I Hate Spinnerbait!

This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen

I challenge you to read this book.  Ok, so only if you have read the book would you understand my sentence about taking a challenge.  I enjoy Dessen’s books so much.  Each character is absolutely wonderful.  She makes each story that I’ve read stand out and is wonderfully different yet has strains of the same within each of her books.

This Lullaby is about a girl named Remy who has one summer before she goes off and starts her new and very own life now that she has graduated high school.  She has big plans, to be single and have fun with her friends and live it up, while trying to be a better person.  But of course, the boy of our book fantasy dreams walks in and messes all of it up.  The only problem is that Remy likes it and she loves hanging out with Dexter, she just doesn’t understand where all of these new found feelings are coming from since it’s not like Remy to get attached and she also doesn’t date boys in bands.

I like the Beetles theme that kept popping up.  First with the drummer’s nick name in the first 8 or so chapters was Ringo in Remy’s mind and then when Remy’s mom was finishing her novel she played the Beetle’s loud and proud.     

This is not my favorite Dessen novel thus far.  It was sweet and I did like the theme of the Lullaby throughout the novel.  Remy’s character was a little different from other Dessen characters.  She had this hard façade and she always called herself a hard cold B. Actually out of all the novels I’ve read of hers, she uses a lot more language and gives the persona of an easy or slutty character. 

I only gave this book 3 stars on Good Reads because I didn’t enjoy the ending to the book.  I like to read at least a chapter of the love interests to be together and see them together.  We got 2 sentences of, “I’ll see you after we have all these gigs.” 

It’s a story of bad girl meets good guy and when the bad girl stays true to character she ruins it all.  This book is not a waste of time but Dessen has better books out there, enjoy them all!  Keep Reading my Friends!

Disasters Welcome Here!

Walking Disaster by Jamie McGuire

Who has two thumbs and loves the same book from a different character’s point of view?  This girl!  I love when I fall in love with characters and then I get to see them from a whole different angle.  I’m having a hard time starting another book since I finished this book (it’s been less than 24 hours), but my heart belongs to Pigeon and of course Travis.  I also loved the best friends, America and Shepley, what wonderful friends.  I loved how scared Shep was that he was going to lose America because of his crazy cousin Travis and that he was so in love with her and he wouldn’t let anything come between them, even Travis’ happiness. 

I love Travis, isn’t he wonderful?  Who’s Team Travis?  I guess there are no reason for teams since there is no love triangle, but there should be teams and we should have cheers for Travis because he is so cool.  Bad boy exterior, soft loving heart, he makes all reading girls swoon!  No one should like him as a character, but Abby brings out the good guy in Travis so it’s easy to like him and all readers fall for him.

So, the question we are all asking is, what was different between Beautiful and Walking (Disaster)?  Great question, here are a few of my opinions, first of all I loved seeing inside Travis’ head, there weren’t any surprises, but I loved that he spent more time with his family than we knew about.  So sweet.  It was also sweet to see how much he loved Abby Abernathy and that he truly never gave up on their love.  While in Abby’s Point of View we just knew that he was up to his old habits during their time apart, that he was drowning his sorrows (which happened to be true) and sleeping with every woman that walked by (which did not happen, but was believable). 

Since these books are literally the exact same books (Beautiful Disaster and Walking Disaster) I’m not going into any more detail.  Just download them as soon as humanly possible and read them.  You will not be disappointed, you will actually be mad at me for not recommending them to you sooner! 

One disclaimer, this is not Young Adult Literature, instead it is from the New Adult Genre and is not recommended by me for anyone younger than 17 years old.  Keep Reading my Friends! 

I've only known one Phoenix, his name was Fawkes.

From Ashes by Molly McAdams

From Ashes is a love triangle between Cassidy, the girl with the horrible past, Tyler, the boy that helped her through the horrors and his good looking, mysterious cousin Gage.  A story of love at first sight had some bumps along the road for Cassidy and Gage.  Will love prevail or will Cassi’s troubled past keep her from love forever?

What I did not like, this book started out a crazy great story, but it had huge plot holes, bad communication between characters increased those plot wholes.  There were several instances that were not realistic.  That I couldn’t believe two people in love would just believe or take someone’s word without making sure from the other person.  Tyler made some stupid mistakes and lied to both Cassi and Gage. But the lies were so dumb and with all of the time that Cassi and Gage were spending together you would think that Cassi would have asked why he hated her living with the guys so much, etc.  There were some unnecessary characters and story lines that did nothing for taking the story forward or developing the characters.  This of course is my opinion, so take it or leave it.  I absolutely hated the story with Conner Green and though it was dumb and not necessary.  Even with these dislikes, I really liked the book.  I gave From Ashes 3 out of 5 stars on Good Reads. While I'm at it, follow me on Good Reads!    

What I did like, was the story.  It was fun and the love story was good.  I enjoyed Gage’s character and enjoyed the story when it was from his point of view.  I also like the phoenix and the “from ashes” idea from the story.  I liked that her mom changed in the end and that there was a good part of her before she died.  I loved Gage’s big family and especially his mama.  I loved the house he built and how forward thinking he was at such a young age.  If you have not known someone like that it’s hard to imagine, but I have known people that have always known what they wanted to do where they wanted to live and they have achieved these goals.  So this is easy for me to comprehend.  Have you ever known anyone like this?  Both of my brothers are in a way like this, they have both known that they wanted stay in the city they were born in and on the most part have known what they wanted to do for a living and pretty much have known the course of their lives or have made their own dreams come true. 

I would recommend this book to my 17 and older audience, but to anyone younger than that, there are plenty of other books on my blog for you to read.  This is not a young adult book, but rather from the New Adult genre and is not suitable for teenagers.  There are some graphic scenes and some things that are talked about that would not be ok for younger audiences.

I want to read another book From Molly McAdams, I enjoyed her characters and look forward to more from her.  Thanks for stopping by and Keep Reading my Friends!