too much unnecessary drama

Title: The Thousandth Floor

Author: Katharine McGee

Published: August 30, 2016

Pages: 448

Genre: Young Adult, Science Fiction, Romance

Goodreads Description: A hundred years in the future, New York is a city of innovation and dreams. Everyone there wants something…and everyone has something to lose.
LEDA COLE’s flawless exterior belies a secret addiction—to a drug she never should have tried and a boy she never should have touched.

ERIS DODD-RADSON’s beautiful, carefree life falls to pieces when a heartbreaking betrayal tears her family apart.

RYLIN MYERS’s job on one of the highest floors sweeps her into a world—and a romance—she never imagined…but will this new life cost Rylin her old one?

WATT BAKRADI is a tech genius with a secret: he knows everything about everyone. But when he’s hired to spy for an upper-floor girl, he finds himself caught up in a complicated web of lies.

And living above everyone else on the thousandth floor is AVERY FULLER, the girl genetically designed to be perfect. The girl who seems to have it all—yet is tormented by the one thing she can never have.

One of the reading challenges I’m participating in this year is the Monthly Motif Reading Challenge. Each month, particpators have to pick a book that fits the theme for that month. The theme for the month of January was Diversify Your Reading, so I had to choose a book written by an author or with characters of a different race, religion, or sexual orientation than me (basically a character who isn’t Asian, agnostic, or heterosexual). The Thousandth Floor had numerous characters that fit criteria (ex. Leda was African American, Eris was bisexual, and Mariel was Christian).

This book reminded me of We Were Liars by E. Lockhart. Both books are about rich kids who seriously need more parental guidance. I actually ended up giving The Thousandth Floor two stars for reasons similar to why I gave two stars to We Were Liars.
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Book Review: Highly Illogical Behavior by John Corey Whaley // the start of my era of diverse reading

Title: Highly Illogical Behavior

Author: John Corey Whaley

Published: May 10, 2016

Pages: 256

Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, LGBT

Amazon / Barnes and Nobles / Goodreads

Goodreads Description: Sixteen-year-old Solomon is agoraphobic. He hasn’t left the house in three years, which is fine by him.
Ambitious Lisa desperately wants to get into the second-best psychology program for college (she’s being realistic). But is ambition alone enough to get her in?
Enter Lisa.
Determined to “fix” Sol, Lisa steps into his world, along with her charming boyfriend, Clark, and soon the three form an unexpected bond. But, as Lisa learns more about Sol and he and Clark grow closer and closer, the walls they’ve built around themselves start to collapse and their friendships threaten to do the same.

I can count how many books I have read about a protagonist with a mental illness on one hand. For that reason, I decided to pick up this book in order to diversify my reading. I also heard that it does a does a good job of respectfully portraying agoraphobia.

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Book Review: Tell Me Three Things by Julie Buxbaum // a predictable, but cute contemporary

Title: Tell Me Three Things

Author: Julie Buxbaum

Published: April 5, 2016

Pages: 328

Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance

Amazon / Barnes and Nobles / Goodreads

Goodreads Description: Everything about Jessie is wrong. At least, that’s what it feels like during her first week of junior year at her new ultra-intimidating prep school in Los Angeles. Just when she’s thinking about hightailing it back to Chicago, she gets an email from a person calling themselves Somebody/Nobody (SN for short), offering to help her navigate the wilds of Wood Valley High School. Is it an elaborate hoax? Or can she rely on SN for some much-needed help?
It’s been barely two years since her mother’s death, and because her father eloped with a woman he met online, Jessie has been forced to move across the country to live with her stepmonster and her pretentious teenage son.
In a leap of faith—or an act of complete desperation—Jessie begins to rely on SN, and SN quickly becomes her lifeline and closest ally. Jessie can’t help wanting to meet SN in person. But are some mysteries better left unsolved?

I picked this book up because I was in the mood for a light, contemporary read and I heard good things about this particular one. I will say that I figured out who SN was right off the bat, but that didn’t hamper my reading experience. In fact, it only added to my squealing during the falling action.

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Book Review: The Help by Kathryn Stockett // as good as the movie

Title: The Help

Author: Kathryn Stockett

Published: February 10, 2009

Pages: 444

Genre: Historical Fiction

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Goodreads Description: Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step….

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

It had been about two years since I last watched The Help and I still found myself thinking about how much I enjoyed it. Instead of watching it again, I decided to read the book to see what wasn’t included. I was pleased to discover that the movie was very true to the book, and I found the movie scenes playing out in my head as I was reading. For that reason, it almost feels like I’m reviewing both the book and movie.

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Book Review: The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black // needed more sword fights

Title: The Darkest Part of the Forest

Author: Holly Black

Published: January 13, 2015

Pages: 336

Genre: Fantasy, Young Adult, Romance

Amazon / Barnes and Nobles / Goodreads

Goodreads Description: Children can have a cruel, absolute sense of justice. Children can kill a monster and feel quite proud of themselves. A girl can look at her brother and believe they’re destined to be a knight and a bard who battle evil. She can believe she’s found the thing she’s been made for.
Hazel lives with her brother, Ben, in the strange town of Fairfold where humans and fae exist side by side. The faeries’ seemingly harmless magic attracts tourists, but Hazel knows how dangerous they can be, and she knows how to stop them. Or she did, once.
At the center of it all, there is a glass coffin in the woods. It rests right on the ground and in it sleeps a boy with horns on his head and ears as pointed as knives. Hazel and Ben were both in love with him as children. The boy has slept there for generations, never waking.
Until one day, he does…
As the world turns upside down, Hazel tries to remember her years pretending to be a knight. But swept up in new love, shifting loyalties, and the fresh sting of betrayal, will it be enough?

To be completely honest, the synopsis of this story didn’t particularly interest me.

I was about to dismiss this book when I realized that it was written by one of the co-authors of a favorite childhood series of mine, The Spiderwick Chronicles. I decided to give The Darkest Part of the Forest a chance in the hopes that it would possess similar elements to the aforementioned series.

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Book Review: Dreamology by Lucy Keating // an interesting concept with humorous execution

Title: Dreamology

Author: Lucy Keating

Published: April 16, 2016

Pages: 336

Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance

Amazon / Barnes and Nobles / Goodreads

Goodreads Description: For as long as Alice can remember, she has dreamed of Max. Together they have traveled the world and fallen deliriously, hopelessly in love. Max is the boy of her dreams—and only her dreams. Because he doesn’t exist.
But when Alice walks into class on her first day at a new school, there he is. It turns out, though, that Real Max is nothing like Dream Max, and getting to know each other in reality isn’t as perfect as Alice always hoped.
When their dreams start to bleed dangerously into their waking hours, the pair realize that they might have to put an end to a lifetime of dreaming about each other. But when you fall in love in your dreams, can reality ever be enough?