top ten tuesday: characters I just don't get

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted over at The Broke and the Bookish. This week's theme is "March 8: Ten Characters Everyone Loves But I Just Don't Get or Ten Characters I LOVE But Others Seem To Dislike." I'm doing my top characters that people *love* but that I could never get behind. Also: these all ended up being boys because I'm 100% more distrustful of boys than girls lol!

1. Morpheus – Splintered Series by A.G. Howard: I know that everyone loves Morpheus so much, but I tend to latch on to the first male protag that I see, and I stayed loyal to Jeb through this entire trilogy. I just got creepy vibes from Morpheus, I can't explain it. 

2. Theo – The Firebird Trilogy by Claudia Gray : Okay, this one is less strong because I know most people love Paul, but I have seen a few people pining for Theo, so I put him on here. Even though he kind of redeems himself in the second book of this series, I still don't love him

3. The Darkling – The Grisha Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo: I never really liked any of Alina's options in this series, I really just wanted her to be by herself and fine with it, but I knew with certainty that I didn't want her to be with the darkling. 

4. Dorian – Throne of Glass Series by Sarah J Maas: I love Dorian as a character, for sure. I want for him to be happy! But I follow tons of people who ship him with Aelin, and I do NOT want that to happen at all. Total Rowaelin girl right here. 

5. Kaden – The Remnant Chronicles by Mary E Pearson: I love Rafe!!! I love him!!! I like Kaden okay, but I don't feel as protective over him as lots of people do. I think this is probably an unpopular opinion, but hey, what can I say?

6. Jacob – Twilight by Stephanie Meyer: as a fourteen year old, which is the last time I read Twilight, I was totally into Edward's creepiness and didn't care for Jacob like, at all. There's no telling what I would think if I read these now though...

7. Sebastian – The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare: I know there were a ton of people that wanted Sebastian to be redeemed, and that believed that he was really good underneath the demon influences or whatever but I was totally fine with the ending that he got. I wasn't particularly bothered with his soul because I wasn't attached to him like the other characters. 

8. Gale – The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins: Gale is just selfish and makes me go NO. 

I understand that some of these are unpopular opinions, so feel free to disagree with me! It won't bother me at all :) Love a spirited debate about fictional characters. 

xx

Caroline

paper stars picks #1

Hi everyone! So, as most of you probably know from reading some of my other posts, I have a friend over at Paper Worlds and Swirls of Ink. We've been wanting to do some more posts together lately, so we came up with the idea to do joint posts sort of whenever we feel like it.

The series that we've just started is entitled Paper Stars Picks, which is when we pick six categories and each answer three on our respective blogs. You can check out the first half of this first installment over on her blog, here. So! Here is my half of the first installment of Paper Stars Picks.

Which protagonist would you be? 

Violet: Kestrel from The Winner's Curse. Kestrel is super smart and resourceful, and also I'd get to wear an awesome gown like the one she wears on the cover! or (sorry I'm picking two but I can't choose!) Cress from The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer. To be honest, any of the girls from the Lunar Chronicles are awesome protagonists, but I really enjoyed reading about Cress's character and hanging out with everyone in that group would be a lot of fun!

Sunny: Tessa Gray from The Infernal Devices trilogy. She loves books and is clever and kind, three things that I think are super important in a personality. Also, it doesn't hurt that she has both Will Herondale and Jem Carstairs to choose from... I seriously love Tessa though, above and beyond her choice in men. 

Significant Other you'd like to date? 

Violet: Morpheus from the Splintered series by A. G. Howard. Yes, he is still my favorite book boyfriend. I don't think this has changed since I've been blogging. Love Morpheus :) 

Sunny: Paul Markov from A Thousand Pieces of You by Claudia Gray. He is a brilliant scientist and a little socially awkward, which just makes him so much cuter. He also throws his entire self into anything that he sees worth doing, which I find so endearing. 

Which YA trope would you like to live out? 

Violet: ordinary girl meets extraordinary world. I would love to explore a new fantasy world and discover an incredible adventure, while still having my normal life. Think Meghan Chase from the Iron Fey series by Julie Kagawa, or Alyssa from Splintered by A. G. Howard, or Percy Jackson from the Percy Jackson series. 

Sunny: the "omg I'm what?" trope where the main character is unaware of his or her involvement in the magical, supernatural or royalty. See: Clary Fray from the Mortal Instruments, Elara from The Princess in the Opal Mask, and Alex from the Covenant series. This is a little similar to Violet's pick, but it doesn't necessarily open a new world to the character in question, just changes their involvement in their own one. 

So thank you to Violet for guest starring over here on Stardust Words! Let us know what your picks would be in the comments :) 

xx

Sunny

a week of recommdenations: day five

This is the fifth and final day of a week of recommendations! This week has been so much fun, and I hope that y'all have enjoyed it and at least gotten a couple recommendations from these posts! Special thanks for Violet for inviting me along with her on this week of posts!

