Baking the Books: Shadow and Bone Appetit!

 Welcome to Baking the Books, where I bake things inspired by my favorite novels! Since I do a lot of reading and a lot of baking, it was only a matter of time before the two things overlapped. It's just part of my evil plot to get books involved in every single aspect of my life.

Previously on Baking the Books: Crown of Midnight cupcakes

Confession: I had a huge Russia obsession as a kid. It was mostly focused on Anastasia and the last Romanovs (started, I must admit, once First Grade Gillian saw how handsome Anastasia's fictional animated boyfriend Dmitri was). But after that, I read every book I could get my hands on about the Romanovs, and then soon I started to read every book available about all of Russia, its history, folklore, and... CUISINE!

(Other small confession: I collect eggs. You know, like Faberge eggs, like these:



Or not at all like these, sadly. But you get the gist. RUSSOPHILE 4 LYFE)

Why am I telling you all this? So I can explain just how much I also love the Grisha series by Leigh Bardugo, which is set in a fantastical eighteenth-century imaginary version of Russia. Bardugo's Ravka incorporates all the cultural aspects of that old-world Empire that fascinated me as a preteen, while adding in hot guys um, cool new magic stuffs and cool new hot guys to fascinate me as a twenty-something.

My review of Shadow and Bone
My review of Siege and Storm

In Shadow and Bone, Alina, the main character, mentions something called "butter week": 

In the week before the spring fast, every nobleman was expected to ride out among his people in a dom cart, a cart laden with sweets and cheeses and baked breads. The parade would pass from the village church all the way back to the noble's estaste, where the public rooms would be thrown open to peasants and serfs, who were fed on tea and blini. 

*AND NOW FOR SOME HISTORICAL CONTEXT YOU DIDN'T ASK FOR*

This seems to be a twist on a real Russian thing called Maslenitsa. It's the week before Lent when everybody gorges themselves on the things they won't be able to eat for weeks, namely bread and dairy and eggs. I considered making blinis, the traditional butter week food, but they're too similar to the crepes I did for Anna and the French Kiss. So instead I made something called vatrushka! They are delicious little bready things with sweet cheese filling and they will make your soul fat and happy.



I need some sexy Ravkan boys to help me all this difficult pronunciating and bakering. Oh, boys! Mal, Sturmhond, Darkling! Have you got your aprons on? Just your aprons, mind you. No, Sturmhond, there will be no carousing or drinking in my kitchen. Perhaps a little carousing. Perhaps a lot.

*ahem* We should bake now.

Ingredients:

For the dough:
 
2 teaspoons active dry yeast
2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 cup warm milk
4 cups unbleached all-purpose floud
1/2 teaspoon salt
7 tablespoons butter, melted
1 egg yolk for egg wash on the outside of the vatrushkas

For the cheese filling:

1/2 pound (200g) farmer's cheese**
2 tablespoon sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons sugar
1 egg

**Apparently, farmer's cheese is the hardest thing in all the land to find (I checked my local supermarket and Whole Foods. If they don't have it, NO ONE DOES (untrue)). However, it's both easy to make and easy to substitute for. I used a pureed blend of ricotta and basket cheese, which is solid, to replicate the firm goat cheese-y texture farmer's cheese has. Ricotta cheese on its own is probably too wet, so if you want pure ricotta, be sure to drain it with a cheese cloth. Ditto cottage cheese.

Assembly:

First, we must deck ourselves out in Summoner blue, despite the fact that we are Frabrikating some scrumptiousness. Oo, Darkling, that color goes GREAT with your evilness.

Directions:

First, the dough. In a small bowl, stir together the 2 teaspoons yeast, 2 tablespoons sugar, and 1 1/2 cups warm milk.

Set it aside for 10 minutes until the mixture starts to puff up and look all spongey. It's supposed to look funky, don't worry. 

 

In a large bowl, combine the 4 cups flour with 1/2 teaspoon salt. Add 7 tablespoons melted butter and yeast mixture. Mix with a spatula at first, and then use your hands. Knead until dough is well mixed. 

 

 

Cover with an overturned bowl or loosely with plastic wrap and let rest for 1 hour.

