Fictional Crush of the Week: Clary Fray from The Mortal Instruments Series

In celebration of the end of the Mortal Instruments series, cure this week’s Fictional Crush post is on a character that started it all in this series.

There is a quote from City of Heavenly Fire in the quotes section so if you’re avoiding spoilers, cialis 40mg I would avoid that section.

Character Name:

Clarissa Morgenstern aka Clary Fray

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Book or Series They Appear In:

The Mortal Instruments Series

City of Bones, City of Ashes, City of Glass, City of Fallen Angels, City of Lost Souls, City of Heavenly Fire 

Author/Creator:

Cassandra Clare

Played By: 

Lily Collins

Who They Are:

Clary Fray is the main character of the Mortal Instruments series. She’s short, redheaded, and has a love for drawing. She’s an ordinary teenager living in New York when she witnesses a murder, by a group of people that only she can see. When one of them comes back, she meets Jace, who is a half-angel, half-human warrior called a Shadowhunter. She soon discovers that she too is a Shadowhunter, kept secret by her mom for years. She soon gets wrapped up in the Shadowhunter world when a Shadowhunter gone rogue named Valentine starts to threaten the peaceful world that they’ve managed to create. In the second trilogy of the series, she’s forced to come face to face with her brother Jonathan, who literally wants to burn down the world, so he can rule among the ashes.

Why I Am Crushing On Them: 

Clary! Clary is a fantastic character in this series and I honestly did not give her enough credit at first, even though she was the main character. I thought she was kind of a trouble maker and that she whined a lot but as I read the books over and over again, I began to like her more and more. I mean, first off, she’s a teenager, of course she whines. And secondly, her troublemaking ways are just her ways of being stubborn and strong. She’s not all that different from me, to be honest. I love that from the beginning, when she’s a simple mundane (human) girl, she’s so brave and strong. She throws herself, untrained, at demons and vampires and more just to save the people that she loves. Its incredible. Its incredible that she struggles to come to terms with her new life, and that she works so hard to become a true Shadowhunter. Without too many spoilers for CoHF, she really becomes a fighter, and fights alongside Jace and Isabelle and Alec and its absolutely incredible. Its so great to see her come that far. She’s determined. She’s also hilarious and has beautiful sarcasm. Plus she’s a little hot tempered redhead and you can never go wrong with that!

Notable Quotes: 

“I don’t want tea,” said Clary, with muffled force. “I want to find my mother. And then I want to find out who took her in the first place, and I want to kill them.”

“But I don’t want anything else in the world.”

“I figured all your classes were stuff like Slaughter 101 and Beheading for Beginners.”

“The other ten percent.”

“Well, when I was five, I wanted my mother to let me go around and around inside a dryer with the clothes,” Clary said. “The difference is, she didn’t let me.”

“You know,” Clary said, “most psychologists agree that hostility is really just sublimated sexual attraction.” 

“I’m not an angel, Jace,” she repeated. “I don’t return library books. I steal illegal music off the internet. I lie to my mom. I am completely ordinary.”

“When you love someone, you don’t have a choice. Love takes your choices away.”

“I love you, Clary wanted to say. And, I would do it again. I would always ask for you. But those weren’t the words she said. “You’re not my brother,” she told him, a little breathlessly, as if, having realized she hadn’t yet said them, she couldn’t get the words out of her mouth fast enough. “You know that, right?”

“Sarcasm is the last refuge of the imaginatively bankrupt.”

“There are a hundred trillion cells in the human body,” she said, “And every single one of the cells of my body loves you. We shed cells, and grow new ones, and my new cells love you more than the old ones, which is why I love you more every day than I did the day before. It’s science. And when I die and they burn my body and I become ashes that mix with the air, and part of the ground and the trees and the stars, everyone who breathes that air or sees the flowers that grow out of the ground and looks up at the stars will remember you and love you, because I love you that much.”

Broken Hearts, Fences and Other Things to Mend Book Challenge!

For those of you who may not know, about it I was lucky enough this year to become part of the Fierce Reads Street Team. I was SO incredibly excited about this because I adore Fierce Reads and all the amazing authors that are a part of it. I was even more excited when I was asked to help promote Katie Finn (aka Morgan Matson) and her new contemporary YA novel, Broken Hearts, Fences and Other Things to Mend.

