Review: Small Damages by Beth Kephart

Title: Small Damages
Author: Beth Kephart
Release Date: July 19, 2012
Pages: 304

It’s senior year, and while Kenzie should be looking forward to prom and starting college in the fall, she is mourning the loss of her father. She finds solace in the one person she trusts, her boyfriend, and she soon finds herself pregnant. Kenzie’s boyfriend and mother do not understand her determination to keep the baby. She is sent to southern Spain for the summer, where she will live out her pregnancy as a cook’s assistant on a bull ranch, and her baby will be adopted by a Spanish couple. 

Alone and resentful in a foreign country, Kenzie is at first sullen and difficult. She begins to open her eyes and her heart to the beauty that is all around her and inside of her.

Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma

Title: Forbidden
Author: Tabitha Suzuma
Series: Stand- alone
Pages: 432

Release Date: May 27th, 2010

She is pretty and talented - sweet sixteen and never been kissed. He is seventeen; gorgeous and on the brink of a bright future. And now they have fallen in love. But... they are brother and sister.

Seventeen-year-old Lochan and sixteen-year-old Maya have always felt more like friends than siblings. Together they have stepped in for their alcoholic, wayward mother to take care of their three younger siblings. As defacto parents to the little ones, Lochan and Maya have had to grow up fast. And the stress of their lives—and the way they understand each other so completely—has also also brought them closer than two siblings would ordinarily be. So close, in fact, that they have fallen in love. Their clandestine romance quickly blooms into deep, desperate love. They know their relationship is wrong and cannot possibly continue. And yet, they cannot stop what feels so incredibly right. As the novel careens toward an explosive and shocking finale, only one thing is certain: a love this devastating has no happy ending.

Review: The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han

Title: The Summer I Turned Pretty

Author: Jenny Han

Series: Summer, book one

Release Date: March 5th, 2009

Rating: 5 Stars

Belly measures her life in summers. Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August. Winters are simply a time to count the weeks until the next summer, a place away from the beach house, away from Susannah, and most importantly, away from Jeremiah and Conrad. They are the boys that Belly has known since her very first summer--they have been her brother figures, her crushes, and everything in between. But one summer, one terrible and wonderful summer, the more everything changes, the more it all ends up just the way it should have been all along.

Bloglovin' and instagram

I'm joining the technologically advanced people, and have joined Blog Lovin' and Instagram. Finally.

Follow me on Blog Lovin' :)

Just search Ramblings of Eliza on Bloglovin, or search my username @elizareads on instagram.

I'm finally getting with it on here, and hopefully, I'll have some more changes on here soon.

Review: Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

Anna is looking forward to her senior year in Atlanta, where she has a great job, a loyal best friend, and a crush on the verge of becoming more. Which is why she is less than thrilled about being shipped off to boarding school in Paris--until she meets Étienne St. Clair. Smart, charming,beautiful, Étienne has it all...including a serious girlfriend. 

But in the City of Light, wishes have a way of coming true. Will a year of romantic near-misses end with their long-awaited French kiss?

Breaking Point and Sequels

Article 5 by Kristen Simmons was an amazing addition to the young adult dystopian genre. Now the sequel, Breaking Point has been released, but it makes me a little nervous. Sequels have been known to disappoint, especially for me, who is a harsh critic when I fall head over heels for the first in a series.

The dystopian genre has become an ever-expanding genre for young adults. Dystopian means the opposite of a utopia, a society that seems perfect from the outside, but it is not at all.

Much like the classics such as George Orwell's 1984, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, or Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, the dystopian novels are meant to warn against the possible take over of power in the future. The warn against a society that is controlled, the creativity and life sucked out of the citizens.

The phase caught on after The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and has continued to grow with Matched, Delirium, and Article 5. Delirium by Lauren Oliver is one of my favourite dystopian novels, because it has such a beautiful flow to the words, as if they were song lyrics, and the story is such a nice pace. It allows the reader to really take in the world and understand the characters instead of just running through an action novel.

Back to my original point. Article 5 was such a great addition to the dystopian genre, and to my personal collection. However, the sequel is staring at me from my bookshelf, begging me to read it, and I'm nervous that I will be as disappointed by it as I was by Pandemonium, the sequel to Delirium.

