Top Ten Characters That I'd Name My Children After

hosted by The Broke and Bookish

Apparently, all my future children will be girls.

I tried to think of characters I both admire and whose names I adore. Like, I had to leave my beloved Hermione off it, because although I would love to honor my bookish bestie by naming my hypothetical kid after her... you just know the other kids will call her Herman/Hermananoid/Hermononucleosis (Starkid reference!).

1. Alanna of Trebond from the Song of the Lioness series by Tamora Pierce



Alanna is the original kick butt, take-no-prisoners, "I forge my own path" lady warrior. Not only do I love the name Alanna, but I love the lessons that girl teaches: to not be ashamed of who you really are, and never be afraid to go after you really want. Also that knowing how to wield a sword is freaking awesome.

2. Jane Eyre from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte/ Jane Austen



I adore the name Jane, and Jane Eyre is a supremely worthy heroine. She was so self-reliant in a time when woman were hardly ever self-reliant. Jane's like a honey badger. She don't care that you got a big house and lots of money and you super, duper love her. You're a bigamist, so Jane don't give a shit.

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”

“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.”

Also, the name Jane would honor my fave author ever, Jane Austen. I also really like the name Charlotte. It's official, I'll be having at least seventeen children, because I like too many names.

3. Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen



Fun Gillian fact: My middle name is Elizabeth, named after one Elizabeth Bennet. By far the most appealing of all of Austen's very appealing heroines, she's witty, bright, sociable, and though it's often difficult to get her to change her mind, she always does. Plus she can rock an Empire waist like nobody's business.

4. Cassandra Mortmain from I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

GET IT GURLL

First of all, I think the name Cassandra is gorgeous, and secondly, Cassandra is the awesomest. If you haven't read I Capture the Castle, you totally should. It's basically about a teenage girl in 1930's Britain who lives in a crumbling castle with her impoverished and eccentric family, deals with the hot local rich boys, and learns how to be even more awesome. READ IT. Cassandra is my spirit animal.

5. Lyra Belacqua from His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman




Lyra is not only one half of the MOST TRAGIC LOVE STORY EVARR, but is one of the favorite heroines of my childhood. Hopefully, if I name my daughter Lyra, she will also have a daemon, because that would be the coolest.


6. Anna Oliphant from Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

Obviously, I like the name, but Anna is also one of the funniest, friendliest YA narrators I've ever had the pleasure to meet. If my daughter were named Anna, I would totally call her in a British accent just at random moments: Ah-na.

7. Alina Starkov from Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

I really like those A names, don't I? But Alina is a gorgeous name. Russian, feminine, and full of whatever the Russian equivalent of je ne sais quoi is.

8. Arya Stark from A Song of Fire and Ice by George R.R. Martin



Arya is basically the literary descendant of Alanna. They both do the gender-bending thing; they're both tough girls living in a crappy man's world; they're both smaller than the people around them; and they both have a lot to prove. I love me some Arya Stark something fierce. And yes, I realize Alina Starkov and Arya Stark are pretty darn similar, but sue me.


9. Emma Woodhouse from Emma by Jane Austen

 

A lot of people don't like bossy, controlling, and confident Emma. I mean, there's not a lot to sympathize with in someone who is introduced to us as handsome, clever, and rich, but I always got her. I just figured she was super bored, since there wasn't much to do for rich young ladies in Regency England, and that was why she chose to micro-manage the love lives of the people around her. She basically INVENTED reality TV, you guys. How could you not love her?

10. Alice from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll



The last of the A names is probably my favorite. Everybody loves Alice, that curious little girl who's finding out little by little that the world she's in doesn't make a lick of sense. Also I like her headband. See, I always have good reasons for choosing things.


Bonus 11. Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling



Luna is seriously one of the bravest characters in all of Harry Potter, and that is saying something. She's always exactly the oddball person she is and never pretends she isn't. She's incredibly loyal to Harry and the DA. How can you not love the girl who introduced us to Nargles and the Crumple-Horned Snorkack?

