Have you ever thought....

Have you ever seen someone and thought, 'you should be a character in a book!' Last night I was having dinner at a very yummy place in Aspen, Colorado, where we drove around to have a look at before returning to our campsite, and one of the waiters at the restaurant totally should have been a character out of a novel!!! He had dark hair that fell to just below his collar, he was slender and not extremely tall, but not short either. He had a very handsome face and he had a scar that went down from the bottom of the center of his eye to just below his cheek bone. The whole time I was thinking of what character he would be, and I thought he would be perfect as the mysterious stranger who comes to the aid of one of the other characters, or a prince in hiding, maybe both!

I'd love to hear if this type of thing has ever happened to you before! Anyway I filed his description away in my notebook for future use, so if you read anything of mine in the future with a character of that description, you will know what my inspiration was!!!

Hiatus

Hi everyone! I am leaving for a three week road trip, so I may not be able to post as often as I'd like. ( though I will try to get a few now and then).

I am so happy because with long hours of driving comes long hours of reading as well!

Cheers

~ Larissa

Follow Friday

Q. Name 3 authors that you would love to sit down and spend an hour or a meal with just talking about either their books or get advice on writing from?

A. Wow, there are a lot. ButI would have to say J.K. Rowling, Suzanne Collins, and Cassandra Clare. They are such amazing and successful authors and I would LOVE to meet them and get their advice!

Please leave a link so I can check out your blog!

Sing up for my giveaway HERE

Posts this week:

Review: Imaginary Girls
MainstayProductions: Second Quarter Quell!

Reivew: Imaginary Girls

Title: Imaginary Girls
Author: Nova Ren Suma
Publisher: Dutton Juvenile
Page Count: 352 (hardcover)
My Rating: 3/5 stars

Description: (from GoodReads)

Chloe's older sister, Ruby, is the girl everyone looks to and longs for, who can't be captured or caged. When a night with Ruby's friends goes horribly wrong and Chloe discovers the dead body of her classmate London Hayes left floating in the reservoir, Chloe is sent away from town and away from Ruby.

But Ruby will do anything to get her sister back, and when Chloe returns to town two years later, deadly surprises await. As Chloe flirts with the truth that Ruby has hidden deeply away, the fragile line between life and death is redrawn by the complex bonds of sisterhood.

Review:

I really wanted to love this book. From the very first time I saw the cover on a blog I was hopping through and it grabbed me and I had to know what it was about. The description that they put on Amazon and GoodReads doesn’t really tell a lot about what it was about, so when it came out I got it the first chance I had and started reading it.

I know a lot of people have said this, but the whole book really did feel like a bad dream that you didn’t wake out of, but for me it might not have been for the same reason as the author might have intended.

In books, there is a line between relationships where one person has an intense instinct to protect the person they care about and for that person to be down right controlling. (In my opinion, it is the difference between Jace/Clary and Edward/Bella). And I recognize that that is sometimes a very fine line, but I felt like the line was crossed in this book, and Ruby was very controlling of Chloe. Throughout the whole book it felt strange, because it was more of Chloe witnessing what is happening than Chloe actually doing anything herself. She was more along for the ride, and I thought that was weird because the book is told through her perspective. In books, that controlling type of relationship is a real pet peeve of mine, so that was one of the books drawbacks for me.

Another was that most of the characters in the book are older teenagers, and it seemed that every chapter they were out partying somewhere, drinking, smoking joints in cemeteries, and though their were plenty of characters who hooked up, throughout the whole book there wasn’t even one healthy relationship that I could find. What’s worse was that all of this did not add a single thing to the plot of this book. It just felt completely unnecessary to me.

Another thing was that after two hundred pages of this illegal activity (which was maybe the author’s stab at showing how bored the kids in the small town were?) I still didn’t have a clear picture of what was going on, and that feeling remained to some extent all the way until the end of the book, which did in no way really wrap anything up for me. I suppose that that ties in with the bad dream piece of it, I don’t know what’s going on in a lot of my dreams, but for a book a conclusion, even one as simple as the main character waking up and finding it really was a dream would have been enough for me.

Having said that. I did like the writing. Some of the images were very dreamlike, and it wasn’t a boring book. It just wasn’t my cup of tea. I think I would have liked it a lot more without all the unnecessary drinking, smoking, and partying. If I had gone into it knowing it was going to be written like a long, drawn-out dream and not spent so long looking for where the plot was going, I would have given it another star or two.

I don’t want to discourage you from reading this book, I have read quite a few great reviews on it, but I feel like I have to be honest with my thoughts and so I have been. The cover most definitely gets a 5 from me though.

Book Trailer:

Mainstay Productions: Second Quarter Quell!

Mainstay is just awesome with their Hunger Games fan videos such as the Katniss and Rue scene and the Cave Scene. And they have done it again with this one that takes a look at the Games which Haymitch participated in!

*It is rather violent (after all it is the Hunger Games) so just a heads up about that*

Reminder!

Hello!

Just wanted to remind everyone that tomorrow will be exactly one month before the closing of my Summer Reads, Fall Conclusions Giveaway! So you still have plenty of time to enter, but I'm just posting this reminder now because I know blogger widgets kind of fade into the backround after they aren't new anymore, and I am going on vacation soon and won't be able to do as much posting as I would like, so I am doing the 'reminder post' now!

Hope y'all are having a great summer!

Cheers!

Larissa

Follow Friday

Q. WHAT DO I DO WHEN I AM NOT READING?

A. well, let's see, if I'm not reading I am doing a lot of different things in my awesome busy life that would take a very long time to list. But in terms of pass times that I do when I am not reading... I like watching movies/TV shows, writing, spending time with friends, family, pets, horse back riding, and cooking and baking yummy things and eating them (as long as they are gluten free)!!!!

Please leave a link so I can check out your blog!

p.s. The new Harry Potter movie is amazing! I was at the midnight showing last night and I totally cried! If you haven't seen it yet and you are at all into the series, this is the movie you HAVE to see in the theaters!

Spreading the Word

Spreading the Word is something I do every once in a while to let you guys know of a new blog that I really like that is just getting started!

Usually I do this for YA book blogs, but this one is a non-fiction book blog that I think is really amazing!

It is called The Trauma Toolkit and is written by Susan Pease Banitt, whose upcoming book focuses on the holistic healing of trauma and PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). It's a really awesome blog and I would love it if you guys would check it out!

Follow Friday

Q. Let's step away from besties...What is the worst book that you've ever read and actually finished?

A. Hmmm... there are several, but here are two of them. A real book and a graphic novel.
Night of the Howling Dogs, and American Born Chinese






click the button to sign up for my giveaway!!!

Author Interview/ Giveaway!

Today I am super excited to announce that I am doing my first ever author interview with the amazing Janice Hardy, author of 'The Healing Wars' (you could win the first two books in the series in my Summer Reads, Fall Conclusions Giveaway!). So a huge shout-out and THANK YOU to Ms. Hardy!

Q. When did you know that you wanted to become a writer?
A. I’ve always written and told stories, but it wasn’t until high school that I wanted to be a writer. I didn’t know it was real job until then.

Q. Who is your favorite author? Why?
A. Harlan Ellison. His prose just blows me away. He uses interesting combinations of words and sentence structures, and that creates a unique voice and style. I just love the rhythm of his writing. He also has a wild imagination that makes some poignant comments about life, so they’re great stories that make you think.

Q. What was your inspiration for The Healing Wars?
A. The very first spark came after I saw the movie, X-Men (the first one). Rogue is my favorite superhero, and I wondered what would happen if someone accidentally healed people by touching them like she stole superpowers by touch. I wrote up a ten-page outline for a story about a boy who could absorb people’s pain. I quickly realized it was terrible and stuffed it in a drawer. About seven or eight years later, I was at a conference that stressed original ideas, and when I got home I pulled out my old idea file to see what I had lying around. I found that outline. It was still bad, but the idea of shifting pain stuck with me. I started thinking about the type of world where pain was bought and sold, and what kind of society would have evolved around that. Before long I had my world and came up with a girl who could heal by shifting pain from person to person. The rest developed from there.

Q. Who is your favorite character in these books?
A. That’s a tough call. Aylin is my favorite to write, because she always seems to get the best lines. Jeatar was one of my favorites overall because I knew he was hiding secrets in the first book, and it took a while before I found out what they were. He kept me guessing. And naturally, I love my protagonist Nya, because she puts up with all the trouble I throw at her. I throw a lot of trouble at her.

Q. After the publication of Darkfall how many more books can we expect to read in The Healing Wars?
A. The story wraps up with Darkfall, though I might do a short story here and there for fun. I often get asked about the original war that left Nya and Tali orphans, and I have a silly idea for a Halloween short story involving zombies. Something I’d have on the website for free.

Q. Do you follow any sort of ‘schedule’ with your writing?
A. I’m a morning person, so I like to write from 8am to noon most weekdays. If the writing is going well I might write in the afternoons as well. I take days off when I need a break, but I aim for three chapters a week. That’s about 7,500 words for me. If everything goes well, I can write a rough first draft in two to three months. Then it’s on to revisions, which can take anywhere from three months to a year depending on the book.

Q. Are you working on any other projects?
A. Right now I’m working on a new YA fantasy set in a different world from The Healing Wars. It’s about a deep cover spy who gets caught between love and loyalty when a political assassination exposes her true identify. I’m having a great time with it. I’m trying some new things writing-wise and it’s been fun to stretch myself creatively.

Q. What advice would you give to young aspiring writers?
A. Read as much as you can and write as much as you can. Writing is a skill like any other, and the best way to improve is to study books you love and practice what you learn from them.

Author Blog!
Second Author Blog
Website
Buy it at Amazon
Put it on your TBR

In other related news, I am not only doing my first ever author interview, but today I am launching my first ever book giveaway! there will be two packages, one of which being the first two books in 'The Healing Wars' the second of which being the first two books in the 'Leviathan Trilogy' by Scott Westerfeld! click the button to sign up!!!



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I am sorry, but this giveaway is now over. Thank you to all who participated!

Review: Thirteen Reasons Why

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


There are lots of good books in the world, heck, there are a lot of great books in the world. But there aren't that many that have people saying it changed their lives. I loved Thirteen Reasons Why. It was beautifully written, and I loved how the author switched back and forth between Hannah's tapes and the person listening to them. It was heartbreaking, and intriguing, and even humorous at times. After I finished the book, I went to the author's website, Jay Asher and he had posted a picture of a tattoo that one of his readers had gotten on their ankle. It was of the stop, rewind, and play symbols used in the book to help that person remember that the only way they could go with their life was forward. This really stuck with me, I had never heard of a book with fans like that before. On top of the story being so well put together and written, I also think that the cover is gorgeous. The simplicity of it really works even though the book in and of itself is anything but.



Overall, this book was extremely well written and powerful, and I would definitely recommend it. Yes, at times it was a hard read, but I thought it was worth it. I can probably count with the fingers of one hand how many books I've read that have made me cry, and this was one of those books. Please, get your hands on this book by any means possible, and I hope you'll love it as much as I did.




All right, so right now on my poll 'yes' to putting book trailers in reviews is ahead right now (if you haven't voted yet, I'd love it if you did) I couldn't find an 'official' one by the publisher, put this is still really good and looks like it could be professional!

Follow Friday

Q. ACK! YOUR FAVORITE BOOK/MOVIE CHARACTER (EXAMPLE HERMIONE GRANGER PLAYED BY THE EMMA CHICK) JUST WALKED INTO THE ROOM! WHO IS IT AND WHAT WOULD BE YOUR FIRST REACTION? YOU GET EXTRA POINTS IF YOU INCLUDE VISUAL STIMULATION.

Wow. This is kind of hard to pick, but I think will have tong for a book where the movie isn't out yet. I am choosing Josh Hutcherson who will be playing Peeta in the upcoming movie The Hunger Games. *Squeal!!!*

My reaction would probably be that I blush, and if I were to start talking, it would probably be to fast.