In My Mailbox

In My Mailbox is a meme courtesy of The Story Siren which if you haven't seen her vlog of this yet, go visit her blog.



GoodReads -
The Mistress's Revenge by Tamar Cohen

Bought -
I have been wanting to read Still Missing for ages and since we received the ARC of Never Knowing, I felt it was time.
Still Missing by Chevy Stevens
Never Knowing by Chevy Stevens

For Review -
The Twisted Thread by Charlotte Bacon
Miss Timmis' School for Girls by Nayana Currimbhoy

On My Wish List

On My Wishlist is a fun weekly event hosted by Book Chick City and runs every Saturday. It's where I list all the books I desperately want but haven't actually bought yet. They can be old, new or forthcoming. It's also an event that you can join in with too - Mr Linky is always at the ready for you to link your own 'On My Wishlist' post. If you want to know more click here.


Between Shades of Gray

Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they've known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin's orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions.

Lina finds solace in her art, meticulously—and at great risk—documenting events by drawing, hoping these messages will make their way to her father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles, but it is through incredible strength, love, and hope that Lina ultimately survives. Between Shades of Gray is a novel that will steal your breath and capture your heart.



Divergent
In Beatrice Prior’s dystopian Chicago world, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is—she can’t have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles alongside her fellow initiates to live out the choice they have made. Together they must undergo extreme physical tests of endurance and intense psychological simulations, some with devastating consequences. As initiation transforms them all, Tris must determine who her friends really are—and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes exasperating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers unrest and growing conflict that threaten to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves . . . or it might destroy her.

Debut author Veronica Roth bursts onto the YA scene with the first book in the Divergent series—dystopian thrillers filled with electrifying decisions, heartbreaking betrayals, stunning consequences, and unexpected romance.





I know it's gonna be a rough day when . . .

I am getting ready for work, step out the shower and am putting on lotion when I realize only one of my legs is shaved and I cannot for the life of me, remember if I shaved one leg twice or just completely missed it all together.

Review - The Lying Game by Sara Shepard

Title: The Lying Game
The Lying Game Series #1
Author: Sara Shepard
Publisher: Harper Teen
Publish Date: Dec 7, 2010
Hardcover, 307 pages

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This is the first book I have read of Sara Shepard's and gotta say, I am so impressed. For a teen book, this really takes the cake. I can't give away the end, but she leaves more than a few things unresolved which normally would tick me off, but I was so enamored by this book that I really don't care. I can't wait to read Never Have I Ever.

Sara Shepard did such a phenomenal job getting into the head of Emma, her sister and their mean friends. I could not get over how truly fun this book was, though I couldn't believe how horribly mean these girls were. The pranks they pulled are disgusting and they're going to grow up to be criminals no doubt.

Emma is a character I would love to meet and be friends with. She is kind, smart, considerate, honest and has not had an easy life moving from foster home to foster home. She is in a home where the boy who lives there is incredibly fond of her and to get her in trouble (and himself out of trouble) he shows his mother a youtube video of Emma being strangled. Emma finds out she has a long lost twin sister. She goes off to find her and ends up becoming her in order to figure out what is going on.

And that is all I want to tell you because seriously, this book was oh so yummy!!

I wouldn't have even probably picked it up if it wasn't for IHeartMonster's read-along. I am so sorry. I tried to wait and read the chapters as you laid out, but I suck. I couldn't wait to finish it. This book was oh so fantastic!! But without IHeartMonster, I would have missed this great book. So go visit her blog and tell her I said hello!!

Summary -

I had a life anyone would kill for.

Then someone did.

The worst part of being dead is that there’s nothing left to live for. No more kisses. No more secrets. No more gossip. It’s enough to kill a girl all over again. But I’m about to get something no one else does—an encore performance, thanks to Emma, the long-lost twin sister I never even got to meet.

Now Emma’s desperate to know what happened to me. And the only way to figure it out is to be me—to slip into my old life and piece it all together. But can she laugh at inside jokes with my best friends? Convince my boyfriend she’s the girl he fell in love with? Pretend to be a happy, carefree daughter when she hugs my parents good night? And can she keep up the charade, even after she realizes my murderer is watching her every move?

From Sara Shepard, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Pretty Little Liars books, comes a riveting new series about secrets, lies, and killer consequences.

Let the lying game begin.