 

Now the cheese filling. Mix all ingredients for cheese filling (1/2 pound (200g) cheese, 2 tablespoons sour cream,1 teaspoon vanilla extract, 2 tablespoons sugar, and 1 egg) together in an electric mixer (I prefer to use a food processor, but if you've only got a blender, that works fine too) until smooth, about 3-5 minutes.

 

Check out your dough. It should be bigger and puffier and sort of pizza-doughy. If yes, huzzah! If no, you have failed the Darkling, and therefore must die. 

Place the dough to a lightly floured work surface, cut your spongey lump of dough (more appetizing than it sounds) into six to eight equal pieces, and then shape them into flattened balls.

 

Place the balls on a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil or parchment paper. Cover dough balls with towel. Wait thirty minutes for yeast to continue rising. (BUT NOT RUIN AND RISING GET ITTTT). Cover dog with towel while bored waiting. Call her a babushka just to make Sturmhond laugh.



All hail Sankta Ginger.

Darkling will attempt to remain mirthless, but not even he is immune to the babushka dog. Consider it a mighty victory.

Preheat oven to 350F (175C). After thirty minutes, remove the towel, and press the bottom of a glass or cup into each ball to form a hollow.

Fill the center of vatrushkas with the cheese filling, leaving the borders empty. Don't over fill, like I did, or else you'll have a gorgeous cheesy mess to deal with.

 

 See all that glistening yellow on the dough? That's an egg yolk wash. It'll make the dough all shiny and purty once it's baked. Just brush a beaten egg yolk right onto the edges of the dough. Bake until the vatrushkas are a lovely appetizing golden brown, about 30 minutes in my oven. Keep an eye on them, though, as every oven varies.

Take them out and eat them as soon as you are physically capable. They're scrumptious both warm and room temperature.

THE FOLD!!! THE TWO HALVES OF VA-RAVKA WILL NEVER BE UNITED!!!

By the way, those tiny little cookies I have scattered around the vatrushkas? Well, I had extra cheese lying around, and apparently I was possessed with the spirit of Martha Stewart, so I decided to whip those up with the excess cheese. They're another Russian dessert called Geese Feet cookies, and they are so good they actually ought to be BANNED. In the time it took you to read this paragraph, I've already eaten twelve. The full recipe is here.

 They are awesome drizzled with a little bit of honey and eaten with coffee. Perfect breakfast bread!

I am a FRABRIKATOR OF PASTRIES! Leigh herself gave me this bracelet when I went to a panel she was on *preens*

*Note: for health reasons, this food should always be consumed directly from the hand of an underdressed Sturmhond.

Reader's Choice Review: Of Beast and Beauty by Stacey Jay

Review: Of Beast and Beauty by Stacey Jay
Goodreads 
Release date: July 23rd, 2013
Publisher: Delacorte
Series: No
Source: a gift from Lili
Rating: A beautiful, imaginative, and wildly romantic fairy tale.



In the beginning was the darkness, and in the darkness was a girl, and in the girl was a secret...

In the domed city of Yuan, the blind Princess Isra, a Smooth Skin, is raised to be a human sacrifice whose death will ensure her city’s vitality. In the desert outside Yuan, Gem, a mutant beast, fights to save his people, the Monstrous, from starvation. Neither dreams that together, they could return balance to both their worlds.

Isra wants to help the city’s Banished people, second-class citizens despised for possessing Monstrous traits. But after she enlists the aid of her prisoner, Gem, who has been captured while trying to steal Yuan’s enchanted roses, she begins to care for him, and to question everything she has been brought up to believe.

As secrets are revealed and Isra’s sight, which vanished during her childhood, returned, Isra will have to choose between duty to her people and the beast she has come to love.

I am always willing to read books based on fairy tales, especially when it's my very favorite fairy tale, "Beauty and the Beast". I love how much creativity it requires to put a spin on a classic tale and basically reinvent it, and to me, that's where Stacey Jay succeeds the most: in world-building and originality. There are no singing candelabras or dancing teacups (more's the pity), but this darker, more sinister version is haunting and fascinating.

