Review: Snow Like Ashes (Snow Like Ashes #1) by Sara Raasch

Book Title: Snow Like Ashes

Author: Sara Raasch

Published Date: October 14th, 2014

Publisher: Balzer + Bray

Genre: YA Fantasy

Series: Book 1 in Snow Like Ashes trilogy

Book Link: Goodreads

Purchase Links: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, The Book Depository

Synopsis from Goodreads:

A heartbroken girl. A fierce warrior. A hero in the making.

Sixteen years ago the Kingdom of Winter was conquered and its citizens enslaved, leaving them without magic or a monarch. Now, the Winterians’ only hope for freedom is the eight survivors who managed to escape, and who have been waiting for the opportunity to steal back Winter’s magic and rebuild the kingdom ever since.

Orphaned as an infant during Winter’s defeat, Meira has lived her whole life as a refugee, raised by the Winterians’ general, Sir. Training to be a warrior—and desperately in love with her best friend, and future king, Mather — she would do anything to help her kingdom rise to power again.

So when scouts discover the location of the ancient locket that can restore Winter’s magic, Meira decides to go after it herself. Finally, she’s scaling towers, fighting enemy soldiers, and serving her kingdom just as she’s always dreamed she would. But the mission doesn’t go as planned, and Meira soon finds herself thrust into a world of evil magic and dangerous politics – and ultimately comes to realize that her destiny is not, never has been, her own.

Disclaimer: I received this e-ARC from Balzer + Bray via Edelweiss in exchange for my honest review.

Review:

"Even the strongest blizzard starts with a single snowflake."

Oh my goodness, why didn't I read this book sooner? I really should have read it months ago, but I wasn't really feeling the Fantasy genre, so I was holding off until I was ready for it. I really wanted to love this book because the cover is gorgeous, and I wanted the insides to match the gorgeousness of the outside.

I was not disappointed. At. All.

Meira was a total bad ass and I loved her as a character. She was well rounded and so awesome. I loved her relationships with Sir and Mather especially. They were both protective of her, possibly too protective. They refused to allow her to fight in battle, or to do anything physical like that. Meira and Mather have an undeniable connection from the beginning and for the first 125 pages, I adored Mather, and I wanted Mather for my own.

Until we met Prince Theron. Sa-woon!

He was hot, and quickly turned into my favorite guy in the entire story. There was much more to him and why Meira was meeting him, than initially met the eye. Meira seemed to warm to him pretty quickly, which surprised me big time. I didn't expect the connection to be what it was, so I was pleasantly surprised when truths were revealed. 

"We have all the time you desire, Meira. I will not rush you."

Holy hell, he's totally swoony and I love that about him. He's more than just a prince. He's got a good heart, and he's essentially trapped in Cordell, forced to do what his father, King Noam, demands.

"Don't you want more than this?"
"Every day of my life."

It was sad because Theron wanted so much more than to be king. He wanted to explore his artsy side. His artistic abilities included poetry and painting, but as future king, he was unable to explore that side of him.

On the other side of the triangle, we had Mather, who was also struggling with everything. He was in love with Meira, but according to Sir, Winter had to come first. Before his own happiness, even. That was rough on both Meira and Mather. They were attracted to each other, but nothing could happen between them.

King Noam was a complex character and I was never sure what he wanted or who, if anyone, he was loyal to. Watching him was fascinating because I never knew what to expect.

The world was described so vividly that I could see it as I read it. That excites me. Being able to visualize what I'm reading about makes a book even better in my eyes. I was worried that this world wouldn't be described well, but I am so glad I didn't need to worry. It was beautifully & clearly described.

Oh, and I want a chakram

There are so many other things I want to talk about, but I cannot mention it. It's too spoilery and I don't want to ruin it for others. Yes, you definitely need to read this glorious fantasy novel. I loved it, and will happily give it 5 stars.

Review: When Reason Breaks by Cindy L. Rodriguez

Book Title: When Reason Breaks

Author: Cindy L. Rodriguez

Published Date: February 10th, 2015

Publisher: Bloomsbury Children's

Genre: YA Contemporary

Standalone

Book Link: Goodreads

Pre-Order Links: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, The Book Depository

Synopsis from Goodreads:

13 Reasons Why meets the poetry of Emily Dickinson in this gripping debut novel perfect for fans of Sara Zarr or Jennifer Brown.

A Goth girl with an attitude problem, Elizabeth Davis must learn to control her anger before it destroys her. Emily Delgado appears to be a smart, sweet girl, with a normal life, but as depression clutches at her, she struggles to feel normal. Both girls are in Ms. Diaz’s English class, where they connect to the words of Emily Dickinson. Both are hovering on the edge of an emotional precipice. One of them will attempt suicide. And with Dickinson’s poetry as their guide, both girls must conquer their personal demons to ever be happy.

