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bought today. (by at home in the clouds)

REVIEW: Wake by Amanda Hocking

Gorgeous. Fearless. Dangerous. They’re the kind of girls you envy; the kind of girls you want to hate. Strangers in town for the summer, Penn, Lexi and Thea have caught everyone’s attention—but it’s Gemma who’s attracted theirs. She’s the one they’ve chosen to be part of their group.

Gemma seems to have it all—she’s carefree, pretty, and falling in love with Alex, the boy next door. He’s always been just a friend, but this summer they’ve taken their relationship to the next level, and now there’s no going back. Then one night, Gemma’s ordinary life changes forever. She’s taking a late night swim under the stars when she finds Penn, Lexi and Thea partying on the cove. They invite her to join them, and the next morning she wakes up on the beach feeling groggy and sick, knowing something is different.

Suddenly Gemma is stronger, faster, and more beautiful than ever. But her new powers come with a terrifying price. And as she uncovers the truth, she’s is forced to choose between staying with those she loves—or entering a new world brimming with dark hungers and unimaginable secrets.

I have heard great things about Amanda Hocking’s novels. I have yet to read the Tyrelle series but I plan to soon. I’ll be honest, the cover of Wake is what drew me in at first but the mythology aspect to it is also what hooked me. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on a copy of Wake.

As much as I was eager to read Wake, it took me a little while to get into. I liked Gemma, I liked Harper, and I liked the other characters but it took me some time to really get into the story. Even then, I seemed to read Wake at a slower pace than other books. It wasn’t that I didn’t like it, I just had a hard time connecting to the characters. There’s Gemma: the younger sister who is driven but also has a rebellious streek to her. Then there’s Harper: the older sister who feels almost motherly to Gemma because of a tragedy that happened that took their mother away from them so she was left to basically raise her sister. Harper is over-protective, practical, more mature than most people her age and a little reluctant to live her own life. I still felt something was… missing with all the characters. They had little depth. I hope that was only first book jitters and they will become more rounded as the series progresses.

I also found that the pace of the book was a little too speedy. It was difficult to get a grip on a timeline which probably added to the disconnect to the characters. We know it was happening in the summer but it was really hard to tell how much time had passed from the time Gemma had met the sirens to the end of the book. It left me feeling a little confused.

I will say that Amanda Hocking is fantastic at world building. The sirens were absolutely beautiful but so, so creepy and so, so aggravating that you just wanted to reach in and slap them a few times. The setting she created was beautiful. It was as if you were right there in the water, or at Bernie’s Island or the library or any of the other settings in the book.

Though the book has a few flaws, I still thoroughly enjoyed it. Amanda spun a unique tale, I’ll give her that. I will definitely be continuing the Watersong series!

RATING 3.5/5

PURCHASE (amazon kindle) (amazon hardcover) (chapters/indigo)

(Source: omfgbooks)

REVIEW: Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire

The new Abby Abernathy is a good girl. She doesn’t drink or swear, and she has the appropriate percentage of cardigans in her wardrobe. Abby believes she has enough distance between her and the darkness of her past, but when she arrives at college with her best friend, her path to a new beginning is quickly challenged by Eastern University’s Walking One-Night Stand.

Travis Maddox, lean, cut, and covered in tattoos, is exactly what Abby needs—and wants—to avoid. He spends his nights winning money in a floating fight ring, and his days as the ultimate college campus charmer. Intrigued by Abby’s resistance to his appeal, Travis tricks her into his daily life with a simple bet. If he loses, he must remain abstinent for a month. If Abby loses, she must live in Travis’s apartment for the same amount of time. Either way, Travis has no idea that he has met his match.

Beautiful Disaster is not my usual cuppa tea. I like contemporary but generally I stick to fantasy, sci-fi or dystopia. Beautiful Disaster is far from any of those things but still I took a chance on it. I’m a sucker for the bad boy story, what can I say.

One of the things that I liked about Beautiful Disaster is that it is well written. I’ve seen a few reviews that state otherwise and I can see where they are coming from but I do not believe that is the case. Beautiful Disaster is told in first person. The narrator is Abby Abernathy, a 19 year old woman. With that in mind, I think the writing style is realistic. It’s from her viewpoint, her mind. She’s fresh to college; trying to start a new life, trying to get away from her past. I don’t think any of us would think so eloquently in that time of our life, especially with all that Abby went through and is going through.

