So enjoyable: The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli

Title: The Upside of Unrequited
Author: Becky Albertalli
First published in May 2017
Tags: Young Adult. Contemporary, Romance, LGBT+
Source: Purchased paperback
Rating:

Seventeen-year-old Molly Peskin-Suso knows all about unrequited love-she’s lived through it twenty-six times. She crushes hard and crushes often, but always in secret. Because no matter how many times her twin sister, Cassie, tells her to woman up, Molly can’t stomach the idea of rejection. So she’s careful. Fat girls always have to be careful.

Then a cute new girl enters Cassie’s orbit, and for the first time ever, Molly’s cynical twin is a lovesick mess. Meanwhile, Molly’s totally not dying of loneliness-except for the part where she is.
Luckily, Cassie’s new girlfriend comes with a cute hipster-boy sidekick. Will is funny, flirtatious, and just might be perfect crush material. Maybe more than crush material. And if Molly can win him over, she’ll get her first kiss and she’ll get her twin back.

There’s only one problem: Molly’s coworker, Reid. He’s an awkward Tolkien superfan, and there’s absolutely no way Molly could fall for him. Right?

“But you know, there’s an upside here. Because when you spend so much time just intensely wanting something, and then you actually get the thing? It’s magic.”

It’s been a hot minute since I read this, but let’s try to scrape up some thoughts. 

Molly has had 26 crushes in her life. She’s never gotten to really know any of these boys, and none of them ever knew of her crush, so nothing has come of any of them. Molly scared of rejection, and most of it revolves around how she feels undesirable because of her weight. So she’d just rather not try than to try and fail and be humiliated. I think a lot of people can relate to this feeling, no matter the root of the issue. 

They Both Die At the End by Adam Silvera

Title: They Both Die At the End
Author: Adam Silvera
First published in September 2017
Tags: Young Adult. Contemporary, LGBT+
Source: Audiobook (Storytel)
Rating:

On September 5, a little after midnight, Death-Cast calls Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio to give them some bad news: They’re going to die today. Mateo and Rufus are total strangers, but, for different reasons, they’re both looking to make a new friend on their End Day. The good news: There’s an app for that. It’s called the Last Friend, and through it, Rufus and Mateo are about to meet up for one last great adventure and to live a lifetime in a single day.

“I’ve spent years living safely to secure a longer life, and look where that’s gotten me. I’m at the finish line but I never ran the race.” 

Beautiful cover alert!

I think I’ll have to give up on trying to catch up on reviewing all my reads. I’ll just catch up with the most recent (English) ones. So sadly that means I’ll be skipping the review of More Happy Than Not, and instead only review this one, even though I liked MHTN better. 

They Both Die At the End is similar to More Happy Than Not in the sense that they’re both kind of science-fiction-y. And they’re both really tragic. In this one, every person is called by a company called Death-Cast on the day they’re doing to die. You don’t know how you die or why, just that sometime within 24 hours you will be dead. How do the Death-Cast people know who’s dying? We don’t really know, but it’s not the point either. 

A Mix of YES and WTF: Release by Patrick Ness

Title: Release
Author: Patrick Ness
First published in May 2017
Tags: Young Adult. Contemporary, Magical Realism, LGBT+
Source: Purchased hardcover
Rating:

Inspired by Mrs Dalloway and Judy Blume’s Forever, Release is one day in the life of Adam Thorn, 17. It’s a big day. Things go wrong. It’s intense, and all the while, weirdness approaches…

Adam Thorn is having what will turn out to be the most unsettling, difficult day of his life, with relationships fracturing, a harrowing incident at work, and a showdown between this gay teen and his preacher father that changes everything. It’s a day of confrontation, running, sex, love, heartbreak, and maybe, just maybe, hope. He won’t come out of it unchanged. And all the while, lurking at the edges of the story, something extraordinary and unsettling is on a collision course.

---

 

“When I realized how things were, when I said to myself that I am not this thing that I’ve been told I have to be, that I am this other thing instead…the label didn’t feel like a prison, it felt like a whole new freaking map, and now I can take any journey I want to take and it’s possible I might even find a home there. It’s not a reduction. It’s a key.”

Okay, so, people have mixed feelings about this book. It reminds me of The Rest of Us Just Live Here in the sense that it’s somehow both contemporary, and fantasy.

The contemporary every-day aspect of Release is the biggest part of the book, but it’s interrupted by short chapters of a truly bizarre tale about a dead drug addict looking for her killer and… a faun? I don’t know, it’s weird, and I admit I didn’t pay enough attention to it in the beginning so it went over my head a little. I’m sure if I read it more carefully I’d get it, but alas. There’s some Deep and Metaphorical Meaning here, but honestly, I just care about Adam’s storyline. 

Sob-fest: Goodbye Days by Jeff Zentner

Title: Goodbye Days
Author: Jeff Zentner
First published in March 2017
Tags: Young Adult. Contemporary
Source: E-arc (NetGalley)
Rating:

Can a text message destroy your life?

Carver Briggs never thought a simple text would cause a fatal crash, killing his three best friends, Mars, Eli, and Blake. Now Carver can’t stop blaming himself for the accident and even worse, there could be a criminal investigation into the deaths.

Then Blake’s grandmother asks Carver to remember her grandson with a ‘goodbye day’ together. Carver has his misgivings, but he starts to help the families of his lost friends grieve with their own memorial days, along with Eli’s bereaved girlfriend Jesmyn. But not everyone is willing to forgive. Carver’s own despair and guilt threatens to pull him under into panic and anxiety as he faces punishment for his terrible mistake. Can the goodbye days really help?

