Pages of Bookish Love: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer

March 30, 2012 By Alexa 12 Comments

Pages of Bookish Love is a new feature that Alexa (you are HERE) and I (Ashley, The Bookish Brunette) have concocted… We are each going to recommend a book to the other, then review said book on the other’s blog! I had Alexa read The First Days (my FAV book EVER) and her review is posted over at my blog today! Alexa had me read The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer… (psst- the reviews below!). Get it? We’re exchanging Pages of Bookish Love. We both hope you love this new monthly feature!

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The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer

by Michelle Hodkin

Published: 9/27/2011 by Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing

From Goodreads:

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.

The Bookish Brunette thought:

OMG! I am SO ashamed that it took me THIS freaking LONG to read this book! *dies*

Mara Dyer starts out CREEPTASTIC with Mara, her best friend Rachel and her frenemy Claire playing with a Ouija board… And six months later Claire and Rachel are dead, and Mara wakes up in tethered to tubes in a hospital.

Then as Mara is struggling to remember the events that landed her in the hospital… I’m crying like a little girl. ON PAGE 12.

“She [her mother] was the first to reach me that night when my screaming woke the neighbors, and she wastage one who caught me crying in my closet the next day. But it was only after she found me two days later, dazed and blinking and clutching a shard of broken mirror in my bloody hand, that she insisted on getting me help.”

Holy crap right?

After the doctor’s suggest that Mara be instatutionanalized, she convinces her mother that they should move away from all the memories that haunt her every waking hour instead. So they pack up and head to sunny Florida!

I loved the way The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer was told… it flowed so easily and Mara was amusing, sarcastic and totally likable!

Jamie ROCKED my freaking face off with his overly flamboyant AWESOME! Not even joking you,

“Anna used to be the abstinence poster girl, but post-Shaw, you could write a comic book about the many adventures of her vagina. It could wear a cape.”

Things aren’t going so hot in Florida as she continues to see the ghosts of her dead friends lurking about every corner… and Mara starts noticing things that can’t be explained away. People are DYING. People she had wished dead.

Then there’s Noah…

Super hot, mysterious, arrogant, fantastically sarcastic, unapologetically irreverant, closet SWEETHEART… Noah *sigh*

“I find it hilarious that whenever I light up, American’s look at me like I’m going to urinate on their children.”

This book kept me UP and turning pages WELL into the night, left me guessing around every corner… I HAD to know how it ended!!! Needless to say- I’m DYING for the sequel now!

Mara Dyer is dark, suspenseful, haunting. heart-breaking… and FUNNY. Long story short- DO NOT wait as long as I did to read this book! It is AMAZING! The characters are to die for… *cough* Noah *cough*. The plot is twisted and filled with so many turns you can’t help but lose yourself inside Michelle Hodkin’s world of Mara Dyer!

Filed Under: Pages of Bookish Love

Wings of the Wicked

March 29, 2012 By Alexa 5 Comments

Title: Wings of the Wicked
Author: Courtney Allison Moulton
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Publication Date: Jan 2012
Classification: YA Novel
Challenge: 2012 YA/MG Fantasy Challenge

Summary from Goodreads:

Life as the Preliator is harder than Ellie ever imagined.
Balancing real life with the responsibility of being Heaven’s warrior is a challenge for Ellie. Her relationship with Will has become all business, though they both long for each other. And now that the secret of who she really is has come out, so have Hell’s strongest reapers. Grown bold and more vicious, the demonic threaten her in the light of day and stalk her in the night.

She’s been warned.
Cadan, a demonic reaper, comes to her with information about Bastian’s new plan to destroy Ellie’s soul and use an ancient relic to wake all the souls of the damned and unleash them upon humanity. As she fights to stay ahead of Bastian’s schemes , the revelations about those closest to her awaken a dark power within Ellie that threatens to destroy everything—including herself.