That said, Abby is a hard one to get a grip on. At first I was very fond of her. She seemed like someone you might know in real life. She has a bit of a dark past that she doesn’t want to shed any light on, but she’s fun and caring and everything you’d want in a friend. But when she met Travis, and as their relationship rolled along, she became a little intolerable. Her constant see-sawing when it came to Travis and her feelings nearly drove me nuts. I saw where she was coming from most times, but it still grated my nerves. I loved their beginning. I loved how they were friends but there was this thing between them, this unmistakeable sexual chemistry where you just knew they would end up in each other’s pants. But it dragged on and dragged on and Abby got completely hair-pullingly aggravating. But like I said, the more she see-sawed, the more I became annoyed with her.

Travis is another story. I really, really liked him. He’s your typical bad boy: he has a short fuse, he is covered in tattoos, he will totally mess someone up if they so much as look at him or someone he loves the wrong way, even by a fraction but deep down he has a bigger heart than most people. There were times that he also annoyed me but they came far less Abby’s annoyances. Some of his actions were rash, some of them definitely overboard, boarding on completely ridiculous but I guess that comes with the kind of relationship that Abby and Travis had.

At times, reading Beautiful Disaster felt like reading a soap opera. Events, odd but memorable character names, and even Travis and Abby’s relationship to an extent paralleled even the most ludicrous of soaps but at the same time, I couldn’t put it down. One way or another, Beautiful Disaster is a gripping roller coaster ride that will leave you breathless until the very last page. I’m excited to read Walking Diaster, which is this book but told from Travis’s POV.

*Thank you Simon&Schuster for providing a copy for review!!*

Rating 3/5

PURCHASE (amazon kindle) (amazon paperback)

(Source: omfgbooks)

REVIEW: Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver

I’m pushing aside the memory of my nightmare,
pushing aside thoughts of Alex,
pushing aside thoughts of Hana and my old school,
push,
push,
push,
like Raven taught me to do.
The old life is dead.
But the old Lena is dead too.
I buried her.
I left her beyond a fence,behind a wall of smoke and flame.

Sometimes the sophomore book in a series falls short. A number of things could happen: the author get lazy, it doesn’t live up to the hype of the first, it just somehow ends up falling flat in every way possible or it simply sucks. Pandemonium is not one of those sophomore books. It was fantastic. It lived up to every one of the expectations that I had.

I love how the book was split between going back and forth NOW and THEN. It really showed all that Lena had gone through, her feelings from start to finish and the roller coaster she’d metaphorically been on. Lauren didn’t simply do a time jump and suddenly Lena was all strong since losing Alex and crossing into the Wilds. She wasn’t suddenly this new person. We saw how she was truly gutted, how she sometimes wished that she to had died while crossing instead of losing the man she loved. We saw her gradually grow and heal, even when she was in the NOW sequences. It was something I haven’t seen done before.

In Pandemonium we also meet some new characters. There is Raven, Tack, Hunter - a few more - and of course, Julian. They are all fantastic and play a part in Lena becoming who she is now: brave, strong but also, underneath it all, a little bit broken still. You can be strong and broken at the ame time. Hell, I think you can only admit that you’re broken if you’re strong. Julian is Lena’s new love interest and in many ways, he helped her mourn Alex and to heal. In no way has Lena let go but she’s moving on.

Pandemonium doesn’t lack action scenes. At points I was on the edge of my seat, fighting sleep, just to see what happened next. There was no way I was going to go to sleep or head back to work until I knew what was going on. Pandemonium is a brilliant mix of action as well as a very human story, as well as the dystopian element. Pandemonium will not disappoint you. It’s one of the best sequels in a series I’ve read in a while.

I will say this: I wish I had read Pandemonium closer to the release date of Requiem because the cliffhanger is big. Very, very, very big. Huge and hair pulling and oh my GOD, it’s big.

Rating 5/5

PURCHASE (amazon kindle) (amazon hardcover) (kobo)

(Source: omfgbooks)

delirium (by lauren oliver) dreamcast → dylan o’brien as alex sheathes

(Source: omfgbooks)

delirium (by lauren oliver) dreamcast → sasha pieterse as hana tate [2/2]

(Source: omfgbooks)

delirium (by lauren oliver) dreamcast → claire holt as hana tate [1/2]

(Source: omfgbooks)