writer's block

In New Beijing, humans and androids make up the population. As a deadly virus plagues it's citizens, the ruthless Lunar people are ever present in the kingdom waiting to make their move.

Cinder is an android with a mysterious past. Her stepmother resents her and is blamed for her stepsister's illness. But Cinder's life is about to change when she crosses paths with Prince Kai and she becomes apart of an intergalactic struggle and forbidden attraction.

This is a unique spin on the classic tale of Cinderella. I absolutely loved the science fiction twist having our heroine as an android and the Asian characteristics of the New Beijing reminded me of Joss Whedon's show, Firefly, where it's inhabitants aren't necessarily Asian, but they take on a lot of their cultural aspects.

The characters are well written and the relationship between Cinder and the Prince reminded me of the movie, Ever After, so I felt like I knew where things were going in that sense. But even though it was a fairly practicable story, it definitely kept me intrigued and wondering exactly what was going to happen and how.

The science fiction played a big part of course, otherwise it would be just another Cinderella story. The use of a deadly virus is different and a nemesis other than the evil stepmother helps with giving Cinder and the Prince's relationship more depth and meaning which is much appreciated when most young adult books are filled with instant love.

Even though Cinder has a lot of changes to the story we all know, the fairytale of unjust oppression and the triumph over it is still the embodiment of it and I can't wait to read the second installment.

Rating: ★★★★☆ (4.5/5 stars)

Jackson Meyer is an average nineteen year old- college student, part-time job, a great girlfriend... and he can travel back through time. Though unlike what is widely perceived with time traveling, he has no effect on the timeline.

Although what has been harmless fun becomes a desperate attempt to stop his girlfriend from being fatally shot when two men burst in on them.

Jackson jumps back further than he ever has and finds out that he and his ability is not as secretive as he thought. Now he must deal with other time travelers who want to get their hands on him either for recruitment or to kill him.

I have been waiting to read this for awhile and I was so excited to start it, but I was quickly disappointed by it. The idea of time travel is what drew me to this book in the first place, but being a time traveler and not being able to have an effect on your timeline is (quantum) physically impossible. I believe it was mentioned it the story that he wasn't jumping through his own timeline which was why he couldn't change anything, but the universe he is in is exactly the same as his timeline- which is also not possible.

There were a lot of elements like that that made things confusing and made me wish that Cross kept to the simple theory of time travel and focus more on the story- his girlfriend is dead or dying and there are other "time-travelers" who want him for whatever reason. It was just confusing keeping up with the different timelines/universes.

Although I did enjoy the relationship between Jackson and his twin sister, Courtney, who had died and we only know her from flashbacks. I hope her constant mentioning in this first book is a sign that she plays a larger role in the grand scheme of the story.

Unfortunately I didn't care much for his girlfriend. We didn't get to know her before she got shot and then when Jackson jumped, we got a seventeen year old version of her with apparently a slightly different personality, so technically she's not the same girl he fell in love with. And also considering that he and his real girlfriend have only known each other for a few months, I find it extremely hard to believe that a teenager will go through this messed up craziness for a girl.

I was more confused than anything else reading this debut from Cross, but it did kept me entertained enough for me to be curious about where it's headed. It was a very bold attempt by Cross to use time travel as a foundation, but it just didn't work for me.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆ (2.5/5 stars)

Rhine and Gabriel are on the run after escaping the mansion, but find themselves getting trapped in a carnival-like red district where the proprietor seeks to make a fortune from Rhine.

But with the determination to reach Manhattan to find her brother, Rhine and Gabriel travel through the harsh environment that has plagued the world where the lifespan for females is twenty and twenty-five for males.

Worse still is that her ruthless father-in-law in on their trail and will stop at nothing to get her back to possibly use her as one of his test subjects or even to her death.

My friend gave me an ARC copy she had and I was really excited to read this since I loved the first book, Wither. Although I was somewhat disappointed in the fact that the red district wasn't a huge part in the story, but more of a check point and a means to quickly introduce a couple of characters and get a foreshadowing of what was to come.

