top ten tuesday: checking in

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly list feature hosted over at The Broke and the Bookish where, each week, we discuss a different topic as it relates to some of our favorite books. This week's theme is "April 7: Top Ten Characters You'd Like To Check In With (meaning, the book or series is over and you so just wish you could peek in on the "life" you imagine they are leading years down the line after the story ends). "

I love this theme!! I often wish I could go into some of my favorite series and just see how the characters are living their lives, especially with standalone contemporaries that I feel like are too short. (I've excluded Harry Potter from this list because, well, obviously we'd all want to check in and see how Harry and the gang is doing)

1. Cath and Levi from Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell – I love these two so much, and I felt like I could keep reading on and on forever about their lives together. I would love to peek in on them now and see how they're being adorably dorky together.

2. Macallan and Levi from Better Off Friends by Elizabeth Eulberg – Since it took these two SO DANG LONG to get together in the first place, I would love to be able to see how they're living their life together now that they finally had gotten to a point where they could be together. If only, if only.

3. Amy and Roger from Amy & Roger's Epic Detour by Morgan Matson – this really is turning out to be contemporary couples hour over here, but I really do want to see how Amy and Roger are working out, with the distance and all. I hope they're still doing ok, but it would just be nice to check in, you know?

4. Percy, Annabeth, Frank, Hazel, Jason, Piper, Leo, Reyna, Nico, and everyone else from Camp Half Blood and Camp Jupiter from the Heroes of Olympus series by Rick Riordan – Though this series ended last year, I am still in denial and feel like there will be more to come from Percy and the gang. Oh how I wish that were true. I want to know how these kids are doing, after everything they've been through, I want to make sure someone is giving them cookies and enough love. Especially Nico.

5. Anna and Etienne from Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins – I guess technically the last time we hear from Anna and Etienne is in Isla and the Happily Ever After, but I would still like to check in on them, post the events of that last novel. They're one of my all time favorite fictional couples, and just to know that they're doing alright would be enough for me.

6. Noah and Jude from I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson – I just want to make sure that the twins are healing their relationships, with each other, with their father, with their significant others and friends and ghosts and demons. I just want to make sure they're on the road to recovery and make sure they're still making art.

7. Mim, Beck and Walt from Mosquitoland by David Arnold – Did they get back together for opening day is really my main question and also can Mim and Beck please get married and have Walt be the maid of honor and the best man at once?

8. Mia and Adam from If I Stay and Where She Went by Gayle Forman – This duology showed that these two basically need each other to survive well, and I just want to make sure they're together and happy and not chased by their pasts. I want them to still be making music together, mismatched pieces fitting somehow perfectly together.

9. Victor, Sydney, Mitch and Dominic from Vicious by V.E. Schwab  – Basically, I just want to make sure that they took their golden opportunity to run around helping other EOs as a team of morally questionable super anti-heroes. I'd eat up a TV show like that.

10. Eleanor and Park from Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell  – WHAT ARE THE THREE WORDS.

what are some of your answers to these questions?

xx
Sunny

top ten tuesday: books on my spring tbr list

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted over at The Broke and the Bookish, where we highlight a different list of ten things each week. This week's theme  is "March 17: Top Ten Books On My Spring TBR List" which I think is so fun! 

Usually, it is in the spring each year that I feel like switching from reading darker, heavier books to just wanting things that are light and fun, so I'm always looking out for good contemporaries this time of year. If you have any suggestions for contemporaries that you loved, leave them in the comments below! However, there are also a few books that I've had my eye on that aren't the light reads I've just mentions, so this list will be a mix. It will also be a combination of new releases and books that I've had on my shelves but just haven't gotten around to yet!

So, without further ado, here is my top ten spring tbr books, up until the end of April! (May releases will not be included on this list) 

1. Finding Mr. Brightside – Jay Clark


Abram and Juliette know each other. They’ve lived down the street from each other their whole lives. But they don’t really know each other—at least, not until Juliette’s mom and Abram’s dad have a torrid affair that culminates in a deadly car crash. Sharing the same subdivision is uncomfortable, to say the least. They don’t speak.

Fast-forward to the neighborhood pharmacy, a few months later. Abram decides to say hello. Then he decides to invite her to Taco Bell. To her surprise as well as his, she agrees. And the real love story begins.

