darlingem

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Hello everyone! I finally finished the Kane Chronicles! The conclusion to the trilogy is called The Serpent's Shadow which I finished today!

Thoughts: 

1. This was definitely the best of the three. The action picked up A LOT and many of my questions were answered.

2. The only complaint I have about this book is Sadie, one of the protagonists. I was honestly really annoyed by her in this book. Her priorities were absolutely in the wrong places. I mean, the world was ending and she was thinking about which boy she wanted to date -.-

3. Still, the resolution to the story (aka the plot) definitely made up for this. Also, Carter's incredibly noble personality made the story so much better. I loved the characters in this book and some pretty nice plot twists surprised me.

Rick managed to keep up the unique and light humor that he adds in all his series. 4 stars :) Really enjoyed reading this trilogy! 

Hi everyone! Today I have a giveaway for you all!! It's nothing to impressive but I wanted to give a little back to my followers! The giveaway is for the ANGELFALL trilogy by Susan Ee and a mystery ARC! Hope you enjoy! Click the link below to enter!

                      https://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/c25d1c3f1/

Hi everyone! I just realized I never talked about Winter! Horrible mistake because it has been one of my favorite books this year. I finished on June 2nd. I'm going to VERY BRIEFLY share my thoughts because I can't really do a full length review after the time that has passed. I'm just going to post the teeny tiny paragraph I wrote on Goodreads (follow me :p https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/26467756-andrea) after I read the book. Hope you enjoy, though! 

Hello everyone! Today I'll be talking a little about the first two books in the Kane Chronicles by Rick Riordan!

#1 The Red Pyramid:

The first book is titled "The Red Pyramid". Overall the book was a pretty fun read. Despite this, it was a little bit of a disappointment. I honestly went into this book with really high expectations because of none other than... The Percy Jackson series. If you're not aware, the PJO series is my favorite of all time and the one that got me into reading. Because of this I thought this trilogy would be just as amazing. I think I might have liked it more if I'd have read it four years ago, AKA, the time I read PJO. Still, the book was pretty fun, the characters were pretty well done and the story was ok. The problem with this was that it honestly did not make me feel much. I'm a pretty emotional reader, yet I wasn't very emotional during this book. That is when I can determine that the series is not necessarily my cup of tea. I ended up giving the book a 3.85 stars.

#2 The Throne of Fire:

The second book was actually better. I found the action more interesting and liked the characters a little more. I still don't LOVE Sadie, one of our main characters, but I've come to understand her a little bit. Even though it was better, the story still didn't make me feel much. It is obviously not BAD but I feel like a very important part of my reading experience is just... not present. I ended up giving this one a 3.95 stars. 

I am actually enjoying the series but have gotten sort of tired of it. Hopefully I will finish the third and last book, The Serpent's Shadow, tomorrow. Hope you guys got something out of this review and that you stay tuned for my review on that one! 

So this is another one of the novelas for The Chaos Walking Trilogy. This one is #3.5 and let me tell you it was great. I'll definitely give this one a 5 stars. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed reading from Lee's POV and about the ongoing explorations of The New World. ALSO MONSTERS OF MEN LEFT OFF IN A PRETTY BAD CLIFF HANGER AND (spoiler) THIS SHORT STORY SORT OF CLEARS THINGS UP. Definitely read this right after you finish the third book. YOU WILL NEED IT. 

Alright. Here I go. 

This book was exceptional. "Exceptional" actually doesn't begin to cover it. There were so many plot twists that I honestly did not expect. The action was incredible and the mind games were unbelievable.

Things I'd like to point out about some characters: 

Mistress Coyle

I'll be completely blunt and say I hated Mistress Coyle. I admired her strength, but found her to be kind of bland. Also I thought she let herself be run by her emotions in the worst of times. I see how lots of people might like her, but I just wasn't interested in her character at all. 

The Return

The "Return's" POV in this book made a great difference. The relationship of the Spackle with the world is truly one of the most beautiful things I have read about. I love the concepts of "The Land" and "The Sky". Although his POV opened the reader to literally "a whole new world" I didn't really love this character. I definitely related to his conflictive personality and pitied him in various instances. Despite this, I found him to have a sort of weak personality. (and obviously not happy with what he did in the end...)

Todd

Another thing I loved was Todd's character development. I really believe that this is the book where he truly becomes a man. Todd's POV is always so emotional and I find myself feeling everything he feels and just connecting to him in the best way possible. His inability to kill, his love for Viola just... make me so proud of him. But, by far the best thing about him is that he never does lose to Mayor Prentiss.  

