Read the Way

This novel wasn't bad, but it could have been much better. I think there was definite potential and the concept was crazy original. It just didn't really do it for me. I even tried to set it aside for a few days thinking that maybe by the time I picked it back up I'd be able to be more interested in it.

I went into this knowing that this book tells two stories and alternates between Darcy's life and the novel that she wrote. I thought going into this that she was writing the novel as the story was being told. Which I think would have been better, I thought we'd be able to see how the world around her influences the story as she tells it. Instead, the novel is already written and has been purchased by a publisher. But Darcy does do rewrites during the course of the novel, and so you do get to see how her life has an impact on those, as well as why she changes certain things and what the publisher would like to be changed. But the version of Darcy's novel that the story alternates with is the final, to be published version of the novel. So you don't really get to see any of the changes that get made, or any of the missteps that Darcy made during the initial writing of the novel.

This leads me to my main issue with this story: believability. Darcy's novel, Afterworlds, is about a girl who has a near death experience and ends up being able to interact with the afterlife and can see ghosts and in theory will end up at some point serving as a sort of grim reaper. She also falls in love with another psychopomp, who died about 3,000 years ago. And still, Lizzie's story is more credible than Darcy's.

Here is Darcy's story: When the novel starts she is 18 years old and moving to NYC on her own to be a real writer. She had written this entire novel during a one month period (this month HAPPENS to have been November and yet NO reference is made to NaNoWriMo which seems bizarre to me) while she was a 17-year-old senior in high school and sent it off to publishers. This book was then purchased as a prospective trilogy and she was paid $300,000 for the first two books in this series. She then moves to NYC and almost immediately finds this amazing apartment that just inspires her to write her little heart out. She also almost immediately finds herself in her first ever serious relationship with a girlfriend. She is keeping secrets from her family, but they all come out and everybody is happy. She stresses about her deadlines for rewrites and submission of her second book, but meets all of these with time to spare. Her only issues with her girlfriend are petty nonsensical things that get resolved. Her life has NO conflict. There is NO struggle. She doesn't have to overcome ANY obstacles to accomplish anything and everything is just handed to her. Not to mention, I don't know a whole lot about the publishing world, but I am 100% sure that a publisher will not pay you a ridiculous sum of money for a trilogy or series of books without you having AT LEAST outlined the overall arc of the series, and I think they require at least general outline/concept ideas for each book that will be in said series. At the beginning of this book, Darcy has NO IDEA what book two in her series will be about. This seems crazy unrealistic for me, a publisher is not going to buy a book from you that doesn't even have an outline, I'm sorry.

Afterworlds, the novel within this novel, is not without its issues. It just seems like there is a lot going on and all of it doesn't necessarily connect. There were multiple plot threads that could have been developed and just weren't. Lizzie is not a very well developed character, but none of the characters in the story are.

I think that both of these stories could have used some work. I haven't read any other novels by this author and I hate when I don't like the first novel I read by an author because it makes me not want to read any of the others.

This book was so good! I didn't really have high expectations, YA angel books seem to go awry very frequently. But I am so glad I read this one.

This book is about a girl named Clara who is one-quarter angel. With this comes certain abilities and each part angel has a purpose. Clara starts having visions of her purpose and they involve a boy about her age. She and her family relocate to the town from her vision and she meets that boy along with another boy.

I hate love triangles. But this love triangle wasn't so bad because Clara never even really gets involved with one said guys. Given the way this one ended I'm not sure if that will remain true in future books, but I'm cautiously optimistic.

I can't say too much about this book without spoilers. But I will say that one of the reasons I tend to avoid angel-type book series (other than the fact that they generally suck), is that they are always bogged down with religious mythology, motifs, references, etc.. That was not the case here. Sure God's existence would be a given if there are angels involved. But it isn't thrown in the reader's face constantly like some other series I've read. Again, not sure if this will remain true in future books. But it was nice approaching the subject from a sole perspective of them having abilities and trying to figure out what they can do, are meant to do, and so on. There wasn't the rehashing of the fallen angels and the other Angels who reproduced with humans and shouldn't have, we've all read the series that review this story and it gets pretty tired. So I think that was well done.

