Weekly Update: 6/20-6/26

I have decided to start doing a weekly post called weekly recap where I update you on my life, reading and watching. Plus any posts I have done or will do.

This week was my first week of summer and to be honest it was a pretty lazy week. I did a lot of blogposts, went a couple places and watched TV. I also had a horrible reading week and I planned to read a lot more books than I actually managed to read.

I did however purchase four books online and went to a small used bookstore a little ways away from my house and purchased four other books. 

New Books

Purchased:

Library:

In Case You Missed It

Monday: Music Monday
Monday Movie Review: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Thursday: Cover Reveal
Friday Book Review: The Infinite Sea by Rick Yancey
Friday: The 5th Wave Book v. Movie
Saturday Book Review: Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

This Week I Read

  

Next Week I'm Reading

Upcoming Reviews

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes Review

This is a spoiler free review!

Me Before You

Written by Jojo Moyes

Genre: Adult/Romance/Contemporary/Realistic Fiction

Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books/Viking

Release Date: December 31, 2012

Pages: 481

Source: Bought

Places to Get this Book: Amazon Barnes and Noble Book Depository

Recommended Age: 15 or 16 and up

Summary:

Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick.

What Lou doesn't know is she's about to lose her job or that knowing what's coming is what keeps her sane.

Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels very small and rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he's going to put a stop to that.

What Will doesn't know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they're going to change the other for all time.

Review:

I read this book pretty quickly because I wanted to see the movie adaptation of it. I haven't seen it yet but the book was so good. I laughed, I cried and I wanted more of Will and Louisa. The book was amazing and a lot better than I thought it would be. The romance didn’t overwhelm the book and the characters were really well-developed. I really enjoyed it.  

I didn’t know I could feel so attached and connected to a book and characters as I did with this book. I was so attached that I could barely finish the book because I knew what was going to happen. I knew my heart was going to be ripped in two and I wouldn’t be able to piece it together again. This book has changed me and words can not describe what I feel at this moment.

COVER

The cover I have is the UK cover. I like this cover a lot more than the regular red cover. This cover is simple but is very pretty and really makes me feel like reading the book.

Then there are the characters.

LOUISA CLARK

Louisa is such a normal character. She has flaws and talents just like everyone else and she is such a lovable character. I felt that even though I’m a teenager and she was a grown-up, I could relate to her and some of her problems or fears were things every person worried about or thought about. She was always treated as if she was stupid and wouldn’t ever be able to change anyone’s lives. But she had so much potential and truly was a wonderfully unique person. She’s an amazingly lovable character and i love her so so much.

WILL

Will was in an accident that left him stuck in a wheelchair, unable to use his legs or hands. He used to be a daredevil, and adventurous but that was all gone after the accident. Now he can’t even eat without help. Then he meets Lou who changes his life. Will was such a sarcastic character and I hated him at the beginning but then I grew so emotionally attached to him that I knew I would never be able to let him go.

NATHAN

I really liked Nathan who was Will’s caretaker. He was an interesting character and joined Lou and Will on their ‘adventures’.

PLOT

I adored the plot. It was not your ordinary contemporary love story. It was something that had a lot more depth and dealt with issues that were hard to process and really made you think. I feel like the story was made so people would think about their own lives and try to live them to the fullest.

ROMANCE

The romance is by no means insta-lovey. It is such a complex and slow building love that takes up the entire story and really makes you happy. First there was hatred. Lou tried her hardest to be nice to him and Will was nothing but rude. Then there was heartwarming friendship. And finally there was delicate, bittersweet, heartbreaking romance. Lou gave Will a sort of happiness and joy, and he spread her wings and taught her to fly. He gave her that push that made her step out of her shell and do things she wouldn’t normally do. Their romance was sweet and beautiful and just broke my heart.

WRITING

Jojo Moyes writing is so hauntingly beautiful and almost poetic. She gave you hope and also scared you to death to the point where you just wanted to get rid of the book so it wouldn’t cause you endless pain. You hold your breath and pray that what is coming really isn’t. There are gut-wrenching moments and then sweet, tender moments. She created such realistic characters, family relationships that weren’t perfect but you could easily sympathize with all of them. She made you understand both sides. And most of all she made you appreciate the things you take for granted.

