Book Review: Maybe Not (A Novella) by Colleen Hoover

My Rating: ★★★☆☆

Genre(s): New Adult, Contemporary, Romance

Plot: Warren and Bridgette get off to a rocky start when she moves in to the apartment he shares with Ridge. However, it's obvious that there's a shared attraction between them. As strong as her hatred toward him seems to be, Warren is determined to find out if her love could be just as strong.

Pros:

• It's what's happening in the background of Maybe Someday and that's really cool.
• Both of these characters have tough interiors, but gooey insides, and that really shows in this book.
• It was feels-y.
• It told a whole story in a short number of pages, which is really hard to do.

Cons:

• A little too much sex for my taste.
• I was kind of hoping this book would be more about Syd and Ridge, because I didn't read the description.

Favorite Quotes: 

• “The only difference between falling in love and being in love is that your heart already knows how you feel, but your mind is too stubborn to admit it.” 
• “I can’t believe I’m falling in love with such a stupid, stupid asshole.”
• [There are others but my crappy kindle doesn't highlight and I can't find them]

My Thoughts: It was good. It wasn't nearly as good as Maybe Someday, but it was good.

Links:
Goodreads
Amazon
B&N
Colleen Hoover

Book Review: Ask the Passengers by AS King

My Rating: ★★★☆☆

Genre: Young Adult Literature, Contemporary Literature

Plot: With no one else to turn to, Astrid Jones sends her secrets and her love to the passengers in airplanes she sees overhead. As her secret relationship progresses, secrets come out and rumors in her small town fly. All the while, Astrid continues to send her love, not realizing that her love is actually reaching the passengers and helping them in the best ways.

Pros:

• Switching between Astrid sending her love and the passenger who receives it is really cute
• Gay main characters.
• Takes place in a small town. Nae loves small towns.
• Frank.
• I like that she's super into philosophy.
• The bird houses with her dad is a really cute bonding thing.
• Dee calls her by her last name.

Cons:

• Astrid's sister is a twat.
• Basically everyone in Astrid's small town is a twat.
• The thing at the sorority party.

Favorite Quotes: 

•  “I am equal to a baby and to a hundred year old lady. I am equal to an airline pilot and a car mechanic. I am equal to you. You are equal to me. It's that universal. Except that it's not.” 
• “How can we say nobody's perfect if there is no perfect to compare to? Perfection implies that there really is a right and wrong way to be. And what type of perfection is the best type? Moral perfection? Aesthetic? Physiological? Mental?” 
• “I don’t have enough gross words in my gross vocabulary to describe how gross that gross thought is. Gross.” 
• “I’m not questioning my sexuality as much as I’m questioning the strict definitions and boxes of all sexualities and why we care so much about other people’s intimate business.” 

My Thoughts: It was good. I had so many people tell me this book would change my life, and it really didn't. But that doesn't mean it wasn't still a great book. I feel like every time I read a different YA book, there's something that sets it apart from the rest, and for this book it would be Astrid sending her love to the airplanes. I just really love that.

Links:
Goodreads
Amazon
B&N
Book Depository
AS King

Book Review: The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot

My Rating: ★★★☆☆

Genre: Young Adult

Plot: Mia Thermopolis is a dork. Awkwardly tall, flat chest, crazy hair, weird mom. She's not popular. As if that wasn't enough for her to deal with as a teenager, she finds out her dad is a prince-- which means she's the their to his throne. In the first book of The Princess Diaries series, Mia keeps a journal as she adjusts to her new life-- sudden media attention, princess lessons with her grandmere, and attention to boys who didn't know she even existed two weeks ago.

Pros:

• I love, love, love journal-entry books.
• Mia is written as a totally believable teenage character.
• This book was so funny!
• I read it in, like, six hours.
• Mia's dad is alive in the books.

Cons:

• (Please don't hate me for saying this) I liked the movie better. I know, I know! It's actually very rare for me to say this! I think it's maybe because The Princess Diaries is one of my favorite movies, but I kept trying to compare the book to the movie and that's not fair to the book.
• I kept waiting for the book to end.
• It ended really abruptly.

