Wishlist Thursday[6]: The Moon and More by Sarah Dessen

The Moon and More by Sarah Dessen

Genre: YA Contemporary Romance

Publisher: Penguin (Viking Juvenile)

Publish Date: June 4th, 2013

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. Powells.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Luke is the perfect boyfriend: handsome, kind, fun. He and Emaline have been together all through high school in Colby, the beach town where they both grew up. But now, in the summer before college, Emaline wonders if perfect is good enough.

Enter Theo, a super-ambitious outsider, a New Yorker assisting on a documentary film about a reclusive local artist. Theo's sophisticated, exciting, and, best of all, he thinks Emaline is much too smart for Colby.

Emaline's mostly-absentee father, too, thinks Emaline should have a bigger life, and he's convinced that an Ivy League education is the only route to realizing her potential. Emaline is attracted to the bright future that Theo and her father promise. But she also clings to the deep roots of her loving mother, stepfather, and sisters. Can she ignore the pull of the happily familiar world of Colby?

Emaline wants the moon and more, but how can she balance where she comes from with where she's going?

Sarah Dessen's devoted fans will welcome this story of romance, yearning, and, finally, empowerment. It could only happen in the summer.

Why?:

For some reason, I have yet to review even one of Dessen’s books (mostly because I read all of them before I started reviewing), and so I have yet to express my Dessen-love. Which, there is a lot.

I’ve read all of Dessen’s book (I started with This Lullaby), loved every single one, and am always waited, excited and impatient, for the next one; which, ugh, there’s always a two year wait. I understand that it takes time to write the books and all, but I just love her books so much and always want more of them.

So, all this to say that I’m super excited for this book. I cannot wait for it to come out, and am so happy that it will be released and in my hands in only a couple more weeks. I haven't even read the synopsis of it because I want it to be a surprise, although I've caught glimpses that have only gotten me more excited.

Teaser Tuesday[47]: Fall of Night (The Morganville Vampires, #14) by Rachel Caine

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

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Fall of Night (The Morganville Vampires, #14) by Rachel Caine

Genre: YA (NA?) Paranormal Romance

Publisher: Penguin (New American Library)

Publish Date: May 7^th, 2013

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. Powells.

Wishlist Thursday.

Goodreads Synopsis (maybe don't read if haven't read previous books, 'cause of spoilers):

Thanks to its unique combination of human and vampire residents, Morganville, Texas, is a small college town with big-time problems. When student Claire Danvers gets the chance to experience life on the outside, she takes it. But Morganville isn’t the only town with vampire trouble...

Claire never thought she’d leave Morganville, but when she gets accepted into the graduate program at MIT, she can’t pass up the opportunity. Saying good-bye to her friends is bittersweet, especially since things are still raw and unsettled between Claire and her boyfriend, Shane.

Her new life at MIT is scary and exciting, but Morganville is never really far from Claire’s mind. Enrolled in a special advanced study program with Professor Irene Anderson, a former Morganville native, Claire is able to work on her machine, which is designed to cancel the mental abilities of vampires.

But when she begins testing her machine on live subjects, things quickly spiral out of control, and Claire starts to wonder whether leaving Morganville was the last mistake she’ll ever make...

Excerpt:

“Whatever was coming, they’d be facing it together.” (Hardback, pg. 196)

“‘I don’t need you to protect me.’

‘Then why am I going first?’

‘So you can take the first punch while I throw the second?’” (Hardback, pg. 197)

So, what are you reading right now?

Novel Review: With All My Soul (Soul Screamers, #7) by Rachel Vincent

Rating (Out of 5): ~4.5

Genre: YA Paranormal Romance

Publisher: HarlquinTeen

Publish Date: March 26th, 2013

Spoilers?: Minor.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. Powells.

Teaser Tuesday.

Goodreads Synopsis:

What does it mean when your school is voted the most dangerous in America? It's time to kick some hellion butt...

After not really surviving her junior year (does "undead" count as survival?), Kaylee Cavanaugh has vowed to take back her school from the hellions causing all the trouble. She's going to find a way to turn the incarnations of Avarice, Envy and Vanity against one another in order to protect her friends and finish this war, once and forever.

But then she meets Wrath and understands that she's closer to the edge than she's ever been. And when one more person close to her is taken, Kaylee realizes she can't save everyone she loves without risking everything she has....

What Will I Miss?:

• The characters, definitely. Mainly them, I think. I grew close to pretty much all of them, I like the dynamic they had going. 
• I'm also going to miss the romance, of course, because I really liked the main couple.
• I'm going to miss the way that Kaylee, as the main heroine, took charge, and the surprises that Vincent took with the series.
  

Review:

I really like this series, and it’s sad to see it go. This is a good place to stop it, though, very fitting; it’s a good ending to this series. A bit surprising, though, which is also nice.

This book draws the conclusion to the series, and thus the conclusion to the Avari plot line. And while I did like how the story left off, I didn’t particularly believe the ending. Supposedly they won’t have to deal with Avari anymore, but I just don’t trust that things would end that easy. Not necessarily that how things ended was easy to get to, because it wasn’t, but still.

