We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach

Publisher Synopsis

Four high school seniors put their hopes, hearts, and humanity on the line as an asteroid hurtles toward Earth in Tommy Wallach’s New York Times bestselling “stunning debut” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). They always say that high school is the best time of your life. Peter, the star basketball player at his school, is worried “they” might actually be right. Meanwhile Eliza can’t wait to escape Seattle—and her reputation—and perfect-on-paper Anita wonders if admission to Princeton is worth the price of abandoning her real dreams. Andy, for his part, doesn’t understand all the fuss about college and career—the future can wait.
Or can it? Because it turns out the future is hurtling through space with the potential to wipe out life on Earth.

Teal Review

I was expecting a lot more from this book. I was pretty much the opposite of what I thought it was going to be! Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing…the issue is…it was a Contemporary. And I am not the the biggest fan of Contemporary…at all. HOWEVER, it wasn’t horrible. The characters were nicely developed, a little annoying, but realistic to high schoolers today. The story was pretty slow at first and it took me awhile to really get started on it.

I thought that this book was going to be an apocalyptic book, because it seemed to be about a meteor that was hurtling towards Earth. My natural presumption was that it was going to be how things went down up to, during and after the meteor, but it was just about how this high school kids were handling everything. To say the least I was pretty disappointing. While I do enjoy Tommy Wallach’s writing, it was easy to read and understand the characters and world he built, it still wasn’t what I was hoping and would give it a three out of five stars.

I would suggest this book to people that like Contemporary, but if you don’t enjoy that genre then DON’T READ THIS BOOK, it is not an adventure, pre/post apocalyptic story line! I will definitely look more into Wallach’s writing, just hope it’s not all Contemporary!

Happy Reading

xoxoSarah

My Classics!

Anyone a bibliophile? I AM! I absolutely love literary classics. I have been building my collection of new classic design books that Barnes & Noble carries for about six months now. THEY ARE SO PRETTY!

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Seven Novels by Jane Austen

Beauty and the Beast & Other Classic Fairy Tales

A Treasury of Irish Fairy and Folk Tales

Charlotte’s Web and Other Illustrated Classics

Heart of the Storm by Michael Buckley

Publisher Synopsis

“There’s something out in that water. Be ready to take the people you love and leave when it comes onshore.”

For three months, Lyric Walker has been trapped in the hunting grounds, the Alpha city at the bottom of the ocean. But Lyric Walker, Brooklyn girl, is not going down without a fight. She makes an unlikely alliance with her jailer, a Rusalka named Husk. Husk reveals the truth about what actually resides in the Great Abyss. The Great Abyss is not some Alpha god but belongs to an unknown clan of monsters, ones who think in a hive mentality and believe anyone who cannot hear their voice is broken and must be destroyed. And Lyric has just woken them.
After a death-defying escape, Lyric makes her journey back to the mainland to prepare humanity for another monster invasion. Once reunited with her parents, Bex, and hot-nerd-with-potential Riley, Lyric has to break the terrible truth.

Teal Review

**SPOILER ALERT**

This book gave me a major case of the feels!!!! First going into this book I wasn’t as into it as I was for the first two books in this trilogy (Undertow & Raging Sea), however, by the end I was exploding with emotions! It took me a while to get through Heart of the Storm. It was written differently than the first two books…we are reading a chapter each through a flash back and present time…and I have NEVER been a fan of that. However, whenever I sat down with this book and just committed to reading it I couldn’t stop and got trapped in the Coney Island world! By the end of this book I was totally satisfied with the ending even when I thought I wouldn’t be.

Let me just say that the fight scenes in Buckley’s books are so well written, it’s like I am there. My heat starts racing and I feel all the emotions that his characters feel.

Sadness…

Anger…

Pain…

Panic…

Happiness…

Surprise…

Love…

I can smell the ocean and feel the breeze

That’s what I call a fantastic writer!

I sort of ruined it for myself in a way because I read a little bit ahead and just happened to pick the chapter where Lyric finds out she is pregnant with Fathom’s baby (yeah that totally threw me for a loop!!!) and then once I read that I needed to know how it all went down and skipped ahead to the part when she tells Fathom…and then I read a little bit of the epilogue; DON’T DO WHAT I DID! Because of this I jumped to all sorts of conclusions about what happened with Riley and why he was with Bex and then why Lyric and Fathom weren’t together…I mean they love each other and have a son! I started putting off reading this book because I am such a sap for love and it seemed like Lyric wasn’t going to get it with Riley or Fathom…it seriously broke my heart a little bit…like there was pain and everything. But I continued on and I was totally wrong and the ending was one of the most satisfying things I have read in a long time. I am used to the main characters getting the love interest at the end, or ending up with someone they love and someone that makes them happy. But for once the author made it about what was empowering for the protagonist, and in this case is was Lyric deciding to choose herself.

“‘I pick me,’ I say.

He’s confused again. This time, I take his hands in mine.

“I had a choice to make,” I say. He doesn’t need to know he’s been one corner of a love triangle. He doesn’t need to know that I was flipping Riley and him over in my head, trying to see them from every side, so I could decide which one to buy. He doesn’t need to know that Riley helped me understand something that right now makes sense. “And I picked me.”

