Review: The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli

When was the last time I got a review out by release date? Like....2014? I'M SO PROUD OF MYSELF. Clearly, turning 26 has made me grow up at once immediately completely because this is how #biology works.

The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli
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Series: No
Release date: TODAY, April 11th, 2017
Publisher: Balzer + Bray (Harper)
Length: 352 pages
Source: e-ARC via Edelweiss/print ARC from ALAMW
Rating: *BIG GOOBER DOOFUS SMILE*

Seventeen-year-old Molly Peskin-Suso knows all about unrequited love. No matter how many times her twin sister, Cassie, tells her to woman up, Molly can’t stomach the idea of rejection. So she’s careful. Fat girls always have to be careful.

Then a cute new girl enters Cassie’s orbit, and for the first time ever, Molly’s cynical twin is a lovesick mess. Meanwhile, Molly's totally not dying of loneliness—except for the part where she is. Luckily, Cassie's new girlfriend comes with a cute hipster-boy sidekick. If Molly can win him over, she'll get her first kiss and she'll get her twin back.

There's only one problem: Molly's coworker, Reid. He's a chubby Tolkien superfan with a season pass to the Ren Faire, and there's absolutely no way Molly could fall for him.

Right?

This book made me grin so hard my cheeks hurt. Seriously, I was grinning so hard and for such an extended amount of time that it basically became exercise. I now have buff cheeks.

DNF-A-Palooza

I'm feeling lazy, so let's keep it SHORT and NOT SO SWEET (kind of like me, ba dum TSHHH)

All the books were ARCs provided by the publisher and I'M SORRY, PUBLISHERS, I WILL TRY TO BE...TALLER AND SWEETER

Review: We Are Okay by Nina LaCour

We Are Okay by Nina LaCour
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Series: No
Release date: February 14th, 2017
Publisher: Dutton Books for Young Readers (Penguin)
Length: 240 pages
Source: ARC from ALAMW
Rating: Gillian is NOT okay



"You go through life thinking there’s so much you need. . . . Until you leave with only your phone, your wallet, and a picture of your mother."

Marin hasn’t spoken to anyone from her old life since the day she left everything behind. No one knows the truth about those final weeks. Not even her best friend Mabel. But even thousands of miles away from the California coast, at college in New York, Marin still feels the pull of the life and tragedy she’s tried to outrun. Now, months later, alone in an emptied dorm for winter break, Marin waits. Mabel is coming to visit and Marin will be forced to face everything that’s been left unsaid and finally confront the loneliness that has made a home in her heart.

This book is brilliant, and Nina LaCour is a master. And she owes me a stiff drink.

Review: By Your Side by Kasie West

By Your Side by Kasie West
Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes and Noble | The Book Depository | IndieBound
Series: No
Release date: January 31st, 2017
Publisher: HarperTeen
Length: 352 pages
Source: eARC via Edelweiss
Rating: I am betrayed and disapoint

In this irresistible story, Kasie West explores the timeless question of what to do when you fall for the person you least expect. Witty and romantic, this paperback original from a fan favorite is perfect for fans of Stephanie Perkins and Morgan Matson.

When Autumn Collins finds herself accidentally locked in the library for an entire weekend, she doesn’t think things could get any worse. But that’s before she realizes that Dax Miller is locked in with her. Autumn doesn’t know much about Dax except that he’s trouble. Between the rumors about the fight he was in (and that brief stint in juvie that followed it) and his reputation as a loner, he’s not exactly the ideal person to be stuck with. Still, she just keeps reminding herself that it is only a matter of time before Jeff, her almost-boyfriend, realizes he left her in the library and comes to rescue her.

Only he doesn’t come. No one does.

Instead it becomes clear that Autumn is going to have to spend the next couple of days living off vending-machine food and making conversation with a boy who clearly wants nothing to do with her. Except there is more to Dax than meets the eye. As he and Autumn first grudgingly, and then not so grudgingly, open up to each other, Autumn is struck by their surprising connection. But can their feelings for each other survive once the weekend is over and Autumn’s old life, and old love interest, threaten to pull her from Dax’s side?


