Paper Towns by John Green

Published: October 16th, 20
Publisher: Dutton Juvenile
Age Group: Young Adult
Pages: 305
Format: Paperback
Rating: ♥♥♥♥♥

Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life - dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge - he follows.

After their all-nighter ends and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues - and they're for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer Q gets, the less Q sees the girl he thought he knew.

I read Paper Towns over Easter break, while I was back home in Norway. I decided to pick it up, 1. Because I love John Green's writing. And, 2. Because on the flight from London to Norway I spent my time shamelessly crying (ugly-crying/sobbing) while reading The Fault in Our Stars. So by the time I arrived home I was craving another John Green novel, and it did not disappoint. 

Paper Towns was, as everything I have ever read that Green has written, absolutly amazing. I loved the characters, and how none of them were perfect, they were real. I loved the plot line, the setting, everything. It just worked wonderfully, and I am tempted to say that this is my second favorite John Green book (after The Fault in Our Stars, because let's be honest, nothing can compete with the absolute perfection that is that book). 

The bursts of humor thoughout the book are wonderful, they create a nice break from some of the more serious scenes, which I really enjoy. I just loved everything about this novel. The characters were top notch, the plot was exciting and it is a novel I would reccomend to everyone, teens and adults alike.

“Talking to a drunk person was like talking to an extremely happy, severely brain-damaged three-year-old.” 

“Margo always loved mysteries. And in everything that came afterward, I could never stop thinking that maybe she loved mysteries so much that she became one.” 

Future Reads #1

Hey Guys,
So I thought it would be fun to make a list over a few books that are going to be published within the next year that I look forward to, and I want to know what you look forward to as well. Therefore, I want to start this thing called "Future Reads" which will be a monthly post, about, as I said, books that are going to be published within the next year that you look forward to. I would love for you guys to join me in doing this, and if you do it would be great if you post a comment with a link so I can see what you look forward to reading. I hope you like the idea, and now, on to the books!

Enders by Lissa Price
Publishing Date: 07, January, 2014

(First off I want to start by saying that this book does not have cover yet, therefore, I used the first book in the duology.)

Enders is the sequel to Starters, a book that I loved and I cannot wait to see what happens as we continue to follow Callie's story. I don't want to spoil you if you have not read the book so here is the Starters synopsis:

Callie lost her parents when the Spore Wars wiped out everyone between the ages of twenty and sixty. She and her little brother, Tyler, go on the run, living as squatters with their friend Michael and fighting off renegades who would kill them for a cookie. Callie's only hope is Prime Destinations, a disturbing place in Beverly Hills run by a mysterious figure known as the Old Man.

The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater

Publishing Date: 17, September, 2013

Yet another sequel..I recently read The Raven Boys and I adored it, I wrote a book review, if you are interested. Such a great book, very gripping, and with a (painful) exiting cliffhanger on the end. I cannot wait to see where the story goes from here. Here is the synopsis for The Raven Boys:

Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them—not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her. His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble. But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain. He has it all—family money, good looks, devoted friends—but he’s looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little.

Divergent by Veronica Roth

Published: 03, May, 2011
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Age Group: Young Adult
Pages: 487
Format: Paperback
Rating: ♥♥♥♥♥

In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago world, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue--Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is--she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.


Review:
I have had this book on my shelves for a while, and I honestly do not know why I have not read it until now, because it is simply amazing. I loved every single page, from beginning to end. The story is so gripping and suspenseful, the world building is really well done and the characters, they are such a big part of what makes this story so special and wonderful.

I loved Tris and her courage and her sarcastic demeanor was really enjoyable. There were several times where I actually laughed out loud because she was just so awesome and funny, and that is saying something, because it takes quite a lot for me to actually laugh out loud because of a book. Tris made this book great, she is an amazing heroin, she is strong, but she is also soft and sweet at times. Four was also a great character, he is just so...he's just amazing that is what he is, I have no other words, because, well, I just don't - read the book and see for yourself, how great Four is.

This novel has such an original take on a dystopian society I think, I loved the idea of the factions. It intrigued me to see how the different factions acted, and what values that were important to people, it was just very interesting. Veronica Roth did a great job in creating this world, and I think this dystopian is just as good as The Hunger Games is, and that is saying something, because I adored that series. Who knows by the end of this series I might even like it better than The Hunger Games.

As for now, I cannot wait to read Insurgent and to continue the story of Tris and Four, and see where it takes me. This is an amazing dystopian and if you have not read it, I recommend you drop everything and go read it now, I mean it! I finished this book in less than two days, which is saying something because I'm kind of a slow reader, it was just that good.

Favorite quote: "I believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another."