I was sent a challenge to complete for this book, so I definitely want to do it. Check out the synopsis for the book first:

Summer, boys, and friendships gone sour. This new series has everything that perfect beach reads are made of!

Gemma just got dumped and is devastated. She finds herself back in the Hamptons for the summer—which puts her at risk of bumping into Hallie, her former best friend that she wronged five years earlier. Do people hold grudges that long? 

When a small case of mistaken identity causes everyone, including Hallie and her dreamy brother Josh, to think she’s someone else, Gemma decides to go along with it.

Gemma’s plan is working (she’s finding it hard to resist Josh), but she’s finding herself in embarrassing situations (how could a bathing suit fall apart like that!?). Is it coincidence or is someone trying to expose her true identity? And how will Josh react if he finds out who she is? 

Katie Finn hits all the right notes in this perfect beginning to a new summer series: A Broken Hearts & Revenge novel.

You can check out my spoiler free review here!

Now on to the challenge!

Gemma or Hallie? 

As much I love both of these characters, and the sort of balancing each other out they do and the antics they get into it, I have to say Gemma. I don’t know if its because we’re in Gemma’s head, but I just adore her. I love that she’s stumbling along, trying to do the right things but not always accomplishing that. I love that she knows she makes mistakes and that she tries to fix them, but sometimes, she also messes that up. She’s a very real character and I adore her.

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Favorite Character? 

Oh that’s so hard! I loved so many of the characters in this book. AGH. How dare you make me pick! This is too hard. Sigh. I think I’d have to choose…Sophie. Sophie doesn’t have a ton of “screen” time because she’s back home while Gemma is in the Hamptons with her father, but when she is, she’s fantastic. She’s the kind of best friend that we would wish to have. She’s fun, and she’s ready to step into her best friend duties at any moment. When Gemma is like “I’m you and you’re me”, she just goes with it. She questions it, like a real best friend, but she gives in and helps in every where she can, and she’s just awesome. She’s so much fun. I love Sophie!

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Gemma Fancast: 

“We still had brown hair and freckles, but Sophie tended to cover hers with make-up, and her hair was cut in a stylish, choppy bob while mine was kind of long and shapeless.”

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The first person I thought of was Sarah Hyland because, yes, she’s absolutely pretty but she’s also fun, and sort of fun looking. You look at Sarah and you think, she’s going to be so much fun to hang out with. She would be a really great fit for Gemma. The only thing she doesn’t have is the height for Gemma but she has a good look and I think she’d capture her personality so well that it wouldn’t matter :)

Favorite Quote: 

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This just makes me laugh, just thinking about it. It just hints at the absolutely fun hijinks that this book is.

I also like a quote from the beginning of the novel:

“I could never remember the details of the documentaries Teddy wanted to watch. All I knew was that they were never the ones I wanted to see, which were mostly about penguins.” 

And I swear, it has NOTHING to do with my obsession of penguins ;)

Hallie Fancast: 

“She had the same eyes, green and almond-shaped. Her hair was a slightly darker shade of the bright blond I remembered, but it was still long and curly, and it flowed over her shoulders and down her back.”

Model-Maika-Monroe-Photoshoot-2013-7

I’m not going to lie, I literally googled young blonde actresses because I didn’t quite know who to pick and Maika Monroe popped up. She has this fun, beautiful look to her and she’s how I’d imagine that Hallie looked. I think Hallie has this beauty and confidence about her, something that both intimates and attracts Gemma to her, and you can see that in just this picture alone.

Broken Hearts, Fences and Other Things to Mend Theme Songs

Here are some songs that I enjoyed listening to during the summer, and they are the ones that immediately came to my mind when reading it. I don’t know that they have anything directly to do with Broken Hearts, but they’re very summer songs, and they are what I thought of. These are  two songs that I listened to when I was about Gemma’s age!

Boys of Summer – The Ataris  

Yellowcard – Ocean Avenue

Josh Fancast

“He had light brown hair, cut short, and eyes that looked greenish, but that might have just been because he was wearing a pale green T-shirt. He had dark eyelashes and eyebrows and though it was hard to tell because I was sitting, but it looked like he was a few inches taller than me, which meant he was pretty tall.”