I still rooted for Rhine and Gabriel to make it, but didn't think it was necessary to have them acquire a child that really didn't serve a purpose. Other minor check points where Rhine would have something happen to her that replays throughout the rest of the story also seemed unnecessary or too short for me to really care about.

But as far as "on the road" stories go, it was still good read. I enjoyed reading about this world since the first book we were kept sheltered from it. It did make you wonder, as Rhine did, whether or not being in the mansion was really so bad and if escaping was the right choice.

Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3.5/5 stars)

Title: Cinder
Author: Marissa Meyer
Genres: Young Adult, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Dystopian
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Yeah of course I got this! I suspect this to be on a lot of people's IMMs this week. Can't wait to start it!





Title: Darker Still
Author: Leanna Renee Heiber
Genres: Young Adult, Historical Fiction, Fantasy
Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | Goodreads

This came highly recommended by my friend (her review) and when I saw an autographed copy of it, I had to pick it up!
Title: Under the Never Sky
Author: Veronica Rossi
Genres: Young Adult, Science Fiction, Dystopian, Romance
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I honestly thought this didn't come out for awhile, so I was really excited to see this!




Title: Love & Leftovers
Author: Sarah Tregay
Genres: Young Adult, Romance, Contemporary
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I like how the format is in verses. Something Completely different!







For Read & Review

Title: Ugly to Start With
Author: John Micheal Cummings
Genres: Young Adult
Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | Goodreads

I received a request to read and review this from the author. Looks good! Can't wait to start it:)

New York, two teenagers, a red moleskin notebook and the Christmas holiday. Normally nothing out of the ordinary, but Dash and Lily are complete strangers who find themselves in a string of dares.

Dash finds the misplaced notebook at the Strand Bookstore and decides to play along with Lily's game- leaving clues about where to find the notebook and also leaving a piece of themselves in the pages.

Over the course of holiday season, both Dash and Lily wonder if their relationship can only live on within the pages of the red moleskin or if their in-person persona will live up to how they perceived each other.

What I initially drew me to this book was the ode to New York. If you frequent my blog then you know that my of my book purchases are from the Strand. I also wanted to read this during the holiday season to coincide with the story- I suppose to make it more realistic... magical in away since there's nothing like the holidays in New York.

I laughed at a lot of the references to the holiday madness that goes on- FAO Schwarz on Christmas Eve? Yeah I've done that and it's not fun no matter how many toys I'm surrounded by. But aside from it's obvious attraction, I enjoyed reading about these two characters.

I can't say that I cared for either of them or anticipated the end to see if they finally meet. Not to say that I didn't find either of them to be good characters- they seemed like kids that I knew or went to school with, but I felt like even if they never meet and the only way they "spoke" to each other was through the notebook I would be completely fine with that.

There's always something about just writing, isn't there? Not typing, I mean good old fashioned hand written notes. There's always been something more personal about it- your handwriting, the corrections and even the color pen you use.

Overall I really enjoyed this book and I would recommend this to anyone looking for a light holiday read.

Rating: ★★★★ 4/5

Not necessarily all upcoming releases since I still have a lot in my TBR pile that I really want to read soon!


1. Cinder by Marissa Meyer -- Gosh, who ISN'T excited to read this?!

2. Tempest by Julie Cross -- So happy that I found it at Strand this past week!

3. Everneath by Brodi Ashton

4. Shattered Souls by Mary Lindsey

5. The Hunger Games by Suzanna Collins -- Not entirely excited to read this for the story as I am just to have finally read it! Haha

6. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami -- Eventually the nearly 1000pgs won't be so daunting when I start this since I'm a fan of his work.

7. Born Wicked by Jessica Spotswood

8. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls -- One of six titles my sister and I will read together now that she's completely done with school!

9. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith -- I'm hoping the movie will be a good summer flick, but I still want to read it first

10. Divergent by Veronica Roth -- I don't think I even have this yet! Gah! Need to read ASAP!

Happy New Year!

I had an adventurous few days while Michele from Just a Lil Lost was visiting from Toronto and on her first day here, we went to Strand and got a bunch of great titles! Here's what I got...