Favorite Quotes: 

• “Courage is not the absence of fear but rather the judgement that something is more important than fear; The brave may not live forever but the cautious do not live at all.” 
• “You know in sixth grade, when they made all of us girls go into this other room and watch a video about getting our periods and stuff? I bet while we were gone, the boys were watching a video about how to look at each other in that infuriating way.” 

My Thoughts: Like I said, I liked the movie better. I know they're two separate things, and the plots are hardly comparable, but I couldn't help myself. This series was ~just ok~, and I think I would have enjoyed it if I was a little younger. I may attempt to read the rest of the series someday, but I'm not going to go out of my way for it.

Links:
Goodreads
Amazon
B&N
Book Depository
Meg Cabot

Book Review: The Neighbor (A Short Story) by Dean Koontz

My Rating: ★★★

Plot: Malcolm and Amalia are siblings, and each other's best friend. One night, they both notice some odd activity going on in the house next door. However, the owner of that house had died months earlier. Assuming they had new neighbors, the kids went to take a look. What happened next was an experience so haunting that neither of them ever spoke of it again.

Pros:

• It was a nice, scary story that I could read quickly
• I loved the siblings' bond, especially since their parents were awful to them
• It faces a tough issue that's very real today, even though this story was set many decades ago
• Dean Koontz wrote it and I love him

Cons: 

• It felt forced. I know short stories are supposed to be short, but this seemed like something that needed to be a bit longer. Maybe another few pages or so.
• It deviated from his normal style in a way that hurt the story, rather than help it

Favorite quote(s):

• “Amalia insisted he wasn’t cold, but only wounded by life and emotionally isolated.” 
• "One of the good things about being twelve or younger is that you tend to believe that you'll live forever. Therefore, you take stupid risks with little hesitation, and sometimes the risk pays off. Except when it doesn't."

My Thoughts: It was ok. It wasn't spectacular. It wasn't phenomenal. It was ok. And it makes me sad to admit that, because he's my favorite author. However, it's really short so if you have an hour or so to kill, it might be worth the read.

Links

Goodreads
Amazon

Dean Koontz

Book Review: Sailor Twain: Or: The Mermaid in the Hudson by Mark Siegel

My Rating: ★★★


Goodreads Plot: One hundred years ago. On the foggy Hudson River, a riverboat captain rescues an injured mermaid from the waters of the busiest port in the United States. A wildly popular—and notoriously reclusive—author makes a public debut. A French nobleman seeks a remedy for a curse. As three lives twine together and race to an unexpected collision, the mystery of the Mermaid of the Hudson deepens.

My Thoughts: Graphic novels aren't really my thing. But I won this book from a giveaway and it was really pretty, so I decided to give it a try. The story was an interesting take on the temptation of the Siren's Song. The drawings were pretty and the plot was entertaining. If there is a sequel eventually, I might be interested in picking it up just to see where the end of the story takes the characters. If you like graphic novels and/or mermaids, this book might be for you!

Review: Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai

My Rating: ★★★

Goodreads Plot: No one would believe me but at times I would choose wartime in Saigon over peacetime in Alabama. For all the ten years of her life, HÀ has only known Saigon: the thrills of its markets, the joy of its traditions, the warmth of her friends close by . . . and the beauty of her very own papaya tree. But now the Vietnam War has reached her home. HÀ and her family are forced to flee as Saigon falls, and they board a ship headed toward hope. In America, HÀ discovers the foreign world of Alabama: the coldness of its strangers, the dullness of its food, the strange shape of its landscape . . . and the strength of her very own family. This is the moving story of one girl's year of change, dreams, grief, and healing as she journeys from one country to another, one life to the next.

My Thoughts: This book was ok. Poetry isn't really my thing, especially when it's in this format. But the story was believable and deep, and I read the book in just a couple of hours. The way she describes things is really neat because I could very clearly see these pictures in my head, but the book just didn't do it for me.