Claire Stevens's Blog, page 59

Waiting On Wednesday - Because You'll Never Meet Me by Leah Thomas

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

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Because You'll Never Meet Me by Leah Thomas

Synopsis:    Ollie and Moritz are best friends, but they can never meet, because if they ever did, one of them would certainly die. As recluses from society, they develop a fierce bond through letters that become a lifeline.

Through an exchange of letters, the two boys develop a strong friendship which becomes a lifeline during dark times – until Moritz reveals that he holds the key to their shared, sinister past, and has been keeping it from Ollie all along.

Ooh...  Sinister past?  Fierce bond of friendship?  Count me in!

What about you?  What are you eagerly waiting for?

Top Ten Tuesday - Ten Books I Plan To Have In My Beach Bag This Summer

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish because everyone likes a good list, don't they?  This week, we listing the top ten books we're brninging to the beach this summer.

This summer I'm going to Salcombe in Devon with my extended family for Regatta Week.  Note: we will be literally the only people there for Regatta Week who are not doing or watching any sailing.  The upside of this is that we'll have practically the whole beach to ourselves, and plenty of wide open beach and plenty of warm sunshine (hopefully - this is England, after all) will call for plenty of excellent reading material.  So here they are: the ten books I'll be taking on my beach holiday this year:
1)  Made You Up by Francesca Zappia.  I'm hearing nothing but good things about this  book and it's shining a deserved light on the way people live with mental illness.

2)  P.S. I Still Love You by Jenny Han.  I loved To All The Boys I've Loved Before and I've been waiting for this to come out for what seems like a decade.

3)  Sweet by Tammara Webber.  The third book in the Contours Of The Heart series (after Easy and Breakable).  Love Tammara Webber's writing.  Just love it.

4)  Wake by Amanda Hocking.  Because it's about mermaids, and mermaids live at the seaside.

5)  The Knife Of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness.  Supposed to be great, and as an added bonus the series is complete so there's no pesky waiting around for the next books.

6)  Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.  Geekery and eighties references.  What could possibly go wrong?

7)  I'll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson.  I loved The Sky Is Everywhere, so I'm really excited about this one.

8)  Hate List by Jennifer Brown.  To sombre things up a little.

9)  Allison Hewitt Is Trapped (And The Dead Are Closing In) by Madeleine Roux.  Because it wouldn't be a summer holiday without a zombie apocalypse.

10)  Weightless by Sarah Bannan.  This was recommended to me by one of my friends on Goodreads.  Merci beaucoup, Morris, it's going in my beach bag!

What about you?  What books are you reading on the beach this summer?

The Little Android by Marissa Meyer

This is the third Lunar Chronicles story I downloaded from Wattpad.  It's different from the other two in that it's more of a standalone; the only character from the Lunar Chronicles that features in it is Cinder, and she's only in it for a couple of pages.

The Little Android is based on the story of the Little Mermaid.  A mechanic android, Mech 6.0, has an unusual fascination with humans and when a new engineer comes to work in her shipyard she falls desperately in love with him.

The Little Android was such a sweet story and even though we only see Mech 6.0/Star for the equivalent of maybe a couple of chapters, I got a real sense of who  she was.  The author managed to incorporate all of the elements of the Little Mermaid story in, but within the  Lunar Chronicles world.  Plus, I loved the casting of Cinder as Ursula the Sea Witch!  Very cool.

All the way through this story, I was biting my nails, wondering whether Marissa Meyer was going to give us the Disney HEA ending, or the proper creepy Hans Christian Andersen ending.  I won't tell you which one she plumps for in case you decide to read it yourself, but just suffice to say the ending is good.

All in all, I really enjoyed the three Lunar Chronicles stories I read on Wattpad.  They're probably not as polished as her traditionally published books, but they're still really interesting little tales and give some really nice insight.

I also think it's really cool when authors do projects like this and just put some short stories out there for free, just for themselves and the fans.  And yeah, I suppose you could be cynical and say it's a marketing ploy to drive sales, but I think it shows how much the author loves the world she's built and even when she's not writing her 'proper' books, she's still thinking of other little stories within that world.

So very cool.

The Queen's Army by Marissa Meyer

This is the second in the trio of Wattpad stories Marissa Meyer wrote to compliment the Lunar Chronicles books and it tell the story of Wolf's past, before he came to Earth and met Scarlet.

The story opens with Wolf as a twelve year old boy called Ze'ev, or Z for short, being taken from his home by the queen's thaumaturge to join her bonkers army of wolf-man hybrids and then goes through his training in the army.

I really liked this installment of the short stories.  It was very violent because it details the way Wolf became the Alpha of his pack, but because he's my secret boyfriend (so secret he doesn't even know it) it was interesting to see where he came from and a snippet of his life from before the army.  It bodes well for our future as a couple, I think.

To get all the references in this story it would probably be best to read it after Scarlet.