2. Mosquitoland – David Arnold
"I am a collection of oddities, a circus of neurons and electrons: my heart is the ringmaster, my soul is the trapeze artist, and the world is my audience. It sounds strange because it is, and it is, because I am strange." 
After the sudden collapse of her family, Mim Malone is dragged from her home in northern Ohio to the "wastelands" of Mississippi, where she lives in a medicated milieu with her dad and new stepmom. Before the dust has a chance to settle, she learns her mother is sick back in Cleveland. 
So she ditches her new life and hops aboard a northbound Greyhound bus to her real home and her real mother, meeting a quirky cast of fellow travelers along the way. But when her thousand-mile journey takes a few turns she could never see coming, Mim must confront her own demons, redefining her notions of love, loyalty, and what it means to be sane. 
Told in an unforgettable, kaleidoscopic voice, "Mosquitoland" is a modern American odyssey, as hilarious as it is heartbreaking.

3. Miss Mayhem – Rachel Hawkins 

(spoilers for Rebel Belle in synopsis!!)

Life is almost back to normal for Harper Price. The Ephors have been silent after their deadly attack at Cotillion months ago, and best friend Bee has returned after a mysterious disappearance. Now Harper can return her focus to the important things in life: school, canoodling with David, her nemesis-turned-ward-slash-boyfie, and even competing in the Miss Pine Grove pageant.

Unfortunately, supernatural chores are never done. The Ephors have decided they’d rather train David than kill him. The catch: Harper has to come along for the ride, but she can’t stay David’s Paladin unless she undergoes an ancient trial that will either kill her . . . or connect her to David for life.

4. Kissing Ted Callahan (And Other Guys) – Amy Spalding

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist meets Easy A in this hilariously realistic story of sneaking out, making out, and playing in a band.
After catching their bandmates in a compromising position, sixteen-year-old Los Angelenos Riley and Reid become painfully aware of the romance missing from their own lives. And so a pact is formed: they'll both try to make something happen with their respective crushes and document the experiences in a shared notebook.

While Reid struggles with the moral dilemma of adopting a dog to win over someone's heart, Riley tries to make progress with Ted Callahan, who she's been obsessed with forever-His floppy hair! His undeniable intelligence! But suddenly cute guys are popping up everywhere. How did she never notice them before?! With their love lives going from 0 to 60 in the blink of an eye, Riley and Reid realize the results of their pact may be more than they bargained for.

5. An Ember in the Ashes – Sabaa Tahir

Set in a terrifyingly brutal Rome-like world, An Ember in the Ashes is an epic fantasy debut about an orphan fighting for her family and a soldier fighting for his freedom. It’s a story that’s literally burning to be told.
LAIA is a Scholar living under the iron-fisted rule of the Martial Empire. When her brother is arrested for treason, Laia goes undercover as a slave at the empire’s greatest military academy in exchange for assistance from rebel Scholars who claim that they will help to save her brother from execution.
ELIAS is the academy’s finest soldier—and secretly, its most unwilling. Elias is considering deserting the military, but before he can, he’s ordered to participate in a ruthless contest to choose the next Martial emperor.
When Laia and Elias’s paths cross at the academy, they find that their destinies are more intertwined than either could have imagined and that their choices will change the future of the empire itself. 

6. I Am the Messenger – Markus Zusak
protect the diamonds
survive the clubs
dig deep through the spades
feel the hearts

Ed Kennedy is an underage cabdriver without much of a future. He's pathetic at playing cards, hopelessly in love with his best friend, Audrey, and utterly devoted to his coffee-drinking dog, the Doorman. His life is one of peaceful routine and incompetence until he inadvertently stops a bank robbery.

That's when the first ace arrives in the mail.
That's when Ed becomes the messenger.
Chosen to care, he makes his way through town helping and hurting (when necessary) until only one question remains: Who's behind Ed's mission?

7. The Name of the Wind – Patrick Rothfuss


Told in Kvothe's own voice, this is the tale of the magically gifted young man who grows to be the most notorious wizard his world has ever seen. The intimate narrative of his childhood in a troupe of traveling players, his years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-ridden city, his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a legendary school of magic, and his life as a fugitive after the murder of a king form a gripping coming-of-age story unrivaled in recent literature. A high-action story written with a poet's hand, The Name of the Wind is a masterpiece that will transport readers into the body and mind of a wizard.

8. Seraphina – Rachel Hartman

Four decades of peace have done little to ease the mistrust between humans and dragons in the kingdom of Goredd. Folding themselves into human shape, dragons attend court as ambassadors, and lend their rational, mathematical minds to universities as scholars and teachers. As the treaty's anniversary draws near, however, tensions are high.