Final Thoughts:

The end of this book gutted me. I was obviously expecting it from the warnings in the book and from my friends but it did not lessen the impact. Tears were blurring my eyesight so much that I had to take a minute to calm down. I guess I understood why everything happened the way that it did but it was still horrible and I didn’t agree with it at all. But I greatly admire Jojo Moyes for being able and having the guts to write such a powerful, realistic and deeply touching and emotional ending.

Me Before You is a perfect rainy day read. This book is horribly sad but at the same time so full of life. It is uplifting and soul-wrenching. The message is the most important aspect of the novel: life is great when you get to live it on your own terms. At the end of the day it’s okay to put your own happiness first. It’s okay to put yourself before others.

Yes it hurts. It hurts a lot. But I must be strong and live my life fully. And I’m going to take this quote from Katerina [https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5014021-katerina] One day,I'm going to visit Paris,drink coffee in Le Marais and imagine that the girl with the bee tights is walking next to the love of her life,who makes fun of her clothes but holds her in a strong grip and never lets her go.

Please go read this book. And by the way, the movie cast was amazing. I couldn’t have picked a better actor or actress for Will and Lou.

Me at the End of the Book:

Quotes from the Book:

“You only get one life. It's actually your duty to live it as fully as possible.”

“Push yourself. Don't Settle. Just live well. Just LIVE.”

“You can only actually help someone who wants to be helped.”

“I thought, briefly, that I would never feel as intensely connected to the world, to another human being, as I did at that moment.”

“You are scored on my heart,Clark. You were from the first day you walked in,with your ridiculous clothes and your complete inability to ever hide a single thing you felt.”

“I just...want to be a man who has been to a concert with a girl in a red dress. Just for a few minutes more...”

My Rating: 5 out of 5 Crowns

Page to Screen #1: The 5th Wave

Welcome to a new Queen of Books feature. This is a book v. movie comparison and I will show which one is the best in my opinion. 

Each will include mini reviews/summaries, outline of differences between the book and adaptation, I will rate each on the aspects [setting, plot, characters] and will choose which was better. 

  VS

THE BOOK

Title: The 5th Wave

Author: Rick Yancey

Publication Date: May 7, 2013

Publisher: G.P Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers

Pages: 457

My Review: 

After the 1st wave, only darkness remains. After the 2nd, only the lucky escape. And after the 3rd, only the unlucky survive. After the 4th wave, only one rule applies: trust no one.

Now, it's the dawn of the 5th wave, and on a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs from Them. The beings who only look human, who roam the countryside killing anyone they see. Who have scattered Earth's last survivors. To stay alone is to stay alive, Cassie believes, until she meets Evan Walker. Beguiling and mysterious, Evan Walker may be Cassie's only hope for rescuing her brother-or even saving herself. But Cassie must choose: between trust and despair, between defiance and surrender, between life and death. To give up or to get up.

This book was not something I thought I would thoroughly enjoy. People had said it was amazing but I didn't feel as if I would actually enjoy it. I put off reading it for ages until I finally checked it out from the library and actually sat down and read through it. I realized that what other people had been saying was right. This book really was great. It was action-packed and the characters were bad-ass. 

I love reading books. There is something magical about actually getting to imagine the characters in the way you want to and not have actors skewing your opinions. In this book I imagined the beloved characters a certain way and I stuck with them.  When I was reading this book I tried to think of why it was written rather than just being mesmerized by the wonderful action-packed sequences. 

The characters are all three-dimensional and all have issues of their own but that is what makes them human [and in this book, that's a very important aspect].  The world-building is done fantastically and everything is wonderfully tied together. 

Characters: 5/5

Setting: 5/5

Writing: 5/5

Plot: 5/5

Cover: 4/5

Overall: 5/5

THE MOVIE

Title: The 5th Wave

Director: J. Blakeson

Actors: Chloe Grace Moretz, Nick Robinson, Alex Roe, Maika Monroe

Release Date: January 22, 2016

Runtime: 1 hour and 52 minutes

The human race stands on the brink of extinction as a series of alien attacks decimate the 

planet, causing earthquakes, tsunamis and disease. Separated from her family, Ohio 

teenager Cassie Sullivan (Chloë Grace Moretz) will do whatever it takes to reunite with her 

brother Sam. Fate leads her to form an alliance with Evan Walker (Alex Roe), a mysterious 

young man who may be her last hope. Forced to trust each other, Cassie and Evan fight for 

survival during the fifth assault from the invaders.

