One & Only

Goodreads Summary
One night they can't forget...

Tess McMann lives her life according to the secrets she's sworn to keep: the father who won't acknowledge her, the sister who doesn't know she exists, and the mother who's content playing mistress to a prominent businessman. When she meets the distractingly cute Dylan Kingsley at a prestigious summer program and falls in love, Tess allows herself to imagine a life beyond these secrets. But when summer ends, so does their relationship -- Dylan heads off to Canton College while Tess enrolls at the state university.

One love they can't ignore...

Two years later, a scholarship brings Tess to Canton and back into Dylan's life. Their attraction is as strong as ever, but Dylan has a girlfriend…who also happens to be Tess's legitimate half-sister. Tess refuses to follow in her mother's footsteps, which leaves her only one choice: break the rules she’s always followed, or allow Dylan to slip away for a second time.

...And only one chance to get things right.

What Did I Think?
I loved this book! Tess was such a  breath of fresh air. I am so used to female characters that are weak in a way or kind of stupid, but Tess was definitely neither. She knew she wanted to do well academically and she did. She knew she had to keep it all together (her life) and she did the best humanly possible. If I were in her shoes I would have handled it different; I wouldn't have been as mature. I would have told my dad where to stuff it, but I am glad she didn't.

If you like a good contemporary read then read this!

 

Never Too Fond of Books' Create a Story Challenge

Never Fond of Books is holding a Friday challenge.

Here are their rules:

1. Open your current book to the last page you read.
2. Using the last word of every line, create a poem or story. You must use every word (but they do not have to be in order), and you may add punctuation as necessary. If a word is split between the end of the line and the beginning of the next one, you may choose whether or not to use it.
3. Create a post (or tweet or video) that showcases your masterpiece. If you don’t have anywhere else to post it, you can add it as a comment here and use the comment link as your entry.
4. Add it to the linky on this post.

My current book is Wither by Lauren DeStefano and I just read (kobo) page 99.  My words are: looking, searching, my, fingertips, is, orange, my, the, science, the, the, pictures, orange, never, with, home.

My the orange is never looking home. The orange fingertips searching pictures with the science. My!

That makes no sense...at all. ha ha.

Just Listen

Goodreads Summary 
Last year, Annabel was "the girl who has everything" — at least that's the part she played in the television commercial for Kopf's Department Store.

This year, she's the girl who has nothing: no best friend because mean-but-exciting Sophie dropped her, no peace at home since her older sister became anorexic, and no one to sit with at lunch. Until she meets Owen Armstrong.

Tall, dark, and music-obsessed, Owen is a reformed bad boy with a commitment to truth-telling. With Owen's help, maybe Annabel can face what happened the night she and Sophie stopped being friends.

My Thoughts
Meh.

Writing My Own Fairy Tale's Double Date Challenge

Writing my own fairy tale is holding a Thursday challenge where you choose two books that somehow related to each other that someone should read together.

"You must pick two books that you would recommend someone read together (like a double date!) and explain your reasons for the recommendation. You can recommend the books because they are in the same genre, one is a retelling of the other, they deal with the same issues, or maybe they're complete opposites, whatever you want as long as you can explain why they should be read together. Just one exception: they cannot be books from the same series."

My two books are My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult and Unwind by Neal Shusterman. Both are about wanting to have the right's to one's own body...just in different circumstances. They also both switch between people's POVs.

Don't Close Your Eyes: Wake, Fade, Gone (Dream Catcher Trilogy)

Goodreads Summary for the Wake Series by Lisa McMann
Janie Hannagan gets sucked into other people's dreams. It's an ability she always kept secret—until she met Cabel, and found herself with the best (secret) boyfriend ever. But Janie and Cabel are about to find out just how dark Janie's future as a Dream Catcher is... and whether Cabel will be a part of it.

