Dangerous by Shannon Hale

I have seriously been waiting for this to come out ever since Shannon Hale first mentioned it's existence. She's one of my absolute favorite authors, mostly known for her exquisite fairy-tale-like stories and more recently, due to it's movie adaptation, Austenland. So, naturally, when she mentioned a possible Sci-Fi novel...I fangirled loudly.

As soon as a release date was set, I frantically requested it from my library so I'd be the first to have it in my selfish clutches. Needless to say, it was devoured in a day.

(From Goodreads) Maisie Danger Brown just wanted to get away from home for a bit, see something new. She never intended to fall in love. And she never imagined stumbling into a frightening plot that kills her friends and just might kill her, too. A plot that is already changing life on Earth as we know it. There's no going back. She is the only thing standing between danger and annihilation.


Spoiler Free Review:

Maisie was such a fresh character. For one thing, she was Hispanic. I don't remember when I last read a book where the main character wasn't your average white person. Also, she has quite a special and unique physical trait. Secondly, she has a strong relationship with her parents (and they are self-dependent and actually fill their roles as parents, unlike many YA parents these days). I'm sure someone will be able to point out their flaws and say they were horrible parents, but come on, parents can make mistakes too. And as far as YA parents go, they were some of the greats.

The plot was thought out and detailed enough to where I didn't need to know what the cellular-monodegeneratexoid-thingy was, but I still understood what it did. That's one of the beauties of Science Fiction, don't you think so? We don't all have to be nuclear scientists to truly understand the complexity of science. Just reading it you know "Wow, these people are intelligent and...what-in-the-world-is-that-supposed-to-mean? Oh, she explained it. Cool. Wait, what?- Ahhh, I get it!"

Okay, that may or may not have been a completely honest representation of my thoughts.

On to the love interest! (or...the OTHER love interest)

Wilder. 

Oh, Wilder...I'm not sure how I feel about you. Like in all relationships, Wilder and Maisie had their ups and downs...to say the least. At some points I was like: "He's too good to be real", then at others I found myself muttering: "You sneaky little..." 

But hey, that's how you know you've got a good book in your hands. THE FEELS.

Then, there's Luther. 

The childhood best friend. The confidant. Luther is like a brother to Maisie, and like a son to her parents. Both were homeschooled together. Both live in the same neighborhood. 

Both are confused in the area of love.

Love triangles are by far not my favorite, but one reason for that is when the best friend gets pushed aside, and then gets all despondent and vows never to love another. This was not the case in Dangerous.

I shall say no more. I promised. NO SPOILERS.

~

All in all, this book was amazing and has earned it's place in my list of favorites!

(Along with the rest of Shannon Hale's novels.)


~

Five Stars

Ages 14+
(romance, sexual references, and death)

My One Year Blogoversary!

One year ago...I had bright red (temporarily died) hair.

One year ago...I didn't know how to ballroom dance.

One year ago...I was fifteen-years-old.

One year ago...I didn't know what a fandom was.

One year ago...I was the oldest of six children.

One year ago...I sat down at the computer and decided to start a blog.

~

Today...I have my normal brown hair again.

Today...I can dance the cha-cha, waltz, rumba, swing, samba, and foxtrot.

Today...I am sixteen-years-old.

Today...I have too many fandoms to list without taking up this entire post.

Today...I am blessed to be the oldest of seven children.

Today...is the one-year anniversary of my blog!

Blog Accomplishments

3 Most popular posts:

With 236 views: What's Left of Me by Kat Zhang - Book Review 

With 193 views: Vocabulary of a Fangirl - Part 1

With 157 views: Vocabulary of a Fangirl - Part 2

Post with the most comments:

Goose Girl by Shannon Hale - Book Review

Post with the most +1s on Google Plus:

Vocabulary of a Fangirl - Part 2 

 ~

I've posted 65 posts.

20 are book reviews.

List of Reviews 

8 are related to writing.

And 18 are related to music.

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I had the most fun Writing:

Vocabulary of a Fangirl - Part 1 

 Vocabulary of a Fangirl - Part 2

An Amazingly/Weird Dream 

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green - Book Review 

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins - Book Review 

 

 

Thanks to all of you amazing people who follow, read, and enjoy my blog!

A Character's a Character, No Matter How Small

In this post I want to express the importance of 'small' characters; those extra characters that our MC meets throughout their journey.