"X-Men: First Class" New York Premiere

Lucas Till. I think he’s absolutely adorable, you can believe him as the brother of Maika and he would make a really great Josh. He looks like a boy who belongs on the beaches of the Hamptons. Plus I just have a massive crush on him, and its my fancast, so a girl can dream! Haha!

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

I hope you enjoyed learning more about Broken Hearts and that you’ll make sure to check it out and grab yourself a copy! Katie Finn is constantly on the road, promoting her books, as either Katie or Morgan, so definitely look out for her, and this awesome book.

And watch out tomorrow for my Top Ten Reasons to Read Broken Hearts!

Weekly Fangirl Round-Up!

Nerd Girl News

Doctor Who, look Series 8 has a premiere date AND a teasing teasing teasing teaser trailer!

The first chapter of Marie Lu’s new book, The Young Elites, has been revealed!

Debut novel, Love Letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira, has been optioned for film!

Stephanie Leigh Schlund, Cashmere in Catching Fire, confirmed that she joined the cast of Insurgent, as a yet to be revealed member of Amity.

Alfonso Cuaron has been confirmed as NOT directing Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

More promotional images for The Maze Runner have been shared!

Mockingjay Filming continues in Berlin, check out some photos!

Two More People have Been Cast for Insurgent!

More Dragons are coming our way! Netflix confirms a How to Train your Dragon spin-off TV series!

Watch the new trailer for Daniel Radcliffe’s rom com, What If!

Pixar’s 2015 film “Inside Out” has an official synopsis.

Some news of True Detective, season 2, has been revealed: it will have THREE main characters.

Emma Watson, queen bee, and our Hermione Granger, has graduated from Brown University!

One Direction fan fiction “After” has officially gotten a publishing deal.

Robbie Amell, my future boyfriend, has been cast in a role in the movie adaptation of The DUFF.

Secrets about the could-have-been season 2 of Starcrossed were revealed.

Posts and Vlogs

Happy 2nd Blog Birthday What A Nerd Girl Says and HUGE HUGE Giveaway! (One more week to enter!)

Monday Missions Vlog

City of Heavenly Fire Vlog Review (Spoilers!)

Book Review: City of Heavenly Fire by Cassandra Clare (No Spoilers!)

Book Review: All Lined Up by Cora Carmack

Ontario Teen Book Fest Recap!

Why The Mortal Instruments is Important to Me!

Book Review: Broken Hearts, Fences and Other Things to Mend by Katie Finn

Book Review: Broken Hearts, Fences and Other Things to Mend

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This review is based an advanced reader’s copy given to me by Macteen Books as part of the Fierce Reads Street Team in exchange for an honest review and promotion. This in no way had any influence on my review.  

You Can Find the Book At:

GoodReads

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Author Website

GoodReads Summary:

Summer, here boys, price and friendships gone sour. This new series has everything that perfect beach reads are made of!


Gemma just got dumped and is devastated. She finds herself back in the Hamptons for the summer—which puts her at risk of bumping into Hallie, site her former best friend that she wronged five years earlier. Do people hold grudges that long? 

When a small case of mistaken identity causes everyone, including Hallie and her dreamy brother Josh, to think she’s someone else, Gemma decides to go along with it.

Gemma’s plan is working (she’s finding it hard to resist Josh), but she’s finding herself in embarrassing situations (how could a bathing suit fall apart like that!?). Is it coincidence or is someone trying to expose her true identity? And how will Josh react if he finds out who she is? 

Katie Finn hits all the right notes in this perfect beginning to a new summer series: A Broken Hearts & Revenge novel.

My Review:

I had no idea Katie Finn was Morgan Matson when I first got this book. I was SO excited, and am still VERY excited to be a part of the Fierce Reads Tour. Fierce Reads has a ton of amazing authors like Jessica Brody and Leigh Bardugo and Ava Dellaira and all kinds of authors. Being a part of their team has been awesome so far, and I was glad to be a part of it. When I became part of Katie Finn’s team, I was like, okay, I don’t know her, but that’s okay because I’m always up for learning about new authors.

I felt sort of silly when I went to go download my review copy and realized that she was Morgan Matson, one of my favorite authors ever. I urged my computer to download faster, and then cuddled up with my Nook to read this book.