ETA Bonus 12. Sara Crewe from A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett



HOW COULD I HAVE FORGOTTEN SARA??? I actually used to pretend this was my name when I was six. I was that in love with the inventive, resilient, magical Sara Crewe. She could turn an empty table into a feast all through the power of her imagination. Love this girl to pieces.

Honorable Mentions: Ella of Frell from Ella Enchanted, Lily Potter from Harry Potter, Clary from The Mortal Instruments, Tessa from The Infernal Devices, Lucy Pevensie from The Chronicles of Narnia, Peter Pevensie from the same, Harry Potter from duh, Fred Weasley from Harry Potter, Nick from The Great Gatsby, Sam Gamgee from The Lord of the Rings, Felicity Merriman from the American Girl books (nostalgia alert), Briony from Atonement, Finny from A Separate Peace, Teddy (aka Jo's nickname for) Laurie from Little Women, Katniss (Kat) from The Hunger Games, andddd many more.

2013 YA Cover Trends: Part Two

Note: My cover compilations are by no means exhaustive, meaning I left out a whole lot of applicable covers, and while I tried to limit it to just 2013 releases, a couple 2012s or others may have sneaked in there.

Last time on Cover Trends, we just barely scratched the surface on some of the prevalent trends popping up in the world of young adult book covers. This week, the madness continues! And yes, it is still madness, considering my hard drive crashed, dumping all my previously-made cover composites, which means I had to do them all over again! It was exhausting, and took years off my life, so y'all better APPRECIATE WHAT I GO THROUGH FOR YOU. I'm just kidding. I do it because I love it. I'm obsessive like that.

Anyway, let's get cracking.

Redder is Better

When we last discussed title and subject matter trends, I mentioned redheads as a being a ridiculously common thing in YA. Here is visual proof that these days, redheads are all the rage.

Catch You on the Flip Aide, A Balanced Approach, Mirror Images, Even Handed-- pick a catchphrase

A Font of Information
This is for the covers where the font and title do all or most of the heavy lifting. Some of these are so similar it's kind of crazy. I defy you to tell those blue ones apart. Seriously, they are cover clones.

Mini trend: Don't Jump!
Seriously, PLEASE DON'T JUMP.

Stay tuned for part three! Have you noticed any cover trends lately?

Review: Strands of Bronze and Gold by Jane Nickerson

Review: Strands of Bronze and Gold by Jane Nickerson
Goodreads
Rating: I nearly DNFed in the first 100 pages because simply nothing happens. Page upon page of endless gorgeous, ornate description. A heroine who can be a bit of a twit, though I did enjoy the way she matures and strengthens. This book is so visually beautiful, but there simply wasn't enough to grab me. I so wanted to love this one, and I'm kind of heartbroken that I didn't.



The Bluebeard fairy tale retold. . . .

When seventeen-year-old Sophia Petheram’s beloved father dies, she receives an unexpected letter. An invitation—on fine ivory paper, in bold black handwriting—from the mysterious Monsieur Bernard de Cressac, her godfather. With no money and fewer options, Sophie accepts, leaving her humble childhood home for the astonishingly lavish Wyndriven Abbey, in the heart of Mississippi.

Sophie has always longed for a comfortable life, and she finds herself both attracted to and shocked by the charm and easy manners of her overgenerous guardian. But as she begins to piece together the mystery of his past, it’s as if, thread by thread, a silken net is tightening around her. And as she gathers stories and catches whispers of his former wives—all with hair as red as her own—in the forgotten corners of the abbey, Sophie knows she’s trapped in the passion and danger of de Cressac’s intoxicating world.

Glowing strands of romance, mystery, and suspense are woven into this breathtaking debut—a thrilling retelling of the “Bluebeard” fairy tale.


The cover: I LOVE this cover. Love, love, love. Her beautiful hair, her delicate profile, the swirly, embellished bits, the antique coloring, the abbey in the background... I mean, you get the whole mood of the book. This is serious cover lust here. I'm drooling.