You guys, I am so betrayed.

This book could have been my everything. A fluffy romance novel about a ship TRAPPED IN A LIBRARY?? By Kasie West, goddess of squee, author of my favores The Distance Between Usand PS I Like You?? STARRING AN ANXIOUS HEROINE??? Be still my heart! Hold back the tears! My body is ready!

My body was lied to.

My Favorite Reads of 2016

2016 was a complete wash of a year in so very many ways, but at least the books were great, and these in particular! Enjoy my highly biased and highly subjective list of my most loved reads of 2016.

A Deluge of DNFs

I'm woefully behind in reviews, so here are some DNFs from all the way back in September (oof, Gillian). SLOWLY BUT SURELY, I WILL CATCH UP. Ish. Kinda.

What I've Been Reading Lately

I've been absolutely woeful about not only chronicling my recent reads but actually READING. I'm giving myself a bit of slack, because between moving (OOF), the election (I cannot word about this), Twitter trolls (on lockdown for a wee bit, but IT'S BEEN SO FUN WOO BOY), and very high anxiety, my brain just hasn't really had room for reading. But I'm trying to get back into the swing of things as we approach the holidays. And I did manage to read a few things this fall! Here are two of them:

Review: This Adventure Ends by Emma Mills

This Adventure Ends by Emma Mills
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Series: No, ALAS
Release date: October 4th, 2016
Publisher: Henry Holt (Macmillan)
Length: 320 pages
Source: print ARC from the publisher
Rating: SQUAD GOALS

Sloane isn't expecting to fall in with a group of friends when she moves from New York to Florida—especially not a group of friends so intense, so in love, so all-consuming. Yet that's exactly what happens.
Sloane becomes closest to Vera, a social-media star who lights up any room, and Gabe, Vera's twin brother and the most serious person Sloane's ever met. When a beloved painting by the twins' late mother goes missing, Sloane takes on the responsibility of tracking it down, a journey that takes her across state lines—and ever deeper into the twins' lives.

Filled with intense and important friendships, a wonderful warts-and-all family, shiveringly good romantic developments, and sharp, witty dialogue, this story is about finding the people you never knew you needed.


I NEVER WANTED THIS ADVENTURE TO END. I fell in love with this group of friends so freaking hard I can't find the words. (Psych, I totally found them).

This book hit me in every single feel I have (which, if you didn't know, is a LOT--I am a very emotional little bean) and I was so not expecting it. I adored Emma Mills' first novel, First & Then, but somehow I adored this one even more. I knew it would have her trademark quick, funny dialogue, banter, and liveliness, plus the searing insights and romantic tension I love. But what I was NOT expecting was to be completely obliterated by how much I recognized myself in this book. OUCH, MY HEART. MY HAPPY-SOBBING, SAD-SOBBING, OH-WOW-I-AM-NOT-ALONE-sobbing heart.

Review: Been Here All Along by Sandy Hall

Been Here All Along by Sally Hall
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Series: No
Release date: August 30th, 2016
Publisher: Swoon Reads (Macmillan)
Length: 320 pages
Source: print ARC from the publisher (I am sorry, publisher)

Gideon always has a plan. His plans include running for class president, becoming head of the yearbook committee, and having his choice of colleges. They do NOT include falling head over heels for his best friend and next door neighbor, Kyle. It’s a distraction. It’s pointless, as Kyle is already dating the gorgeous and popular head cheerleader, Ruby. And Gideon doesn’t know what to do.

Kyle finally feels like he has a handle on life. He has a wonderful girlfriend, a best friend willing to debate the finer points of Lord of the Rings, and social acceptance as captain of the basketball team. Then, both Ruby and Gideon start acting really weird, just as his spot on the team is threatened, and Kyle can’t quite figure out what he did wrong…


Oh, man, I sooooo don't want to write this review, because I really--really--REALLY--wanted to love this. A book full of tropey T-Swift cuteness starring two nerd boys in love? This sounds like everything my little heart could ever want! And oh, it could have been. If it hadn't been for...well, everything besides the premise, alas.



