Into the Dim #1

Publisher: HMH Books For Young Readers

Publication Date: March 1st, 2016

Rating: 4 Stars

Source: eARC from Netgalley

Pages: 432

Add it on Goodreads!

Summary (from Goodreads):

When fragile, sixteen-year-old Hope Walton loses her mom to an earthquake overseas, her secluded world crumbles. Agreeing to spend the summer in Scotland, Hope discovers that her mother was more than a brilliant academic, but also a member of a secret society of time travelers. Trapped in the twelfth century in the age of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Hope has seventy-two hours to rescue her mother and get back to their own time. Along the way, her path collides with that of a mysterious boy who could be vital to her mission . . . or the key to Hope’s undoing. Addictive, romantic, and rich with historical detail, Into the Dim is an Outlander for teens.

Into the Dim is another excellent time travel novel for 2016! I thoroughly enjoyed this book and the characters.

Hope Walton has a photographic memory. She's incredibly smart, but she suffers from a lot of fears and phobias. She seems to be incredibly sheltered by her mother up until her mother disappears and is declared dead. She's kind of an outcast because she was always kept too busy to have friends and her father's mother has always made it her mission in life to make sure that Hope doesn't feel like she belongs in her family. 

When Hope's mother's sister invites her to come to Scotland after her mom's funeral, she learns that her mother is a part of a group of time travelers and is not actually dead, but is stuck in 12th century England. Hope trains alongside her new friends Phoebe and Collum to prepare herself for the journey back through time to go save her mother.

I really enjoyed Hope as a main character. I don't think that it's fair to her that she is made out to be pretty much scared of her own shadow. She's been so sheltered and babied by her mother that she's never had a chance to be anything, but scared of everything. But once she's thrust into this strange new world, she really kicks butt. She can talk herself out of her bad moments and can push herself through the things that scare her with the help of a group of new friends.

But really, this book makes her sound like she's scared of everything saying she has so many phobias and anxieties, but really besides this reoccurring nightmare type thing she has, the only real fear I can remember her having is near crippling claustrophobia. Which isn't as bad as I was imagining her to be from what they were saying. So I thought that was a smidge misleading. 

And despite what fears she does have, when they get back to the 12th century, it is Hope that basically gets them all the leads on her mom and even gets them in with the royalty! So really, she's a lot tougher and braver than anyone will give her credit for. She can hold her own!

Besides Hope, this book had plenty of other likable characters. Hope's aunt Lucinda took a bit for me to warm up to for a few reasons. I enjoyed Mac and Moira, Collum and Phoebe's grandparents, except that they really put off Hope's questions when she arrives in Scotland. Like almost in a rude way, I felt. Her aunt should have been there when she arrived to answer her questions, but she was off somewhere in time and I don't know if we ever find out what she was doing there instead of waiting for Hope?? Anyway, yeah. For the most part, I quite liked the characters in this book! 

There is a romance brewing in this book that I enjoyed. Hope somehow has a strange connection to him that I liked learning about. It's really interesting the history they have. There is not a love triangle in this book, but I don't know, I can't decide if there is another character in this book that has feelings for Hope or if they are just being kind of over protective of her.

I enjoyed the writing of this book. It was a bit slow in the beginning, as I am starting to feel that a lot of time travel novels might be, when Hope is learning about the whole time travel thing and learning what she needs to know about 12th century London and how to act and defend herself and everything. But once they got back in time, things really started to pick up!

As for negatives, I found this book to be kind of really predictable. I feel like there are passages in this book that basically take future plot twists and slap you in the face with them so you know they're coming. So, while there were a couple of things that surprised me in this book, if the writing were kept a bit more vague, I think this book could have been full of far more surprises. Also, the villain. I know that we don't see a whole lot of her in this book and we don't really know her story, but she's just awful for the sake of being awful. I don't like that so much.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. Going into it, for some reason, I didn't think I was going to like it as much as I did. I was pleasantly surprised by this book! If you liked Passenger, I think you might like this one! It is a very different book, but some of the explanations gave me Passenger vibes!