I definitely recommend this one if you're looking for a YA paranormal romance series.

This was pretty good. I didn't like it quite as much as the first one, but it was still a good installment. I kind of feel like there didn't need to be a third book. Most everything is pretty wrapped up at the end of this one, it seems.

The death was really emotional, actually. It nearly made me cry, which isn't common. All in all it made this book pretty depressing. There was so much build up to it, it was rough.

I loved getting to know more about the angel-bloods. That was cool. There was much more religious mythology in this one than in the first book, but I thought that might happen going into this one. So that wasn't all that surprising.

It was cool getting to learn more about Jeffrey and his purpose. It explained quite a few things from both of the books so far.

Even though I'm not sure it's necessary, I'm going to move onto the third book.

This book was so good. There could not have been a more perfect conclusion to this trilogy for me.

At the end of the second book I thought everything seemed pretty wrapped up. But this final installment took things to a whole new level.

It was interesting being able to see both Heaven and Hell in more detail in this book. It helped keep things in perspective. There were people related to each other that I definitely didn't expect to be. But it worked really well, I thought.

There isn't anything I would change about this novel other than perhaps the pacing. There were chapters where so much happened and then a few chapters in a row where nothing really happened. Everything was necessary to the story in the end, but it just seemed to me like things could have been moved around a bit to make the story flow a little more smoothly.

All in all, this was a solid angel series.

I am completely in awe of this book and series at large so far. This book definitely cemented this as one of my favorite series, as long as the last book is not a complete catastro-fuck (I'm looking at you, Allegiant).

I loved this book so much. It was so consistent with the first book in terms of the characters' behavior and also in terms of the overall themes. So many times characters can be inconsistent between books to the point that they don't even seem like the same person you read about previously. This is what ruined the Divergent trilogy for me. So I was nervous something similar might happen here because I loved The Winner's Curse SO MUCH.

The political intrigue continued into this installment and the stakes were MUCH higher than they had been in the first book, which took this to a whole new level. The emperor and the system of government in general was so terrifying. I was nervous for my favorite characters in nearly every scene. It is so impossible to know in this series who to trust and what decisions may come back to bite our characters in the ass. It made this book incredibly excited, but it also caused me a fair bit of anxiety.

Kestrel was on point in this book. Was she perfect? No. Did she make mistakes? Obviously. But she is so damn smart and courageous. Some of the things she went through in this book were incredibly hard to read because I love her character so much. But she is nothing if not a survivor. I spent this entire book on the edge of my seat to see not only what she was going to do next, but also because I was dreading her being discovered in any of the dangerous schemes she had going.

Arin was heartbreaking in this story. The only thing about this book that really frustrated me was that so many issues could have been avoided if Arin and Kestrel had been up front and honest with each other. At the same time, it was always made completely clear why they could not be honest with each other and how disastrous the consequences could be for them in even the smallest interactions they had with each other. Their story remains impossible and heartbreaking. It is nothing short of soul crushing to read the things these two suffer through both together and separately.

This book ends with a MASSIVE cliffhanger. You have been warned. I feel like I'm going to die having to wait an entire year for the next book. So if you don't think you can handle that, I would probably wait to read this one until next January or February.

All that said, if you enjoyed the first book I don't find it likely that you won't LOVE this one. This is probably my favorite book that I've read so far in 2015. It is simply wonderful.

Before I begin I will preface my review by saying my thoughts about this book are all over the place. I will try my best to organize them somewhat, but this review still might be all over the place.

This book was awesome, this series was superb. I'm actually sad that it's over and almost wish it would have been a trilogy. In no way is that meant to indicate that this conclusion was anything other than satisfying, because it was. I just loved this world so much. It was so well built in the first book and that really carried over into this one. This entire series was non-stop and is guaranteed to make you feel ALL the feels. I did not cry, which isn't unusual for me, but there are some scenes in each of these books that may induce some tears.

Sloane and James continued to be adorable and heartbreaking all at the same time. I really loved the way their relationship grew in this installment. Even though it was sometimes heartbreaking, I love that they never stopped making promises to each other that they both knew they may not be able to keep. They both matured so much throughout these books and their relationship matured with them. I just love them so much.