She’ll be betrayed.
Treachery comes even from those whom she loves, and Ellie is broken by the deaths of those who stood beside her in this Heavenly war. Still, she must find a way to save the world, herself, and her love for Will. If she fails, there will be hell to pay.

My Thoughts:

I started Wings of the Wicked as soon as I was done with Angelfire and I did enoy being able to immediately jump back into Ellie’s story. Of course Wings of the Wicked starts off with Ellie and Will at odds due to the fact that they love each other but Will thinks it would be best if he stayed away from her for fear of what Michael would do to him if he found out about their relationship. So of course things are off to a rocky start but all of that has to be put aside for some great battle scenes. I swear it is rare to find battle scenes like this in a YA series and I really love what Moulton does each and every time they go to battle. Now Angelfire had a ton of fights so I was pleasantly surprised to see some fights in Wing of the Wicked but I felt Moulton found a better balance this time around.

So since the battles were taking a back seat for portions of the book I bet you are wondering exactly what was going on for 500+ pages. Well there is a lot of teenage drama and emotions flying around. I really liked this at first because it was so sad and yet lovely to watch Ellie and Will struggle with their love and want of each other without giving in. While all of their drama is happening there are still advancements in the storyline about what is going on with the demonic reapers, who are of course out to get Ellie once again. So the storyline did move forward in many ways but it also stalled in a few. Sometimes the length of this novel was actually shown when a scene would happen and then the next chapter seemed to be a repeat of those same feelings or the same knowledge we already learned about. So in some ways this book did end up being the second in a series, you all should know what I mean, in ways this book was a filler book.

So while I appreciate the fact that the storyline did move forward in some ways and I did enjoy watching Ellie and Will come together and have problems then come together and have problems it was a little exhausting over time. It was a little bit of a repeat at times and I think a couple of the scenes or chapters could have been cut out just to set the pace a little better. If you read my review of Angelfire you know a problem that I had were all of the Twilight inspired scenes, I think that was mostly cleared up in this book but there was one scene that had me laughing because of the light Twilight inspiration behind it. So this book certainly gets some props for moving away from what I originally thought was a slight take on things that played out in Twilight.

Overall, I still enjoyed this book and it certainly took a step up from some of the things I didn’t like in Angelfire, and I haven’t even told you my favorite part of Wings of the Wicked yet! I must say that I do like Ellie and Will but I have to say I enjoyed learning more about Cadan in this book. I swear I don’t know what it is but Cadan just does it for me, I think I’ve been developing more crushes on the ‘bad’ boys lately! I know Will is the guy she should be with and yada yada yada but I just love Cadan, he has the wit and style that I wish Will had. In all honesty, Will bores me at times with how simple he can be, ok he loves Ellie, I get that but I need more from him sometimes, which is where Cadan fills the gap in my heart. So even if my love of Cadan is a wasted effort because she loves Will I just can’t help myself. I’m rooting for the losing team this time around and I know my heart will break a little in the end. Oh and just so you all are prepared Wings of the Wicked ends on a wicked cliffhanger. This one gets 4.5 hearts from me for being a step up from Angelfire but still not lighting my fire all the way.

Filed Under: Young Adult (YA) Review

Blog Tour: War of the Fae: The Changelings

March 28, 2012 By Alexa 5 Comments

Today I am honored to be a part of the What’s Your Story Blog Tour of The Changelings!

Title: The Changelings
Author: Elle Casey
Publisher: Elle Casey
Publication Date: Feb 2012
Classification: YA Novel

Summary from Goodreads:

Jayne Sparks, a potty-mouthed, rebellious seventeen-year-old and her best friend, shy and bookish Tony Green, have a pretty typical high school existence, until several seemingly unrelated incidents converge, causing a cascade of events that change their lives forever. Jayne and Tony, together with a group of runaway teens, are hijacked and sent into a forest, where nothing and no one are as they seem. Who will emerge triumphant? And what will they be when they do?