Wordless Wednesday - Yarn for Sale

Farmers Market


Wordless Wednesday

Review - Passion by Lauren Kate

Title: Passion
Author: Lauren Kate
Publisher: Delacorte Books
Publish Date: June 14, 2011
Hardcover, 432 pages

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I have been waiting for this last book since I read the first two months ago. I was luckier than some, who read the books a long time ago. I didn't have to wait as long. If you haven't read the first, Fallen or the second, Torment. GO! GO NOW! Yes, that is me telling you to GO READ THESE BOOKS!!

I am tired of vampire books, I have said it a few times before, but these books are so original, so fresh and new with fun ideas and still the feeling of an old friend that I want to curl up with.

Luce is a wonderfully vulnerable girl who ends up at a boarding school, Sword & Cross and from the moment she sees Daniel she feels that she has known him before.

Now, that sounds like a really bad pick up line doesn't it? That's what I thought, but even though it might seem that way, the moment you really start reading these books you realize it's not.

Luce learns about all the different types of people there are out there, including Angels and Demons and how they came to be. She falls in love with Daniel along the way - or maybe it has been a love that lasts eternity.

In Passion, the last book of the series, Luce wants to know why she dies every time she touches Daniel. She also wants answers to why they love each other - is it simply because of the curse or do they really, truly love each other. She goes back in time through the Announcers to see if she can find out what brought them together and why they keep being drawn to each other. Along the way, she meets an Announcer travel guide, so-to-speak, who helps guide her through the Announcer's twists and turns. The others, Angels and Demons of Daniel's are also on the journey trying to find Luce and help them or possibly, hinder them. Daniel is also simultaneously searching for Luce and why she has left him. He ponders so many things about their relationship. I really had fun with this aspect of his thoughts and feelings.

Now I have said throughout this review that this is the last book in the series, that is because I really thought it was . . . til I turned the pages at the end. There is another book in the series. YES THERE IS!! Coming out next year is the final (lol, really?) Rapture.

Seriously, so easy to fall in love with this series.

PS There is a poster in the back of the book. Even at my age, I really would have loved to post this in my room - or maybe on the back of my closet door as a secret, guilty pleasure just for me.

PPS This hardcover comes in that wonderfully smaller size that I just LOVE TO DEATH!! So fabulous. Now, I have to wait even longer to buy the series to keep.


Review - The Summer We Came to Life by Deborah Cloyed

Title: The Summer We Came to Life
Author: Deborah Cloyed
Publisher: Mira
Publish Date: may 31, 2011
Paperback, 400 pages

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I was looking forward to reading this book, as I love books about friends gathering and reminiscing, but I honestly got lost in all the death regarding Mina and Sam. I loved the idea that Mina could keep in touch and help all to resolve the unresolved issues regarding Mina's death, but I just felt odd about the entire business of Sam reaching out to Mina in the afterlife. I just couldn't get into the ideas and feelings behind it all. I don't want to reveal too much, as to each their own - I am sure lots of people enjoyed this book, but I frankly just didn't.

I am unsure as to what exactly it was about the dying and reuniting afterlife that I didn't like. It could have been the overall dream like state of it; the way it seemed so real life and yet, shouldn't have been. It could have been the way Sam pinned for Mina and just couldn't reach out to these "friends" of hers that were there for her all her life, even if Mina was her closest friend. It just didn't gel for me. I thought the journals were a fantastic idea to keep in touch and remember the person once loved.

I enjoyed the different stories of how the parent's met, lived and loved. I liked the cultural aspects and the in-depth looks at the different ways everyone can live. I really liked the shock when the parent's revealed all this and the children had no idea. Amazing the secrets we keep. But all in all, I just couldn't get pulled in when Deborah Cloyed talked about the way Sam reunited with Mina.

Summary -

Every summer, Samantha Wheland joins her childhood friends—Isabel, Kendra and Mina—on a vacation, somewhere exotic and fabulous. Together with their mixed bag of parents, they've created a lifetime of memories. This year it's a beach house in Honduras. But for the first time, their clan is not complete. Mina lost her battle against cancer six months ago, and the friends she left behind are still struggling to find their way forward without her.

For Samantha, the vacation just feels wrong without Mina. Despite being surrounded by her friends—the closest thing she has to family—Mina's death has left Sam a little lost. Unsure what direction her life should take. Fearful that whatever decision she makes about her wealthy French boyfriend's surprise proposal, it'll be the wrong one.

The answers aren't in the journal Mina gave Sam before she died. Or in the messages Sam believes Mina is sending as guideposts. Before the trip ends, the bonds of friendship with her living friends, the older generation's stories of love and loss, and Sam's glimpse into a world far removed from the one in which she belongs will convince her to trust her heart. And follow it.