Dallas and Cas were interesting additions to this series. Of course Dallas' story was heart wrenching and disturbing. I (like Sloane) was never entirely sure what to make of either of them and was always unsure whether or not they were trustworthy. It was nice to see both Sloane and James be guarded around them and playing it really smart when it came to their time spent all together. There's nothing worse than reading about characters that you love doing really stupid shit and making incredibly stupid mistakes. But that did not really happen at all in these books.

Realm. Where to start with Realm. What a prick. I thought that the secret he was keeping from Sloane from the first book was bad enough. Reading about what he had done to a certain other character in the past made me absolutely hate him. Seriously. What an asshole. The way he kept trying to come between Sloane and James was also incredibly frustrating. He was so convinced that he loved her more than James and would make better decisions regarding her welfare than James does. I was evicted to see him when he first popped up in this book, then after a few paragraphs I just wanted him to go away.

I was surprised and most displeased to see Roger again in this book. I hoped he was gone forever. No such luck. He's probably the only character in this series that I hate more than Realm.

I'm sure I'll come back and add more to this later. That's all I can come up with at the moment that wouldn't spoil this book or series for people.

This was completely different than I expected. I was prepared for a great mystery story and this did not at all live up to that.

In general, I liked the overall arc of the story. I liked the Nick and Dara story (minus the Parker and Andre-related elements). I LOVED the Madeline Snow aspect. If the rest of the elements of the story would have been different (no/less Parker, no Andre-related elements), this could have been a really great book.

First of all: Parker. I quickly reached the point in this story that I just didn't want to hear about him anymore. At all. Not a peep about him. And that point was reached fairly early on. I didn't find him to be a likable or sympathetic character. Even if I might have, having romantic interludes/relationships with sisters is just not something that appeals to me. I hated the Parker aspect of this story. If his role in the book had been severely diminished, that would have been better. But everything from both sisters was Parker this and Parker that the whole way through. I was over it. Then after that massive plot twist near the end? I was SERIOUSLY over it. Come on. What was it about the guy that would have made him that much of a catch, anyway? Because I did not see it. Maybe his character could have been better developed as we really didn't get to know him all that well. Maybe the book would have been improved by having some chapters told from his perspective also in addition to Dara's and Nick's chapters. We'll never know because that didn't happen.

Second: Andre-related activities is what I shall call them to avoid spoilers. Completely unnecessary! Ridiculously disturbing! Added nothing to the story! If the excessive amount of exclamations is any indication, I feel pretty strongly about this. We get it, Dara was not a good girl. She snuck out, she drank, she experimented with some drugs. But this? Really? Why? To make the reader like Nick more by comparison? I just don't understand the purpose behind this at all. Lauren Oliver had already made Dara out to be enough of a failure and screw-up, this was simply overkill. Crikey.

Again, I didn't hate this story. I loved the plot twist. I loved the Madeline Snow storyline.

With some reworking this could have been a fantastic book. I simply don't think it is as it stands.

I put off reading this book because I wasn't sure that I really wanted to. I liked the somewhat ambiguous ending of the first book and wished there wasn't a sequel. But now I'm glad there was a sequel and I'm very glad I read it.

This book alternates between following Addie and following Laila, which took a little while to grow on me. But once it did, I enjoyed getting to know Laila so much better. To be honest, I didn't really care for her all that much after the first book. I thought she was a pretty shitty best friend to Addie at several points throughout that book. But she was redeemed in my eyes in this book and I really ended up liking her. I enjoyed getting to see Laila's brothers more, particularly Eli. Poor kid. I loved all of Laila and Connor's scenes together, each one was cuter than the last. So adorable.

It was interesting to find out more details about everybody's abilities, and learn about a few abilities that weren't mentioned in the first book. It was fascinating to learn that specific abilities could be passed from parent to child. Obviously there is a genetic element to the abilities in general, but it never occurred to me that children could/would inherit the same exact abilities as one of their parents.