I am familiar with movies that don't follow the book at all or movies that are a ghost of what the book was and I am sorry to say that that is what I thought would happen when I watched this movie. The movie turned out to follow the book pretty well. 

This movie was really good however a few things took it down from being a perfect book to movie adaptation to a good book to movie adaptation. 

The first of those is how the characters were portrayed. The cast was amazing and I wouldn't have wanted a different cast. That wasn't the problem. The problem was the way they were portrayed. For example, I did not imagine Ringer to be a sort of emo girl. Sure she was tough but I thought she was supposed to be really pretty and that is not what I was getting from the movie. 

Another issue with this movie was the pace. I felt like a lot of things were rushed which led us to believe everything was faster than it initially was. For example, Cassie met Evan way too soon and trusts him way too soon which is not what happened in the book. 

Cast: 5/5 

Cinematography: 5/5

Screenplay: 4/5

Performances: 4/5

Overall: 4.5/5

NOTABLE DIFFERENCES

1. The fact that their hair stays picture perfect throughout makes me really mad. Like, they are out surviving in the wilderness so at least make it look realistic. 

2. The romance in the movie seemed to happen much faster than in the book which was still extremely fast for my taste. 

3. Ringer didn't look exactly how I wanted her to. I didn't expect her to look as emo as she did. 

4. How in the movie she missed the bus but in the book she wasn't allowed to go with her brother. That annoyed me a lot. 

5. The order in which Cassie told the story was also different. 

6. Vosch doesn't specifically kill her father. This kind of made me mad cause it wasn't as sad as in the book. 

7. Reznik is a woman in the movie

8. They don't mention Wonderland that much. 

9. Sammy doesn't pray in the camp like he does in the movie. 

10. Ringer doesn't kill Reznik. Instead Cassie does. 

THE BOTTOM LINE

I adored the movie but the book is officially the winner of this battle. The movie was missing some things and changed a couple things that annoyed me. But the book was amazing and I loved it. 

The Infinite Sea by Rick Yancey Review [The 5th Wave #2]

This is a spoiler free review! But there may be spoilers for the first book.

The Infinite Sea

Written by Rick Yancey

Genre: Young Adult/Science Fiction/Dystopian

Publisher: Putnam Juvenile

Release Date: September 16, 2014

Pages: 320

Source: Library

Places to Get this Book: Amazon Barnes and Noble Book Depository

Recommended Age: 13 and up!

Summary:

How do you rid the Earth of seven billion humans? Rid the humans of their humanity.

Surviving the first four waves was nearly impossible. Now Cassie Sullivan finds herself in a new world, a world in which the fundamental trust that binds us together is gone. As the 5th Wave rolls across the landscape, Cassie, Ben, and Ringer are forced to confront the Others’ ultimate goal: the extermination of the human race.

Cassie and her friends haven’t seen the depths to which the Others will sink, nor have the Others seen the heights to which humanity will rise, in the ultimate battle between life and death, hope and despair, love and hate.

Review:

When I saw how short this book was compared to the first one, I was shocked. I didn’t know how it could be as action-packed and exciting as the first book with less pages. But I was pleasantly surprised and enjoyed this book as much as the first.

COVER

This is by far not my favorite cover but it is still an interesting cover. I actually spent like thirty minutes trying to figure out what the cover was depicting and got nowhere so yes I think the cover is very interesting and intriguing.

WORLD-BUILDING

This is set on earth and there isn't much world-building because of that respect. We get a little more information about the aliens and their whole plan regarding to what they are going to do to the people who are still left on Earth.

Then there are the characters.

