What girl doesn’t want to be surrounded by gorgeous jocks day in and day out? Jordan Woods isn’t just surrounded by hot guys, though-she leads them as the captain and quarterback of her high school football team. They all see her as one of the guys and that’s just fine. As long as she gets her athletic scholarship to a powerhouse university.
But everything she’s ever worked for is threatened when Ty Green moves to her school. Not only is he an amazing QB, but he’s also amazingly hot. And for the first time, Jordan’s feeling vulnerable. Can she keep her head in the game while her heart’s on the line?
The blogosphere was crazy about this book last year and so when I saw it so cheap on the Kindle store I knew that I had to buy it. My thoughts? Miranda Kenneally is a genius!
Our main character, Jordan, is so awesome that I just want to move to Hundred Oaks so that I can be best friends with her. Her dedication to football (American football to all English people) was admirable and she was a really good role model. I liked the fact that she wasn’t particularly girly and didn’t have a lot of friends besides the ones on her team. She also had a lot of problems at home. Her dad was incredibly annoying and I really did want to shout at him. Ty Green was your typical jock character. Yes, I enjoyed reading about him but there was something holding me back throughout. There was something off about him. I did feel sorry for him though, so I wasn’t completely heartless! His past did explain the way he reacted in certain situations. Now on to, SAM HENRY! I loved him right from the start! He was Jordan’s best friend and I really loved their relationship. There were times in the novel when I could have screamed at him (you’ll understand if you’ve read the novel!) but they were special circumstances.
I was left reeling at the ending. I couldn’t believe that it was left so amazingly but I also couldn’t believe that Miranda Kenneally was a mind reader! It was written exactly as I would have ended it. It was definitely the definition of perfect!
Create your own Stacking The Shelves post. You can use my official graphic or your own, but please link back to Tynga’s Reviews so more people can join the fun!
You can set your post any way you want, simple book list, covers, pictures, vlog, sky is the limit!
I am posting Stacking The Shelves on Saturdays, but feel free to post yours any day that fits you.
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I have a massive haul this week! Probably because of my addiction to taking things out of the library and also because I ordered and received lots of books!
Library Haul:
Losing Lila by Sarah Alderson- I read the first book at the start of the year and can’t wait to read the rest! I also really love the cover.
Crossed by Ally Carter- I haven’t finished Matched yet but I’m hoping that now I’ve got this one I’ll end up reading it.
Audrey, Wait! by Robin Benway- I know a lot of people have read and enjoyed this book so I decided to pick it up myself. I’ve only read a small part of it but it’s really good!
The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer- Evolution comes out in the UK soon and, even though I’ve already read The Unbecoming, I’d like to read it again.
Saving June by Hannah Harrington- I’ve been hearing a lot about this book lately and have decided to try it out for myself. It does look great!
Review Haul:
Dance of Shadows by Yelena Black- I hadn’t heard of this book until I got it this week and I actually kissed the cover when I pulled it out of the envelope. It’s so pretty! Thank you Scholastic!
Tempest by Julie Cross- I received this to review from Macmillan and started it straight away. I really enjoyed it and my review will be posted on Tuesday!
I also received Smuggler’s Kiss by Marie-Louise Jensen which I didn’t photograph but absolutely loved!
Amazon Haul:
Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan- I’m always looking for a good contemporary so I decided to order this book! It’s the only one that has been delivered yet but I can’t wait to start it!
What books did you receive this week? Leave your link!
Welcome to the newly designed Queen of Contemporary! I was really lucky because Lizzy from Read-A-holicZ agreed to design my blog for me! I am so pleased with it and can’t stop looking at it! Thank you so much, Lizzy! You should all stop by her blog because it is equally as amazing as her designs.
Rose Zarelli, self-proclaimed word geek and angry girl, has some confessions to make 1. I’m livid all the time. Why? My dad died. My mom barely talks. My brother abandoned us. I think I’m allowed to be irate, don’t you?