Seraphina Dombegh has reason to fear both sides. An unusually gifted musician, she joins the court just as a member of the royal family is murdered—in suspiciously draconian fashion. Seraphina is drawn into the investigation, partnering with the captain of the Queen's Guard, the dangerously perceptive Prince Lucian Kiggs. While they begin to uncover hints of a sinister plot to destroy the peace, Seraphina struggles to protect her own secret, the secret behind her musical gift, one so terrible that its discovery could mean her very life.

9. All The Bright Places – Jennifer Niven
Theodore Finch is fascinated by death, and he constantly thinks of ways he might kill himself. But each time, something good, no matter how small, stops him.
Violet Markey lives for the future, counting the days until graduation, when she can escape her Indiana town and her aching grief in the wake of her sister’s recent death.
When Finch and Violet meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school, it’s unclear who saves whom. And when they pair up on a project to discover the “natural wonders” of their state, both Finch and Violet make more important discoveries: It’s only with Violet that Finch can be himself—a weird, funny, live-out-loud guy who’s not such a freak after all. And it’s only with Finch that Violet can forget to count away the days and start living them. But as Violet’s world grows, Finch’s begins to shrink.
This is an intense, gripping novel perfect for fans of Jay Asher, Rainbow Rowell, John Green, Gayle Forman, and Jenny Downham from a talented new voice in YA, Jennifer Niven.

10. Just One Day & Just One Year – Gayle Forman

(synopsis for Just One Day shown)

From the New York Times bestselling author of If I Stay


Allyson Healey's life is exactly like her suitcase—packed, planned, ordered. Then on the last day of her three-week post-graduation European tour, she meets Willem. A free-spirited, roving actor, Willem is everything she’s not, and when he invites her to abandon her plans and come to Paris with him, Allyson says yes. This uncharacteristic decision leads to a day of risk and romance, liberation and intimacy: 24 hours that will transform Allyson’s life.

A book about love, heartbreak, travel, identity, and the “accidents” of fate,Just One Day shows us how sometimes in order to get found, you first have to get lost. . . and how often the people we are seeking are much closer than we know.

The first in a sweepingly romantic duet of novels. Willem’s story—Just One Year—is coming soon!



What is on your Spring TBR? 

xx
Sunny

february wrap up

It's really hard to believe that this is already the second wrap up of the year– the first two months of 2015 have absolutely flown by! I've been really lucky to have been reading amazing books so far this year, so I'm excited to share what I read in the month of February with y'all.

I read a total of 9 books in February, which is the same amount as I managed in January, so yay for consistency, I guess? I also was able to get 4 reviews up during the month, and I'm very proud of that. So here we go.

1. Splintered (Splintered #1) – A.G. Howard ☆☆☆☆☆
This stunning debut captures the grotesque madness of a mystical under-land, as well as a girl’s pangs of first love and independence.
Alyssa Gardner hears the whispers of bugs and flowers—precisely the affliction that landed her mother in a mental hospital years before. This family curse stretches back to her ancestor Alice Liddell, the real-life inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Alyssa might be crazy, but she manages to keep it together. For now.
When her mother’s mental health takes a turn for the worse, Alyssa learns that what she thought was fiction is based in terrifying reality. The real Wonderland is a place far darker and more twisted than Lewis Carroll ever let on. There, Alyssa must pass a series of tests, including draining an ocean of Alice’s tears, waking the slumbering tea party, and subduing a vicious bandersnatch, to fix Alice’s mistakes and save her family. She must also decide whom to trust: Jeb, her gorgeous best friend and secret crush, or the sexy but suspicious Morpheus, her guide through Wonderland, who may have dark motives of his own.

2. Unhinged (Splintered #2) – A.G. Howard ☆☆☆☆☆
(spoilers for Splintered!) Alyssa Gardner has been down the rabbit hole and faced the bandersnatch. She saved the life of Jeb, the guy she loves, and escaped the machinations of the disturbingly seductive Morpheus and the vindictive Queen Red. Now all she has to do is graduate high school and make it through prom so she can attend the prestigious art school in London she's always dreamed of.
That would be easier without her mother, freshly released from an asylum, acting overly protective and suspicious. And it would be much simpler if the mysterious Morpheus didn’t show up for school one day to tempt her with another dangerous quest in the dark, challenging Wonderland—where she (partly) belongs.
As prom and graduation creep closer, Alyssa juggles Morpheus’s unsettling presence in her real world with trying to tell Jeb the truth about a past he’s forgotten. Glimpses of Wonderland start to bleed through her art and into her world in very disturbing ways, and Morpheus warns that Queen Red won’t be far behind.
If Alyssa stays in the human realm, she could endanger Jeb, her parents, and everyone she loves. But if she steps through the rabbit hole again, she'll face a deadly battle that could cost more than just her head.