Rereading Delirium

I read Delirium by Lauren Oliver a few years ago, and loved it.  I was trying to decide which books I would recommend to a friend, and realized how much I loved this one and wanted to reread it myself. So I did, and I can't get over the amazing writing. The writing is so beautiful, even more so than I remembered.

If you haven't read it yet, you really should before the third book Requiem, comes out in a few months. I will post a review of my thoughts compared to the first time I read it.

Here are some of my favourite quotes:

“Love: a single word, a wispy thing, a word no bigger or longer than an edge. That's what it is: an edge; a razor. It draws up through the center of your life, cutting everything in two. Before and after. The rest of the world falls away on either side.”

“And now I know why they invented words for love, why they had to: It's the only thing that can come close to describing what I feel in that moment, the baffling mixture of pain and pleasure and fear and joy, all running sharply through me at once.”

“You can build walls all the way to the sky and I will find a way to fly above them. You can try to pin me down with a hundred thousand arms, but I will find a way to resist. And there are many of us out there, more than you think. People who refuse to stop believing. People who refuse to come to earth. People who love in a world without walls, people who love into hate, into refusal, against hope, and without fear.

I love you. Remember. They cannot take it.”

My Favourite TFiOS Quotes

I KNOW I KNOW, you're probably getting sick of me talking about The Fault in Our Stars so much, but it is just so good.

The way John Green just slots a magnificent line into the rest of the book flawlessly is beyond me. He makes it seem like any other line, and yet if you think about it, it's some deep quote about life that really makes you stop and wonder. Here are some of my favourite quotes (even though they are all pretty amazing if you stop and think about them):

"When I got out of the movie, I had four text messages from Augustus.

Tell me my copy is missing the last twenty pages or something.

Hazel Grace, tell me I have not reached the end of this book.

OH MY GOD DO THEY GET MARRIED OR NOT OH MY GOD WHAT IS THIS

I guess Anna died and so it just ends? CRUEL. Call me when you can. Hope all's okay."

This is the part in the book when I first found myself falling in love with Augustus' character. I know 'falling in love' with a character sounds ridiculous, but you know what I mean... that if he was a real boy, I would want to marry him. This is the first time when I saw a side of Gus that made me giggle and then think about the text messages I have received like those. It made him such a believable character and really helped me to get into the story.

My 'The Fault in Our Stars' Song

Ever since I finished The Fault in Our Stars, I have been thinking about my playlist for the book. I know I keep posting about it, but it was just so deep and complex. One song that struck me is Kodaline's All I Want. 

I feel like it expresses the sadness and the epicness of Gus and Hazel's relationship. The lyrics, I thought, switched perspective from Gus to Hazel, like I labelled below. The song basically makes me want to cry...

Augustus- 

"All I want is nothing more

To hear you knocking at my door

'cause if i could see your face once more

I could die as a happy man I'm sure"

Hazel-

"When you said your last goodbye

I died a little bit inside

I lay in tears in bed all night

Alone without you by my side

But If you loved me

Why did you leave me?"

Augustus-

"'cause you brought out the best of me

A part of me I'd never seen

You took my soul wiped it clean

Our love was made for movie screens"

The Fault in Our Stars: Grenades

In John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, I was struck by the idea that people are grenades. Hazel believes she is a grenade because she is dying of cancer. However, as John Green said in answer to a FAQ about TFiOS, we are all grenades:

 "The central thing that Hazel has to realize at the end of the book is that she has been wrong all along about how she imagines her relationships with people she loves. She wasn't wrong about being a grenade (although we’re all grenades)."

"Although we're all grenades". That part struck me and I can't stop thinking about it. Every person you get close to and love,  you are becoming a grenade for them. Being a grenade for someone means that when you die, when the time comes for your grenade to implode, you will hurt them. 

It got me thinking who I am a grenade for, who is a grenade for me, and why everyone in the world is a grenade. Unlike Hazel, I am probably too selfish to cut myself off from the ones I love and want to continue a friendship with. I suppose we all just have to accept the fact that we are grenades.

It amazes me how deep John Green's thoughts are (and yes, I have to call him "John Green" every time. I can't call him Green or something, I feel a strange need to bask in the amazingness of John Green, and therefore, I must say his entire name each time. He is basically a god. Like the Greek God of amazing books or something....but I digress). It surprises me, honestly, that any person can just ponder such things about the world in such a way. His intelligence and depth of knowledge astounds me. 