2. I make people furious regularly. Want an example? I kissed Jamie Forta, a badass guy who might be dating a cheerleader. She is now enraged and out for blood. Mine.
3. High school might as well be Mars. My best friend has been replaced by an alien, and I see red all the time. (Mars is red and “seeing red” means being angry—get it?)
Here are some other vocab words that describe my life: Inadequate. Insufferable. Intolerable.
(Don’t know what they mean? Look them up yourself.)
(Sorry. That was rude.)
I received Confessions of an Angry Girl to review from Netgalley and didn’t start reading it immediately, deciding to put it away for a while whilst I got through a few more books. I finally started reading this as I wanted a good contemporary read and this looked very promising.
First of all, I would like to say that I loved our main character, Rose. She reminded me of myself in a weird way and I enjoyed reading about her mainly for this reason. I’m not a huge geek, and neither was Rose, although, like me, she worked hard and tried to get good grades. From the cover, title and blurb we get this image of an incredibly angry girl who was been through troubling times. Yes, she has been through hard times but she really isn’t very angry. I think the anger is more grief than anything and her feeling that she couldn’t do anything to save her father. It’s despair, really.
Jamie Forta! How amazing is that name?! He was this slightly bad boy with a past just as bad as Rose’s and they really were the perfect match! He already had a girlfriend, though, which added a few complications. He really was quite a typical YA love interest, but it really didn’t bother me this time. I was actually pretty comfortable with it.
The other characters were really great as well and they were all rounded and whole, rather than flopping all over the place. I was annoyed in all the right places, and squealing in places at times too!
The plot idea is really good and a little like Mean Girls, but totally unique! We have the bad girl (who is also called Regina! Coincidence?) and the super hot male: what else do we need? It was written really well and I loved the addition of dictionary definitions at the start of each chapter.
I think that Rozett has managed to portray a perfect high school setting and created believable and compelling characters.
We’ve all been through those traumatic times when reading: tears streaming down your face, a feeling of utter despair. And I bet that you’re wishing that you had my advice then (you’re probably not but I can always dream!).
Here is my advice:
1. You can never have enough tissues. You heard me! You need something to wipe those tears away with and your friends will thank me when they don’t have your snot on their shoulders!
2. Take deep breaths. No, don’t hyperventilate but don’t faint either from holding your breath! Concentrating on your breathing will really help to calm you down.
3. Cry it out! I know I’m majorly contradicting myself here but sometimes it’s a good thing to cry!
4.Thrust the book into the hands of everyone you see! Seriously, if I were you I would be going out in to the streets and throwing the book at people until they read it. This is also a good thing as you can talk to people about it too!
5. Take your time! Nobody is telling you to come to terms with the book straight away! Even if it takes 5 years (it probably won’t do! But oh well!) it really doesn’t matter!
Welcome to the dorkside. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
Jeane Smith’s a blogger, a dreamer, a jumble sale queen, CEO of her own lifestyle brand, and has half a million followers on Twitter. Michael Lee’s a star of school, stage, and playing field. A golden boy in a Jack Wills hoodie. They have nothing in common but a pair of cheating exes.
So why can’t they stop making out? This novel is about an unlikely relationship, but it’s also about roller derby, dogs on skateboards, dogs on surfboards, dogs doing any form of extreme sport, old skool hip hop, riding your bike downhill really fast, riot grrrl, those boys you want to kiss but punch in the face at the same time, dyeing your hair ridiculous colors just because you can, stitch ‘n’ bitch, the songs that make you dance, the songs that make you cry, being a bad ass, cake, love, death, and everything in between.
I mainly picked up Adorkable because it said that the main character was a blogger. I thought that it might be interesting and it was contemporary as well, which is a major bonus. Adorkable was more than that, though. It’s a novel about identity and self confidence but also about living your life and not worrying what other people think of you.
Jeane, our female protagonist, is a blogger, owner of her own brand, and major Twitter addict. She made me laugh, and she also made me want to throw stuff in rage. That’s a good thing, by they way. I was pleased that I felt such emotions because some characters make me want to eat cardboard. Seriously. She had this really amazing sense of humour and I’m sure that I’ll be using some of her lines in the future!
So maybe Michael Lee wasn’t one of my favourite love interests, but does it really matter? I was really surprised when I saw that some chapters were written from his perspective but this was actually something I was glad of because if the whole novel was written in Jeane’s point of view then I may have had to hit my head repeatedly on a table. She can be a little bit too much sometimes!
The other characters were really great too and I really wanted to slap Heidi. Scarlett and Barney were sweet too and I had a cuteness overload every time Alice and Melly were in a scene!
I really liked the plot ideas and it kept me reading throughout. There were some scenes where I felt a little uncomfortable and there was also a lot of sexual references but the book’s general awesomeness and dorkiness really made up for this.
I really enjoyed this book and I can’t wait to read other books by Sarra Manning! Is there an Adorkable fandom because I am totally joining it if there is?! And finally: Adorkable for life!
I’m really lucky to have Rebecca from Rebecca-Books on the blog today! Rebecca runs one of my favourite blogs and I’m so excited about this interview!
1. What made you take the step into the blogging world?
I’ve always loved books so it’s probably unsurprising that I do something related to that. Around three years ago, for some unidentifiable reason, I created a blog and wrote a really, really bad review for a Sarah Dessen book. I started the blog as a chance to get away from some things happening in my life at that point and it kind of worked. After that spell, I forgot about making the blog.
Fast forward a couple of months, I was looking at some reviews of a book I wanted to read and found Goodreads and then eventually found this huge network of blogs and reviews that made me want to join in. And the rest, they say, is history!
2. If you could time travel, which period of time would you go back to?
Oh gosh, that’s a little hard. I loved history since I was like 7 so there are a few period of times I’d like to go back to.
Definitely the Tudor times. I find that period of history the most interesting – all the betrayals, affairs, politics and going-on’s – it’s one of the best periods. And also, I want to wear one of those Tudor dresses…
3. If you had to compare yourself to a fictional book character, who would it be?
A few people have asked me this recently and I never know the answer. One of the people I did feel quite a connection with was the narrator from Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (funny enough her name is not Rebecca…). The way she feels and what she does through in the novel I felt quite united with.
The other character I feel attached to is Macy from The Truth About Forever by one of my favourite authors, Sarah Dessen. I can feel a little bit of an outsider like she does and I hold myself back a lot. I think I need some of her courage and bravery sometimes. Wow, that sounds a little morbid.
4. You have the chance to visit one Dystopian world, where is it?
WHY ONE? SO MANY. However, when I was considering this question, I realised something. Most of the dystopians I’ve read, there’s some serious problem with the world or the government so in some ways I’d rather live in the present or past…
If I could choose one, it would have to be the reformed newer world from Extras, at the end of the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld. Although a lack of privacy, I thought the idea of just this huge blogosphere that everyone can contribute and be a part of seemed quite a cool idea.
5. If you could be an author for a day, who would you choose to be?
AH STILL SO MANY. I think someone that comes across quite fun like John Green or Maureen Johnson (I love her tweets!). I think it would be really cool to be in their shoes for a day, especially someone like John Green with a book that SO many people love!
6. What is your favourite book blogging experience so far?
Oh, there have been a few! One was probably when Patrick Ness remembered a comment I had made about the anthology he contributed to, Losing It. I was at a signing and told him my name as he was signing my book and then suddenly he was asking me ‘Were you the Rebecca that wrote the comment about the blanks in this book?’ And then, wrote a little note about me on his blog. Yes, I had fan-girl moment.
I think the experience that tops that is when I see a comment about my blog or me on the many blogs I follow. I’d see someone mention me as one of their favourite bloggers in an interview or someone call me one of their best blogging friends. Sometimes I feel the most happy and proud of myself when I see someone comment that they love my blog so much and read all my posts. Just one of the best moments for me. (Lucy, I know you were one of those people, thank you!)
I also love fashion so I follow a lot of fashion blogs as well as book blogging ones. My favourite at the moment is probably WishWishWish (http://wishwishwish.net/), If you love vintage style or photography in general, take a look.
8. Do you have any advice to give to future book bloggers? I’ve been doing this for three years, so I have picked up a few tips along the way.
First thing first, as soon as you have a blog, try and join as many social networking sites as you can, like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook. As soon as I got Twitter, I started getting more ideas for posts, finding out about other great books and opportunities as well as meeting some great people along the way. It’s a must for a blogger.
Another thing I felt at the beginning of blogging was that no-one cared or read my blog. It was only when I became friendly with some bloggers that I felt my posts were actually valued and liked. New book bloggers, you will feel at the beginning (I still do sometimes now) that no-one is reading your reviews or posts, it’s just you and maybe some of your friends. You may feel like ‘Oh what’s the point?’. Just keep going, someone will find you in the vast blogosphere eventually. I wish someone had told me that.
One last piece of advice. Don’t have CAPTCHA for people posting comments. EVERYONE HATES IT. Oh and if you’re book blogging just for the free books (which I guess is a perk) then you’re doing it for all the wrong reasons.
Favourites
Book (Because I am so cruel!)? You are! Probably, erm, well, ooo…The Fault in Our Stars by John Green Shop? H&M Subject? Media. And History. No, Media… Food? A ROAST DINNER ANY DAY. TV Programme? Downton Abbey, forever.
Summary: Even if Blue hadn’t been told her true love would die if she kissed him, she would stay away from boys. Especially the ones from the local private school. Known as Raven Boys, they only mean trouble. But this is the year that everything will change for Blue. This is the year that she will be drawn into the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys. And the year Blue will discover that magic does exist. This is the year she will fall in love. I’ve wanted to read The Raven Boys since it came out in October, but didn’t have the chance to until now. I seriously regret not buying it before as this book definitely belongs on my favourites list.
The Raven Boys is a thrilling and fast-paced novel, set in Virginia and one of the things that I loved about it was it’s mythological background. This book was full of references to old Celtic culture and, coming from England myself and knowing quite a bit about the subject, I particularly loved this aspect.
Blue was one of those main characters that I loved right from the start. I was horrified at the start when I thought there wouldn’t be any kissing because of the ‘if you kiss your true love, he will die’ thing but I actually managed to put that fact aside and really enjoyed it. In fact, the romance plays quite a big part in this book and you really need to look between the lines to see it. Blue isn’t a typical YA female protagonist and, for this reason, I loved her. She didn’t pretend to be anything she wasn’t and I liked that she was natural around the Raven Boys. Gansey and Adam! Eep! Two AMAZING male characters in this novel, and two to add to my favourite love interests list. Adam was down-to-earth and I really liked him. He was easy to understand and there were times in the book when I just wanted to time travel to Henrietta and tell him that everything would be okay. I liked that he wasn’t full of himself and that he thought things through carefully. Gansey is another matter altogether, though! He was cocky and loud, but not in a bad way, I must add. There was this huge vulnerable side to him which was really sad and I just wanted him to be happy. He always had to sort everyone else’s problems out and he was having to lead an adult life at such a young age. Whelk! The name makes me want to growl in fury. There was something really creepy about him and I really wanted to slap him. There was also the mysterious Czerny who we find out more about towards the end of the novel and, for me, this was one of the biggest shockers. When I find out a particular detail I got so annoyed and upset that I could feel tear’s in my eyes. Ronan was also a great character and really added something to the novel. He was funny but he also had a kind side when he wanted it to show and his love for Gansey was evident.
THAT COVER! WOW! Maggie Stiefvater’s books have some of the best covers and I must buy this book to add it to my collection! Look at the Raven!!!
Overall, I really enjoyed this book and don’t think I’ll be able to wait until the second book comes out! IT WILL BE TORTURE!
