Title: The Break-Up Artist
Author: Philip Siegel
Published: May, 2014 by Harlequin Teen
Thanks: Harlequin Teen, AU
Pages: 308
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

Some sixteen-year-olds babysit for extra cash. Some work at the Gap. Becca Williamson breaks up couples…

After watching her sister get left at the altar, Becca knows the true damage that comes when people utter the dreaded L-word. For just $100 via paypal, she can trick and manipulate any couple into smithereens. With relationship zombies overrunning her school, and treating single girls like second class citizens, business is unfortunately booming. Even her best friend Val has resorted to outright lies to snag a boyfriend.

One night, she receives a mysterious offer to break up the homecoming king and queen, the one zombie couple to rule them all: Steve and Huxley. They are a JFK and Jackie O in training, masters of sweeping faux-mantic gestures, but if Becca can split them up, then school will be safe again for singletons. To succeed, she’ll have to plan her most elaborate scheme to date and wiggle her way back into her former BFF Huxley’s life – not to mention start a few rumors, sabotage some cell phones, break into a car, and fend off the inappropriate feelings she’s having about Val’s new boyfriend. All while avoiding a past victim out to expose her true identity.

No one said being the Break-Up Artist was easy.

Final Thoughts:
This book had me from the start. Perhaps it’s my current contemporary fixation, but I found this so easy to get into. I love it when I pick up a book and it just clicks with me. You’re not counting how many pages left until it ends, you’re counting them, wishing there were more. Becca was such a loveable anti-hero, championing the destruction of relationships. The way she saw the world was refreshing, albeit, cynical—but I loved that. Her occasional outbursts had me grinning. She’s that little voice in your head whenever you read something corny that everyone else swoons over.

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Title: The Iron King (The Iron Fey #1)
Author: Julie Kagawa
Published: February, 2010 by Harlequin Teen
Pages: 363
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

Something has always felt slightly off in Meghan’s life, ever since her father disappeared before her eyes when she was six. She has never quite fit in at school or at home.

When a dark stranger begins watching her from afar, and her prankster best friend becomes strangely protective of her, Meghan senses that everything she’s known is about to change.

But she could never have guessed the truth – that she is the daughter of a mythical faery king and is a pawn in a deadly war. Now Meghan will learn just how far she’ll go to save someone she cares about, to stop a mysterious evil, no faery creature dare face; and to find love with a young prince who might rather see her dead than let her touch his icy heart.

Final Thoughts:
I think I may have left this one a little too late. I’ve heard people rave about this faery series, putting it up there as one of the best. But, for me, I just couldn’t seem to connect with it. I found myself rushing through it just because I wanted to get to the next book on my to-read list—not a good feeling. I couldn’t find fault with the characters—I wasn’t annoyed by them, they weren’t stupid—the story just didn’t grip me. I wish it had, because it was a wonderfully descriptive and well developed world. So that, again, makes me wonder whether I would have enjoyed this book more had I read it a few years back.

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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
• Phantom Eyes by Scott Tracey (purchased)
• Spirit by Brigid Kemmerer (purchased)
• Broken Dream by Eden Maguire (purchased)
• Agent 21: Codebreaker by Chris Ryan (purchased)
• Agent 21: Reloaded by Chris Ryan (purchased)
• The Blood Keeper by Tessa Gratton (purchased)

These books were all $5 or less each, except for Spirit, but it was only $8.50. One of my local bookstores was having a 50% off sale in preparation for their eventual closing down once their lease ends. The shopping centre it’s in is being refurbished, so all the stores have to go. It’s sad, and I’m hoping they reopen once it’s done, but in the meantime–cheap books!

I haven’t started the Agent 21 series, and don’t know if I will anytime soon, but it’s good to have the books here if I get the urge to read a spy book. Likewise, I haven’t started Eden Maguire’s series, but if I start buying a series, I want to have them all, just in case I can’t find them later. I’m up to date with the Witch Eyes series, but after a big disappointment with how book two went down, I’m in no rush to get back into it. It’s another ‘one day’ book. I am looking forward to The Blood Keeper though. It’s been a while since I read the first one, but I have a feeling I enjoyed it. I’m always up for a good witch story–hard as they are to find. If you know of any that blew you away, let me know.

That’s it for this time. So, what books have you gotten lately? Let me know in the comments.

I know there are still new books coming out, both debuts and continuing series, but it seems like the market here is shrinking—or at least the market space allotted for YA. Borders are gone, Angus & Robertson are gone—even places like Collins are hard to come by. I went looking for one I knew of yesterday and found a Supré in its spot instead.

In Queensland, we still have QBD, and nationally, there’s Dymocks, but their YA sections are usually only a wall a metre to two metres wide, unless in you’re in the city. If it was 2012, I’d say sure, these stores have a good selection of books—and compared to the department stores, they still do. But I look at the book hauls many US bloggers are posting pics of, and it’s usually the first I’m seeing of the book. Are these even getting published here? And if they are, where are they?

