Mark This Book Monday: Summer on the Short Bus by Bethany Crandell!!

Hello guys!

How's your Monday going? Mine has started rather well, with some highly awaited book mail and some really good sleep last night, so I'm ready to start this new week! And the fact that I'm off work till Thursday after working 6 days last week is obviously helping with that good feeling too!

For this week's Mark This Book Monday I have a book that I will highly recommend to everyone, because it's both funny and full of depth and makes us think and makes us laugh. I also count it towards my 105 Challenge as part of my YA contemporary category!

Summer on the Short Bus by Bethany Crandell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I got Summer on the Short Bus shortly after release last year but for one reason or another it got buried under more books in my Kindle library and remained unread. Then I took part on the 1 year anniversary blitz for it and thought that it was about time I read it and it took over my Sunday!

Constance "Cricket" Montgomery is a spoiled brat with an hilarious and offensive inner (and outer) monologue that made her feel extremely real and infuriating and that once confronted with a summer sentence working at a camp, tries every one of her tricks with her daddy to get out of it. And once she can't and has to face working on Camp I can with kids with special needs... she literally faints!

This story is full of snark, laughs and some serious fuzzy feels! I love how Cricket has to get off her spoiled rich girl horse and face more than her own share of prejudice and realize how that hurts when it's directed at you, as opposed as being the one spewing it. The best thing about Cricket though is how upfront she is with everything. She doesn't have a politically correct filter that makes her pretend to be one thing while snarking inside as another and that makes her honest and genuine, even in her spoiled brat self.

I love how Cricket learns a lot about empathy and about herself and her past and her own family, in a way that she could have never imagined, and even if it all might have been initiated by making the most out of spending time with the resident hottie and Zac Efron look-alike, it is not a change done only on surface. She is not faking for Quinn's sake, so she'll look good, the campers and other counselors are making her see things differently, and see herself differently, and she doesn't want to go back to being who she was anymore.

All the characters had a lot of depth and personality, from the campers, counselors to even Cricket's dad. There is so much more to them all than what we see at first when we meet them, and even if we don't get to know them all in depth, the characters have that realness to them.

A fantastic book that made laugh and snicker, and smile and gave me quite a few swoony feels and that managed to give quite a few lessons on diversity, equality, empathy and being honest with outselves and others without ever feeling preachy or self-righteous!

Very well deserved 4 stars and a very much recommended read for all of those that love contemporaries and all of those that aren't entirely sure if it's their genre too!



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Saturday Song: Wonderful Life by Alter Bridge!

Hey guys, given my work schedule and blue mood for this last pair of days, I just couldn't have a review ready for today...

And since I felt like I needed a good cry to get it out of my system since it had been brewing for a while... I'll leave you with a fantastic song by a brilliant band. I'm now going to bed to cry and then hopefully get some proper sleep so I handle another night shift at work tonight.

Friday Reads: I'll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios!!!

Hey there guys!

It is Friday! And I'm hoping to get a pair of books in the mail and to have some time to read before going to work night shift, because then I work night shift on Saturday again, which means I'll spend most of my Saturday sleeping...

For this week's Friday Reads I have a book that punched me in the feels in the best of ways and that made me sob and ugly cry and any other actions involving tears that you might think of. I preordered it from Book of Wonder signed and personalized and I got a special promo letter from Josh to Skylar for V-day and that was just wonderful too!

Since it is a 2015 release it will count towards that category on my 105 Challenge!

I'll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


My ratings usually come from gut feelings and when I've been through so many emotions and I've cried as much as I did with this book, it deserves 5 and more stars for sure. And this is particularly relevant for me since this one is a contemporary book, and it's not a genre that I am drawn to much. I usually am very picky when it comes to contemporaries and this one was an absolute bullseye for me!

Skylar is our main character and it's a girl that wants to get out of the small town she has always lived in, and that dream of going away, all the planning and saving and thinking, is what has kept her sane through a very crappy and tough and all around messed up family dynamic, with her dad dead and her mum not being much of a parent for quite some time. Skylar has just graduated high school, has a scholarship for a fantastic art school and she just needs to get through a final summer before she can follow her dreams.

