Thoughtless by S.C. Stephens

Publisher's Description:

For almost two years now, Kiera's boyfriend, Denny, has been everything she's ever wanted: loving, tender and endlessly devoted to her. When they head off to a new city to start their lives together, Denny at his dream job and Kiera at a top-notch university, everything seems perfect. Then an unforeseen obligation forces the happy couple apart.

Feeling lonely, confused, and in need of comfort, Kiera turns to an unexpected source—a local rock star named Kellan Kyle. At first, he's purely a friend that she can lean on, but as her loneliness grows, so does their relationship. And then one night everything changes...and none of them will ever be the same.

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I want to address a major point of the novel first. I don't usually take issue with love triangle stories per se, especially where the author has thoughtfully constructed delicate but powerful relationships. Unfortunately, love triangles are all too often a part of real life, and if art mimics life, love triangles are bound to appear in novels. (Especially YA because we all know what being a teenager can be like sometimes.)

I do have a very hard time stomaching cheating or adultery however. (It made me very uncomfortable through Emily Giffin's Something Borrowed and it was probably my least favorite part of Gone with the Wind.)

I had to dock Thoughtless a few stars for the way my stomach turned during pivotal plot points. The bottom line is this is a love triangle that takes place during a relationship. The main female character, Kiera cheats on her boyfriend, Denny with his best friend Kellan while she is still with Denny. She's with him both emotionally and physically and I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse. (She can't makeup her mind because she loves them both? Or she has so little respect for them both?)

Luckily I really liked Kiera as a character. I identified with her although we have little in common. I came to understand where she was coming from, even if I didn't agree with it and I appreciated the realistic guilt the author had her suffer. (Not over-dramatic, but deep and cutting.) If you are less bothered than I am by cheating then this might not be as much of an issue for you.

I also really appreciated the unique setting and the older age of the characters and Stephen's ability to write them as adults and not as teenagers who just happen to be in their mid-20s. They actually act their age. They have their own goals, ambitions and weaknesses. Character development is definitely one of Stephen's strengths and her secondary characters are as likable, if not more likable, than her main characters. They have their own personalities and don't just mesh into one giant blob in the background.

Oh, and some of the scenes will leave you heart thuddingly breathless. If you read Thoughtless, you know I'm talking about the rain scene. Stephens writes tension - both good and bad - masterfully. She does a great job of balancing anticipation and gratification so the reader doesn't spend the entire book waiting for action and so there isn't too much of it that it gets old.

I only gave it three stars because of the explicit cheating, the kind of cliched plot-idea (A rockstar? Really?) and because the writing isn't going to change your life. The plot moves briskly but there are parts that drag when they shouldn't or breeze past when they should be slower and more developed.

All in all, 3 out of 5 stars ain't bad and I liked it enough to read the sequel. 

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Publisher's Description:

Diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer at 13, Hazel was prepared to die until, at 14, a medical miracle shrunk the tumours in her lungs... for now.

Two years post-miracle, sixteen-year-old Hazel is post-everything else, too; post-high school, post-friends and post-normalcy. And even though she could live for a long time (whatever that means), Hazel lives tethered to an oxygen tank, the tumours tenuously kept at bay with a constant chemical assault.

Enter Augustus Waters. A match made at cancer kid support group, Augustus is gorgeous, in remission, and shockingly to her, interested in Hazel. Being with Augustus is both an unexpected destination and a long-needed journey, pushing Hazel to re-examine how sickness and health, life and death, will define her and the legacy that everyone leaves behind

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I really shouldn't write a review right after I've finished the book. But I really want to. A book hasn't made me cry since the end of Harry Potter. I don't even know where to start with this one. When I first picked it up I had heard so many good things about it that I thought it couldn't live up to the hype. I didn't want to like the book, I was fairly sure I would hate it. Surprise: I'm not a fan of Perks, and I really expected this to be Perks 2.0... but it wasn't.

The characters are wonderful. They're developed and strange and real and flawed. The plot is so strange, parts of it are so surreal and parts of are it so trivially "cancer plot points" that it makes you stop and think, maybe this is what it's like. Maybe this is what Hazel and Augustus are dealing with. Some things stay so unapologetically normal and predictable, while some things are wild and out of control and the strangest part is how they all come together without your permission.

John Green does an excellent job of keeping the teenagers teenagers, and the parents parents, the doctors doctors and the strage recluse the strange recluse. His language is powerful but accessible, sometimes quirky. I was often uncomfortable with his vocabulary (or maybe, Augustus's vocabulary) but that was part of what gave the book life. The Fault in Our Stars is not what you want it to be. It's not perfect, it is it's own story. But it is wonderful.

Find The Fault in Our Stars on Goodreads.

Top Ten Tuesday: The Very Top of my TBR Pile

This week's Top Ten Tuesday (hosted as always, by The Broke and the Bookish), we're talking our top ten books on the top of our TBR list for Spring 2013. 