I read it in about 2 hours. I sped through it so fast, because it was so much fun! It was really awesome to see a different writing side to Morgan. As Morgan, she writes sort of serious, dramatic YA, and as Katie Finn, it was a lot of fun, laughs, sort of unbelievable hijinks and I really truly enjoyed it. Whenever summer hits, I’m always looking for some good contemporary books to read, something involving road trips or trips to the beach and Broken Hearts is absolutely perfect in that.

Gemma is a real relatable character. She makes a mistake when she is younger, and she’s constantly feeling guilty about it. When she arrives to spend the summer with her father, and runs into the best friend she had so many years ago, the one she wronged, she genuinely wants to make things better. Of course, she goes about the wrong way, but she really is a genuine person and I think she’s hurt by her ex-boyfriend and just kind of making the mistakes that people make sometimes when they don’t quite know what to do with themselves. Plus, she makes some silly mistakes along the way too, and it makes me laugh. She gets herself into some of the craziest situations and I found myself laughing out loud at many of the parts.

I also love Josh. Josh is the brother of the girl Hallie that Gemma had wronged so many years before, and she has a vague memory of him, but when she returns, of course he’s totally cute and totally sweet, and crush-worthy. I totally developed a crush on him. Despite the train wreck of silliness that Gemma can sometimes be, he obviously cares a lot about her, and they are very cute together. Its a fun, summer romance and I love being along for that ride.

Getting down to it, without spoiling the book…its just fun. Its a really fun book. This is a perfect summer time read because its got the pool parties and the ice cream and the summer dates and all of that, the summer fun and, of course, the summer drama. I wanted to be a part of that world, and it reminded me of the summers I used to have before having jobs and responsibilities. It was juicy and racy and just straight up fun. I found myself laughing over and over and over again.

I will say this too, I wasn’t aware that it was a trilogy at first, because normally with contemporary, there is very little times, a sequel. So when the book ended, I was like “WHAT!” I never knew a contemporary book could leave me with such a delicious and infuriating cliffhanger. I wanted to throw the book across the room because I HAD to know what happened next. I turned the page and saw that there would be more books and felt a slight sense of relief that I would eventually find out what happened next, but I’m not a patient girl and I’m already ready for it!

All in all, fun book, full of everything you’d want in a perfect summer book…or even a book that you’re reading in winter, while dreaming of summer. It has the friendship and romance and pool parties and delicious treats and the rule breaking and all of that. Its a feel good, fun book and its one that I so HIGHLY recommend.

Rating:

5 out of 5 Stars

Why The Mortal Instruments Series is Important to Me

Pre-warning: there are NO City of Heavenly Fire spoilers in this post! 

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This past Tuesday, shop May 27th was the day that City of Heavenly Fire hit bookshelves. It is the very last book of The Mortal Instruments series. While we are going to be in the world of Shadowhunters for years to come, what with The Dark Artifices and The Last Hours series coming to bookshelves, this series is the one that started it all. I will get to read more of Shadowhunters and the Shadow World but it was bittersweet to say goodbye to Clary, Jace and the rest in this series. If you haven’t had a chance, you can check out my spoiler free review here, or my spoiler filled vlog here.

Continue reading

Book Review: City of Heavenly Fire by Cassandra Clare (Spoiler Free!)

8755785Genre: 

Young Adult, buy Urban Fantasy

Pages: 

725

Part of a Series?:

The final book of The Mortal Instruments series

Release Date: 

May 27th, stuff 2014

You Can Find the Book At:

GoodReads

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Book Depository

Author Website

GoodReads Summary:

I am coming.

Darkness returns to the Shadowhunter world. As their society falls apart around them, Clary, Jace, Simon and their friends must band together to fight the greatest evil the Nephilim have ever faced: Clary’s own brother. Nothing in the world can defeat him — must they journey to another world to find the chance? Lives will be lost, love sacrificed, and the whole world changed in the sixth and last installment of the Mortal Instruments series!

My Review:

I will warn you now: there will be NO NO NO NO NO spoilers for City of Heavenly Fire in this review, but there will be spoilers for City of Bones, Ashes, Glass, Fallen Angels and Lost Souls. If you’re reading this and you haven’t read the first five, I can’t imagine why you’re here, but I would suggest not reading this review.

Now I’m going to jump in. I was very excited for this book but also incredibly apprehensive. I loved the way the first trilogy of this series ended, City of Glass is beautiful and it remains my favorite. Fallen Angels was disappointing to me, and Lost Souls was better but I just didn’t feel like the second half of the series was good for me. I was happy with how City of Glass ended.