The Mayor

This book was a total game changer for my view of Mayor Prentiss. I always loathed him, but admired him. In this book I came to pity and understand him. His love for Todd was obviously very unnerving but it was also sort of beautiful (yeah ok? sue me). How his story comes to an end is incredible. Despite wanting to harm Todd for hurting him, he decides to preserve Todd's reputation of being unable to kill. This is the character I honestly liked the most. I don't like him because of his personality but because of how interesting and brilliantly twisted he was. Patrick Ness OUTDID himself with this villain. Favorite villain yet. 

Concluding thoughts on The Chaos Walking Trilogy

The Chaos Walking Trilogy is a very gloomy series. It is not happy. Despite this, I have enjoyed it so much. By far, this series has been a total game changer for me. I have learned so many things in an incredibly interesting way. This trilogy had some of the most importante themes I've ever read about. These include: What it is to be a man, Slavery, Sexism, Power, War, Love, Death, and so many more. This trilogy went to places I did not ever even begin to think "YA" could go. I have come to place this trilogy in a completely different pedestal than that of my "favorites". I can't say It's my favorite because it isn't. But I have more respect for this series than any other I have ever read. 

FAIREST

This "novela" was incredible! It read as a book for me and I definitely did not expect to like it as much as I did. I started it a little while ago and stopped for some time because the beginning was sort of slow. After the first 60 pages, I could not put this book down! 

It was an incredible insight on Levan, our antagonist in The Lunar Chronicles. Despite being described as "the story of Queen Levana", it also gave a backstory of Cinder, Cress, and Winter which made it incredibly much better. In this book we get to see how incredibly twisted Levana is and we gain a MUCH better understanding of who she really is. Despite the fact that I pitied her at first, I seriously got to hate Levana. Marissa did an exceptional job in creating the antagonist of her story. Solid 4.5 stars for this. Definitely recommend that any Lunar Chronicles fan read this.

WINTER

BY FAR my favorite book in the series. Perfect. Just perfect. I could not have asked for a better conclusion to this incredible series. Seriously Marissa Meyer outdid herself with this book. I was concerned at first because this book is 823 pages long, which is pretty intimidating. I have no idea how, but Marissa made every single page incredibly entertaining. I literally had NOT ONE SINGLE MOMENT of boredom while reading this. Definitely 5 stars. Just yes.

Read this a while ago, but still wanted to write a review... Hope you enjoy it!

Overall: 

This book was pretty epic. It has definitely been one of the most complex books I've read in terms of the various things that happen all at once. Despite this, the book read like a movie. It was super interesting and pretty fast-paced.

Main Characters: 

Kady was an incredible main character. She has been one of the most real characters I've ever read about. I think her reaction to the situation was very realistic and was pleasantly surprised by that. Kauffman and Kristoff somehow created a main character that was very strong yet realistic.

Ezra was a total sweetie. I loved his positive and outgoing personality; it refreshed the story a little. I also really admired his commitment to Kady. So, needless to say, I loved the relationship between Kady and Ezra.

Ok. AIDAN. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole situation with AIDAN. It was really interesting to read about an AI as complex and intelligent as him. It really surprised me how honestly creeped out I was by him. I also sort of pitied him. What I loved most about his situation was his struggle with understanding humans and how he somehow started experiencing human emotion. Completely and utterly incredible. 

A little summary...

Solid first book in the trilogy. Really enjoyed the format of the book, but it honestly made it kind of hard for me to follow the plot and connect to the characters. Despite this, the story was incredible and the ending was an awesome setup for the rest of the series. (Damn that plot twist) Definitely looking forward to the movie! Recommend to any sci-fi lovers out there.

This "novela" was incredible! It read as a book for me and I definitely did not expect to like it as much as I did. I started it a little while ago and stopped for some time because the beginning was sort of slow. After the first 60 pages, I could not put this book down!

It was an incredible insight on Levan, our antagonist in The Lunar Chronicles. Despite being described as "the story of Queen Levana", it also gave a backstory of Cinder, Cress, and Winter which made it incredibly much better. In this book we get to see how incredibly twisted Levana is and we gain a MUCH better understanding of who she really is. Despite the fact that I pitied her at first, I seriously got to hate Levana. Marissa did an exceptional job in creating the antagonist of her story. Solid 4.5 stars for this. Definitely recommend that any Lunar Chronicles fan read this.

Wow. This was so unexpected and interesting! Human and Spackle? I actually never thought of that. Really enjoyed reading about a new character in the New World. Declan was so emotional and he kind of reminded me of Todd in the best way possible. It was super interesting to read about his relationship with Ti and the town's reaction to it. This honestly felt like it had a lot of content, yet it's only about 30 pages long. Really excited to see how this story connects to Monsters of Men!

Holy crap this book was incredible! It was so much better than the first one. (And the first one was great!) 

The character development was CRAZY GOOD; Todd grew so much. So many things happen to him in this book. He got stronger but had to go through some pretty horrible stuff to do so.