Addie and Trevor were so adorable. It was so cute getting to see them fall in love a second time and in a completely different way than the first time around. But my favorite moment of the book was between Connor and Trevor at the end.

One of the most interesting parts about this book, for me, was the friendship that develops between Stephanie and Addie. It was interesting to see how well they could get along without the romantic rivalry that developed immediately in the first book. It was nice to see another side to Stephanie that wasn't the crazy, jealous ex-girlfriend routine from Pivot Point. I didn't think I remembered much from the first book when I started this one, but when Stephanie brought up the party I remembered that misguided disaster from Pivot Point right away. It was good to know that Stephanie wasn't trying to be malicious in any way, she was just really clueless and naive regarding what Trevor was going through.

I strongly recommend this duology. Both books are fast-paced, interesting, quick reads.

This was pretty cute. It was very different than I was expecting, but not terrible.

I found the relationship between the main characters to be very believable. Jase was adorable. He was very mature for his age, but it was easy to understand why he would be that way with all those younger siblings around to look after and help out with.

I had issues with Samantha's character. She basically always had everything handed to her, and that makes a character hard to relate to. Particularly one so young. Until the end of the book it was clear she had never faced any legitimate struggles that she would have had to overcome. This made it kind of unbelievable for me that she would respond to "the incident" the way she does at the end. I understand having a conscience and wanting to do the right thing, but I didn't see that she would have ever had to overcome anything that would prepare her for the way she responds to the situation.

It also seemed bizarre to me that she would be able to blend in with Jase's family to effortlessly, always doing and saying the right thing. She was able to jump right in babysitting all of these overwhelming kids and be amazing at it right off the bat. I just didn't find her character relatable or believable.

I'm also not a fan of how this book ended. I'm not sure if it makes me a good person or a bad person, but the conclusion (lack of consequences in particular) really did not sit well with me whatsoever.

This book exceeded my expectations. I am frequently disappointed in the cheap romance books that I stumble across on Amazon, but this one was a very pleasant surprise. The writing was not great, but I think the price is appropriate for what you get.

Aimee and Tristan are just too perfect together. I really appreciated that they both had obstacles in their past that they had to overcome and also continue to struggle with. I was nervous to discover Tristan's deep dark secret because I was afraid it would be something genuinely worrisome. That he had done something truly horrible or something like that. But I really liked him so I'm glad that was not the case.

I really am not a fan of infidelity-type novels as a general rule. But this one was very well done. You could clearly see that Tristan had genuine feelings for Aimee before all of this even happened to them. And Aimee, while she loved her fiancé, was not passionately in love with him. Who doesn't want a little passion in her life? I appreciated that Aimee and Tristan didn't just jump straight into a physical relationship with each other, they actually waited what you would consider to be an appropriate amount of time given their situation.

The ending of this book was so amazing. I wasn't really expecting that ending at all, but it was a very pleasant surprise. I stayed up until 3am finishing this book when I had to get up at 7 the next day. I don't recommend starting this one close to your bedtime.

I have enjoyed all of the Rosemary Beach books. I absolutely loved Rush and Blaire's books. I really loved Wood's and Della's. Grant and Harlow's were good. This one was decent. What I'm getting at: I think this series is getting progressively worse. That's not to say this book was bad, because it wasn't. I just think it could have been better.

Let me just say that I really like Bethy and Tripp as characters, and I also like them together.

Now onto the issues: the flashback chapters stopped abruptly before they even covered any of the most significant parts of Bethy and Tripp's history together. All of those moments were either remembered by one of the characters at some point in the story, or mentioned by them in conversation. It just seemed odd to me.

The ending was rushed and wrapped up very quickly. There wasn't a satisfying sense of closure for me since Tripp and Bethy are only getting one book instead of two. I could have definitely used an epilogue.

But what bothered me the most: the sex. Obviously these books are going to have it. It's going to happen. It's mature romance. But I don't read books for that. Im married, I'm good on that front. I read books for the story. And I have romance books that are either all about the sex with no story or all about the sex with little story. So much of this book was sex or them being physically attracted to each other, etc. I just thought it was a little much.

