writer's block

Title: Cinder
Author: Marissa Meyer
Genres: Young Adult, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Dystopian
Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | Goodreads

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
Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | Goodreads

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
Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | Goodreads

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:)

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
Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | Goodreads

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
Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | Goodreads

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
Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | Goodreads

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
Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | Goodreads

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)

Trying to save money for Christmas shopping, so I just got some free eBooks and I that's really the only really reason I got them:P

Title: Honor Bound
Author: C.J. Archer
Genres: Romance, Paranormal, Historical
Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | Goodreads

Isabel Merritt's quiet life as an assistant to one of London's famous apothecaries hides a deadly secret. A secret that could see her put on trial for witchcraft if the authorities, and her husband, uncover the truth.

When royal spy Sir Nicholas Merritt stumbles upon his estranged wife during an investigation, he can't believe his luck. He's been searching for her for seven long years and now he has her again, in his bed and his life. Except she's resisting all the way. Worse still, she's somehow tangled up with a plot to assassinate the queen. To hold onto her this time, he must find out why she left him while hiding a secret of his own that could tear them apart forever.

Title: The Soulkeepers
Author: G.P. Ching
Genres: Young Adult, Fantasy, Paranormal
Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | Goodreads

When fifteen-year-old Jacob Lau is pulled from the crumpled remains of his mother's car, no one can explain why he was driving or why the police can't find his mother's body. Made a ward of his uncle and thousands of miles from home, a beautiful and mysterious neighbor offers to use her unique abilities to help him find his mom. In exchange, she requires Jacob to train as a Soulkeeper, a warrior charged with protecting human souls.

He agrees to her demands, desperate for any clue to the mystery of his mother's disappearance. But soon Jacob finds himself trapped in a web of half-truths, and questions her motives for helping him.

I suck at keeping up with this book-buying ban... okay, I'm done with this pointless ban and from now on I'm going to buy how ever many books I want! There. Now on to the goodies...

Won:

Title: Glaciers
Author: Alexis M. Smith
Genres: Fiction, Contemporary
Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | Goodreads

Won this from Goodreads a couple of weeks ago and I just received it a few days ago! This is also my first time as a Goodreads First Reads winner! A sign of things to come...?





From Amazon:

Title: In the Shadow of the Moonlight - The Awakening
Author: J.J. Bidell
Genres: Young Adult, Fantasy
Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | Goodreads
get the eBook from Amazon

Free eBook! Woohoo! That's really the only reason I got it. Didn't even read the description until afterwards, but now I think I'll really enjoy it! Bonus! LOL!




From Strand Bookstore:

Title: If I Stay
Author: Gayle Forman
Genres: Young Adult, Romance, Contemporary
Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | Goodreads

On sale for $4! I've read a lot of positive reviews of this one and even more so for the sequel, Where She Went, so I'm excited to start this.




Title: Matched
Author: Ally Condie
Genres: Young Adult, Dystopian, Romance, Science Fiction
Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | Goodreads

This has been on my wishlist for such a long time and although I've seen it every time I was at Strand, I've been holding out until I could find the hardcover- yes, I'm picky like that.

There was also a copy of Crossed and I really had to hold back from creating a set, though I'll probably kick myself for not getting it because I'm also a bit nutty when it comes to series.


From Barnes & Noble:
Title: Clockwork Prince
Author: Cassandra Clare
Genres: Young Adult, Steampunk, Fantasy
Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | Goodreads

I literally finished Clockwork Angel 12hrs before I went to the launch book signing! I still need to do the review for it, but I'm putting it on hold until I finish this, which by the way, is fantastic so far! Will! Jem! <3 them both it's bound to be heartbreaking either way.

In case you missed my tweet during the signing, here's Cassie with Gossip Girl's Ed Westwick (who co-narrates the audio book) and my signed copy:)