Bookish Smash or Pass

I came across this fun tag created by Becky over at Becky’s Book Blog and found it to be a lot of fun!

Bookish Tropes

SMASH! I love a good trope(for the most part). Enemies to lover, grumpy/sunshine, age gap, chosen ones…I eat it up!

Alternating POV

Smash. This is something that I’ve really come to love over the years! When we get to see the perspective from other characters. Most of the times it’s fascinating!

Ambigious Endings

PASS!!! Nope. Overall, ambigious endings are a no go for me. I like my stories wrapped up nicely. I don’t want to spend all that time investing in a story for me to have to figure out what the hell happens in the end. Like…why? Just tell me.

Non/Fiction

Another Pass. Obviously there is nothing wrong with non ficiton. It’s just definintely not something that I choose to pick up. The number of non ficiton books that I have read are very very slim.

Historical Setting

Oh this is a hard one because I don’t mind a good historical setting, but it’s definiitely not something that I gravitate towards. I may have to say PASS(AHHHH)

Morally Grey characters

Smash. I mean these type of characters are just so interesting to read about!

First Person POV

Smash. I don’t really have any explanations for this. I just like it!

Audiobooks

HARD SMASH!!! Especially these last couple of years. It’s interesting because years ago it would’ve been a pass. However, over the years I’ve become addicted to audiobooks. They’ve definitely become a game changer for me!

Re-reading

Smash. I absolutley love re-reading books and think people should do it more. It’s great for when you just want to read a story you’re familiar with, or maybe you need something to get you out of a reading slump. Re-reading a favorite book could be the way to go!

Classic novels

Pass. Absolutey nothing wrong with classics, but like with non fiction it’s just not something that I pick up. Although I do have a couple classics on my tbr that I want to check out!

Annotating

SMASH!!!. I love annotating books, especially books that I feel like I will love. Usually when I annotate though, it’s me just writing my thoughts/commentary to the characters and/or what’s happening in the story. So sometimes it’s like I’m having a conversation with them and if they do something idiotic, I’ll make a comment saying “WHYY???” or “DON”T DO IT!!!”. Just ridiculous things like that, but it’s fun to look back on!

Cracking Book Spines

SMASH!!! I’m all for cracking book spines! DO IT!!!

Smut

Smash. I think a good smut scene is great!!!

Character Driven Books

Smash! YES! We need amazing characters! So I’m absolutely here for the character driven books!

Past/Present Split Timeline

I think I’ll have to go with pass. I mean I do enjoy them, but it’s not something I’ll jump for!

Heavy World Building

Probably another pass for me. I have a hard time focusing if it’s a lot of world building. I mean if it’s not info dumpy than maybe, but honestly, heavy worlding books are not ones I’m reaching for.

And that’s it for the questions! This was a lot fo fun to answer! What would your answers be?

Sisyphus: The Myth Thoughts

I’m hear to talk about the drama Sisyphus: The Myth. (***This post may contain SPOILERS***)

First thing, I absolutely loved this drama. From the characters, relationships, story, I really loved it all.

Sisyphus: The Myth is about a war that breaks out leaving it completely destroyed. We follow our main character Seo Hae as she travels from 2035 back to 2020 to prevent the war. We follow the timeline of both the post war as well as present time.

The characters and the relationships were really great in my opinion. I found myself loving not only the main characters but most of the side characters as well, both good and bad. I loved how the villains were portrayed in this story, especially Sigma.

Seo Hae, played by Park Shin Hye, really surprised me with this character. And I think she portrayed her so well. She was such a badass character, and I absolutely loved seeing it! I loved seeing her time in both the present and the future and it was SO NICE to see a woman as the protector this time! The relationships that she built with people was fun to watch, but the relationship between her and her father was absolutely amazing. I loved seeing how that father-daughter relationship was portrayed in both the past, present, and future.

Tae Sul, played by Cho Seung Woo, was such a fun character to see played out on screen. I think Cho Seung Woo was a great choice for this character. He plays a brilliant CEO engineer who also happens to be struggling with the loss of his brother. He hallucinates his brother quite often, so we see him taking pills to stop it.

Kim Byung Chul who plays Sigma was absolutely amazing. I thought he was such a great villain, and every time he appeared I was wondering what he was going to do next. What he had planned. And the dynamic between him and Tae Sul was absolutely entertaining to watch. And adding Seo Hae in the mix made it better.

The crew of Asia Mart was also a lot of fun to watch. They become important parts to the story and with our main characters.

I was a big fan of the relationship between Tae Sul and Seo Hae. Personally I loved seeing them together and this relationship develop. And I absolutely loved seeing Seo Hae as the protector in this story.

This entire drama is very action filled, but we also get quite a bit of emotional moments between a lot of the characters. I was rooting for our leads to save the world and stop the war. I wanted to see it happen even though about halfway through I finally realized what the title meant.

I think why I loved this drama so much is because I didn’t take it that seriously. This deals with time travel, and obviously time travel is a very difficult plot to do well. So with movies and/or shows that do it I don’t take them all that seriously and am pretty lenient with how it’s portrayed. You have to be open to it, so because I was more open to what they were doing with this plot, I think I was able to enjoy it so much more.

I won’t talk about the ending here because I have an entire post dedicated to my thoughts on the ending of this drama. People have a lot of theories, and I share mine. If you would like to read that I’ll link it here—> Sisyphus: The Myth ENDING

Overall I really loved this drama. I know it has a lot of mix thoughts, and I would love to hear yours.

Book Review- In the Afterlight

Title- In the Afterlight
Author- Alexandra Bracken
Pages- 535
Rating-  3.3 out of 5
Companion/Sequel/Other- Third and final book!

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD! ONLY READ IF YOU’VE FINISHED THIS BOOK!

If you saw my review for Never Fade, then you would know I really enjoyed (almost)everything about that book, except for Ruby. The same goes for this book, except now you can add Ruby and Cole to the mix. I’ll start off with what I didn’t liked about this book.

Ruby and Cole- I can’t explain to you how much these two frustrated me in this story. Now i can’t deny that these two work well together, but that’s because they’re so similar. To me that was a bad thing. They both want the same thing, to free the camps, but they wanted to go about it by fighting and killing, which, yes, there was obviously going to be a lot of that, but they wouldn’t even listen to anyone else’s ideas. They just shut down anyone’s plan. Also, these two had so many secrets from everyone, it pissed me off. Every other word from them was “you can’t tell anyone”, “no one else can know” “this stays between us”. Damn, it frustrated me to know end.

What pissed me off the most, was the way Ruby and Cole treated Liam. Talking down to him, treating him like he’s useless, like he can’t fight, or help. He freaking escaped from a camp, survived on the run, and took care of Chubs and Zu. Now, what? He can’t do anything? I don’t think so!

COMMUNICATION- Oh my god! This is what made me want to throw this book across my room. Except, I was reading on my ereader, and I couldn’t do that, but I was tempted. As I said before, so many secrets were kept from one another. If they just talked to each other, told each other the truth, so much could have been avoided!

Moving on to what I liked about this book:

Plot- I really liked where this story started off, and was heading. As with the rest of these books, this one had a lot of surprises. I enjoyed seeing them finally work out a plan to free the kids from the camps and expose the truth. I can’t even begin to imagine how hard it must be to wrap up a series, but I felt this one did a decent job. I didn’t even see the big twist coming: Clancy was controlling Ruby! What the actual hell?

Characters- As always, I loved the characters. I said it before, and I’ll say it again. These characters are fun, strong, badass, and real. I loved seeing all these characters that we know and love come together and work towards a common goal. People who you’d think wouldn’t work well together, surprisingly did. Also SUZUME was back! YESSSSS!

Ruby and Liam- Now as frustrated as Ruby was, I do have to say, I really loved her when she was with Liam. I adored all the Ruby and Liam scenes. These two, for all the flaws, are perfect for one another.

Chubs and Vida- This was just EVERYTHING! I have nothing else to say but that!

Cole’s death- I don’t know how I feel about it. To be honest, I didn’t really like Cole that much. I mean, I didn’t hate him, but I also didn’t care much for him and I think most of that had to do with the way he treated Liam. I did feel sad about his death though, mainly because of Liam. I mean, Liam had just found out about Cole being a Red. I really thought they were on there way to fixing there relationship, but then he dies? Are you kidding me? I would’ve loved to have watched Liam and Cole get there relationship back. I could’ve seen myself growing to really like Cole.

So those are my thoughts on In the Afterlight by Alexandra Bracken. Let me know what you thought about the conclusion below!

3 Days, 3 Quotes- Day 1

I wasn’t tagged by anyone specifically, although I saw this on My Tiny Obsessions page, and I thought it would be fun to do! Especially since I’ve been gone for over a four months, I thought this would be fun as a getting-back-into-blogging post! This is the 3 Days 3 Quotes Challenge.

THE RULES:

1. Thank the person who nominated you.
2. Post a quote for 3 consecutive days (1 quote for each day)
3. Nominate three new bloggers each day! (If you’re reading this, and want to do it, go right ahead! I tag you!)