Classic Pick: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Reprinted: September, 2012
Originally Published: 10, April, 1925
Publisher: CPI Group (Alma Classics Edition)
Age Group: Adult
Pages: 180
Format: Paperback
Rating: ♥♥♥♥♥

Review
There are some books you read that just stay with you, books that you know that you will never forget, you can't exactly put your finger on why - they just are that way, they stay in your mind and in your heart.. The Great Gatsby is one of those books for me. There is something so wonderful about this book, and there is so much reason behind the fact that it has remained as popular as it has. It is just so beautiful. The writing it great, the characters are fantastic and the plot is gripping. This book is heart warming, but also so incredibly sad.

I can honestly say that this is the best classic I have ever read, I loved it! It was such an amazing novel, I have no words. It just was so amazing. Definitely a book worth picking up. F. Scott Fitzgerald does a remarkable job creating this story, these complex and interesting characters. I recommend this book to anyone that likes reading - even people that don't usually read. Go buy it, and read it, and love it!

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

Release date: 18, September, 2012
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Age Group: Young Adult
Pages: 454
Format: Paperback
Rating: ♥♥♥♥♥

Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them—not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her.
His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble.
But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain. He has it all—family money, good looks, devoted friends—but he’s looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little.

For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.

Review

When I first picked up this book to buy it, it was the synopsis that drew me in - it seemed interesting, like a book I would enjoy at the least - AND, it did not disappoint. This may well be one of the best books I have read so far this year. I absolutely loved it and could not put it down for the life of me. 

With a set of wonderfully crafted characters Steifvater delivers a gripping story that will keep you at the edge of your seat. The plot twist were amazing and the story went in a direction I did not expect at all, which I loved. As of late, I feel that I have been able to figure out where the story is going before it actually gets there, so it was so nice to read this book where I was so surpried by the plot. It had me hooked from the beginning.
I also really loved the characters - especially Blue, I thought she was a great heroin, and I can't wait to read more of her story in the upcoming books in this series. I also loved Adam, he was just so wonderful, so kind, and then of course there is Gansey, which is a character that I think people that read this book will either love or hate. Personally I loved him, he just seems like the sort of person you would want to know, and he is so driven, and I just like him.
Overall, I enjoyed this book so much, it was a great read and I recommend it to everyone! It was great and I can't wait to see what happens next, because the cliff-hanger is killing me. The next book is unfortunatly not coming out until September, so I'll have to sit tight till then.

Wonderful Words #1

Hey Guys, 
So I decided to start a new "series" on this blog, where I share quotes that really stayed with me after I heard it, read it, whatever, just quotes I really like. Feel free to do it as well and comment on this post linking your post so that I can see it. I hope you enjoy this! 

“There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does.”

• Hazel (The Fault in Our Stars by John Green) 

“Sometimes it takes more courage not to let yourself see. Sometimes knowledge is damaging – not enlightenment but enleadenment.”

“He said you couldn’t pretend the terrible things in life didn’t happen. You can’t clean it up. You keep all the refuse and the scars. It’s how you learn. And try to make improvements.”

“I was aware too how strange adults were, how theirs lives were vaster than they wanted anyone to realize, that they actually stretched on and on like deserts, dry and desolate, with an unpredictable, shifting sea of dunes.”

• Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

• The Painted Drum by Louise Erdrich

Friday Finds #2

FRIDAY FINDS showcases the books you ‘found’ and added to your To Be Read (TBR) list… whether you found them online, or in a bookstore, or in the library — wherever! (they aren’t necessarily books you purchased). It is hosted by MizB over at Should Be Reading.

Painted Drum by Louise Erdrich

While appraising the estate of a New Hampshire family descended from a North Dakota Indian agent, Faye Travers is startled to discover a rare moose skin and cedar drum fashioned long ago by an Ojibwe artisan. And so begins an illuminating journey both backward and forward in time, following the strange passage of a powerful yet delicate instrument, and revealing the extraordinary lives it has touched and defined.

Compelling and unforgettable, Louise Erdrich's "Painted Drum" explores the often fraught relationship between mothers and daughters, the strength of family, and the intricate rhythms of grief with all the grace, wit, and startling beauty that characterizes this acclaimed author's finest work.

This Is Not A Test by Courtney Summers

It’s the end of the world. Six students have taken cover in Cortege High but shelter is little comfort when the dead outside won’t stop pounding on the doors. One bite is all it takes to kill a person and bring them back as a monstrous version of their former self. To Sloane Price, that doesn’t sound so bad. Six months ago, her world collapsed and since then, she’s failed to find a reason to keep going. Now seems like the perfect time to give up. As Sloane eagerly waits for the barricades to fall, she’s forced to witness the apocalypse through the eyes of five people who actually wantto live. But as the days crawl by, the motivations for survival change in startling ways and soon the group’s fate is determined less and less by what’s happening outside and more and more by the unpredictable and violent bids for life—and death—inside. When everything is gone, what do you hold on to?

House Of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

The story focuses on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.
Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story -- of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.

I am super excited for these books, expecially House of Leaves, I've heard it's supposed to be a (excuse my language) complete mind-fuck, very disturbing, but also super awesome!