The story: I adore fairy tales. I will pretty much pick up anything that's a fairy tale retelling, particularly one that appears to have a darker, more twisted viewpoint, even on a fairy tale already as dark and twisted as Bluebeard, a personal favorite of mine. Strands of Bronze and Gold has been on my radar for a while, and I was so excited for it, which is partly why I was so disappointed by it.



Don't get me wrong; this is not a bad book. Jane Nickerson seriously has a way with words. The mood, the setting, and even the concept were wonderful. But it took me weeks to read this book. Weeks. I never take that long to read things. I simply couldn't get into this one. I wanted to like Sophia, the main character, who claims to be dreamy and imaginative. But she never felt like a coherent character to me. She was dreamy when required, prudish when necessary, and so on. Sometimes she was naive to the point of eye-rolling. I don't require my heroines to be perfect, and I preferred her when her own imagination got the best of her, and she got caught up in her fairy tale surroundings, but I never felt connected to her emotions. In first person, this is particularly problematic. I mean, you're living in the main character's head. In Sophia's case, it was a pretty head, but it seriously got on my nerves.



The largest problem I had with SoBaG was the abysmal pacing. How many chapters can I be expected to handle that do nothing but describe jewels, gowns, fabrics, armchairs, wallpaper, ceilings, floor tiles, armoires, twelve course dinners, horse rides, and on and on and on? I was going stir-crazy, I swear. I was enchanted by the descriptions in the beginning. Nickerson has a way with evoking luxury and beauty and implanting a vision in your mind's eye. But seriously, I JUST COULDN'T TAKE IT any longer. There's setting the mood, and then there's drowning in it. I was like, "Can we get to the murdering and haunting and suffering, please? I do not need to know the color and fabric and cut and life story of all twenty-seven of her dresses. Thank you." I probably would have enjoyed this more if I hadn't known there was meant to be murderings afoot, but when you already know the secret but it's being revealed in not-so-steady drips... ACK.

 

Also, that amount of sheer over-the-top luxury hanging out in the middle of Chicataw, Mississippi in 1855 just strained my credulity. The level of luxury present in Wyndriven Abbey, which is itself a monastery transplanted in full all the way from England, was really kind of absurd. A lot of it I just straight up couldn't believe. And none of the luxury was disquieting enough. Even as Sophia is ooh-ing and ahh-ing over her (HORRENDOUSLY CREEPY) godfather and his ridiculous wealth, there should have been a few more foreboding details to let you know that all is not right. It felt like Nickerson was attempting that, but it didn't play that way to me. It was all too pretty, and Sophia was too enraptured by it all.

Speaking of too enraptured... dude. Bernard, you are so eggregiously inappropriate, I can't even. On the one hand, I loved it. I thought his character worked as a Bluebeard-esque villian, beguiling at first, but secretly Patrick Bateman on the inside. And so gross and touchy. How Sophia didn't clue into his less-than-honorable desires the very moment he cast a glance at her bosoms, or made her wear a belly dancer costume, or initiated a discussion about how he wished she weren't wearing undergarments, all in the first TWENTY-FOUR HOURS of their meeting, I will never  know. Don't get me wrong-- I loved how wrong that all was. It was supposed to be. He was giving me all the squicky shivers, just as he should have. But Sophia was all, "Oh, my, he's so enchanting! Perhaps I ought to Carpe Diem, as my dearest godfather, who is always so fond of touching me, always says! Why, I do believe I am in love with him, even though he's over forty, is my legal guardian, and has four dead wives all with my red hair. That's normal. It's all so magical!" No, Sophie, it's not. It's like sexual harassment, actually. Stab him with one of the twenty thousand  jewel-encrusted pins he gave you.



Things really picked up once the creep factor got turned up. Once Sophia started to clue in on the fact that things weren't right, that's when I started to get invested in her. If you promise me Bluebeard, you better deliver Bluebeard, because that dude was one crazy ass motherf*cker. I expected creepiness out of Bernard, so I watched him mega closely for the slightest signs of psychopathy. Which is why it is really frustrating when Sophia, an intelligent and articulate girl, doesn't see it at all. The thing is, we know right away that he's super shady, because we've read the back of the book and the fairy tale and he's got a hoop earring, for God's sake, and he for damn sure ain't no Jack Sparrow.

