Event Recap: The DUFF Screening Presented by Tumblr with Mae Whitman and Robbie Amell!

February 19, 2015February 19, 20151 Comment

Last week, prescription I was all gearing up to go on a date (yes, viagra a date AGH) when I got an email from a super cool lady named Christina from Tumblr, order inviting me to an exclusive screening of The DUFF, with some of the cast in attendance.

And I freaked out a little. I had already seen the movie and some of the cast but you guys know me, I was NOT going to turn down another chance at meeting my number one celebrity crush (besides Mike Trout), Robbie Amell. What a conundrum and confusion on what to do!

Luckily, it all worked. My date decided to hang out with me at the screening for the day, so I got to hang out with a super cool guy AND see The DUFF and Robbie Amell again.

This was possibly the coolest screening I have ever been to, and I’m not just saying that. I’ve been to a ton of screenings and this one just took the cake.

First off, it was put on by Tumblr, who gave us a TON of swag. I got a tumblr bag, all these buttons and stickers, a DUFF shirt (which I proudly wore this past weekend at Gallifrey One) and a Tumblr sweater that I literally keep wearing because its so massively comfortable.

We then were escorted into the theater, where my jaw basically dropped. This theater was BEAUTIFUL. Super large, reclining seats with pillows and blankets and these little tables and personal tablets to order food on. I was like, I seriously can’t see a movie at any other theater ever again. Ever again.

Then came MORE free stuff. We got free drinks, either strawberry lemonade or watermelon lemonade. I got the watermelon lemonade and it was something new and absolutely delicious. They also had a candy bar (mmm, gummy bears) and handed out free popcorn before the movie. I also ordered a pizza because I just couldn’t resist ordering something from the super fancy tablet thing. Seriously, this theater blew my mind.

Then it was movie time :) I loved the movie just as much as I did the first time, if not more. I know they changed a lot about the movie but the fact that they really kept the core message, that meant a lot to me. The DUFF is all about realizing that there are always going to be people that you think are prettier or smarter or whatever than you, but you have to be confident and happy with the person that you are and things will be okay and I’m glad they kept that part in. If you’d like to read my recap of the last screening AND a spoiler free review of the movie, check it out.

After the movie, they brought out Robbie Amell and Mae Whitman who play the two main characters in the movie to do a short Q and A. It was fun to see them talk about the movies, focusing on the self-confidence part of the story. I also liked hearing them talk about other projects, and about teens and all of that. This is a YA book so it meant a lot that the questions stayed geared toward YA themes and issues. It was awesome. Plus, I spent most of the time drooling over Robbie, much to the amusement of my wonderful date haha.

Then they lined us up and we were able to get our professional photo op with Robbie and Mae. I absolutely LOVE when they do this. They did this with Vampire Academy too and I think that’s great when they do. They know this is an experience for the fans and they do what they can to make it a great experience and I seriously appreciate that. I’m more likely to write about an event with high praise when it feels like I matter and I definitely felt like I matter.

I’m especially happy with the way the picture turned out, because these are two of my favorite people and they were SO nice. I was going to stand in between them but it was like my body had a mind of its own and I just went straight for Robbie haha, and Mae just laughed and was like “its all good, I know he’s hotter than me.” Which made me laugh. Then I was able to say that I loved them in Arrested Development and The Tomorrow People, which is SO very true, and I squealed a bit, again, to the amusement of my date.

All in all, great night. I would seriously do another screening through them again, easily. It was a ton of fun, I enjoyed the movie, enjoyed meeting part of the cast, and the whole movie experience was just fantastic.

And I have the most comfortable Tumblr sweater ever so there’s that too ;)

Make sure to go see The DUFF in theaters this Friday! Remember, every single YA adaptation needs YOUR support so that more movies with our favorite characters get made so head to the theater this weekend and watch the movie! Even if its only just see Robbie Amell’s beautiful abs ;)

Book Review: Fairest by Marissa Meyer

February 13, 2015March 26, 2019Leave a comment

Genre:

Young Adult, Science Fiction

Pages:

222

Part of a Series?:

Companion Novel in the Lunar Chronicles

Release Date:

January 27th, 2015

You Can Find the Book At:

GoodReads Summary:

In this stunning bridge book between Cress and Winter in the bestselling Lunar Chronicles, Queen Levana’s story is finally told.