The relationship between Skylar and her mum was painful to read at times, but so raw and real and heartfelt. Skylar has been the one taking over the adult role and being the one responsible for herself and her mother for a lot time already and once her mum falls into another dark hole, Skylar feels like she'll have to give up everything to pull her mum out of it. It was very much a role reversal with the teen being the responsible one and the mum being the one in need of care. I found myself wishing that Skylar would stop feeling so responsible for her mum and would decide to focus on herself more, and feeling like crap for wishing that because her mum is her only family, and we do take care of those we love.

Then we got her friends, Dylan and Chris, both excellently written secondary characters that break through the possible sterotypes. Dylan is a girl that wears tight clothes and has a baby boy, a teen mother that is madly in love with her son's father and that has managed to graduate. Chris is Skylar's ally on the quest to leave their town, to be more and a genius at math. I loved how their relationship went through some hardships due to their different choices about staying or leaving for the future, and how despite it all they were there for each other through and through!

And then we got Josh, and he is such a broken and complex character and one that I simply felt for so much! He also wanted to leave town and did so as a soldier, to fight in Afghanistan, and he is injured, loses a leg and returns suffering from PTSD. A mess if there ever was one. I am very happy that we got both Skylar and Josh's POV, because his chapters if shorter, were even more emotionally heavy and poignant and made me cry like mad! Being in his head was both amazing and painful and was necessary to get us readers to not hate him after one pretty big mistake he makes, but seeing things from his POV... well, we know he made a BIG mistake and we still want Skylar to kick his arse but also to forgive him.

I'm glad that Skylar and Josh's relationship is built by working together, hanging out together, becoming friends by feeling like outsiders and not really belonging in a place, and after quite a few false starts here and there, with communication and a lil help from others here and there, they find a way to be together. They have to work on their relationship a lot, but they do have dreams to achieve and someone to share those dreams with. And an amazing black lab doggie that made me cry even more!

This book was an amazing read for me and not only because it was extremely emotional for many reasons and not just the romance, but so many important relationships like between parent and children, friends, co-workers, parental figures. And it makes you really think and wonder about the consequences of war for those that come from it and their families. A brilliant book through and through.



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Waiting on Wednesday #89!!

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly feature hosted at Breaking The Spine  that spotlights those can't-wait-to-get-my-hands-on-them books that we are eagerly awaiting!

So what book am I dying of anticipation while I wait for it to arrive in the mail because it's been preordered since forever this week? An Ember In The Ashes by Sabaa Tahir!!!

Goodreads Summary:

"Set in a terrifyingly brutal Rome-like world, An Ember in the Ashes is an epic fantasy debut about an orphan fighting for her family and a soldier fighting for his freedom. It’s a story that’s literally burning to be told.

LAIA is a Scholar living under the iron-fisted rule of the Martial Empire. When her brother is arrested for treason, Laia goes undercover as a slave at the empire’s greatest military academy in exchange for assistance from rebel Scholars who claim that they will help to save her brother from execution.

ELIAS is the academy’s finest soldier—and secretly, its most unwilling. Elias is considering deserting the military, but before he can, he’s ordered to participate in a ruthless contest to choose the next Martial emperor.

When Laia and Elias’s paths cross at the academy, they find that their destinies are more intertwined than either could have imagined and that their choices will change the future of the empire itself."
 

Why am I eagerly awaiting An Ember in the Ashes? Well, it's fantasy, and I'm a fantasy reading binge this year, it's a debut, it's got Roman and Greek references and almost all my blogging friens that have read it have loved it to bits, so how could I not be excited for it?? It's preordered and I cannot wait for it to arrive already!

What are you all (im)patiently awaiting this week?

Mark This Book Monday: ARC Review of Made For You by Melissa Marr!!

Hey there!

Monday is here and it's a new week to look forward to! I'm having a heavy on the workload week, but I'm hoping that some book mail will improve the week for me! I'm also awaiting a few things for my new apartment, so I cannot wait for them to arrive!

For this week's Mark This Book Monday I got the review for an eARC that I was approved for via NetGalley, thank you so much for the auto-approval Harper Collins UK!! It counts for my books for review category on the 105 Challenge!

Made For You by Melissa Marr

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I had been really intrigued about this book for quite a while, so when I was approved for an eARC for it via NG, I was quite eager to start reading it!

Eva Tilling is your super popular girl in a small Southern town, where popularity and status comes from who your family is and how long they can claim to have been in the town. Thankfully Eva is not your mean queen bee, but instead we get someone that isn't sure of continue fitting in because it's how things are, or to ignore convention and do what she feels right. She has the perfect boyfriend and a group of friends she's known forever and Grace, her non-Jessup-native best friend.

Made For You could feel like your typical and topical contemporary story about privileged teenagers but then we get a few twists, one is the murder mystery that starts with the attempted murder of Eva herself and two is the paranormal element introduced after Eva's accident and her seeing visions if someone touches her.

Those two twist are not the only things that make this feel less topical than usual, I must say that one of the topics I loved seeing twisted & broken were the absent parents that we usually see in YA. Eva's parents are always travelling and busy with their work, so Eva has always been very self reliant, but after her accident/attempted murder, her parents really are shocked into a change of attitude, and I loved how Eva's mum reacted to everything. I love how she decided that she needed to take charge and responsability and that being a mother was something she had been failing at. Not something common seeing an adult admiting fault AND taking steps to fix it, and even less in something as parenting.

We get 3 POVs in this book, Eva, Grace and Judge, the serial killer aka completely-off-his-rocker-guy. Being in the killer's head was utterly creepy and disturbing, but it was incredibly well done. I was always wondering about who Judge would be from Eva's group of friends and although I suspected right, waiting for Eva to connect the dots wasn't as fustrating as it could have been.

I think the bit that worked less well for me were the visions, even if they were clearly key to actually apprehend Judge and to save Grace and Nate. But we really don't get much of an explanation or clue as to why visions are possible, or other clues about paranormal stuff, so it was a bit odd.

As for the romance... I was happy to see Eva and Nate working things out and talking and being upfront with each other and that Eva decided to stop acting the way she is expected to for social convention. And I loved that she was strong and sent her bf packing when she found out about the cheating and that she was adult enough to avoid bitterness and still help him when he desperately needed it.

I really enjoyed the writing and the pacing even if not everything clicked 100% for me, and I was particularly happy to see the way nurses were depiced in this one, so thank you for that Melissa Marr! Definitely I'm gonna check more books written by her. Well deserved 3.5 stars for this one.



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Saturday Pages: Empire At Night by Kelley Armstrong!!

Hi there guys!

Happy Saturday! Having the weekend off is quite amazing and a nice change, so I'm going to the cinema with a friend and spending some time reading and relaxing, and continue plotting apartment decoration!

I'm starting this week's Saturday Pages with the review of the sequel of the very first Alyssa Recommends book!! I'm gonna be counting this one as part of my 105 Challenge since this is a 2015 release and that's one of my categories in the challenge!

Empire of Night by Kelley Armstrong

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Last year I read Sea of Shadows as my first ever Alyssa Recommends book and it was a fantastic start. I loved the world building, the magic, the main characters and the way the plot was progressing as an overall series ARC and the plot driving the book. So I was extremely intrigued and awaiting eagerly the sequel.

It was a happy coincidence that the edition I happened to preorder in my Kindle not the US one and ended up downloading on April 1st instead of having to wait till April 7th!

Despite having read the first book a year ago and not having the clearest memory of everything that happened, I never felt lost or confused, and we quickly get up to date with what's going on now after the events of book 1. Ashyn and Moria are at the Emperor's palace as guests, and both are uneasy because they feel they ought to be doing something more after what they witness and being Keeper and Seeker.

Empire of Night is a fantastic sequel. We get character growth for both Moira and Ashyn, we learn more about Ronan and Tyrus and even Gavriel and the Emperor. When we're not having quiet moments of character development and dealing with court politics and intrigues, we finally start moving into the action to the moderate happines of Moira, that was chaffing at the inaction.

There's so much plotting and crafting in this book and despite having the sisters together for a good portion of it, since they're dealing in their different ways with the aftermath of what happened in book 1 and their grief and guilt about it, they are emotionally stranged somewhat. Then once they start being on the move again, they find themselves working together and dealing with the dangers as a team once again.

The mission they find themselves in ends up quite disastrously and the sisters end up once again separated, Moria kidnapped, Tyrus with Ashyn and Ronan and a big mess underway for them all. Treachery, political intrigues (again) and lies all over the place makes any rescue plans or direct action complicated, so there's a lot of hiding and spying and escaping.

There was very subtle romance in the first book and in this one things are less subtle but still didn't take over the book either. The romance not only was adorable even with some heartbreak in there but also was a fantastic way to get to know and develop our characters even more. Moria and Tyrus make a fantastic team as friends and as a couple and I love how their relationship developed.

I love the nuances of the culture and world building, how there's more to everything that we think at first, and then once the book it's almost over... we encounter not one but TWO cliffhangers, of very different sort with each one of the sisters' POV! Both equally intriguing and maddening and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!

Very much deserved 4 to 4.5 stars to this one, when does the next book comes out?!?!



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Friday Reads: ARC Review of Only Ever Yours by Louise O'Neill!!!

Hello there guys!!

Happy Friday!! It is a Friday after night shift from me, so although it's a pretty awesome day since I have it off, it is also a bit inconvenient since I really need my nap in the morning after work. Do forgive any typos that might happen right now!

For this week's first Friday Reads entry I have an ARC that I was approved on NG by Quercus books and that is an amazing book but also extremely tough to read! As an ARC it shall count towards my 105 Challenge in the books for review category and also as part of the Dystopian Reading Challenge 2015!!

Only Ever Yours by Louise O'Neill

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Brilliant, relevant and enraging all at once. Is this an amazing book? YES! Will it be easy to read and give you fuzzy feels? HELL NO! But I think it's something every woman of every age NEEDS to read!

This was a particularly hard book for me to read, and I'm pretty sure it'll be for any woman out there, because it holds a mirror to the ugliest parts of ourselves: our envies, our self-hate and self-doubt, how we've all sometimes agreed to some injustice to stay on someone's good side, how we lose control of ourselves and our bodies... and all that hate and those messages about the perfect body, the Vomitorium, the kcal blockers... it reminded me of some less than stellar moments of my teenage self and made me want to go eat some chocolate because I could.

A dystopian story set in a future where women are designed and created, not born, raised together in Schools where they're prepared for their future as companions, concubines or chastities, the only roles allowed to women now. And as the best dystopians, it is so scary because it could be true. Women, specially young girls, have no real rights, no right to think for themselves or to ask questions, they only exist to give birth to sons, please men or care for the other eves. What are the eves? They're the women, and they are as unimportant as to have their names without a capital letter.

So many of the things that happen in the book are already happened, albeit in a smaller scale. Women are still treated as property in many countries, and even in the first world ones, the pressure to look perfect, to be perfect, to be thin, to look perfectly composed, to not be overly emotional and the fact that women still turn against each other for petty reasons instead of focusing on fighting for what's important really, like true equality.

We follow the story from freida's POV, one of the eves in her final year at the School, hoping to be chosen as a companion. I had the biggest swings with freida that I've ever had with a character, I kept on going from hating her to pitying her to understanding and empathy to loathing and wanting to shake her, time and again! She wants attention and she puts up with so MUCH to get it, risking everything for approval.

As I said, this is a MUST READ BOOK and if you know or find any girls out there that think feminism is not their issue or relatable, give them this book and make them think about that it says!

Despite how I needed a break now and read from reading the book, this is a brilliant book and deserved to ger more out there!



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Anniversary Nerd Bast for Summer On The Short Bus by Bethany Crandell!!

Hey guys! Happy Thursday!

Welcome to the Anniversary Nerd Blast for Summer on the Short Bus by Bethany Crandell hosted and organized by Jean Book Nerd!!

Summer On The Short Bus by Bethany Crandell

Publisher: Running Press,U.S.
Format: Paperback | 256 pages
Publication date: 17 April 2014
Publication City/Country: Philadelphia
ISBN 10: 0762449519
ISBN 13: 9780762449514

 Spoiled, Versace-clad Cricket Montgomery has seventeen years of pampering under her belt. So when her father decides to ship her off to a summer camp for disabled teens to help her learn some accountability, Cricket resigns herself to three weeks of handicapped hell.

Her sentence takes a bearable turn as she discovers the humor and likeability of the campers and grows close to fellow counselors. Now, if she can just convince a certain Zac Efron look-alike with amazing blue eyes that she finally realizes there's life after Gucci, this summer could turn out to be the best she's ever had.

Summer on the Short Bus is a very non-P.C., contemporary YA with a lot of attitude, tons of laughs, and a little life lesson along the way.

You can purchase Summer on the Short Bus at the following Retailers:

 Bethany Crandell lives in San Diego with her husband, two daughters (one of whom is differently-abled), and a chocolate lab with no regard for personal space. She watches too much TV, savors avocados, and is still waiting for Jake Ryan to show up at her door. She writes YA because the feelings that come with life’s “first” times are too good not relive again and again.

  

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