In My Mailbox!

In My Mailbox is hosted by Kristi at The Story Siren Hey everyone! I got some great books this week I’m so excited for all of them! A lot of them I’ve been highly anticipating and now I finally have them don’t you just love that feeling? Anyway enough talk lets bring out the books! Books from Amazon The Infernal Devices 1: Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare Lies by Michael Grant Amy and Roger's Epic Detour by Morgan Matson Finding Sky by Joss Stirling Zelah Green: Bk. 2: One More Little Problem by Vanessa Curtis Books from The Book Depository Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews Spy Glass by Maria V. Snyder The Duff: Designated Ugly Fat Friend by Kody Keplinger Firelight by Sophie Jordan For Review A shiny ARC of Entangled by Cat Clarke so excited for this one thanks Quercus! So that’s what I got In My Mailbox this week! Many of you will be pleased to know that I’ve finally got round to reading City of Bones by Cassandra Clare and I love it so much so far! I’m 150 pages in and I can’t wait to read some more today- so happy that I’ve finally got round to reading this series! I think it was all the hype around Clockwork Angel that gave me that extra push ;) If you’ve read any of the books I got this week leave me a comment with your thoughts – good or bad I don’t mind! And make sure you leave me a link with what you guys got this week. Here’s to another week of good reading ahead!

Review for Zelah Green by Vanessa Curtis

I hadn’t heard very much about this book at all other than it kept coming up in my Amazon recommendations, so when I read a book bloggers review and found out that it was about a teenage girl with OCD I knew I just had to buy it and bought it prompt on my next trip to the book shop. I, like Zelah, suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder more commonly known as OCD which I developed in my teen years after going through a rough time. I know that there are a lot of books on depression out there for teens but I haven’t ever heard of one that’s based on OCD before. I think it’s great that Vanessa Curtis decided to write a book on this subject because unfortunately whether we like it or not mental illnesses are on the rise in today’s society and I find that books are a great comfort to those suffering with one. When you’re a teen with a mental illness – no scratch that – anybody with a mental illness a lot of the time people are too ignorant on the subject to see that it is an actual illness and are quick to just label the person as ‘weird’ and when you’re a teen life’s hard enough, add a mental illness on top of that and people avoiding the ‘freak’ it’s possibly one of the hardest times to have to deal with having a mental illness. So I salute Vanessa Curtis for writing this book – hopefully it will make anyone out there going through this feel less alone and help everybody else understand the illness a little better. Zelah Green is a cleanaholic. She spends most of her life sticking to her harsh schedule also know as germ alert and dirt alert. This involves Zelah washing her hands up to 31 times, jumping on the stairs 128 times and having to touch everything with a tissue between her hand and the item. If Zelah doesn’t stick to her rituals or they go wrong she has to do them again to avoid having a panic attack and something bad happening to the people she loves. With her mother dead and her father gone Zelah’s left with her stepmother who can’t stand Zelah’s routines anymore so she ships Zelah off to Forest Hill House to get treatment for her OCD. There Zelah meets Alice the anorexic, Caro the cutter and Silent Sol who’s gorgeous but doesn’t speak to anyone. Zelah’s mortified to be at Forest Hill and worst of all having to live without her routines, but the teens soon become friends and with a little help from each other they help work through their problems and what follows is a heart-warming story that will have you laughing one minute and teary eyed the next. This was a short sweet read that I read in two sittings. Zelah’s an endearing, hilarious character who you can’t help but want the best for. The book remains sweet and funny whilst at the same time deals with some serious issues. At no point did it ever feel heavy so I think that Vanessa Curtis got this just right for the teen reader. I immediately after finishing this bought the sequel Zelah Green: One More Little Problem and I can’t wait to read more of Zelah’s adventures and struggles with OCD. Recommended whether you want a funny, quick, quirky read or whether you want to learn more about teens with a mental illness from the view point of lovely awkward Zelah. This book has a nice balance between both making it a very good read indeed. 4 stars. My Rating 4/5 stars ****

Book Bloggers Hop & Follow My Book Blog Friday!

Hello to all my wonderful followers and to hopefully some potential new ones! This Friday I’m participating in The Book Bloggers hop which is hosted by Jennifer at Crazy for Books and Follow my Book Blog Friday that’s hosted over at Parajunkee's View if you wish to take part please stop by there and sign the Mr Linky. This week’s question from the hop is... ‘Link to your favourite book review that you've written in the last three months.’ My answer: Oh I love this week’s question! I think my favourite recent review of mine has to be the one I wrote for Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma which can be found HERE. I really loved this book so much more than I originally thought I would. It’s a very controversial story and I thought very carefully about what I wanted to say about this book. I really enjoyed writing this one and got a lot of positive feedback for it. If you have the time feel free to check it out and leave a comment it would be very much appreciated! :) Feel free to leave me a comment and if you like what you see remember to follow! Leave me a link with your blog and if you follow I’ll check you out too :) Hope your all enjoying my blog! Happy hopping!

Booking Through Thursday

You’ve just dropped your favorite, out-of-print book into a bathtub, ruining it completely … What do you do now? Ok well first things first I doubt this will ever happen to me. I don’t like to read whilst I’m taking a bath so the last time I actually read anything whilst bathing was years ago. I don’t to my knowledge own any out of print books – never mind a favourite. So this really isn’t an issue for me. I suppose hypothetically though I’d cry and be very upset then hunt me down a new copy off the internet not really caring about the price? But then isn’t this what most people would do? I mean what else are you suppose to do? Bit of a lame question this week me thinks, I’m a tad disappointed :| Never the less leave me a comment with your answers and if yours is in anyway different to mine lemme know!

Review for Infinite Days by Rebecca Maizel

When I first heard about this book months ago I immediately added it to my wish list and started counting down the days until its release date. It sounded right up my street- a fresh new take on vampires with it being about a 500 year old vampire queen being re-made as a 16 year old human girl, and after reading this the books biggest triumph is definitely the originality of it all but unfortunately for me that’s pretty much where it ends. Lenah Beaudonte is a ruthless, murderess vampire queen to a coven of some of the most feared vampires in the world. Having been made into a vampire in 15th century England she is one of the oldest and strongest of her kind. Despite all of this Lenah isn’t happy. After being turned into a vampire by her lover Rhode at the young age of sixteen Lenah feels like she’d missed out on her chance to live life, so as Rhodes last act of love he performs an ancient ritual that allows her to reclaim the human life that he took away from her. Lenah must now live as a mortal in a boarding school in New England and try to stumble her way through modern technology, make friends and keep her past a secret. But when you’ve lived your days as an evil creature of the night it’s not so easy to put your past and your mistakes behind you, and when Lenah’s coven discovers that their queen is missing Lenah realises that her human days may be numbered… I loved the idea of this story and when I first started it I found myself really enjoying it. It was interesting learning about Lenah’s past as a vampire queen and watching her try to fit in and appear normal amongst her peers but my problem started when this didn’t stop. For 300 pages there’s no real action and it reads very much like a YA realism book. Yes it’s all very interesting watching a vampire try to live as a human but after the first 100 pages it got very tedious and boring and by the time I was half way through I was debating putting it down. When I pick up a book about vampires I expect it to be action packed, and filled with blood and lust but Infinite days just didn’t read that way. The plot moved along very slowly making some parts boring to read. It wasn’t what I was expecting when I picked this book up so it left me very disappointed. The second problem I had with this book were the characters. Be warned - if you find Zoey Redbirds boy problems irritating in The House of Night series you may not get along so well with Lenah Beaudonte. Like Zoey, Lenah has a string of 4 boys in this book that she has some sort of thing with who are all fighting for her love and to make things worse none of them were that great. There was very little character development which made the characters just ok for me. I didn’t love any of them in particular and so wasn’t really fussed who Lenah ended up with. The main relationship that Lenah does have happens very quickly over the period of a few weeks and when that’s done well in a book I don’t mind it but with Lenah and the guy in question I just wasn’t convinced they were the real deal. So after suffering through 300 pages of the above I get to the last 100 pages and that’s when things start to improve considerably. We finally get some action and the ending almost makes it worth getting through the first 300 pages. I won’t say too much about that but it definitely sets things up for a potentially better sequel. During the last 100 pages Rebecca Maizel really shows us what she’s capable of and I just hope that now with everything set up in Infinite days she’ll continue on along that path with the sequel. Her writing is really beautiful and this definitely has the potential to be a great series if she’d just cut out a few of the guys and work on adding some action and suspense through out the book instead of saving it all for the end. Over all I have to say that I was disappointed with this book because I was looking forward to it for so long and it just wasn’t what I expected it to be. It was an ok read though not something to rush out and buy so for that reason I’m giving it 3.5 stars. My Rating 3.5/5 stars ***1/2 Note on the UK Cover: I just wanted to leave a note about the UK edition of this book. The cover has an almost tracing paper like quality to it making it very easy to snag which happened to me - even though I’m a very careful reader - a few times leaving tiny tears in it. The model used also looks like she’s in her late twenties and doesn’t resemble a just turned 16 year old girl at all. After one very careful read of this book the covers crumpled and snagged, this book just isn’t very good quality at all. This is in no way Rebecca’s fault though which is why I didn’t want to include this in the actual review of the book but if your from the UK and are thinking about purchasing this book I’d advise you to try and hunt down the US copy – considering this is a hardcover it’s really not worth the money!