Mirror, mirror on the wall,
Who is the fairest of them all?

Fans of the Lunar Chronicles know Queen Levana as a ruler who uses her “glamour” to gain power. But long before she crossed paths with Cinder, Scarlet, and Cress, Levana lived a very different story – a story that has never been told . . . until now.

Marissa Meyer spins yet another unforgettable tale about love and war, deceit and death. This extraordinary book includes full-color art and an excerpt from Winter, the next book in the Lunar Chronicles series.

My Review:

While there will be no spoilers for Fairest in this review, there will be spoilers for Cinder, Scarlet and Cress. Please be aware of that when continuing.

I LOVE Marissa Meyer and the Lunar Chronicles, so when I discovered I would have to wait nearly two years for the conclusion after reading the beautiful book that is Cress, I was heartbroken. However, we had this book in between and I’m so glad it exists.

The thing about Levana is that she is the bad guy. She is the villain. She’s the one we’re spending all these books fighting. Its hard to ever think that we could get behind her point of view. But that’s kind of what this book is for. Not necessarily to get you on Levana’s side, but to give you the background on how she began the queen that she is.

When the book first starts, I actually felt really bad for her. Her sister, the way she’s treated by others, the accident that left her…well, desperate to use a disguise all the time…you actually feel sorry for her. For a moment, I felt confused that I wouldn’t know how to feel about her, especially with Winter releasing this fall.

But it didn’t take long for the things to go opposite of how Levana plans them and the character that we’ve grown to know in the books surfaces. But so much worse than we could have imagined. She is sick in the head, the ideas that she has and the measures she takes in order to fulfill her own desires and to quench her own insecurities….its insane! This book is short, chronicling Levana’s life until what we know now and it just blows my mind. You wonder how this little girl that you felt so sorry for just became so misguided and cruel. Her cruelty comes mostly from her insecurities and its sickening. Marissa has created an incredible villain in that even when you’re reading her side of the story, you’re still blown away at what she is capable of.

I think it was a great story, and it really added to what we already know in the series. I think seeing Winter and Selene (aka Cinder) was incredible as well, because we see them under Levana, and what she really truly thinks of them, and its just…ugh. Its gross. Its hard to imagine someone so insecure, so unsure, that they go to the lengths that Levana does.

But it also made me even more excited for Winter. Seeing Winter as a child, seeing what she and her father went through, and her poor mother…its just heartbreaking and I can’t wait to see how this series ends. Marissa Meyer creates the most compelling characters and this is only further proved in Levana’s story.

Rating:

5 out of 5 Stars

Book Review: Revenge, Ice Cream and Other Things Best Served Cold (ARC) by Katie Finn

February 12, 2015February 11, 20151 Comment

This advanced readers copy was provided to me in exchange for an honest review. This in no way had an effect on the integrity of my review. Thank you Macmillan Teen.

Genre:

Young Adult, viagra 100mg Contemporary

Pages:

400

Part of a Series?:

The 2nd Novel in the Broken Hearts and Revenge Trilogy

Release Date:

May 5th, 2015

You Can Find the Book At:

GoodReads Summary:

The war rages on between Gemma and Hallie in the second installment of the Broken Hearts and Revenge series.

After the humiliating events on the 4th of July, Gemma’s trying to handle the fact that Hallie knew who she was all along, and she was the one who stole Teddy from her. Gemma vows revenge, but things get more complicated than she planned. Ford, Gemma’s long-time crush, has arrived in the Hamptons cuter than ever. Josh is refusing to speak to her after she lied to him, and Teddy is playing champion to his beloved Marsh Warbler (in Gemma’s backyard, no less).

Gemma and Hallie find themselves locked in an escalating revenge cycle. Just when Gemma thinks she has the upper hand, the biggest bombshell of all is dropped. And it’s one that threatens to change her life forever.