3. The Song of Achilles – Madeline Miller ☆☆☆☆☆
review here!
Achilles, "the best of all the Greeks," son of the cruel sea goddess Thetis and the legendary king Peleus, is strong, swift, and beautiful— irresistible to all who meet him. Patroclus is an awkward young prince, exiled from his homeland after an act of shocking violence. Brought together by chance, they forge an inseparable bond, despite risking the gods' wrath.

They are trained by the centaur Chiron in the arts of war and medicine, but when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, all the heroes of Greece are called upon to lay siege to Troy in her name. Seduced by the promise of a glorious destiny, Achilles joins their cause, and torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus follows. Little do they know that the cruel Fates will test them both as never before and demand a terrible sacrifice.

4. Frostfire (Kanin Chronicles #1) – Amanda Hocking ☆☆☆½
review here! 

Bryn Aven is an outcast among the Kanin, the most powerful of the troll tribes.

Set apart by her heritage and her past, Bryn is a tracker who's determined to become a respected part of her world. She has just one goal: become a member of the elite King’s Guard to protect the royal family. She's not going to let anything stand in her way, not even a forbidden romance with her boss Ridley Dresden.

But all her plans for the future are put on hold when Konstantin– a fallen hero she once loved – begins kidnapping changelings. Bryn is sent in to help stop him, but will she lose her heart in the process?

5. Alienated (Alienated #1) – Melissa Landers ☆☆☆☆☆
Two years ago, the aliens made contact. Now Cara Sweeney is going to be sharing a bathroom with one of them.
Handpicked to host the first-ever L’eihr exchange student, Cara thinks her future is set. Not only does she get a free ride to her dream college, she’ll have inside information about the mysterious L’eihrs that every journalist would kill for. Cara’s blog following is about to skyrocket.
Still, Cara isn’t sure what to think when she meets Aelyx. Humans and L’eihrs have nearly identical DNA, but cold, infuriatingly brilliant Aelyx couldn’t seem more alien. She’s certain about one thing, though: no human boy is this good-looking.
But when Cara's classmates get swept up by anti-L'eihr paranoia, Midtown High School suddenly isn't safe anymore. Threatening notes appear in Cara's locker, and a police officer has to escort her and Aelyx to class.
Cara finds support in the last person she expected. She realizes that Aelyx isn’t just her only friend; she's fallen hard for him. But Aelyx has been hiding the truth about the purpose of his exchange, and its potentially deadly consequences. Soon Cara will be in for the fight of her life—not just for herself and the boy she loves, but for the future of her planet.

 6. Invaded (Alienated #2) – Melissa Landers ☆☆☆☆
(spoilers for Alienated!) The romantic sequel to Alienated takes long-distance relationships to a new level as Cara and Aelyx long for each other from opposite ends of the universe...until a threat to both their worlds reunites them.
Cara always knew life on planet L’eihr would be an adjustment. With Aelyx, her L’eihr boyfriend, back on Earth, working to mend the broken alliance between their two planets, Cara is left to fend for herself at a new school, surrounded by hostile alien clones. Even the weird dorm pet hates her.
Things look up when Cara is appointed as human representative to a panel preparing for a human colony on L’eihr. A society melding their two cultures is a place where Cara and Aelyx could one day make a life together. But with L’eihr leaders balking at granting even the most basic freedoms, Cara begins to wonder if she could ever be happy on this planet, even with Aelyx by her side.
Meanwhile, on Earth, Aelyx, finds himself thrown into a full-scale PR campaign to improve human-L’eihr relations. Humans don’t know that their very survival depends on this alliance: only Aelyx’s people have the technology to fix the deadly contamination in the global water supply that human governments are hiding. Yet despite their upper hand, the leaders of his world suddenly seem desperate to get humans on their side, and hardly bat an eye at extremists’ multiple attempts on Aelyx’s life.
The Way clearly needs humans’ help . . . but with what? And what will they ask for in return?

