Lock and Key | Sarah Dessen

Kinda predictable. 

Kinda boring.

Kinda a waste of time.

I gave this three stars. Lock and Key is about seventeen year old Ruby who has had it rough from the beginning. Her childhood consisted of her parents getting divorced and her sister abandoning her at a young age and then her mother abandons her when she's seventeen, on top of all that she has never settled down in one place. For the most part she is in denial but then she realises that everyone's left her and she decided to live it out alone but then her landlord gives her up and she is turned in to child services. She then ends up forced to stay with her estrange sister: Cora and her husband Jamie who take custody of her. Ruby then has to deal with her new life -school, friends, college, jobs etc.

When I first came across this in the bookstore I already knew I wouldn't love it but I still gave it a whirl regardless of the mixed reviews. And with summer coming up stocking up on contemporaries was ideal. Its not that I didn't enjoy any of it because I did enjoy most of it. I was very much into the first two thirds of the book, just later it got loathsome and boring. I ended up putting it down a couple times, reading other books and then picking it up and continuing from where I left of.

Its not the book, its me. 

I have this sixth sense when I know I won't really like the book, yet somehow I am still compelled to buy it and read it. I know its me and not the book because loads of people adore Sarah Dessen and her books. This just got boring for me after 2/3 of the book, nothing was happening and it was just getting prolonged. Endings of books are a weird thing, especially when the book it quite lengthy (like this one) you seem to only remember the ending and crucial parts of the book. However the ending of this book isn't even gonna stick with me, it was that pointless. 

The main characters of this book- Ruby wasn't all that bad I mean she reeked of adolescent-teen-who-doesn't-know-what-to-do-with-her-life and is trying to figure everything out when she ends up living with her sister after her mother goes awol and leaves her. The book itself deals with dysfunctional families and child abuse. Its a very realistic book, as a contemporary the romance is realistic too; there is no insta-love (thankgod). But it was predictable and that got boring after some time.   

By no means do I despise the whole book, I loved that it was realistic and the characters mirrored typical teenagers trying to get into uni's. There were many parts in the book where I cried and sympathised with the main-Ruby, she goes through some shit and tough love and it gets emotional.

I can see why people adore the book: great romance, realistic plot and characters, humour is on point etc. This is my first Sarah Dessen and I don't think this is her best but I don't know if I would pick up any of her other books. Again its not the book is me, for that reason I do urge you all to pick it up and give it a go if you're on edge.

Tiger Lily | Jodi Lynn Anderson

☆☆☆☆☆

'Before Peter Pan belonged to Wendy, he belonged to the girl with the crow feather in her hair. . . .'

My lord!

I can definitely see people: romance readers/enthusiasts, disney/fairytale fans and people who have read other books by Jodi Lynn Anderson and you all will most definitely going to be disappointed. You aren't supposed to read this for those specific reasons, romance for example. This book! Oh my, this book! How do I even fathom this book into words? I don't think my synopsis of the book would do it any justice so here is the blurb on goodreads (crossing my fingers that this intrigues many of you to pick it up.) 

"Fifteen-year-old Tiger Lily doesn't believe in love stories or happy endings. Then she meets the alluring teenage Peter Pan in the forbidden woods of Neverland and immediately falls under his spell.

Peter is unlike anyone she's ever known. Impetuous and brave, he both scares and enthralls her. As the leader of the Lost Boys, the most fearsome of Neverland's inhabitants, Peter is an unthinkable match for Tiger Lily. Soon, she is risking everything—her family, her future—to be with him. When she is faced with marriage to a terrible man in her own tribe, she must choose between the life she's always known and running away to an uncertain future with Peter.

With enemies threatening to tear them apart, the lovers seem doomed. But it's the arrival of Wendy Darling, an English girl who's everything Tiger Lily is not, that leads Tiger Lily to discover that the most dangerous enemies can live inside even the most loyal and loving heart."


This story takes place in Neverland but not Neverland as we know it. The unspoken truth of Neverland. The fact that love doesn't always triumph and the good may fall.  

