May Wrap-Up!

Hello again! I hope you guys have been having a good week! I got to hang out with my best friends yesterday, so that was lots of fun! I read four books last month, which is an absolute miracle because my May was insane! So much happened! But here are the books I read!

•  Mar. 22nd/May 12th - Only the Good Spy Young by Ally Carter - 4.5/5 ⭐s - The reason it took me so long to finish this was that I put in on hold for a while to finish Song of Blood & Stone and Renegades. I finally finished it during a readathon by Howl's Moving Bookstagram on Instagram (you should definitely check her out! She's one of my favorite bookstagrammers!) and I can't wait to see what happens in the next book! This book ended in quite a cliffhanger... But thankfully I had the short story to help me until I got book 5 from the library! 
•  May 12th/May 13th - The Throne of Fire by Rick Riordan and Orpheus Collar - 4/5 ⭐s - I think I liked this one better than the first! It did leave out a lot of scenes, but they made the point that needed to be made in each scene they did use. The art was a little weird in this one and the writing seemed to be written for a younger audience than the first, but my ships are beginning to sail, so I was happy. 😂 I'm excited to see what I think of the last one!
•  May 1st/May 18th - Olympian Challenger by Astrid Arditi - 4.5/5 ⭐s - This was an eARC from Netgalley and I enjoyed it so much! It won't be out until July 3rd, but be sure to look out for a full review from me on release day! 
•  May 30th/May 31st - Classified Material by Ally Carter - 4/5 ⭐s - This is considered #4.5 in the Gallagher Girls series by Ally Carter! It's a set of 10 chapters(?) from different characters POVs that gives some info about what happens between the events of books 4 and 5! I loved seeing the POVs of the other girls and Zach! It was really cool seeing inside their heads instead of just seeing them from Cammie's POV. It made me so concerned for book 5 and now that I'm currently reading it, my concern was definitely accurate. 😂 If you want to read this story for yourself, you can use this link to read it on Wikia! (It was released in sections on the author's website initially and someone put it all in one place on the Gallagher Girl Wikia page!)

Well, that's it for this wrap-up! I hope you guys enjoyed! If you've read any of these books, let me know in the comments! 

~Allie

April Wrap-Up! Finally!

Hey guys! Sorry I didn't post last week, but between performances and school, I didn't have time to write it out! But as of this week, I am officially done with high school, so I'll definitely be posting on time from now on! 🎉 I read three books last month, but they were all pretty good and they helped me narrow down my current reads pile! (Plus, I've already finished two books this month. I see a bright reading future ahead for my Summer!)

•  Apr. 6th/Apr. 14th - The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan & Orpheus Collar - 4/5 ⭐s - Seeing as how this was a graphic novel, it probably should not have taken me a week to read it... But it did. 🤷 I was really excited when I found this at my library, and thankfully I was pretty happy coming out of it! There were some scenes that they left out or changed a bit, but I understand it was to keep the book shorter considering it's already 200 pages long. The artwork in this book is absolutely amazing and there are a couple of little easter eggs that are just great. 😂
•   Mar. 31st/Apr. 19th - Song of Blood & Stone by L. Penelope - 4/5 ⭐s - This was the first ARC from Netgalley that I've read and I am so happy that I was given the opportunity to read it! I won't go into detail about my thoughts here, but if you'd like to know what I thought, you can find my review in the post before this one or here! 
•  Jan. 24th/Apr. 26th - Renegades by Marissa Meyer - 5/5 ⭐s - Ugh, why must buddy reads take so long?! Honestly, this book was so amazing that I probably could have finished it in a week... I loved absolutely everything about this book - it had me hooked from the first page of the prologue! And that ending!! If you haven't read it yet, go. Read it now. You won't regret it! I am so excited for Archenemies in November!

Well, there was my small but feels-filled wrap-up for the month of April! If you've read any of these, let me know in the comments! 

~Allie

March Wrap-Up!

Hey guys! I hope your week is going well so far! Mine's been pretty busy - saw two plays over the weekend, four-hour long practice for my own play, and dance class. And then youth group today, but that's a relaxing one. 😊

So, somehow I only read two books last month... Two... I don't have many hopes for this month, because I have almost every single day booked, but I'm going to try my best! At least the two books I read last month were pretty good ones! 