CASSIE

Cassie is still pretty strong and badass in this book though she is a little piney since Evan isn’t with them. But I will always love Cassie. She is one of those YA heroines that you can’t help but love because she’s so strong and determined. She stands her ground and knows what she wants and doesn’t let others lead her away from what needs to be done. She is a great fighter and I love her a lot

EVAN

I’m still a little bit wary on this character. I can’t really tell which side he’s on and what he’s planning on doing but I still have trust that he’s going to do the right thing. I mean, if he loves Cassie he will. Right?

BEN (ZOMBIE)

Ben has changed a lot since the first book. He seems more cold and calculating than he is in the first book but he still has a heart. He is still one of my favorite characters cause he is such a multi-layered character and is so different.

RINGER

Ringer was so different in this book. I had a lot more respect for her because of things she went through and she quickly went from my least favorite character to a character I could actually tolerate. She went through a ton in this book which seriously changed her as well as changed my opinion of her.

PLOT

I can't believe on most reviews, I forget to talk about the plot. The point of view changes stayed in this book and it actually helped us get the story from other’s perspectives. I have to admit at first I didn’t like Ringer in this book but she goes through a ton in the alien lab and that made me gain some respect for her and what she’s going through. I also liked how it was all high stakes and action which made our hearts beat a little faster because we needed to know what would happen to the characters.

ROMANCE

The romance in this series still annoys me a lot. I still feel like it is very insa-lovey [at least the romance between Evan and Cassie]. I am more of a Ben and Cassie kind of girl. I ship Ben and Cassie way more than Cassie and Evan because I feel like Ben and Cassie could develop a love that would withstand everything. Evan is an alien and that could really screw things up between the two characters.

Nevertheless, the romance is still insta-lovey. It takes basically a week or a couple for Cassie and Ben to start making out which both annoyed me and disgusted me. Then in this book, it seems like Cassie is pining for him more than just a little bit which also annoyed me. Cassie is such a strong character that she shouldn’t have to pine over someone she shouldn’t trust all that much. Ben and Cassie were cute and yes, I will forever ship them.

WRITING

I liked the writing which helped me fly through this book. It helped the story be fast paced and action packed.

Final Thoughts:

I highly recommend this book, it has aspects of sci-go, action and dystopian. The characters are three dimensional and the plot is amazing. I really enjoyed this book and it was a wonderful sequel. Again, I highly recommend this series.

Quotes from the Book:

“When you look death in the eye and death blinks first, nothing seems impossible.”

“It isn’t that the lies are too beautiful to resist. It’s that the truth is too hideous to face.”

“People die. Love endures.”

“You never know when the truth will come home. You can’t choose the time. The time chooses you.”

My Rating: 4.5  out of 5 Crowns

COVER REVEAL: Fall of Thrones and Thorns by Jennifer Ellision

Hey guys! Welcome to the stop on the cover reveal tour of Fall of Thrones and Thorns by Jennifer Ellision. I am so excited to share this cover with you guys. This is the third book in the Threats of Sky and Sea series. It is set to be published on September 27, 2016. 

Before I reveal the cover, here is what Fall of Thrones and Thorns is about:

War hurtles in, a typhoon over the sea.

After Bree’s life was torn apart, Nereidium had represented a haven to her. A place that—if she could save it—was beyond the King’s reach.

And, at last, she’s arrived upon its shores. But things in Nereidium are not what they should be.

The land is plagued by a rash of mysterious earthquakes, the likes of which it’s never known. The governors are distracted by old traditions, while Bree and her friends grapple with changing identities and the sense that the longer they wait to take action… the greater the danger from Egria grows.

Bree is tired of living under the shadow of King Langdon’s power. And she’s tired of waiting for him to be the first to act.

In this final chapter of the Threats of Sky and Sea series, it all comes down to Nereidium or Egria. To Bree or the King. It’s kill… or be killed.

And not everyone will escape the battle unscathed.

ADD IT TO GOODREADS

Previous Books in This Series: 

AND NOW FOR THE BIG REVEAL

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AUTHOR BIO:

Jennifer Ellision spent a great deal of her childhood staying up past her bedtime with a book and a flashlight. When she couldn't find the stories she wanted to read, she started writing them. She loves words, has a soft spot for fanfiction, and is a master of the fangirl flail. She resides in South Florida with her family, where she lives in fear of temperatures below 60 Fahrenheit

Website / Goodreads / Twitter / Facebook