That being said, now after reading City of Heavenly Fire, I can say…that City of Glass is still probably my favorite of the entire series but City of Heavenly Fire was incredible and I’m highly impressed and I thought that the ending was really great.

It wasn’t perfect though, but I’ll get to that later. I’m going to be as spoiler free as I can possibly be, but if you literally want to know nothing before you read this book, I suggest you go. I promise to be spoiler free, and vague but it still may not be enough for you.

First off, the story. When we leave Sebastian at the end of Lost Souls, with the Infernal Cup, and the ability to transform the Nephilim into darker versions of himself, I thought, where on earth is this going? We know Sebastian is insane, and that the demon blood in his body has made him into a sick person but I couldn’t see exactly where the story was going in this book. It opens up with Sebastian attacking Institutes in order to build up his Dark Shadowhunter army. The fear of him is real, and the building tension and fear throughout the story is very real. I was clutching the pages, anxious to get through because I had to know what happened next. It wasn’t just the whole “it’s the end of the series” anxiety but also the “Ohmygod, what is happening, what is Sebastian doing, what is going to happen to my favorite characters” anxiety.

The romance in the story is absolutely beautiful too. There are so many great romances in the Mortal Instruments series and seeing them interact and struggle and work together, it was beautiful, and I loved all of it. I do love that we get to see Jace and Clary fight together, side by side for the first time in the series. Its the first time we really truly see them as equals and I absolutely loved it. There are a few couples that don’t make it, all heartbreaking but done in ways that killed your heart but also made sense too, if that made sense. Its hard to explain without feeling like I’m revealing stuff but the couples that didn’t make it together, it hurt but it was done in a way that it made sense and it was heartbreaking in all the right ways. Plus there are a lot of FANTASTIC sexy scenes, enough to get all of us Shadowhunters all hot and bothered.

We’ve known for awhile now that we would meet the main characters of The Dark Artifices-Emma Carstairs and Julian Blackthorn-would be introduced in this and I was surprised with the…frequency that they appeared in the story. I won’t say more than that but what little we get to know of them as young Shadowhunters-in-training in CoHF makes me absolutely love them and I can’t wait to dive into their stories later. I also like that we get what seems like hints for Lady Midnight in this book.

Again, from the hints, and from Clockwork Princess (if you haven’t read that, please skip to the next paragraph), that Brother Zachariah would be…no longer a Silent Brother anymore. Again, no spoilers, but this scene caused me to burst into uncontrollable tears and the interaction between him and Jace was beautiful. I marked it in my book because it was truly one of my favorite scenes in the book.

I did have some issues with the end. I think that Cassandra Clare could have been…harsher than she was, and that she could have taken more risks than she ended up taking. I was disappointed that the sort of sacrifices she made didn’t make as much of an impact as she could have. Its so hard to talk about it without spoilers but I just thought Cassie could have taken more risks. I thought that the direction she took with Simon’s story was the sort of risk I was looking for but it changed in the end to something I didn’t expect and was also kind of disappointing too. I think she went safe in the ending of the book, though heartbreaking and heart wrenching, could have been…more realistic, I guess is the word I’m looking for.

The conclusion of Sebastian’s story, I’ll just do words: unexpected. but kind of expected. perfectly written. perfect in general.

I had two favorite parts: when Zachariah, no longer a Silent Brother, meets Jace. Then there is a part when…a group of our favorite characters come into contact with a demon that makes them…see things. The things they see…its very emotional and I had to pause after I read that part in order to wipe the tears literally streaming down my face.

Basically, I am highly impressed with this book, and the fact that it brought together so much that has happened in the Shadowhunter world. We got flashes to the time of Tessa, Jem and Will, we got hints at the time of their children. We have everything of the Mortal Instruments time come together and wrap up and we have hints at what is to come in the future, and I think it all comes through nearly flawlessly and I applaud Cassie Clare a million times. I am proud to wear the fearless rune permanently on my shoulder :)

One last thing that’s SLIGHTLY (very slightly) spoilery: Simon’s band finally picks a name. And its WONDERFUL.

Ave Atque Vale, Shadowhunters. Until Lady Midnight!

Rating:

4 out of 5 Stars