Book Review: Graffiti Moon by Cath Crowley

Graffiti Moon by Cath Crowley 
Release Date: 10th August 2010

Publisher: Pan MacMillan Australia
Format: Paperback 
Pages: 264
Rating: 4.5/5.0

This book was read as part of the 2012 OTS Challenge

Summary from Amazon:

"Senior year is over, and Lucy has the perfect way to celebrate: tonight, she's going to find Shadow, the mysterious graffiti artist whose work appears all over the city. He's out there somewhere—spraying color, spraying birds and blue sky on the night—and Lucy knows a guy who paints like Shadow is someone she could fall for. Really fall for. Instead, Lucy's stuck at a party with Ed, the guy she's managed to avoid since the most awkward date of her life. But when Ed tells her he knows where to find Shadow, they're suddenly on an all-night search around the city. And what Lucy can't see is the one thing that's right before her eyes."

Review:
This was a nice little romance. The main romance in this story was fairly predictable, but I didn't mind. I liked seeing how it played out, how it all came together. It was cute, easy to read, and a romance that I approved of. The one thing I didn't really like about this novel was Poet's chapters. I understand why they were there, and I understand why they were written in poetry, but I didn't really care for them. I found that I rushed quickly through these chapters (which was easy considering they were only ever a page or two long), so I could get back to Lucy or Ed. 

What I liked was that Lucy and Ed, our main characters, didn't outshine the rest. I thought Jazz, and to a lesser extent Daisy, were hilarious, I really liked Leo and his back story, and I thought the Malcolm Dove was mental, and also hilarious. I also liked the writing style; switching between Lucy and Ed's perspectives allowed us to see conversations from both their points of view, as well as misunderstandings and miscommunication. Just as you finish a conversation between the two from Ed's point of view, the next chapter brings us Lucy's thoughts as you re-read parts of the same conversation. This was a writing tool that I thought worked quite well. 

Overall, a cute novel about teen romance that I found very hard to put down. 

Know Me Better (2)

Know Me Better is a weekly Meme by Inspired Kathy
@ I Am A Reader, Not A Writer

This weeks questions are...

Do you like the spotlight or lurking in the shadows?

Definitely a shadow lurker...I've always preferred being behind the scenes as opposed to on the stage. 

How many books are on your TBR pile?
The TBR list I keep is getting pretty long, now that I constantly add books to it. It's about 260 books long at the moment, but for every book I read I probably add at least 10 more to my TBR list. I also have about 1,700 ebooks.

What is next on your to read list?
I really, really, really want to get onto reading City of Bones by Cassandra Clare and Divergent by Veronica Roth. 

What one item would you eat for the rest of your life?
Spaghetti Bolognese. 

What is the last thing you bought?
I bought a really cute pink and white dress and a grey skirt from boohoo.com. 

Book Review: Newes from the Dead by Mary Hooper

Newes from the Dead by Mary Hooper
Release Date: 6th July 2010

Publisher: Baker and Taylor 
Format: eBook 
Pages: 272
Rating: 4.5/5.0

This book was read as part of the 2012 OTS Challenge

Summary from Amazon:

"WRONGED. HANGED. ALIVE? (AND TRUE!)

Anne can't move a muscle, can't open her eyes, can't scream. She lies immobile in the darkness, unsure if she'd dead, terrified she's buried alive, haunted by her final memory—of being hanged. A maidservant falsely accused of infanticide in 1650 England and sent to the scaffold, Anne Green is trapped with her racing thoughts, her burning need to revisit the events—and the man—that led her to the gallows.

Meanwhile, a shy 18-year-old medical student attends his first dissection and notices something strange as the doctors prepare their tools . . . Did her eyelids just flutter? Could this corpse be alive?"

Review:
I really liked the premise of this story. A girl, just a normal girl, survives her hanging. Her hanging. That's not something that happens. And, this story was based on a true story. Now I made sure to read the authors notes, and there was in fact a girl named Anne Green who survived her hanging. A person who actually did exist, survived a hanging. I'm sorry, I probably sound like I'm banging on about this, but don't you just find that amazing? That doesn't happen, people don't survive public executions, especially if they occurred the way it was described in this book. The fact that this book was based on a true story was a massive plus for me. It made the story so much more interesting.

So, to actually get to the story, I really, really enjoyed it. Granted, you know where the story is going to go from the beginning, but it was still really interesting to read the journey that took us from Anne's hanging to her revival. What I enjoyed was that the story had two narrators; Anne, who told us her story and established for us why she was hanged in the first place, and Robert, who details her (planned) dissection which turns into a resurrection. All of it was fascinating to read, and I found that I didn't have a preferred narrator either. Sometimes, I find that books with more than one narrator can have the problem where I don't like the narrators equally, and so I end up rushing through certain chapters or dragging through others. I'm glad to say that this wasn't the case for this novel.

Probably the only thing I didn't like was the character of Sir Thomas. He was in the background being very mad and angry, and it just annoyed me. I got to the point where I just skipped over whatever dialogue he had; his incessant yelling didn't need my attention. Overall, this novel was a great read - a solid plot, great characters, and a happy ending. 