WHY WEREN'T YOU GREAT? YOU COULDABIN A CONTENDER. YOU WERE EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING THAT I WANTED, WE WERE MEANT TO BE SUPPOSED TO BE BUT WE LOST IIIII-IIIIT

I apologize for that ear worm. Those of you too young to know that song, please don't tell me. All righty then.

Review: P.S. I Like You by Kasie West

P.S. I Like You by Kasie West
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Series: No
Release date: July 26th, 2016
Publisher: Point (Scholastic)
Length: 304 pages
Source: finished copy from publisher
Rating: IT'S SO FLUFFY I'M GONNA DIE

What if the person you were falling for was a total mystery?

While Lily is spacing out in Chemistry one day, she picks up her pencil and scribbles a line from one of her favorite songs on the desk. The next day, someone else has written back to her on the desk! Soon enough Lily and the mystery student are exchanging notes, and lyrics, and even sharing secrets. When Lily finds out that her anonymous pen pal is a guy, she's flustered -- and kind of feels like she's falling for him. She and her best friend set out to unravel the identity of the letter writer -- but when the truth is revealed, the guy is the LAST person Lily could have ever imagined it to be. Now that Lily knows the truth, can she untangle her feelings and gather the courage to listen to her heart?

From beloved author Kasie West (The Distance Between Us) comes an utterly charming story about mixed messages, missed connections, and the magic of good old-fashioned secret admirer notes.

THAT WAS SO RIDICULOUSLY ADORABLE I AM MELTING OMGGGGGGGGG just leave me here with my feeeeeeeelings I am a puddle of shippy goo

Kasie West's books almost always leave me feeling like that. But this one was easily my favorite of hers yet because it played on a lot of my favorite tropes and reminded me of two of my favorite movies, You've Got Mail and Shop Around the Corner.

I MEAN EVEN THE COVER IS DOING A YOU'VE GOT MAIL THING

Like YGM and SAtC, PS I Like You is about two people falling in love anonymously through the written word, only instead of email and letters respectively, Lily and Mystery Boy (whose identity is super not a mystery, really) fall in love through notes scribbled on and then left in a shared classroom desk. They have the same taste in music, and they're open and honest with each other in their notes, baring their souls and making me squee and giggle like a very calm adult person. This book proves the old adage that the way to seduce the modern woman is through her pop culture interests. It is known.

The Good, the Bad, and the DNF

Mini review time, because I'm laaaazyyyyy and, well, I have barely been reading lately (slumps, they are the WORST), so let's catch up on some of the books this year I forgot to review.

Review and Giveaway: The Long Game by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

The Long Game by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes and Noble | The Book Depository
Series: #2 in the The Fixer series
Release date: June 7th, 2016
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Length: 368 pages
Source: ARC from the publisher
Rating:  *sucker punch gasp* *PROLONGED SOBSCREAM*



Tess Kendrick, teen fixer extraordinaire, returns in a pulse-pounding thriller about a deadly conspiracy at the heart of Washington.

For Tess Kendrick, a junior at the elite Hardwicke School in Washington D.C., fixing runs in the family. But Tess has another legacy, too, one that involves power and the making of political dynasties. When Tess is asked to run a classmate's campaign for student council, she agrees. But when the candidates are children of politicians, even a high school election can involve life-shattering secrets.

Meanwhile, Tess's guardian has also taken on an impossible case, as a terrorist attack calls into doubt who can--and cannot--be trusted on Capitol Hill. Tess knows better than most that power is currency in D.C., but she's about to discover first-hand that power always comes with a price.

Perfect for fans of Harlan Coben and Ally Carter, the second book in this thrilling series will leave readers breathless.

Fun bonus: today's visual entertainment will be provided by screenshots of my reading liveblog to Lizzy and Shae, aka the evil people who told me to read this book and then laughed at me while I sobbed over it. Spoilers redacted.