I'll admit, I wasn't quite hooked in the beginning. The prologue is absolutely gorgeous, if distancing, and the prose is rich with imagery, but I wasn't connecting. We first meet Isra, the blind princess of the domed city of Yuan. She lives trapped in a tower with only one handmaiden, and her life isn't her own. One day, she will sacrifice herself for the good of the city. Yuan's queens have long been giving up their lives, spilling their blood on the magical rose garden, to ensure the city's success and keep the dome intact. It's the covenant they've made with the roses. If Isra does not give up her life when the time comes, the city will fall, and everyone one of the Smooth Skins in Yuan will be at the mercy of the unforgiving desert outside and the even more unforgiving Monstrous.

Gem is a Monstrous. He is bigger, stronger, and scaled, with claws and fangs that help him survive in the dying lands outside the domes. He seeks revenge on the selfish people of Yuan who've sucked all the life out of the desert and are dooming his people. Despite all this great setup, the beginning is rather slow, and it takes a little while to connect to Isra. She has fire, certainly, and it's a joy to see it emerge.

So, yeah. The worldbuilding. Jay creates so many interesting legends and creepy mythology, the best of which is the magical roses.



Yes! Exactly like that! Only picture it carnivorous and thirsty for blood and totally effing creepy. This book is set on an alien planet with a strong history of magic, but also technology and human greed.

Once Gem and Isra come to sort of trust each other, that's when the plot gets moving and the feels develop. All the elements start coming together and making it so I couldn't put the book down. Gem and Isra both want to do good, but neither of them quite knows how, or even what good is. They were complex, interesting characters who underwent a lot of change, and that was tons of fun to read about. Isra is sheltered, but she hates being so. It's a long journey for her to stop considering herself to be monstrous and to assert herself as the take-charge princess she is. I mean, she doesn't start out completely dormant--she has been jumping out the window of her tower and scuttling down the roof since she was ten, or something--but she really develops into a stronger person worthy and capable of love.

THE. WRITING. Perhaps that was the best part. It's lyrical and inventive and absolutely breathtaking. It never turns purple, always remaining on the right side of flowery, but still I'd find my eyes widening at some of Jay's gorgeous phrases. The sign of good writing is when an author pairs two words that I've never heard together before but that perfectly conjures the intended image, and Jay does it again and again and again. When writing a fairy tale, I suppose it's very easy to fall into romantical cliches, but Jay manages to explain Gem and Isra's connecting in such a unique way that it always felt about them, and them alone.

It's pointless. Hopeless. Even if she weren't afraid of me, at the core we'll always be enemies. She rules a wicked, selfish city, and my tribe suffers for her people's comfort. She's a queen; I'm her prisoner. I resent her and she fears me, and there are times when I fear her, too. I am her monster, and she is mine. But right now none of that matters.

 The concepts of beast and beauty get twisted around until you're not sure who is who in the original fairy tale and in this one. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and so is beastliness. But once their romance gets going, WHEW, DOES IT GET GOING. *paints a proud Gem + Isra 4eva banner*

This has nothing to do with the book, I just wanted to put it here

I would have liked to have gotten a better handle on some of the side characters (Jujie, Bo, Isra's father--I'm still  not sure EXACTLY what made them tick, even though we're in Bo's head for quite a bit), but as I said, I loved the two leads. I am super glad Lili forced me to read this, because it wasn't like any other book I'd ever read in the best way possible. If you like dark, mysterious twists on fairy tales, I would definitely recommend giving Of Beast and Beauty a shot.

Got an idea about what I should read next? Let me know in the form below!

Top Ten Books That I Wish Were Taught In Schools

Hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

Young adult literature should get the reputation it deserves as high quality literature worthy of study and analysis. Schools are slowly coming around to this, with some schools adding books by John Green and Sherman Alexie onto their curriculums. But why shouldn't fantasy or dystopian be taught in schools? Why is it thought to be of lesser intellectual quality that navel-gazing contemporaries? Don't get me wrong, I have loved my fair share of pretentious, navel-gazing contemporaries, but those aren't the only books of literary value. Genre books are just as intellectual. *climbs off nerd soap box*

Obviously, I could only include books that I've read, though I could think of a dozen more that I haven't that should probably go one here (like The Book Thief).

Also, I didn't include any books that I actually READ in school, even though I went to pretty atypical schools with atypical curriculum, meaning I read some books that may show up on other people's lists. OH WELL. MY LIST, MY RULES.

1. Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein



 I learned about history as a kid through reading historical fiction. Books like Number the Stars and the American girl series taught be what World War II was far more than facts in a textbook ever could. Code Name Verity is the kind of masterpiece that should be required reading for everyone

2. Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein



DITTO. And yes, they should teach both. RUF should be shoved in the hands of every child ever.


3. If I Stay by Gayle Forman



I mean, the kids might fall apart crying, but at least they'll read some gorgeous prose and learn some powerful truths about life and death.

4. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins



Kids should read this for two important reasons: 1) it is full of horrible awesomeness and teaches all kinds of valuable lessons, like THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS JOY (and other things), and 2) the kids who read this book are fully informed members of society. This book is so much a part of our pop-culture that to be fully ignorant of it makes you... well, a little bit more ignorant.

*apologizes to blogreaders who haven't read it yet* I'M NOT CALLING YOU STUPID, I haven't read John Green, either. You're allowed to pelt me with stones. *cowers*


5. Seraphina by Rachel Hartman



For starters, this book would increase any kids vocabulary by about a million percent. The complexities of Seraphina's world, with it's politics and prejudices, would be a great setting for some classroom learning.

6. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

 

TCIotDitN is, despite it's cumbersome name, a short and powerful novel. It's told from the point of view of an autistic teenager, and it never once devolves into schmaltz. It's funny, clever, and fascinating while managing to be brutal.

7. Speak by Laurie Hals Anderson



This one seems primed and ready to be taught in schools (and it may be taught in places... though I recall a butt-faced douche-rocket trying to ban this a couple weeks ago). It's unflinching, raw, funny, and heartbreaking, and could teach millions of kids to find their voices.

8. The Song of the Lioness series by Tamora Pierce



LE DUH. Actually, I'd accept any Tortall-set Pierce series here. The Immortals, Protector of the Small, Tricksters. All full of awesome girl power, action, and excellent social messages.

 8. (tie) His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman

 

Considering the severe anti-religion themes of this series, I can understand why it probably WOULDN'T be taught in most schools, but it really is such a glorious, intelligent, imaginative series

9. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer



HEAR. ME. OUT. As a definitive piece of culture, for good or for bad, Twilight is worth analysis almost as a historical artifact. Why did it gain the fame and popularity that it did? What about this book, and the time it was published, lead to such a phenomenon?

10. The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling



Ditto above, except including literary analysis, because it is full of depth and awesome and life lessons and magicccc. And it should be law that every human being read this series. Bump Catcher in the Rye and that snot-nose Holden off the list for HP and Company.

Honorable mentions: Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, Graceling by Kristin Cashore, Forever by Judy Blume, I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, The Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace, Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson, Grave Mercy by R.L. LaFevers, Scarlet by A.C. Gaughen.

Review: Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein

Review: Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein
Goodreads 
Release date: September 10th, 2013
Publisher: Disney Hyperion
Series: companion to Code Name Verity
Source: ARC from BEA
Rating: I don't think this glorious book can be summed up in one rating. Anything I say feels inadequate.

 

While flying an Allied fighter plane from Paris to England, American ATA pilot and amateur poet, Rose Justice, is captured by the Nazis and sent to Ravensbrück, the notorious women's concentration camp. Trapped in horrific circumstances, Rose finds hope in the impossible through the loyalty, bravery and friendship of her fellow prisoners. But will that be enough to endure the fate that’s in store for her?

Elizabeth Wein, author of the critically-acclaimed and best-selling Code Name Verity, delivers another stunning WWII thriller. The unforgettable story of Rose Justice is forged from heart-wrenching courage, resolve, and the slim, bright chance of survival.


 I honestly have no idea how to write this review. I can't think of any clever, funny, giffy ways to say that this book is the most powerful and moving book I've read since Code Name Verity. I can't think of other ways to explain that the prose is something magical, but never purple or flowery. I can give this book all the stars and all the exclamation points and flaily gifs I want, but there's no way I'd be able to portray just how incredible of a novel Rose Under Fire is.

Rose Under Fire was the very first ARC I grabbed at BEA. The word was they were dropping it the second the doors opened the first day, at nine am, that there'd be stacks of them at the Disney Hyperion booth and it'd be first come, first serve. The second those doors opened, I BOOKED IT. I power-walked like a FIEND to get this. And oh, did it pay off.

