Crashed

Musing Monday: August 14, 2017

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Musing Mondays is a weekly meme, hosted by Ambrosia at The Purple Booker, that asks you to choose one of the following prompts to answer:

I’m currently reading…
Up next I think I’ll read…
I bought the following book(s) in the past week…
I’m super excited to tell you about (book/author/bookish-news)…
I’m really upset by (book/author/bookish-news)…
I can’t wait to get a copy of…
I wish I could read ___, but…
I blogged about ____ this past week…

THIS WEEK’S RANDOM QUESTION: What are your feelings on YA? Do you think it is just for young adults or do you think it’s cool full grown adults like it too.

I’m currently reading…

 

I was having a little trouble getting into Crashed, which I anticipated (not because I didn’t want to read it, but because I find Lia kind of annoying) so I thought it would be a good time to do a reread of something easy to get through as well. I was going to do the whole Uglies series, but I reread book 1 not too long ago, so I just jumped straight to Pretties.

I’m also still working my way through Persuasion… I’ll read another chapter of that this week just like I committed to doing, though I don’t think I’ll do more than the one.

Interesting things are starting to happen in Crashed about 1/3 of the way in, but I’m already 2/3 of the way through Pretties so I’ll probably get to Specials (Uglies, book 3, my favorite of the series) before Crashed is completely finished. We shall see!

What are your feelings on YA? Do you think it is just for young adults or do you think it’s cool full grown adults like it too.
Well, as a 25-year-old reading YA, I might be a bit biased… Honestly, I fully believe that this genre is for anyone and everyone.

In fact, when I first became an “adult” I tried to move on from YA, thinking that it was only for teens or whatever, but what I found was a lot of books with the exact same disappointing storylines interspersed with unnecessary sex scenes. So I went back to what I enjoyed!

That isn’t to say that I don’t ever read anything else, but YA is my main deal (as you can probably tell if you have ever looked at my blog for even a minute).

Friday 56: August 11, 2017

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The Friday 56 is a weekly meme hosted by Freda’s Voice and the rules are simple:

  • Grab a book, any book (I, personally, prefer to use my current read.)
  • Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader (If you have to improvise, that’s ok.)
  • Find any sentence, (or few, just don’t spoil it)
  • Post it

Crashed by Robin Wasserman
(Cold Awakening, book 2)

You’d think BioMax could have improved on the defective male brain. . . .

Thursday Quotables: August 10, 2017

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This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week; whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written.

The days had no shape. They passed, which was good enough.

Summary:

Everyone Has Some.

Before the accident, Lia Kahn was happy.

Before the accident, Lia Kahn was loved.

Before, Lia was a lot of things: Normal. Alive.

Human.

Lia no longer believes in before. Six months after the crash that killed her, six months after being reborn, Lia has finally accepted her new reality. She is a machine, a mech, and she belongs with her own kind. It’s a wild, carefree life, without rules and without fear. Because there’s nothing to fear when you have nothing left to lose.

But when a voice from her past cries out for revenge, everything changes. Lia is forced to choose between her old life and her new one. Between humans and mechs. Between sacrificing the girl she used to be and saving the boy she used to love.

Even if it means he’ll hate her forever.

Thank you Bookshelf Fantasies for this fun book meme!

WWW Wednesday: August 9, 2017

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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:  The Imposter Queen (The Imposter Queen, book 1) by Sarah Fine
I don’t know a whole lot about this book right now, but it feels like the right book to be starting after Jane Austen and Maureen Johnson.

It’s been on my TBR for long enough that I’m embarrassed to say exactly how long, and I’ve mentioned it in a First Lines Friday post as well.

I have high hopes for this book! It’s got fantasy and magic and royalty, what could go wrong? (I probably shouldn’t have said that…)

Recently Finished:  Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Continuing my reread of Austen novels, I grabbed my second favorite of her novels. I didn’t enjoy it as much as the first time I read it, but I can’t really be too surprised considering that was 10 whole years ago!

And I finally realized what is different about the way Austen writes:  Her books read like very long, elaborate letters where the reader is the recipient! I love that!

I also love how she likes to state things as if it’s all praise and everything is lovely, but if you look past the initial words to the tone you realize she is having a dig at her own characters!
It reminds me of a thing my mom used to do. Someone would say something like “I almost got hit by a car!” and my mom would sweetly reply “I’m sorry you almost got hit by a car” and the person would thank her and go about their lives not noticing the subtle inflection on the word ‘almost’ which changes the entire meaning of the phrase!

The Last Little Blue Envelope (Little Blue Envelope, book 2) by Maureen Johnson
I started this a little early, before I had actually finished Sense and Sensibility. And I finished it faster than I expected as well.

I didn’t know I had a review in me until I sat down to write a few lines on Goodreads about who I would recommend the book to, but I did and you can read it here!

Did I mention I’m still not over the scene on page 101? You know, the scene where she gets toilet water in her hair and doesn’t wish she was still wearing it braided instead of loose and then just a few seconds later does wish she was still wearing it braided so she could feel Keith’s lips on her ear when he whispers something (and she still has toilet water hair) and then .02 seconds later is actually SWOONING LIKE A VICTORIAN LADY BECAUSE HER HORMONES ARE JUST TOO UNCONTROLLABLE! Because I’m still not over that scene even a little bit. If anything it’s getting worse.

Reading Next:  Crashed (Cold Awakening, book 2) by Robin Wasserman
This book was republished as ‘Shattered’ (and the series was previously called ‘Skinned’).