Until next time, Happy Reading,

Helene

GIVEAWAY: When The Siren Calls by Tom Barry

When The Siren Calls by Tom Barry is being published in November of this year and Tom has been very nice to provide the book for this Giveaway. If you guys are interested in getting your hands on this book, why not join in and try to win it?

Here is the synopsis from Goodreads:

"Restless and neglected, Isobel is suffocating in a stagnant marriage. Suave and charismatic Jay is fighting for survival. An invitation to visit Jay's resort in the hills of Tuscany sparks Isobel to imagine a life of freedom and excitement.
Dismissing her husband’s objections, Isobel pursues Jay to Tuscany on the pretext of searching for a holiday home. After fighting anguished guilt, she abandons herself in a passionate affair, with her controlling lover encouraging Isobel to push beyond her sexual boundaries.
But all is not as it seems in the idyllic Tuscan retreat, and Isobel finds herself trapped in a web of intrigue, deception, and betrayal. She is one player in a dangerous love triangle, unsure whether Jay is her saviour, or her nemesis. As her world falls apart, she must choose between the woman she thought she was, and the woman she has become."

Looks good, doesn't it? I think so, I am definitely reading this next.

This giveaway is open internationally, so all of you can join in!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

If you want to know more about the author, Tom Barry, here you go;

Web: http://www.tombarrywrites.com

Twitter: http://twitter.com/tombarry100

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/WhentheSirenCalls

Friday Finds #1

FRIDAY FINDS showcases the books you ‘found’ and added to your To Be Read (TBR) list… whether you found them online, or in a bookstore, or in the library — wherever! (they aren’t necessarily books you purchased). It is hosted by MizB over at Should Be Reading.

What We Saw At Night by Jacquelyn Mitchard

Like the yearning, doomed young clones in Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, three teenagers with XP (a life-threatening allergy to sunlight) are a species unto themselves. As seen through the eyes of 16-year-old Allie Kim, they roam the silent streets, looking for adventure, while others sleep. When Allie's best friend introduces the trio to Parkour, the stunt-sport of running and climbing off forest cliffs and tall buildings (risky in daylight and potentially deadly by darkness), they feel truly alive, equal to the "daytimers." On a random summer night, while scaling a building like any other, the three happen to peer into an empty apartment and glimpse an older man with what looks like a dead girl. A game of cat-and-mouse ensues that escalates through the underground world of hospital confinement, off-the-grid sports, and forbidden love. Allie, who can never see the light of day, discovers she's the lone key to stopping a human monster.

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.

From Maggie Stiefvater, the bestselling and acclaimed author of theShiver trilogy and The Scorpio Races, comes a spellbinding new series where the inevitability of death and the nature of love lead us to a place we’ve never been before.

Before I Die by Jenny Downham

Tessa has just months to live. Fighting back against hospital visits, endless tests, drugs with excruciating side-effects, Tessa compiles a list. It’s her To Do Before I Die list. And number one is Sex. Released from the constraints of ‘normal’ life, Tessa tastes new experiences to make her feel alive while her failing body struggles to keep up. Tessa’s feelings, her relationships with her father and brother, her estranged mother, her best friend, and her new boyfriend, all are painfully crystallised in the precious weeks before Tessa’s time finally runs out.

All of these look super awesome, and I am so excited to read them all! 

Until next time - Happy Reading,

Helene

Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers

Goodreads   Amazon   Author

Climbing to the top of the social ladder is hard--falling from it is even harder.  Regina Afton used to be a member of the Fearsome Fivesome, an all-girl clique both feared and revered by the students at Hallowell High... until vicious rumours about her and her best friend's boyfriend start going around.  Now Regina's been "frozen out" and her ex-best friends are out for revenge.  If Regina was guilty, it would be one thing, but the rumours are far from the terrifying truth and the bullying is getting more intense by the day.  She takes solace in the company of Michael Hayden, a misfit with a tragic past who she herself used to bully.  Friendship doesn't come easily for these onetime enemies, and as Regina works hard to make amends for her past, she realises Michael could be more than just a friend... if threats from the Fearsome Foursome don't break them both first.

First off, I want to start by saying that this book was not what I expected, and that is not a bad thing, at all! I just didn't expect it to be so deep. Which it is. This book it truly amazing. It's heartbreaking. But it truly is an amazing piece of writing. The story is of a girl that falls from popularity and becomes the victim, and even though this girl has been a complete bitch to so many people, you start to feel for her, you start liking her, even though you should hate her. 

The fact that Courtney Summers has been able to write a likable bitch is amazing, the character is such a developed character, she has more to her than what you first think, and that is an amazing thing, when a book has great characters, like this one. All the characters are amazing, they are so different, so complex, but at the same time, you can relate to each of them in some way, well except the Fearsome Foursome, they are terrible people. But all I want to say is that this book is really worth the read, or a listen, in my case I listened to it, but I think I might buy this book too, because I loved it so much. 

So, what I want you to do now is go read this book, and be blown away by how great it is!

Rating; ♥♥♥♥♥