Compelling Reads Tour Giveaway

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Great Imaginations: Reader Appreciation Giveaway!!

Great Imaginations: Reader Appreciation Giveaway!!: WE ARE POPULAR ON THE INTERNETZ! The people have spoken, and the bodacious ladies here at Great Imaginations nabbed the award ...

A to Z Bookish Survey

 The Perpetual Page-Turner has a book survey that I decided to join in on because it looks fun! Also her blog is amazing!

Authors you've read the most books from: 
Sarah Dessen, I've read all her books (except for her new one I haven't gotten to that one yet) and J.K. Rowling.

Best Sequel Ever:
The Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld
I'm going to put this here even though I just started it and I'm only on ch. 3 but The Scorch Trials by James Dashner. The Maze Runner was AMAZING and I'm in love with the characters!

Currently Reading: 
The Scorch Trials by James Dashner

Drink of Choice While Reading: 
Water, coffee or tea

E-Reader or Physical Book: 
Physical, I will never stop buying physical books and even though e-books are cheaper I need to be able to hold the book in my hand and turn the pages.

Fictional Character You Probably Would Have Actually Dated in High School: Alright but you asked, Thomas (The Maze Runner), Newt (The Maze Runner), Minho (The Maze Runner), Ron Weasley (Harry Potter), Owen (Just Listen)...I should probably stop listing now because there are a lot more. Although I'm not even sorry.

Glad You Gave This Book a Chance: 
The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey. In one word: AMAZING!!! I've never really been an end-of-the-world, alien type of girl but this book was so good I wanted to erase my memory and read it over again.

Hidden Gem Book: 

Important Moment in Your Reading Life: 
When my sister showed me book blogs and that led me to Goodreads, which is a fabulous website!

Just Finished: 
Incarnate by Jodi Meadows.

Kinds of Books You Won't Read: 
Romance novels. You know the ones with Fabio on the cover, not that there is anything wrong with them just not my cup of tea.

Longest Book You've Read: 
The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (973 pg.)

Major Book Hangover because of: 
The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

Number of Book Cases you Own: 
Unfortunately it's just one and I share it with my sister. There are a lot of books that don't fit and I am hoping to get a bigger one soon.

One Book You've Read Multiple Times:
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, I read it the summer before seventh grade and it just changed everything, I've read it every year since then and Just Listen by Sarah Dessen

Preferred Place to Read: 
My bed

Quote That Inspires You/ Gives you Feels From a Book You've Read: 
"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it." -To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Reading Regret: 
I have a few, not reading 1984 in high school and not appreciating The Catcher in the Rye in high school. Also not reading/watching The Lord of The Rings in high school. 

Series you Started and Need to Finish (all books are out in the series): 
The Beautiful Creatures series and the Hush, Hush series by Becca Fitzpatrick

Three of Your All Time Favorite Books: 
Just Listen by Sarah Dessen, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Unapologetic Fangirl for: Neil Gaiman

Very Excited for this Release More Than All Others: 
Project Cain by Geoffrey Girard, my sister told me about it, it sounds so good! 

Worst Bookish Habit: 
I have a few, I start reading a book and I get a quarter of the way through, sometimes half way through and then I just stop reading. I literally just put the book down and stop reading it for a while. I do eventually pick it up again but at that point I have to read it from the beginning. 

I pick books based on their cover a lot. It's an awful awful habit and I know it is. The worse thing is that so far it hasn't let me down. 

I start multiple books at once which isn't always bad except for when I can't focus on the different story lines and then I put them down again. 

X Marks the Spot, Start at the top left of your shelf and pick the 27th book: 
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (I really enjoyed the movie!) 

Your Latest Book Purchase: 
The Scorch Trials by James Dashner

ZZZ-snatcher book(last book that kept you up way late): 
The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey and The Maze Runner by James Dashner

Alright there you go, a little bit about me and my bookish habits :) 

Review: Parallel by Lauren Miller

Goodreads Synopsis:

Abby Barnes had a plan. The Plan. She'd go to Northwestern, major in journalism, and land a job at a national newspaper, all before she turned twenty-two. But one tiny choice—taking a drama class her senior year of high school—changed all that. Now, on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, Abby is stuck on a Hollywood movie set, miles from where she wants to be, wishing she could rewind her life. The next morning, she's in a dorm room at Yale, with no memory of how she got there. Overnight, it's as if her past has been rewritten.

