Hello Lovelies~

2012 came in with a big bang in the YA world, with the release of so many amazing novels! I hope you enjoyed reading them as much as I did! I can't believe we are already into February, my how time flies!

My goals for 2012 were to find the time to read/blog more, hit the 200 follower mark (hopefully) and spend more visiting other blogger's sites and  comment back!!!

I am quite happy with the amount of books I was able to read this month, and quite shocked at the same time! I had 26 total blog posts, WOW! That's almost one per day! Eeek! Granted not all are reviews, some are meme's such as WoW, IMM, and some I do on my own such as Steals and Deals, Around Town and some discussion posts thrown in as well. Not a bad way to start of 2012 if I do say so myself! ;)

The Books 

Cinder by Marissa Meyer

The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith ( AMAZING!!! Go read it NOW!!!)

Pretty Little Liars #2 Flawless by Sara Shephard

Irises by Francisco X . Stork

New Girl by Paige Harbison

Dead To You by Lisa McMann

Chopsticks by Jessica Anthony and Rodrigo Corral

Wither by Lauren DeStefano

Fever by Lauren DeStefano ( have about 60 pages left!!!)

The Challenges

• I read 8 books towards my goal of 100 for the Goodreads 2012 Reading Challenge

• I also read 2 books towards my 2012 Ya Contemporary Challenge as well as met my personal goal of 2 YA contemps a month!

• I read 3 books towards my 2012 TBR Pile Challenge. YAY!!! This is a HUGE feat for me, and I credit it all to being sick and catching up on books I've always wanted to read!

• And last but not least, I read 4 books towards the 2012 Debut Author Challenge

Random Act's of Kindness

The lovely Loretta from Between the Pages sent me an ebook of The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan which I've been dying to read! We are reading it together this week so look for our shared blog posts on this coming up in February!

My awesome friend, and also my tv buddy, Amy from Book Loving Mom sent me an audio book of Legend by Marie Lu. Amy know how much I LOVE my dystopians and she highly recommended this one and thought I would love it! Eeek! 

Mindy from Magical Urban Fantasy Reads sent me signed copies of Cinder by Marisa Meyer and Fracture by Megan Miranda. I literally squealed when they came in the mail! Thank you soooo much!!! Mindy also bought me some other books for a few signings I'm going to in February (super sweet of her!) but I will include those in my February wrap-up after I get them autographed! I can't wait!!!

All in all January was a great month for me! I recieved some amazing gifts from friends, bloggers, and authors. I attended my first ever Mid-Winter ALA conference and had a total blast! 

I hope you all had a fantastic month as well as a great start to a brand new year! I'd love to hear about what books you were able to read this month and what goals you accomplished, so let me know it the comments! Until next month...

Happy Reading!

XOXO

Waiting On Wednesday (9)

"Waiting on Wednesday" is a weekly meme, hosted by Jill atBreaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

Miranda has Shakespeare in her blood: she hopes one day to become a Shakespearean actor like her famous parents. At least, she does until her disastrous performance in her school’s staging of The Taming of the Shrew. Humiliated, Miranda skips the opening-night party. All she wants to do is hide.

Fellow cast member, Stephen Langford, has other plans for Miranda. When he steps out of the backstage shadows and asks if she’d like to meet Shakespeare, Miranda thinks he’s a total nutcase. But before she can object, Stephen whisks her back to 16th century England—the world Stephen’s really from. He wants Miranda use her acting talents and modern-day charms on the young Will Shakespeare. Without her help, Stephen claims, the world will lost its greatest playwright.

Miranda isn’t convinced she’s the girl for the job. Why would Shakespeare care about her? And just who is this infuriating time traveler, Stephen Langford? Reluctantly, she agrees to help, knowing that it’s her only chance of getting back to the present and her “real” life. What Miranda doesn’t bargain for is finding true love…with no acting required.

 I am absolutely DYING to read this book! The story sounds AMAZING and the cover is utterly gorgeous! Look for it to hit shelves on August 14, 2012

So what books are you waiting for?

In My Mailbox ( 15)

In My Mailbox is a weekly Meme hosted by Kristi the Story Siren. This is where us bloggers get a chance to show you what we got this week! Bookish related of course!