Many authors seem to forget them. They forget to take time making them real, which makes them seem flat and useless. When you write a story, every character needs personality. At least jot down the basics (appearance, stronger positive trait, strongest negative trait, religion, and influence on the MC). Get to know them. In my opinion, you can't write about someone you don't know and make them seem real.

Granted, you should spend the most time creating your Main Character, but that doesn't mean ditch the others and make them up as you go. Have a plan for them. Give them a purpose. Otherwise, they're just dead weight in your story.

One way to study this is to watch movies and TV shows. Now, before you get all hoity toity with me, hear me out. Movies are stories that we watch, instead of read. When you watch movies, you can understand characters faster than when reading. It's all in their expression, body language, tone of voice, appearance, and personality. In books, it takes time to know a character, but in movies it usually doesn't.

Take The Hunger Games, for example.

-In the book, we slowly begin to know Katniss. Her talents. Her lifestyle. Her government.
-In the movie, you need only to watch ten minutes to know all of those facts and more.

Or, perhaps even a better example is one of my favorite shows: Once Upon a Time.

-Each character has a purpose and sometimes that purpose is even greater than you had expected. 
-Even when the characters don't have a huge impact, we still get a sense of who they are.
-You can make almost every character related to each other in some way, just to make things amazingly complicated.


Also, character profiling is always good practice. My very first blog post was an outline I found online and it has really helped me when I'm creating characters!


Here's the link:

Character Profile Outline


I hope that this post has either helped or inspired you to flesh out and spend time on ALL of your characters.

Towering by Alex Flinn

(From Goodreads)
Rachel is trapped in a tower, held hostage by a woman she’s always called Mama. Her golden hair is growing rapidly, and to pass the time, she watches the snow fall and sings songs from her childhood, hoping someone, anyone, will hear her.

Wyatt needs time to reflect or, better yet, forget about what happened to his best friend, Tyler. That’s why he’s been shipped off to the Adirondacks in the dead of winter to live with the oldest lady in town. Either that, or no one he knows ever wants to see him again.

Dani disappeared seventeen years ago without a trace, but she left behind a journal that’s never been read, not even by her overbearing mother…until now. 


~


Funny story: On my 16th birthday I went to the library to leisurely browse and run my fingers on the spines of books. I bumped into a girl that I had spent last summer volunteering at the library with and we got talking about Doctor Who, Sherlock, and the like. Then she started recommending me more books than I could hold (literally!). The books took up a whole shelf on my TARDIS bookshelf. 

One of those books was Towering:

(my blurb)
Wyatt goes to live with a lady he barely knows, in order to escape his messed up life. He finds the diary of the lady's dead daughter. A mystery starts to unfold before him. Then, he begins to hear strange singing noises that no one else notices. Something bizarre is happening in this small town.

Rachel lives in a tower in the woods, in order to be safe from the people who had killed her mother. She is cared for by another woman, whom she calls Mama, even though she knows she is not. Rachel starts to sense a change coming. Something is about to happen.

~


When I noticed that this book was written my Alex Flinn, I was skeptical. I enjoyed the last book of hers I read (Beastly), but it wasn't AMAZING and the movie adaption kind of sucked.

My expectation for Towering from reading the back: "This is going to be a sappy love story."

"Today, I woke knowing something would happen. Something would be different. I opened my window. I was a long way down. Still, I wanted to leave the window open, to smell the world outside. I would plaay my harp and sing my songs, and the animal, at least, would hear me.

I sang the saddest song I knew, about a girl in love with a poor boy but unable to marry him.

I know where I'm going;

And I know who's going with me.

I know who I love;

But the dear knows who I'll marry.

As I sang, I had once again that strange feeling, the feeling of being listened to, not by birds or squirrels or even deer. I rushed to the window to look. I saw something, or someone, moving. It was walking closer to me, struggling where there was no path, holding on to trees to keep its balance, but still coming closer. Perhaps it was the man I had dreamed of."


Halfway through the book I began to wonder why they had put that especially lovey part on the back cover. Then, it finally started getting sappy. I don't like it when there's some strange, magical connection between a couple, and then all of a sudden they're deeply in love and feel like they'd die without each other. It's unreal.

I mean, sure, love can be magical, but I think it's necessary for a relationship to have a foundation other than "I knew he was the one".