7. I Was Here – Gayle Forman ☆☆☆☆
review here!
Cody and Meg were inseparable.
Two peas in a pod.
Until . . . they weren’t anymore.
When her best friend Meg drinks a bottle of industrial-strength cleaner alone in a motel room, Cody is understandably shocked and devastated. She and Meg shared everything—so how was there no warning? But when Cody travels to Meg’s college town to pack up the belongings left behind, she discovers that there’s a lot that Meg never told her. About her old roommates, the sort of people Cody never would have met in her dead-end small town in Washington. About Ben McAllister, the boy with a guitar and a sneer, who broke Meg’s heart. And about an encrypted computer file that Cody can’t open—until she does, and suddenly everything Cody thought she knew about her best friend’s death gets thrown into question.
I Was Here is Gayle Forman at her finest, a taut, emotional, and ultimately redemptive story about redefining the meaning of family and finding a way to move forward even in the face of unspeakable loss.

8. The Conspiracy of Us (The Conspiracy of Us #1) – Maggie Hall ☆☆☆☆☆
Avery West's newfound family can shut down Prada when they want to shop in peace, and can just as easily order a bombing when they want to start a war. Part of a powerful and dangerous secret society called the Circle, they believe Avery is the key to an ancient prophecy. Some want to use her as a pawn. Some want her dead.
To unravel the mystery putting her life in danger, Avery must follow a trail of clues from the monuments of Paris to the back alleys of Istanbul with two boys who work for the Circle—beautiful, volatile Stellan and mysterious, magnetic Jack. But as the clues expose a stunning conspiracy that might plunge the world into World War 3, she discovers that both boys are hiding secrets of their own. Now she will have to choose not only between freedom and family--but between the boy who might help her save the world, and the one she's falling in love with.

 9. A Thousand Pieces of You (Firebird #1) – Claudia Gray ☆☆☆☆☆ review here!
Marguerite Caine’s physicist parents are known for their radical scientific achievements. Their most astonishing invention: the Firebird, which allows users to jump into parallel universes, some vastly altered from our own. But when Marguerite’s father is murdered, the killer—her parent’s handsome and enigmatic assistant Paul—escapes into another dimension before the law can touch him.
Marguerite can’t let the man who destroyed her family go free, and she races after Paul through different universes, where their lives entangle in increasingly familiar ways. With each encounter she begins to question Paul’s guilt—and her own heart. Soon she discovers the truth behind her father’s death is more sinister than she ever could have imagined.
A Thousand Pieces of You explores a reality where we witness the countless other lives we might lead in an amazingly intricate multiverse, and ask whether, amid infinite possibilities, one love can endure.

My two favorite reads of the month were The Song of Achilles and A Thousand Pieces of You! 
What did y'all read in February?

xx
 Sunny

january/february – hello book haul

As you all know, I don't do that many book hauls. I usually accumulate books like once every two weeks when I can actually get to a Barnes and Noble. However, over January and February, I seemed to just rack up tons of books over the course of these months, and since it is getting to be the very end of February, I decided to share them with you. (keep in mind some of these were residual Christmas presents, bought with Christmas giftcards, etc.)

Over the past two months, I accumulated a grand total of 21 books. Here is the (partial) book tower.

not pictured: On the Fence by Kasie West and Lady Thief by A.C. Gaughen (which are at home), and A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab and The Sin Eater's Daughter by Melinda Salisbury (which got shipped to my home instead of dorm by an unhappy accident) 

look at her go: reviewin' reviewin': I Was Here

Name: I Was Here
Author: Gayle Forman
☆☆☆☆
find it on goodreads
barnes & noble 
amazon

synopsis: Cody and Meg were inseparable.
Two peas in a pod.
Until . . . they weren’t anymore.
 
When her best friend Meg drinks a bottle of industrial-strength cleaner alone in a motel room, Cody is understandably shocked and devastated. She and Meg shared everything—so how was there no warning? But when Cody travels to Meg’s college town to pack up the belongings left behind, she discovers that there’s a lot that Meg never told her. About her old roommates, the sort of people Cody never would have met in her dead-end small town in Washington. About Ben McAllister, the boy with a guitar and a sneer, who broke Meg’s heart. And about an encrypted computer file that Cody can’t open—until she does, and suddenly everything Cody thought she knew about her best friend’s death gets thrown into question.
I Was Here is Gayle Forman at her finest, a taut, emotional, and ultimately redemptive story about redefining the meaning of family and finding a way to move forward even in the face of unspeakable loss.

Full, non-spoilery review under the cut! 

highly anticipated books of 2015

it only feels natural to follow up a 2014 wrap up with a 2015 look ahead. there are so many books that I am looking forward to this year, so this is just a sampling of the ones that I am biting my nails until the release date.