Hello my Lovelies! I hope you all had a fantastic week/weekend! I came home from ALA sick. BOO! But I got some fabulous stuff in the mail, and it totally made up for how crappy I was feeling. I can't wait to show it to you! So let's get started...

 

 

 

For Review

The Last Echo by Kimberly Derting

The Savage Grace by Bree Despain

The Rock by Daniel O'Malley

Don't Breathe A Word by Holly Cupala

 

HUGE thank you to Holly Cupala and Harper Teen! As well as Bree Despain and Egmont! And thank you to Little Brown! You guy's made my week! <3

 

Leave me a comment and let me know what you go in your mailbox this week. Hope you all had a fantastic weekend and I will see you back here next week.

XOXO

Wither

Wither by Lauren DeStefano
Release Date: March 22, 2011
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Age Group: Young Adult
Pages: 368
Format: Hardback
Source: Own
Interest : Dystopian
Challenge: 2012 Reading Challenge
Buy The Book: Amazon

By age sixteen, Rhine Ellery has four years left to live. A botched effort to create a perfect race has left all males born with a lifespan of 25 years, and females a lifespan of 20 years--leaving the world in a state of panic. Geneticists seek a miracle antidote to restore the human race, desperate orphans crowd the population, crime and poverty have skyrocketed, and young girls are being kidnapped and sold as polygamous brides to bear more children.

 

When Rhine is sold as a bride, she vows to do all she can to escape. Yet her husband, Linden, is hopelessly in love with her, and Rhine can’t bring herself to hate him as much as she’d like to. He opens her to a magical world of wealth and illusion she never thought existed, and it almost makes it possible to ignore the clock ticking away her short life. But Rhine quickly learns that not everything in her new husband’s strange world is what it seems. Her father-in-law, an eccentric doctor bent on finding the antidote, is hoarding corpses in the basement; her fellow sister wives are to be trusted one day and feared the next; and Rhine has no way to communicate to her twin brother that she is safe and alive.

 
Together with one of Linden's servants, Gabriel, Rhine attempts to escape just before her seventeenth birthday. But in a world that continues to spiral into anarchy, is there any hope for freedom?

I have heard amazing things about Wither since it hit the YA scene a year ago. The gorgeous cover has been sitting on my shelf, collecting dust, and beckoning me to read it since I brought it home last April. Aquiring an ARC of it's sequel, Fever, was just the push I needed to finally dust this book off, and take it for a spin!

Wither isn't just another book with a pretty cover. It's a dark, yet rich and powerful dystopian, full of love, loss, and bitter conflict. I won't rehash the plot, because I'm sure most of you already know it by heart. What I will say is that Wither is definately a wonderfully written dystopain novel that I couldn't tear myself away from!

After reading the book,I can see why so many people are fans, and I am now lucky enough to join in their ranks. I was emersed into the the story and the world that Lauren DeStefano so expertly created. The story was so vividly described that I felt like I was right there in the middle of it all! I wanted to feed Rhine invisability pills and give her a map so she could run away! I wanted to reunite Jenna with her sisters, and I so desperately wanted to give Cecily back her childhood. No child should ever have to go through the things that she did, even though at times I wanted to give her a stern spanking!

Perhaps because the author so vividly painted a picture of the story, I at times felt a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach. I really felt for these girls who had been plucked from their lives, and were sent to become sister wives and baby-making machines at such an early age. I felt horribely for Rhine being seperated from her twin, and for Jenna after knowing what fate all of her sisters faced. It bothered me how young Cecily was saught out, to marry and bear children for a 20 year old man! I wanted to cry out "she is just a CHILD! Barely a teenager!!!" but even if I had, I'm not sure anyone would've listened, or cared. There were times when I forgot how young Cecily was, and others when I couldn't seem to forget.

I loved the character development throughout the story, and I look forward to watching these girls lives grow in the next book! I'm dying to find out what young and foolish Cecily is up to, and what the beautiful Rhine has in store for her.

As much as I love dystopians, I can't help but wonder, why didn't I read this book sooner? Whatever the reason is, I am glad this situation has been remedied.