My apologies.

Mild spoilers for those not familiar with the original Bluebeard tale. Nickerson doesn't actually expand the tale so much as deepen it, really, providing no new twist on the story but a lot more information. It's still the straightforward serial killer and serial husband tale, only with an Antebellum setting, which I love, and a red hair fetish, which skeeved me the hell out in a good way. I'm a sucker for anything historical and anything Southern, so that aspect really worked for me.I think it's a perfect place to set a fairy tale, a place rich with history, atmosphere, and seeeecrets. A psycho obsessed with power and dominance and violence could have no better setting than as a master of a plantation in the deepest reaches of pre-Civil War Mississippi. There are tensions with the slaves, which I loved and which DEFINITELY could have been amped up, and did I mention the visuals? Because they're stellar. I could see every inch of the place, and could feel the humidity like it was there, dripping on the back of my neck.

(I'm not going to get into a long discussion about the treatment of characters of color in this book, since I actually felt Sophie had as modern a view as possible given her time period (except for the part where she feels bad for the field worker slaves because of their SHABBY CLOTHES, I kid you not, I had to put the book down and stare blankly in horror for like a minute). and it felt very historically accurate, though I wish a bit more depth had been given to them and there hadn't been quite as many stock characters. If you want to hear the Book Smugglers talk about it (and they actually object to the "shabby clothes" thing too), click here. If not, carry on.)

I found Bernard actually creepier in the beginning, when he was still playing the role of a fairy tale prince, than at the end, when his dark secrets came unraveled and sinister things were happening. It was chilling, but not as chilling as I'd hoped. He's creepier in the subtle ways, in the brainwashing and the false smiles. I know the original tale so well, and love the horrible way the ending came about, and wish Nickerson had preserved more of it.

Also, INSTA-LOVE ALERT. Major, major insta-love. I get why, because compared to horrid Bernard, any non-murderous, non-abusive, non-racist dude would be nice, but... ugh. You don't fall in love after three meetings. I don't care what era you're in. ALSO IS HER NAME SOPHIE OR SOPHIA THEY CALL HER BOTH THINGS IN THE BOOK AND IN THE SYNOPSIS AND I'M CONFUSED NOW.

This is one of those times where I'm actually encouraging you guys to check out a book that didn't work for me. Most people really loved this one. They did connect to Sophia, and they were enchanted by the beyond-beautiful imagery and Gothic, haunting mystery. I think I was just picking up this book at the wrong time, really. I was staring down at words I know I should have loved, but I just didn't. I was flat-out bored at times. This is definitely a book I will try again at another time, in the hopes that I finally feel that fairy tale love for it.

Review and Giveaway: Paper Valentine by Brenna Yovanoff

Review: Paper Valentine by Brenna Yovanoff
Goodreads
Rating: Gorgeous writing, ghosts, and serial killers collide for a story that'll creep the heck out of you with its eerie mood and somehow lift your heart at the same time.



The city of Ludlow is gripped by the hottest July on record. The asphalt is melting, the birds are dying, petty crime is on the rise, and someone in Hannah Wagnor’s peaceful suburban community is killing girls.

For Hannah, the summer is a complicated one. Her best friend Lillian died six months ago, and Hannah just wants her life to go back to normal. But how can things be normal when Lillian’s ghost is haunting her bedroom, pushing her to investigate the mysterious string of murders? Hannah’s just trying to understand why her friend self-destructed, and where she fits now that Lillian isn’t there to save her a place among the social elite. And she must stop thinking about Finny Boone, the big, enigmatic delinquent whose main hobbies seem to include petty larceny and surprising acts of kindness.

With the entire city in a panic, Hannah soon finds herself drawn into a world of ghost girls and horrifying secrets. She realizes that only by confronting the Valentine Killer will she be able move on with her life—and it’s up to her to put together the pieces before he strikes again.

Paper Valentine is a hauntingly poetic tale of love and death by the New York Times bestselling author of The Replacement and The Space Between.