Ho. Ly. Shit.

Review: The Anatomical Shape of a Heart by Jenn Bennett

The Anatomical Shape of a Heart by Jenn Bennett
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Series: No
Release date: November 3rd, 2015
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends (Macmillan)
Length: 304 pages
Source: gift
Rating: HEART EYES, and not anatomical ones

Beatrix Adams knows exactly how she’s spending the summer before her senior year. Determined to follow in Da Vinci’s footsteps, she’s ready to tackle the one thing that will give her an advantage in a museum-sponsored scholarship contest: drawing actual cadavers. But when she tries to sneak her way into the hospital’s Willed Body program and misses the last metro train home, she meets a boy who turns her summer plans upside down.

Jack is charming, wildly attractive, and possibly one of San Francisco’s most notorious graffiti artists. On midnight buses and city rooftops, Beatrix begins to see who Jack really is—and tries to uncover what he’s hiding that leaves him so wounded. But will these secrets come back to haunt him? Or will the skeletons in her family’s closet tear them apart?
I'm trying to be coherent here, but i'm struggling. I loved this book bunches. Cutey cuteness all over the place, ship a dee doo dah, ship a dee day. This book is sort of instalove done right, in that I totally believe these crazy kids are in love despite how quickly it happens. THEY'RE SO CUTE I MELT. Such adorable banter and chemistry and SQUEEE. In addition to be a highly successful romance, TASoaH is also a sensitive portrayal of complicated families and mental illness. I loved how no character is ever demonized, not even the parents, who all try their best but are flawed and fully realized and aww feels.

Double Review: Riders by Veronica Rossi and The Last Place on Earth by Carol Snow

Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes and Noble | The Book Depository
Series: Yes, #1 in the series
Release date: February 16th, 2016
Publisher: Tor Teen
Length: 364 pages
Source: borrowed ARC
Rating: DNF

Oh, man, this kills me to do. KILLS ME. I love Veronica Rossi's Under the Never Sky trilogy--I binged the entire thing, novellas and all, in a single weekend and walked around in a haze for days afterward. But I just could. not. get into Riders. I was intrigued by both the concept--a guy dies and comes back to life as War, one of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse--and the conceit--the novel opens with Gideon, our MC, strapped to a chair and being interrogated. The novel is the tale he spins his torturer/kidnapeprs, explaining how he got his powers and how he got tangled in this mess.

Review: Heist Society by Ally Carter

Heist Society by Ally Carter
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Series: Yes, #1 in the Heist Society series
Release date: February 9th, 2010
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Length: 287 pages
Source: purchased
Rating: Perfect plane read, perfect slump buster

When Katarina Bishop was three, her parents took her on a trip to the Louvre…to case it. For her seventh birthday, Katarina and her Uncle Eddie traveled to Austria…to steal the crown jewels. When Kat turned fifteen, she planned a con of her own—scamming her way into the best boarding school in the country, determined to leave the family business behind. Unfortunately, leaving “the life” for a normal life proves harder than she’d expected.

Soon, Kat's friend and former co-conspirator, Hale, appears out of nowhere to bring Kat back into the world she tried so hard to escape. But he has a good reason: a powerful mobster has been robbed of his priceless art collection and wants to retrieve it. Only a master thief could have pulled this job, and Kat's father isn't just on the suspect list, he is the list. Caught between Interpol and a far more deadly enemy, Kat’s dad needs her help.

For Kat, there is only one solution: track down the paintings and steal them back. So what if it's a spectacularly impossible job? She's got two weeks, a teenage crew, and hopefully just enough talent to pull off the biggest heist in her family's history--and, with any luck, steal her life back along the way.


So, this book is mad entertaining. I've only read one Ally Carter book, and I wasn't as enamored of it as I thought I would be, but THIS is exactly what I wanted from Carter. Whip-smart teens up to NEFARIOUS DEADS! Art heists! Twists, turns, fast pace, such goodness. I read essentially this whole book on a trans-continental plane. I couldn't put it down. I was so into Kat's heist (AND HALE!! oh, Hale).