Liebster Award

I was nominated for this award by Kristen @ Blissful Bookworm! Thanks Kristen! :)

The Rules:

Thank the blogger(s) who nominated you.

Answer the 11 questions the blogger gives you.

Let the blogger know you nominated them.

Give them 11 questions of your own.

Questions from Kristen:

Tell me an interesting fact about yourself.

An interesting fact about me is that when I was in 4th grade, I broke both of my arms. At different times. And if you've been in any twitter chats with me where this question was asked, you will probably already know most of this.

I broke both bones in my right wrist when I fell rollerblading. I spent two hours in the emergency room before I got x-rays because there was a car accident that day and all the x-ray technicians were busy. The nurse gave me a sucker I couldn't eat before surgery. It was blue which is always the best flavor, unless it's cotton candy. And my grandma lost it and I never got to have. Then my doctor got there and yelled at everyone for not bringing more x-ray technicians in. Then my arm healed wrong and I had to have it rebroken. And when they put the IV in my arm, they missed the vein and pumped my arm full of water. That wrist is still a bit crooked to this day.

Then after that mess healed, I was leaning back on a chair and I leaned too far and it fell. And I got a greenstick fracture in my left forearm. So the bone bent and cracked, but didn't break. So since it wasn't broken, we assumed it was sprained and I spent all night with a broken arm and my dad took me to the hospital the next day. Let me tell you, it hurt way worse than the first time. My 12-year-old self cried at the hospital and my nurse was an A-hole and she told me to suck it up and quit crying because I was a big girl. Then instead of taking what, 15 minutes (I don't remember how long it took)? to put a cast on me, they wrapped it and sent me somewhere else in town to have them put a cast on me.

Bottom line kids, don't put your arms out to catch yourself when you fall. Or you will surely understand my pain.

If you could have dinner with one author, who would it be?

It would be Alexandra Bracken. All the way. She's my favorite, so there's really no contest there.

Would you go back in time and change a certain event? Why?

I don't know if I would go back and change anything. It would be just my luck that whatever I changed would be generally detrimental to the world and it would be all my fault. 

What is your favorite cartoon?

At this point in my life, I don't watch a whole lot of them, but I do like the occasional episode of Family Guy or something. And I loooove me some Sailor Moon.

If you could have one superpower, what would it be?

I think it would be awesome to be able to control the elements! I think that would be fun.

What is your favorite book to movie adaptation?

I'm going to go ahead and say one of the Harry Potter movies (or all of them).

Are you an early bird or a night owl?

A little bit of both. I hate sleeping in. I like to get up not EARLY, but I don't like sleeping late. And I like to stay up late-ish as well.

What are some of your favorite OTPs?

Liam Stewart and Ruby Daly (The Darkest Minds)

Alex Balashov and Elodie Buchanan (The Forbidden Orchid)

Why did you start blogging?

I started looking at other people's blogs and decided that I wanted one! I wanted some place to talk about books since I don't really know anyone else who reads. But since I started my blog, I have gotten my sister more into reading. I have broken her a few times already.

Do you have any pets?

I have a naughty, floofy black cat named Roo. He was Ruby for about 20 minutes til I brought him to the vet after I got him and they told me that he was actually not a girl.

Name one of your fears.

My car going into the water. I hate driving over bridges or with water on both sides of the road. I don't know why that is something that scares me, but my dad told me that I have always been scared of that. I also find the thought of outer space to be scary.

My Questions:

1. If you could have an endless supply of any food, what would you get?

2. What is one goal you would like to accomplish during your lifetime?

3. What are some of your pet peeves?

4. Which bad habits of others drive you crazy?

5. What's the weirdest dream you ever had?

6. What's your favorite quote?

7. If you could max out your credit card at any store, what store would it be? What would you get?

8. If you could live in any sitcom, which one would it be and why?

9. What's one book that you didn't like, but couldn't stop reading?

10. What's one book that you enjoyed that you didn't think you would like?

11. Name an instance in which hype ruined your reading experience.

I nominate:

I'm just gonna go ahead and nominate whoever wants to do this! I would love to see your answers to my questions!