Wake

Goodreads Summary
For seventeen-year-old Janie, getting sucked into other people's dreams is getting old. Especially the falling dreams, the naked-but-nobody-notices dreams, and the sex-crazed dreams. Janie's seen enough fantasy booty to last her a lifetime.
She can't tell anybody about what she does they'd never believe her, or worse, they'd think she's a freak. So Janie lives on the fringe, cursed with an ability she doesn't want and can’t control.
Then she falls into a gruesome nightmare, one that chills her to the bone. For the first time, Janie is more than a witness to someone else's twisted psyche. She is a participant.

Fade 
Goodreads Summary
For Janie and Cabel, real life is getting tougher than the dreams. They're just trying to carve out a little (secret) time together, but no such luck.

Disturbing things are happening at Fieldridge High, yet nobody's talking. When Janie taps into a classmate's violent nightmares, the case finally breaks open -- but nothing goes as planned. Not even close. Janie's in way over her head, and Cabe's shocking behavior has grave consequences for them both.

Worse yet, Janie learns the truth about herself and her ability -- and it's bleak. Seriously, brutally bleak. Not only is her fate as a dream catcher sealed, but what's to come is way darker than she'd feared....

Gone
*no summary listed on Goodreads*

My Thoughts
I really liked this series. In the first book Wake you are introduced to Janie and her...ability. You see her try to understand what is happening to her and how she struggles to deal with it and her life. You then meet Cabel who reminds me a lot of Caleb (just rearrange the letters) from Pretty Little Liars. Both Cabel and Caleb come from messed up homes and have a sweet dispositions. When Janie and Cabel are thrown together on a school trip bus, sparks don't exactly fly. The building of their relationship makes sense. Can they trust each other? Should they? Can they help each other?

By Fade they know how they feel and you would think that this book would be happy, but nope. I really liked this book too. The story was solid (for me) and the characters were just as captivating. I just had a little trouble with the subject matter.

***potential spoiler so stop reading if you don't want to know*** 

I wasn't prepared for the "teacher aspect". If you read the book than you'll know what I mean. I just wasn't ready for Janie to have to deal with that and I was equally unprepared for how Cabel reacted. This book just broke my heart.


In Gone Janie has to deal with some family issues that then bring up some questions about her dream catcher ability. It is equally as heart breakingly (ya I know that isn't really a word) as Wake and Fade. Janie questions everything! She's 18 and it's natural to question things at that age, but since she has so much going on it makes matters 100 times more stressful. Plus she used to doing everything by herself, so she won't let Cabel or Captain help. 

Like I said before, I really liked this series.  I gave Wake a rating of , Fade , and Gone .

The Archived (Archived #1)

Goodreads Summary

Imagine a place where the dead rest on shelves like books.

Each body has a story to tell, a life seen in pictures that only Librarians can read. The dead are called Histories, and the vast realm in which they rest is the Archive.

Da first brought Mackenzie Bishop here four years ago, when she was twelve years old, frightened but determined to prove herself. Now Da is dead, and Mac has grown into what he once was, a ruthless Keeper, tasked with stopping often—violent Histories from waking up and getting out. Because of her job, she lies to the people she loves, and she knows fear for what it is: a useful tool for staying alive.

Being a Keeper isn’t just dangerous—it’s a constant reminder of those Mac has lost. Da’s death was hard enough, but now her little brother is gone too. Mac starts to wonder about the boundary between living and dying, sleeping and waking. In the Archive, the dead must never be disturbed. And yet, someone is deliberately altering Histories, erasing essential chapters. Unless Mac can piece together what remains, the Archive itself might crumble and fall.

In this haunting, richly imagined novel, Victoria Schwab reveals the thin lines between past and present, love and pain, trust and deceit, unbearable loss and hard-won redemption.

My Thoughts
This book was so good! I had heard quite a few booktubers talk about this one, but it took me a little while to look into the book. Boy am I glad that I did. It has all the elements that a good book should including suspense, well developed characters, loss, a love story, as well as a few twists and turns. 

If the book's goodreads' summary didn't hook you in still give this book a shot. It's worth it.

Bookish Comfort's Book Buying Spree Monday Challenge

Bookish Comforts is holding a Monday Challenge where you "purchase" $100 worth of books from Book Depository. The prize is one of those books ($15 value).

Here is my list: