Tag Archives: contemporary

April Uppercase Box Unboxing

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Hey peeps, I’m here with another Uppercase Box unboxing for you! If you don’t know what Uppercase is, as it says on the website, it’s “a young adult book-of-the-month subscription box. Simply put: You sign up and receive a recently published YA book and awesome book-related items every month! Plus you’ll access exclusive book content and a one-of-a-kind reading experience to dive deeper into each story.”

This month’s box had some added extra goodies because a) I had that option to pay for some extra things, and b) because something happened with it and they added a poster as an apology.

Here’s what was inside:

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  • A signed copy of Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here by Anna Breslaw
  • Stickers that reflect the book
  • I read YA pin & invite to events from May 2-6
  • A Book Addict keychain from Peachy Apricot
  • Hagrid and Buckbeak bookmarks from BeeDoo (extra)
  • The Book of Magical Things notebook (extra)
  • Poster (added extra)
  • Letter & bookmark with extra goodies

This month’s box was seriously awesome! I already have the keychain on my keyring – I didn’t waste any time with that! And I hung up the poster next to my shelves (which also covers up a chip in the paint on the wall, shhhhh).

The book itself sounds interesting because it deals with more of the Internet side of relationships and things than other contemporary books do, at least from what I’ve read so far. I’m excited to read it because it also seems like it’s going to be a funny book.

This month’s Uppercase was awesome! I’m still going to continue this subscription box as I like the items in it a lot and still want to get at least something each month.

Let me know if you’ve read the book yet (though it just came out April 19th) and what your thoughts are on it. What did you think of the items inside? Do you get any book subscriptions? Let me know!

Top 5 Wednesday: Books On Hard Topics

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Welcome to another Top 5 Wednesday which is now hosted by Sam from Thoughts on Tomes. Today’s topic is about our top five books on hard topics. If you’re wondering what a hard topic is it’s a topic that is something heavy such as mental illness, eating disorders, sickness, etc. So these are my picks:

5. My Heart and Other Black Holes by Jasmine Warga

myheartandotherblackholes

This book deals with the topic of suicide and when I read it I felt like I could relate to a lot of what was being said and some of the words and sentences really stuck out to me. Though it did have flaws I think that it handled the subject pretty well, but it’s always a hard topic to really grasp.

4. This is Where It Ends by Marieke Nijkamp

thisiswhereitends

This one deals with school shootings and it’s a fast-paced story that really just had me needing to know what happens next. I thought that some parts were kind of unnecessary or that it didn’t make sense given the situation, but overall I really enjoyed it.

3. Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon

everything

This one is about a few things: a girl with a very serious health condition, and a mother with mental health issues. It’s a cutesy read for sure, but there are some underlying problems within the book that surface a lot toward the end especially.

2. None of the Above by I.W. Gregorio

noneoftheabove

This deals with the topic of being an intersex person and what it’s like discovering that, plus bullying and how to reach out for help. It’s a fascinating read given I had never heard the term intersex before reading this book and so I thought it was a great eye opener for that reason.

1 . Every Last Word by Tamara Ireland Stone

everylastword

This book deals with a particular kind of OCD where the main character uses poetry to help her cope with it. It’s also got quite a bit of romance, too, but I love the way it’s handled and I found myself once again relating to a lot of what was said.

Though some of these reads are on the lighter side of the spectrum for hard topics, I think that they’re still important because those kinds of things are so broad and it’s hard to pinpoint an exact way people react and cope and live; we’re all varied individuals, after all.

Let me know some of the books that you’d recommend to me on hard topics!

This Is Where It Ends Book Review

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thisiswhereitendsTitle: This Is Where It Ends
Author: Marieke Nijkamp
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Publication Date: January 5, 2016
Genre: Young Adult – Fiction, Realistic Fiction, Contemporary
Pages: 282
Format: Purchased Hardcover

10:00 a.m.
The principal of Opportunity, Alabama’s high school finishes her speech, welcoming the entire student body to a new semester and encouraging them to excel and achieve.

10:02 a.m.
The students get up to leave the auditorium for their next class.

10:03
The auditorium doors won’t open.

10:05
Someone starts shooting.

Told over the span of 54 harrowing minutes from four different perspectives, terror reigns as one student’s calculated revenge turns into the ultimate game of survival.

This story is on a sensitive topic of school shootings, so please take that into consideration before reading it.

I knew as soon as I picked this book up that it would be a controversial one. I knew that people were going to die in it. I knew I’d be sad. But wow, I didn’t expect to be blown away.

