Maybe One Day – Melissa Kantor

Title: Maybe One Day
Author: Melissa Kantor
Year: 2014
Publisher: Harper Teen
Format: Hardback, 386 Pages
ISBN: 9780062279200

 

If you’re planning on reading this book, here is some advice. Have some tissues on standby. This book made me ball my eyes out – and I don’t mean just tears streaming from my eyes. I mean actual sobs, the kind of messy crying where you make that weird noise and you just can’t swallow your grief. It probably didn’t help that I finished reading this book in the middle of the night after a long and exhausting day, but wow, this book made me feel sad.

Maybe One Day is the story of the friendship of Zoe and Olivia, two girls who have been friends for years due to their mutual love of ballet. When the girls are cut from their ballet company, they are forced to complete their junior year without the thing they love. Thinking that the worst was over, no one thinks twice of Olivia’s constant tiredness, or how she hasn’t been feeling well. Not until they discover she has aggressive Leukemia. Maybe One Day is the story of two girls who have always had each other, forced to question that maybe one day they won’t have each other.

Ten Thousand Skies Above You – Claudia Gray

Title: Ten Thousand Skies Above You (Firebird #2)
Author: Claudia Gray
Year: 2015
Publisher: Harper Teen Australia
Format: Advanced Readers Copy
ISBN: 9780062427892

I always find myself slightly nervous when reading sequels to series I started a year prior and loved. During the wait for the next book there is so much time to anticipate what’s going to happen next, which can ultimately leave you with higher expectations than is realistic. I tried to go into this being cautious and to not get my hopes up, and I’ve now finished this book with feelings of the book being great, but just shy of being as great as the first book. Simply put, Ten Thousand Skies Above You makes for a decent sequel, but falls short of overtaking my love of A Thousand Pieces of You.

If you haven’t heard of this book or series before, perhaps you would be best to start with my review of A Thousand Pieces of You as that way you won’t be confused or spoiled for the first book!

Perfect Ruin – Lauren DeStefano

Title: Perfect Ruin (Internment Chronicles 1)
Author: Lauren DeStefano
Year: 2013
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Format: Hardback, 356 Pages
ISBN: 9781442480612

 

Perfect Ruin is quite possible one of my favourite books of all time. It just has something so hauntingly beautiful that makes me fall in love with it every single time I read it. Lauren DeStefano has been gifted with her incredible writing skills, and it is no wonder that she is, and will continue to be an author I automatically buy books she has written, just because her name is on the cover.

Perfect Ruin is set on Internment, a floating city in the sky, and follows the story of Morgan. It is forbidden to leave Internment for the ground, and yet some of the residents still dream about the edge and what may lie beneath them. Morgan’s brother Lex was one of these people, and his attempt at jumping has left him permanently blind and their family somewhat out casted. Morgan should know better than anyone that thoughts about the edge are dangerous, and yet she can’t stop herself from daydreaming about the life that could have been. Then one day a murder occurs, the first murder in over a generation. Suddenly life on Internment is not the safe place that’s always been, and everything Morgan has ever known begins to unravel like never before.

A Court of Thorns and Roses – Sarah J. Maas

Title: A Court of Thorns and Roses
Author: Sarah J. Maas
Year: 2015
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Format: Paperback 419 pages / Hardback 419 pages
ISBN: Paperback 9781408857861 / Hardback 9781619634442
Price: Paperback $16.99 AUD / Hardback $18.99 USD

Sarah J. Maas has done it again, in proving to me that she is without doubt my favourite author. I love the Throne of Glass series, and when I heard about a new Maas series, words could not describe how excited I was. And then I read ACOTAR, and just fell in love with Maas’s writing all over again. Simply put, A Court of Thorns and Roses is my second favourite read of this year, second only to Queen of Shadows, another Sarah J. Maas book. Does that show you just how much I love her books?

ACOTAR is a loose retelling of the lovely Beauty and the Beast story. If you’ve followed my blog posts for awhile now, you’ll know I suck at writing plot summaries, so here’s the blurb from the back of the hardcover edition of the book (because interestingly enough, the paperback and hardback blurbs are different):

Sapphire Blue – Kerstin Gier

Title: Sapphire Blue
Series: The Ruby Red Trilogy (Book 2)
Author: Kerstin Gier (Translated by Anthea Bell)
Year: 2012
Publisher: Henry Holt
Format: Hardback, 362 pages
ISBN: 9780805092660

 Before you start reading this review, this is for the second book in a series! This review will therefore contain spoilers for book one in this series, Ruby Red. I did a review of the first book here, so if you would like to know more about this series, that is a better starting spot then this review.

Sapphire Blue continues the story from Ruby Red (obviously as it’s a sequel). Gwen has inherited the time travelling gene in her family line, making her the final member in the time traveling Circle of Twelve. Due to the suspicious circumstances that Gwen discovered she had the gene, the other members of the secret society do not trust her, and keep her in the dark on what is really going on. Expected to make visits back in time that put her life in danger, and that require her to have contact with the dangerous Count, Gwen takes matters into her own hands as she starts digging in the past to discover what exactly is being kept from her. Gwen’s secret behaviour in searching for answers is noticed by her time travelling partner Gideon, and she struggles to decide whether she can trust him, or if he believes her to be a traitor like the rest of the circle, a decision made all the harder due to her growing romantic feelings towards him.

