Top Ten Authors I Want to Read More From

Item: Shadowlands
Rating: 4
Author: Jana

Posted August 10, 2015 by Jana in Top Ten Tuesday / 4 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted over at the other blog I write for, The Broke and the Bookish.

I’m putting a spin on this week’s topic, which is actually top ten authors I’ve read the most books by. I used up all my picks over at The Broke and the Bookish (you know I write there, too, right?), though! I tend to jump around from author to author. I read many debut books since I host the Debut Author Challenge, and my favorite authors are new within the the last few years so they only have 2-5 books out right now. I’ve found some other authors I love, though, and really want to go read their backlists! So here they are!

1. Tessa Dare
I love her Castles Ever After series, and can’t wait to get to her Spindle Cove, Stud Club, and Wanton Dairymaid series as well. She knows how to write wit and swoon, for sure.

2. Julie Anne Long
I’m loving Julie’s Pennyroyal Green series, and want to read more of them ASAP!

3. Ally Carter
Ally’s Heist Soceity books were so much fun, and I’ve heard great things about her Gallagher Girls books as well. I also got Embassy Row, the first book in her new series, from my OTSP Secret sister, so I’m excited for that one as well!

4. Shannon Stacey
I’ve read and really enjoyed one of her Kowalski books, and own a few of her standalone Christmas books as well. Hoping to read more of hers soon!

5. Mary E. Pearson
I LOVED Kiss of Deception and have an ARC of Heart of Betrayal I’m hoping will get me out of my reading slump. I won her Jenna Fox series from Brittany at The Book Addict’s Guide a while back, and want to read them even more now that I know I love Mary!

6. Marie Rutkoski
I’ve only read the first book in her Winner’s trilogy so far, but I really liked it. I want to finish that series (book 3 comes out soon!) and also read The Shadow Society, which looks great.

7. Maria V. Snyder
I’ve only read Poison Study, but I want to read EVERYTHING! All the series/trilogies. I hear wonderful things about Maria all the time, so I want to catch up on everything. I feel like she kind of exploded as an author since I picked up Poison Study. So many Maria books now!

8. Kate Avery Ellison
I’ve read a few of her Frost Chronicles books and I just read the first Secrets of Itlantis book, and she is one of my favorite authors. Her writing is amazing! I want to finish both of these series ASAP.

9. Sophie Jordan
I really liked her Firelight books, and I enjoyed Uninvited. I want to read Unleashed and all of her adult historical romances that I’ve heard so many great things about!

10. Sophie Kinsella
I LOVED I’ve Got Your Number, and want to start her Shopaholic series and get in on some of those other cute standalones everyone loves so much.

So! Which books or authors should I start with first? Which books of theirs are your favorites?

Shadowlands by Kate Brian | Mini Book Review

Posted August 6, 2015 by Jana in Book Review, Young Adult Fiction / 4 Comments

Shadowlands by Kate Brian
Series: Shadowlands #1
Published by Disney Hyperion on January 8, 2013
Genres: Mystery, Thriller
Pages: 336
Format: Paperback
Source: Gift
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Rory Miller had one chance to fight back and she took it. Rory survived and the serial killer who attacked her escaped. Now that the infamous Steven Nell is on the loose, Rory must enter the witness protection program. Entering the program alongside her, is her father and sister Darcy. The trio starts a new life and a new beginning leaving their friends and family behind without a goodbye.

Starting over in a new town with only each other is unimaginable for Rory and Darcy. They were inseparable as children but now they can barely stand each other. As the sisters settle in to Juniper Landing, a picturesque vacation island, it seems like their new home may be just the fresh start they need. They fall in with a group of beautiful, carefree teens and spend their days surfing, partying on the beach, and hiking into endless sunsets. Just as they’re starting to feel safe again, one of their new friends goes missing. Is it a coincidence? Or is the nightmare beginning all over again?

This book had the makings of everything I love. Serial killer. An escape. Witness protection. Suspense. What’s going on here? Paranoia. Stalking. Relocation to a quaint beach town that has creepy fog roll in at night. Shady people. I was all over this book and so super in love for about 96% of the story. The ending derailed my happiness, and I was frustrated and annoyed that such an amazing book had to end that way! It was honestly such a disappointing ending that I’m not even sure I care to read the other two books in the trilogy.

