Booking Through Thursday 13

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book blog meme, booking through thursday

Booking Through Thursday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by Deb about (mostly) books and reading. This week’s question:

Movies have a rating system to help guide the consumer weed out adult/violent/inappropriate knds of films. Video games do, too. Do you think BOOKS should have a ratings system?

I’m not sure they should have ratings but I do think there should be trigger warnings. I personally don’t like reading books with rape scenes or mentions of rape. It’s uncomfortable to read and I can understand why it can be necessary for the story. Most of the time I have no warning if there is one, unless a friend has read the book previously and warns me. I think that books should have warnings if certain topics like rape, suicide, self-harm, etc. are mentioned because they can be really triggering to some people. And some books have them when you wouldn’t expect it based solely on the synopsis. I put those warnings on my reviews (well for rape and sexual assault, but if I do read a book with suicide or self-harm I will probably put a warning on that too). I know there are some people that don’t want to read adult novels with explicit sex scenes so I guess having ratings for books wouldn’t be a bad idea. But then you get into the idea of how should we rate them and who gets to be in charged of deciding what kind of rating they have and I know from my LGBT classes that movies with gay characters used to be rated harshly because of certain people’s opinion.

But, ramble aside, I do think there should be warnings for triggers on books because sometimes it isn’t fun having a rape scene sneak up on you in the middle of a good read and it can definitely change your mood and how you feel about the book with just that one scene.

Poster Giveaway

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book club, giveaway, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, poster, three nerds, three nerds and a book club

Hello my lovely readers,

Just a friendly reminder that there is about 6 days left to sign up for a Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children poster that is also signed by the author Ransom Riggs!

CLICK HERE for more information and to enter!

Stayed tuned for announcements on a, potentially soon, giveaway I will host myself 🙂

Happy Readings!

~ Scatty

W…W…W…Wednesdays 14

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a song of ice and fire, A Storm of Swords, Alicia Wright Brewster, book blog meme, Brian D. Anderson, cynderes midnight, D. J. MacHale, Dreamsongs, Echo, Elizabeth Guizzetti, george r r martin, jeffrey overstreet, Kim Harrington, mara dyer, michelle hodkin, Other Systems, Pendragon, The Dead and Buried, The Evolution of Mara Dyer, The Godling Chronicles, The Merchant of Death, The Sword of Truth, the unbec, wwwwednesdays

W…W…W…Wednesdays is a weekly meme hosted by MizB at Should be Reading. To play along, just answer the following three questions: What are you currently reading? What did you recently finish reading? What do you think you’ll read next?

  I recently finished reading The Sword of Truth by Brian D. Anderson, which was book one in the Godling Chronicles. It was provided by JKS Communications in exchange for an honest review. It was alright, although I feel like the execution of the interesting plot could have been executed better. I also finished The Dead and Buried by Kim Harrington and The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin. I really enjoyed Harrington’s fast paranormal mystery read and I want to check out some of her other works. I loved Hodkin’s first novel in the Mara Dyer trilogy and immediately went and  purchased book two the moment I finished. It’s currently sitting on my desk and I desperately want to read it but I have a couple books that have priority. 

  I’m currently chugging my way through A Storm of Swords by Martin. Everything is happening in this third book! Every chapter has a new major plot twist and it’s insane! I’ve also started Other Systems by Elizabeth Guizzetti. It was given to me by the author to review. The other two nerds loved it so I have high hopes. I’m really curious to see if I’ll like it as much because I’ve realized recently I don’t really like sci-fi novels… I much prefer fantasy. I’ve also started The Merchant of Death by D. J. MacHale. It’s the first book in the Pendragon series which was a favorite of mine as a preteen. I’m reading it for Three Nerds and a Book Club’s March read.

 Up next is Cyndere’s Midnight by Jeffrey Overstreet. It was given to me by the author and I really need to read it before I completely forget what happened in the first novel of the series. I also have Echo by Alicia Wright Brewster. It’s an ARC copy won through Library Thing and is set to be published late April. I also want to read Dreamsongs by Martin. It was a gift given to me by a good friend yesterday that is a collection of stories by Martin. I really want to start reading some of them. Since I’ve only read the Song of Ice and Fire series by him, I’m curious to see how his other works compare. There’s also a few books given to review that I have to read soon because they’ve been sitting around for too long. Oh! And I want to read the second Mara Dyer book which will probably take me a day since I know I won’t want to do anything but sit and read it.

What are you reading?

Teaser Tuesday 13

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book blog meme, michelle hodkin, quote, teaser tuesday, the unbecoming of mara dyer

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

‘Seriously, you must have better things to do than with your life than waste it on the hopeless?’ ‘I’ve already learned Parseltongue. What else is there?’ ‘Elvish.’

page 124 of The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

Loved this quote when I was reading it. See my review.

Book Review: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer

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book review, fantasy, fiction, mara dyer, michelle hodkin, mystery, paranormal, paranormal romance, the unbecoming of mara dyer, young adult

Author: Michelle Hodkin
Series: Mara Dyer, Book #1
Publisher: Simon & Schuster 
Publication Date: Sept 2011
Genre: Fantasy, Young Adult, Paranormal 
Romance, Mystery
Pages: 452
Buy: The Book Depository

Book Description: Mara Dyer doesn’t think life can get any stranger than waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there.
It can.
She believes there must be more to the accident she can’t remember that killed her friends and left her mysteriously unharmed.
There is.
She doesn’t believe that after everything she’s been through, she can fall in love.
She’s wrong.

First Line: “My name is not Mara Dyer, but my lawyer told me I had to choose something.”

I bought this book on black Friday and I finally picked it up. I am so glad I did because this book was amazing. The writing is well done. It’s simple yet sucks you in right away. I’m usually really picky about books written in the first person but with this novel it worked very well. I think seeing the story from Mara’s perspective made things more interesting.

I really liked Mara’s character. I liked her snarkiness despite all she’s been and going through. I could easily relate to Mara and understand where she was coming from, even if I didn’t agree with some of her decisions. I was wary of Noah at first, but that was the point of his character. I liked him the more Mara got to know who he was. My favorite character was Jamie though. I loved him even more when I found out he was the token black Jewish bi friend. I wish he was more pertinent to the story but I can understand why he wasn’t there very often.

The romance was very well done. Some YA novels will just skim through the romance or portray it as love at first sight. I really liked how in this instance it was more hate/annoyance at first sight. While the middle dragged on a bit and didn’t have much of the creepy aspect, I liked that Hodkin made the time to flush out the relationship between Mara and Noah.

The creepy factor was spot on in this book. I loved how amidst the romance and getting to know the characters, something small would happen to keep you interested and wanting to know what it all means. Having the story written in first person really increased the creepy factor. I enjoyed not knowing what was real or fantasy and being just as confused as Mara with what was going on. I liked going through that journey with Mara rather than seeing it from outside the story.

The ending, though. OMG that ending! I thought I finally figured everything out, and that all the questions (or at least the ones I wanted to know the answers to) were answered. But then Hodkin throws in the one major plot twist in the last two pages and left me screaming and flailing on my bed and then scrambling to buy book two online. This book was amazing and I highly recommend it. I also loved that it was really unique. I haven’t read a YA paranormal romance like it at all and I liked that. I feel that there are too many books that are the same concept, but this one really stood out. I have definitely found a new favorite author and I can’t wait for my copy of book two to arrive in the mail.

My Rating: ★★★★★