Know Me Better (1)

Know Me Better is a weekly Meme by Inspired Kathy
@ I Am A Reader, Not A Writer

This is my first time participating in this meme! I discovered this meme exactly one year ago, where Inspired Kathy had just posted these holiday themed questions and had announced that Know Me Better was taking a break. A year later, its back, and it's time for me to get involved!

This weeks questions are...

Red or Green?
Definitely green, it's my favourite colour.

Favourite Christmas Carol?
Hmm I'm not really sure. Although, I do find myself singing Jingle Bells quite a bit around Christmas time.

What do you want for Christmas?
Usually I don't have anything I specifically want for Christmas, but I know that this year I want money so I can go out and buy some books. I don't know how it happened, but my TBR list has quadrupled in size in the past couple of weeks alone!

Favourite Holiday Treat?
Gingerbread. I can't get enough gingerbread.

Favourite Holiday Tradition?
This isn't a tradition yet, but I suspect it's likely to become one in future years. My youngest brother is 2 and a half years old now, so he's at the stage where he kinda understand Christmas and Santa and presents. My older brother and I have spent Christmas Eve at my dads for the past two years, which has involved staying up late to put together various presents (this year I've been told we'll be putting together a swing set and a trampoline). I can't wait to see how he reacts on Christmas morning. 

Musing Mondays (12)

Musing Mondays is a weekly Meme by Mizb @ Should Be Reading

This weeks musing asks...Is there a particular book that is your nemesis - the book you're determined to one day finish?

I don't usually start books and then not finish them, but rather, I put books on my TBR lists/piles, and then just leave them there. Game of Thrones is the one that comes immediately to mind, since I have a lot of the books in this series, but still haven't even glanced at the first novel. City of Bones is always constantly staring at me from it's place on my bookshelf. I will get around to these books one day (hopefully soon)!

What about you? Do you have this problem?

2012 Debut Author Challenge: Completion Post!

2 challenges down, 1 more to go!

The 2012 Debut Author Challenge was hosted by The Story Siren. The aim is to read 12 young adult novels (ideally one for each month) from debut authors. Since I got a fair bit distracted from reading this year, I decided to stick with 6 novels. 

1. Cinder by Marissa Meyer 

2. Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi 

3. The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

4. Tempest by Julie Cross

5. Slide by Jill Hathaway

6. Fracture by Megan Miranda

I really enjoyed participating in this challenge this. I probably won't be back next year, even though this challenged introduced me to a top-notch books, I just have too many books on my TBR pile at the moment. Sometime in the future, I will definitely revisit this challenge. 

Book Review: Fracture by Megan Miranda

Fracture by Megan Miranda
Release Date: 12th February 2012

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing 
Format: eBook 
Pages: 272
Rating: 3.0/5.0

This book was read as part of the 2012 Debut Author Challenge

Summary from Amazon:

"Eleven minutes passed before Delaney Maxwell was pulled from the icy waters of a Maine lake by her best friend Decker Phillips. By then her heart had stopped beating. Her brain had stopped working. She was dead. And yet she somehow defied medical precedent to come back seemingly fine
-despite the scans that showed significant brain damage. Everyone wants Delaney to be all right, but she knows she's far from normal. Pulled by strange sensations she can't control or explain, Delaney finds herself drawn to the dying. Is her altered brain now predicting death, or causing it?

Then Delaney meets Troy Varga, who recently emerged from a coma with similar abilities. At first she's reassured to find someone who understands the strangeness of her new existence, but Delaney soon discovers that Troy's motives aren't quite what she thought. Is their gift a miracle, a freak of nature-or something much more frightening?"

Review:
I have to say that this book underwhelmed me. The premise is really, really interesting, and I did enjoy this part of the plot - it's a fascinating idea, the idea that severe trauma can cause changes in our body and our mind, that science and medicine can't explain. However, I don't really think that this book pulled this concept off that well. It's not that it was bad, but I do think it could be better. It's kinda like how I felt about Slide by Jill Hathaway in this respect. The premise of the story is interesting in itself, but I don't really think that Megan Miranda pulled it off. There was no OMG moment for me in the novel; there was potential for an OMG moment at one point, but it played out way too quickly for my liking.

Moving onto another point, I wasn't the biggest fan of the romances in this novel. The romance between Troy and Delaney felt, to me, forced and a bit convenient. I get that they share some sort of bond because they are both afflicted with the same kind of problem, but you don't become romantically interested in someone just because of that, which really is the only reason that these two come together. Troy was acting a bit stalkerish at the beginning of the novel, and any sane girl would have run in the opposite direction (this was especially the case when Delaney found out something about a certain old man with a cane), but Delaney didn't, and I just didn't understand that. Secondly, there's Decker, and the relationship between these two and the way it progressed was completely predictable. I didn't mind the romance between these two, but I knew what was going to happen between these two from probably the first page.

Overall, this wasn't what I would call an amazing read. Which is interesting because I'm seeing this book pop up on some people's best books of the year lists. So, really, you can't just trust my word on this, it's probably that this book just wasn't for me.