I tell him that I love him and that I probably always will, and then  I tell him all the reasons why it’s not a good enough reason for us to be together. He doesn’t argue or try to manipulate me. He doesn’t go on and on about how if we want it, we can have it. He just sits and listens. For the first time since he came into my life, he is exactly what I needed him to be.”

I absolutely love this because I feel like it portrays a different side of not only the heroin but reveals that we all have a choice and that choice doesn’t always have to be what other people expect it to be.

The epilogue starts of three years later when Lyric, Riley, Bex and Lyric’s three old son, Max, return to Coney Island to meet up with Fathom and Husk so that Max can meet his dad. And while it kind of rubbed me the wrong way that Max and Fathom were just meeting for the first time in three years I got through it and totally fell in love with this scene. Fathom is a little more human and is great with Max. Buckley ends this book perfectly because it’s the cutest scene in the history of books, it ends with Fathom and Max doing the Wild Things dance and Fathom is the one to initiate it! My heart seriously melted. Not to mention that Buckley hints at Fathom and Lyric still feeling things for each other and possibly starting over in the future…that might just be my imagination but a girl can dream! Over all I really enjoyed this book more than I thought I would and it was such a satisfying ending! Thank you Michael Buckley for capturing my heart in the Undertow world!

Happy Reading!

xoxoSarah

My Most Anticipated Books of 2017

Hello Readers! Today’s blog post is going to be about my most anticipated books of 2017 in order, 1 being my most anticipated and 10 being my lesser anticipated!! I don’t have as many this year as I usually do and I think that’s mostly because I have been so busy with class and planning a wedding that I have not been able to scroll through bookish media! Don’t despair though because I still have A LOT of amazing books that are being released that I want to devour. Lately I have been really into post apocalyptic books, usually about the world ending in some way…why I am not sure! I have also really been enjoying books that take place in space or on other planets, love love love!! Here is a list of the books that I am dying to get my hands on! If you have read any of these or if you are also impatiently waiting for them like I am let me know in the comments down below!

P.S. Some of these I have already read this year and I was a little bit disappointed in some of them. However, I am going to rate them how I would have rated their anticipation before reading them!

1. Untitled Chaol Novel by Sarah J. Maas
2. Kings Cage by Victoria Aveyard
3. Starfall by Melissa Landers
4. We All Looked Up by Tommy Walach
5. The Edge of Everything by Jeff Giles
6. The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett by Chelsea Sedoti
7. Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor
8. The Last Place on Earth by Carol Snow
9. North of Happy by Adi Alsaid
10. Duels and Deception by Cindy Anstey

Happy Reading!

xoxoSarah

The Assassins Blade by Sarah J. Maas

Publisher Synopsis

Celaena Sardothien is Adarlan’s most feared assassin. As part of the Assassin’s Guild, her allegiance is to her master, Arobynn Hamel, yet Celaena listens to no one and trusts only her fellow killer-for-hire, Sam. In these action-packed novellas – together in one edition for the first time – Celaena embarks on five daring missions. They take her from remote islands to hostile deserts, where she fights to liberate slaves and seeks to avenge the tyrannous. But she is acting against Arobynn’s orders and could suffer an unimaginable punishment for such treachery. Will Celaena ever be truly free? Explore the dark underworld of this kick-ass heroine to find out.

Teal Review

**SPOILERS ALERT**

Hello readers! Let me just start off today’s blog post by sta-OH MY GOSH THIS BOOK RIPPED MY HEART OUT, SPIT ON IT AND THEN STUFFED IT BACK IN!!!!

Let me take a breath and calm down for a second…okay so to start off. I made the choice of reading The Assassins Blade after reading the first six books of the Throne of Glass series and I don’t regret that at all; this is why I don’t regret doing this…because I could fully invest myself in the beauty that is Sam Cortland. I feel like if I had read this book when it was meant to be read, closer too the middle of the series, than I would have been too wrapped up in my other “bookish boyfriends” of this fantastic series…such as Dorian, Chaol or Rowan. However, by reading this book after the sixth book, I was able to commit my entire love and literary imagination to Sam and his character…and the horrible things that happened to him in the end that resulted in his gruesome death. Of all the horrible things that have happened to Aelin (Celaena), including the final scene in Empire of Storms when Queen Maeve takes Aelin-the way she was taken was cruel-I now feel, after reading The Assassins Blade-that Sam’s death and the gruesome, cruel way he died is the worst thing to happen to her; and to readers of Miss Maas’s series.

Before reading this book of the series, I had yet to feel sick to my stomach and on the verge of tears, but after knowing how Sam died in that horrible way, I just did not want to continue reading this book because I was afraid to feel the loss, as a reader, when he died; I wasn’t disappointed. I explained in an update on Goodreads, when I was around page 390, that as I crept closer and closer to the scene were Sam died I started to slow down on my reading of the book and took my time when I was reading…I just didn’t want to have him ripped from my readers character heart.

I say kudos to Celaena for even being able to live on and fight after a grotesque death like Sam’s. If you think this book doesn’t enhance the Throne of Glass series then you are SO WRONG, The Assassings Blade adds to much to the series as a whole. Read it. Read it now.

Happy Reading!

xoxoSarah