Stacking the Shelves (#32)

Stacking the shelves is a weekly meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews to highlight books received each week!

During the week of February 20th - 26th I got...

Bought:

I got these from my first ever Book Outlet order! I would say that I'm pretty pleased with my first experience with them.

Trade:

Thank you to @valesbookshelf for the trade!

Netgalley:

What kinds of goodies did you get this week?

Review: The Forbidden Orchid by Sharon Biggs Waller

Publisher: Viking

Publication Date: March 8th, 2016

Rating: 4 Stars

Source: eARC from Netgalley

Pages: 432

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Summary (from Goodreads):

Staid, responsible Elodie Buchanan is the eldest of ten sisters living in a small English market town in 1861. The girls' father is a plant hunter, usually off adventuring through the jungles of China. 

Then disaster strikes: Mr. Buchanan fails to collect an extremely rare and valuable orchid, meaning that he will be thrown into debtors' prison and the girls will be sent to the orphanage or the poorhouse. Elodie's father has one last chance to return to China, find the orchid, and save the family—and this time, thanks to an unforeseen twist of fate, Elodie is going with him. Elodie has never before left her village, but what starts as fear turns to wonder as she adapts to seafaring life aboard the tea clipper The Osprey, and later to the new sights, dangers, and romance of China. 

But even if she can find the orchid, how can she find herself now that staid, responsible Elodie has seen how much the world has to offer?

The Forbidden Orchid starts off at an almost achingly slow pace. It introduces Elodie, our main character, and her family. It sets the scene for what it's like to be an essentially man-less family in the 1860's. 

Elodie's father is a traveling plant hunter. He frequently visits China looking for new and rare plants to bring back to England. He visits home once a year and then leaves again for China, the search for interesting plants, endless.

Elodie is the oldest of 8 daughters who are all named after flowers. It's her job, as the oldest, to look after all the children as well as her mother when she falls ill after giving birth to the latest daughter. She does her best to look after everyone, but it's hard because everyone gossips about the family and there are men around every corner putting their noses in where they don't belong and pretty much making things more difficult for the family. They don't take kindly to Elodie's questions and general attitude about the way things are.

The beginning of this book pretty much sets all of that up. Then things start to pick up! Things haven't gone well for Elodie's father in China on his most recent trip and while he is back in England, he refuses to return home to his family. When his angry employer sends men to their house to appraise their things as a potential payment for a failed shipment of Queen's Fancy orchids, Elodie takes matters into her own hands and goes to her father in Kew to tell him the news. He eventually realizes that he must go back to China to collect the orchids to save his family.

But Elodie knows that he's in no state to travel alone. She fears he won't make it back alive and he won't allow her to travel with him. So she disguises herself as a boy and stows away on the Osprey, the tea clipper that her father secured passage to China on.

And that is when things start to pick up. China is fully of danger and adventure, which Elodie has been yearning for. And she will definitely get it!

Elodie is a great main character. She is dependable and caring. She puts the needs of others before her own, but just longs for something more. She has always been her father's eyes and ears at home while he is away, generally being the only person in the household that isn't always hurt by him. She kind of puts him up on a pedestal, thinking he can do no wrong. When she stows away on the Osprey, there is kind of a strain put on their relationship, but over the course of the book, their relationship starts to change and it's a good change and was nice to see! 

There is a romance in this book that is both wonderful and frustrating. It is wonderful because Alex Balashov, second mate of the Osprey, is great. He's sweet, he's kind, he's understanding. He has his hidden demons, but overall, I think he's definitely my new #2 fictional love. The romance is frustrating because it develops sooo slowly! I wanted Elodie to get over herself and allow herself to have feelings for him! I wanted to bang their heads together and tell them to just be cute already!

Besides the beginning of this book being slow, the rest of it is fairly slow as well. But the last 2/3 of the book is considerably more interesting than the first third. Things start to pick up a little bit aboard the ship and definitely pick up in China! Considering that most of this book is just one big journey and travel was a lot slower in the 1860's, the story moves slowly. But overall, I found the interesting parts to outweigh the slow factor.