I’m going to do my best to get into Crashed because I don’t want to wait too long on this series and forget what happened in the first book.

I’m not worried the book is going to be bad or anything, I just hit a slump a while back that put me off reading it for a while. My only real concerns are Second Book Syndrome and the fact that the few times I saw Jude in book one (Skinned / Frozen) I thought he was too preachy…

I have a feeling it may be hard to get into at first (because of the SBS), but I’ll keep at it this time even if I add another book to the mix because I really want to complete this trilogy.

July 30th Read-A-Thon Goals

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@books-and-cookies Read-A-Thon Day! (Learn More)

I’m not sure I have a firm goal here. It would be cool to finish a whole book, but as long as I get a full day of reading in I’m satisfied!

I’ll be starting with Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen since I am a chapter into it already.
If I get in the mood for something more modern I’ve got many others from the library I have been neglecting… *cough* Crashed *cough

(I’d also like to say that if any of you read-a-thon participants have Goodreads and would like to add me, please feel free! I’m “darkestwings” over there. I’m on mobile right now or I would add a link.)

Edit: Goodreads Link!

WWW Wednesday: March 8, 2017

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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:  Crashed/Shattered (Cold Awakening, book 2) by Robin Wasserman

I have just begun Crashed, by which I mean, I’ve just gone and gotten it off the shelf to start reading it today. So I have nothing but the summary and Skinned to base my opinions on so far.

The Goodreads summary says “Lia is forced to choose between . . . sacrificing the girl she used to be and saving the boy she used to love.”

This fills me with a certain amount of what I like to call Love Triangle Dread. But that aside, it also leaves me with the question of: Auden or Walker?
Because she did love Auden, platonically, and if you’ve read Skinned you know he could very well need her to save him. But since I read a lot of YA, I am almost positive it’s Walker that hint is about. In fact, I’d go so far as to say, pretending I believe Auden is an option is purely wishful thinking….

Did I mention I’m almost positive (based on prior YA Lit knowledge) that Jude is going to be her love interest in this one? I am not excited about that at all….

I am pretty excited to see her new Mech-life, though, a life (hopefully) uninhibited by her old one, even if it does mean reading more about Jude.

This last bit is for Krysta over at Pages Unbound who commented that “The cover for Crashed is a little creepy!” (which it is), but I wanted to let you know I totally found out why when I was reading Skinned: It’s because the Mech-heads try to make themselves look as obviously non-human as possible. Jude is described as having silver hair and silver paint streaked down his face! So it seems that creepy is their little Mech-Aesthetic™.

Recently Finished:  Skinned/Frozen (Cold Awakening, book 1) by Robin Wasserman

Overall I liked this book. It was well written and nicely allegorical over multiple types of bigotry. I also found the futuristic world it was set in pretty interesting, I hope to learn more about it in the next books.

I’ve seen people relate it to Scott Westerfeld and I’d say it’s a somewhat an apt observation. Generally I don’t like the “for fans of [author]” or “it’s like [series]” because that makes you expect something pretty specific. So to be clear, it might remind you of the ‘Uglies’ series in some ways, but it is definitely not the exact same, definitely it’s own world/story.

I did find a few things I didn’t love, but they were minor enough that those things couldn’t ruin the book for me.

I wrote a (somewhat messier than usual) review on Skinned which you can read here.

Reading Next:  Wired/Torn (Cold Awakening, book 3) by Robin Wasserman

HOPEFULLY I’ll be able to get my hands on a copy. The local library has the first two, but not the third? What kind of evil librarian shenanigans are they up to there??
But I talked to one of the lovely ladies there and they think they can get it for me pretty soon on inter-library loan from another town. I’m just hoping it happens quick enough for me to go straight from Crashed to Wired, because I hate interrupting a series.

If for some reason I have to wait longer I’ll go ahead and read one of the books off my TBR Shame List.

WWW Wednesday: March 1, 2017

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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:  Skinned by Robin Wasserman (also published as ‘Frozen’)

I’m only about halfway through, and for the most part I’m enjoying myself.

The least part (the not enjoyable part) is that I just want Lia to move on and stop trying to have her old life with her lame friends and her prejudiced family. As far as I can tell, Lia cares about Lia more than anyone else, so why is it so hard for her to just move on? Why am I at the halfway point and still watching her try to fit in with a bunch of morons? Why has she not realized her relationship with Walker was crappy even before she was dead?

I did have a message from Robin Wasserman herself who confirmed both that Lia isn’t that aware of things outside what’s happening to her, and used the phrase “hasn’t quite yet [caught on]” so I have hope that soon Lia is going to realize the people from her old life don’t deserve to stay in her new one and she’ll MOVE ON so I can see some awesome Mechs-People.

Also I miss Quinn, I hope she comes back.

Recently Finished:  Psych Major Syndrome by Alicia Thompson

I tried to like this book, I swear I did. But after two days of desperately trying to find something to like about any of these characters, I gave up.

I even reviewed it, which I normally wouldn’t do for something I couldn’t get more than 28 pages into, but the people deserve to know (or possibly I just wanted to complain).

You can read the review for yourself here.

I also found some problems regarding racism in some Goodreads reviews and at that point I just figured I couldn’t be asked to continue reading.

Reading Next:  Crashed by Robin Wasserman (also published as ‘Shattered’)

I will most likely get to this one Friday or Saturday and I’m pretty eager, even though the summary makes me think there’s going to be more Walker, who I really don’t enjoy… But maybe by the time this rolls around I’ll have grown to like him. (That laughter you hear in the distance is me totally not believing what I just said.)