I'm not sure if I'll read Mase's story. I don't know that I care enough about him as a character. But I also thought the same thing about Tripp and Bethy's story before I actually read it. Besides, I care about all of these other yahoos, so we'll see what happens.

This wasn't so great.

For about the first 40% of the novel I was thinking it may be a better version of The Testing trilogy. Then it ended up being much worse than that. There were so many directions this story could have taken, the way it went was pretty disappointing.

I did appreciate that Alenna was a strong, determined survivor throughout. She never really displayed any weakness and I respected that about her. Her relationship with Liam was hard to get into for me. I didn't think there was much of a foundation between them and no real time for them to fall for each other, it happened fairly instantaneously. Their characters were each too perfect for me, they never made any real mistakes or did much wrong.

The story behind the island and the gray zone was way too convoluted. The author definitely could have come up with something better than that. This book could have been greatly improved by having a more straight-forward story behind all of this. There was so much going on, and then the actual conclusion came completely out of left field.

So much craziness had already happened, and then that? It was a bit much.

I was surprised by the identity of The Monk. I had a notion of who it might be, but I was not correct. So that caught me off guard.

All in all, I now know why I've never heard anything about this novel. I have no intention of continuing with this series or trilogy or whatever it is.

I want to re-read this series now. I read them all so long ago that I feel like I don't remember all that much. I also think if I did re-read them I would pay a little more attention to Levana. Basically every massive Lunar plan/conspiracy mentioned in the first three books are all ideas you see spawned/implemented within this novella. If I re-read the books, I think I would pay more attention to the details about her and the references that she makes. Also, I am curious if she continued to use the Sol influenced glamour because I don't really remember how she is described in the books in terms of specific features.

This novella did make me understand Levana a little better. Not sympathize with her, just understand her. Channary was pretty evil and Levana definitely made a better Queen that her in a certain sense, you couldn't really argue with her there. Levana was just always so twisted. I don't really think anything specifically made her that way, I just think it's how she and her sister turned out. It was clear their parents weren't good people and neither were they. But I'm not sure they would have necessarily had any possibility of turning out any other way.

To be honest, one of my biggest thoughts is that Cinder was lucky to have gotten away. Even though she didn't choose that, obviously. To have been raised by such a horrible person for a mother and to be around such terrible people in general, who knows how she would have turned out. I don't think she would have stood a chance.

The whole relationship with Evret was incredibly awful and uncomfortable. It definitely demonstrated how selfish and manipulative Levana's nature truly is. And also how little understanding she has of simple decent feelings, such as love, having never genuinely experienced love or many other good feelings during her life.

This showed that Levana is willing to go to very extreme lengths to achieve her ends. Which has me more excited than ever to see what Winter (the book not the character, but her also) has in store for all of our favorites. It will be epic. I don't want to wait nine more months!

This book was much, much better than expected. I didn't have very high expectations and thought it would be another silly high school romance, but it really was not.

There are so many contemporary novels out there that are about the spoiled, rich girl falling for the boy from the wrong side of the tracks. But this story was so real and the stakes were so high that it was in a whole different league from the rest of those stories.

Alex is in a legitimate gang member. Brittany has her own home struggles and isn't as perfect as she tries to make people think she is, but he endangers himself on a daily basis to keep his family safe. You can't help but admire that, even as you think he is misguided for having gotten himself into that situation in the first place.

I really liked both Brittany and Alex. I liked the supporting characters, especially on the South Side, particularly Paco and Isabel. They really made the story more full and rich than it would have been otherwise.

This is a cute read that deals with some real awful issues. It isn't necessarily a light read, but it isn't very graphic either.

I really try to finish every book I pick up. But at the end of the day, life is too short to read bad books. I feel like there are so many books that I want to read that I'll never come close to finishing them. So why waste times on one that don't appeal to you?

I'm sure there are many people out there that enjoy this book. The cover is gorgeous. The concept of a society divided into day citizens and night citizens is an interesting one.

However, I didn't feel any sort of connection with any of the characters. Sol has a very juvenile view of just about everything and I'm just too old to relate to that. I read plenty of characters her age who are intelligent and thorough in their planning. She has these general big ideas with no consideration for the details. She has no real idea how she's going to accomplish anything.