So grenades. Grenades are always thought of as negative, right? Hazel definitely thinks they are negative in TFiOS, but I have begun to think that there could be a positive aspect of grenadism (Not a word, but I see no reason why it can't be). Grenadism, to me, means that you affected someones life in the long run. That when you die, that person will be sad for your loss. I think that is great, because it means you are wanted, needed, loved. 

"Only now that I loved a grenade did I understand the foolishness of trying to save others from my own impending fragmentation." I agree with Hazel, that there is no reason to try to alienate yourself, everyone is a grenade, and death is a part of life. I love the words "Impending fragmentation", because death is impending, we all know it will happen, why not enjoy life while you can?

Not that I hope for those I love to be sad when I die, I think it's nice for people to know that they will be missed, and that they had a positive impact on someone's life.

Countdown to CP2

Clockwork Princess comes out 72 days from today!!! I am SO excited, I can't wait. I have so many questions, especially about Will and Jem's fate. Agh.

Also, Cassandra Clare mentioned on her blog that she cried while writing it. Although it could be because she was finishing the series and leaving her characters behind, I have a feeling it will be horrendously, awesomely sad. I might be devastated if it turns out a way I don't want it to.

Review: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Title: The Fault in Our Stars
Author: John Green
Release Date: January 10, 2012
Pages: 313
My Rating: Five Stars

Diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer at 13, Hazel was prepared to die until, at 14, a medical miracle shrunk the tumours in her lungs... for now. 

Two years post-miracle, sixteen-year-old Hazel is post-everything else, too; post-high school, post-friends and post-normalcy. And even though she could live for a long time (whatever that means), Hazel lives tethered to an oxygen tank, the tumours tenuously kept at bay with a constant chemical assault. 

Enter Augustus Waters. A match made at cancer kid support group, Augustus is gorgeous, in remission, and shockingly to her, interested in Hazel. Being with Augustus is both an unexpected destination and a long-needed journey, pushing Hazel to re-examine how sickness and health, life and death, will define her and the legacy that everyone leaves behind.

My Favourite Books of 2012

Happy New Year! As we segway into 2013, I have been pondering my favourite books from 2012. I would have done either five or 10, but in the end, there were six books that I felt were worthy. They are in no particular order:

1. City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare:

I am a self-professed Cassandra Clare addict. Anything and everything she writes is pure genius. I would think she was a genius simply for creating such incredible characters, especially my favourite, Jace Wayland. If you have followed my blog for any length of time, you have probably noticed my fangirl-ishness that accompanies any CC review, such as the COLS review HERE.

2. Clockwork Prince by Cassandra Clare:

I did tell you I am a Cassandra Clare maniac...Although this book came out in 2011, I was stupid enough to believe that Clare's prequel series would not live up to my all time favourite series, The Mortal Instruments. I was, of course, extremely mistakenly, and fell head over heels for Will, Jem, Tessa, and the other characters of the Infernal Devices, especially in the sequel. HERE is my review. I cannot wait until the final installment, Clockwork Princess. I am sure to be a blubbering mess.

3. Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi:

Gah, this book. My affiliate, Amber Skye, basically begged me to read this book, and I was quite reluctant at first. However, after I read it, I was desperate to reread it. The premise is so unique given that so many people are writing similar books to each other these days. Although there is a fantastical element, this book reaches the impossible without calling upon werewolves or vampires, witches or wizards. HERE is my review.

4. Article 5 by Kristen Simmons:

This book is another dystopian, futuristic-yet-somewhat-believable story that I am in love with. In the same vein as The Hunger Games, this dystopian society creates a heartpounding and heartbreaking story about two characters I love. Especially the wonderful Chase (insert eye-heart emoticon face). He's a book boy who is believable enough, with enough flaws to become a real boy.

5. Ours Is Just A Little Sorrow by Gwen Hayes:

Although this book was only a novella, it drew me in, and left me wanting a full novel. The futuristic world that was set in space, but based on the Victorian Era made for a very interesting read. It was certainly a new and intriguing topic. Obviously Gwen Hayes has talent, especially because she only have 70 something pages or so, and still made me fall head over heels for Gideon. That's impressive, if you ask me. HERE is my review.

6. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green:

I have nothing else to say other than this: John Green is simply a genius-superhuman and the male version of Cassandra Clare.