I know for many bloggers this will be a lot of books that are coming out this spring. I'm a little OCD with my TBR list though; I almost always have to read things in the order that I added them to my list. The only exception of course, is that series must be read in order and don't have to be read back-to-back. You'll see a number of repeats on here from last week's series to read list. I didn't really get the series phenomenon until I started blogging, but I can't seem to stop now. 

      

1. Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruis Zafon - Shadow of the Wind is really holding me up at the moment. While it's a sweet, interesting story, I'm just not getting into it the way some people have. Although I have heard that it has a fantastic ending, so that might change yet!

2. Dark Lover by J.R. Ward -  I know, I knowwww. This is going to take me forever, the series is crazy long! I'm hoping I love it so it can last forever.

3. Paper Valentine by Brenna Yovanoff

4. Hopeless by Colleen Hoover

5. Graceling by Kristin Cashore

    

 

6. Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

7. Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

8. Requiem by Lauren Oliver - I know so many of you have already read this even though it was just released, but my OCD tendencies say it's gonna have to wait it's turn.

9. In the Woods Tana French - gotta mix it up with some adult contemporary fiction.

10. City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare - reading for the series challenge, since I started reading The Mortal Instruments last year as part of my read the books being turned into movies crusade.

What are your top reads this spring?

Anything you think I should break my rules for and bump up?

Share your TTT or a link in the comments so I can scope out new recs!

Sunday Coffee and Company

Sunday Coffee and Company

I've always thought of Sunday as the very end of the week, rather than the beginning, despite what the calendar makers would have us believe. 

Sundays I like to spend the morning curled up with a cup of coffee going over all of those links I've saved during the week to "read later." 

Sometimes we all need a little mental break from the novels we're reading to exercise our brains with something shorter, fun, or new. Here is a collection of my favorite reads, books, news articles, essays and discussions from around the web this week.

Online Reads:

The Ghost Writes Back, A 'Sweet Valley High' Ghostwriter on Living a Double Life by Amy Boesky via The Kenyon Review. In her twenties, Amy Boesky lived a double life. By day, she was a Harvard graduate studying English at Oxford. By night, she was a ghostwriter for the popular teen book series Sweet Valley High. Over the course of six years, Boesky wrote more than 50 books for the series under the pseudonym Kate William.

The Professor, the Bikini Model and the Suitcase Full of Trouble by Maxine Swann via NYT Magazine. A world-renowned physicist meets a gorgeous model online. They plan their perfect life together. But first, she asks, would he be so kind as to deliver a special package to her?

Serial Thriller by Megan Garber via The Atlantic Magazine. From literature to appointment television, episodic storytelling is flourishing.

Podcasts:

This American Life: Harper High School - Part I and Part II -  Chicago Public Media and NPR - By far one of the best This American Life's in a while... heavy and fantastic. A must-listen.

Part I - We spent five months at Harper High School in Chicago, where last year alone 29 current and recent students were shot. 29. We went to get a sense of what it means to live in the midst of all this gun violence, how teens and adults navigate a world of funerals and Homecoming dances. 

Part II - We pick up where we left off last week in our second hour from Harper High School in Chicago. We find out if a shooting in the neighborhood will derail the school's Homecoming game and dance. We hear the origin story of one of Harper's gangs. And we ask a group of teenagers: where do you get your guns?

How Coffee Works - (link to the .mp3) Stuff You Should Know podcast - There’s a 98 percent chance you’re drinking coffee right now. Maybe not, sure, but coffee is ubiquitous – about 80 percent of Americans consume coffee and Brazil alone has 3 billion coffee plants. Learn all about the great black brew in this episode.

Articles:

Women in Their 20s Shouldn't Feel Bad About Wanting a Boyfriend by Leslie C. Bell via The Atlantic. But a lot of them experience ambivalence about being in a relationship. A therapist asks why.

The Papal Conclave 2013 (The Search for Benedict XVI's Successor) a collection of articles via The New York Times concerning the upcoming Papal conclave and information about Pope Benedict XVI and his possible successors.

Wired's SXSW Liveblog - Couldn't make it to Austin this year but still want to know what's going on? Wired has you covered with a minute by minute liveblog every day of the festival. Tune in for the good stuff, tune out for the bad. It's practically like being there.

That's all I've got for you this week, share your thoughts if you've read or listened to any of them.

Any great articles I missed? Let me know!

The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling

Publisher's description:

When Barry Fairbrother dies unexpectedly in his early forties, the little town of Pagford is left in shock. Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war. Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils…. Pagford is not what it first seems. And the empty seat left by Barry on the town’s council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations?

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I really didn't begin reading The Casual Vacancy expecting Harry Potter, or anything like Harry Potter. I didn't expect any magic or a fantasy world. I didn't expect that the novel would be written for young adults and/or appropriate for children. I fully expected something deeper, richer, even darker (as I had been warned) from Rowling.

I did however, expect better storytelling, better developed characters and in general, better writing. I refuse to believe that J.K. Rowling is limited to the YA genre, but The Casual Vacancy doesn't inspire much confidence.