The cover: I'm obsessed with silhouette covers and this cover in particular. I love the intricacies of the cutout and how equally sweet and sinister the girl is, even with her delicate ponytail and profile. It suits the feel of the book and the main character perfectly.

The book: Do you ever read a book where you're just so in love with the prose that you kind of feel sick with envy and happiness, and the plot could kind of go anywhere and you'd be happy with it, because you'd be able to continue reading this author's words? I feel that way about Tahereh Mafi, and now I feel that way about Yovanoff. There's a whimsical almost-poetry to her descriptions and the details she chooses to include. Like, it's all sparkly and lilting on the surface, but there's this dark grittiness underneath. That perfectly sums up Paper Valentine, a beautiful, engaging, horrifically disturbing novel about the many layers a person can be hiding, for good or for bad.

Strange things are afoot in the city of Ludlow, where Hannah Wagner lives. And by strange, I mean, horrible. Hannah's best friend Lillian, who died after a long battle with anorexia, now haunts her day and night, and there's a serial killer murdering middle school girls. Plus Hannah's friends are all really awful people and she may or may not be inordinately interesting with the dangerous and very much off-limits Finny Boone, a huge, delectable pile of YA swoon. I loved being in Hannah's head and hearing the unique way her thoughts form. When I talk about liking characters with layers, I mean Hannah. She wears vintage dresses that she sews herself, and ribbons in her hair, and Alice in Wonderland charm bracelets. She does crafts and smiles a lot and always has something whimsical to say. But there's so much more to her, things she doesn't want others to see and things she even keeps from herself.

I'm a lot like Hannah, but even those who aren't can find themselves in that, I think. And in Lillian, the self-destructive dead girl, and Finny, the absurdly attractive, silent, gentle, shy, awkward, and completely misunderstood guy. All these characters are continually, deliberately seen a certain way that doesn't at all line up with what's inside.

As for the mystery of who's murdering all these teenage girls, it's so freaking creepy.  The killer was both a total surprise to me and an "Of COURSE!", which is exactly what you want. I love murder mysteries, and this one definitely isn't for the faint of heart. Yovanoff doesn't spare any of the gruesome details.She's determined to thrust you right into the ugliness of the situation, not in a graphic way, but emotionally. It's not as unpleasant as it sounds, really. I felt wiser and sadder and happier by the end of this book. Hannah deals with so much in this book. Death. Friendship. Loss. Peer pressure. Finding herself without the dominant, bossy Lillian, and becoming the strong person who is kind of a mix of both of them. And somehow, Yovanoff managed to tie that journey in with Hannah catching a serial killer with her dead best friend.

There's also the relationship Hannah has with her little sister, Ariel. I always love reading about family relationships in YA, and this one was no different. Ariel's a plucky, vibrant kid, and it's obvious she and Hannah care about each other. It added another great dimension to this book. And lasty, Finny. I can't say much without getting spoilery, but...Finny. Yes. Please. At first blush he seems like a stereotype, and I had my insta-love sensors going at full-blast, but everything between them was perfectly understandable. Everything that happened before and during and after made perfect sense. Let me say that the big finale was without a doubt the best part. Don't get stopped by a possibly slow beginning.

Enter to win a signed copy of Paper Valentine! US/CA ONLY.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Bloglovin'

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Still working out the kinks of this, but apparently since Google Friend Connect/Google Reader is soon to disappear and we will all be plunged into the GOOGLE POCALYPS, I'm making the switch over to Bloglovin. I'd super, duper appreciate it if you guys would follow me over there! Hugs and kisses.

Giffy Reviews: Yea or Nay?

Some people love adding gifs to their reviews, and some never do. If you've spent any amount of time reading anything on my blog, you may have managed to glean my opinion on gifs. I'm pretty subtle about it. If not, I'll tell you now: I LOVE THEM. I love throwing in a little dancing cat to liven up a review.

I like expressing my bookish rage by having Alan Rickman flip a table for me.

