The Hybrid Chronicles

First Lines Fridays: September 21, 2018

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First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

  • Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
  • Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
  • Finally… reveal the book!

First Lines:

Addie and I were born into the same body, our souls’ ghostly fingers entwined before we gasped our very first breath.

Did the quote pique your interest? View this book on Goodreads!

 

April 2018 Reading Wrap-Up

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Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
(Twilight Saga, book 3)
Rating:  ★☆☆☆☆ – did not like it
Review:  No
Format:  E-book
Reading Dates:  April 1 – 2
Read Count:  2
Favorite Thing:  It could have been longer, but it wasn’t and I’m grateful.
Least Favorite Thing:  Bella’s doormat impersonations…

Lordy this book was obnoxious. There were a lot of parts I hated, but all of them in some way tie-in to the whole “Bella as a doormat” crap so… Like seriously I kept wanting to climb into the novel and shake her like “just stick to your guns about literally anything, just stand up for yourself, just stop letting these idiots run right over all your boundaries!” and then scream for an hour.

My Posts About Eclipse

Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
(Twilight Saga, book 4)
Rating:  ★☆☆☆☆ – did not like it
Review:  No
Format:  E-book
Reading Dates:  April 2
Read Count:  2
Favorite Thing:  Bella is slightly more tolerable as a vampire.
Least Favorite Thing:  Nessie. Both the name and the concept.

I read all of the Twilight books and my head didn’t even explode it’s a miracle! Never again.

My Posts About Breaking Dawn

Empire of Storms by Sarah J. Maas
(Throne of Glass, book 5)
Rating:  ★★★☆☆ – liked it
Review:  No
Format:  Print
Reading Dates:  March 8 – April 4
Read Count:  1
Favorite Thing:  Lorcan being like “I hate Elide, but if anyone ever even thought about hurting her, I would kill everyone in this room and then myself.”
Least Favorite Thing:  Up until the very end of the novel, it was like “everything that can go wrong, will go wrong” and that made me tired.

My least favorite thing is actually why I rated this book only 3 stars. It was good, interesting, and there were a lot of parts I enjoyed, but it felt like for every good thing there were two bad things and it just starts to wear on me after a while and make me tired so it limits my enjoyment of the novel.

Also can I just say, why are they like “oh obviously someone has to die to forge the lock” when they have two heirs of Brannon? It takes all the power of one heir of Brannon to forge the lock, they have two heirs of Brannon. Halfsies, bro. Everybody lives.

My Posts About Empire of Storms

The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale
(Books of Bayern, book 1)
Rating:  ★★★★☆ – really liked it *
Review:  Yes **
Format:  Full-Cast Audiobook
Reading Dates:  April 5 – 7
Read Count:  5-ish
Favorite Thing:  Vicious Attack Geese!
Least Favorite Thing:  Um literally all of Selia’s guard friends. Too skeevy, blech.

* Please note that this rating is for the novel as a whole, not the Full Cast Audio version.
** This review is for the Full Cast Audio version, not the novel as a whole.

My Posts About The Goose Girl

Life and Death by Stephenie Meyer
(Twilight Saga, book 1.75)
Rating:  ★☆☆☆☆ – did not like it
Review:  Yes
Format:  E-book
Reading Dates:  April 10 – 13
Read Count:  1
Favorite Thing:  The alternate ending.
Least Favorite Thing:  So boring.

Please tell me she’s done beating the dead horse that is the Twilight Saga???

My Posts About Life and Death

White Oleander by Janet Fitch
Rating:  ★★★★★ – it was amazing
Review:  No
Format:  E-book
Reading Dates:  April 5 – 15
Read Count:  1
Favorite Thing:  The amazing prose.
Least Favorite Thing:  Literally every male past puberty that ever came in contact with Astrid….