In my normal style, I made that plot summary sound bad, but it really is an amazing book, so don’t let my bad description turn you away.

Even In Paradise – Chelsey Philpot

Title: Even in Paradise
Author: Chelsey Philpot
Year: 2014
Publisher: Harper
Format: Hardback, 360 Pages
ISBN: 9780062293695

 Have you ever read a book that you’ve really enjoyed, but you can’t quite work out why? A book where not much happens, but the story is nonetheless intriguing and captivating? A book where you worked out the secret well before it is announced in the book. A book that is reminiscent of books you’ve read previously and disliked, but somehow you still liked this book. Even in Paradise was this book for me. It had me from the tagline on the cover; “They were brilliant, beautiful, and broken.”

I first added this book to my TBR because of its stunning cover. It is absolutely beautiful. When I finally decided to buy it online, I never bothered looking up the blurb again. I went into this book not knowing anything about this book except for the quote on the back cover.

“Knowing what I do now, I would do it all again.
Beginning with the night I met her, then him, then the rest.
I would do it all again just to know that for a moment I was one of the Great Buchanans.”

Firecracker – David Iserson

Title: Firecracker
Author: David Iserson
Year: 2013
Publisher: Razorbill
Format: Paperback, 331 Pages
ISBN: 9781595146816

 

One of my favourite reading experiences is buying and reading a book that you know absolutely nothing about. With the internet providing us with so many ways to learn about books (blogs, Goodreads, Instagram), there are not many occasions where I find myself entering a bookshop and not buying a book I had already been planning on buying. One day I was in a bookshop, and I saw this beautiful cover staring at me. And I knew then and there that I was going to buy it. I didn’t even read the blurb to see what it was about. I literally took it for face value of its cover, and I am so glad I did because Firecracker was such a surprising read, one I immensely enjoyed.

I’m going to acknowledge now that this book is most definitely not for everyone. It has a particular kind of humour that you are either going to love or hate. If you love it, like I do, you can tolerate the main character Astrid. If you hate the humour, chances are you will hate Astrid and therefore hate this book.

Ruby Red – Kerstin Gier

Title: Ruby Red
Author: Kerstin Gier (Translated by Anthea Bell)
Year: 2011
Publisher: Henry Holt
Format: Hardback, 324 pages
ISBN: 9780805092523

Ruby Red was one of my favourite reads of 2014. I loved this story. It was beautifully written, and it had fun and snarky characters, and it had an interesting and exciting plot that had me manically reading long into the early hours of the morning. Ruby Red is a book I would recommend immensely!

Ruby Red follows Gwen, a 16-year-old girl who lives in London with her rather strange family. The female line in her family has a rare time travelling gene that appears randomly throughout the line. It had been predicted that the last time traveller would be Gwen’s cousin Charlotte, meaning Charlotte has had a life of training to prepare for time travel. Gwen on the other hand has lived a normal life. When Gwen is the one who travels back in time, she is incredibly unprepared, and her life is changed as she is thrust into a mysterious secret society where no one trusts her, and she is forced to risk her life travelling through time.

Girl Online – Zoe Sugg

Title: Girl Online
Author: Zoe Sugg
Year: 2014
Publisher: Penguin UK
Format: Hardback, 346 Pages
ISBN: 9780141357270

 Let me start off by saying that this was not a book I was rushing to read. It wasn’t that I thought I would not be interested in it, nor was it because I don’t like Zoe. I just did not have this book high up on my list of books I should read/buy. There is a lot of controversy about this book, mostly which I don’t agree with. But I also feel that there is a lot of praise for this book based on people’s personal opinions of Zoe. This review is somewhere in the middle. I’ve watched the occasional Zoella video, but I am not a subscriber, nor do I watch every single new video the second she uploads them. The only youtube videos I particularly watch are booktubers. I find that people who really enjoy Zoella’s videos, rave about how amazing this book is. And then there are the haters who are annoyed about the whole ghost writing controversy. In my opinion, this book is not amazing, but it is also not bad. It is somewhere in the middle.

Girl Online tells the story of 16 year old Penny, a Brighton teenager who blogs about friendship, boys, family, and her life. After being involved in a car accident along with her family, Penny begins to have panic attacks, and she writes about them on her blog, Girl Online, as a way of coping with them. Readers of Girl Online appreciate the realistic and honest approach to writing that Penny takes on her blog. Over Christmas, Penny’s family go to New York, and it is whilst she is here that Penny meets Noah, a cute boy who she begins to fall in love with. Everything seems perfect, until she discovers the secret Noah’s kept from her, and suddenly the blog she loves so much along with her life is spiraling out of control.

Snow Like Ashes – Sara Raasch

Title: Snow Like Ashes
Author: Sara Raasch
Year: 2014
Publisher: Balzar + Bray
Format: Hardback, 422 pages
ISBN: 9780062286925

Want to know how I would sum this book up in one word? Fantastic. Everything about this book is just awesome, and I am in love with this world, these characters, and that writing style. Hello to a new favourite author, and a new favourite book series that I am assuming will only get better with each release. If you’ve been planning on reading this or buying it since it came out and still haven’t got around to it, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? Guys, this book is fabulous.

Normally I always try and type up my own summary on what the book is about, but every time I try it sounds super confusing and ends up rambling and long. Even when I tried to tell someone what this book was about in person they told me I confused them, so I’m just going to share the blurb from the dust jacket.