Most likely you won't be reading this at all if you can't stand giffy reviews, because, you know, that's sort of my thing. So I'm asking this Yea or Nay more as, what type of review do you prefer writing? (Or reading, I guess. I won't be offended if you say you prefer the non-giffy, I assure you!)

Arguments I've heard non-giffy people use for remaining non-giffy:

It distracts from the pretty, pretty words I spent so long putting together. People tend to just look at the gifs and ignore the actual review.

I have no idea how to use them. I'd feel like a fraud if I tried.

It just doesn't fit the tone of most of my reviews.


Arguments I've heard pro-giffy people use for being giffy:

Gifs are fun! Look at all those cute moving pictures. Readers like the cute moving pictures. Being giffy is spiffy.

It DOES suit the tone of my reviews.

It adds perfect punctuation to my more extreme emotions.

It breaks up the text on the page.

I've got hundreds of gifs saved on my computer and I've got to use them SOMEHOW (maybe that's just my logic).


So what reasons do you have for using or not using gifs? And if you're not a reviewer, which do you prefer reading and why?

Giffy reviews: Yea or Nay?


 

Review and Giveaway: The Nightmare Affair by Mindee Arnett

Review: The Midnight Affair by Mindee Arnett
Goodreads
Rating: I think my expectations were a little too high. But it was definitely charming, and elements of it were incredibly original, and I'm still completely in love with the premise and the fun and funny heroine. I loved the second half but only liked the beginning.



Sixteen-year-old Dusty Everhart breaks into houses late at night, but not because she’s a criminal. No, she’s a Nightmare.

Literally.

Being the only Nightmare at Arkwell Academy, a boarding school for magickind, and living in the shadow of her mother’s infamy is hard enough. But when Dusty sneaks into Eli Booker’s house, things get a whole lot more complicated. He’s hot, which means sitting on his chest and invading his dreams couldn’t get much more embarrassing. But it does. Eli is dreaming of a murder.

Then Eli’s dream comes true.

Now Dusty has to follow the clues—both within Eli’s dreams and out of them—to stop the killer before more people turn up dead. And before the killer learns what she’s up to and marks her as the next target.


The cover: I ADORE silhouette covers. I've had my eye on this book for a while partly because I find this cover so gorgeous. The shape of the white phoenix is a little wonky, as is the concept of a white phoenix to me (especially since the phoenix in the book is black), but the deep purples and black gravestones are all so super pretty. Love her sassy ponytail.

The story: The moment I heard about this book, months and months ago, I knew I had to get my hands on an ARC. Luckily enough, I did. And while I definitely enjoyed The Nightmare Affair and recommend it to those who prefer their paranormal stuff on the humorous side rather than the drearily romantic, I'm not sure it quite lived up to my sky-high expectations.

What I absolutely hands-down loved was the mythology. Arnett's system of magickind was genius and so unique. I loved all the politics and prejudices between various forms of magical creatures. I loved the concept of a Nightmare, a creature that must feed on people's dreams to survive and the idea of a dream-seer, aka a Nightmare and his/her partner that can see the future in dreams.

Who are you?

 
Arkwell Academy is a fun boarding school setting, where the kids learn telekinesis instead of chemistry and the kids accidentally get turned into snakes every now and then. Arnett included some really cute quirks  like how furniture and electronics can develop (usually cantankerous) personalities and sugar is a contraband substance because it's basically cocaine for fairies.

I also loved Dusty. I found her a little too quippy at the beginning, but she quickly won me over. She's flawed and fun. Feisty, incredibly stubborn, and more than a little hilarious, Dusty is an easy girl to love. She's got a serious mouth on her and can never quite manage to hold in her snarky, snotty comments, which is always something I can relate to. I would have loved to know more about her life before she came to Arkwell. She hardly ever talks about her father or her previous friends. But watching her try to adjust to a magic world that has no place for her and doesn't want her was amazing. Nightmares are generally hated, and Dusty's own estranged-ish mother was the most hated of the lot. Poor Dusty has a fearsome reputation to live down, but no matter how hard she tries she can't shake people's negative expectations of her.

