Review for Matched by Ally Condie

"On her seventeenth birthday, Cassia meets her Match. Society dictates he is her perfect partner for life. Except he’s not. In Cassia’s society, Officials decide who people love. How many children they have. Where they work. When they die. But, as Cassia finds herself falling in love with another boy, she is determined to make some choices of her own. And that’s when her whole world begins to unravel . . ." When I first heard the synopsis for Matched I just knew that it was a book that I was going to love. I adore futuristic, dystopian books and with the star crossed love story thrown in it was as though this book and I had been Matched ourselves! (Sorry for the obvious pun but I couldn’t pass up on it!) I read Matched in 2 sittings. It’s one of those books that has so much going on and has you that gripped that time just seems to fly by and before you know it you’ve sat and read half the book. I found it impossible to put down especially at the beginning when were first introduced to this amazing, highly believable future.I loved how well developed and imaginative Matched was. A key point in a good dystopian book for me is when the author has created this fascinating new world. I loved learning about a world where society chooses everything for you, especially because I could see this happening someday. The world Ally Condie has created is so layered and with a fantastic plot taking place inside it there’s always something exciting going on. I really liked our heroine Cassia. She felt like a very real character that was brave and strong but also had her moments of vulnerability and doubt making her incredibly humane and endearing. What really impressed me with Matched was the loving relationship Cassia had with her family. I liked how supportive and involved they were with Cassia. It was nice to get that supportive realistic family rather than- as is the case with a lot of young adult novels- the heroine going against her family or the family not suspecting something’s going on with their daughter. I loved the strong family unit Cassia had and it reminded me very much of my own family and rung true to how a close family would behave under Cassia’s circumstances. As well as adoring Cassia and her family I also loved both of her love interests Xander and Ky. I surprisingly liked both guys and was a little bit torn between them myself! The only thing that let this book down for me was the romance. Although I liked Cassia and Ky as characters I didn’t really feel this great love between them until the end of the book. If I could have just felt that a little more this book would have been my idea of perfection. That being said Cassia and Ky don’t get that much one on one time together in Matched so maybe I’ll be more convinced in future books when they’ll hopefully be together alone more. Ally Condie has created a fantastic new world with a brilliant cast of characters to go along with it. The plots clever and the writings poetic making Matched a must read. I can’t wait to find out what happens next. Not the greatest of love stories but one heck of a plot! My Rating 4.5/5 stars ****1/2 Synopsis taken from Amazon

Review for Twelve Days of Christmas by Trisha Ashley

"Christmas has always been a sad time for young widow Holly Brown, so when she's asked to look after a remote house on the Lancashire moors, the opportunity to hide herself away is irresistible – the perfect excuse to forget about the festivities. Sculptor, Jude Martland, is determined that this year there will be no Christmas after his brother runs off with his fiancée and he is keen to avoid the family home. However, he will have to return by the twelfth night of the festivities, when the hamlet of Little Mumming hold their historic festivities and all of his family are required to attend. Meanwhile, Holly is finding that if she wants to avoid Christmas, she has come to the wrong place. When Jude unexpectedly returns on Christmas Eve he is far from delighted to discover that Holly seems to be holding the very family party he had hoped to avoid. Suddenly, the blizzards come out of nowhere and the whole village is snowed in. With no escape, Holly and Jude get much more than they bargained for – it looks like the twelve days of Christmas are going to be very interesting indeed!" What first attracted me to Twelve Days of Christmas was that it sounded very much like one of my all-time favourite Christmas films “The Holiday” with it being about house sitting over Christmas time so I was very excited to start reading this when the snow started to fall and I was really getting into that Christmas Spirit, and well, I guess I’m just going to come out and say it. I didn’t like this book. The story centres around 35 year old Holly Brown and the main problem I had with this book is that I didn’t get on with Holly- not because she was annoying or nasty or anything like that she was nice enough but she was also incredibly boring and dull. I just didn’t have anything in common with her and couldn’t warm towards her. It was a bit like meeting somebody at a party who seems like a nice enough person but you’d never actually be friends with them because you don’t have anything in common. Holly spends 400 odd pages either cooking, looking after the animals or “thawing off” a HUGELY over used phrase in this book, which is all fine and well if that wasn’t all that she done in excessive detail. I like food and animals as much as the next person but I really don’t need a running commentary especially when it came to the cooking. Holly spends 80 per cent of her time cooking and not being a keen cook myself I found a huge chunk of this book very tiresome. Holly was for me a rather boring character who I just try as I might couldn’t connect with. I also really didn’t enjoy Trisha Ashley’s writing style. It struck me as rather old fashioned and everyone was rather sensible and proper even nearly a teen Jess who really didn’t act like a modern day teenager and behaved more like her gran! That being said this book wasn’t all bad. Some aspects of the plot kept me interested and I rather liked some of the secondary characters. Twelve days of Christmas is one of those books with a great story idea but it just isn’t executed well. I did wonder at some points if it would be better suited to older readers, with a lot of the main characters being either middle aged or elderly and with the Old fashioned style of writing, but for me as a 20 year old who likes her chick lit funny, fashionable and sexy this book was a bit of a let-down. Although I personally didn’t enjoy it I would recommend it to people fond of their cooking or maybe to a slightly older audience than myself. But as a warming fun read for Christmas? I’d give this one a miss. My first Trisha Ashley book and unfortunately I think this will also be my last. My Rating 2/5 stars ** Synopsis taken from Amazon

In My Mailbox!

In My Mailbox is hosted by Kristi at The Story Siren Hey guys, this is my first IMM post in weeks due to- as a lot of you may know- computer problems. I wanted to do an IMM before Christmas to show you what I’ve got over the last few weeks. I bought wayyy too much and it would take ages to show you them all so I’ve just picked out the highlights ;) For Review/ Won The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove by Lauren Kate (Random House) Alpha by Rachel Vincent (Won from Book Chick City) The Iron Witch by Karen Mahoney (ARC, Random House) Bumped by Megan McCafferty (ARC, From the lovely author herself and yes it is signed to me! Eep!) Low Red Moon by Ivy Devlin (Bloomsbury) From Notting Hill with Love... Actually by Ali McNamara (Won from One More Page) Bought/ Gift Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A. S. King (From Rach) The Lying Game by Sara Shepard My Soul to Take by Rachel Vincent Inside Out by Maria V. Snyder Dark Heart Forever by Lee Monroe So as you can see I got a whole load of greatness whilst I was away. I was really made up about all of these especially Bumped, Megan is one of my favourite authors so to have a signed ARC is amazing. I also got my Christmas present from Rachel Please Ignore Vera Dietz through the post today so I just want to say a big thank you to her for that and as always thank you to the bloggers and publishers mentioned for my books! Hope your all having a great weekend. If you’ve read any of the books I got this week and want to leave me a comment letting me know what you thought please do and make sure you leave me a link to what you got in your mailbox. Here’s to another great week of reading ahead made even more special by Christmas, I hope all my fellow book junkies get PLENTY of books under the tree next week. Happy Christmas everyone :-)

2011 Debut Author Challenge

Hi guys! I will be participating in the 2011 debut Author Challenge hosted by Kristi over at The Story Siren. Being a UK blogger I’m going to be switching between UK debuts and US debuts. Here’s a list of some of the books I might read for the challenge... Across The Universe by Beth Revis (UK and US debut) Haven by Kristi Cook (US debut) Bumped by Megan McCafferty (US debut) Wither by Lauren DeStefano (US debut) Unearthly by Cynthia Hand (US debut) Inside Out by Maria V Snyder (UK debut) The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff (UK debut) Angelfire by Courtney Allison Moulton (US debut) The Iron Witch by Karen Mahoney (UK and US debut) Entangled by Cat Clarke (UK debut) Wake Unto Me by Lisa Cach (US debut) Clarity by Kim Harrington (US debut) Like Mandarin by Kirsten Hubbard (US debut) So as you can see I have a lot to choose from and there’s plenty more where that come from! I’m really looking forward to doing this challenge for the first time and discovering some new authors next year. Wish me luck!

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... What do you consider the most important in a story: the plot or the characters? My answer: I think it’s very important to have both. Although if a book has brilliant characters that I come to think of as friends I definitely get more into the story because I care about what’s going to happen to them next. I think a story can survive with great characters but a not so great plot where as if you have a fantastic plot but unlikeable characters the plot sometimes isn’t strong enough to stand alone if you don’t really care what happens to the people the story centre’s around.

Thank you for stopping by my blog!! Please leave me a link back to yours if you are a new follower so I can return the hello :-)

Jess x