With the help of Caitlin, her science-savvy BFF, Abby discovers that this new reality is the result of a cosmic collision of parallel universes that has Abby living an alternate version of her life. And not only that: Abby's life changes every time her parallel self makes a new choice. Meanwhile, her parallel is living out Abby's senior year of high school and falling for someone Abby's never even met.

As she struggles to navigate her ever-shifting existence, forced to live out the consequences of a path she didn't choose, Abby must let go of the Plan and learn to focus on the present, without losing sight of who she is, the boy who might just be her soul mate, and the destiny that's finally within reach.

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I won this book from Claire Reads

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One thing you should probably know about me is I love parallel universes! I cannot get enough of them, I will read and watch anything that has to do with parallel universes because the concept is so fascinating. 


This is one of the few books that I actually read the synopsis before I sat down and read it (It's a bad habit not reading the synopsis of the book that I need to break) and as soon as I read that it was about a parallel universe (which should be obvious from the cover) I was hooked. You got me Lauren Miller! The thing I love the most about Parallel though is that it's about an ordinary girl. Abby Barnes is just trying to fulfill her dream of going to Northwestern and becoming a journalist. Then a weird twist of fate changes her plans, then her world collides with the parallel world and Abby's plans are changed again, drastically. 


I'll admit I had some problems with it, 17 year old Abby in particular, I just wanted to shake her shoulders and yell at her BE MORE CONFIDENT IN YOURSELF! I wasn't as interested in Abby's love life as I was in Caitlin's and Tyler's; I could read a book about those two. I'm just not a fan of quad-angles (any angles really, leave the sharp corners away from the relationships). There were some parts where I had to go back and re-read the date at the top of the chapters but once I was finished and I sat down and thought about the book as a whole it all made sense.

However, there is more good about this book that outweigh the issues I had with it, like Caitlin and Josh, Astronomy Boy is so dreamy! I loved Abby and Josh's relationship, once they clicked into place I was totally on board with them. Lauren Miller's writing is great, her explantion of the colliding parallel worlds was easy to understand and different. I thought it was a well thought out book and I can't wait to read what Lauren Miller writes next. 

4/5 

A Reading Nurse!: EVENT RECAP & GIVEAWAY - Leigh Bardugo & Robin LeF...

A Reading Nurse!: EVENT RECAP & GIVEAWAY - Leigh Bardugo & Robin LeF...: Yesterday Viv and I drove down to the Redondo Beach Mysterious Galaxy. Even though this location is closer to us than the San Deigo one,...

Shadow by Amanda Sun

Shadow by Amanda Sun

The prequel to Ink is still free on Amazon! 

Review: Golden by Jessi Kirby

Golden by Jessi Kirdy

Goodreads Summary:

Love, tragedy, and mystery converge in this compelling novel from “an author to watch” (Booklist).

Seventeen-year-old Parker Frost has never taken the road less traveled. Valedictorian and quintessential good girl, she’s about to graduate high school without ever having kissed her crush or broken the rules. So when fate drops a clue in her lap—one that might be the key to unraveling a town mystery—she decides to take a chance.

Julianna Farnetti and Shane Cruz are remembered as the golden couple of Summit Lakes High—perfect in every way, meant to be together forever. But Julianna’s journal tells a different story—one of doubts about Shane and a forbidden romance with an older, artistic guy. These are the secrets that were swept away with her the night that Shane’s jeep plunged into an icy river, leaving behind a grieving town and no bodies to bury.

Reading Julianna’s journal gives Parker the courage to start to really live—and it also gives her reasons to question what really happened the night of the accident. Armed with clues from the past, Parker enlists the help of her best friend, Kat, and Trevor, her longtime crush, to track down some leads. The mystery ends up taking Parker places that she never could have imagined. And she soon finds that taking the road less traveled makes all the difference.
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I read this on Simon & Schuster's Pulseit, which is a fantastic site and everyone should be a part of it! 

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5/5
This was my first book my Jessi Kirby and I was hooked from the very first sentence, I read it in one day, that's how much I loved this book. I couldn't put it down. It just flowed so well. I could identify with Parker's need to please people and always act the way she thinks people want her to act. She doesn't take chances that she thinks will affect her future. Then she finds Julianna's journal and she starts taking those chances, living the life that she wants and not what she thinks her mom wants. I loved that Parker finally took her life in her own hands.  

I loved the slow development between Trevor and Parker and Trevor actually turned out to be one of my favorite characters. I loved that there wasn't a love triangle and that Kirby acknowledged the fact that Trevor had a past. They were real and Kirby captured that perfectly. 

The predictablity of this book works for me and I love that it has a happy ending. Sometimes you just need a happy ending!