Kate Brian’s writing style and her ability to scare the living daylights out of you and keep you up all night are amazing. I’ve got no complaints there. I loved her descriptive writing style that made my spine tingle. The suspense was intense. The feeling of the book is very ominous and creepy, and I’m glad I read it while I was on vacation so that I was in a hotel room with my family and not sleeping on my own. I loved the alternating chapters, which go back and forth between Rory’s point of view and the killer’s. This guy is psycho. I liked the characters and feel like more attention was paid to them than most characters receive in a mystery or thriller. I enjoyed reading about them and grew to feel for Rory. I loved the setting of the book. It was the perfect location for a story like this because it was so sweet and friendly on the surface, but was hiding an uncomfortable reality underneath. There was a little romantic intrigue, but not so much that it took away from the creep factor. Really, I have very few complaints.

But the ending. UGH. I finished it, threw my book down on my bed, and immediately began venting to my mom. I remember saying, “I spent all my time on this creepy book, looking for an amazing climax… and THIS is the resolution?” I don’t even know why there are two more books in the trilogy. It’s no longer a mystery or a thriller for me. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’m not going to ay anything other than the fact that there’s a genre change. If you look on Goodreads and see how this book is classified, you’ll see what I mean. Needless to say, I was so disappointed. I loved everything else about the book, so I’m sad! This is really just a case of the author going in a direction I was not happy about. But oh well. I’m still glad I read it, and I would not refrain from recommending it to others. I would just preface my recommendation with “expect the unexpected.”

Five Fairytale Retellings I Loved and Five I Want to Read

Posted August 4, 2015 by Jana in Top Ten Tuesday / 7 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted over at the other blog I write for, The Broke and the Bookish.

This week we’re talking fairytale retellings! I adore fairytale retellings, and I’m always on the lookout for more. Below you will find five I loved, and five I can’t wait to read.

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas (Beauty and the Beast)
Cinder by Marissa Meyer (Cinderella)
Scarlet by Marissa Meyer (Little Red Riding Hood)
Cress by Marissa Meyer (Rapunzel)
What is Hidden by Lauren Skidmore (Cinderella)

Uprooted by Naomi Novik (Beauty and the Beast)
The Wrath and the Dawn by Renee Ahdieh (A Thousand and One Nights)
The Forbidden Wish by Jessica Khoury (Aladdin)
Winter by Marissa Meyer (Snow White)
The Great Hunt by Wendy Higgins (Beauty and the Beast)

Honorable mention:
Heartless by Marissa Meyer (Alice in Wonderland)

What fairytale retellings are your very favorites? Which ones are you excited to read? I need more recommendations, so please give me lots!

Keeping Up With the Debuts: Favorite Quotes from Never Always Sometimes by Adi Alsaid

Posted August 2, 2015 by Jana in Book Spotlight, Keeping Up With the Debuts / 1 Comment

Adi was a 2014 debut author, with his road trippin’ contemporary romance called Let’s Get Lost. I love keeping up with our former debuts and seeing what they’ve been up to since their first book debuted. Let me introduce to you Adi’s new book, Never always Sometimes, which comes out on Tuesday, August 4th! Read a little about the book, plus I’ve included some quotes from the book that I enjoyed to whet your appetite.

Never Always Sometimes by Adi Alsaid
Published by Harlequin Teen on August 4, 2015
Genres: Young Adult, Contemporary Romance
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Never date your best friend

Always be original

Sometimes rules are meant to be broken

Best friends Dave and Julia were determined to never be cliché high school kids—the ones who sit at the same lunch table every day, dissecting the drama from homeroom and plotting their campaigns for prom king and queen. They even wrote their own Never List of everything they vowed they’d never, ever do in high school.

Some of the rules have been easy to follow, like #5, never die your hair a color of the rainbow, or #7, never hook up with a teacher. But Dave has a secret: he’s broken rule #8, never pine silently after someone for the entirety of high school. It’s either that or break rule #10, never date your best friend. Dave has loved Julia for as long as he can remember.

