Title: Anna and the French Kiss (Anna and the French Kiss #1)
Author: Stephanie Perkins
Published: January, 2010 by Penguin
Pages: 416
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

Anna has everything figured out – she was about to start senior year with her best friend, she had a great weekend job, and her huge work crush looked as if it might finally be going somewhere… Until her dad decides to send her 4383 miles away to Paris. On her own.

But despite not speaking a word of French, Anna finds herself making new friends, including Etienne, the smart, beautiful boy from the floor above. But he’s taken – and Anna might be too. Will a year of romantic near-missed end with the French kiss she’s been waiting for?

Final Thoughts:
I loved the book. I mean, really…never-wanted-to-put-it-down kind of loved it. I kept finding myself reading extra chapters even after I’d told myself I needed to sleep. It was that kind of book. Although it came out years before Fangirl, I found it gave me a similar kind of giddy rush while reading. I was immersed within their world, really caring about their lives and desperately hoping they would just get things together already. This is a relationship in a book—the good, the bad, all of it. I wasn’t even finished reading it and I was already online ordering the companion novels. I NEED more of Stephanie Perkins. She made me believe in YA romance again.

Stacking The Shelves is a meme hosted by Tynga’s Reviews all about sharing the books you are adding to your shelves, may it be physical or virtual. This means you can include books you buy in physical store or online, books you borrow from friends or the library, review books, gifts and of course ebooks!

Titles link back to Goodreads
• Pivot Point by Kasie West (purchased)
• Split Second by Kasie West (purchased)
• Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins (purchased)
• Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell (purchased)
• Attachments by Rainbow Rowell (purchased)

My Book Depository order arrived (in five separate packages) this week. I’ve already dived in and finished Anna and the French Kiss in the past couple days. My review will be up Monday! As for the rest, I can’t decide on which to start next. I’ve got a few others I’ve been meaning to start, but Anna arrived and they got pushed back. I am looking forward to starting Pivot Point though, but I’m thinking staying on top of the library books I’ve got out is more pressing.

It’s my mum’s birthday this weekend, so I’m probably not going to get much reading done though. She’s coming to visit and hit the markets with me, so I’m busy doing some baking, baking…and more baking. A cream-cheese iced carrot cake is first on the agenda. It’s kind of a birthday tradition in my family. Anyway, I’d better get back to the kitchen!

Here are some of my latest posts if you want to check them out:
Carter, Ally Heist Society #2, Uncommon Criminals – Joey discovered his first case of Second-Book Syndrome.
Healey, Karen Guardian Of The Dead – I struggled a bit with this.

So, what books have you gotten lately? Which books would you recommend I read first? Let me know in the comments.

Title: Guardian Of The Dead
Author: Karen Healey
Published: August, 2010 by Little, Brown Books
Pages: 333
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

Seventeen-year-old Ellie Spencer is just like any other teenager at her boarding school. She hangs out with her best friend Kevin, she obsesses over Mark, a cute and mysterious bad boy, and her biggest worry is her paper deadline.

But then everything changes. The news headlines are all abuzz about a local string of serial killings that all share the same morbid trademark: the victims were discovered with their eyes missing. Then a beautiful yet eerie woman enters Ellie’s circle of friends and develops an unhealthy fascination with Kevin, and a crazed old man grabs Ellie in a public square and shoves a tattered Bible into her hands, exclaiming, “You need it. It will save your soul.” Soon, Ellie finds herself plunged into a haunting world of vengeful fairies, Māori mythology, romance, betrayal, and an epic battle for immortality.

Final Thoughts:
Admittedly, this wasn’t my favourite book. I liked the characters, even found myself letting out sharp bursts of laughter, but the plot dragged. It really felt like a chore getting through it. Being a standalone, I had expected this to be fast-paced, full of action from the get-go. Instead, we spent chapters upon chapters with the characters practicing for a university theatre production which really did nothing for the plot except in showing us how creepy one of the characters was. And with the lengthy, overly-descriptive chapters, it just kept leaving me with the feeling of wanting to put the book down and do something else.

Title: Uncommon Criminals (Heist Society #2)
Author: Ally Carter
Published: June, 2011 by Disney Hyperion
Pages: 298
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

Katarina Bishop has worn a lot of labels in her short life. Friend. Niece. Daughter. Thief. But for the last two months she’s simply been known as the girl who ran the crew that robbed the greatest museum in the world. That’s why Kat isn’t surprised when she’s asked to steal the infamous Cleopatra Emerald so it can be returned to its rightful owners.

There are only three problems. First, the gem hasn’t been seen in public in thirty years. Second, since the fall of the Egyptian empire and the suicide of Cleopatra, no one who holds the emerald keeps it for long, and in Kat’s world, history almost always repeats itself. But it’s the third problem that makes Kat’s crew the most nervous and that is simply… the emerald is cursed.

Kat might be in way over her head, but she’s not going down without a fight. After all she has her best friend—the gorgeous Hale—and the rest of her crew with her as they chase the Cleopatra around the globe, dodging curses, realizing that the same tricks and cons her family has used for centuries are useless this time.

Which means, this time, Katarina Bishop is making up her own rules.

