Review: My Heart and Other Black Holes

My Heart and Other Black Holes
Author: Jasmine Warga
Publication Date: February 10th 2015
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
~A copy was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review~

Sixteen-year-old physics nerd Aysel is obsessed with plotting her own death. With a mother who can barely look at her without wincing, classmates who whisper behind her back, and a father whose violent crime rocked her small town, Aysel is ready to turn her potential energy into nothingness.

There’s only one problem: she’s not sure she has the courage to do it alone. But once she discovers a website with a section called Suicide Partners, Aysel’s convinced she’s found her solution: a teen boy with the username FrozenRobot (aka Roman) who’s haunted by a family tragedy is looking for a partner.

Even though Aysel and Roman have nothing in common, they slowly start to fill in each other’s broken lives. But as their suicide pact becomes more concrete, Aysel begins to question whether she really wants to go through with it. Ultimately, she must choose between wanting to die or trying to convince Roman to live so they can discover the potential of their energy together. Except that Roman may not be so easy to convince

After reading All the Bright Places last year, I was a little apprehensive about reading My Heart and Other Black Holes, because of the mess All the Bright Places left me in. So I am so glad I can say that I loved My Heart and Other Black Holes for some of the reasons why I loved All the Bright Places and for other reasons that All the Bright Places didn't give me. Hope.

Guest Review Amber: What Curiosity Kills

What Curiosity Kills (The Turning #1)

Author: Helen Ellis
Publication Date:  May 1st 2010
Publishe Sourcebooks Fire

Pages : 288

Rough estimate of time it took to read: 7 Hours

Source: Gifted by Kirsty

Nobody can know your secret.
Nobody can know your power.
But if nobody knows who you are to begin with...what's stopping you?

I whisper, "What's so special about me all of a sudden?"

Nick says, "The Turning."

Mary feels different, but can't explain why. The fainting, the strange cravings...and worse, the things she's noticed about her body.

Mary doesn't know where to turn. If she tells her parents or her sister, she'll risk losing everything. She has no other family, no way of knowing if what she's going through is normal. Everyone she's ever known and loved could reject her...

I found What Curiosity Kills easy to read even if some of the words tripped me up a little bit. It's fast paced, but paced well with the well thought out plot, and I thought it was executed just as good. Even though there isn't another, I would've liked to have read it.

Waiting on Wednesday (#90)

"Waiting on" Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Breaking the Spine that spotlights upcoming releases.

Asking For It by Louise O'Neill

Expected publication:  September 3rd 2015 by QuercusChildrens

FROM THE WINNER OF THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR AWARD.

It's the beginning of the summer in a small town in Ireland. Emma O'Donovan is eighteen years old, beautiful, happy, confident.

One night, there's a party. Everyone is there. All eyes are on Emma.

The next morning, she wakes on the front porch of her house. She can't remember what happened, she doesn't know how she got there.

She doesn't know why she's in pain.

But everyone else does. Photographs taken at the party show, in explicit detail, what happened to Emma that night.

But sometimes people don't want to believe what is right in front of them, especially when the truth concerns the town's heroes...

One reason. It's Louise O'Neill. I loved Only Ever Yours (which is currently only £2.84 on Amazon) so obviously, I'm going to read anything she writes.

What're you waiting on?

Review: The Secrets We Keep

The Secrets We Keep
Author: Trisha Leaver
Publication Date: April 28th 2015
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
~A copy was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review~

A girl takes over her twin sister's identity in this emotionally charged page-turner about the complicated bond between sisters.

Ella and Maddy Lawton are identical twins. Ella has spent her high school years living in popular Maddy's shadows, but she has never been envious of Maddy. In fact, she's chosen the quiet, safe confines of her sketchbook over the constant battle for attention that has defined Maddy's world.

