Review: The Darkest Part of the Forest

The Darkest Part of the Forest
Author: Holly Black
Publication Date: February 5th 2015        
Publisher: Indigo
~A copy was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review~

Children can have a cruel, absolute sense of justice. Children can kill a monster and feel quite proud of themselves. A girl can look at her brother and believe they’re destined to be a knight and a bard who battle evil. She can believe she’s found the thing she’s been made for.

Hazel lives with her brother, Ben, in the strange town of Fairfold where humans and fae exist side by side. The faeries’ seemingly harmless magic attracts tourists, but Hazel knows how dangerous they can be, and she knows how to stop them. Or she did, once.

At the center of it all, there is a glass coffin in the woods. It rests right on the ground and in it sleeps a boy with horns on his head and ears as pointed as knives. Hazel and Ben were both in love with him as children. The boy has slept there for generations, never waking.

Until one day, he does…

As the world turns upside down, Hazel tries to remember her years pretending to be a knight. But swept up in new love, shifting loyalties, and the fresh sting of betrayal, will it be enough?

First things first The Darkest Part of the Forest is completely charming and holy crap, I ship this book. I don't know where it changed for me, from thinking a three to four, that's not a full blown five. It's my first Holly Black, so maybe it's the writing, the enchanting feel, the characters, the story itself, or the story within a story, or the magical way everything just is. I'll tell you one thing, I'm not a lover of Fae books, I've tried a few of them but they're not my thing as such. So it takes a lot, and I mean a lot for me to get into it, and I got sucked in, so you win, book. You win.

Review: Playlist for the Dead

Playlist for the Dead
Author: Michelle Falkoff
Publication Date: January 27th 2015        
Publisher: HarperTeen
~A copy was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review~ 

 

A teenage boy tries to understand his best friend's suicide by listening to the playlist of songs he left behind in this smart, voice-driven debut novel.

Here's what Sam knows: There was a party. There was a fight. The next morning, his best friend, Hayden, was dead. And all he left Sam was a playlist of songs, and a suicide note: For Sam—listen and you'll understand.

As he listens to song after song, Sam tries to face up to what happened the night Hayden killed himself. But it's only by taking out his earbuds and opening his eyes to the people around him that he will finally be able to piece together his best friend’s story. And maybe have a chance to change his own.

Part mystery, part love story, and part coming-of-age tale in the vein of Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Tim Tharp’s The Spectacular Now, Playlist for the Dead is an honest and gut-wrenching first novel about loss, rage, what it feels like to outgrow a friendship that's always defined you—and the struggle to redefine yourself. But above all, it's about finding hope when hope seems like the hardest thing to find.

WHY ARE THESE ONES SO HARD TO REVIEW?

So I'll get straight to the point.

I didn't love it.

I didn't hate it.

Again, I'm in middle ground territory and I freaking hate that, and the fact that I so wanted to love it, it's very music orientated as well, and come on, that's perfect for me, which makes me dislike it more because I didn't love it. But, that's not down to the story, or the message behind the story.

Problems, Problems, We All Have Problems...

I was tagged by the awesome Shannon @ It Starts at Midnight and Henna @ Howling for Books to do the Reader Problems Tag originally created by  About To Read.

1. You have 20,000 books on your TBR. How in the world do you decide what to read next?

I don't think 20,000 books would fit in my house. I must live in a library. Yes! Wishes do come true. Now, when I open my eyes will I be in Italy?

Easy. I don't. No, really. Obviously review books are in order of month, so I ask someone to pick a number from 1-(whatever number of books in that month) and read the book from the number they pick.  My own books I read when I feel like reading, though they're usually the newer ones I buy, instead of the ones I that have probably been on my shelf for a year that I said I would get to next time...and still haven't. Like Dangerous Girls, (yes, I know, I should've read it like yesterday Instead, I read it the other day.) and Ensnared that I was like GIVE ME two months ago, and now have read some reviews and I'm just...no.

Waiting on Wednesday (#80)

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

We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach

Expected publication: March 31st 2015 by Simon & Schuster

Four high school seniors put their hopes, hearts, and humanity on the line as an asteroid hurtles toward Earth in this contemporary novel.

They always say that high school is the best time of your life.

Peter, the star basketball player at his school, is worried “they” might actually be right. Meanwhile Eliza can’t wait to escape Seattle—and her reputation—and perfect-on-paper Anita wonders if admission to Princeton is worth the price of abandoning her real dreams. Andy, for his part, doesn’t understand all the fuss about college and career—the future can wait.

Or can it? Because it turns out the future is hurtling through space with the potential to wipe out life on Earth. As these four seniors—along with the rest of the planet—wait to see what damage an asteroid will cause, they must abandon all thoughts of the future and decide how they’re going to spend what remains of the present

What're you waiting on? 

Review: The Mime Order

The Mime Order
Author: Samantha Shannon
Publication Date: January 27th 2015        
Publisher: Bloomsbury
~A copy was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review~

Paige Mahoney has escaped the brutal prison camp of Sheol I, but her problems have only just begun: many of the survivors are missing and she is the most wanted person in London...

As Scion turns its all-seeing eye on the dreamwalker, the mime-lords and mime-queens of the city's gangs are invited to a rare meeting of the Unnatural Assembly. Jaxon Hall and his Seven Seals prepare to take centre stage, but there are bitter fault lines running through the clairvoyant community and dark secrets around every corner. Then the Rephaim begin crawling out from the shadows. But where is Warden? Paige must keep moving, from Seven Dials to Grub Street to the secret catacombs of Camden, until the fate of the underworld can be decided.

I didn't really get on that well with The Mime Order, I don't know what it was but something just felt disconnected and missing. I wasn't all that raving about The Bone Season either. I liked it well enough, but it wasn't one I'd rave about, it didn't stand out to me, probably because it's confusing and hard to get into, which I hoped wouldn't be the case with The Mime Order, and unfortunately was, for me at least. I wanted to love it, considering the characters had escaped and The Mime Order literally starts right where The Bone Season left off, I thought it would be intense, but even that felt bogged down by overcomplicating things. I get it, things weren't exactly going to go as planned or easy, but it just dragged.

Review: I Was Here

I Was Here
Author: Gayle Forman
Publication Date: January 29th 2015         
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
~A copy was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review~

From the bestselling author of If I Stay - this summer's YA blockbuster film.

This characteristically powerful novel follows eighteen-year-old Cody Reynolds in the months following her best friend's shocking suicide.

As Cody numbly searches for answers as to why Meg took her own life, she begins a journey of self-discovery which takes her to a terrifying precipice, and forces her to question not only her relationship with the Meg she thought she knew, but her own understanding of life, love, death and forgiveness.

A phenomenally moving story, I Was Here explores the sadly all-too-familiar issue of suicide and self-harm, addressing it in an authentic way with sensitivity and honesty 

I hate comparing books, especially these type of books because they are on the same level. Theme wise. Storyline wise. Writing wise. Character wise, but I think the only way to talk about this one properly is to compare it, and the difference between the two is that I cared more for one than the other. The former being All the Bright Places and the latter, I was Here. Maybe that's because  I Was Here was dealing with the after of suicide and not the mental illness,  whereas All the Bright Places is now and you see the mental illness and the decisions and experiences and stages it goes through. Maybe it's because we only saw one side, in here, Cody's, and in All the Bright Places we have Finch and Violets. The effecter and the affect-ee. That is the major difference to why All the Bright Places affected me more, because we're in the middle of it, and I Was Here deals more with the after effects with who that person touched, it dealt more with moving on and getting through and ultimately understanding, and hope.