Through this standalone historical novel, I learned a lot about the time period! I found the tea clippers and the plant hunters and the opium wars to be very interesting! I love historical novels. I love learning about history in a way that doesn't make me wanna fall asleep and drool all over my desk.

If I had to complain about anything besides the pacing, I would say I was a bit disappointed by a lack of conflict with the villain. I was expecting more there. Maybe I'm not disappointed, more like surprised. I was just expecting there to be more in that department.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book! I loved learning about the time period. I loved the plant descriptions. I loved Alex Balashov. If you're into slower paced historical novels with a super adorable love interest, you might just love this book!

Discussion: Video Game Love!

Welcome to another About Me Discussion post! Today I'm going to talk about my hobby of playing video games!

I'm not a SUPER avid video game player, but I do enjoy playing them. And my boyfriend and I together pretty much have all the consoles.

We've got an Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Original NES/ Super NES combo console, GameCube, Nintendo 64, Wii U, Gameboy Advance, Nintendo 3DS, and a PSP. Along with about a zillion games for each of these.

(The 3DS is my baby.)

If you can't tell from the two above pictures, I love Yoshi and Zelda. When new consoles come out, I buy them solely for the new Yoshi and Zelda games. Mostly Zelda. Because Zelda = <3. 

I have been a huge Zelda fan since I started watching my mom play Ocarina of Time when I was younger, which is, to this day, my favorite video game of all time! I remember how much fun my sister and I would have watching my mom play that game. I think my mom thought we were weird because we would ask her to play so we could watch and she thought that must be boring for us. But apparently we thought it was like watching a movie.

I also remember how my mom had the official game guide for Ocarina of Time and I flipped through that thing over and over and over! I remember having a little notebook and listing all the places, the characters, the villains, everything. I was really weird as a kid.

But after all that watching and game guide reading, I could beat the first boss on the first round of sword slashes. Ghoma never got back to the ceiling on me.

It has only been in the past few years that I actually started beating games that I started playing. Most recently was Wind Waker and Oracle of Ages. 

I HATED Oracle of Ages. I cheated through that whole game and on the final boss it seriously took me like two days to beat it. I tried like 15+ times each day and I couldn't do it and I was mere seconds away from throwing that stupid Gameboy against the wall.

I really only play Nintendo games. I don't like the controls on Xbox and I've never played a Playstation before. 

I have a bunch of Zelda T-shirts that I like to wear. I was wearing a Wind Waker, stained glass window design t-shirt to work one day and someone at my work asked me if I actually played or if I was just a video game fashionista. Pfffft.

Most recently I've been working on playing Hyrule Warriors. I have almost all of the first Adventure Mode map unlocked! I have three squares left to unlock! I also just started playing Yoshi's Wooly World! It's probably the cutest video game ever! I love it! Oh! And I've been working on Spirit Tracks on my 3DS, but recently had to put it down because I wanted to shake the stupid thing to pieces. For the instrument you get in that game, you have to blow into the microphone to play it and I COULDN'T DO IT AND I WAS SO ANGRY!!!!

         

Anyway, does anyone else out there like video games? What's your favorite franchise?

Waiting on Wednesday: March Releases!

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

I decided that I'm going to change up Waiting on Wednesday. Instead of doing one every week, I'm just going to do one once a month and feature all the books coming out the next month that I'm salivating for.

So without further ado, the books I am aching to own that release in March are:

Add it on Goodreads!

Sonya was born with the rare gift to feel what those around her feel—both physically and emotionally—a gift she’s kept hidden from the empire for seventeen long years. After a reckless mistake wipes out all the other girls with similar abilities, Sonya is hauled off to the palace and forced to serve the emperor as his sovereign Auraseer.

Tasked with sensing the intentions of would-be assassins, Sonya is under constant pressure to protect the emperor. One mistake, one small failure, will cost her own life and the lives of the few people left in the world who still trust her.

But Sonya’s power is untamed and reckless, her feelings easily usurped, and she sometimes can’t decipher when other people’s impulses end and her own begin. In a palace full of warring emotions and looming darkness, Sonya fears that the biggest danger to the empire may be herself.