January DNFs

I've had a really excellent string of reads lately. I added two books to my YES PLS SEQUEL NOW shelves this month (Truthwitch and The Dark Days Club, the latter of which I plan to review tomorrow if I'm not lazy again which I probably will be). But too much positivity does things to a person. It makes my hair limp and my skin dull. It is time to bring some negativity to this business and restore the evil sparkle in my snake lord eyes.

Blog Tour: Every Word by Ellie Marney

Yay! I'm so excited to be part of the blog tour for Every Word by Ellie Marney, which is the second book in one of my favorite series of all time. it starts with Every Breath, and if you want to read my mostly incoherent and very exuberant review of that masterpiece, head over here. If you want to see some images that remind me of the mood, feel, look, and story of the first two books in the trilogy, scroll down to the goods.

Review: First & Then by Emma Mills

First & Then by Emma Mills
Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes and Noble | The Book Depository
Series: No
Release date: October 13th, 2015
Publisher: Henry Holt (Macmillan)
Length: 272 pages
Source: ARC/Purchased
Rating: squee

Devon Tennyson wouldn't change a thing. She's happy watching Friday night games from the bleachers, silently crushing on best friend Cas, and blissfully ignoring the future after high school. But the universe has other plans. It delivers Devon's cousin Foster, an unrepentant social outlier with a surprising talent for football, and the obnoxiously superior and maddeningly attractive star running back, Ezra, right where she doesn't want them first into her P.E. class and then into every other aspect of her life.

Pride and Prejudice meets Friday Night Lights in this contemporary novel about falling in love with the unexpected boy, with a new brother, and with yourself.


Oo, I needed this book. I've was in a bit of a reading slump, the kind where I'm reading six or so books at once and none of them are really grabbing me. I took First & Then and a few other books to my favorite local cafe, planning to grab some caffeine and maybe see if I'd get hooked by any of my reading options. Reader, by the time I let that cafe, two hours later, I'd had three cups of coffee and had finished all of First & Then.

Review-A-Palooza: Contemporaries

Good Bellamy in heaven, am I behind on reviews. I guess this is what happens when you travel for a month? And have a life? By which I mean, er, watch a lot of Netflix? I mean PARTY. I meant party.

So here are a bunch of books I read in the last two months (possibly more, let's not dwell on things like WHEN and WHERE and JUST HOW LAZY GILLIAN IS, okay) and what I thought of them.

Review: Signs Point to Yes by Sandy Hall

Review: Signs Point to Yes by Sandy Hall
Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes and Noble | The Book Depository
Series: No
Release date: October 20th, 2015
Publisher: SwoonReads (Macmillan)
Length: 288 pages
Source: ARC from BEA
Rating: Signs Point to No

The author of A Little Something Different brings you the most adorkable romance ever.

Jane, a superstitious fangirl, takes an anonymous babysitting job to avoid an unpaid internship with her college-obsessed mom. The only problem? She’s babysitting the siblings of her childhood friend and new crush, Teo.

Teo doesn’t dislike Jane, but his best friend Ravi hates her, and is determined to keep them apart. So Teo’s pretty sure his plans for a peaceful summer are shot. His only hope is that his intermittent search for his birth father will finally pan out and he’ll find a new, less awkward home. Meanwhile, at Jane’s house, her sister Margo wants to come out as bisexual, but she’s terrified of how her parents will react.

In a summer filled with secrets and questions, even Jane’s Magic 8 ball can’t give them clear answers, but Signs Point to Yes.

I quite enjoyed Hall's A Little Something Different, despite an instance of very problematic girl-hating. But what made ALSD an enjoyable read to me was that it had a lot of personality and humor. It's hard to pull off ~15 or so first person POVs, and she managed to make them all mostly distinct and amusing. So it's really baffling to me that Signs Point to Yes ended up being so utterly devoid of...well, anything, really. Which sounds like an awful thing to say, but really, SPtY was pointless, bland, unswoony, and dull. The signs didn't point to anything.