The Butterfly Clues

location: home

mood:  sleepy

watching: Scarecrow and Mrs. King Season 1 ( mom has me hooked now!)

music: none

The Butterfly Clues by Kate Ellison

Release Date:  Febuary 14,2012

Publisher: Egmont

Age Group: Young Adult

Pages: 336

Format: eARC
Source: NetGalley
Intrest: Young Adult
Challenge: 2011 Reading Challenge, Debut Author Challenge, Stand Alone Challenge
Buy the Book: Amazon

Penelope (Lo) Marin has always loved to collect beautiful things. Her dad's consulting job means she's grown up moving from one rundown city to the next, and she's learned to cope by collecting (sometimes even stealing) quirky trinkets and souvenirs in each new place--possessions that allow her to feel at least some semblance of home.

But in the year since her brother Oren's death, Lo's hoarding has blossomed into a full-blown, potentially dangerous obsession. She discovers a beautiful, antique butterfly pendant during a routine scour at a weekend flea market, and recognizes it as having been stolen from the home of a recently murdered girl known only as "Sapphire"--a girl just a few years older than Lo. As usual when Lo begins to obsess over something, she can't get the murder out of her mind.

As she attempts to piece together the mysterious "butterfly clues," with the unlikely help of a street artist named Flynt, Lo quickly finds herself caught up in a seedy, violent underworld much closer to home than she ever imagined--a world, she'll ultimately discover, that could hold the key to her brother's tragic death.

I love a good murder mystery! For some reason in the YA genre this is something that is very much lacking. If you like paranormal, witches, vampires, and the like then you'll be entertained for years to come. Some of the very first books I ever read, that totally got me hooked on reading, were mysteries. So needless to say, I was thrilled about this book!

Kate Ellison delivered a stunning and intricately woven debut novel that had me biting my nails, gritting my teeth, and anxious to turn the page and find out what was going to happen next! She so cleverly wove together murder, mystery, suspense, family drama, the loss of life, and mental disorders. I was completely hooked from the first page!

I love how The Butterfly Clues isn't just your standard mystery. Kate Ellison expertely tackles the topics of death, and how it affects the entire family. Some family members pull away and others fall into a deep depression and a fog that never seems to lift. The patterns of someone who has OCD and how it affects their family and others around them. This part I especially found to be entertaining and true to form, as I personally live with 2 very OCD people in my house! Their strange quirks, and the inner struggles they fight within their own mind was so expertly depicted.

The Butterfly Clues is a great murder mystery, but its so much more! It is the story of Lo, who suffers from severe OCD. Think Mr. Monk ( my favorite dective!) but so much worse! Lo buys a necklace at a flea market, and soon discovers that it belonged to recently murdered Sapphire. Like many things in her life, that Lo can't seem to control, she is drawn in an inexplainable way to Sapphire and is determined to find out what happened to her, and why. During her search Lo discovers things about her own family, the death of her brother,and more that she never knew! Can Lo cope with the news surrounding her family,the loss of her brother, her mother's deep dression, and her own uncontrolable quirks? Or will her obsession get the better of her? Can she find the murderer before he finds her?

Well, you'll have to read this stunningly captivating, and gritting debut novel to find out!

Kate Ellison did an incredible job delivering her debut novel The Butterfly Clues. I can't wait to see what else she has in store for us. Trust me, this is one book you won't want to miss!

Chopsticks

Chopsticks by Jessica Anthony and Rodrigo Corral
Release Date: February 2, 2012
Publisher: Razorbill
Age Group: Young Adult
Pages: 272
Format: Paperback
Source: OWN
Interest : YA Contemporay
Challenge: 2012 Reading Challenge, 2012 YA Contemporary Challenge
Buy The Book: Amazon

After her mother died, Glory retreated into herself and her music. Her single father raised her as a piano prodigy, with a rigid schedule and the goal of playing sold-out shows across the globe. Now, as a teenager, Glory has disappeared. As we flash back to the events leading up to her disappearance, we see a girl on the precipice of disaster. Brilliant and lonely, Glory is drawn to an artistic new boy, Frank, who moves in next door. The farther she falls, the deeper she spirals into madness. Before long, Glory is unable to play anything but the song "Chopsticks."

