Wither - Impressions

Hello again readers! Here I am with another book in my read pile. Enjoyed my 'weekend' by plowing through books, and relaxing. I have possibly avoided all the cleaning I said I was going to do, (okay I definitely did) whoops.

Book: Wither by Lauren DeStefano
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers; 1 edition (March 22, 2011)
The book was purchased by me for review purposes, I still don't blog enough to get ARCs or early releases.

From the Publisher - Dust Jacket blurb:
What if you knew exactly when you would die?

Thanks to modern science, every newborn has become a ticking genetic time bomb - males only live to age twenty-five, and females only live to age twenty. In this bleak landscape, young girls are kidnapped and forced into polygamous marriages to keep the population from dying out.

When sixteen-year-old Rhine Ellery is taken by the Gatherers to become a bride, she enters a world of wealth and privilege. Despite her husband Linden's genuine love for her, and a tenuous trust among her sister wives, Rhine has one purpose: to escape - to find her twin brother and go home.

But Rhine has more to contend with than losing her freedom. Linden's eccentric father is bent on finding an antidote to the genetic virus that is getting closer to taking his son, even if it means collecting corpses in order to test his experiments. With the help of Gabriel, a servant she is growing dangerously attracted to, Rhine attempts to break free, in the limited time she has left.


Dust Jacket Impressions: Wow, whoever designed the cover should get a raise, I loved it. The fun little lines and circles, the little bird in the cage, and the test tube on the back with the hourglass, awesome.

Ticking genetic time bomb, when we die do we actually explode? I was getting hilarious visuals of people's heads exploding the exact minute they hit their 20/25th birthday. I'm quite positive that this does not happen, but admit it, it makes you giggle (or I may possibly need mental help). The large fact of the matter is, in this future world, I AM DEAD. Thanks ever so much Lauren, oh wait, so are you, how did you write this? I kid, obviously. So polygamous marriages? I get the impression women are bred like animals, it is also not a good visual. Also, ew, STDs much? If they kidnap women off the street I hope they clean them up first. I'm assuming this does not occur in the book it bares thought though.

Rhine is our main character, I love that she is named after a river. I see her twin brother is mentioned but barely, so I am assuming he plays little to no role in the actual book. If he does I assume it is in the beginning or via flashbacks. Her husband Linden sounds like he'll be decent, and it seems like her father-in-law will be our bad guy in this book. I suppose collecting corpses is better than eating corpses I guess. Being experimented on, and apparently lusting after a servant boy has got to be better than sleeping in the street and being eaten by zombies. No, as far as I know there are no zombies in this book.

Okay, I'm sold. Rhine apparently wants nothing more than to escape a creepy marriage she was kidnapped for. I want nothing more than to read an interesting story where the main character has to decide between a gilded cage, and the unknown of the outside world. She wants to get back to her brother and probably take Gabriel with her. Cool, romance, creepy in-law, death everywhere, dystopian world, yep I can't wait to read it.

Buy the book to read it with me!:

Shatter Me - Impressions

Well Readers! I'm back, and have a giant pile of books to go through and review. Today I'm bringing my initial impressions of a book that has been getting TONS of press, including optioned movie rights months before it was even available in stores! Today is the release date, so it felt good to start my review of it!


Book: Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
Publisher: HarperCollins (November 15, 2011)
The book was purchased by me for review purposes, I still don't blog enough to get ARCs or early releases.

From the Publisher:
"You can't touch me," I whisper.

I'm lying, is what I don't tell him.

He can touch me, is what I'll never tell him.

But things happen when people touch me.

Strange things.

Bad things.

No one knows why Juliette's touch is fatal, but The Reestablishment has plans for her. Plans to use her as a weapon.

But Juliette has plans of her own.

After a lifetime without freedom, she's finally discovering a strength to fight back for the very first time—and to find a future with the one boy she thought she'd lost forever.


Dust Jacket Impressions:Well, I first heard about this book a few months ago, and since then it has steadily been getting more and more press. When I read the publisher's blurb I was intrigued, it sounds like X-men meets dystopian literature, therefore putting it to the top of my To-Read list when it released.

I don't know what is going on with the cover, I personally think it looks ridiculous, it looks more like a teen socialite book than a book about a girl with mysterious powers. I personally feel I'm going to be reading a book about prom, over a book with a dystopian feel. Quite frankly, had I just seen the book on a shelf and not heard about it, I never would have picked it out as something that interested me. Yes, I did judge this book by it's cover, thankfully I learned it was not a book about prom, or homecoming, or a coming out party for a New York socialite, but a book about a young girl who's touch can kill (far more interesting).

So, it look's like our main character is Juliette, if she happens to poison herself in the book, or stab herself over a boy, I will be sorely disappointed. I also hope that her love interest is not named Romeo. If she decides to change her name during the course of the book I also hope it does not change to Rogue. Yes, I made passes at both William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliette, and X-Men, those are the huge vibes I got from reading the book (Also, I somehow managed to spell Shakespeare wrong when I first typed this, blogger fail).