So many of my opinions were changed. I ended up loving characters I hated and understanding them. Let me just say I hate Mayor Prentiss but I freaking love to hate him. He is definitely the most incredible antagonist I haver ever read about. One of the villains that I hate to admire but certainly do.

Also, Mystress Coyle was so confusing for me. I never knew if she was good or bad. Her intentions were never actually clear until the end of the book. I was kinda bothered by this (probably on purpose - thanks, Ness) but I also loved the twists that had to do with her. 

I loved how throughout the book we really get to know the two different sides of the "war" but which one is good and which one is bad is never really clarified. In the beginning, it's obvious which side is the good one. However, towards the end, everything just takes a different turn than expected and pretty much changes everything. 

This book was so well written and thought out. Everything happened smoothly and made sense. I did not expect absolutely ANYTHING that happened in any part of the book. Incredible sequel to the first book, really scared (and excited) for the last book. Obviously 5 stars.

In this novela (Chaos Walking #0.5) we follow Viola's journey to the New World. In it, Viola's family appears and we also see little glimpses of her life on the ship she was born. I really liked seeing what happened to Viola and her family and how she came to the new world. I'm pretty sure this novela will have some importance in the next two books. Definitely try out this series! 

I really enjoyed this book! It wasn't like anything I've read before, which I think is why I loved it but also made this book a little hard for me to read. 

It's not a typical YA story where the romance plays a big part. Maybe it's not even meant to be a romance. Judge me all you want, but in most of the books that I love romance plays a big part. I'm noy saying that I NEED romance in a book in order to enjoy it, it's just that it felt weird to read a book without it. I'm pretty sure that is what was sort of missing for me. I understand that it was ment to be that way but it'll still take some getting used to for me. ***I didn't take off a full star because of the romance!*** Even though the plot and just everything about this book was incredible, something (that I can't put a finger on) was missing for me. Even though I loved everything, I couldn't bring myself to give it 5 stars.

Despite this, the book was incredible. The characters were amazing. I loved our main character Todd and his character development was great. The world was also really cool. Definitely different but very alike in lots of ways. And of course the plot was amazing. The end just leaves you wanting the second one!

I also wanted to share how much I loved the meaning behind this book. Patrick Ness discusses some topics that are extremely important for any society and usually are not discussed in YA novels. This book makes you think. It makes you question so many of the traditions and customs that we have in our own world and how extremely wrong they are. It also has the best quotes. The quotes in this book made so much sense to me. I usually never remember quotes of a book, let alone the page they are in. This one is my favorite (pg. 42): "The Noise is just a man unfiltered, and without a filter, a man is just chaos walking." Patrick Ness is just a genius.

I would definitely recomend this book to anyone who likes action-packed stories. Even if you're like me and love your romance, I'm pretty sure you'll enjoy this book. Definitely recomend and definitely trying out the second one!

Synopsis:

- Luxury spaceliner Icarus suddenly plummets from hyperspace into the nearest planet. Lilac LaRoux and Tarver Merendsen survive -- alone. Lilac is the daughter of the richest man in the universe. Tarver comes from nothing, a cynical war hero. Both journey across the eerie deserted terrain for help. Everything changes when they uncover the truth.

Hello everyone!!! I haven't done a review in a LONG WILE but I read this book and wanted to share some of my thoughts on it!

The first half of this book was really entertaining and the ending was pretty satisfying. The middle was kind of just ok.

Overall I enjoyed this book. I was pretty entertained; my problem were the characters and the love story. I liked the characters and they had ok chemistry but I just didn't really feel attached to them seperately. I was a little attached to them as a couple but as indiviual characters I just wasn't. I will say I really enjoyed Lilac's character development.

As for the plot, it was entertaining but I honestly got lost in some parts. Sometimes I didn't understand the descriptions of what was happening. I never really understood what the life forms of the planet were and what happenened to them.

I honestly won't read this book again. It was an entertaining story but I don't think it was really worth the time I gave it. Maybe I wasn't impressed because I went into this book with pretty high expectations. Either way, I gave it a solid 3.5. 

Instructions for whoever wants to do the Tag!!! http://sjbouquet.blogspot.com/2015/08/make-me-your-villain-tag.html

So here are my results! 

1. Villan Name: Stronger Queen 

2. Your Weapon or Power: Walls 

3. Weakness: Wasting Time

4. Villan Theme Song: Renegades by X Ambassadors

5. Evil Henchmen: Rachel from PJO 

6. Love Interest: Etienne St. Clair from AATFK

7. The Hero: Cinder

Guys this was SOOO fun!!! I tag anyone who feels like doing it! Thanks to Dashiell Garci for tagging me on twitter! (@DashGarci)