For the curious, you will be able to read this book without having read Code Name Verity (but you shouldn't, because Code Name Verity is amazing). We first meet Rose Justice, plucky, feisty American teenager and transport pilot in England in 1944. Rose is a brave, adventuresome girl who loves to fly and writes gorgeous poetry in her journal. Rose's voice is fabulous, and so different from Verity's was. I suppose the only critique I'd have is that the beginning is a bit slow, and like CNV, it's full of technical plane stuff and wartime details, which I personally love. I like learning just what life was like for the ATA girls and the men of the RAF and the people of Britain during the Blitz. I could eat up those details all day long. Wein is a master of research and giving so much just by dropping one small fact.

But this early section, before Rose is captured and sent to Ravensbruck, is necessary. It shows Rose as she was before and reunites us with Maddie (SOBBBBBBS). You learn that Rose is both the kind of girl who takes risky chances and one who doesn't quite yet understand the severity of the war around her. Oh, she understands that people are dying (the book opens with the death of a fellow ATA girl), and she understands butter shortages and living far away from home. But she doesn't yet grasp the full scale of the atrocities happening in Europe, but as we know, she's about to.



It was awful reading that first section, knowing what's about ot happen to our bright and shiny Rose, reading her poetry full of hope and soaring words. All she wants to do is fly and knock bombers out of the sky, but it's this daring that seals her fate, and just like that, we've reached the meat of the story: Rose's incarceration at Ravensbruck.

I don't even know how to write about this. The first part is conveyed in diary format, as Rose's everyday journal. The Ravensbruck section is written by Rose three weeks after she has left the camp, so the mood is radically different. It's utterly heartbreaking, but so stunning.It's an unflinching account of the horrors these women underwent, but it's also a tale of the strength and friendship of the prisoners.

You know, it almost makes me laugh to write about. What was the first thing you worried about when you found yourself a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp, Rosie? Gosh darn it, holes in my nylon hose!

That's why I love Rose. She made me laugh even under horrendous circumstances. The friendships she finds in the camp are what get her, and the reader, through. There's prickly Roza, a Polish girl who's one of "the Rabbits", aka victims of Nazi "experiments". They've destroyed her legs completely. She and the other Rabbits are protected by the entire camp, because they're the evidence. Everybody wants them to get out alive, because they physically bear proof of Nazi evil. She also swears like a sailor and has a fearsome temper. Oh, I love Roza. There's Elodie, the French girl who's a wizard at smuggling contraband through her friends and adding personal touches. There's Irina, tall, fearsome Soviet fighter pilot. OH, AND THERE'S A CHARACTER FROM CODE NAME VERITY SNUCK IN. Just to make you die a little.



Hope--you think of hope as a bright thing, a strong thing, sustaining. But it's not. It's the opposite. It's simply this: lumps of stale bread stuck down your shirt. Stale gray bread eked out with ground fish bones, which you won't eat because you're going to give it away, and maybe you'll get a message through to your friend. That's all you need.

This book is not a history lesson on the Holocaust. The Jewish experience is never really mentioned, because this book is from the POV of Rose, and she's housed with political prisoners: French resistance fighters, Polish Rabbits, and Soviet pilots. And it's about heroism in it's smallest, most difficult, most everyday forms, and sacrifice and love and perseverance and ahhhhh





"You should have seen what I got up to when I worked in the post office," Micheline said. "We'd put big black censor stamps all over instructions being sent to German officers, or we'd steam open envelopes and swap letters around so they went to the wrong people, or steam off stamps so there was postage due--and anything that came from Paris with a German name on it we'd return to sender. Every now and then we'd send off a mailbag with a burning cigarette butt tied up inside it. My God, I miss the thrill of being a civil servant!"

In this book, the horrors happen up close. The tragedies are given faces and names (so many names). Rose's eyes are fully opened, and they'll never be closed again. The only thing that helps is poetry, and so Rose writes dozens and dozens of poems for her fellow inmates. These poems... man. I don't even... Seriously, you just have to read them yourselves. I'm getting all verklempt just thinking about them. The book is full of horror and pain and evil, but it's the poetry, and the warmth, and the strong people who stand out. So many vibrant people live and die in fictional Ravensbruck that it begins to impress upon you just how many real people lived and died in Ravensbruck.