It's almost as if Rowling turned around and said, "What can I write about that is entirely the OPPOSITE of what I've been writing about? What will shock the world and make them realize I'm not just a children's writer? Let's make this a character study, then lets throw in rape, cutting, suicide, adultery, drug use, lying, child abuse, dying children, overtures of incest and poverty."

It was just... too much. I was so tired of trying to care about the characters that by the end of the book I would have been thrilled however it ended, no matter how miserable they were. It was exhausting even to try to enjoy the last section of the book.

Biggest literary disappointment recently, hands down.

Top Ten Tuesday: Series to Start

Today's Top 10 Tuesday from The Broke and the Bookish is perfect timing! Joining the book blogging world beyond Goodreads has introduced me to so many new obsessions in the blogosphere, usually in the form of favorite or beloved book series. Since I joined the 2013 Series Catch-Up challenge this year, I've been even more motivated to knock some of these off of my TBR list!

My Top Ten Series I'd Like to Start:

1. The Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire) series by George R.R. Martin

I've loved watching Game of Thrones on HBO because it's so beautiful, but I bet the storyline is far better in this wildly popular series.

2. The Stephanie Perkins "trilogy"

Sometimes I think I'm the only person in the entire book blogging world who hasn't read these beloved books. I have to say the new covers just make me want to pick them up even more now!

3. The Wolves of Mercy Falls series by Maggie Stiefvater

I've seen these on shelves and in hands forever, but for the longest time thought they looked like a yet another Twilight ripoff, but I'd like to make my own mind up.

4. The Daughter of Smoke and Bone series by Laini Taylor

People absolutely rave about Laini Taylor's writing and if there's one thing I love more than just good storytelling, it's great writing. This is definitely at the top of my "to-read" series list and will probably be one of the first ones I pick up this year

5. The Uglies series by Scott Westerfield

These have been out so long they're almost a "classic" but I've never even glanced at them!

6. The Unearthly series by Cynthia Hand

I know you're not supposed to judge a series by their covers, but check out how cool these look. Plus, I'd love to know what the hype is all about.

7. The Lunar Chronicles series by Marissa Meyer

That Lunar Chronicles series is so hot right now. No, but really... I feel so left out since I haven't read either of these, or the next two, Cress and Winter. Love these not-so-classic retellings.

8. The Shatter Me series by Tahereh Mafi

Another somewhat controversial pick, people seem to uniformly love Shatter Me although theres some difference in opinion on the last one, and wherever there are differences I like to make up my own mind.

9. The Grisha series by Leigh Bardugo

This series sounds like it has an incredibly detailed and believable fantasy world. It reminds me a little of Harry Potter, not because of the plot but because of the uniqueness and depth of the world it's set in. I'm looking forward to seeing if people are right about that.

10. The Graceling Realm series by Kristin Cashore

Of all the series I've seen online, I don't think I've ever seen a bad word written about this one. I actually have been putting off starting it because I'm a little afraid I might fall in love with it as well.

Those are my picks! What are yours? 

Leave me a link or your URL to check out!

Book Review: The Rook by Daniel O'Malley

Publisher's Description:

"The body you are wearing used to be mine." So begins the letter Myfanwy Thomas is holding when she awakes in a London park surrounded by bodies all wearing latex gloves. With no recollection of who she is, Myfanwy must follow the instructions her former self left behind to discover her identity and track down the agents who want to destroy her.

She soon learns that she is a Rook, a high-ranking member of a secret organization called the Chequy that battles the many supernatural forces at work in Britain. She also discovers that she possesses a rare, potentially deadly supernatural ability of her own.

In her quest to uncover which member of the Chequy betrayed her and why, Myfanwy encounters a person with four bodies, an aristocratic woman who can enter her dreams, a secret training facility where children are transformed into deadly fighters, and a conspiracy more vast than she ever could have imagined.

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I wasn't sure what to expect when I picked up The Rook. My brother bought the novel for me for Christmas and gave me a strange look when he handed it over "You know this was in the Sci-Fi section right?" I had no idea. The best thing about The Rook is that it's very difficult to categorize. It's not fantasy really, it's not science fiction, it's definitely not a young adult book like the cover might suggest.

I really enjoyed the structure of the book. As Myfanwy begins to discover who she is through the letters she has left herself, we are gradually introduced to her story, the world she lives in and the backstory of the plot. It becomes a very clever and compelling way to "information dump" knowledge about the world that O'Malley has created without overloading the actual text with unnecessary details and lengthy descriptive paragraphs. (The bane of fantasy novelists everywhere.)

The heart of the plot itself is an interesting concept. A super-secret agency within the United Kingdom that is responsible for taking care of the supernatural problems of the country. Many of the agents have their own supernatural powers, taken from their parents when young and trained for the agency their whole lives, making them particularly qualified for their jobs.

Half sci-fi/supernatural/fantasy book and half government/spy book, the novel takes a number of really interesting twists and turns along the way. My biggest complaint is that it is long. Really long. Unnecessarily long. While it never felt "draggy" - it was not exactly concise either, and could have been edited down signficantly. But if you're not looking for a super quick read, it's very enjoyable.