My Review:

Please keep in mind that while there will be no spoilers for this book, there will be spoilers for Broken Hearts, Fences and Other Things to Mend. Please check out my review for that here.

I adore Morgan Matson, so it goes without saying that I absolutely LOVE Katie Finn as well. Morgan has beautiful stories that usually make me all emotional. Katie Finn, her alter ego, makes me laugh, and have a blast while reading. Its great to get both of these from the same person.

When Broken Hearts left off, we had a cliffhanger. A pretty major one. Hallie had revealed some crazy things. She had known who Gemma was all along and had spent the summer doing everything she could to get revenge of what Gemma did to her family years ago. It literally blew my mind and I remember closing the book and thinking, ” I need the next one. Now.”

Which is precisely how I feel about this book as well!

Katie serves up a delicious story just like she did the first time around. We enter the book with Gemma feeling the sting of what happened with Hallie and Josh and all of that. She’s not sure what to do until…well, things keep going wrong. Her and Hallie, their fight isn’t over yet and Gemma is determined to get her revenge on what Hallie did to her this summer. And the results are pure hilarity. This book reminds me of a primetime teen drama, like something you’d see on Disney Channel or The CW and I mean that as a total compliment. When there isn’t massive drama, there’s laughter and revenge and hilarity and I sped through this book because its just so fun. At every turn, you think Hallie or Gemma has the upper hand and then the other one comes back with a WHAM and the story spins off in a completely different direction. Its a roller coaster ride of fun, and I’m on it for the long haul.

I was also really excited to meet the new characters in the novel: Ford, Gwyneth, and Darcy especially. They all added flavor and color to the novel and I was glad to have them aboard for this story. Especially Ford. I think some great things are coming ahead for us in Ford. And I also think there was a secret revealed about Gwyn toward the end that might just cause some problems in the future a little.

All in all, I LOVED this book. It was fun and juicy and the perfect beach read, which means its going to be the perfect book to pick up in May. And that cliffhanger! I thought Katie had left us hanging in the first book but she reveals another shocking secret right on the last page and leaves me hanging in the balance, ready for the next book. I, for one, can’t wait to see how things continue to unfold for these teens in the Hamptons and am anxiously awaiting that conclusion!

Rating:

4 out of 5 Stars

Book Review: The Ruby Circle by Richelle Mead

February 11, 2015February 11, 2015Leave a comment

Genre:

Young Adult, cure Paranormal

Pages:

348

Part of a Series?:

The finale to the Bloodlines series

Release Date:

February 10th, stomach 2015

You Can Find the Book At:

GoodReads Summary:

Sydney Sage is an Alchemist, about it one of a group of humans who dabble in magic and serve to bridge the worlds of humans and vampires. They protect vampire secrets—and human lives.

After their secret romance is exposed, Sydney and Adrian find themselves facing the wrath of both the Alchemists and the Moroi in this electrifying conclusion to Richelle Mead’s New York Times bestselling Bloodlines series. When the life of someone they both love is put on the line, Sydney risks everything to hunt down a deadly former nemesis. Meanwhile, Adrian becomes enmeshed in a puzzle that could hold the key to a shocking secret about spirit magic, a secret that could shake the entire Moroi world.

My Review:

Please keep in mind, while there will be NO spoilers for The Ruby Circle, there might be spoilers for previous books. Please check out my past reviews for those books!

I feel like I have been waiting for this book to come out forever, and really, it hasn’t been that long. But I WHIPPED through this thing and I’m so completely satisfied.

I love this story and I love that Richelle Mead was able to take the world that she built in the Vampire Academy series and continue it so well in this series. The relationship that she builds between Sydney and Adrian, especially after their marriage in Silver Shadows, is so real, and feels like it was just meant to happen all along. Who knows? Maybe it was haha. But I love the continuation of their relationship in this book. Now that they’ve got the chance to be honest about their relationship…they have the struggle of getting everyone else on board with it. But they also have the struggle of figuring it out themselves. What they are willing to do for each other, how they fight together, how they trust each other. Its a beautiful, real relationship and I enjoyed every single minute of it while reading this book. The love that Sydney and Adrian have for each other…its just beautiful.