As she struggles to wrangle her abilities, Sonya seeks refuge in her tenuous alliances with the volatile Emperor Valko and his idealistic younger brother, Anton, the crown prince. But when threats of revolution pit the two brothers against each other, Sonya must choose which brother to trust—and which to betray.

BURNING GLASS is debut author Kathryn Purdie’s stunning tale of dangerous magic, heart-rending romance, and the hard-won courage it takes to let go.

Add it on Goodreads!

When fragile, sixteen-year-old Hope Walton loses her mom to an earthquake overseas, her secluded world crumbles. Agreeing to spend the summer in Scotland, Hope discovers that her mother was more than a brilliant academic, but also a member of a secret society of time travelers. Trapped in the twelfth century in the age of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Hope has seventy-two hours to rescue her mother and get back to their own time. Along the way, her path collides with that of a mysterious boy who could be vital to her mission . . . or the key to Hope’s undoing.      Addictive, romantic, and rich with historical detail, Into the Dim is an Outlander for teens.

Add it on Goodreads!

War has begun. Arin is in the thick of it, with the East as his ally and the empire as his enemy. He’s finally managed to dismiss the memory of Kestrel, even if he can’t quite forget her. Kestrel turned into someone he could no longer recognize: someone who cared more for the empire than for the lives of innocent people—and certainly more than she cared for him. At least, that’s what he thinks.

But far north lies a work camp where Kestrel is a prisoner. Can she manage to escape before she loses herself? As the war intensifies, both Kestrel and Arin discover unexpected roles in battle, terrible secrets, and a fragile hope. The world is changing. The East is pitted against the West, and Kestrel and Arin are caught between. In a game like this, can anybody really win?

Add it on Goodreads!

Kill the beast. Win the girl.

A strange beast stirs fear in the kingdom of Lochlanach, terrorizing towns with its brutality and hunger. In an act of desperation, a proclamation is sent to all of Eurona—kill the creature and win the ultimate prize: the daughter of King Lochson’s hand in marriage.

Princess Aerity understands her duty to the kingdom though it pains her to imagine marrying a stranger. It would be foolish to set her sights on any particular man in the great hunt, but when a brooding local hunter, Paxton Seabolt, catches her attention, there’s no denying the unspoken lure between them…or his mysterious resentment.

Paxton is not keen on marriage. Nor does he care much for spoiled royals and their arcane laws. He’s determined to keep his focus on the task at hand—ridding the kingdom of the beast and protecting his family—yet Princess Aerity continues to challenge his notions with her unpredictability and charm. But as past secrets collide with present desires, dire choices threaten everything Paxton holds dear.

Inspired by the Grimm Brothers’ tale, “The Singing Bone,” New York Times bestselling author Wendy Higgins delivers a dark fantasy filled with rugged hunters, romantic tension, outlawed magic, and a princess willing to risk all to save her people.

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She’s more gunpowder than girl—and the fate of the desert lies in her hands.

Mortals rule the desert nation of Miraji, but mystical beasts still roam the wild and barren wastes, and rumor has it that somewhere, djinni still practice their magic. But there's nothing mystical or magical about Dustwalk, the dead-end town that Amani can't wait to escape from. 

Destined to wind up "wed or dead," Amani’s counting on her sharpshooting skills to get her out of Dustwalk. When she meets Jin, a mysterious and devastatingly handsome foreigner, in a shooting contest, she figures he’s the perfect escape route. But in all her years spent dreaming of leaving home, she never imagined she'd gallop away on a mythical horse, fleeing the murderous Sultan's army, with a fugitive who's wanted for treason. And she'd never have predicted she'd fall in love with him...or that he'd help her unlock the powerful truth of who she really is.

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The last thing sixteen-year-old Jamie Watson–writer and great-great-grandson of the John Watson–wants is a rugby scholarship to Sherringford, a Connecticut prep school just an hour away from his estranged father. But that’s not the only complication: Sherringford is also home to Charlotte Holmes, the famous detective’s enigmatic, fiercely independent great-great-granddaughter, who’s inherited not just his genius but also his vices, volatile temperament, and expertly hidden vulnerability. Charlotte has been the object of his fascination for as long as he can remember–but from the moment they meet, there’s a tense energy between them, and they seem more destined to be rivals than anything else.