But nothing is what it seems, and Glory's reality is not reality at all. In this stunningly moving novel told in photographs, pictures, and words, it's up to the reader to decide what is real, what is imagined, and what has been madness all along....

 

I first heard about this book over the summer, and I have been dying to read it ever since. As most of you know, I am a huge fan of books where the author uses other, non-traditional means to weave their tale. The bulk of Chopsticks is told through the use of photography, along with the aid of instant messages, notes, drawings and doodles to tell the tale.

I was pleasantly surprised at how the story itself, sucked me within the first 5 pages and I couldn't tear myself away! Literally! I began readiang this as my family and I headed home from ALA, it went from the car with me, straight into the resturant where we ate our lunch, and right back into the car as we finished our journey home. Yep, I couldn't even put it down to eat! It was that amazing!

Chopsticks is the story of young piano prodigy Glory. In the first few pages we learn that she has mysteriously gone missing, and we are then thrown into a flashback of her life. Between loosing her mother, her father's obsession with her gift of playing the piano, and her whirlwind career which takes her traveling around the globe, it's of no wonder this poor girl went a little mad! I'd probably bang out chopsticks endlessly too if I were forced to play the piano all day! So who can blame her for seeking solice in the arms of the super cute boy next door? But what exactly did happen to Glory?

Jennifer and Rodrigo did such an amazing job with this novel! The story captivates you in just a few short pages, and has you in a  hypnotc trance until the very last page! I loved how they weaved the story and used the aid of so many different forms of communication in such a way that I felt like I was seeing everything through Glory's eyes. I felt like I was a part of this story, and couldn't tear myself away from it. Chopsticks is very artisistically, well thought out, and cleverly done!

Embrace

Embrace by Cheri Colyer

Release Date: December 20, 2011

Publisher: Omnific

Age Group: Young Adult

Pages: 220

Format: eARC

Challenge: 2012 Reading Challenge, 2012 Debut Author Challenge

Buy The Book: Amazon

Madison is familiar enough with change, and she hates everything about it. Change took her long-term boyfriend away from her. It caused one of her friends to suddenly hate her. It's responsible for the death of a local along with a host of other mysterious happenings. But when Madison meets a hot new guy, she thinks her luck is about to improve. Madison is instantly drawn to the handsome and intriguing Isaac Addington. She quickly realizes he's a guy harboring a secret, but she's willing to risk the unknown to be with him. Her world really spins out of control, however, when her best friend becomes delusional, seeing things that aren't there and desperately trying to escape their evil. When the doctors can't find the answers, Madison seeks her own. Nothing can prepare her for what she is about to discover. Dangerous, intoxicating, and darkly romantic, Embrace is a thriller that will leave you spellbound.

I am so excited to be a part of this blog tour! I was initially drawn to Embrace by the gorgeous cover and the plot. It sounded amazing, and I was curious to see if this book would deliver. Well, let me tell you, deliver it DID!

Embrace is the story of Madison who is going through quite a few changes in her life. Her boyfriend, that she's been dating for 2 years has moved away. As if her life wasn't shaken up enough already, a new guy moves into town. Isaac is gorgeous, and quite mysterious, and definitely turning heads around school. There is something different about Isaac that has Madison immediately attracted to him. While Madison is desperately trying to sort her feelings out strange things begin happening around town. Then Madison's own best friend is hospitalized for having crazy delusions and Madison is desperate to get to the bottom of things before they get any worse. Will she be able to figure out what's causing all of these strange things before her best friend is committed permenantly? Or will she be too late?

Embrace really shocked me by how amazing it was! I was not expecting to like it so much, and I was very pleasantly surprised when I did. I read the whole thing in one day, which for me doesn't happen too often. It was an intoxicating story that sucked me in and had me guessing the entire time!

I don't want to give too much away, because it was amazing and you should definitely check it out for yourself. It had elements of mystery, suspense and intrigue coupled with true love, and friendship. I really enjoyed reading this novel and hope you decide to check it out for yourself. 

If your a fan of mystery, suspense, or paranormal you won't want to miss this one!