My Thoughts:

When I started this book I expected it to be like A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I expected humans to be lured into a forest where we would meet the fae who would play tricks on the poor humans. Well even though that was what I was expecting, I got something very different. Even though it was quite different than what I expected I don’t mean that in a bad way, quite the opposite, this story really did pack a punch.

The story starts off with Jayne and Tony at any ordinary high school, living the lives of boring teenagers who don’t fit in at school. I really liked Jayne from the start because she had an attitude, she actually acted like a teenager! She had some sass and even though she got into trouble I could appreciate her carefree attitude. Of course Tony was great as well and it is not long before this cute high school tale of angst is thrown on its head when Tony pulls a gun on a guy from their school. Before the pair know it they are escaping their lives in order to get away from the people who can hurt them most, their own family members. Since they are run aways they find a group of other teens and decide to stay with them since they have shelter. In order to gain money they find that they can participate in this trial…

The group takes a trip to the forest and things will never be the same from here on out. What was suppose to be a quick way to make some money to get food quickly turns into a dark and dangerous story. This group has to learn to survive and their first adventure into this mysterious obstacle course happens to be a vampire who is quite thirsty. As I said everything is turned around from this point on and I loved watching the adventure unfold. You just never knew what was around the next corner. I found myself really growing to like each and every main character and I bonded with Jayne and her special powers!

Overall, the best part of this book has to be the crazy stuff that happens in the second half of the book right up to the cliffhanger ending. I swear I wish I could tell you more but I don’t want to ruin the surprise for all of you. I can promise that I have never looked at the fae in this way and I feel that the author really stepped YA paranormal stories up a notch with this one. While there is adventure, romance, mystery and paranormal elements, no one can sit back and say that this one is just like all of the other paranormal stories out there. Trust me this is a thrill ride that you just have to take! I give this book 4.5 hearts for a little bit slow of a start but by the end I was dazed and the only thing left to say is where is book two?

Filed Under: Young Adult (YA) Review

Waiting on Wednesday (24)

March 28, 2012 By Alexa 9 Comments

This is a great weekly theme hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine to show off the books that we are looking forward to that haven’t been released yet.

Summary:

The Ghost
I’ve been trapped in the body of Lily “Ally” Turner for a month now. Talk about a fashion crisis on an epic scale. What worries me more, though, is sometimes I catch Will looking at me like he thinks I’m Lily…or that he wishes I were. Without the good looks of my former self, I don’t know who I am, or if who that is is good enough. I need out of this mess. Now.

Will and I have been looking for a solution, one that would separate me from Lily without killing her. But it’s not going well. Then, when it seems like things couldn’t get any worse, we run into Misty, my former best friend and boyfriend-stealer extraordinaire, who claims she’s being haunted…by me. Seriously?

I’m determined to get to the bottom of who’s pretending to be the spirit of Alona Dare (while I’m pretending to be someone else) and then get the heck out of this body. Or die trying…

The Goth
I’ll admit it. It’s really weird to look at Alona but see Lily. I do know the difference, though, contrary to what Alona might be saying. And Alona is more than a pretty face to me, not that she would believe that.

Our one lead for some help in this messed up situation might be a page torn from the yellow pages-—the “Psychics” section-—I found in my dad’s stuff. One of the “fakes” seems a bit more real-—and odd-—than the others. Before I can investigate further, though, Alona is off and chasing a ghost that’s probably nothing more than a figment of Misty’s guilty imagination. Now Lily’s family is freaking out because she didn’t come home, my mom is ordering me to stay out of it, and something is definitely wrong with the person formerly known as Lily “Ally” Turner…

Release Date:

May 8th, 2012

Why I’m Waiting on it:

I’ve always liked this series so I’m really looking forward to the third book. I guess I just enjoy that this one has some great paranormal elements while still managing to be really cute. I can’t wait to see what Alona will do now that she back in a very unique way.

Filed Under: Waiting on Wednesday (WOW)

Tune In Tuesday [4]

March 27, 2012 By Bianca 2 Comments

Tune In Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by Ginger at GReads. It is a way to share with others old or new music you are listening to. You can link up and join on Gingers Blog. Go ahead and start sharing your awesome music!