When—after a heated argument—Maddy and Ella get into a tragic accident that leaves her sister dead, Ella wakes up in the hospital surrounded by loved ones who believe she is Maddy. Feeling responsible for Maddy's death and everyone's grief, Ella makes a split-second decision to pretend to be Maddy. Soon, Ella realizes that Maddy's life was full of secrets. Caught in a web of lies, Ella is faced with two options—confess her deception or live her sister's life

The Secrets We Keep is a hard one to review, because whether you agree with Ella's decision or not, you will never know what you would do in her situation, unless you have a twin. It's bad enough losing a sister or brother, but a twin, that's the other half of you? That's a whole different bond only twins have, especially identical twins. It is character driven, and because of that I'm not quite sure how I feel about it.

When Maddy and Ella were younger, they were inseparable and as close as you expect twins to be, until Maddy drastically changes after falling in with the 'in' crowd in high school and started dating Alex. The way she acted, the way she did her hair and makeup, to everything she wore changed to appease the people around her. Maddy shut off the way she used to be, and effectively, shutting out Ella. 

Review: Everything That Makes You

Everything That Makes You
Author: Moriah McStay
Publication Date: March 17th 2015
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
~A copy was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review~ 

One girl. Two stories. Meet Fiona Doyle. The thick ridges of scar tissue on her face are from an accident twelve years ago. Fiona has notebooks full of songs she’s written about her frustrations, her dreams, and about her massive crush on beautiful uber-jock Trent McKinnon. If she can’t even find the courage to look Trent straight in his beautiful blue eyes, she sure isn’t brave enough to play or sing any of her songs in public. But something’s changing in Fiona. She can’t be defined by her scars anymore.

And what if there hadn’t been an accident? Meet Fi Doyle. Fi is the top-rated female high school lacrosse player in the state, heading straight to Northwestern on a full ride. She’s got more important things to deal with than her best friend Trent McKinnon, who’s been different ever since the kiss. When her luck goes south, even lacrosse can’t define her anymore. When you’ve always been the best at something, one dumb move can screw everything up. Can Fi fight back?

Hasn’t everyone wondered what if? In this daring debut novel, Moriah McStay gives us the rare opportunity to see what might have happened if things were different. Maybe luck determines our paths. But maybe it’s who we are that determines our luck

In the style of Just Like Fate, Everything That Makes You is cut into two different stories, a what if scenario, only with Just Like Fate, I actually liked it and though Caroline made some rash and stupid decisions, you could understand her, sympathise with her. Fioana and  "Fi" not so much. Wasn't the whole what if scenario was a way of thinking that if Fiona didn't get her face scarred when she was younger, she would be a different person?

If Everything That Makes You meant to say, that no matter what happens to you, you were always meant to be a certain person, then it succeeded, Because she was a horrible person both ways. If you think I'm being mean now, hang around a while. Fiona is a spiteful little bitch. There we go. She's bitter, which okay, you can get, she's bitter at the world, at herself, she has low self-esteem, given all that: she's still a bitch. To her family, to her so called friends, to her boyfriend, self deprecating , selfish and completely takes things for granted. Isn't having something so horrible like this happen to you, supposed to make you have a real long look at yourself and see just how strong you are? To make yourself a better person? Even the "Fi" What If, she was still like this and because of that, even though we know which part is which, I had a hard time differentiating  the two, and considering the names are in the chapter titles, it shouldn't be that hard.

Guest Review Amber: Shadows

Shadows (Dark Touch #1)

Author: Amy Meredith
Publication Date: April 1st 2010
Publisher: Red Fox

Pages : 240

Rough estimate of time it took to read : 14 Hours

Source: Gifted by Kirsty

Fifteen-year-old Eve Evergold is cute, sassy and enjoying a busy social life. What she doesn't know yet is that someone close to her is an evil demon that only she has the supernatural power to defeat. She needs to work out who it is - and fast! Because although there's something very attractive about the dark side...dating a demon? Pure hell!

I'm going to keep this review short since it's a short book, more like a novella than a full-length novel, and I'm not sure what I feel about it, either.

I'm not sure what to think of this book, the last 6-8 chapters were  worth the read but all the previous ones well I just feel like majority it was wasting my time to read. I really struggled with this book. I don't know what to think as I said the last couple chapters were very very good and made me want to read the next book in the series. But looking at the book over all I would have to admit not worth the read unless you are like me and have to finish a book once you've started just to get the satisfaction of knowing you slugged through it and completed a small challenge.