But what I really love about this book is how it concluded the series. It was GREAT. I’ve had such wariness with authors lately on how they conclude series. They’ve been sloppy or rushed, all kinds of things. This ending was great. From the beginning, they’re on the hunt for Jill and the hunt for Jill takes a lot of time, effort, hard work and a lot of super fun fight scenes. What I love about this is that everyone has their piece in it. We get to see Sydney using her magic, Adrian using his spirit magic, the guardians fighting their way. I love every bit of it. In Vampire Academy, it was centered on the fighting of the dhampirs and a few Moroi but in this book, we get such a hodge podge of people working together: Moroi, dhampir, alchemist, human witches, the Warriors of Light, etc. Its amazing.

We also get to explore and discover more. We see a commune of dhampir women who have chosen a life different from a guardian. We have new revelations about dhampirs and Strigoi and spirit magic. We have a super fun revelation about Dimitri and Adrian that I won’t go into because SPOILERS. We get to meet new characters and revisit old characters and I just loved every single minute of it. It was action and romance and drama and it was a great ending. I loved seeing Adrian and Sydney’s story conclude and I loved seeing new things happen but I also loved seeing Rose and Dimitri together. ESPECIALLY after the epilogue!

But I’ll also say this…I love the things that Richelle did with this book. She concluded the story, left us with a satisfying ending, all the loose ends tied up. For the most part. She opened up some new ideas, left us hanging a little, left us wondering. I think that means we just might get some more VA stories soon and I’m ALWAYS okay with that.

Rating:

5 out of 5 stars

Book Review: Inspire by Cora Carmack

January 28, 2015January 26, 20151 Comment

Genre:

New Adult, ampoule Romance, sick Fantasy

Pages:

284

Part of a Series?:

First Novel in a Trilogy (?)

Release Date:

December 15th, more about 2014

You Can Find the Book At:

Book Depository

GoodReads Summary:

Kalliope lives with one purpose.

To inspire.

As an immortal muse, she doesn’t have any other choice. It’s part of how she was made. Musicians, artists, actors—they use her to advance their art, and she uses them to survive. She moves from one artist to the next, never staying long enough to get attached. But all she wants is a different life— a normal one. She’s spent thousands of years living lie after lie, and now she’s ready for something real.

Sweet, sexy, and steady, Wilder Bell feels more real than anything else in her long existence. And most importantly… he’s not an artist. He doesn’t want her for her ability. But she can’t turn off the way she influences people, not even to save a man she might love. Because in small doses, she can help make something beautiful, but her ability has just as much capacity to destroy as it does to create. The longer she stays, the more obsessed Wilder will become. It’s happened before, and it never turns out well for the mortal.

Her presence may inspire genius.

But it breeds madness, too.

My Review:

Seriously. Cora. How can you do this to me? First, you made me fall in love with Carson. And then Silas. Then, let’s face it, I’ll probably fall madly in love with Torres. But in the meantime, I just fell madly in love with Kalli and Wilder.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book. It wasn’t that I didn’t think it was going to be good because the Rusk University series has seriously made me fall madly in love with Cora as a writer. I read Inspire because it was on sale for 99 cents and I couldn’t really turn down a deal like that, especially when I was feeling a little slumpy (despite the hundred books sitting in a pile, waiting to be read), so I decided to buy it.

And I just love it. It was such a beautiful and addicting book. I didn’t think it was possible for Cora to make me love her more as a writer but it was. I immediately absolutely love Kalli. You’re in her head, and you feel her struggle. She’s a goddess, a muse, weighed down by this power that she has to use…but also is dangerous to use as well. You feel her struggle and you just want her to have a normal life. She immediately felt like someone I would want to be best friends with, and not just because she would help my writing flourish haha.

Then we enter Wilder. And they immediately have a connection, from their brief encounter at the grocery store, to their first encounter…in…the…shower, I was sold on them. Their romance was quick, thrilling, sexy, hot. There is a thread of fate between them and I knew that I wanted them together so badly. They had an incredibly chemistry, and there are some seriously steamy scenes between them that made me blush in all the best ways possible. You really want to root for them. You really want Kalli to have a normal life even though she really can never possibly be normal.