Maybe I just didn’t connect with the ending as well as I could have, though. Aside from the ‘reunion’ at the very end, that was really nice.

Aside from that, though, I really enjoyed this book. I like what happened with Kaylee and Tod; I liked their sweet moments, as well as their sexy ones, and just where their relationship was by the end of the book. Although there was this soul entertwining thing that I had to expend my disbelief for, even though it was supposed to be sweet (and actually was, in a way).

I really like what happened with Nash and Sabine, how Nash seemed to have grown and I was happy that things were working out for Sabine. Sophie and Luca seem to be in a good place. Emma, by the end, seems to be moving on very well, and I’m hopeful for how things are going for her sister and the baby. I’m happy for all of their parents.

I don’t think I really have too much to say. I’m rather happy with how everything ended, with where all of the characters are at. I’m going to miss them, but this is a good time to stop the series, and this a very good ending to do it.

Also, I look forward to whatever Vincent has planned in the future for YA, which is hopefully something, although that leaves time for me to actually start her adult series. 

The Cover:

I do rather like the cover of this book. The first few covers for this series were not very good, but they got better as they went, and I think this one is especially pretty. The fact that a dress similar to the one the model is wearing is actually in the book helps, too. The Embarrassing Factor isn't too horribly high, either, which is nice.

Manga Review: Category: Freaks, Volume 3, by Gokurakuin Sakurako

Rating (Out of 5): ~2-2.5, maybe

Publisher: DrMaster Publications

Publish Date: 2007

Volumes: 4

Spoilers?: No.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. Powells. RightStuf! (or you can get a set of all three).

Goodreads Synopsis:

The world is occupied by evil spirits preying off human weaknesses and desires. But what mortal can resist possession by these "freaks" when they can make dreams reality? And what price is there to pay for the wicked union of these spirits and their human hosts? Enter Nanami Paranormal Investigations where director Asagi Nanami utilizes his own talents and supernatural aid to keep these spirits away from the folly of human weaknesses. But can they succeed when the fruit of evil is so sweet?

Review:

I started this series quite a while ago, mainly because it’s by the same author as Juvenile Orion, a series that I quite enjoyed. This one… not so much. This series is just odd, a bit confusing and messy, and even a little ecchi (not that that’s bad).

This series is short at only four volumes, but it was cancelled (or the company closed—I’m not too sure which came first, this was a rather unknown company and series) after only three. I would say that it would have been nice to have finished the series, and perhaps it would have been, but this is such a confusing series. I barely even remember what happened in this volume, and I’m not even sure if I’d have been able to describe it while I was reading it.

I do know that it’s mostly, pretty much, about a group of characters, sometimes kind of detectives, who kill Freaks, which are demon-like things that attack and possess humans. Sometimes they go undercover, sometimes they stumble upon a case—it varies, I suppose.

I’m not going to go into who each character is, because even if I did check what their name was, I was never really sure who each person was, what their part was, or really anything about their personalities. The head guy, Asagi, I found kind of interesting, as well as Naoki, a guy who seems to have kind of just stumbled into the group, I think. I did like Tokiko, kind of the mascot of the gang, who’s in the body of a little girl and detects where a Freak is and eats it. I wanted to find the relationships between the characters interesting, and I did find some of it that way, but I just never really got to know any of them enough.

The whole storyline tended to get a bit confusing at times, and I had a hard time following what was happening. Maybe that was just me, though.

I’d have liked to have liked this series more. But it’s messy and rather forgettable.

Novel Review: The Summer I Became a Nerd by Leah Rae Miller

Rating (Out of 5): ~4, maybe 4.5

Genre: YA Contemporary Romance

Publisher: Entangled Publishing/Teen

Publish Date: May 7th, 2013

Spoilers?: Minor.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. Powells.

Teaser Tuesday. Wishlist Thursday.

Goodreads Synopsis:

On the outside, seventeen-year-old Madelyne Summers looks like your typical blond cheerleader—perky, popular, and dating the star quarterback. But inside, Maddie spends more time agonizing over what will happen in the next issue of her favorite comic book than planning pep rallies with her squad. That she’s a nerd hiding in a popular girl's body isn’t just unknown, it's anti-known. And she needs to keep it that way.

Summer is the only time Maddie lets her real self out to play, but when she slips up and the adorkable guy behind the local comic shop’s counter uncovers her secret, she’s busted. Before she can shake a pom-pom, Maddie’s whisked into Logan’s world of comic conventions, live-action role-playing, and first-person-shooter video games. And she loves it. But the more she denies who she really is, the deeper her lies become…and the more she risks losing Logan forever.

Something Specific:

Quotes!:

•  "Be true to yourself and others will be true to you, too. It's a nice thought, but so not realistic." (Paperback, pg. 17) That first sentence is stated a couple of times, is kind of a main theme in the book, and I just thought it was stated in an interesting way, and that her thoughts going with it were interesting as well.
• "'If you never get told you're a wuss, you'll always be a wuss.'" (Paperback, pg. 104) I also used this quote in the Teaser Tuesday for this book, but I liked it. And it was used in a rather entertaining way in the book, and Dan (who says this) says something else similar, but I also just kind of find it to be true.
• "'It's not just high school. People are going to judge you for all kinds of reasons for the rest of your life. Because you vote one way or the other, because you go to one school or the other, because you look a certain way. It's a fact of life: you can't make everyone happy. But you can make you happy.'" (Paperback, pg. 194) I've thought things similar to this, I've heard things similar to this, and I really just like the way it's stated here.