Title: Fracture
Author: Megan Miranda
Genres: Young Adult, Paranormal, Romance
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Eleven minutes passed before Delaney Maxwell was pulled from the icy waters of a Maine lake by her best friend Decker Phillips. By then her heart had stopped beating. Her brain had stopped working. She was dead. And yet she somehow defied medical precedent to come back seemingly fine
-despite the scans that showed significant brain damage. Everyone wants Delaney to be all right, but she knows she's far from normal. Pulled by strange sensations she can't control or explain, Delaney finds herself drawn to the dying. Is her altered brain now predicting death, or causing it?

Then Delaney meets Troy Varga, who recently emerged from a coma with similar abilities. At first she's reassured to find someone who understands the strangeness of her new existence, but Delaney soon discovers that Troy's motives aren't quite what she thought. Is their gift a miracle, a freak of nature-or something much more frightening?

For fans of best-sellers like Before I Fall and If I Stay, this is a fascinating and heart-rending story about love and friendship and the fine line between life and death.

Title: Tempest
Author: Julie Cross
Genres: Young Adult, Science Fiction, Romance
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The year is 2009.  Nineteen-year-old Jackson Meyer is a normal guy… he’s in college, has a girlfriend… and he can travel back through time. But it’s not like the movies – nothing changes in the present after his jumps, there’s no space-time continuum issues or broken flux capacitors – it’s just harmless fun.

That is… until the day strangers burst in on Jackson and his girlfriend, Holly, and during a struggle with Jackson, Holly is fatally shot. In his panic, Jackson jumps back two years to 2007, but this is not like his previous time jumps. Now he’s stuck in 2007 and can’t get back to the future.

Desperate to somehow return to 2009 to save Holly but unable to return to his rightful year, Jackson settles into 2007 and learns what he can about his abilities.

But it’s not long before the people who shot Holly in 2009 come looking for Jackson in the past, and these “Enemies of Time” will stop at nothing to recruit this powerful young time-traveler.  Recruit… or kill him.

Piecing together the clues about his father, the Enemies of Time, and himself, Jackson must decide how far he’s willing to go to save Holly… and possibly the entire world.




Title: Across the Universe
Author: Beth Revis
Genres: Young Adult, Science Fiction, Romance
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Seventeen-year-old Amy joins her parents as frozen cargo aboard the vast spaceship Godspeed and expects to awaken on a new planet, three hundred years in the future. Never could she have known that her frozen slumber would come to an end fifty years too soon and that she would be thrust into the brave new world of a spaceship that lives by its own rules.

Amy quickly realizes that her awakening was no mere computer malfunction. Someone - one of the few thousand inhabitants of the spaceship - tried to kill her. And if Amy doesn't do something soon, her parents will be next.

Now, Amy must race to unlock Godspeed's hidden secrets. But out of her list of murder suspects, there's only one who matters: Elder, the future leader of the ship and the love she could never have seen coming.

Title: The Apothecary
Author: Malie Meloy
Genres: Young Adult, Fantasy, Historical Fiction
Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | Goodreads


It's 1952 and the Scott family has just moved from Los Angeles to London. Here, fourteen-year-old Janie meets a mysterious apothecary and his son, Benjamin Burrows - a fascinating boy who's not afraid to stand up to authority and dreams of becoming a spy. When Benjamin's father is kidnapped, Janie and Benjamin must uncover the secrets of the apothecary's sacred book, the Pharmacopoeia, in order to find him, all while keeping it out of the hands of their enemies - Russian spies in possession of nuclear weapons. Discovering and testing potions they never believed could exist, Janie and Benjamin embark on a dangerous race to save the apothecary and prevent impending disaster.
Together with Ian Schoenherr's breathtaking illustrations, this is a truly stunning package from cover to cover.