This last day is a day for retellings, which are something that Violet and I cannot get enough of. I've always loved fairytales and myths and folklore, and retellings give me a chance to read stories that I love all over again, anew. Retellings are one of my favorite sub-genres under the umbrella of YA or Adult, and I am really excited to share some of my favorite picks with you. 

1. Cinder – Marissa Meyer

Cinder is the first in an eventual quartet called the Lunar Chronicles, and if you've been on booktube or around the blogging sphere then you'll know that these are extremely popular books with tons of people. Each installment is a sci/fi, futuristic fairy tale retelling, and they are all so creative, my mind is blown even more than I thought possible with every book. Cinder is, obviously, a retelling of Cinderella. Scarlet, the second book, is a Red Riding Hood retelling, and Cress, which is book three, tells the story of Rapunzel. However, all the characters and stories are so intertwined, there is a lot more going on in each book than just the retelling at hand. They're amazing! You should all read them! 

2. Cruel Beauty – Rosamund Hodge

This is a a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, with elements of Roman society and mythology thrown in for good measure. I adored this book when I first read it, and the ending is seriously so epic! The world of Cruel Beauty is brilliant and different and dangerous, and I would definitely recommend this to anyone who is looking for a Beauty and the Beast story with a twist. 

3. The Land of Stories: The Wishing Well – Chris Colfer

Though this is a middle grade series, I enjoy myself immensely when I'm reading the Land of Stories books. Though they aren't strictly retellings, they do include characters from all of your favorite fairy tales, all in one world, so I count them. Since they are middle grade, they're fast paced and just so much fun. 

4. Entwined – Heather Dixon

I am a huge fan of the 12 Dancing Princesses, and I have read multiple retellings of this classic story. However, I think that Entwined is my favorite. It is darker and somehow deeper than most of the other versions that I have read, and I love the characters so much. The 12 Princesses, in this retelling are strong and three dimensional, quite a feat when there are 12+ characters to develop. I love this retelling, it is graceful and twisted. 

5. Splintered – A.G. Howard

This is the first book in a trilogy that retells Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland stories. Violet urged me to read this series for ages and I never got around to it until this year, and I was amazed. This too is a darker story than even the original Alice, which is pretty twisted in its own way. I think this is a must read for anyone who enjoys retellings of any sort, and even anyone who just wants to be swept away in a different sort of world. 

And here we come to the end of a week of recommendations! I hope you all had as much fun as I did. 

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) 

Sunday Summations

Hello! This has been a pretty good reading week for me! I continue my readalong with Violet, in the middle of Frostfire by Amanda Hocking. Also, as I finished Splintered by A.G. Howard last Sunday, I continued with Unhinged, which is the sequel. I am also in the middle of finishing out that trilogy with Ensnared, the final book. The last thing I read this week was one of my new favorites, The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. Full review of that is up here!

This week I hope to finish Ensnared, and after that read Alienated and Invaded by Melissa Landers! This is a super busy week for me at school so I may not get to all three of them, but here's hoping!

What did your reading week look like?

xx
Sunny

sunday summations

I apologize for the lack of posting this week- it's been super busy and I have been in sort of a reading slump! This week has much less coursework that I am anticipating, and also more time for reading!!

However, this past week I did manage to keep up with my readalong with Violet, and I think we are both enjoying reading Frostfire by Amanda Hocking. I also managed to finish Splintered by A.G Howard, which I adored and have rated 4.5 stars.

This coming week, I want to finish the Splintered trilogy (the last two books are Unhinged and Ensnared) and also read Gayle Forman's new book, I Was Here.

What was your week like, reading wise?

xx
Sunny

sunday summations

This is an old series that I've chosen to revamp. Sunday Summations is a time where we discuss what we've read in the past week and our goals for the next week!

Last week I finished Ignite by Sara B Larson (4 stars), re-read the Chaos of Stars by Kiersten White (5 stars), read The Year I Turned Sixteen by Dianne Schwemm (3 stars) and re-read These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner (4 stars).

Today, my friend Violet and I will begin our readalong of Frostfire by Amanda Hocking, which I am super excited for! The Trylle trilogy were some of my favorite books of 2013, so I can't wait to get back into that world. I have also just begun Splintered by A.G. Howard. I've been meaning to pick up the series for a while, and now that I have attained the conclusion to the trilogy, I am planning on marathoning Splintered, Unhinged and Ensnared this week. Those are tentative goals, though, because I'm also working on something very exciting...

I've just finished planning and workshopping a new novel idea! So, this week will be the first bit of actual writing involved, which I'm very excited about. That being said, I might not have as much time for reading as I'd like, but this is such an exciting thing that I don't mind it that much.

So, what have you guys read this past week, and what are you planning on reading this coming week?