New Blog. Please Follow!

I have decided to create a new book reviewing blog. I slightly don't like this one, it has a load of old rubbish reviews, plus i feel like i need a new start, to push me to become a better blogger.

Trust me, my new blog will be so much better than this one, where I plan to update with either reviews, meme's or other book related post's. It's definately worth following.

My New Blog: The Reading Journal

Abandon by Meg Cabot

Title: Abandon
Series: Abandon Trilogy #1
Author: Meg Cabot
Average Goodreads Rating: 3.67
My rating: 3 stars

Pierce knows what it's like to die.
Last year she flatlined following an accident.
During that time Pierce saw a dark world and met a mysterious and irresistible boy.
Now that boy, John Hayden has turned up at school. Everytime she sees him Pierce finds herself in terrible danger. Yet she's still drawn to him.
John wants to take her back to the place she fears the most: the Underworld.
The question is why?

Meg Cabot is a well known author whose books are known to be amazing and of course popular. I knew I just had to try one and Abandon happened to be the first one to catch my eye.

I had high expectations and because it took so long for me to finally get round to reading it, I had already planned exactly what I thought would happen, leaving me quite disappointed that the book didn't go that way.
The book had massive amount of potential which I believed that Meg was unable to reach.

It took me a while before I found myself able to get along with this book. The beginning and the middle were slightly boring, despite that a lot was happening, to the point that I came close to putting the book down and giving up on it forever, fortunately the end got pretty amazing and definitely gripping.

The book partly alternates between the past and present, which was obviously an up side to the book, except I found the way Meg did it almost impossible to understand. It was confusing and near enough possible to understand, due to no visible change in writing.

A Greek mythology theme takes place in the book, but I found it almost a waste of two lines, those two lines of course being the only two lines where Greek mythology seems to appear.
I can only hope it plays a bigger part in the rest of the trilogy.

I felt like the characters were not fully established or introduced.
Main character, Pierce was someone who I couldn't relate to, mainly due to not really being able to find out about her as a person, only her past.
John, is a mysterious character, who strangely enough I feel like I know more about than Pierce.

All in all the book was an ok read, and after such a cliffhanger ending, I will be checking out the sequel for sure!

Turned by Morgan Rice

Title: Turned
Series: Vampire Journals #1
Author: Morgan Rice
Goodreads Average Rating: 3.35

18 year old Caitlin Paine finds herself uprooted from her nice suburb and forced to attend a dangerous New York City high school when her Mom moves again. The one ray of light in her new surroundings is Jonah, a new classmate who takes an instant liking to her.

But before their romance can blossom, Caitlin suddenly finds herself changing. She is overcome by a superhuman strength, a sensitivity to light, a desire to feed--by feelings she does not understand. She seeks answers to what’s happening to her, and her cravings lead her to the wrong place at the wrong time. Her eyes are opened to a hidden world, right beneath her feet, thriving underground in New York City. She finds herself caught between two dangerous covens, right in the middle of a vampire war.

There's three things which in my mind make up a book:
-Decent story Line
-Writing Quality
-Decent character's
This book seems to lack all three of these things, though I will say that the story line had a lot of potential just the writing quality nor the character's were good. A 150 page book is not recommended for a YA book, as it's not enough time to have a well paced book.
This book began with a quite standard beginning, which was the only reason I made it through the book, but near enough straight away we were pulled into this so called 'action', which was where the book went dramatically down hill. It was confusing, completely unbelievable (even though a vampire book)and too book happened for a 150 page book.

The character's I couldn't get along with.
Caitlin, the main character, had barely any introduction, only the fact that her family were dysfunctional. There wasn't much to her and she just seemed rather bland and quite gormless.
Her brother just seemed to basically disappear and no one seemed to care, almost like the author was attempting to give this impression of a normal family you would find in America.
Character's walked in and out, and it got stupid in the end. I would not recommend this book at all, I couldn't get along with it. I don't even have anything good to say about this.
I give this book...

IMM and My Week (8/1/12)

In my mailbox is hosted my Kristi at The Story Siren.

Feed by Mira Grant (My Review)

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

Hate List by Jennifer Brown

My Week!

Current Books Completed this year: 4/53

Current Number of Books Completed This Week: 4

1. Feed by Mira Grant (Review)
2. Silence by Becca Fitzpatrick
3. The Lost Saint by Bree Despain (Review)
4. Hate List by Jennifer Brown

The Lost Saint by Bree Despain

Title: The Lost Saint
Author: Bree Despain
Series: The Dark Divine #2
Goodreads Average Rating: 4.10

 A family destroyed. A love threatened. An enemy returns.

Grace Divine made the ultimate sacrifice to cure Daniel Kalbi. She was infected with the werewolf curse while trying to save him, and lost her beloved brother in the process.

Desperate to find Jude, Grace befriends Talbot, a newcomer to town. But as the two grow closer, Grace's relationship with Daniel is put in danger - in more ways than one.

Unaware of the dark path she is walking, Grace begins to give into the wolf inside of her - not realizing that an enemy has returned and a deadly trap is about to be sprung.

Another second book which gives a series a bad name.

The first book, was amazing, enjoyable, slightly romantic, and action-packed.
The second book, this book, the cliché of a YA sequel.
I feel as though we spend the whole of the first book waiting for the most perfect couple's in the world to come together, but in the second book, we watch as the couple pull themselves apart, due to their own stupid acts, in the attempts of saving each other.

So yes, as you may of gathered I wasn’t the biggest fan of this book, I will be completely honest by saying that in fact the book was good and would definitely of received a higher rating if I wasn't forced to compare it to the first book.

The positive though, unlike The Dark Divine, this book is almost completely action-packed, making the reader stuck on the edge of their seat, unable to pull themselves away from the book. Each moment something, relatable to the storyline is happening throughout the whole book.

With the new, interesting storyline, brings introduction of the new characters, who I do not really know my opinion on mainly due to the fact that throughout the book your being told their good, then bad, then good again, to the point the only thing you want to do is completely forget the existence of the character, until they are fully needed.

Another fault with the characters, is based around the original set, though this is mainly directed to main character, Grace. Once a polite preacher’s daughter, who had her thoughts of rebellion, but was realistic for the role she played, took a massive step into becoming this wanna-be strong, inspirational character, who in the end makes a fool out of herself, and supports other books portrayal of weak females, being forced to depend upon male's to save them from every 'dangerous' event put in front of them.

Though I will it to her, that she isn't the only character to change, but least no one changed as much as her without a reason to

 I will carry on this series, despite all the bad things I found to say about it, it's definitely a series I wish to carry on.

I give this book:

Feed by Mira Grant

Title: Feed
Serious: Newsflash Trilogy #1
Author: Mira Grant
Average GoodReads rating: 4.01

The year was 2014. We had cured cancer. We had beaten the common cold. But in doing so we created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, virus blocks taking over bodies and minds with one, unstoppable command: FEED. Now, twenty years after the Rising, bloggers Georgia and Shaun Mason are on the trail of the biggest story of their lives - the dark conspiracy behind the infected. The truth will get out, even if it kills them.

YAY!!! Book 1 of the year, down, just 52 left!
This is the kind of book, which despite the fact that all you have heard good things about it, it still manages to surprise how amazing it actually is.

I began reading this book, in a half hour break between college classes, and almost refused to put it down. In such a little amount of time I had already managed to be dragged into the world of the book and not wanting to leave.
The book is about a world, the same as ours, though no longer plagued with the common cold or cancer, but instead a new kind of illness. When each person dies, they do not stay dead, they come back of zombie's roaming the streets trying to find someone to turn into one of their own.
Georgia, Shaun, Rick and Buffy are a group of bloggers, who base their lives on writing, filming and reporting zombie attacks. But the blog is given an offer which can't be refused, to follow a presidential campaign.
The book goes straight into the action, automatically hooking the reader, and leaving them on the edge of their seats, and even each time beyond the first chapter, it's near impossible to put the book down.
The writing is a mixture of two. The normal, every day book writing style, telling the story and also casual writing coming from the character's in the occasional blog post, which was a really nice added factor in the book and probably my favourite bit.
I loved the story of how it mixed such an adventurous story plot in with a storyline partly evolved around politics's. The zombie's may take a back seat in the book, but you know that they are constantly there as a threat. The storyplot altogether was slightly confusing, it took a while before I could fully understand what was going on, though this did not pose much of a problem.

The character's were unique and strong.
Georgia, otherwise known as George is the character who stands out the most, and not just due to her narrating the book, but to how much of a strong and inspirational character she is portrayed to be. She's strong, stubborn but also such a lovely person.
Shaun, is George's adoptive brother. He is known in the bookworld as an Irwin, someone who seeks danger/adrenaline, and the kind of person who will willingly go and poke a zombie, either hes crazy or suicidal, but one thing  I know for sure he is, is a rather humorous character, he compliments the book so nicely, stood next to his sister, and the relationship they have is amazing, despite being in their twenties, the sibling's are unbelievable close.
Buffy, is a very unique character, well not just character, but person altogether. She's almost distant in the world, and serves her life as a Fictionist, making up poems and stories, but she's also the techie of the group. You can tell within the story she is not that close to the sibling's, but still she holds a level of commitment, but due to the limelight of the story not overly focusing on her I felt as though I didn't get to know her so well.
I could go on and on about all the good things about this book, and find it very hard to mention a bad thing. But here is the bad thing:
This book is wonderful for the way it portrays it's female character, they are all inspirationally strong, except one. A politician, known to get so far in her career due to her sexual assets, due to being a bit 'dumb' according to the book. She is the only female politician in the book, and despite politics being largely known as a male dominated career, it does not put us women in the best of light's, slightly ruining the book for me.
I give this book a well earned:

My opinion on the book blogging world-Part 1

After over a year of blogging as much as I can I have just a mere 166 followers, compared to people who blog for about 3 months and end up with nearly a 1000, does it bother me? No, it honestly doesn't.
I feel like the world of book blogging has been overtaken by people who are not passionate about sharing the opinion of their favourite books, but to gain a form of fame in this world, and also receive as many free books as they can.

On a weekly basis we see some of the more famous book bloggers, come out with Advice post's and Hints and Tips (which is a great thing for them to do), most saying the same thing:

• Make your blog look amazing and eyecatching as you can, to persuade people to check out your blog.

I care about how my blog looks, but I would not put the appearance of my blog before anything else, all I can think is, if your willing to judge my blog by the appearance instead of the content, then your lose, simple as.

• Blogging takes commitment, do it as often as you can!

I blog as much as I can, though I refuse to review every book I read, and even if I have to I'll spend a few weeks not blogging. Why? Because this is my blog, no one elses. I blog for my fun and entertainment, not use this as my job. I have college and work, and well much more to do in my life, then spend all day blogging.

• Make your reviews sound as professional as possible.

This is a bit of advice I agree with, but also disagree with. Yes we all want to be reading amazing reviews, whether positive or negative, but like me, some people just are not that good at reviewing books. I put my honest opinion, and I feel like this is something which has been lost in the blogging world, just to force everything to sound so professional, hence why I try and make my post's as casual as I can, especially seeing as it's mainly Teen reader's I'm blogging for, and not all these author's and publishers.
I'm not the best writter, I don't spell well, nor do I use long words, but I do believe that my blog is the best I can make it, and I'm proud of that.