Review:

I really enjoyed this book. Like, a lot. I was expecting to, as well, and it’s really nice when I enjoy something as much as I was hoping to.

Maddie is a cheerleader, the girlfriend to the quarterback, and hiding that she geeks out over comic books and science fiction and, when she starts doing it, LARPing (Live-Action RolePlaying). When she was younger, she got teased for being a fan of comic books, and decides that she didn’t want to feel that way ever again, and so started hiding her geek tendencies and sometimes pretending to like the things that everyone else does.

This book was a really fast read. I hadn’t even meant to really start it, since I was trying to get through a different book, only to get half-way through this one in one night, and then of course finish it the next morning. Because it went by so quickly, and it was so good that I didn’t want to stop.

So. I liked Maddie. She was very misguided and much too afraid of what other people think of her, and kept making these stupid mistakes because of those reasons, but I still liked her. I liked being in her head, hearing her thoughts as she dreads and over-thinks things and geeks out over certain things/people. And even while she was being dumb and thinking a bit too much about herself at times, she was also loyal, as best as she could be. And when she finally smarted up, she did a very good job of trying to make up for it.

I also very much liked the love interest, Logan. He’s a geek, and he’s adorkable, and he’s sweet. I felt bad for him several times because of how Maddie was treating him, and annoyed when he gave in too easily. But I still liked him and their interactions, and think him and Maddie fit well together. The way they got together, their pre-attraction to each other, it was all just adorable to me.

I like Logan’s best friend, Dan, who’s crude and loud and funny but loyal to his friends. I liked Maddie’s best friend, Terra, and also felt bad for her because of what Maddie was doing, although I do think that we could have gotten to know her better, given how little we saw of her. I also really liked Maddie and Logan’s parents, who we saw a pretty good amount of. I liked what I saw of Maddie’s brother, and would have liked to have seen him more.

I loved all of the geeky things. I liked the fangirling, and the radio show, and the comic book store, and the comics, and the LARPing was awesome.

For some reason I always like reading stories when one of the characters, usually the girl, already has a boyfriend/girlfriend, but one who they don’t really get along with for some reason. And so I liked the situation that Maddie was in, as well as the somewhat similar one that Logan was in.

So, pretty much, I really liked this book. Kind of loved it, even. I’ll probably end up re-reading/skimming it in the future for the best scenes (i.e. the romantic ones), and I will definitely be picking up Miller’s future books.

The Cover:

I rather like the cover of this book. I feel like the front image should represent the geeky parts of the book better, but I still think it's pretty. And the back cover and side on the physical book has that dotted, word-bubble look, which I think works really well for the comic book parts of the book, and I generally just think it's really adorable.

Wishlist Thursday[5]: Dare You To (Pushing the Limits, #2) by Katie McGarry

Dare You To (Pushing the Limits #2) by Katie McGarry

Genre: YA Contemporary Romance

Publisher: HarlequinTeen

Publish Date: May 28^th, 2013

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Ryan lowers his lips to my ear. "Dance with me, Beth."

"No." I whisper the reply. I hate him and I hate myself for wanting him to touch me again....

"I dare you..."

If anyone knew the truth about Beth Risk's home life, they'd send her mother to jail and seventeen-year-old Beth who knows where. So she protects her mom at all costs. Until the day her uncle swoops in and forces Beth to choose between her mom's freedom and her own happiness. That's how Beth finds herself living with an aunt who doesn't want her and going to a school that doesn't understand her. At all. Except for the one guy who shouldn't get her, but does....

Ryan Stone is the town golden boy, a popular baseball star jock-with secrets he can't tell anyone. Not even the friends he shares everything with, including the constant dares to do crazy things. The craziest? Asking out the Skater girl who couldn't be less interested in him.

But what begins as a dare becomes an intense attraction neither Ryan nor Beth expected. Suddenly, the boy with the flawless image risks his dreams-and his life-for the girl he loves, and the girl who won't let anyone get too close is daring herself to want it all....

Why?:

I am rather excited for this book to come out. I read the first one not too long ago and absolutely loved it, so I’m really hoping that this one is just as good. I’ve heard some not-so-great things about it, but I’m trying not to let that get me down. I’m sticking to my optimistic hope that it’s going to be great. It should be arriving in the mail in a couple of weeks, and I will probably start it really quickly, so I suppose I’ll find out (relatively) soon.

Also, what do you guys think of that cover? It doesn't really spark any form of intense feelings for me. I actually kind of don't like it. Not just 'cause of the embarrassing factor (I mean, the first cover had that, but I like it more than this one), but I think I don't like the positioning of the two or something. I'm not sure. I do, though, hope that there's a scene in the book where the main couple is in the rain/are wet, whether they're kissing or being romantic or yelling at each other or whatever. If not, then I'm going to be even more upset with the cover choice.