[Recap] Hachette Date A Book Blogger Night 2015

What: Date A Book YA Bloggers Night 2015
When: Monday 17th August 2015, 5:30-7:30pm
Where: Hachette HQ (aka. the land of awesome, like OMG JUST TAKE ME!)
Why: Because books rock and so do book people! :D
How: The faeries!

Okay! Let's see if I'm bothered enough to see this through to the end. Heheh... heh. Well, so there was this thing on the other night in Sydney Australia (I live there!) called Date A Book YA Bloggers Night, held over at the Hachette HQ. I so wish I could just live there, like if I had the choice between being eaten alive by a pack of rabid ANY OF THESE, and living at Hachette HQ (or really any bookish anything), I'd choose the latter without a doubt.

This was their second annual Blogger Night and it was, by far, bigger and better than the first! Now, being confined in a small space with a bunch of people I may or may not know, whether online or by brief offline encounters, wasn't the most appealing idea for me to spend my evening (especially as I was stuck between night shifts... and still am). Hey, just being honest here! My friend had bailed on me, and I didn't want to be the awkward chickadee standing by the corner eating a pile of snakes and staring at everyone creepily, or latching onto a group of people, clutching to them FOR DEAR LIFE because OH GOD DON'T LEAVE ME! I'm exaggerating here, but you get what I mean.

[News] Giveaway winners

Source: ♥

So the time has finally come! My 5 year blogoversary giveaway has just come to an end, and the winners have been declared! Without further ado...

• Rebecca from Reading Wishes! (Yay! Another Aussie blogger! :D)
• Dea (I did a bit of Google stalking, I think this is her blog? Correct me if I'm wrong!)

Both of these lovely chickadees will be receiving a preorder of their choice from the list I gave in my previous post. :) Don't worry if you didn't win - as long as I keep up with this blogging business there shall be more giveaways to come in the future!

Until next time!

 

[Review] I Was Here by Gayle Forman

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Publication (dd/mm/yyyy): 27/05/2011

Publisher: Viking Juvenile
Pages: 270

Source: Bought
Genre: YA - Contemporary (16+)

Violence | Sexual Content | Profanity

Book Tunes
♪ Zedd - Clarity (feat. Foxes) ♪

My Rating: 

Absorbing read

My thoughts

It has been two months since I read this book, so forgive me for not really remembering too many of the specifics about this book. I still remember the important things, so I guess that's all that matters. I'm sure that my dwindling memory is not at all a reflection on the impact that this book had on me. I remember being very moved by Forman's words in I Was Here. Maybe not as much as If I Stay (that book will forever have my heart), but I still remember being moved.

I Was Here is a book about grief, and life and love. We follow our main character Cody who is devastated by her best friend Meg's recent death (she ingested a whole bottle of industrial-strength cleaner in a faraway motel room). She is left with many questions, but most of all: Why? Until she starts to dig a little deeper, and discovers that maybe it wasn't entirely of her own volition. Cody will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of this. It might not bring her best friend back, but maybe, just maybe finding truth will help to ease her overwhelming feelings of guilt that came with drifting apart from her best friend when she moved away for college, and not even knowing about this side of her.

It is no surprise that I am a huge fan of Gayle Forman's writing. She is a beautiful person and author who I hope to one day have the pleasure to meet. She has a unique talent of breathing life into the characters she creates. I fell so hard for Adam and Mia in If I Stay and Where She Went. I held my breath for Allyson and Willem in Just One Day and Just One Year. Cody resonates within me on a core level. I may not have lost a friend to suicide, but I have lost friends to reasons entirely outside of my own control. People just grow apart. And like Cody, I have harboured intense feelings of guilt and questioning and grief and worry. Like Cody I care a lot, though I may be blindsided at times and miss out on the bigger picture. We may not learn too much about her. For me, sometimes it's not extremely important that the character have an illustrious background and personality. Sometimes it's just enough that the reader is able to relate to them on some intrinsic level, if the plot works.

[Review] A Court of Thorns and Roses (#1) by Sarah J. Maas

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(#1, A Court of Thorns and Roses)

A Court of Thorns and Roses | Untitled

Publication (dd/mm/yyyy): 05/05/2015

Publisher: Bloomsbury
Pages: 419

Source: Bought
Genre: YA - fantasy (16+)

Violence | Sexual Content | Profanity

Book Tunes
♪ Major Lazer - Powerful (feat. Ellie Goulding & Tarrus Riley) ♪

My Rating:

Tantalisingly swoonworthy

My thoughts

How do I express exactly what and how I feel for this book? Okay, let's start with this simple and undeniable fact: I am a huge fan of Sarah J. Maas' books. I think her storytelling is on point, her writing style is lovely and eloquent and effective, her use of dialogue, tension, suspense, conflict and astute development of her characters just work perfectly together, grabs me in the heart every single time, leaving me gasping, emotionally spent from the experience. Her grasp on the human condition translates perfectly into her heroines. I loved Celaena's (Throne of Glass series) rough edges, her will to live above all else and her vulnerabilities. I absolutely love that she empowers her female characters, gives them roles that matter and feel real and they are never the same as when we first met them. That is the mark that a truly magical thing has taken place in your story: your characters have undergone irrevocable changes. 

A Court of Thorns and Roses is a loose fairytale retelling of Beauty and the Beast involving an ancient war between faeries and humans. It is a heart-wrenching story about love, family, survival, power and humanity. It follows 19-year-old Feyre’s journey as she is plucked from her miserable impoverished home in the mortal lands after she plunges an ash arrow into a wolf during one of her hunts, not knowing that it was actually a faerie. Unknowingly she has broken an age-old vow made between the two, but instead of killing her there and then Tamlin, an influential and powerful faerie, has decided to take her into the Faerie Realms, into the Spring Court where he resides. There Feyre learns more about the war and her sort-of captors, and finds out there is more to Tamlin than he’s letting on… and maybe she holds the key to saving her family from devastation.

[Ramblings] Fifty Shades of Grey (#1) by E.L. James

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Publication (dd/mm/yyyy): 25/01/2015

Publisher: Vintage
Pages: 356

Source: Kindle
Genre: Adult - Erotica (18+)

Violence | Sexual Content | Profanity

Book Tunes
♪ Ariana Grande - Love Me Harder ♪

My Rating: 

Meh.

My thoughts

OKAY. I'M DONE! NO MORE, I CANNOT DEAL... No more My Fifty Shades, no more "Oh My!", no more "inner goddess" and "my subconscious" and Mrs Robinson and Jose and...

The reason I am not giving this book 1 star is simply because I finished it, therefore it is, to some degree, "readable". I will not be reviewing this book properly because I will not really be able to analyse it objectively... so here's just a jumbled mess of my thoughts towards this book.