Top Ten Tuesday

Books that include traveling...

Such an awesome topic this week, although I could barely come up with an ideas! However, I did include Paris (twice), India, Norway, the circus, and road trips!

                   
                   

What is your Top Ten? :) Or (in my case) Top Six?

Also, please, please, please check out my 150 follower giveaway, which is ending soon!

Also, check out my first author interview and giveaway if you want!

Bloglovin' Blog Hop #1

Hosted by Blkosiners Book Blog 

Question:
What are your blogging pet peeves?


Er, well a lot of times HTML gets on my nerves. (Other times I think it is really cool though, and I pretend I am one of those cool spies with codes.) And, on other blogs, CAPTCHA, can get a teensy bit annoying even though I know it is there for a reason. Oh, and I hate when you accidentally delete an image or part of a post that you worked on for forever to get just right!

Review: Another Little Piece

Another Little Piece by Kate Karyus Quinn

The spine-tingling horror of Stephen King meets an eerie mystery worthy of Sara Shepard's Pretty Little Liars series in Kate Karyus Quinn's haunting debut.

On a cool autumn night, Annaliese Rose Gordon stumbled out of the woods and into a high school party. She was screaming. Drenched in blood. Then she vanished.

A year later, Annaliese is found wandering down a road hundreds of miles away. She doesn't know who she is. She doesn't know how she got there. She only knows one thing: She is not the real Annaliese Rose Gordon.

Now Annaliese is haunted by strange visions and broken memories. Memories of a reckless, desperate wish . . . a bloody razor . . . and the faces of other girls who disappeared. Piece by piece, Annaliese's fractured memories come together to reveal a violent, endless cycle that she will never escape—unless she can unlock the twisted secrets of her past.

Wow, okay, I just want to get across how much this book sucked me in. I received Another Little Piece in the mail Tuesday and finished it Wednesday . This was so unique and stood so far apart from all the other books I have read. So refreshing. Wow.

This book is mentally exhausting. There is so much to take in, plus I cried a lot. And, at the end, I was frantically reading and rereading pages trying to take it all in and figure out what was going to happen. Also, there are all these plot and characters you have to keep track of. If you read the book carefully though, the book seems beautiful. After completing the book I flipped to random pages and just slowly reread, the writing is that good. Another Little Piece is definitely book you can read again and again and again and always get something out of it.

The characters are unlike any characters I have ever read, and so it the dialogue. I would call this book almost lyrical in the way it is told. I would go more into characters but I can't really, most of the plot is preventing me. Although I can say all of them were fully formed and memorable. Dex, Logan, Frankie, the mom and the dad, Gwen... all these characters are frighteningly vivid. And the narrative and poems are stunningly powerful.

The content within is not for the faint hearted, I can clearly see how this could fall under YA horror/suspense. However, the gore and horror is another little piece that makes the book stand out. I also loved the supernatural aspect. There are some dark monsters, and this book defines exactly what a monster is, and what it is not. 

Overall, I loved this book so much more than I expected to! I would totally recommend Another Little Piece to anyone looking for a shockingly lyrical and gory read. Read slowly and carefully though, otherwise you will be lost. And prepare to be brain dead after you finish, in a good way that rarely ever happens with all of those cliche, easier books circling around!

I received an ARC from HarperTeen (via Firstreads) in exchange for an honest review. 

5/5 bookcases

Stacking the Shelves #12

 Okay, here is two weeks worth of books because last week I couldn't provide the real pictures on my last STS!

Bought:

I am so excited for Of Triton, I just received it yesterday! Also, I just bought Black Heart!

Won:

Thanks to The Starry-Eyed Revue for the books and

Heidi Garret for the bracelet!

For Review:

My fist two ARCs! Thanks to Firstreads, ARCycling, and Harperteen!

Also, this week I had my first author interview! Please come check it out along with the giveaway!

Feature and Follow #11

Q: What blogger would you most like to meet in real life? Tell us about him or her.

What a hard question! There are so many wonderful bloggers I would like to meet!

Okay, the blog I always read, even when I wasn't a blogger, is The Starry-Eyed Revue which is hosted by Jen and now Mendy! I always love reading their posts which are fun and shows their great personalities. 

Also, after I began blogging, I found Anahera Reads, which is hosted by Ana, and also Starbucks and Books Obsession, which is hosted by Chelsea! They are both great bloggers! 

There are so many I could name... but these are the top of my list!

I always love to meet more awesome bloggers! So thanks for visiting!

Cover Reveal: True Love's First Kiss

True Love's First Kiss by Heidi Garrett

The Queen of the Realm of Faerie is a fairy tale fantasy series that bridges the Mortal and Enchanted worlds. The main character, Melia, is an eighteen-year-old half-faerie, half-mortal. She lives in Illialei, a country in the Enchanted World, with her two sisters and their mother. Melia’s father has been exiled to the Mortal World, and her best friend is a pixie. When the story opens in the first book, Melia is troubled by her dark moon visions, gossip she overhears about her parents at the local market, and the trauma of living among full-blooded faeries with wings—she doesn’t have any. As the series unfolds, the historic and mystical forces that shape Melia’s life are revealed. Each step of her journey—to find the place where she belongs—alters her perceptions about herself, deepens her relationships with others, and enlarges her world view. True Love’s First Kiss is a compilation of the first three books in this ongoing series.

About the Author

The product of a verbally gifted family, Heidi Garrett is possibly the least loquacious of them all. While her Uncle John created off-the-cuff characters like King Machi-Machi and her Uncle James turned otherwise ordinary moments into O. Henry stories, she would often sit dazzled and silent, thrilled that these were ‘her people,’ as Grandma would say.
Despite the verbal inadequacy that shadowed Heidi whenever she was in her family’s presence, she never stopped writing in secret. Whether it was angsty teen poetry, the personal journals she has since burned (imagine bonfires), passionate letters to the editor, purgative song lyrics, or simply imagined vignettes, Heidi has played with words all of her life. Bottom line: she loves stories and the people who tell them.

Links: http://heidigwrites.blogspot.com | https://twitter.com/heidigwrites

https://www.facebook.com/heidigwrites 

Newbie Blogger Diaries #7

Hi everyone! I know I have been missing in action the last few days, and a bit behind on the posting of The Newbie Blogger Diaries. This was because I have been traveling to see my family with only a small amount of wifi. Anyways, I am nearly back now and I thought I would do this post really quick while I am sitting in the airport.

Today's topic was not what I planned to do this week, but I learned a couple lessons this week while visiting my family!

1) Showing your blog to family members is nice. Even if they don't really read the content (which is sometimes preferred), my relatives were interested in how a blog works and how I interact with the blogging community. This is good for you and your family, as you teach your family about memes, your schedule, HTML, blogging buttons etc., and also you get to get all these things out of your head. I found talking about these things always makes my goals and processes clearer. Also, I brought along an ARC to show them and I talked about how publishers try to create before-the-release buzz with these copies. This was kinda fun.

2) Blogging is kind of like a fun type of work. Even when you are on vacation, you need to try to post as much as possible and with the knowledge you will have a lot of catching up to do once you come home. Of course, everyone needs a blogging break once in a while, just they will need to work a little harder than normal to come back. It is okay to be behind though (as evidence of this post) just as long as you catch up! Also, when you are on vacation, the blogging world doesn't just stop, you may have authors contacting you or events going on at your favorite blog.

So, have you ever had some blogging epiphanies while on vacation? Have you ever showed your blog to a family member or friend?