Title: This Dark Endeavour: The Apprenticeship of Viktor Frankenstein
Author: Kenneth Oppel
Genres: Young Adult, Fantasy, Historical Fiction
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Victor and Konrad are the twin brothers Frankenstein. They are nearly inseparable. Growing up, their lives are filled with imaginary adventures...until the day their adventures turn all too real.
They stumble upon The Dark Library, and secret books of alchemy and ancient remedies are discovered. Father forbids that they ever enter the room again, but this only peaks Victor's curiosity more. When Konrad falls gravely ill, Victor is not be satisfied with the various doctors his parents have called in to help. He is drawn back to The Dark Library where he uncovers an ancient formula for the Elixir of Life. Elizabeth, Henry, and Victor immediately set out to find assistance in a man who was once known for his alchemical works to help create the formula.
Determination and the unthinkable outcome of losing his brother spur Victor on in the quest for the three ingredients that will save Konrads life. After scaling the highest trees in the Strumwald, diving into the deepest lake caves, and sacrificing one’s own body part, the three fearless friends risk their lives to save another.

Title: Everything Matters!
Author: Ron Currie Jr.
Genres: Fiction
Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | Goodreads

Much thanks to Andrew at the Strand for the enthusiastic recommend!

In this novel rich in character, Junior Thibodeau grows up in rural Maine in a time of Atari, baseball cards, pop Catholicism, and cocaine. He also knows something no one else knows-neither his exalted parents, nor his baseball-savant brother, nor the love of his life (she doesn't believe him anyway): The world will end when he is thirty-six. While Junior searches for meaning in a doomed world, his loved ones tell an all-American family saga of fathers and sons, blinding romance, lost love, and reconciliation-culminating in one final triumph that reconfigures the universe. A tour de force of storytelling, Everything Matters! is a genre-bending potpourri of alternative history, sci-fi, and the great American tale in the tradition of John Irving and Margaret Atwood.

Title: Fever
Author: Lauren DeStefano
Genres: Young Adult, Dystopia, Romance
Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | Goodreads

LOVE Michele for giving me her ARC!

Running away brings Rhine and Gabriel right into a trap, in the form of a twisted carnival whose ringmistress keeps watch over a menagerie of girls. Just as Rhine uncovers what plans await her, her fortune turns again. With Gabriel at her side, Rhine travels through an environment as grim as the one she left a year ago - surroundings that mirror her own feelings of fear and hopelessness.

The two are determined to get to Manhattan, to relative safety with Rhine’s twin brother, Rowan. But the road there is long and perilous - and in a world where young women only live to age twenty and young men die at twenty-five, time is precious. Worse still, they can’t seem to elude Rhine’s father-in-law, Vaughn, who is determined to bring Rhine back to the mansion...by any means necessary.

In the sequel to Lauren DeStefano’s harrowing Wither, Rhine must decide if freedom is worth the price - now that she has more to lose than ever.

Title: How to Be a Canadian
Author: Will Ferguson, Ian Ferguson
Genres: Non-Fiction, Humor
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LOL:P

How to be a Canadian. Don't worry: here, the phrase is not punctuated by the usual soul-searching question mark. Instead, the Ferguson brothers boldly assert that, since they have both been Canadian their whole lives, they are uniquely qualified to dissect Canadian society. Besides, Margaret Atwood told them to do this book, but that's another story.
As a guidebook, How to Be a Canadian contains "a wealth of information gathered from fact-filled articles that [the authors] sort of remember reading somewhere," but frankly, the facts are there as a framework for a wicked sense of humour. The jokes, which fill every page, are sometimes juvenile: "There are 30,000,000 people in Canada-- all of whom have, at some point, frozen their tongues to the side of a flagpole." They are sometimes pointedly amusing: "Often, when the UN needs a cereal box translated, they call in the Canadians, who parachute out of stealth bombers clutching boxes of Capitaine Crounche." And they are often laugh-out-loud, fall-out-of-bed funny: "There is the assumption that Canada has only two seasons: Winter and Not Winter...In fact, Canada has no fewer than six distinct seasons: Tax; Hockey; More Hockey; Still More Hockey; Summer (also known as the July Long Weekend); and finally Good God, Isn't the Hockey Season Over by Now?!" (read more)