So I know there was only one week left for the the Book Playlist edition but truthfully I couldn’t think of anything that fit at the moment. Maybe I’m just a little out of it but I hope you still enjoy these next couple of songs. They are just some songs I have been listening to a lot on Spotify.

Big thanks to Ginger for posting Sometime Around Midnight on her Tune In Tuesday a while ago. I have listened to it so many times and I am still not sick of it.

More Chester See – He sings his own music, does covers, and makes funny videos so go check out some more

We Are The In Crowd Website

The Airborne Toxic Event Website

Filed Under: Tune In Tuesday

The Seduction of Phaeton Black

March 27, 2012 By Alexa 4 Comments

Title: The Seduction of Phaeton Black
Author: Jillian Stone
Publisher: Brava
Publication Date: March 2012
Classification: Adult Romance Novel
Challenge: None

Content: Erotic scenes and crude language

Summary from Goodreads:

In the gaslit streets of Victorian London, phantoms rule the night, demons dance till dawn, and one supernatural detective dares to be seduced by the greatest power of all. . .He’s The Man With The Magic Touch

A master of deduction, seduction and other midnight maneuvers, Phaeton Black is Scotland Yard’s secret weapon against things that go bump in the night. His prodigious gifts as a paranormal investigator are as legendary as his skills as a lover, his weakness for wicked women as notorious as his affection for absinthe. But when he’s asked to hunt down a fanged femme fatale who drains her victims of blood, he walks right into the arms of the most dangerous woman he’s ever known. . .

She’s The Devilish Miss Jones

Pressing a knife to his throat–and demanding he make love to her–Miss America Jones uses Phaeton as a willing shield against the gang of pirates chasing her. As deadly as she is, with a derringer tucked in her garter, Miss Jones is not the vampiric killer he’s been staking out–but she may be just what Phaeton needs to crack the case. As the daughter of a Cajun witch, she possesses uncanny powers. As a fearless fighter, she can handle anything from Egyptian mummies to Jack the Ripper. But when an ancient evil is unleashed on the world, she could be his only salvation. . .or ultimate sacrifice.

My Thoughts:

This book starts off with two amazing characters showing up instantly. I instantly liked Phaeton Black for the crude rake that he was. He was certainly perfect from his carefree attitude to the fact that he lived in a whore house. This is certainly a man’s dream to be seconds away from so many women who participate in pleasure as their living. Of course opposite him is the enchanting America Jones, who lights up the pages with her wit and sass. The first time these two come together was magical and I instantly had high hopes for this bold couple who ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time, or the right place at the wrong time, however you want to view it.

From here the reader soon learns that Miss Jones is escaping from pirates that took all of her father’s ships away from him before he passed away. Mr Black on the other hand works for the Scotish Yard, well working is a pretty strong word, considering he was let go from the Yard before because of his belief in paranormal aspects/creatures being behind huge murder cases such as Jack the Ripper. From here on out two storylines weave together and go in separate directions from time to time. Black is working on his own case trying to solve what temptress is behind all of these dead bodies that keep showing up while Miss Jones is worried about the return of her ships. I did like that while this book was romance and even bordering on erotic fiction in certain points, that it had a great storyline going on. There was never a time to get bored and the romance really just added to the overall value of the story, instead of the romance being the only plot element like so many romances out there. My big complaint in the beginning of the book is that Phaeton Black tries to be too formal in the language that he uses in the beginning of the book. Whenever he is on a case the style of writing becomes elegant and complex, in my opinion this was unnecessary. Plus Phaeton can be confusing because he constantly is changing the names of the creatures that he sees. One moment they are called one thing and then sentences later it is something else, almost making it seem as if a new creature has appeared when infact that is not the case.