It follows a first person perspective of Tinkerbell; this gives us a wider view of perspectives of different characters, it's much more personal in Tinks perspective. This book is cleverly entwined with the disney story as we know it, the original and a few elements of surprise. It's not a re-telling. 


I would have never picked this up, ever. Seriously! Like the only reason I did was because one of my friends: Tilda-who never reads anything and she said it was worthwhile and my other friend Tess said the same thing. So when I was browsing the bookstore (as you do) and I came across the paperback edition and I read the synopsis I just thought this was another cheesy romance and I remember thinking it was kinda babyish; with the whole Peter Pan prospect of the book, but lemme just say you are never to old for Peter Pan or any fairytale matter of fact!  

There is a sentence that I would like to share from this book: "...but men don't want women who are brave. They want women who make them feel like men." As a feminist this is something I see regularly, but the fact of the matter is that it's very much true. I won't bore anyone with my feminist antics but I'll just let this sentence sit with you. If you will. 

These characters and the settings are so loveable, you slowly find yourself falling in-love with the writing and the characters and then it all breaks your heart but you still adore the book. Wow, this really blew me away. I didn't expect it to move me like it did, but it's beautiful. There isn't anything I disliked about this which is kinda weird, I always somehow find something to itch on. However the ending was what I was dreading and for good reason, it wasn't what I wanted any of us readers wanted but thats what I loved about this book and the author. 

My first book by Jodi Lynn Anderson and I'm already in love with her writing. I'm definitely going to pick up her newest book: The Vanishing Season. Highly, highly recommend this! Probably one of my favourite books of 2014 with CoHF by Cassandra Clare.

Just One Day | Gayle Forman

☆☆☆☆

This was such a 'weird' book for me. At one point I loved it and then I have no idea what happened and then I loved it again. What? This book did make my heart melt at times and crumble into a million tiny pieces as well. It's like a brilliant contrast between travelling and romance. 

I want to say I read this in JUST ONE DAY but its more like ONE and a HALF. Just One Day isn't Happy Happy, I bloody cried! Why am I reading emotional-baggage-y/a-contemporary's these days? I have no idea. 

Just One Day is about Allyson Healey-who is described as 'just like her suitcase'-who has taken up a post graduation European tour and on the last day she meets a boy: (of course) Willem, who is the total opposite of Allyson-very free spirited; a great actor and when she invites her to ditch her plans and go to Paris for Just One Day, how could she resist? 

The first third of the book and the last were my favourite parts,  just felt more happened there than in the middle. I loved and I mean LOVED this main character in the beginning, the key word here being the beginning. I related to her in more than one way and I sometimes appreciate when this happens in a book, not always though. However Allyson got so irritating after the first third it was unbelievable. I mean she gets to travel around all these beautiful, fantastic places and she feels bad for herself because these cities weren't like they were portrayed in the movies or what she would hoped and thought up to be. Allyson views every single female character in this book that isn't her with disdain, I swear. Uhh and she is also like the most annoying female heroine I have every read, she is up there with America Singer, there is just so much stupid whining. She goes on about all these girls who are prettier than her but everyone seems to find her smoking hot anyways, like in what mindset was this okay, like it's so messed up. This is my first book that I've read by Gayle Forman. Not exactly sure if this is how she writes/portrays her characters 'normally' but if it is I don't like it at all. 

The middle half or second third was ehh for me, only because there is a sense of depression which I'm not personally fond of reading so that was very slow and hard to get through. But no matter how hard I tried to relate in whatever way with this main character after the first third was impossible. I don't 'read' to relate to the characters but the fact that I did in this particular book in the first third I thought I would like it very much, only cause it's like you but written. 

I absolutely adored that this was very much a realistic contemporary and the Shakespeare parallels were fantastic. Once I got close to end of this book, oh my god the anticipation and let me just tell you I really loved Willem he is wonderful and I do plan on reading Just One Year the sequel because I want to know what happens. I may not like the book entirely but I do like the journey and I want to know what happens. 

~fi

  x

Winger | Andrew Smith

☆☆☆☆☆

Well, wasn't this just an emotional roller-coaster. This was such a great read and I'm so glad I picked it up. Honestly though, why did it take me this long? we'll never know. Winger is about a fourteen year-old (I was gonna say little boy but...); Ryan Dean West who's in his junior year of a rich kid boarding school. He has his ups and downs with his friends, fitting in, bullying, being the youngest and the girl he loves. Ryan Dean manages to survive life's complications and finds somewhat 'peace' afterwords. The worlds most shittyest synopsis of a book ever but it'll have to do, for now. Just check it out would you!

Before I even go into my feels lets talk about the physical book, please? I mean the cover is eh but I love how the front is Ryan Dean and the back is Ryan Dean but a drawn version. The spine tho, yes the spine! Absolutely in-love with this spine, might just be the best spine in my entire book collection. It's up there with my gorgeous penguin deluxe edition of Jane Eyre.

How does a book make you laugh your ass of one minute then rip your heart out and crushes it into a million tiny pieces the next? HOWWW?????!?! Bittersweet this was for me. I adored this book so very much, if I could give it a higher rating I would. No doubt.

I didn't expect to  it as much as I did, the main character was a bit of a hassle for me in the first few pages, but ayye isn't every book character. I mean I like how this main was flawed and not 'perfect'. The main character in this book goes through a transformation (like most characters) but this one was so well written and I can't. His journey throughout the book is a journey us-readers truly indulge in and in my case my emotions where everywhere, literally. I thought this would be a semi traumatic book because of the bullying but that isn't half of it. Why didn't anyone warn me! I so was not prepared. I appreciated every single character and was very entertained. The humour in this is on point, the amount of times I laughed my head of during this book is countless.

Andrew Smith is absolutely amazing and such a great person. Not to mention or brag but he did favourite one of my tweets (made my day) where I tweeted that this book was making me emotional and AHHHHHHH! The writing style is something you kinda have to get into and for me it was like two pages in but I do understand people who don't particularly like the writing style but I did and I thought it was fantastic.

I highly enjoyed reading this and savoured every moment, highly recommend!


~fi
  x

Cruel Beauty | Rosamond Hodge

☆☆☆.5 

'Her mission was to kill him, her destiny was to love him'

FunFact: I read this on my kindle in one sitting on my plane ride and I very much enjoyed the experience and the book.I’m still contemplating whether to give it the 3.5 or the 4 but I think a percentage would be better; in that case I give it a solid 85%.

This book was straight up complex yet super interesting. Definitely not an easy breezy book that you can skim through; you really have to understand it to be able to read it. I didn’t think that I would actually like this at all but it was very intriguing especially the first third of this book. The book starts of very vague; it is a y/a stand alone.Based on 'The Beauty and The Beast', Cruel Beauty is about a girl called Nyx and since birth she has hated the evil ruler of her kingdom because of a bargain initiated by her father, since birth she has been training to kill him even though she also has to marry him.

I highly, highly enjoyed reading about this main character: Nyx, she was very cool. She was by no mean the greatest female protagonist I have ever read, I mean she had her flaws but she wasn’t “not like other girls” and I loved that Rosamond Hodge wrote this heroine with realistic characteristics and personality. There were times where I despised her stupid actions and feelings; most of the book I was screaming “SWALLOW THOSE BUTTERFLIES, NYX”. Absolutely loved her from the beginning. I honestly really liked all the characters for what they’re worth and I especially envied all their names; their names were the best!This book is written in first person with Nyx’s point of view. It’s set in a somewhat medieval point in time because of the dialogue and terminology however there was so much about Greek Mythology and I wasn’t complaining because I love learning things in books and I just happened to learn a bit more about Greek Mythology in this one.

A crucial part of this novel is that there’s a hella lot of Greek mythology that you have to understand. I by no means am a specialist in Greek mythology but I do know quite a bit, mostly from Percy Jackson and the Olympians because that whole series is based on Greek gods and what not. So I was somewhat familiar with the terminology but I can see where some people my struggle if they don’t know very much or anything about the Greek gods and that would be where they get into a slump and really dislike the book merely because they don’t understand any of it. The mythology straight up is hard to grasp at once (maybe that’s just me) especially if you don’t know anything about it prior, It’s not written like it is in the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan where the learning is very easy to understand but then again that's middle-grade.