The story follows four individuals who are all linked through one person in some way: Tomas, Sylv, Autumn, and Claire. Each chapter has each person’s point of view during that set time of what is taking place, so each section of story is happening at the same time as another within that time frame, which I thought was actually pretty cool.

Normally I would talk about each character individually, but this book didn’t really allow for a lot of growth or anything like that in the characters because everything did happen within an hour’s time. But I will say that I believe each character learned something about themselves during that time and that, though terrible as their experience was, if we were to see them a length of time from now that they would have learned and grown from that tragedy.

It was a fast paced story that took place over the course of 54 minutes, which is incredible to think about, because while the characters talked about what they were doing and how they wanted to get through it, there were also flashbacks that they would have as they remembered memories that were joyful to them, or sad, or significant. Many of these memories traced back to the shooter, but some of them were memories for the sake of remembering. I think that including these flashbacks was important because I’m sure that for many in life or death situations, these kinds of things are going to come up in your mind.

I did have a few problems with the book, though, such as in some ways I’m not entirely sure the gravity of the situations was truly reached from certain characters’ perspectives, and that there were a few lines that I don’t think would actually have happened in real life that were in there, but then again, people react to situations differently, so maybe those lines are possible (like Tomas flirting with the cheerleader…sort of).

I also felt that, at the end, I was sad for many reasons but one of them being what happened with the shooter. I just wish more had been explored into his own psychology and that maybe we could have gotten a perspective from him. I think that definitely would have made the story even more interesting and gripping than it already was.

Other than that, I felt completely gripped by the story and couldn’t put it down; I needed to know what happened next. Each perspective lead to something hidden and meaningful and I felt so much sadness and shock over the situation that I was reading about. I know these things happen in real life, and I really wish they didn’t, and I was glad to read about a book that dealt with the issue.

I gave this book 4/5 stars and recommend it.

Anna and the French Kiss Book Review

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annaandthefrenchkissTitle: Anna and the French Kiss
Series: Anna and the French Kiss #1
Author: Stephanie Perkins
Publisher: Speak
Publication Date: December 2, 2010
Genre: Young Adult – Romance, Contemporary
Pages: 372
Format: Purchased Paperback

Can Anna find love in the City of Light?

Anna is happy in Atlanta. She has a loyal best friend and a crush on her coworker at the movie theater, who is just starting to return her affection. So she’s not too pleased when her father decides to send her to a boarding school in Paris for her senior year. But despite not speaking a word of French, Anna meets some cool new friends, including the handsome Étienne St. Clair, who quickly becomes her best friend. Unfortunately, he’s taken–and Anna might be too. Will a year of romantic near misses end with the French kiss she’s been waiting for?

This was such a cute book with romance, angst, friendship, and a theme of loneliness.

I’ve heard a lot of rave about this book for a long time now, and I was always curious as to what all the hype was about so I finally got to it and now I understand.

This was a really cute YA contemporary that held my interest from beginning to end. The plot was pretty straightforward about love and relationships, but it also dealt with friendship and loneliness as a bigger encompassing theme.

The story follows Anna, a seventeen year old girl who is sent off to study abroad for her senior year of high school in Paris. Where any other teen would be excited, Anna wasn’t because of her crush on a coworker, as well as leaving her friends and family behind. But, she goes anyway and slowly starts to make friends at her new school.

And of course the main love interest is introduced pretty early on and the first thing Anna notices is his hair. And then she slowly starts to notice other things about him – his crooked bottom teeth, his height, his nail biting habit, his eyes – and it’s like her heart knows nothing else.

It was cute and filled with angst and longing and I could totally understand this thinking back to my teenage years.

Anna, as a character, was actually fairly fun. I like how the story was narrated in first person through Anna’s eyes and that she enjoyed so much around her as time progressed. I thought that incorporating her passion of movies was actually nice because it’s not very often you read about a girl in YA who’s into movies like that (she wants to go to college for film review, which is neat). I thought that at times she was a little obsessive over whether or not Etienne St. Clair actually liked her or not, or if her feelings were weird, but I think part of that was just her growing a bond and friendship with him.

She had her own family drama going on: her father is a rich author who’s made cheesy novels and had movies based off of those novels; her mom and little brother live in Atlanta Georgia; her best friend babysits her brother, etc. When she describes some of the things that happens around the holidays I think that she’s just complaining, but then again, we were all teens once and we all did the same thing, so I couldn’t fault her for it.

Otherwise I thought that she handled a lot of situations pretty well and that she and the relationship she formed with Etienne was natural and progressive, albeit a bit strenuous.

Etienne is an American/French/British dude who was born in America, raised in London, but has a French name. It was kind of confusing at first, but he grew on me soon enough. I thought that he was fun and charming and flirty, and that he was a really great friend. He could come off as overly protective sometimes, but he had feelings for Anna and wanted to defend her in certain situations (and that’s totally fine because in certain situations I was glad that he did). Though his back and forth thing with his girlfriend and his feelings was irritating, I got that with what was going on in his family life he didn’t want to be alone and change things so suddenly.

I liked that he asked Anna permission before kissing her and didn’t force anything and it was all natural and flowing. That was probably my favorite part because it was SO long awaited. So cute.

I thought that the friendships that Anna formed were important, too, and even though they weren’t seen in depth, there were still bits and pieces that shone through that showed that her friends do care about her and that even if they make mistakes that things can be mended. I wish that the friendships could have been seen just a little bit more in depth, but I did enjoy the bits we got.

I really enjoyed this book and thought that even though a lot of it was angsty and whatnot, that it was worth it in the end. Though there was fighting and bickering, all friends fight every now and then, and eventually they make up.

I think that the point of the loneliness is that, when you’re young and in love, that feeling can really encompass everything in your life and it can be hard to function when change is introduced. I think that Perkins handled that theme well and that it was shown in a way that seemed realistic.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book, and though my biggest peeves were probably the back and forth drama with Etienne, I think that this was a really great and solid YA contemporary.

I rated this book 4.5/5 stars and recommend it!

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Enjoyed That Aren’t My Typical Kind of Book

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Hey peeps and welcome to another Top Ten Tuesday as hosted by the lovely people of The Broke & the Bookish. Today’s topic is all about some of the books that I enjoyed in the last yearish that aren’t my typical kind of book/genre that I gravitate toward. So I looked back on my Goodreads reading challenge from last year and discovered that a) I read A LOT of fantasy/sci-fi, and 2) I barely read any contemporary – and ones that I enjoyed, no less.

So, for this week’s TTT, I’ll be talking about contemporary that I enjoyed in the last yearish, plus one from this year!

  1. Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell. I loved this book when I read it back in 2014. Rainbow’s reading style is a little difficult to get into, but once I’m into it, I’m hooked. I love the stories she tells and how raw and real they can be, and I just love the dynamic between the two main characters of the book and the romance and everything about it.
  2. Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. I LOVE THIS BOOK. It’s probably my favorite contemporary book ever because I could just relate to it so much that it wasn’t even funny. I loved the fangirl aspect, the romance, the school crises, and just everything about it. So good.
  3. To All the Boys I Loved Before by Jenny Han. I thought that this was a cute romance with a nice family dynamic because you don’t often see good family dynamics in YA, which I just don’t get, but whatever. I enjoyed reading this book and the drama in it.
  4. None of the Above by I.W. Gregorio. This was my first book reading about an intersex individual and I thought that it was well done. It was a good book to read about the kinds of realities people can face and deal with not only on the outside, but the inside as well.
  5. Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli. SO MUCH CUTE I CAN’T EVEN DEAL. GO READ IT. NOW.
  6. My Heart & Other Black Holes by Jasmine Warga. A sensitive topic of suicide in this book, but I still enjoyed it. I felt there were a lot of beautiful lines in the book that spoke to me because of my own personal experiences with the topic.
  7. The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith. And with the longest title ever award (again), I thought this was a cute romance story about a girl and a guy who meet at an airport and grow to really like each other in such a short amount of time.
  8. P.S. I Still Love You by Jenny Han. The sequel to To All the Boys, I enjoyed this book even though I found the love triangle to be more plot device than anything. But it was still cute and stuff.
  9. Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon. A girl allergic to everything, a new next door neighbor with a broken family, a secret, and love? Sign me up.
  10. Every Last Word by Tamara Ireland Stone. I loved this book and thought that it did a good job portraying a certain type of OCD without being over the top with it. Plus, the romance was nice, too.

So there you have it! I just realized that I’ve only read ten contemporaries over the last year and a half. The other 60ish books? Fantasy/sci-fi. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

What is the genre you typically don’t gravitate towards that you read in the last year or so? Did you find you enjoyed most of the books in that genre, or did you not like them much? Let me know!