Monday 23 September 2013

“In new situations, all the trickiest rules are the ones nobody bothers to explain to you. (And the ones you can't Google.)”

I have just finished Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl, and yes, it is as perfect and wonderful as everyone has been saying it is!

This is the second book I've read by Rowell, my first being her debut novel (and her only novel that has been marketed as specifically an 'adult' novel) Attachments.  I loved Attachments so much; I want to be bff with Attachments and call it up on the phone just to say hi and see how her day has been.  If you want to read something smart, funny, and wonderfully romantic (Lincoln O'Neill is very literary crush-worthy), then you must read Attachments.  I haven't yet picked up Eleanor and Park, which has been taking the YA book world by storm and I'm sure I'm going to shake myself upon reading and ask "Why has it taken me so long to read this?!"

So, Fangirl.  Well it's just perfect really.  This book gets everything right; be it falling in love for the first time, becoming your own person, college...the list goes on and on.  One of my favourite things about this book is how Rowell perfectly captures what it is like to really be in love with a book and its story.  I have fell in love with so many wonderful stories and their characters over the years and Fangirl perfectly expresses how it feels to feel this way.  Cath and her love of all things Simon Snow reminds me of myself and how I have fallen under the spell of different characters, worlds, and stories over the years.  When you fall in love with a book, you fall hard and forever.  Some books that I read last month I can barely remember what happened in them;  books I read ten years ago and loved I could quote you entire paragraphs of them.

Fangirl has made me, well, even more of fangirl of Rowell's writing (and now I REALLY need to go pick up Eleanor and Park!) and is a story I'm going to be sharing (and possibly forcing into the hands of unsuspecting book shoppers) with friends.  I eagerly await whatever Rainbow Rowell will next bestow upon us.

**Thank you to Raincoast for my copy of Fangirl!**

Saturday 21 September 2013

“The idea of waiting for something makes it more exciting” (Andy Warhol)

It's been awhile since I did a post about upcoming books and since there are so many amazing reads on the near (and far) horizon, it felt like time!  Here's some books to get excited about in 2013 / 2014!

October 2013

by Gayle Forman

Just One Day is one of my favourite books from this year! It is such a beautiful book :)  So excited to read this second installment.

by Veronica Roth

The book that all teen dystopian fiction fans have been waiting for!  Only a month away!

December 2013

by Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner

This has been getting amazing amazing reviews for months now.  Not only does it take place in space on a luxury spaceliner, but have you seen this cover?? Gorgeous.

March 2014

by Mur Lafferty

Have you discovered the wondrous Mur Lafferty yet? If not then RUN, don't walk, to your nearest bookstore and pick up her excellent novel The Shambling Guide to New York City.  You can thank me later.

by Diana Gabaldon

When they bumped this publication date back to March (it was originally scheduled for late 2013), I'm sure I was not alone in my infinite sadness.  But March is just around the corner and now I have lots of time to reread all the Outlander novels in order to get uber pumped up for this book.

April 2014

by  Moira Young

I loved the first book in this wild west dystopian series (Blood Red Road)  and felt that the sequel fell short of my expectations (Rebel Hearts).  I'm really interested to see how this trilogy wraps up!

by Rachel Hawkins

All I know is that I've loved everything this lady has written and therefore MUST read her newest novel.  That is all.

by Libba Bray

Libba Bray is awesome in all that she does so it was no surprise that The Diviners was wonderful.  If you like 1920's New York paranormal mysteries then this is the series for you! 

by Patrick Ness

I have had this described to me as 2014's The Night Circus.  As one who enjoyed The Night Circus, I am intrigued.  Plus it's by Patrick Ness which means it will probably be wonderful.

by Laini Taylor

The final installment in Taylors Daughter of Smoke & Bone series, this promises to be a good one!  And again, beautiful cover alert!

May 2014

by Stephanie Perkins

Stephanie Perkins is aces when it comes to writing contemporary teen fiction.  Anna and the French Kiss made me yearn for Paris, while Lola and the Boy Next Door drew the reader to San Francisco.  Both are wonderful stories of first love and I can't wait to read Perkins latest.


June 2014

by Leigh Bardugo

This series got better and better as it progressed and is probably my favourite teen series out there right now.  Book 1 is Shadow and Bone, Book 2 is Seige and Storm; these are must reads for YA fans!  I'm so excited for this book! :)

Unknown Month 2014

by Deborah Harkness

No exact date yet but still worth letting the masses know that it's coming! Who's not excited for this one?!  Harkness has woven a wonderful story of time travel and love and vampires and witches and gosh darned I want to know how it ends!

by Maureen Johnson

Maureen Johnson's Shades of London series has been one of my most triumphant finds this year!  I devoured the first two books (The Name of the Star and The Madness Underneath) and am now eagerly, and slightly impatiently, awaiting the final book.  So many cliffhangers! I need to know things!

Teen Book Excitment!

I was very fortunate to attend a wonderful event this morning with the ladies at Raincoast, plus a number of awesome YA Bloggers, to hear about all the exciting books coming out this in the near future!  Let me tell you, there are some gems coming our way this winter!  Raincoast very generously provided me with a number of ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies) that I'm rubbing my hands together in anticipation to read!   Would you like to see some of the newest additions to my bookshelf?


I'm sooo excited to read these (especially FanGirl which I've been longing to read for months and months!)  Plus, check out my sweet book bag which will be helpful in carrying all these goodies around town!  A big thank you to Raincoast!  I will be posting reviews once I've read them!

“She didn't know then that life has a way of backing you into a corner. You make your choices when you're far too young to understand their implications, and with each choice you make the field of possibility narrows. You choose a career and other careers are lost to you. You choose a mate and commit to loving no other.”