Overall I liked the beginning of the book, but the ending was predictable and the romance dripped with sticky, unrealistic love.


~


3 Stars

Ages 14+

In a Heartbeat by Loretta Ellsworth

(From Goodreads)

When a small mistake costs sixteen-year-old Eagan her life during a figure-skating competition, she leaves many things unreconciled, including her troubled relationship with her mother. From her vantage point in the afterlife, Eagan reflects back on her memories, and what she could have done differently, through her still-beating heart.

When fourteen-year-old Amelia learns she will be getting a heart transplant, her fear and guilt battle with her joy at this new chance at life. And afterwards when she starts to feel different—dreaming about figure skating, craving grape candy—her need to learn about her donor leads her to discover and explore Eagan’s life, meeting her grieving loved ones and trying to bring the closure they all need to move on.


~


There's just something I like in a book about death and cancer and medical issues. Maybe it's that they make me ponder how I would react in a similar situation. Would I be the kind of person that becomes depressed from my ailment, or someone that decides to push past it and make something of her life while she still can? I guess I won't know unless it actually happens.

I can't imagine having a heart transplant. Through someone's death would come my life...

Amelia goes through these emotional struggles as she copes with the knowledge of a stranger's heart taking the place of her own. She begins acting...different. Not like her normal, sweet self. She's snappish and suddenly likes the color purple.

Just like Eagan.

Who, in the mean time, is experiencing a sort of afterlife...or mid-life...because she's kinda stuck in between life and death. You get to read what Eagan's life is like as it flashes before her eyes. Her mother is pretty pushy and strict about the way Eagan spends her time, wanting to make sure she becomes the best skater she can be. Eagan then dies when she messes up her triple lutz and cracks her head on the side board.


The ending was just right, if not a little weird, but I won't say anymore (just in case). :)



~


4 Stars

Ages 14+
(brief sexual references)

I'm Sixteen...Now Where's My Adventure?

I have finally reached the coveted age of wonder and excitement.

Being sixteen is your ticket to saving the world or traveling to magical realms...right?

Thankfully, as a reader and a writer I can do just that ;)

Anywho!

No, not a quest to the lonely mountains, sadly.

Today, I ask you to join me on an adventure of many books and the scribbling of pens. I only have another 364 days of being sixteen and I want to make them count. I want to look back a year from now and see ridiculous selfies with friends and glitter still lingering on my clothes from parties. I want to have a blog that's grown, hundreds of stories saved in my laptop, and have baked tons of new desserts that I've never tried. 

So now, I inquire you to join me on my adventure, my quest, my mission, and...my life. (whichever you prefer)

And here's to many more years of blogging adventures!

Plus, Happy Sweet Sixteen to Me! ;D

An Amazingly/Weird Dream

Be prepared for a blurb fit for tumblr...

Someone in my family apparently worked on the set for Sherlock and KNEW Benedict. Then, for some reason, Sherlock was shooting in the US so I got to go on set and meet him! Then, THEN, he was invited to dinner with us. It got better. There wasn't room for me in our car (we had distant relatives over or something) so he said I could ride with him in his car! Then someone said we needed hot dog buns so he offered to get some. We stopped at this weird gas station-like place that had an abnormally large selection of hot dog buns. He grabbed these weird whole wheat roll things with tons of sesame seeds on top and I just laughed and he snickered and we bought some normal buns.

 

That's where the semi-normalness ended...it just got weirder and weirder from there... This old lady tried stealing his car as we were coming out and since I was closest I jumped on it to try and stop her. The car somehow became a motor cycle and the old lady hopped off so I went swirving into a curb and got flung out into the middle of the street. He ran over and picked me up and called a rental car place, but somehow we ended up in this weird, multi-leveled, primary colored building. Suddenly, there was this monster thing that was after Benedict and we got to run all over the place, you know, Sherlock and John style.

 I guess somewhere in there we started falling for each other (I mean, obviously I was already head over heals for him, but it wasn't until the hot dog buns incident that he began to like me more). So we ran and ran...and ran...until we came to this lake/swimming pool thing. We were trapped and the monster grabbed me and pulled me into the water and turned me into a small fish. Then the monster disappeared (to who-knows-where) and Benedict was on his knees, dark curly head in hands, crying because I was a fish...

And then I woke up.