Dusty, like all good plucky PIs in the making, throws herself headfirst into this murder-investigation business. I love a good murder mystery. I will always one hundred percent support a teenage girl snooping through underground tunnels to catch people doing nefarious deeds. Add magic, hot boys, and a harbinger of death or two and I'm doubly sold.

 

Where Arnett lost me a little bit was in the side characters. I really liked Eli, Dusty's dream-seer partner, but I wanted more of both him and Selene, Dusty's siren roommate (who is hilariously campaigning for the sexual objectification of sirens, a historically sexy and beguiling mythical creature, to stop). Eli was yanked out of his "ordinary" high school pretty abruptly. I would have enjoyed to see more of the growing pains of that and how it matched up with Dusty's own experiences of suddenly leaving the world she knew behind. I wanted Eli to do more stuff! Be more present! A for there to be less Paul (but not Les Paul). Most of the teachers fell flat to me, to the point where I actually had trouble remembering who was whom. And the Paul character just completely didn't work for me at all. Especially when Eli was just sitting there all hot and Eli-ish in comparison. Dusty. Put your contacts in. One has a weird blond ponytail and the other has abs of death and blue eyes. This isn't difficult.

As for the mystery... I wasn't so engaged in the beginning, but once things picked up, I was like "I MUST KNOW THE DEAL HERE." I totally pegged one of bad guys from the very beginning, and was actually rolling my eyes every time Dusty interacted with this person, because they were so obviously evil, but the rest of the reveal definitely surprised me. The climax was exciting and intense, and I loved that so much of it happened because of Dusty's flaws and strengths. Everything happened both because Dusty was too stubborn to see the truth and brave enough to seek it no matter what. I loved her complicated relationship with her mom, though again, I thought Dusty was seriously missing the obvious there.

All in all, this book was a really nice setup for what should be a fun paranormal series. I still have some questions remaining that didn't get answered, particularly about Arkwell and the different types of magic creatures and how the heck this giant magic just exists in the middle of Ohio (random) without anyone noticing, and a few other tiny things. I'm hoping everything will get clarified in the later books, when I can tell all the good stuff is coming, because I loved how The Nightmare Affair ended. This book was definitely a lot of setup and a lot of clunky but interesting info-dumps, but once it got to the goods, the goods were great (unlike that sentence).



Want a copy? Well, I'm giving one away! As long as you live somewhere the Book Depository can ship to, you're eligible to win!  

  a Rafflecopter giveaway

Happy Birthday Giveaways!

Yes, that's right. IT'S MY BIRTHDAY. THE MOST HOLY OF DAYS. The day I turn... 22.

The day I become old.

Well, not old, really. Yet. To quote the poet of our generation, Jessica Simpson: "23 is old. It's almost 25, which is almost mid 20s." So I have at least a year before I devolve into total decrepitude.





In all seriousness, I love my birthday, and getting old is not a bad thing at all. I will always be a young adult no matter what. I just love to celebrate in general, which is why I also love my friends' birthdays, Christmas, Thanksgiving, the Fourth of July, Halloween, even Arbor Day. YOU NAME IT, I CELEBRATE IT! Mostly by eating things and sending gifts. And since it's  my birthday... I want to give YOU gifts!



It makes sense. Don't question it.

I love being a book blogger more than I ever thought possible. This blog started out as a class assignment for my Women and Gender studies class. It wasn't even MEANT to be a book blog. Then I dropped the class, but never dropped the blog. And somehow books got involved and that was that.

So to thank you all for joining me and encouraging my book nerdery and inspiring me to become an even bigger book nerd than ever, and as a thank you to book blogging universe, for helping me make friends with even more book nerds, I'm launching a month-long spree of giveaways! This'll be the master-post for all of them, so keep checking back here as I update. There will be signed books, swag, author discussions, and more!

Win The Nightmare Affair by Mindee Arnett
Win a signed copy of Paper Valentine by Brenna Yovanoff
Win a signed copy of Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare, plus swag

Now let's celebrate!

Hell's candle. Don't put this on my cake or I'll punch you.