Then a Sherringford student dies under suspicious circumstances ripped straight from the most terrifying of the Holmes stories, and Jamie and Charlotte become the prime suspects. Convinced they’re being framed, they must race against the police to conduct their own investigation. As danger mounts, it becomes clear that nowhere is safe and the only people they can trust are each other.

Equal parts tender, thrilling, and hilarious, A Study in Charlotte is the first in a trilogy brimming with wit and edge-of-the-seat suspense.

What books are you looking forward to in March?!

Top Ten Tuesday (#32)

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature created by The Broke and the Bookish!

This week's topic is Top Ten Books I've Read Recently That Weren't My Typical Type of Book!

Generally, more contemporary novels aren't my thing, but here are a few that I've read in the last year.

1. The Smell of Other People's Houses by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock

2. Magonia by Maria Dahvana Headley

3. Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins

4. All the Rage by Courtney Summers

5. Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

6. The Girl Who Fell by S.M. Parker

7. We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

8. Love Letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira

9. Until We Meet Again by Renee Collins

10. Arrows by Melissa Gorzelanczyk

What are some books that you've read recently that aren't your usual type of books?

Review: The Smell of Other People's Houses by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock

Publisher: Wendy Lamb Books

Publication Date: February 23rd, 2016

Rating: 3 Stars

Source: Miss Print's ARC Adoption

Pages: 240

Add it on Goodreads!

Summary (from Goodreads):

In Alaska, 1970, being a teenager here isn’t like being a teenager anywhere else. Ruth has a secret that she can’t hide forever. Dora wonders if she can ever truly escape where she comes from, even when good luck strikes. Alyce is trying to reconcile her desire to dance, with the life she’s always known on her family’s fishing boat. Hank and his brothers decide it’s safer to run away than to stay home—until one of them ends up in terrible danger.
 
Four very different lives are about to become entangled.

I received this ARC as kind of a bonus when I requested The Word For Yes from Emma @ Miss Print! I think it has a rather interesting title and that cover is kind of insane! That sky is so pretty!

This book follows four different teenagers in Alaska in 1970.

Ruth has lived with her Gran since she was 5, her father died right before her sister was born and it really messes up her mom. So Ruth and her new baby sister, Lily go to live with their Gran. They aren't terribly well off and their Gran seems almost bitter that she's stuck with them and seems to find any reason she can to punish them.

Dora is living with the family of one of her friends because her family isn't... really... a good family. She is probably the only character in this book that I really didn't like. She just struck me as jealous and kind of stuck up despite being in a situation where most people would probably actually be looking down on her. I guess I can see where some of her feelings might be coming from, but I still didn't like her.

Hank is running away from home with his two brothers. They are leaving behind their mom and her awful new boyfriend. They stow away on a ferry, looking to get anywhere but where they were when something bad happens and two of them have to go on without the other.

Alyce is a talented ballerina. She needs to audition the summer before her senior year of high school if she wants to be able to get a scholarship and go to school for dance. But every summer she has to go out on the fishing boat with her dad and uncle and help them out and she doesn't want to let them down so she keeps her audition to herself and does what she feels is her duty to her father.

It took me awhile to really get into this book. It's probably not something that I would usually read, but I ended up liking it okay. I feel like it's hard to talk about the characters in this book because the book is so short and each character only gets a couple of chapters so if I were to say much, I'd definitely give something away. I want to say that not a lot really happens in this book, but that is really not true. I guess maybe everything just happens so subtly or naturally, that it just kinda nicely flows in the book. I don't know.

I found the main characters (except Dora) and pretty much all of the secondary characters to be fairly interesting characters. Even Ruth's relatively unpleasant Gran grew on me. I think it's really interesting how all of these characters end up coming together. And how on the journey, a character will conveniently meet someone pivotal to the story. I liked to see how all these new characters fit in. I think the story was overall maybe a bit predictable, but not too bad. There are little bits of romance in this book, but nothing major at all.

