S, 1960), Green draws Alaska so lovingly, in self-loathing darkness as well as energetic light, that readers mourn her loss along with her friends. -- Amazon
Buy here
My Thoughts: John Green is probably one of the best YA authors out there and I'm shocked I didn't pick up Looking For Alaska before. They need to start adapting his books for movies ASAP!

Friday, May 20, 2011

What Do I Use to Read?

There is something to be said about real books: their smell is intoxicating, the feeling of the weight in your hands, and feeling the pages beneath your fingertips. However, if you're a hardcore reader like me, it's difficult to carry around multiple books with you, especially when your bag is already heavy with textbooks!

Two years ago, my father offered to buy me a Kindle for Christmas and I reluctantly agreed, but it was a great decision! Now, I have over 200 books on my Kindle, all within the reach of my hand! I know that there are a lot of people that refuse to give up hardcover books, and that's cool, but you can mix digital and hardcover.

E-readers are definitely something to look into!

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

Title: Shiver
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Paranornal YA
Pages: 400
Publisher: Scholastic Paperbacks (June 1, 2010)
Source: My Kindle
Summary: Grace, 17, loves the peace and tranquility of the woods behind her home. It is here during the cold winter months that she gets to see her wolf—the one with the yellow eyes. Grace is sure that he saved her from an attack by other wolves when she was nine. Over the ensuing years he has returned each season, watching her with those haunting eyes as if longing for something to happen. When a teen is killed by wolves, a hunting party decides to retaliate. Grace races through the woods and discovers a wounded boy shivering on her back porch. One look at his yellow eyes and she knows that this is her wolf in human form. Fate has finally brought Sam and Grace together, and as their love grows and intensifies, so does the reality of what awaits them. It is only a matter of time before the winter cold changes him back into a wolf, and this time he might stay that way forever. Told from alternating points of view, the narrative takes a classic Romeo & Juliet plot and transforms it into a paranormal romance that is beautiful and moving. Readers will easily identify with the strong, dynamic characters. The mythology surrounding the wolf pack is clever and so well written that it seems perfectly normal for the creatures to exist in today's world. A must-have that will give Bella and Edward a run for their money. --- Amazon (link to buy)

Stars: 5 STARS

Review: I am by now means a werewolf fan, but this book sucked me in right in the beginning. The novel follows a 17-year-old girl named Grace, who after surviving a wolf attack as a young girl, sees "her wolf" every winter; this is the wolf that saved her. As it turns out, "the wolf" is in fact a boy her age named Sam, who pines for Grace. During the warm months, Sam is human and the cold makes him turn back into a wolf. However, Sam's months as a human are dwindling as you can only change so many times before you become a wolf forever.

Sam and Grace meet and fall in love, with Grace finding out Sam's secrets just as her town prepares to kill the remaining wolves in the town because they supposedly killed a popular student.

Shiver is indeed a well-written book, with strong descriptions and a great love story. It is the first book in the Mercy Falls Wolves Series (the final book Forever comes out in July!) and I recommend this book for anyone who enjoys a love story with a bit of paranormal mixed in.