Again, it's the tiny things that crack your heart open. Yes, I felt teary thinking about gas chambers and brutal beating and bullets to the head. But it was a silly song about painted toenails that broke me. It was Rose singing her poetry to the other girls in the dark. It was Irina's paper airplanes, Elodie's embroidered blue roses, and Rose thinking about her family at home and the way her life used to be.

READ THIS BOOK. And get your tissues ready. And just... be ready to feel everything. Elizabeth Wein is a master. By definition, she's chosen a subject matter that will connect with every reader with a soul. But it's her execution of it that puts her in a league above the rest. It's her prose, woven with pain and hope, the way she paints such a rich historical setting with just a detail (in Europe, they'd put duct tape in an X over the windows to prevent them from shattering in a bomb blast), and the subtleties of the characters. It's easy to make a big, tragic death sad, but how Wein really acheives greatness is in how she depicts their lives. Because ultimately, that's what this book is about: living, living, living.

Now I'm going to go cry in the corner.

Blogoversary Giveaway (1) !!!!

YOU. GUYS. Technically, I have been blogging for an ENTIRE YEAR. That's madness. That's lunacy. That's... EXCITING! When I first started my blog, it wasn't meant to be a book blog. It wasn't  meant to be a BLOG at all, but was actually a class assignment. Well, I dropped the class. I didn't drop the blog.

CHECK.

I had NO CLUE what I was doing when I first decided this blog was going to be about books. I had no blogging friends. I didn't even really know there was a book blogosphere. But somehow I muddled along, and I slowly learned what I was doing. I still don't have all the answers--not even close-- but at least now I've got great blogger friends and readers to make the confusion fun. I got to talk with authors I never dreamed I'd meet. I got to go to BEA. I got to do a million things I never even dreamed possible.

Just for fun, here are my most popular posts as of September 1:

Most popular review on Goodreads:

Frozen by Melissa de la Cruz and Michael Johnston

Most popular blog reviews:

The Elite by Kiera Cass 
The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner
Matched by Ally Condie
For Darkness Shows the Stars by Diana Pieterfreund
The Prince by Kiera Cass
Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas

Most popular discussion posts:

Lending People Books (Most popular post EVER!)
Classic Books Everyone Should Read 
YA Trend Watch
Negative Reviews: Why I Write Them and Why I Read Them 
Baking the Books: Cinder Fortune Cookies 
In Defense of Love Triangles

It just makes me want to cry, thinking about how every little number and every little stat represents a person who's interested in what I have to say and who's taking the time to read what I write.

Blogging has totally changed everything about my life. It's what I think about when I wake up in the morning and when I go to sleep at night. I have blogging dreams (usually panic-stricken ones where I send the wrong reviews to the wrong publishers or I lose all my Twitter followers). Every single day, as I go about my regular life, I have at least two moments where I gasp and cry aloud,

This month will have a whole bunch of giveaways to celebrate this auspicious occasion, the first of which is a followers only giveaway, to thank the people who make me be able to do what I love to do. The winner will get to choose any one of the books below that they wish, all of which are personal favorites of mine that I've reviewed:




 45 Pounds by K.A. Barson
Alanna: The First Adventure by Tamora Pierce
All Our Yesterdays by Cristin Terrill 
Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins
The Archived by Victoria Schwab
The Beginning of Everything by Robyn Schneider
The Bitter Kingdom by Rae Carson
Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas

 


The Distance Between Us by Kasie West
The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater
Everneath by Brodi Ashton
Faking It by Cora Carmack 
The False Prince by Jennifer Nielsen 
Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
For Darkness Shows the Stars by Diana Peterfreund
Gorgeous by Paul Rudnick

 

 

Graceling by Kristin Cashore
If I Stay by Gayle Forman
Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick
Pivot Point by Kasie West 
Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein
Seraphina by Rachel Hartman
Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo 
Unspoken by Sarah Rees Brennan
Unravel Me by Tahereh Mafi

I am also DANGEROUSLY CLOSE to 100,000 pageviews (!!!! $^%$#@#). That boggles my brain. I LOVE YOU PEOPLE. That's right, bitches. One year. Nearly one hundred thousand page views.

 

This is a followers appreciation giveaway, so you must be following me to enter.

EDIT: This giveaway is INTERNATIONAL! :D

Check out my ARC giveaway, head over here! 

a Rafflecopter giveaway