Glitches by Marissa Meyer

This was originally published on Wattpad as a companion story to Marissa Meyer's Cinder.  It's only a short novella - probably only a chapter or so - but it gives a really lovely insight into Cinder's life in the few weeks after she wakes up from her cyborg operation.  We get to see younger versions of Cinder, Peony and Pearl and we're introduced to crazy-inventor Garan as well.  I think this novella just made me love Cinder even more - she's such a quiet little thing, not wanting to be a burden and confused at her loss of memory after her operation.  

I noticed on other reviews that Adri got a lot of hate from this novella, and while she is definitely mean to Cinder, the author does a good job of fleshing her out so she doesn't just appear as this one-dimensional baddie, whose only purpose in the book is to be a thorn in Cinder's side.  You also see that she loves her daughters and husband, is scared of a disruption to the status quo and is terrified that Garan's constant tinkering and inventing is leaving them short of cash.  You get a sense of exactly why she hates Cinder so much.

And Iko is in it too!  I love Iko!  She's so human, but she's stuck in her android body...

"I have a glitch, too.  Sometimes I forget that I'm not human."

Aw!

And check out that artwork, too.  Awesome.

Feature and Follow Friday

Feature and Follow is a weekly feature hosted by Parajunkee and Alison Can Read.  Thank you for making me a Featured Blogger this week!

The aim is to make new friends in the book blogging community and gain new followers to your blog.

This week's question is: How do you write your reviews? - Suggested by Blue Books and Butterflies

I start off by saying why I read the book (ARC, something from my TBR list, Book Club book) and give a bit of a synopsis.  Then I talk about what I liked/disliked about the plot, characters and writing.  I try to keep my reviews as positive as possible, whilst still staying honest!  

That's the plan, anyway.  I'm very aware that sometimes I go off on a complete tangent, and start talking about random anecdotes and things.  In general, my reviews of ARCs tend to be a bit more professional than books I've bought.  I guess I feel that if a publisher has been kind enough to give me a free book, they deserve something that's had a bit of time spent on it!

What about you?  Do you have a set method for writing reviews, or do you fly by the seat of your pants??

This feature is a blog hop.  Add your name and link to the Linky Tool and visit other blogs too!  Feel free to follow me onBloglovin' and Twitter.  I always follow back!

Polarity In Motion by Brenda Vicars

Polarity In Motion starts off with a bang.  Polarity Weeks is the new girl in school.  She and her parents travel around a lot and live in their trailer, searching for a cure for her mother’s borderline personality disorder.  Because Polarity has an unusual name, lives in a trailer park and writes poetry, she gets picked on a bit at school, but nothing compares to the day she looks up in class to see that everyone is ogling a nude picture of her on the internet.  What’s worse, is that she has no idea how the picture was taken of who took it.  Before she can catch her breath, she is hustled off into foster care while her parents are being investigated.

The first half of this book was kind of a roller coaster ride and I felt so sorry for Polarity and all the things she had to face.  Things just seemed to keep getting worse and worse!  Even once she was restored to her parents, her problems didn’t go away.  The paced slowed down a lot in the second half of the book where a couple of different mysteries are being solved, but the author has a nice style of writing that made it very easy to rattle through the book

I liked Polarity a lot as a character and it was good to watch her grow as a person throughout the course of the book to the point where she was holding her own with the town sheriff and the school principle. 

There is some romance in the book and while Polarity and Ethan are very sweet, I didn’t really get why she liked him so much, other than the fact he’s hot (which is obviously a valid reason!)  I would have liked a bit more interaction between them, something to really show why they’re connecting.  I did like the way they both tried to solve each other’s problems, though.

Polarity In Motion is definitely an issues book as opposed to an entertainment book and while I absolutely have to give snaps to the author for tackling the subjects she writes about (racism, drugs in schools, mental health, bullying, the care system) I would have preferred it if she’d stuck to just one or two issues and explored them in a bit more depth.

All in all though, I thought this was a pretty good book.

7/10

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.  Many thanks to Red Adept Publishing and Netgalley. 

Waiting On Wednesday - Emmy and Oliver by Robin Benway

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

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Emmy and Oliver
By Robin Benway

Publication Date
16th July 2015

From Goodreads
Oliver's absence split us wide open, dividing our neighborhood along a fault line strong enough to cause an earthquake. An earthquake would have been better. At least during an earthquake, you understand why you're shaking. Emmy and Oliver were going to be best friends forever, or maybe even more, before their futures were ripped apart. But now Oliver is back, and he's not the skinny boy-next-door that used to be Emmy's best friend. Now he's the boy who got kidnapped. A stranger - a totally hot stranger! - with a whole history that Emmy knows nothing about. But is their story still meant to be? Or are they like the pieces of two different puzzles - impossible to fit together?

Why I Can't Wait...
Okay, this is a bit of a cheat because technically I'm not waiting waiting as I actually have an ARC of this (thanks Simon and Schuster!), but I want to wait until closer to the publication date before reading and reviewing.

The whole concept of the book intrigued me - what must it be like to have your best friend suddenly go missing and then meet up with them a decade later?  And to find out that he's hot!  Bonus.  