I'm hoping Juliette turns out to be a strong woman and not a dead fish, and that the book focuses more on her adventure in possibly saving the world and taking down whatever evil government is around, than her romance. I hope I am right readers, I don't want to run into zomgtrueloveforever in the book. Life doesn't happen that way, and although it is a marvelous thing to imagine in a perfect world we will all find our prince fall in love at first site then live our our lives, it just doesn't. Something that bothers me in a lot of YA is the zomgtrueloveforever trap. I suppose I could take it though, if Juliette is a strong character, and doesn't fall all over herself and 'woe is me' attitude, and she uses whatever cool power she has, and kicks butt... We shall see! I have high hopes for a book labeled as fodder for those waiting for The Hunger Games movie, and a book receiving so much buzz. Also, I WANT to love it, Tahereh Mafi is such a wonderful person, and tries to talk to as many of her fans as possible through Twitter, I adore her for that.

Buy the book to read it with me!:

Delirium - Final Review

 Hello Readers! Here I am with my final overall review for delirium by Lauren Oliver. I know I've been slow to post this, with my week hiatus and all, but here it is!

For the entire review experience: Read the first two posts for Delirium, Initial Impressions, and First 100 Pages Review

Book: Delirium by Lauren Oliver - 2011
My copy of delirium is the special edition, which contains a Q+A from the author, and an excerpt from the sequel.

Final Review: I would definitely say I enjoyed Delirium. Many of the things I would like to say in this review though, I can't, for fear of spoiling the book, therefore I have them jotted down in notes meant for when I do my initial impressions of the sequel. Delirium was a fun take on the saturation of romance and distopian literature in the YA market. In Delirium, love is the enemy, a disease meant to be cured. The book starts slow, not to say it is a slow read, just that it takes awhile for the book to take off into the main story. Oliver's writing however, is wonderful. She could probably write stereo installation instructions and it would be an easy and enjoyable read about nothing. The book flows, and even slow readers will have an easy time reading this book quickly.
I was incredibly taken on the idea of 'love is a disease' amor deliria nervosa as it is called by the characters in the book. As I stated in my first two posts this was what initially drew me into the book. Our main character, and narrator for the story Lena; starts out excited and ready for the cure. Part-way into the book though, she meets a guy, and of course, falls in love. I was originally rolling my eyes because I knew it was going to happen, but it wasn't the worst 'OMG true love at first sight' scenario that I was expecting. The romance seemed more a plot point, to get Lena to where she needs to be for the second book. I'm not going to lie, this book could have possibly been cut in half and still carried as much as it did, but as it flowed so well it wasn't too much of a problem.
As I said before, there is a lot I want to say, but I'm worried about spoiling it. The book was well written and interesting. Overall a good start to what I hope will be an exciting adventure starting in the next book. Pick it up, it's worth a read, and I am incredibly excited about the sequel coming out. I have incredibly high hopes for the next one, and the preview for Pandemonium (coming out March next year) will contain all the spoilers and things I wanted to talk about during this review. I REFUSE TO SPOIL AWESOME THINGS YOU NEED TO READ!

Overall: I'd give Delirium an 8/10, solid start to hopefully an interesting series.
I give my anticipation for book 2, Pandemonium a 10/10.

Go read it too!

delirium - First 100 Pages

Hello readers! I am back with part two of my 3 part review for delirium by Lauren Oliver. It was incredibly tough to put the book down because it is rainy and dreary, and all I wanted to do was read all day.

Read the first part of the review here: Initial Impressions - Delirium 

Book: Delirium by Lauren Oliver - 2011
My copy of delirium is the special edition, which contains a Q+A from the author, and an excerpt from the sequel.

First 100 Pages: What can I say? I'm not entirely sure what I read. Not because it was bad, or anything else, because I read it too fast! Lauren Oliver has a wonderful grasp of writing in the first person, enough that I'm sure even a slow reader will have read the first 100 pages and never noticed they had read that far! I found myself so incredibly immersed that I looked down and realized I was on page 90, and that I needed to stop reading soon.

Delirium is a story about a girl named Lena, short for Magdalena, that takes place in the future in the city of Portland, Maine. Portland, Maine? Really? Awesome I've been there before, may times, it helped me visualize the landscape, the smell of the ocean, and even the color of how the sun sets. Lauren Oliver, writing as Lena in the first person, does a wonderful job describing the setting. She even ads in smells to help you visualize in, without it becoming a ridiculous monologue. Lena describes things as she sees them, not overly detailed, but just enough to make it believable as internal thoughts as well as giving the reader a good visualization on the story and what Lena sees.