As the story moved forward the plot lines get more intense and a lot of side characters that you will only see briefly are introduced. It is a lot to take in the beginning of the book but over time I feel it was easier to understand who everyone was and what was going on in the story. Plus past the middle point in the book Phaeton slows down his robust language so that the reader can more clearly understand him without having to think about every little thing he states. Of course as he calms down Miss Jones seems to pull more and more French phrases out in the book, sometimes leaving the reader to wonder what on Earth she just said. Since I read an advance version of the book I’m not sure if a glossary was added in the final finished version but I would honestly recommend there be one.

Overall, this certainly was a very erotic and enticing tale that actually had real plot elements. As I stated before there was never a time to be bored because everything was constantly moving. Even though so much is going on I felt it all worked and trust me there were moments in the book that allowed the main characters a reprieve to allow for moments of intense passion and romance. I must say that I love Miss Jones’ saying of there being proofs of love in life, it is never enough for someone to just utter the words, rather their actions speak it for them. Trust me by the end of this novel you will not be able to turn the pages fast enough and I know I was taken with Phateon and America by the end. I can’t wait to read their next adventure! This book gets 4 hearts from me for being a good story with some minor flaws along the way.

Filed Under: Adult Review

The Girl Behind the Blog: My Love of Adult Romance Books

March 26, 2012 By Alexa 10 Comments

So back in January, I believe, I did a post about The Girl Behind the Blog: Burn Out in which I expressed my feelings about how stressful blogging can become. Back then I said I might do more posts like this if the mood struck. Well I have decided I wanted to share more with you so here I am again to ramble on, this time my topic is My Love of Adult Romance Books!

Alexa

Unless you are new to my blog, you know that I review mostly YA books. Sure I like to read all sorts of genres in YA but I orginally started Pages of Forbidden Love thinking I would review YA and Adult Romance equally. Well I did have several adult reviews when I first started to blog but over time my adult romance books have been sitting on my shelf collecting dust while I tried to keep up with all of the newest young adult books.

Well let me tell you, other than the two adult urban fantasy books I read last month, the last time before that was about seven months ago that I was actually reading an adult romance book! This scares me, it frustrates me, and it makes me pretty darn sad that I haven’t had time for it. I miss great characters such as Cat and Bones from the Night Huntress series, Kitty and Martini from Touched by an Alien series, the tall dark males in the Dark Hunter series, etc. I miss reading something that didn’t have all of the darn drama that you get in YA. I’m ready to put on my big girl pants and go back to a genre that I love.

So pretty soon I’m going to be putting YA books on hold for a little bit while I catch up on all those steamy adult romances I’ve been missing out on. This means that hopefully come May I will be reviewing more adult books. Sure I still love YA so there will be reviews on those, like there has always been, but I need to stop getting so trapped into reading just one area of my bookshelf.

I hope that you are all excited about seeing some different reviews on this blog. Plus now that I have Bianca, Johnny, and Lindsay posting reviews on mainly YA books I feel they are going to take care of some of the YA side of the blog while I explore my old love for deep, steamy romance. I need more than just the simple kisses that teenager characters have in YA, I need more passion and depth to the relationships.

Certainly feel free to let me know your thoughts on this and The Girl Behind the Blog posts themselves!

Thanks for listening to me ramble on about something that I felt I needed to address.

Filed Under: The Girl Behind the Blog

IMM 68:

March 25, 2012 By Alexa 10 Comments

Big Thanks to Kristi @ The Story Siren for this Great Weekly Theme

Awesome Bloggers Mentioned:

~ Elodie @ Once Upon a Quote
~ Erica @ The Book Cellar
~ Loretta @ Between the Pages

Filed Under: In My Mailbox (IMM)

Ten Thing We Did (and Probably Shouldn’t Have)

March 24, 2012 By Bianca 8 Comments

Title: Ten Things We Did (and Probably Shouldn’t Have)
Author: Sarah Mlynowski
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication Date: June 7^th, 2011
Classification: Contemporary YA
Challenge: 2012 Goodreads Reading Challenge 13/70

Summary from Goodreads: 2 girls + 3 guys + 1 house parents = 10 things April and her friends did that they (definitely, maybe, probably) shouldn’t have.