So yeah, can't wait to get stuck into this one!

What about you?  What book are you counting down the days to?

Top Ten Tuesday - Mean Girls

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This feature was created because everyone loves a good list, don't they? 

This week is a freebie, so I've compiled a list of my Top Ten Literary Mean Girls. 10.  Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada.  The boss from hell.  My favourite bit was when she ordered Andy to obtain a copy of the as-yet-unreleased Harry Potter book. 

9.  President Coin from Mockingjay.  Talk about ‘out of the frying pan, into the fire’.  It’s like: Dear Citizens of Panem, would you rather be poisoned by cyanide or arsenic?

8.  Hatsumomo from Memoirs of a Geisha.  What a rotter.  She makes Chiyo/Sayuri’s life a misery from the moment they meet, all because she’s terrified that someone prettier might have encroached on her territory.

7.  The Marquise he Merteuil from Les Liaisons Dangereuses.  Most of her meanness comes from her living in a time when people were terrified of women having an interest in sex, but still.  She was pretty horrible.

6.  Jane from the Twilight series.  Baby-faced sadist.

5.  Dolores Umbridge from the Harry Potter series.  Mean and racist, too, which is always a great combo.  Now, all together: ‘I must not tell lies....’

4.  Catherine Earnshaw from Wuthering Heights.  Mean as a box of rats and as dumb as paint to boot.  One third of the only decent love triangle I’ve ever read.  Treated everyone meanly, especially the boy who was supposed to be her soulmate, and eventually deigned to marry the rich boy for his foppish looks and bottomless cash pit.  Nice.

3.  Scarlett o’Hara from Gone With The Wind.  She hates all other women and they hate her right back!  Where do I start on the meanness?  Stole her friend’s boyfriend, her sister’s boyfriend, owned slaves, exploited convicts, tries to steal a married man, mean to all her husbands, ignores her children...  I’ll tell you what, though: if I was ever in a monumental fix, there’s no one I’d rather have by my side!

2.  Caroline Bingley from Pride and Prejudice.  Gratuitously nasty.  Yet so fashionable.

And my top mean girl is...

1.  Sam from Before I Fall.  She's such a horrible bully in the beginning.  I mean, she paints a nail varnish line across the threshold of her room and forbids her family to cross it (although I thought her parents should really have grown a pair and said, ‘Pffft.  Don’t think so, love.’)  And she and her equally-mean friends literally bully a girl to death.  But the beauty of this book is that by the end Sam’s redemption was so complete that I absolutely loved her.  Now THAT is the mark of a great writer.  Making you love the mean girl.

What about you?  Who are your top mean girls?

Scarlet by Marissa Meyer

Scarlet is the second book in the awesome Lunar Chronicles.  I still cannot believe I left this series alone for so long.  I feel like one of those people who arrive fashionably late at a party, only to find everyone else has been having loads of fun without her.

Scarlet follows on from Cinder in the same updated fairy tale style.  After her memorable showdown at the ball and subsequent arrest, Linh Cinder escaped from jail, and is being hunted by just about everyone on Earth.  Against this backdrop Scarlet Benoit is trying to find her grandmother, who went missing from her farm in France a couple of weeks ago.

In Scarlet, the POV switches between Scarlet and Cinder as Scarlet tries to track down her kidnapped grandmother and Cinder attempts to discover the truth about her past.  Needless to say, neither plan goes as smoothly as the girls hope and I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that eventually everyone’s paths cross in spectacular style.

Again, the female leads in Scarlet are really strong (good!) and don’t take any rubbish from anyone, but they don’t derive their strength at the expense of the male characters (especially Carswell Thorne - my new Book Boyfriend).  There are no out-of-place characters, or characters who are just there as filler.  Everyone has their part to play and everyone has their own strengths and flaws.

There was this one point, when Cinder is escaping from prison and she meets rogue spaceship cadet, petty larcenist and all-round super-rake, Carswell Thorne, with his foppish hair and boyish charm, when I thought, ‘Melissa Meyer - don’t do this to me!  Don’t give me a LOVE TRIANGLE!  No!  Nooooo!’

And she didn’t. 

Because I would have had to knock a star off for that.

It’s like the author keeps introducing these little things that make me think, ‘Ah, finally.  I’ve found a flaw in this series’, only to have her whip away the cloth and reveal the potential flaw as something cool instead.

Like Cinder, I knew how the story of Red Riding Hood goes, but I still chewed my nails wanting to know what happens next.  How?  How does she do that?  And don’t get me started on the bit (about 40% in) when I remembered what happens to the wolf...

On my review of Cinder, I said that I was glad I’d left it late to read this series because I didn’t think I’d be able to stand it if I had to wait a year between these books.  Seriously.  These books are like literary crack.  I’m looking at my reading list and seeing  Cress, Fairest and her three Wattpad short stories and I’m getting clammy hands and heart palpitations, thinking, ‘That’s not going to last me until Winter comes out in November.’

See?  This is what happens when you let books take over your life.

10/10