The Silent Wife has been called this year's Gone Girl.  Having loved Gone Girl (and Sharp Objects, another great book by Gillian Flynn), I was naturally intrigued to give this book a go.  Adding to the hype of this debut novel is the sad story of author, A.S.A Harrison, and how she passed away shortly before it was published.

Now, while an enjoyable read, let's not go saying that this is a different version of Gone Girl....because it really is not.  Yes, both feature two narrators, a husband and wife, that are in a marriage that is more then it appears on the surface.  Yes, both are psychological thrillers with twists and turns.  But really, and I feel a little bad saying this, The Silent Wife does not even compare to Gone Girl.  I've been thinking about why I feel so strongly about this and I think the big reason why is that with Gone Girl, when those plots twists appeared they quite literally knocked my socks off; I didn't see them coming and the hair on the back of my neck stood up.  Gillian Flynn lowered the boom at exactly the right time and with it she took her readers somewhere completely unexpected and exactly where we needed to go.  With The Silent Wife, I kept waiting for the Harrison to drop the boom....and she never really did.  Yes, there was a plot twist (though you could somewhat see it coming) but the shock value wasn't there.  The character of Jodi was really interesting but I felt like there was something missing there, like she was a little more unhinged then we thought and I just kept waiting for her to do something more dramatic then she did.

That all said, The Silent Wife wasn't a bad book...it just wasn't as good as all the hype around it led me to believe.  So if you read it, read it for itself, not as another Gone Girl; because if you do that you will probably be a wee bit disappointed.

Vacation Reads - The NY Edition

I was recently in New York for a week and as you all know, when you are on holiday (especially when there are long plane rides involved) you need several good books to tide you over!  I brought an assortment of literary goodies with me and was very pleased with the three books I was able to get through on this trip!

How the Light Gets In
by Louise Penny

I have shown Ms. Penny the love many times on this blog; her Inspector Gamache series is one of my favourite mystery series out there right now.  With her latest installment, the 9th book in the series, Penny has taken her characters to a whole new level and created, quite possibly, her best book yet.  For those of you that are up to date with the series, How the Light Gets In takes places shortly after the events of The Beautiful Mystery, and thank goodness since we were left in a cliffhanger situation in many many ways.  This book is almost two stories in one; we have all the internal drama from the previous books where relationships are tested and Gamache's world has been turned upside down.  On the flip side, we are also looking at a missing persons case that takes the story to our favourite small town, Three Pines.  I got so emotionally invested in this book that I was up until 2:30 am finishing it up with a box of tissues at my side.  A must for Louise Penny fans!  And if you haven't read her books yet, I recommend you start at the beginning with Still Life since plots and characters weave their way through most of the novels.

Code Name Verity
by Elizabeth Wein

I had heard nothing but good things about this teen novel of espionage during WWII.  It has won numerous awards (including the 2013 Edgar Award for Best Young Adult Novel) and pretty much everyone I speak to, every blog I read, has proclaimed it a literary gem.  I'm not going to lie, it took me awhile to get into this one.  It was a bit technical at first, going into lots of detail about the different planes flown (which makes sense since the author is also a pilot) which, while interesting, was not what I was looking for in this story.  However, by about halfway through I was hooked.  The real meat of the story comes from the friendship of the two narrators, two young women involved in the war effort, one as a pilot and the other with a more ambiguous role (that is fleshed out as you read on).  By the time I finished this one (another that I confess I was up late into the night reading), I again had my trust box of tissues handy and was an emotional mess.  What a story!  Be prepared while reading this one, nothing is as it seems.

I have two weeks. You’ll shoot me at the end no matter what I do.

That’s what you do to enemy agents. It’s what we do to enemy agents. But I look at all the dark and twisted roads ahead and cooperation is the easy way out. Possibly the only way out for a girl caught red-handed doing dirty work like mine — and I will do anything, anything, to avoid SS-Hauptsturmführer von Linden interrogating me again.

He has said that I can have as much paper as I need. All I have to do is cough up everything I can remember about the British War Effort. And I’m going to. But the story of how I came to be here starts with my friend Maddie. She is the pilot who flew me into France — an Allied Invasion of Two.

We are a sensational team.



The Rosie Project
by Graeme Simsion

What a charming debut!  If you are looking for a light read with substance then look no farther than The Rosie Project!  I had a lot of fun reading this one and can see why it has been getting so much buzz in the book world.  As my coworker Darlene so perfectly put it "If Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory was looking for a wife, then this is how he would do it!"

Don Tillman, professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. He is a man who can count all his friends on the fingers of one hand, whose lifelong difficulty with social rituals has convinced him that he is simply not wired for romance. So when an acquaintance informs him that he would make a “wonderful” husband, his first reaction is shock. Yet he must concede to the statistical probability that there is someone for everyone, and he embarks upon The Wife Project. In the orderly, evidence-based manner with which he approaches all things, Don sets out to find the perfect partner. She will be punctual and logical—most definitely not a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker, or a late-arriver.

Yet Rosie Jarman is all these things. She is also beguiling, fiery, intelligent—and on a quest of her own. She is looking for her biological father, a search that a certain DNA expert might be able to help her with. Don's Wife Project takes a back burner to the Father Project and an unlikely relationship blooms, forcing the scientifically minded geneticist to confront the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie—and the realization that love is not always what looks good on paper

“Most of the time, there is no truth, only various levels of interpretation. Fact is a construct we provide to the public.”

The Ashford Affair  by Lauren Willig I really enjoyed Lauren Willig's Pink Carnation series and thought I would give one of her stan...