And that’s where things get complicated. The book is in split point of views, so that we get both sides of the story, Kalli and Wilder. And when we learn things about Wilder that Kalli doesn’t know (which I can’t say, because, you know, spoiler free), your hands are clutched tightly to the pages, frantically flipping, waiting for the moment when things are going to implode, because inevitably shit is going to hit the fan. And when it does, I was in near tears, hoping that things were going to work out. This book is an emotional roller coaster. It made me laugh and blush, and it made me pant and it made me tear up more than once.

What really gets me about this book though is that its so different from anything we’ve seen from Cora yet. She says that fantasy is actually her forte, what she had spent many years writing and that she went with the contemporary of Losing It, to try and get published. Now, having read Inspire, you can see how that was something she felt so comfortable writing for so long. It seems effortless, the world and characters that she has created and I bought into almost immediately. And its a story of Greek mythology that I definitely don’t think is out there. Kalliope and her sisters, the muses, you don’t see versions of that at all.

All in all, Cora completely scores with this fantasy romance, with her characters, her steamy scenes and the mythology she weaves into the novel. Its beautiful and she leaves me with such an epic cliffhanger that I was super disappointed when the book ended. Luckily, hopefully, I won’t have to wait too long to find out what happens next!

Rating:

4.5 out of 5 Stars

Book Review: Pushing the Limits by Katie McGarry

January 28, 2015January 26, 2015Leave a comment

Genre:

New Adult/Young Adult Romance

Pages:

392

Part of a Series?:

The first in a series of companion novels

Release Date:

June 1st 2012

You Can Find the Book At:

GoodReads Summary:

No one knows what happened the night Echo Emerson went from popular girl with jock boyfriend to gossiped-about outsider with “freaky” scars on her arms. Even Echo can’t remember the whole truth of that horrible night. All she knows is that she wants everything to go back to normal.

But when Noah Hutchins, medical the smoking-hot, girl-using loner in the black leather jacket, explodes into her life with his tough attitude and surprising understanding, Echo’s world shifts in ways she could never have imagined. They should have nothing in common. And with the secrets they both keep, being together is pretty much impossible.

Yet the crazy attraction between them refuses to go away. And Echo has to ask herself just how far they can push the limits and what she’ll risk for the one guy who might teach her how to love again.

My Review:

Katie McGarry has been floating around in my peripheral vision of YA/NA literature for quite some time now. I think the first book I noticed by her was Crash Into You, which I believe is the third in the series. But I remember a lot of hype around it when it came out and I remember seeing it on the shelves of bookstores and all that and I remember thinking, well I’ll read it soon.

Now I’ve been in one of the worst slumps I’ve ever had. Ever. Guys, last year I read 208 books. With less than a month left in this year, I’m at 120 books. 120. I read two books total in the month of November. I have a stack of roughly 100 books that need to be read and I just can’t read right now. Its awful.

That being said, this book really helped to pull me out of a seriously rough slump. I immediately fell for both characters. They both felt real and it was easy to fall in love with them. I felt like it was easier to fall in love with them than it was for them to fall in love with each other. That was seriously cheesy. But very very true. They had instant chemistry and I believed in them right off the bat. Their romance had ups and downs, and it was difficult and there were secrets and it wasn’t perfect, but that’s what made it good. Romance isn’t perfect, relationships definitely are NOT perfect. And their romance is great.

What I really loved about this book is that the characters are great in themselves, separate from each other. Echo and Noah both have incredible stories, they’re both trying to figure out their lives and move on and come to terms with the things that have happened to them. And I’ve read books where it can seem cheesy or overdone or too dramatic but it didn’t feel like that at all. Everything that the two of them go through, especially Echo, really feels real. Even though I’ve never gone through these sorts of things, I felt connections with them. I felt their journey, their emotions.

Bottom line, great book. I’m excited to continue onto the rest of the series because truly, a great romance, a great character story and Katie is a fantastic writer.

Rating:

4 out of 5 stars