•  Mar. 3rd/Mar. 9th - Reckless by Cornelia Funke - 4.5/5 ⭐s - This book definitely had some differences from the newer, rewritten version, The Petrified Flesh, but I actually think I may have enjoyed it more... This book was written so poetically (one of my favorite things about Cornelia's books) and oh my gosh, the illustrations 😍! They are seriously gorgeous. I honestly plan on buying this book at some point just because the artwork is so pretty. Though this edition was published under Middle Grade (whereas The Petrified Flesh was published as YA) and I definitely don't think that it should have been. And the author obviously agreed. 😂
•  Feb. 24th/Mar. 22nd - Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover by Ally Carter - 4/5 ⭐s - Ugh, I thought I was done with taking an entire month to finish a book... *flops* Though, I guess it wasn't an entire month, considering February only had 28 days... 🤷 I really did like this book! It did frustrate me because the MC knows nothing about what's going on, so therefore you know nothing about what's going on, and almost everyone else does... But really, I think the main reason for the 4-star rating is that it took me so long to finish it. But my schedule is insane right now and my nights are usually filled with writing right now. 

Well, that's it for my upsettingly short wrap-up! I hope you had a better reading month than I did! Let me know what your favorite March read was down in the comments! 

~Allie

February Wrap-Up!

Wow, I can't believe it's March already... 😱 Where in the world did January and February go?? Only two more months until I'm an official adult and no more high school... Wow... Anyway, ignore my mini aging crisis and please enjoy this little wrap-up of all the books that I read in February! I read five books this month and I swear I was hit with all of the feelings, guys... 

•  Jan. 30th/Feb. 11th - The Assassin and the Underworld by Sarah J. Maas - 4.5/5 ⭐s - This one took me a little longer to read than the others because I fell behind in a buddy read and it took me a little while to catch back up. This book... All the feels, guys... Certain things in the second half of the book made me both really happy and really sad (if you know what happens, then you know why). I had such a hard time putting this one down once I picked it back up! 
•  Feb. 11th/Feb. 16th - The Assassin and the Empire by Sarah J. Maas - 4.5/5 ⭐s - So, I finally finished this during a readathon and... Oh. My. Heart. 💔💔 See, I was expecting pain, but not like this... Though I didn't cry, I also knew what was going to happen, so maybe that's why... I just didn't expect certain events to happen the way they did. The ending scene was absolutely amazing though! I need to pick up Crown of Midnight soon... 
•  Feb. 13th/Feb. 17th - Lost in a Book by Jennifer Donnelly - 4/5 ⭐s - So, of course, I enjoyed this book because it was Beauty and the Beast, but I was actually really disappointed... It didn't seem to fit the Beauty and the Beast theme... I plan on writing a more detailed review of this soon though, so I'll leave it here for now. This was another readathon read. 
•  Feb. 16th/Feb. 17th - Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy by Ally Carter - 5/5 ⭐s - Okay, I loved this book! The first book, I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You, was a 4-star read for me - not bad, but not absolutely amazing either. This book though, I sped through it! And I could blame it on the readathon, but honestly, I think I would have sped through it anyway. The plot was amazing and I was in a serious book hangover until I got the library for the third book in the series (which I'm currently reading now). I seriously wish that this was longer than six books... I'm already halfway through. I haven't made this much progress in a series in a while... 😂
•  Feb. 17th/Feb. 19th - Spy High Mission Two: Chaos Rising by A. J. Butcher - 4/5 ⭐s - This book was definitely better than the first one. I used to own the first one, but there was so little that I liked about it that I ended up taking it to my local used bookstore for in-store credit. In the first book, all of the MCs were so stereotypical in the beginning that it was almost annoying, and I usually don't mind cliches and stereotypes in books. Thankfully, a couple of them got more complex by the end of the first book, and that was enough to make me determined to continue the series in the hopes that it would get better. Thankfully, I wasn't disappointed! The plot in this book was a lot better to me, and most of the characters were a lot more enjoyable and had better character development! Though there were still some aspects that I didn't like, and I still don't care for Ben, but I already have the next book on hold at my library, so we'll see how the next one is! 

Well, that was it for my February wrap-up! Hope you guys enjoyed! If you've read any of these, what did you think?? 