In an emotionally taut novel with a richly diverse cast of characters, readers will relish in the poetry of Emily Dickinson and be completely swept up in the turmoil of two girls grappling with demons beyond their control.

Disclaimer: I received this ARC from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

Review:

In high school I loved Emily Dickinson's poetry so when I saw that this book had an Emily Dickinson connection, I knew I had to get it. Plus, look at that cover you guys. I mean, really pretty cover. We all know how much of a sucker I am for pretty covers. Books like this tend to be a hit or miss for me, so to say I was nervous is a bit of an understatement.

The book is a very slow moving book, and to be honest, I did get bored sometimes. I wanted some feelsy moments, but those did not arrive until the end of the book. In fact, the end of the book was beautiful & hopeful, which made me happy.

The girls are very different from each other. Emily's family is "perfect" Her dad is a politician, which of course means no one is allowed to make a mistake or else he could lose supporters. He has someone monitoring his childrens' activity on social media. Emily begins a secret relationship with a boy, Kevin. In doing so, she begins to neglect her friends. Abby and Sarah, and that infuriated me. I hate when friends essentially dump you because they have a boyfriend. I also felt badly for Kevin because he had to sneak around to see Emily, which I would not have been okay with, no matter what the reason.

Now, I really liked Elizabeth. She had more of a firey personality which jived with my own personality. Her father had left the family not long before, and her mother had sunk into a deep depression over this. I felt sympathy for Elizabeth, as she had to be mother and father and big sister to her younger sister, Lily. Elizabeth is still so angry at her father for walking out on her, her mother and her sister, and she's struggling hard to handle it on her own.

This book didn't totally win me over until the end of it. I loved the ending, it made me feel all the feels, and cry all the tears. I do think people need to read this book. I do think it's important to stay connected to others like Ms. Davis did throughout this book. I am giving this book 4 stars and I would definitely recommend it.

Cover Reveal: Black Iris by Leah Raeder

BOOK DETAILS:

Published by: Atria Books  

384 pages 

 ISBN: 9781476786421

 On sale: April 28, 2015 

 List price: $15.00 

 eBook ISBN: 9781476786438 

 eBook list price: $5.99

Pre- Order Links: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, IndieBound (US)

Amazon, Nook, Waterstones, Foyles, Kobo, iTunes, Google (UK)

Amazon, iTunes, Google (AUS)

Synopsis

It only took one moment of weakness for Laney Keating’s world to fall apart. One stupid gesture for a hopeless crush. Then the rumors began. Slut, they called her. Queer. Psycho. Mentally ill, messed up, so messed up even her own mother decided she wasn't worth sticking around for.

If Laney could erase that whole year, she would. College is her chance to start with a clean slate.

She's not looking for new friends, but they find her: charming, handsome Armin, the only guy patient enough to work through her thorny defenses—and fiery, filterless Blythe, the bad girl and partner in crime who has thorns of her own.

But Laney knows nothing good ever lasts. When a ghost from her past resurfaces—the bully who broke her down completely—she decides it's time to live up to her own legend. And Armin and Blythe are going to help.

Which was the plan all along.

Because the rumors are true. Every single one. And Laney is going to show them just how true.

She's going to show them all.

Excerpt

April is the cruelest month, T.S. Eliot said, and that’s because it kills. It’s the month with the highest suicide rate. You’d think December, or even January—the holidays and all that forced cheer and agonized smiling pushing fragile people to the edge—but actually it’s spring, when the world wakes from frostbound sleep and something cruel and final stirs inside those of us who are broken. Like Eliot said: mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain. In the deepest throes of depression, when sunlight is anguish and the sky throbs like one big raw migraine and you just want to sleep until you or everything else dies, you’re less likely to commit suicide than someone coming out of a depressive episode. Drug companies know this. That’s why antidepressants have to be marked with the warning MAY CAUSE SUICIDAL THOUGHTS.

Because what brings you back to life also gives you the means to destroy yourself.

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Review: I'll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios

Book Title: I'll Meet You There 

Author: Heather Demetrios

Publish Date: February 3rd, 2015

Publisher: Henry Holt & Co.

Genre: YA Contemporary

Standalone

Book Link: Goodreads

Pre-Order Links: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, The Book Depository

Synopsis from Goodreads:

If seventeen-year-old Skylar Evans were a typical Creek View girl, her future would involve a double-wide trailer, a baby on her hip, and the graveyard shift at Taco Bell. But after graduation, the only thing standing between straightedge Skylar and art school are three minimum-wage months of summer. Skylar can taste the freedom—that is, until her mother loses her job and everything starts coming apart. 

Torn between her dreams and the people she loves, Skylar realizes everything she’s ever worked for is on the line.Nineteen-year-old Josh Mitchell had a different ticket out of Creek View: the Marines. But after his leg is blown off in Afghanistan, he returns home, a shell of the cocksure boy he used to be. What brings Skylar and Josh together is working at the Paradise—a quirky motel off California’s dusty Highway 99. Despite their differences, their shared isolation turns into an unexpected friendship and soon, something deeper.

Disclaimer: I received this e-ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

Review:

I didn't know what to expect with this book. I'd heard from trusted bloggers that it was a beautiful book, chock full of feels. I was definitely excited to be approved for this book, but I was also a bit nervous. It was getting some major early buzz among my fellow bloggers and I could only hope that I wouldn't be the black sheep for this book.

I absolutely love damaged characters. I know that may sound weird, but reading about flawed characters makes me happy because no one is perfect. Everyone has a flaw or an imperfection and having characters in books that are flawed is so, SO much more realistic.

I really liked Skylar a lot. She was so determined to make something of herself. She wanted to get out of the life she currently had. She was also extremely close to her mother which I totally understood as my mom and I have always been very close. So, I understood her instinct to protect her mom and try to get her mom back to the land of the living again when she lost her job. I understood Skylar's fear of leaving her mom the way she was. It was really hard to read sometimes, but I had fallen in love with this story.

"I hate to break it to you, but your mom is an adult woman. How many times are you just gonna drop everything when she loses her shit?"

I understood this feeling as well. I kept hoping that Skylar wouldn't allow her mother's downward spiral to affect her. I was so afraid that Skylar would forget all about her own dreams and stay in Creek View. Skylar had put so much pressure on herself that she had lost some of herself as well.

Yet there was still one thing that hadn't let her down. Pools. She loved to swim or even to just be in the water in some capacity. Swimming brought her peace, even if everything in the world was crashing down around her.

"Pools didn't get you pregnant, and they didn't die on you.Who needed anything more?"

Now, Josh Mitchell was hot. Normally I don't go for military types, but there was more to him than just the military. Yes, he had a bit of a colorful past in Creek View. Before he joined the military, he'd had a bit of a promiscuous past.

"Yes Josh, everyone in Creek View is well aware of your sexcapades."

When he returned from the military, missing a leg, he was different. He was hurting both physically and emotionally. He and Skylar had known each other for a long time, but it wasn't until this summer that they begin working together at the quirky motel by the name of Paradise.

It was their trips to Dairy Queen that really sealed it for me. I could feel things changing between them and I remember hoping that Skylar's growing feelings for Josh would not change her college plans. I had seen too many girls change their plans for a guy and that made me nervous. I loved the outrageous combinations they came up with. Josh's was pineapple & Snickers and Skylar's was Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and mint. That definitely added to the quirky-ness of this book.

"I'm fucking crazy about you!"

I loved the ending so much. I think I cried a small river by the time the book was over, and I was definitely sad when the book ended. Demetrios rocked this story and I'm excited to read her other books. I'm giving this book 4.5 stars. I wish I could give it the full 5 stars, and I'm honestly not sure why I can't. Everyone needs to read this book.

A Thousand Pieces of You (Firebird #1) by Claudia Gray

Book Title: A Thousand Pieces of You

Author: Claudia Gray

Published Date: November 4th, 2014

Publisher: HarperTeen

Genre: YA SciFi

Series: Book 1 in Firebird trilogy

Book Link: Goodreads

Purchase Links: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, The Book Depository

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Every Day meets Cloud Atlas in this heart-racing, space- and time-bending, epic new trilogy from New York Times bestselling author Claudia Gray.

Marguerite Caine’s physicist parents are known for their radical scientific achievements. Their most astonishing invention: the Firebird, which allows users to jump into parallel universes, some vastly altered from our own. But when Marguerite’s father is murdered, the killer—her parent’s handsome and enigmatic assistant Paul—escapes into another dimension before the law can touch him.

Marguerite can’t let the man who destroyed her family go free, and she races after Paul through different universes, where their lives entangle in increasingly familiar ways. With each encounter she begins to question Paul’s guilt—and her own heart. Soon she discovers the truth behind her father’s death is more sinister than she ever could have imagined.

A Thousand Pieces of You explores a reality where we witness the countless other lives we might lead in an amazingly intricate multiverse, and ask whether, amid infinite possibilities, one love can endure.

Disclaimer: I received this e-ARC from HarperTeen via Edelweiss in exchange for my honest review.

Review:

"The Firebirds allow me to travel through dimensions, but not through time."

That quote above is a very clear and concise description of the Firebird and reading that was very helpful to me. So many science fiction books don't explain things well, or if they do explain them, the explanation is overly complex and makes it hard to follow. Gray was able to boil it down to the basics which was great to see and it helped me enjoy the book more because I understood what was going on.

I was worried that this book wouldn't work for me. I love parallel universe stories, but the cover of this book was so stunning, I was afraid that the book wouldn't match the gorgeous cover. I am so glad to say that I was wrong, and really wrong. 

A Thousand Pieces of You is slow in the beginning and normally that would bother me a lot, but I stuck with it because I wanted to give this book some time to really hook me. Right around page 60, it really began to pick up and from that point on I was fascinated by the world, or rather, worlds that Gray had created in this story.

I don't know which boy to trust at this point. I don't like Theo all that much and I do like Paul. I'm just not sure if I like him with Marguerite. Marguerite is a bad ass on her own and I do think she's in love with Paul and that he is in love with her as well. I'm just not sure if the book really needed the romance or if it would have been stronger without it.

"I fell in love with one Paul. I fell in love with his unchanging soul. Does that mean I fell in love with every Paul, everywhere?"

I do think Paul has goodness in his heart, but I think Marguerite is conflicted due to the things that happen throughout the book. Things that she can't answer. Questions that plague her mind every single day. She begins to question what actually happened to her father. She begins to second guess everything that everyone is telling her, in every dimension.

A Thousand Pieces of You is a wild ride that will take readers on an adventure through multiple universes. I really enjoyed this one and I cannot wait to see where it goes next. 4 stars to this captivating book with captivating characters. I would completely recommend this book to lovers of science fiction.

Review: All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

Book Title: All The Bright Places

Author: Jennifer Niven

Published Date: January 6th, 2015

Publisher: Random House Children's

Genre: YA Contemporary

Standalone

Book Link: Goodreads

Pre-Order Links: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, The Book Depository

Synopsis from Goodreads:

The Fault in Our Stars meets Eleanor and Park in this compelling, exhilarating, and beautiful story about a girl who learns to live from a boy who intends to die.

Theodore Finch is fascinated by death, and he constantly thinks of ways he might kill himself. But each time, something good, no matter how small, stops him.

Violet Markey lives for the future, counting the days until graduation, when she can escape her Indiana town and her aching grief in the wake of her sister's recent death.

When Finch and Violet meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school, it’s unclear who saves whom. And when they pair up on a project to discover the “natural wonders” of their state, both Finch and Violet make more important discoveries: It’s only with Violet that Finch can be himself—a weird, funny, live-out-loud guy who’s not such a freak after all. And it’s only with Finch that Violet can forget to count away the days and start living them. But as Violet’s world grows, Finch’s begins to shrink.

This is an intense, gripping novel perfect for fans of Jay Asher, Rainbow Rowell, John Green, Gayle Forman, and Jenny Downham from a talented new voice in YA, Jennifer Niven.

Disclaimer: I received this e-ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

Review:

I was so, so excited for this book. I loved the synopsis and was so confident that this book would be a new favorite of mine. I hate to admit it, but I was wrong. I think I was hit by the hype-monster and unfortunately this book didn't work for me.

I love well developed and interesting characters, but neither Violet or Finch was very interesting to me. I didn't care for either of them all that much. They weren't awful characters necessarily, but they definitely should have been developed more extensively. To me, it didn't feel like the author took the time to delve into their characters. We know them on one level, but I truly feel like every character could be like an onion and if developed well, the readers can see that as they are reading.

Normally I don't mind dual POVs, but in this case, they didn't work for me. I couldn't differentiate the different characters. Both Violet & Finch's voices sounded very similar, which really bugged me. To do a dual POV well, the characters voices have to be different and they cannot sound the same or else it doesn't seem realistic.

Now, I did enjoy the writing. It was very pretty, and the writing was the main reason I even stuck with the book. I don't know how to describe the writing. Saying it was pretty doesn't seem like enough. 

 I was hoping the book would improve for me and I'd fall in love with it like everyone else has.It kills me to say that I didn't enjoy this book, but I didn't. In a book like this, characters are so important and when they aren't developed well, that generally ruins a book for me. Unfortunately, I have to give this book 2 stars. It just wasn't for me. Lots of other people have loved it, so I would still recommend it. Maybe you will love it.

My Reading Challenges For 2015

Hi guys!

This year, I wanted to participate in more challenges, but I really didn't want to be overwhelmed. So I chose two different challenges. One is brand new and the other one, I participated in last year, and enjoyed, so I decided to do it again.

I decided to join the Flights of Fantasy Reading Challenge, hosted by Alexa @ Alexa Loves Books as well as Rachel @ Hello, Chelly because last year I didn't read very much Fantasy and one of my biggest goals of 2015 is to read more YA Fantasy. I'm really excited to get to be introduced to new worlds this year.

Last year, I participated in the 2015 Netgalley & Edelweiss Reading Challenge hosted by Emily @ Falling for YA, and when I found out Emily was going to do it again, I knew I wanted to do it again.. The whole point was to attempt to keep up on our review piles. I ended up being reasonably successful, but to be honest, I don't even know my final number for that one. 

So these are the challenges that I am participating in. Are you participating in any challenges in 2015?