“We all change the world, with every day of living in it,” Magnus said. “You just have to decide HOW you want to change the world.”

–Tales From the Shadowhunter Academy by Cassandra Clare

 

#IIReadathon Wrap Up!

Dana over at @andbookhoarding hosted the Informal Impromptu Readathon from February 27th until March 4th. As what I normally do, I decided to join in last minute. It was a fun readathon, with sprints being hosted every night, which really helped with my reading. I was able to read 3 books this week, which is the most I’ve read in one week!

The first book I read was The Forbidden Wish by Jessica Khoury and I gave this book a 4 out of 5. This book was a retelling of Aladdin and was a definite surprise. I really enjoyed the characters and retake on the story!

Next I read Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon. I’ve been wanting to read this book since I watched the trailer. I’m really glad I was able to get to it during the readathon. This book was such a fast read, and I really did end up enjoying it. I ended up giving this book a 4.3 out of 5. I loved how it was told throughout different formats like IM’s and Emails as well. The characters were a lot of fun and I loved the romance.

The last book I read Was Nerve by Jeanne Ryan. I really didn’t like this book and I gave it a 1 out of 5. I watched he movie last month which made me want to read the book. I enjoyed the movie. It wasn’t anything great, but it was simply fun to watch on a Sunday afternoon. However, I really didn’t like the book. I didn’t like the writing, or the characters, and I really didn’t like the romance. It just wasn’t for me. I do however recommend the movie if you want something fun.

Book Review- Never Fade

Title- Never Fade
Author- Alexandra Bracken
Pages- 507
Rating-  4 out of 5
Companion/Sequel/Other- Sequel

I want to start off by saying that I really enjoyed everything about this book: the characters, the writing, the pacing and plot. Everything was great. Except for one thing that wasn’t. One thing that made me go from giving this book a 5 stars to a 4 stars…Ruby. I’ll start off with this positives first, and then talk about my one negative. WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE DARKEST MINDS AND NEVER FADE!

Plot- The story started off a bit slow, and I wasn’t really sure how I was feeling about it. But I kept going, and it really started to pick up. Next thing I new it was 3:30am and I’m still up reading. I was doing that whole “just one more chapter” thing us readers do. When Ruby finally ended up going on a mission for the League to find Liam and the flashdrive, that’s when it started to pick up and damn it got good! They’re were so many surprises that you don’t expect and it just keeps you wanting more.

Characters- The characters, I think are the best thing about this books! They’re fun, strong, bad-ass, and real. I was surprised to find myself really loving the new characters: Jude, Nico, and Vida…especially Vida. But what I really loved more than that, was seeing Ruby reunite with old characters. CHUBS! LIAM! Even though both reunions were completely different and surprising, it was amazing to see!

Liam and Ruby- One thing I really loved about The Darkest Minds, was the relationship between Liam and Ruby, and the way it ended in the first book was heartbreaking! I was so glad to see them finally reunite in this one, although I knew it wasn’t going to be the same. I was surprised to find out that even though Ruby erased herself from Liam’s memories, his feelings were still there. So when he saw her, he just knew.

Now lets talk about the one thing I didn’t like about this book:

Ruby- I just  want to point out that yes, Ruby did have moments in this book where I did like her, but for most of the book she got on my damn nerves. Most of the time, that happened was when she was alone, or with the leaders of the children‘s league. She just seemed like a completely different person, at least until she got her friends back: Chubs and Liam. With them by her side again, she seemed like the same old Ruby, whom I did like. Without them, she was mean, rude, and just cold. I also didn’t like how she trusted Cole. I get that he looks like Liam, but he’s not Liam. You don’t know him, so why trust him? Why keep a secret from Liam, because Cole asked you to? You already messed with his memories, now you’re going to keep a secret from him about his brother? You should be trying to earn his trust back, not keeping secrets. It frustrated me.

Trailer Reaction || 13 Reasons Why

We’ve been hearing about this for awhile, but to be honest, I really thought it got scraped and it wasn’t going to happen. But, I’m glad I was wrong. We officially have a date and teaser for this show.

Now the first thing that went through my mind when I watched this, was “Damn! Who are these people?” You see, it has been a long while since I read this book. I remember the major points of the story, but other than that, I forgot quite a bit, like most of the characters names(except for Hannah and Clay of course.) The next thing that went through my mind was “this looks like it’ll be good!” I don’t know about you, but I really enjoyed this teaser. It gives you just enough!

I’m trying to decide if I should reread this book before the show or not. I don’t remember much, so it’ll be kind of fun to experience it over.

What’re your thoughts on the teaser? Are you excited?