Julia is beautiful, wild and impetuous. So when she suggests they do every Never on the list, Dave is happy to play along. He even dyes his hair an unfortunate shade of green. It starts as a joke, but then a funny thing happens: Dave and Julia discover that by skipping the clichés, they’ve actually been missing out on high school. And maybe even on love.

Jana’s Favorite Quotes

“The sun kept dipping down into the ocean and the lights came on at the harbor, casting sudden shadows on the ground, illuminating the faces that were just a second ago silhouettes. The sky was golden and purple, the ocean a darker shade of violet.”

“The Best you can ever do is to leave the world a little better than you found it.”

“No point in living a life less ordinary if you don’t know what the other side looks like.

“We are more or less kind, or more or less not. More or less selfish, happy, wise, lonely. Just like things are rarely always true, we aren’t ever exactly one thing or another. We are more or less.

It’s like that in out love lives too. We like to think we’re formulas that even out exactly, that we are perfect matches with each other. But we’re not. We match up with lots of people, more or less.”

“People were always belittling teenage heartbreak. But heartbreak was heartbreak was heartbreak.”

About the Author

Adi Alsaid was born and raised in Mexico City, then studied at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. While in class, he mostly read fiction and continuously failed to fill out crossword puzzles, so it’s no surprise that after graduating, he did not go into business world but rather packed up his apartment into his car and escaped to the California coastline to become a writer. He’s now back in his hometown, where he writes, coaches high school and elementary basketball, and has perfected the art of making every dish he eats or cooks as spicy as possible. In addition to Mexico, he’s lived in Tel Aviv, Las Vegas, and Monterey, California. A tingly feeling in his feet tells him more places will eventually be added to the list. Let’s Get Lost is his YA debut.

Author Website • Goodreads • Twitter • Facebook

Top Ten Books with Bookish Characters

Posted July 27, 2015 by Jana in Top Ten Tuesday / 5 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted over at the other blog I write for, The Broke and the Bookish.

I think this topic is one of the coolest ones we’ve done! I love books about bookish people, but I learned very quickly that I have read VERY few. Heck, I know about very few! It took me forever to come up with this list, and I started researching for more books to read that fall into this category, and I couldn’t find many at all! So, here are my favorite books (and pretty much the only books I’ve read) about bookish people.

Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn
Dash and Lily met through the Strand bookstore in NYC, when Lily left a red notebook there for an unsuspecting soulmate to find. They wrote back and forth, daring each other to do various things and kind of fall for one another. Both are very bookish, but Dash’s dream in life is to own a 22-volume Oxford English Dictionary! You can’t get much more bookish than that.

Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling
I’m pretty sure everyone will mention Hermione Granger, but I just had to!

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
Hazel’s last wish is to meet the author of her favorite book. She flies to Amsterdam with Gus to meet him, and learns a lot about her life and herself in the process.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
She steals books. From the Nazis. My hat’s off to this girl. She’s got guts. A true book lover.

Nocturne by Syrie James
Michael Tyler is a secluded vampire who refuses to give in to his urges for human blood. She he lives in seclusion, writing books under a pen name to conceal his identity. He’s pretty popular and super swoony.

Romancing the Duke by Tessa Dare
Izzy is the star of her father’s successful series of stories for children. She has spent her life trying to break free of the fictional version of herself in those stories, but it’s hard when your dad’s devout followers have pretty much memorialized you!

Illusions of Fate by Kiersten White
Finn has an awesome collection of books. Plus, a book actually flies around and acts as his guardian angel in this book!

Taken With You by Shannon Stacey
Hailey is a librarian in a cute little library!

Austenland by Shannon Hale
Jane LOVES Jane Austen, so much that she has unrealistic views on love. It’s not until she goes to an Austen-themed resort and gets her own Mr. Darcy that she realizes maybe she’s had her nose stuck in Pride and Prejudice for too long.

My Ridiculous, Romantic Obsession by Becca Wilhite
Sarah loves romance novels and wants a romance novel kind of romance for herself. This book is ADORABLE, and pretty much nobody knows about it!

Show me your bookish characters! Tell me about those you love to read about! I am dying for more books about bookish people in my life. Leave your link and I’ll stop by with my TBR list ready to be added to.

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