---

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a free ebook copy in exchange for an honest review. 

It’s been a hot minute since I finished this book now, but I wanted to get the review up and oh lord, where to start. First off, this is just a downright tragic book. Don’t read this if you don’t want it raining on your face because I swear, you could cry through this entire book non-stop if you wanted. 

I like sad things though, so I enjoyed this reading experience. I felt for Carver and I could truly feel and understand his guilt, even though he wasn’t at fault. And that’s where one of my main issues with this book lie. The premise of this story is that Carver’s three best friends die in a car accident because the driver, Mars, was replying to a text that Carver sent. This somehow spins into an entire case where Carver is being investigated for murdering these teens because he texted Mars even though he knew he was driving at the time. HOW IS CARVER AT FAULT WHEN MARS IS THE ONE WHO WAS TEXTING AND DRIVING. I refuse to believe this would happen in real life, but who knows, I don’t know. 

Apart from me not being able to suspend my disbelief about that, I enjoyed the book. I liked getting to know these boys, who are now dead, through the “goodbye days”. My favorite goodbye days were definitely Blake’s (sob) and eventually Mars’ (sob again). At the time of finishing writing this review, Blake’s is the one I remember most vividly. 

You get to know all of these people, and it hurts that they’re dead. I found the writing truly beautiful, the panic attacks super well done, and I’m looking forward to read Zentner’s The Serpent King, which is apparently set in the same universe as Goodbye Days. I heard a TSK character has a cameo in Goodbye Days, but since I haven’t read it I don’t know who it was. If you’ve read The Serpent King you might enjoy that. 

All in all, a good read, even if I couldn’t bring myself to believe in the main premise. Let me know if this actually has happened in real life though and I’ll eat my words. There are some weird justice systems out there. 

---

Have you read this book? What did you think? 

Follow me on Twitter | Goodreads | Bloglovin’ | Instagram | 

Mid-year book freak-out tag

*crawls out of the woodwork*  Uh, hi! I’m alive, I swear, I’ve just been too distracted by other things to blog recently. I started volunteering for AO3 (Archive of our own) so I’ve been busy with that almost every time I’ve been on my computer. I’ve slowly been getting back into Instagram, so I’ll try to get back into blogging as well. 

No promises though! 

But I’ll 100% get better at at least reading and commenting on what you guys post even if I don’t post much myself:D I’ve missed talking to you all. 

This tag is a tradition, so I had to come back to do it. Then I have some reviews due as well. 

This tag was created by Chami @ ReadLikeWildFire and Ely @ Ely Jayne. It’s where we look back at (and freak out over) the books we’ve read during the past six months.

the best books you’ve read so far in 2016

                                      

I read book 2-4 in The Raven Cycle this year, and I’m counting them as one since it’s a series. I liked the first three a tiny bit more than the last, but all in all it’s a glowing 5 star for the series. I’m also giving a shout-out to Bird Box. What a pageturner. Wow.

March 2017 Wrap-Up

It’s April already! How did that happen? It’s still winter where I live, but hopefully it’ll be spring soon because I’m really feeling like spring. 

The titles take you to the book’s Goodreads page or my review if I have one. 

---

The Nightmare

by Lars Kepler

Lars Kepler is a Swedish couple writing under one pseudonym, and this is the second book from them that I’ve read. Scandinavians really like detective fiction. I liked it, especially the beginning, but it lost me a bit towards the end. I prefer my crime stories to be “smaller” if that makes sense, more personal. The moment it’s about some big corporations or businesses or something like that I’m like eh. 

2/5 stars

---

Blue Lily, Lily Blue
by Maggie Stiefvater

I don’t have much to say about this series that I haven’t already said. I love it. I love the characters so much. My favorite is still Gansey, I don’t know, he’s just charmed the hell out of me. Ronan is a close second and Ronan is more my type of character, so usually this character would be my number one, but I don’t know, I’m so weak for Gansey??? I really had to emotionally prepare myself for the next book. 

5/5 stars

.

---

WWW Wednesday: March 29 2017

Hey guys! It’s been a month since I did one of these so I thought I’d update you on what I’m reading. 

WWW Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Samantha @ Taking On a World of Words where you answer the following questions: 

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

My main read right now is my ARC copy of Goodbye Days by Jeff Zentner. I’m a little over halfway through and I’ll just leave you with this gif, it accurately portrays my feelings on this book: 

PAIN.

I most recently finished Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman. I liked it, but it’s probably best suited for people who want to learn about Norse mythology and who didn’t grow up with these stories. Neil Gaiman hasn’t added anything new to the myths (which is fine!), he just retells them, so it’ll work perfectly for those who want easy access to the stories. They’re a lot of fun, I’d definitely recommend it. In short: Thor is kind of an idiot and Loki is a slippery SOB.

AND THEN I FINISHED THE RAVEN CYCLE. [insert another crying
gif] I have a lot of feelings. A lot. The Raven King isn’t quite as good as the previous three, but come on, who cares. All in all this series gets a 5/5 from me. I want more. Now.

 

 

 

---

                                 

I don’t know yet. I think I might go on to History is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera, because I’m sure after I finish Goodbye Days I’ll want to cry some more… Other than that I’m planning on finishing that Norwegian zombie trilogy (I morgen er alt mørkt #3) I’ve written about in wrap-ups before. 

---

Have you read any of these? What are you currently reading? 

Follow me on Twitter | Goodreads | Bloglovin’ | Instagram | 

Book vector by Freepik