“People aren’t either wicked or noble. They’re like chef’s salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Grim Grotto
““You think the dead we loved truly ever leave us? You think that we don’t recall them more clearly in times of great trouble?”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
And again, since finishing Poison Study my answer has changed… Yelena is totally my favorite. She’s such a badass! I love that she’s so smart and strong, and that she doesn’t take crap from anyone no matter who they are. She stands up for what she believes is right and, like me, has the first instinct of running away from things that are uncomfortable or scary, but she’s trying to change. Totally the girl I want to be. Now if only I could find someone to teach me how to fight like Ari & Janco teach her…
I absolutely love Mia Thermopolis. Is she crazy confident, cool, and brave? Hell no. Does she wield a sword, slay beasts, or go on crazy quests? Hell no. No, Mia is okay at school, a terrible princess, and even worse with boys.
In short, Mia was my role model when I was growing up. I was no princess by any means, but I felt that my homeschooled self lived vicariously through her first kiss, homework issues and princess troubles. I even loved the movie. In fact, I think my nerdy self really understood Mia’s nerdy self.
Hello, Jamie from Outlander. Though the dude they cast in the Starz version is not how I pictured him in my head while reading the book, he’s still okay.
In the book, he’s mysterious, sexy, smoldering…Scottish. Plus he can wield a sword like nobody’s business. Did I ever think I would have another fictional ginger man crush since Ron Weasley? Nope, but Outlander pleasantly surprised me!
Oh my, my answer to this is officially changed! I finished Poison Study a couple weeks ago and am totally enthralled with Valek. He’s handsome, and mysterious and totally intriguing. I want to read about him all the time and know what he’s doing and why he is the way he is. It’s kind of nice to have a male character peak my interest so much!
I’ve read every single book in the Series of Unfortunate Events. When they announced that they would be making a movie out of it (with Jim Carrey, AND my heartthrob, Liam Aiken) my thirteen-year-old self was stoked.
Until I watched it and realized that they stuffed three books into one movie.
Look. I get it. Three SUE books doesn’t equal many pages—maybe 600-700. I get it. Longer books have been stuffed into the minuscule timeframe of a film. But shoving three different plots and stories into one? Absolutely ridiculous. So much was left out, and it was very jarring to have three story lines in one movie.
The Lovely Bones holds such a huge piece of my heart, I used to talk about it to anyone that would listen and I convinced my friends that didn’t read that they had to read it. Then, the movie came along. Pure and utter devastation.
I was actually really optimistic about how they were going to handle it. I mean, Mark Wahlberg, Susan Sarandon, and Stanley Tucci? Such a killer cast! I didn’t see how they could mess it up! But they did, oh how they did. Maybe it was just me and how I envisioned the book, but it wasn’t anything like how they made the movie.
The girl that played Susie was just not good, and I felt like… it was just one big let down. The thrill that I got when I read the book, that piece that hooked me and wouldn’t let go, was not there. Stanley Tucci was brilliant, which I appreciated, but that didn’t save the movie from disaster for me.
She’s relatively new in the author world I would say (her first novel was published in 2006) but she has definitely won me over and I will forever read anything she publishes.
Gillian Flynn is absolutely amazing.
The way that she writes, the way she captures your attention and you don’t want to look away for fear of missing something (in a book!!), it’s just breath taking.
If I could read her novels for the first time over and over again, I would. After I finished Gone Girl, I just sat in awe of the way she has with words and immediately found her other books, Sharp Objects and Dark Places. She is the best in my book.
Growing up, I read a lot. Things haven’t changed much. I read Harry Potter, I read the Warriors series, I read the Chronicles of Narnia, the Hobbit, the Silverwing series, and the Unicorns of Balinor. I was all over the young adult fiction section at the library—the librarians knew me by name!
One writer stands out above the rest from my adolescence: Meg Cabot. Being a homeschooled girl with only a brother for company, my Meg Cabot books were like a girlfriend in my hand. I felt like I learned about boys, dating, and falling in love through various Cabot series—the Princess Diaries, The Mediator, 1-800-Where-R-U, Avalon High, All-American Girl—I picked up my first Meg Cabot book when I was thirteen. It was the first Princess Diaries book, pre-Anne-Hathaway. I was hooked, and actually took a break from my beloved fantasy novels.
To this day, I still love Meg Cabot and continue to read her adult books.
I love the Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold…but I really hate it at the same time. I love it because I grew so attached Susie, the MC. I hate it because with every turn of the page, I became attached, but new she was dead. I love it because it’s a beautiful book, hate it because it’s just a dreadful, terrible story. I ached for Susie. I ached for her family. For her father. With every mention of her murderer, my skin crawled.
Incredibly depressing but awesome book.
Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins. I loved this book, I loved the setting and the characters, everything.But I absolutely hated how predictable it was. Every page I turned, I felt like I knew what was going to happen. I didn’t even need to finish reading it, I had already guessed, but I did anyway because it was cute. Still a good book, but definitely been done before. A lot.
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. HATE THIS BOOK. I jumped on the band wagon when it was super popular and read the entire series, and I really can’t stand any of them.
I don’t like how reliant on males (whether it’s Jacob or Edward or her dad) Bella is, I don’t like that the vampires sparkle in the sun (they’re supposed to catch fire, duh). I don’t like any of the characters or any of the relationships or the writing. Nothing about it. It’s so whiny and disturbing. Rant over.
Beauty Queens by Libba Bray was the weirdest book I’ve ever read. Seriously, so weird. A strange Mean Girls meets Lord of the Flies meets Lost type of book.
Fifty contestants of Miss Teen Dream are on an airplane flight to the beach, when it crashes. From Goodreads: What’s a beauty queen to do? Continue to practice for the talent portion of the program – or wrestle snakes to the ground? Get a perfect tan – or learn to run wild? And what should happen when the sexy pirates show up?
I thought they would turn girl-vicious/survival-mode after being stranded, but instead, the overly powerful GIRL POWER message turned me off the most. I consider myself a feminist, and I understand that many feminists who read this book were rejoicing. I felt differently, mostly because it was forced down my throat.
Strange, strange book. Hated it. Finished it, but I hated it.
1. Peeta Mellark – I feel like seeing what he was thinking and feeling during the entire series, would be such a different perspective than Katniss. She volunteered in place of her sister, he was chosen. He’d had a crush on her for awhile and just had a different perspective to offer.
2. Hermione Granger – so many girls identify with her, I think a series or even just one book from her point of view would be a huge hit.
3. Primrose Everdeen – what did she go through while Katniss was away? What feelings did she grapple with?
4. Perry – the Under the Never Sky series would have been SO interesting coming from Perry’s point of view, with his family history and everything that went on between his brother, father and himself leading up to the books… a book like this should definitely be on Veronica Rossi’s to-do list.
5. Draco Malfoy – getting the story from one of the “villains” is always interesting, and I think HP from Draco’s point of view would be even more so than your average villain. He had a lot of pressure on him from his family and didn’t have anywhere near the same life or experiences that Harry did.
I know they’re all pretty prominent characters in the books themselves, but books from their point of views would be so AMAZING.
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I finished this book last weekend and I’ve really been thinking about what exactly I’m going to say about it… my mind is still full of awe and just a complete mess so I’m just going to go for it.
Poison Study is without a doubt the BEST book that I’ve read this year. It is so incredibly stuck in my mind; it’s all I’ve been thinking about since I finished it. If I’m being completely honest, I’ve even dreamt about it. It’s THAT stuck in my head and it’s so refreshing to feel this way about a book when the last couple I’ve read (or tried to) have been complete let downs. I only wish I had read it sooner, but alas, it’s exactly what I needed right now.
Yelena is on the verge of being executed for murder when she is given the opportunity to become the food taster for the Commander of Ixia in lieu of execution. She goes for it, and realizes that staying alive isn’t necessarily going to be easy when the Rebels are plotting to seize Ixia and she herself is developing magical powers that she’s unable to control.
Yelena herself is such a badass. She’s strong, stubborn, level headed, and doesn’t take anyone’s crap including the Valek, the Chief of Security. While her life is continuously threatened by the father of the man she murdered (among others), she doesn’t give in to her immediate reaction which is to run away as fast as possible. She has a hard time trusting anyone, and when you learn her entire story, it’s completely understandable. There are twists and surprises, and some things I definitely saw coming but in a way that I was anxious to see the events play out, not in a way that was old and tired. I rated it 5/5 on Goodreads and cannot wait to get the next book in my hands!
Again, my first choice would be a number in the Harry Potter series, because we read them as a family. But I’ll go with number two, Midnight for Charlie Bone by Jenny Nimmo.
To be honest, I don’t remember much of what actually happened in the book. I had to check out the Goodreads summary for that. I don’t remember if it was good or not. I do remember we read it as a family because we were told it was like Harry Potter—we were in between Harry Potter book releases, so we bought the hardcover book, and Mom and Dad would take turns reading it out loud.
So cliche, but Going Home by Harriet Evans. When I was younger, we moved around quite a bit, so there’s not really a book that reminds me of that but this one gives me that feeling of home.
It’s about Lizzy Walter going home to spend Christmas with her family and finding out the family home is in jeopardy and with that the unity of her family. Every time I read it, I wish I was part of her family and in the book with them. It gives such an overall feeling of comfort and concern, it’s perfect. I forgot how much I love this book!
lifebetweenreads.com 