If given the opportunity, what sixteen-year-old wouldn’t jump at the chance to move in with a friend and live parent-free? Although maybe “opportunity” isn’t the right word, since April had to tell her dad a tiny little untruth to make it happen (see #1: “Lied to Our Parents”). But she and her housemate Vi are totally responsible and able to take care of themselves. How they ended up “Skipping School” (#3), “Throwing a Crazy Party” (#8), “Buying a Hot Tub” (#4), and, um, “Harboring a Fugitive” (#7) at all is kind of a mystery to them.

In this hilarious and bittersweet tale, Sarah Mlynowski mines the heart and mind of a girl on her own for the first time. To get through the year, April will have to juggle a love triangle, learn to do her own laundry, and accept that her carefully constructed world just might be falling apart . . . one thing-she-shouldn’t-have-done at a time.

My Thoughts

“I bolted awake. A siren.”

Ten Things We Did didn’t start right at the beginning of the story. Instead it started three months into the story and gave a taste of all the craziness that will happen. This helped me get into the book quickly because it had me wondering how the story progressed to get to this point in the story and I also wanted to know what was going to happen after. Right from the beginning I knew April was going to get herself into some pretty crazy situations.

During Christmas break April’s father informs her that he has gotten a new job and that they are going to move to Cleveland, in 9 days! Come on of course people are going to be upset with such short notice. April doesn’t want to go. She is a Junior in High school, all her friends are already here, and she thinks she is ready to take the next step with her boyfriend Noah. Moving is not in her plans so after a little persuading and a couple of “tiny” lies (lies told to both April’s dad and Vi’s mom) April and her friend Vi get April’s dad to stay with Vi and her mother for a semester. Of course Vi’s mother will also be gone during that time so the girls really have the whole house to themselves

April felt bad about lying to her dad. She really cared about his feelings and I really liked knowing that. She wanted to stay and be grown up but later she realizes she might not want all the things she thought she did. I found it really entertaining reading about her experiences with learning how to load a dishwasher, do the grocery shopping, and make dinner. It was just funny because there were so many things that April didn’t know how to do or wasn’t used to doing around the house.

For Vi these were the things she was used to. It was just her and her mom so she had more responsibilities (especially since her mom was gone a lot). A lot of the time I forgot that Vi was still in high school. Most of the time she seemed older than she really was but she isn’t really as grown up as she thinks she is. As much as they want to be older April and Vi both are still very much just teenagers.

I am trying to think of the best way to write this without giving too much away. I don’t want to say a lot about the 10 things that they did because it really just needs to be read. I can say that I laughed a lot while reading this book. The things that these two girls do and just the way that they interacted with each other and others was hilarious.

Besides April and Vi, Dean and Hudson had to be my two favorite characters. They helped April and Vi a lot and they were just great! Dean always had me cracking up and Hudson was really nice. He also was a bit of a mystery. There were all kinds of rumors of what he did for a job and it was interesting reading everyone’s theories. The whole book was just fast and really fun to read.

*This was also the very first book I read on my Nook! I know your probably thinking “that was random” but I just had to share

Filed Under: Young Adult (YA) Review

Blogger Pages to Love…Vicariously

March 23, 2012 By Alexa 3 Comments

Blogger Pages to Love is a newish feature here at Pages of Forbidden Love!
Basically the point is to highlight new and old bloggers that you should all check out!
(If you would like to be featured please send me an email at apk1princess(at)live(dot)com)

Today I am honored to have Bec here from Vicariously!

I just discovered her blog recently and I can’t wait to chat with her more and join in on a weekend feature that she does with a blogger friend of hers.