The book is a fascinating view on what society would be like if love, the disease amor deliria nervosa, we not present. I giggled a lot when I read that they had declared it a disease, one that I think roughly means - a disorder of the delirium of love, you know, something like that. They claim it is like a plague that all of the human population can get, and if you don't get the procedure you can become infected. The society blamed mental disorders, war, murder, all kinds of things on the disease. In the story Lena talks about the book that their society is based The Book of Shhh or : The Safety, Health, and Happiness Handbook, which seems like some wonderful propaganda that blurs fiction, fact, and ideas into one book to make the population docile. Including having rules and reasons for the country to be walled in and defended, and each society walled in and defended.

Delirium starts with Lena counting down the days when she can have her procedure done and be disease free. We learn about her family, and that she lives with her aunt, and other family members, and eventually learn her mother had 3 procedures and was never 'cured'. Lena thinks herself plain, if not ugly, and compares herself to her beautiful friend Hana. She remarks though, that after the procedure she probably won't feel anything at all like that anymore. Well several pages in we see that Lena is getting ready for her evaluation, which is the most important day of her life. The girls and boys go in separately (they also go to school separately) and are evaluated to see what their future prospects are. For marriage, jobs, the amount of children they are assigned to have. Lena is standing in line with Hana waiting to go in and Hana pops out with the most interesting line in the first 100 pages, "You know you can't be happy unless you're unhappy sometimes, right?" Oh, is Hana in love, is she doubting the procedure? Well, Lena hasn't found out yet, and I'm really curious, but Lena also avoids bringing it up again, ever, although she thinks about it.

During the evaluation all hell breaks loose and cows run stampeding through the lab, the government says it was a delivery mix up, Hana decides it was done by the Invalids, the people of the wilds who refuse to bow down and get treatment. Lena sees a boy while the stampede is happening (I'm assuming this will be her love interest). Later on Lena and Hana run into the boy again, he names himself Alex, but pretends he has never seen Lena before. Of course if you are sneaking around in a government building, and are probably someone the government wants to get rid of, why not pretend to know nothing. Lena reflects upon Alex, having to take her evaluation over again, and having her graduation from high school in the rest of the first 100 pages.

The first 100 pages seems to sent the tone of the story up so far, of a girl questioning some aspects of her society. I am looking forward to reading more. Delirium is the first book in a series, so I'm hoping it has an ending that leaves me wanting more, but that actually ends. I hate super big cliffhangers!

Buy the book to read it with me!:

delirium - Impressions

Hello again readers! Here I am with another book set to be reviewed by yours truly. The one was another from the pile of books I purchased when I was back home visiting family and friends. It also wasn't the next I had pulled out to review, in fact, I seem to be missing my copy of Wither which I had pulled out! Oh well, I guess this book wanted to be read first! Also: I am posting the blurbs from the publisher for my dust jacket impressions, I think it might make it easier to understand what I am reacting to.

Book: Delirium by Lauren Oliver - 2011
My copy of delirium is the special edition, which contains a Q+A from the author, and an excerpt from the sequel.

From the Publisher, dust jacket blurb:
Ninety-five days, and then I’ll be safe.
I wonder whether the procedure will hurt.I want to get it over with.
It’s hard to be patient. It’s hard not to be afraid while I’m still uncured, though so far the deliria hasn’t touched me yet.
Still, I worry.
They say that in the old days, love drove people to madness.
The deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both when you have it and when you don’t.

From the Publisher; back of the book blurb:
They say that the cure for love will make me happy and safe forever.
And I've always believed them. Until now.
Now everything has changed.
Now, I'd rather be infected with love for the tiniest sliver of a second than live a hundred years smothered by a lie.

Dust Jacket Impressions: Oh! The dust jacket is written in pretty fonts and the occasional word in blue, it reminds me of a poem I once wrote in high school. The publisher did a good job making this stick out, having never seen the original edition of the book I can't compare if it is the same thing.
So, here's what I'm getting from my impressions: the book will be in first person. I'm not saying it WILL be, I'm just assuming this. Most books with a blurb written in first person I tend to find are written in first person. Anyhow, it seems this book takes place in a world where we have cured love. Well, that for one would make my life a lot simpler, can I volunteer for trials in the real world? It looks as though our main character is all for obtaining her pseudo-lobotomy (it's totally what I've decided they do to people, I imagine I'll be disappointed if they get a shot and then a lollipop and are sent on their way), until she happens to fall in love. I mean, I'm guessing she falls in love, I can't imagine in this world she picks up a romance novel and goes, 'hey this sounds awesome, I totally want to fall in love, screw this cure.'
So, here's what I'm worried about: instant love. I suppose it is a YA novel, teenage girls adore thinking that love happens at first site and all that cute stuff, can we start calling it what it is? Infatuation. I'm perfectly okay if our main character sees some dude she wants to get hot and heavy with and then they realize they are in love. Quite frankly though, I am incredibly excited to pick up a book where love is seen as a disease, I am very intrigued to see where this is going.

Buy the book to read it with me!: