Friday, 17 July 2015

Love and Misadventure | Lang Leav





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'Love is a game of tic-tac-toe,
constantly waiting for the next x or o.'


This is Lang Leav's first book: Love & Misadventure. I read her second book Lullabies before this one and I have a review of that here. I mention in that review that it was my first ever poetry book and that I really enjoyed it. In that review I mention my favourite poems and I also recommend you all some songs that were fitting for the book to listen to while reading or just some additions to your music library, I plan on doing the same fore this review. I will however go more into Lang Leav's writing styles as well as the poems themselves. 

A few of my favourite poems in this are: 
Xs and Os
Art and Books
His Word
A Well-Dressed Man
A Stranger 
Wallflower
Rogue Planets 
A Question 
Lost Things 
Love Lost
Wishful Thinking 
First Love 
He and I
Soul Mates
A Dream
Beautiful
Souls 

If you've read my Lullabies review you could see I had less 'favourite poems' than this review but that's only because this time I remembered to label the pages with some bright pink stickies. For the Lullabies review I just tried to flip through the whole book and tried to find the poems that stuck out to me again and that's partially why I have less favourite poems in that review. I also want to mention that I think I preferred reading Lullabies to Love and Misadventure. 

In this book filled with beautiful poetry there is different lengths of poems. What I mean by different lengths is that some poems Lang Leav has written are super long and some super short, for example the one above (Xs and Os). Lang Leav is also an extremely talented artist who drew/painted the image on the front cover. 

With Lang Leav I always say she has a thing with words and she really does! But sometimes her poems can fall flat but then again some poems may speak to others more than they may speak to me. People love different things. I may personally find that particular poem boring or un-relatable and someone else might have just fallen in love with that and that exact night their are gonna recite it to everyone they know. That's why I don't judge the poems as much as I do novels. Just like when I did my poetry course work for school there were poems that my teacher loved and the rest of us hated and some my friends really liked and I was just like 'Really? No thanks!' 

I've read some nasty reviews for this which really upset me. There are some people who dislike the poetry and then there are people who are bashing Land Leav's talent. I'm not judging the people writing the review because you're allowed to review your experience and I do respect your opinion, however if your opinion dehumanise someones existence then I will kill you. I will admit, like I said above, that some of Lang Leav's poems can fall flat but then again like I also said before, there will be many people who like a certain poem more than me. That is because as the reader you take on these poems as the protagonist and the poems mould into your lifestyle and your relationship. So for example, if there is a poem about long distance relationships and you're not in one then OBVIOUSLY THAT WON'T RELATE TO YOU! But don't go bash the writer! 

If you straight up don't like the writing and the poems, that fine! There is nothing wrong with that. You're allowed to not like this and give it a rating of one star but don't then go ahead and review the book and bash the writer with comments of 'no talent' or that she 'should not have made a career in writing shit' because that's just plain rude! When clearly this book has an average rating of 4.10 stars! So maybe it's just you! I personally didn't love the book either (hence the three star rating) but I will say Lang Leav isn't a terrible poetess. Moreover her other poem book Lullabies won the goodreads choice best poetry last year. Her writing isn't 'artistic genius' or that her words make the world move and everything is so lush. It's not like that. I gave it a 3 star rating because some of the poems were good and the rest of them were iffy, poorly executed and some even badly written. But I am not sitting here telling you not to read it because (1) she is a woman, (2) she has 'no talent', (3) I don't like reading romantic poetry, (4) it's heteronormative, (5) I'm speaking on behalf of the entire world, (6) I'm a poetry enthusiast. 

I want to address the heteronormativeness of this book. Yes, shocker most of the poems are based of heterosexual relationships, I want to put that out there because some people may prefer not to read this which is understandable. However some of the poems are from the POV of a guy or a girl and some of it is abstract. Like I said in my Lullabies review that it's much more memorable to read this over a few days, even weeks or just when you want to read some lovely poetry to brighten your day rather than reading it all in one sitting. 

Just like last time, I will recommend some music that (1) goes with the book and (2) just cute songs that you should all have a listen to! 

Happy - Marina and The Diamonds 
Goddess - Banks 
Someone New - Banks 
Is There Somewhere - HALSEY (PLEASE listen to her whole EP, IT'S AMAZING!) 
You Are In Love - Taylor Swift
I Stand Corrected - Vampire Weekend 
Shine - Years and Years (ALSO THEIR WHOLE NEW ALBUM IS ANGELIC, it's called 'Communion' go check it out! 
Wicked Game - Chirs Isaak 
Past Lives - BØRNS 
Young Blood - Birdy
Jet Pack Blues - Fall Out Boy
Go Your Own Way - Fleetwood Mac
Fireproof - One Direction
Pyramids - Frank Ocean 
Someone New - Hozier 
Is This Love? - James Arthur 
High Hopes - Kodaline 
Be Together - Major Lazer ft. Wild Belle 
Need The Sun To Break - James Bay...and the rest of James Bay's album! 
Trap Queen - Fetty Wap (this is the song I'm currently obsessed with and I guess it's kinda a long shot but I guess you could say it's a love song, it might not be as fitting as the rest of the songs though.

There are some songs on here that I have repeated and are also on my Lullabies review because THEY ARE WONDERFUL! I also tried to put one song for each artist even though I may love many of their songs I didn't want to bombard the list and I didn't want to make this list too generic. I wanted to put some new music out there as well. I didn't want to make the list very obvious songs that would go on here and songs that everyone has heard, so that's why many of my love songs/hopeless romantics aren't on here (if they were I would need to make a whole post for it!). Obviously Sam Smith and Ed Sheeran would be on this list but like I said I didn't want to make this too generic. I've got some oldies in there as well! Hope you enjoyed my recommendations and this review! 

Love u. 

ALSO, Eid Mubarak to everyone celebrating today or tomorrow!!! Sending you all lots of love, wishing you a wonderful day and I HOPE YOUR OUTFITS SPARKLE!    


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Saturday, 11 July 2015

The Heir | Kiera Cass




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Hi, okay so I've been gone a long time for many reasons which I will go into but first I would like to greet all these new people who have stumbled onto my blog. Hello! I'm Tia and it's very nice to meet you. I hope you stay a while and enjoy my reviews with some ice lollies. 

Basically, I had to deal with a loss in my family which was very tragic and unexpected which meant I took time to mourn, grieve; deal with it and cry. I haven't worn makeup in almost two weeks because it was inconvenient considering it would just be ruined with all my tears. It also meant I would have to travel back to all my family and friends so we could all be together for the funeral. I was very sad the first couple of days and now I'm getting better but it still really hurts. That being said I haven't been reading much over this past week, however I was currently reading this (The Heir) when this ordeal happened and I was almost done with it but I stopped reading it and only picked it up again a few nights ago and completed it in a sitting. Even though I finished reading the book I didn't feel like reviewing it till now, so Hi! I'm back. 

The Heir is a Young Adult, Dystopian and is also the sequel to The Selection trilogy by Kiera Cass. Although on goodreads this is considered as book #4. My thoughts of this book in a nutshell? Well, it was a fucking mess. I knew it was gonna be bad but I just thought to give it a go and see where it ends up, but bloody hell DON'T! 

Now this is a hard book to not spoil for you, so if you want to read The Selection series and don't want to be spoiled by the sequel to that trilogy The Heir (this book!) then stop reading and go eat some vanilla ice cream. Like, stop now, I'm warning ya'll, I will spoil after this!

America Singer dies!

Sike! 

Also the first book came out in 2012 so...girl bye! Although that whole series is predictable and you all knew who America Singer was gonna end up with so with that being said, enjoy this review on her daughter Eadlyn Schreave, who surprise surprise also goes through a 'selection' (gross). 

If you're someone who has read the prior trilogy and are a bit iffy on wether to read this (don't) then you're at the right place. For you all I will also keep this very spoiler free, like all the rest of my reviews but just to put it out there, this is spoiler free. 

Eighteen years ago, America Singer entered the Selection and won Prince Maxon's heart. Now the time has come for Princess Eadlyn to hold a Selection of her own. Eadlyn doesn't expect her Selection to be anything like her parents' fairy-tale love story...but as the competition begins, she may discover that finding her own happily ever after isn't as impossible as she's always thought. A new generation of swoonworthy characters and captivating romance awaits in the fourth book of the Selection series! This is the synopsis on goodreads.

I used to have the reviews I did for the three books prior to this: The Selection, The Elite and The One but I reverted them all to drafts because I reviewed them when I was a baby sunflower and they are a little rusty and....bad. So I don't have them up but if I did I would link you all to them, however I will recommend reading some of the fantastic reviews on goodreads of other wonderful reviewers. Like I said before you will have to read those before you can read this or you will be in for many spoilers and you won't understand anything.

What is a 'Selection'? 

Good question. It's basically the same this as if you've ever watched The Bachelor or The Bachelorette, yeah, that's what it is with like dystopia (not much) and hella drama. 

The thing is when I first read The Selection I was in love. I gave it 5/5 stars; it was amazing. As we progress through that trilogy to the second book The Elite, the plot and idea got less and less interesting and when we ended with The One, everything was so predictable and it just got boring. Kiera Cass had some plot twists in the last book that were TOTALLY unnecessary, I shouldn't even call that a plot twist to be honest. Looking back the whole reason I adored The Selection books at first was because I was at that age that romance was such a buzz and the only thing in young adult literature. I believed that women had to have a love interest and had to be naturally beautiful and gorgeous. As I have grown up my genre and taste of books have slightly altered and I've grown as a person and realised so many different things. If you asked me to read The Selection series now, I probably would not love it as much (I would hate it). 

Eadlyn Schreave is nothing like America Singer, she's WORSE! In my opinion anyways and I'll tell you why. 

So many reviews that I've read of this have said that they love the fact that Eadlyn is not like America but I hate that! Like, I didn't like America either but at least she wasn't a total brat and had some manners. I have no idea how Kiera Cass wrote Eadlyn and who she was imagining when writing her (if she was) but it was a mess! I knew from the beginning that I wasn't gonna like her. At all. No joke. America Singer is #1 on my most hated female characters in books and Eadlyn Schreave is #2.

Schreave....what is that. What. Is. That. Name. 

Also how do you pronounce her name? I've been saying/reading Ed-lin or is it Eid-lin. I still don't know I've been pronouncing it the whole time as Ed-eh-lin which is 100% wrong but she was so irrelevant I didn't care. Don't get me started on her last name, shreeve? #sorrynotsorry

No matter how much I dislike Kiera Cass's books I can never understand why I adore her writing. I have a theory that it's because her writing is so easy to read and follow; it just flows nicely. It's one of those books you could just read in a few hours because the writing style is so easy to follow. Just the other day I was telling a friend of mine who had also read the three books before this one but decided to not pick up and read this (for obvious reasons and I don't question her at all), is also trying to read 100 books this year. So I told her that if she ever needed to read a book quick to keep up with trying to read 100 books she could always pick this up even though she may hate it, only because it's a quick book to fly through. 

The main character is Eadlyn Schreave and in The Selection series: America Singer. These books do have minor characters but they aren't very memorable which is another reason these books lack proper and good character development. Kiera Cass seems to just plop her characters here and there with minimal background or development. You'll find yourself reading and be like 'Oh yeah, that character! I totally forgot they were there.' 

Another thing I would like to touch on is the world building in these books is so.....bad lacking. It is said to be a dystopian and in the books the world has these 'casts' that is literally brushed upon. There is so much potential in this series if everything was just amped up but not the romance! There is already enough of that. This is more of a romantic dystopian rather than a dystopian. 

All in all, if you're wondering why I chose to read this even though I had learnt my lesson with the prior three books and obviously reflected upon them and my perception has changed. The whole reason I chose to read this is because I thought it would be different (even better?) and I thought that the fact I've invested my time into three books I might as well just continue and read the fourth but I think that's all I'm doing. I'm sure there is gonna be a fifth and maybe a sixth but I'm done. 

One thing I will give Kiera Cass alongside her writing is the cover of these books. They are absolutely breathtakingly gorgeous and I just....LOVE THEM! Publishing companies take note. Hopefully I don't come of as hating Mrs Cass because I'm sure she is a wonderful lady. I follow her on twitter and she is very funny, nevertheless I don't love her books. I would recommend you read her first book The Selection and to the people, who like me invested their time in three books, I would have to say just don't read this. 

Peace out. 


p.s
follow me on goodreads to find out what I'm reading next! 
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