Final Thoughts:
This is actually the first sequel I’ve read in years—perhaps ever (is The Odyssey considered the sequel to The Iliad?). It hadn’t been that long since I read Heist Society, and so I was happy to find the second book in the series, Uncommon Criminals, available at the local council library. I still felt the residual itch to jump back into the world of Kat Bishop and her teen-criminal wonder crew, and though it did seem to have a tiny fleck of “sequel-syndrome”, it was still a pleasant read.

Stacking The Shelves is a meme hosted by Tynga’s Reviews all about sharing the books you are adding to your shelves, may it be physical or virtual. This means you can include books you buy in physical store or online, books you borrow from friends or the library, review books, gifts and of course ebooks!

Titles link back to Goodreads
• Heartbeat by Elizabeth Scott (purchased)
• The Girl With The Iron Touch by Kady Cross (purchased)
• The Forever Song by Julie Kagawa (purchased)
• Extras by Scott Westerfeld (purchased)
• Shadow Of The Mark by Leigh Fallon (purchased)
• The Temptation by Aubrey Clark (purchased)
• Blood Feud by Alyxandra Harvey (purchased)

I got a lot of J.R Ward books…a lot. I found these on eBay, $30 (incl. postage) for the lot. I had been wanting to get the Aussie covers, because, well, these covers aren’t really for me, but at that price I could forgo them looking pretty on my shelves. Here’s hoping I still enjoy the vampire series. It’s been a few years since I read the first two.

There’s a distinct purple-ness to my book haul this week. I finally decided to give in and get a copy of Heartbeat, adding it to my pile of contemporaries I want to check out this year. I haven’t been able to find a copy of The Girl In The Clockwork Collar in-store, but I’m going to keep trying. I picked up the third in the series in case it disappears in the mean time. Why is it so hard to find previous Harlequin releases in Australia once the next book in a series comes out? It’s exactly why I’ve been collecting Julie Kagawa’s books with each new release even though I haven’t even started this series yet.

The rest are some bargain books I picked up on the cheap in order to finish off or fill out missing places in series I’ve been collecting. I did read Blood Feud back in 2011, but I’m not sure what happened in it anymore. I recall a family of vampires, and…caves, maybe. I’m not sure. You can see it didn’t leave a lasting impression on me. I’ve got books three and four on my shelves already, but I don’t think I’ll be getting around to them any time soon. I’m waiting on my TBD order to arrive with some other goodies I want to check out.

Here are some of my latest posts if you want to check them out:
LaFevers, Robin His Fair Assassin #1, Grave Mercy – Joey’s guest review.
Terrill, Cristin All Our Yesterdays #1, All Our Yesterdays – LOVED this!
Westerfeld, Scott Uglies #2, Pretties – Wasn’t for me.

That’s it for this time. So, what books have you gotten lately? Which of these books would you recommend I read first? Let me know in the comments.

Title: All Our Yesterdays (All Our Yesterdays #1)
Author: Cristin Terrill
Published: August, 2013 by Bloomsbury
Pages: 362
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

Em is locked in a bare, cold cell with no comforts. Finn is in the cell next door. The Doctor is keeping them there until they tell him what he wants to know. Trouble is, what he wants to know hasn’t happened yet.

Em and Finn have a shared past, but no future unless they can find a way out. The present is torture – being kept apart, overhearing each other’s anguish as the Doctor relentlessly seeks answers. There’s no way back from here, to what they used to be, the world they used to know. Then Em finds a note in her cell which changes everything. It’s from her future self and contains some simple but very clear instructions. Em must travel back in time to avert a tragedy that’s about to unfold. Worse, she has to pursue and kill the boy she loves to change the future.

Final Thoughts:
Un-put-down-able, that’s what this book would have been had I not needed to work, eat or sleep. Every chance I got, I had this book in my hands, frantically trying to see how things would play out. The first page had me hooked, which was certainly a good sign. Some books you just trudge through, but this one had me actually wanting to read, just for the enjoyment of reading. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of time travel YA out there, so I usually jump on them whenever I spot one. And unlike Julie Cross’ Tempest, which was ‘Boy loves girl. Girl dies. Boy goes back to save her’, All Our Yesterdays shook things up with ‘Boy tortures girl. Girl hates boy. Girl goes back to kill him’.

Title: Pretties (Uglies #2)
Author: Scott Westerfeld
Published: November, 2005 by Simon & Schuster
Pages: 368
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

Tally has finally become pretty. Now her looks are beyond perfect, her clothes are awesome, her boyfriend is totally hot, and she’s completely popular. It’s everything she’s ever wanted.

But beneath all the fun — the nonstop parties, the high-tech luxury, the total freedom — is a nagging sense that something’s wrong. Something important. Then a message from Tally’s ugly past arrives. Reading it, Tally remembers what’s wrong with pretty life, and the fun stops cold.

Now she has to choose between fighting to forget what she knows and fighting for her life — because the authorities don’t intend to let anyone with this information survive.

Final Thoughts:
This started out SO slow. Set in New Pretty Town, I just couldn’t get into the characters. I got that their brains had been messed with, but it didn’t make for enjoyable reading. I mean, how many times can you listen to characters say ‘bubbly’ or ‘bogus’ before you want to hurl the book across the room? The pacing was just off for me. It was one of those books where you felt the need to put it down every 20 or so pages and go find something else to do. Of course, I got around that by forcing my way through it, but you shouldn’t have to do that. Luckily the second half picks up a bit.