This was recommended to me as part of the Buddy Reads activity in an online Book Club I am a part of. My “buddy” recommended this to me because I wanted to try more books outside of the YA genre this year. I am so incredibly glad I signed up for this activity because I got an excellent recommendation here. A recommendation which I happily pass along:  Read this book!

My Posts About White Oleander

Once and for All by Sarah Dessen
Rating:  ★★★☆☆ – liked it (real rating: 3.5)
Review:  No
Format:  Print
Reading Dates:  April 15 -17
Read Count:  1
Favorite Thing:  Snarky wedding planner comments.
Least Favorite Thing:  Ambrose’s habit of writing everything off as being somebody else’s fault. Fucking obnoxious…

I read this book for my book club’s April Challenge (Read a book with a pastel cover.) and also because I’ve never yet met a Dessen novel I didn’t like. I wish I could give half-star ratings on Goodreads though.

My Posts About Once and for All

What’s Left of Me by Kat Zhang
(Hybrid Chronicles, book 1)
Rating:  ★★★☆☆ – liked it
Review:  No
Format:  Print
Reading Dates:  April 20 – 28
Read Count:  1
Favorite Thing:  Sisterly bond? Is that an accurate term for the bond between two souls sharing the same body?? Whatever. That’s what I’m calling it.
Least Favorite Thing:  Slow? Kind of slow… Not slow enough to DNF, but still slow.

April Challenge #2 complete with the finishing of this novel! Yay! (I don’t know how quickly I’ll move to the sequel though.)

My Posts About What’s Left of Me

Heartless by Marissa Meyer
Rating:  ★★★★☆ – really liked it
Review:  No
Format:  Print
Reading Dates:  April 29 – 30
Read Count:  1
Favorite Thing:  I took sick pleasure in angry, vengeful Cath.
Least Favorite Thing:  Peter Peter.  Actually that’s not even the thing I hated most, but the real thing is a big spoiler.

It took me a minute to get into it, but once I did I couldn’t put it down! And April Challenge #3 successful by the skin of my teeth!

My Posts About Heartless

In Progress

WWW Wednesday: April 25, 2018

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Welcome to WWW Wednesday! This meme was formerly hosted by MizB at Should be Reading and revived on Taking on a World of Words. Just answer the three W’s!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading:  What’s Left of Me (Hybrid Chronicles, book 1) by Kat Zhang

I’m enjoying this one, but I feel like I shouldn’t be considering how slow it’s going so far? I mean when I think about it and break it down into what has actually been happening, I feel like I should have DNF’d this by now, but for some reason the actual reading process is going pretty easily and it doesn’t feel slow.

I’m also still technically reading Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell and the audiobook of American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I can already tell I won’t finish American Gods before hoopla auto-returns it, but that’s okay, I’ll just check it out again afterwhile. I am enjoying it, even if the pacing is a bit strange to me in a way I can’t place.

Recently Finished:  Once and for All by Sarah Dessen

This was my pick for one of the April reading challenges that this book club I’m in is doing. The challenge was to read a book with a pastel cover, and I wasn’t sure this counted, but I took a little poll of sorts and everyone agreed it was pastel enough to count for the challenge.

I was a little afraid I wouldn’t enjoy this book because I haven’t read anything by Sarah Dessen since high school, when I was the same age as the protagonists. I was worried I might have outgrown it or that her writing may have changed in a bad way. I wouldn’t rate this one as high as I have some of her other books, but since it’s been a while since I read them I can’t tell if that’s because I was right about aging out of her demo or if it’s just this book in particular. I’m thinking next month I might start on a little Sarah Dessen reread to answer that question.

Reading Next:  Heartless by Marissa Meyer

I don’t know exactly what to expect with this one. It’s another of my April Challenge books (read a book with a one word title) and my husband actually chose it off my TBR for me.

I hope I like it? I’ve only read one other book that was an Alice in Wonderland retelling, and I don’t remember enjoying it, but obviously that may have nothing to do with the setting and more to do with the writing.

I’m probably hopeful.