That also brings me to the writing style of this book and I’m gonna be frank here, I didn’t not like it but I didn’t love it either. Maybe it was the world it was written in and the time but it just wasn’t doing it for me, although I strongly encourage you to give it a go even if you’re sensitive to writing styles. The one thing that let me down had to be how fast the romance picked up in this book. At first I thought it was unrealistic and dumb; just another one of those books where they slip in an unexpected romance just to increase the readings but later did I realise the impact and how well written and crafted it was. Not sure if I would recomend this but if you're really into Mythology and Fantasy this is the book that ticks all that. Its not that I didn't enjoy the book because I did yet I only have it a 3.5 because of the writing style.

~fi
  x

Across The Universe | Beth Revis

☆☆☆☆

Oh thank god we finally get a proper y/a sci-fi where romance doesn't depict the whole book! 

'A love out of time. A spaceship built of secrets and murder.' 

Across The Universe in my opinion is a very unique young-adult-sci-fi novel where sixteen year old Amy joins her parents on board a spaceship 'godspeed' to theoretically be frozen and awaken at a new planet three hundred years later in the future. However she unfortunately gets awaken fifty years too early. Amy then realises that she didn't 'accidentally' wake up from some computer malfunction but because some is out to kill her and possibly her parents and the other frozen cargo. She then has to discover the secrets of the this spaceship and meeting the inhabitants. She befriends Elder and Harley in the process of figuring out who awakened her. 

Can we talk about how I don't actually have the beautiful hardcover edition of this book *sighs* I have the boring space-n-star-less edition. God damn publishing companies, damnnnn. If you have the hardcover edition I am super jealous of you.

                        My favourite part:

She starts crying. Not soft, sad tears, but the angry sort like she hates the whole world or at least the ship that's now her world . So I do what any reasonable person would do when faced with a crying girl.

I get the frex out of there.

This honestly was a well written y/a sci-fi novel. There was so much action (passive action?) that I literally sped through the book. The idea and plot line for this novel was greatly thought out; the characters were brilliant, however Amy one of the mains was slightly annoying for me. This is another great and I mean GREAT representation of a y/a book where the romance isn't the only 'hot topic' but there was a solid plot and grounded characters, yes there was romance but it was kept to a minimal (which makes it far more realistic!) probably because this is a trilogy. The book may sound confusing to most people I can relate because I basically don't read books that have strong themes of sci-fi, apocalyptic, paranormal and aliens, no no noo. However Beth Revis writes this brilliantly with the duel perspectives and the whole book is just so damn intriguing. I'm very please to hear that this isn't then end for these characters and this world because I'm starting to really, really love it. 

The only thing I struggled with was the lingo or the 'space language', if you will. I understand that this was all for effect and it just helped the world building and the personality and dialogue between the characters, for example a few words: chutz, stars, frexing (my personal favourite) etc. I am in no means saying that this was pointless, its quite the opposite where I totally understand why this 'lingo' was used, this was just a mere observation a took down what I was reading. I also got very confused with the ship godspeed and how it was laid out and where everything was but not to fret there is a map/diagram insert in the book. 

All in all I highly recommend if you like sci-fi and if you don't want something where romance takes it all up, however even if you love romance I still think you should pick it up because what romance there is it's very cute and ship/otp worthy. Spoilery section bellow. 

~fi

  x

Around the second third of the book I did have a theory that the whole Eldest/Elder thing had something to do with all these killings; that the Elder between Eldest and present Elder was still alive and thats why he was able to get access into the cargo and stuff. I was right so HA! I was deffinely onto something along the lines of the dead Elder was still alive. I'm wasn't that fond of Harley or Amy, Harley was just sorta third-wheeling for me but I did start to like him more as the book progressed and then......he died......wow. Amy was always sorta annoying I mean Elder would call her 'beautiful' and hold her hand and she totally ignonred him, like GIRl I understand you're a little shook up but don't be a rude meanhead. I never truly liked Eldest either so when he died I was all for it, I was holy-mofo shocked when we learn there was no plague with disease but more of a protest/riot. Neither did I suspect Orion of anything but lmao right, shocker. The damn phydus though.