~ Allie 

First Wrap-up of the Year! Jan. 2018

Hey guys! So far so good with the posts, but it's only been a month, so let's hope I didn't just jinx it. 😂 I read five books this month and they were all amazing reads! Even though two of them were books from last year that I hadn't finished yet, and the other three were novellas, I still consider this a great accomplishment considering how little reading I'd done last year! Hopefully it'll only get better from here! I'm absolutely determined to get a lot of reading done over the summer before college starts! I'm also participating in a 48-hour readathon in a couple of weeks that another bookstammer is putting on and I am so excited! I plan to get a lot of reading done during this. 😁 But on to the books! 

•   Nov. 17th, 2017/Jan. 17th, 2018 - The Heart of Betrayal by Mary E. Pearson - 5/5 ⭐s - Okay, this book is the second book in The Remnant Chronicles and let me just say, I'm loving it so far! Contrary to what you might think since it apparently took me two months to the day to finish this, though it doesn't feel like it. In my defense though, I put it down during November and December to focus on other books that I was actively reading because I was starting to get overwhelmed by the number of books I was reading at the same time. 😂 I really started reading this book again closer to the end of December or the beginning of January and then I felt like I was speeding through it! I do think I need a break between this one and the third and final book, The Beauty of Darkness, just because it felt like this book had been on my current reads list forever and I need a break before I start that 700-page monster. 😂

•   April 10th, 2017/Jan. 18th, 2018 - A Time To Die by Nadine Brandes - 4.5/5 ⭐s - Honestly, I'm absolutely ashamed that it took me this long to finish this book... Maybe because it was a buddy read? I'm not entirely sure because it's a genre that I absolutely love, dystopian, with the added amazingness of also being a Christian book. I do have a tendency to take longer to read parts that I'm afraid to see how they turn out though, and this book definitely had a lot of them. 😂 That being said, this book was still really good, and unlike The Heart of Betrayal, I didn't feel like it took me forever to read it even though it totally did. And oh my gosh, that ending... It tore my heart into tiny pieces, and yet somehow I loved it. It was amazingly well written, especially Chapter 40 (oh, the pain...) and the last two pages of the book! Nadine Brandes is honestly the kind of author I aspire to be, and I plan on buying A Time To Speak and A Time To Rise really soon!

•  Jan. 15th/Jan. 21st - The Assassin and the Pirate Lord by Sarah J. Maas - 4.5/5 ⭐s - I technically read this as part of The Assassin's Blade, which has all five novellas in one book, but I'm counting them individually in my Goodreads goal, so I figured I would do it here as well! Really, my only reason for not giving this one all five stars was because I can't say that I absolutely loved it. But it was absolutely amazing and I went back and forth on the rating for a while before deciding on 4.5! I tried and tried not to get attached to a certain character (if you've read Throne of Glass, then I'm sure you know who I'm referring to), but by the end of the story, I couldn't help it. I absolutely love him now... 😂😍 I really enjoyed seeing Celaena before the events of Throne of Glass, too! You can tell she was a lot more light-hearted, and somewhat full of herself 😂, in this story than the main storyline, for obvious reasons, but she was still mature and knew how to handle herself. All-in-all, I really enjoyed this story, from the plot to the characters! 

•   Jan. 21st - The Assassin and the Healer by Sarah J. Maas - 5/5 ⭐s - Honestly, this rating is because there was absolutely nothing I didn't like and I loved Celaena and Yrene! I'm really hoping Yrene shows up again somehow because 1 - it kind of alluded to it, and 2 - I really want to see what ends up happening with her! I loved the fact that she learned how to stand up for herself and protect herself and I'm just really happy with how this one turned out. 😂

•  Jan. 21st/Jan. 29th - The Assassin and the Desert by Sarah J. Maas - 4/5 ⭐s - It kind of pained me to give this one a four-star rating, but I just didn't like it as much as the other two. It was still amazing and I seriously love how these books have life lessons woven into them! It's nice to see Celaena actually having a hard time controlling her emotions. I feel like she hides them a lot more by the time she gets to Throne of Glass... The ending was good, though there were a couple of events that made me sad. I love the Master though. 😂

Well, that's my January wrap-up! Hope you guys enjoyed! If you've read any of these books, let me know what you thought in the comments, and let me know what you read in January!

~Allie📚