Her entire relationships with both her grandfather and brother are revealed through flashbacks for at least the first 40% of the book. I didn't have any sort of feelings toward either of them, not even curiosity. I didn't care about them. I didn't care about Sol. I didn't care about the baby.

D'Arcy was annoying. I didn't think he was physically described as being attractive, but then she made reference to finding him attractive. Her description of his features was not at all flattering. Those sort of inconsistencies happened so many times in he section of this book that I made it through.

I think this book is another example of an author taking a good concept and trying to make it overly complicated. I really wanted to read this and like it because it's a stand alone and there are just so many series out there. But this was a waste of time.

I can't believe it took me so many days to finish this book, but I worked OT this week and I like to get sleep occasionally.

That was amazing. I didn't like it QUITE as much as the first book, but that was only because of pacing. I felt the end of part 2 into the beginning of Part 3 REALLY dragged, and so I kept putting this down. Mainly to get some sleep.

I love this world so much. It is dark, intense, deadly. The amount of talent it takes an author to craft a world like this so masterfully is unreal. As much as I enjoy Newcago, it was incredibly cool getting to see another city. Babylon Restored was incredible. Just to see Manhattan like that was heartbreaking because I love NYC, but also such an amazing way to show the different capabilities of the different Epics and how they change cities in completely different ways when they take over. There were so many bizarre aspects of the city that David noticed throughout the story and I was worried that we wouldn't get answers as to what was the real story behind a lot of the craziness, but I was so glad that we did. And it was a sad, albeit creative solution.

I didn't realize after reading Steelheart that The Reckoners had various cells in various places. I suppose I should have, but to be honest I didn't even realize that they were communicating with people outside of Newcago. I enjoyed getting to meet Val, Exel, and Mizzy. They were all so different and unique. It had been a while since I read Steelheart and I didn't feel like I remembered too much of it, but I remembered more than I thought. And the characters are so well fleshed out that even if you don't remember much from book one you still know exactly who each and every character is and what they are all about.

David's "metaphors" made me LOL so many times while reading this book. My favorite passage from this book is the potato passage. He is just so awkward and adorable and he flirts in his own clumsy way. Super cute. I spent a good chunk of this book thinking that he was an idiot and as a result of him keeping secrets from the rest of the team something bad was going to happen. I understood where he was coming from in many regards, I just wish that he would have left the lines of communication open a bit more, particularly with Prof. But he's a kid and it was always clear that Prof and Tia in particular were always holding things back. So I can see why that would be frustrating, but David has a tendency to go rogue and is a bit of a loose cannon, so it's easy to understand why those in charge would want to play things close to the chest.

I have to admit that David's obsession with Megan was really getting on my nerves until she actually showed up again. Then I got it and understood because I had forgotten how cool she is despite her betrayal in the first book. I loved getting to know her based on this whole other aspect of her character than the first book when she couldn't reveal that she was an Epic, especially with the way it ended. I enjoyed getting to know her as both the girl and also the Epic that she is. I was surprised by what her ability actually is. It definitely seems like the most far-fetched one we've learned about so far, but this is sci-fi so that's to be expected.

We got so much more information in this book than I expected. We learned (mainly through David) so much more about Epics. He finally solved the mystery of their weaknesses and that was a really interesting thing so watch him try to figure out as this book went on. I am in shock that we found out what Calamity is. I really, really was expecting that to be revealed in the third book so that was crazy unexpected for me. Though we still don't know HOW Calamity happened, which I'm sure will be revealed in the third book. The scene with David, Regalia, and Calamity: Wow. I was on the edge of my seat.

I thought something like what happened at the end was coming, simply due to the amount to foreshadowing. That did not mean that it wasn't very hard to read and extremely heart-wrenching. I can't wait to see where Brandon Sanderson takes this amazing story next. He is such a talent. I haven't read many of his books; just this series so far and The Rithmatist. But from what I've read, he is ridiculously talented and his world building is insanely thorough and complex. He has so many books out that I haven't read yet so I think I will make that one of my reading goals for 2015.