Overall, I found this book to be fairly enjoyable. I didn't think I was going to like it at first, but it ended up surprising me. I don't really think I've read anything that I can compare this to, but if you're interested in learning about Alaska right around the time it gained statehood, fishing communities, Alaskan natives, any of those kinds of things, this book might be for you.

Love-A-Thon 2016: Mini Challenge #4

Alrighty! I'm here with the final Mini Challenge for the Love-A-Thon  hosted by Alexa, Cee, Hazel, and Mel!

Mini Challenge #4 is An Invitation to Tea. So I will be sharing which fictional character, book blogger OR BookTuber OR Bookstagrammer, and author I'd want to have a tea party with and why!

So first of all, here is the invitation to my tea party!

Who could turn down that invitation? :)

So first of all, the fictional character that I would invite to my tea party would be Ruby Daly. I would say Liam Stewart because yum, but really, boys probably wouldn't be too pumped about being invited to a tea party. And Ruby is a pretty fantastic character! One of my favorites! Who would have ever guessed that!?

The fellow book blogger that I would invite would be Mariam (@mariamthekid) because she is my fellow TDM fangirl and is just generally awesome.

And the author that I would invite to my tea party is totally Alexandra Bracken! I got to meet her last month and it was amazing!!! She is my favorite ever! <3

I hope that there is coffee at this tea party because bleh, I don't like tea!

Who would you invite to your tea party? :)

Love-A-Thon 2016: Mini Challenge #3

Hello lovely readers! I'm here with Mini Challenge #3 of the Love-A-Thon hosted by Alexa, Cee, Hazel, and Mel!

The third mini challenge is Book Spine Poetry! At first I thought that this was going to be no fun because I didn't think I had the creativity or library resources to come up with anything good, but once I really got into it and started planning it, I started to sing a different tune! I think that what I came up with is actually pretty sweet!

Okay, so when I was putting this together, I was feeling like it was more of a book spine story than book spine poetry. It feels more like a story than poetry to me. Kind of your run of the mill, orphaned queen story, but a story all the same.

Basically what I was thinking when I put it together was:

The Midnight Queen was uprooted from her kingdom by a darker shade of magic that sieged and stormed the kingdom. The kingdom fell and panic and pandemonium ensued. Then through the dark comes the orphaned Queen on a road for vengeance, swearing death against the imposter Queen. There are violent ends and in the afterlight things all work out. 

Requiem felt like a final sounding word to put at the end. It kind of is, but the definition of it is 'an act or token of remembrance' or 'a celebration of the dead'. So along with it being the book title with the most final sounding word for a title, they're also celebrating getting their kingdom back and remembering the brave souls who died for the cause.

So, what do you think of my book spine poetry? Is it gold or what? :)

Love-A-Thon 2016: Mini Challenge #2

Hello lovely readers! I am here doing Mini Challenge #2 for the Love-A-Thon hosted by Alexa, Cee, Hazel, and Mel!

This is a bingo challenge! So let's see how many of these squares I can fill in!

√ Visit 5 new blogs:

1. Rabbit Hole Reviews

2. Latte Nights Reviews

3. Arctic Books

4. Wandering Through Books

5. Fleurs et Nerds

√ Join one of the Love-A-Thon twitter chats:

Twitter Chat #1

Twitter Chat #2

Twitter Chat #3

√ Twitter Chat #4

√ Participate in one other challenge:

Introduction

Mini Challenge #1

Mini Challenge #3

Mini Challenge #4

√ Find 3 new instagram accounts (and follow):

1. Admire_Stories

2. Mel_1704

3. PopGoesTheReader

√ Leave a comment on some of your favorite blogs:

1. Eater of Books

2. Downright Dystopian

Tweet 3 of your favorite authors:

√ Watch 3 videos from new youtubers (and follow):

1. Novels and Nonsense

2. BangadyBangz

3. Katytastic

Dedicate a blog post to talk about some of your favorite blogs, youtube, and instagram accounts:

√ Color Hunt - Find a blog with a purple, blue, and pink design:

After a lot of hunting, I found that Writer Grrl Reads has pink, purple, and blue in her design!