About Me: I’m a twenty-two year old musician who blogs about books in her spare time, which these days is all the time. Hopefully that will change in a bit because I would like to get my career off the ground, but not too much because I love Vicariously! very much and could not stand to part with it. If you’re curious as to my music, I’m a singer/songwriter of the Joss Stone/Adele variety.

I hail from the south where they think burning Harry Potter books is great fun and I find it quite appalling. I’ve always been a bit of a follower, but one who marches at her own speed and to the beat of her own drummer. I’ve always had an intense need to be someone special and different. I want people to know my name. However I would like this to be through my more altruistic and kooky antics as opposed to my many-err accidents, yeah we’ll call them that.

I’m highly opinionated and uptight, but you won’t see that side because I like for people to think I’m easygoing. God forbid that something I’m involved in planning goes wrong. I will take the reins and dictatorship that bitch in four point five seconds.

I’m not making myself sound very appealing, but the thing is that I’m honest. I’m not going to tell you that I’m anything that I’m not. I am who I am and I have absolutely no apologies foor it. If you had my life, if you’d been what I’ve been through, and been subject to my usual idiocy? You’d learn to like yourself too.

My Blog

I am a book blogger who reviews every. damn. thing. she. reads. I want people to know what’s out there. I feel like too many people forget that there are a lot of books out there that have been out for awhile, but haven’t been given their just due. So many great new books come out that these jewels get lost in the shuffle. So I want to give everything possible it’s props. People work outrageously hard on their books and they deserve exposure whether it be good or bad.

I really just hope to open some minds with my blog. I get political sometimes. I have a feature on religion coming to my blog, but I like to show all viewpoints. I like to get on tough subjects. I don’t just do the paranormal, dystopian, and romance of it all. I’ll be the first one to read a book about a tough subject such as suicide and mental illness etc. I want people to know what’s out there.

Also being a musician I participate in a segment called Tune In Tuesday where I feature songs and artists that need some attention. It might be a familiar song covered by an unfamiliar artist. You really never know what I’m going to come out with on this. I’m kind of all over the place.

My Roots (and no I don’t mean the hair I need to dye): I started *book* blogging in December 2011. The first book I reviewed on my official blog was Chime by Frannie Billingsey. I’ve been reviewing books on goodreads since about 2010. And I’ve had an online journal since I was seventeen. I won’t link you to that though. If you want to find me though just find a way to tell me and I’ll link you to my livejournal. But I don’t really think that’s necessary.

I blog because I want to be heard. I’ve never been the girl whose voice gets lost in the crowd, but I’m certainly not about to shout my opinions at the top of my lungs for no reason. I have been known to haunt the local book store and give people suggestions on what they should read. I kept thinking, well if I do this maybe I should try doing it on the internet. I didn’t get the idea for a book blog until my friend Suz pushed me into it. That, they say, is history. I did and do have a separate music blog that I’m still working on getting off the ground, but that is neither here nor there. It’s only got a couple of reviews up and I’m still working on the layout.

I had to be the most nervous new blogger. I never thought I’d find anyone who’d want to read anything that I wrote about books. I was pleasantly surprised.

My Stomping Grounds or, rather, My Comfort Zone: My favorite book of all time is Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine. Fairy tale, myth, legend, and historical retellings are my favorite genres. My favorite fairy tale is Beauty and the Beast or Cinderella, my favorite myth is the tale of Persephone, my favorite legend is Robin Hood, and my favorite historical characters are Anne Boleyn and Elizabeth Bathory. Anything to do with any of that I’m totally there. I pretty much read everything I can get my hands on. The only thing that shakes me up is a dystopian reality. I have an extremely overactive imagination and I can completely see our world becoming the next Panem (The Hunger Games).

Catching Me On the Fly: Subscribe to my blog, use GFC, follow me on twitter @VicariouslyBec, but mostly just comment. Any and every comment is responded to and answered. I’ve made two of the greatest friends from my comments. I e-mail them both quite often.

I bid you good day and good night blog world. Hopefully you’re not already asleep

Filed Under: Blogger Pages to Love