Over the past month, I’ve been holidaying, going both to Brisbane and down to Melbourne’s CBD, checking out every bookstore, and department store with book sections that I could find. Dymocks in Melbourne’s CBD was massive, though it’s YA section wasn’t quite as good as the Brisbane one. Brisbane’s beat it by an extra row. Just about everywhere else that I went, though, was a letdown. For the life of me, I couldn’t find Anna and the French Kiss anywhere.

I don’t know why I bother going to Target or Kmart anymore. I used to love poring through their shelves, snatching up heaps of YA books at low-for-Australia prices. But now it seems like only Harlequin/Mills and Boon have any sort of presence there. It’s basically just a romance section now. The more popular titles like John Green’s back catalogue, The Hunger Games and Divergent are usually there, but I want to be able to discover new books when I’m out shopping, not just the latest craze.

Big W isn’t too bad, but you need to keep checking back regularly. Books pop up, and then a week later they’ll all be gone and you’ll never see it again. It’s weird, because there are a heap of others that seem like they’ve been sitting there since the store first opened, or at least the past couple of years. It’s why I keep checking every Big W whenever I’m at a new shopping centre. Each one has its own vault of treasures that haven’t been sent back to the publishers, just accumulating in a disorganised pile, behind the newer books on the shelves—you just have to dig through to find them. Still, if you’re after a certain book, it’s usually only pure luck if you find it.

I’d really like to be able to support our local market, but it feels like there is no supply, or at least no consistent supply, to meet the demand. It’s so much easier to just open my laptop and type in the book. Sure, it takes a couple weeks to get to me, but it’s usually cheaper and a lot less trouble than trying to track something down from store to store.

What do you think of the current offerings at Aussie bookstores? Am I just not finding the right stores or this happening to you too?

UPDATED: More pictures. And yes, the Twilight books are sitting in New Releases.

QBD (pictured below, on the left) beats all of my local bookstores, having a wider and more complete selection when it comes to stocking each book in a series. Though, it could do with some newer titles as most have been out for quite a while.

And what our shrinking YA sections seem to have made way for:

Title: Roomies
Author: Sara Zarr & Tara Altebrando
Published: December, 2013 by Little, Brown Books
Thanks: Little, Brown Books via NetGalley
Pages: 279
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

It’s time to meet your new roomie.

When East Coast native Elizabeth receives her freshman-year roommate assignment, she shoots off an e-mail to coordinate the basics: television, microwave, mini-fridge. That first note to San Franciscan Lauren sparks a series of e-mails that alters the landscape of each girl’s summer — and raises questions about how two girls who are so different will ever share a dorm room.

As the countdown to college begins, life at home becomes increasingly complex. With family relationships and childhood friendships strained by change, it suddenly seems that the only people Elizabeth and Lauren can rely on are the complicated new boys in their lives . . . and each other. Even though they’ve never met.

National Book Award finalist Sara Zarr and acclaimed author Tara Altebrando join forces for a novel about growing up, leaving home, and getting that one fateful e-mail that assigns your college roommate.

Final Thoughts:
Roomies was fun—something I’d devoured within a day, but it didn’t hit me in the way a certain other new contemporary did. I wasn’t bored, but it’s not going to go down as one of my favourites. Switching back and forth each chapter between the two girls, we quickly get to know their family situations and their blossoming love lives. The romances didn’t do a lot for me, I was more interested in the drama going on between the girls and their back and forth passive-to-actually-aggressive emails throughout the book.

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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
• Uglies by Scott Westerfeld (purchased)
• Pretties by Scott Westerfeld (purchased)
• Specials by Scott Westerfeld (purchased)
• The Vampire Diaries: Destiny Rising by L.J. Smith (purchased)
• Popular by Maya Van Wagenen (thanks to Penguin, AU)
• The Break-Up Artist by Philip Siegel (thanks to Harlequin Teen, AU)

It was only two weeks between book hauls this time (not a whole year again, so I think I did pretty well). I’ve been wanting to start Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies series for quite a while now, so I gave in and ordered these with the cool black/fluorescent covers. I still need to order my copy of Extras, but I’m saving that for another one down the track. I snatched up this copy of The Vampire Diaries for less than $2 on Booktopia this week, which I’m really happy with. I needed it to round out that trilogy of the seemingly never-ending series. I’ll have to start collecting the next lot with the blue covers soon. I’ve only read the first four that L.J. Smith actually wrote, though. I’m not sure when the ghostwriters took over, but it hasn’t stopped me collecting the books. Maybe I’ll read them one day when the TV show ends and I want another fix.

Popular has been sitting around my room for a couple weeks now. It was a free gift from Felicity at the Penguin Teen Australia blogger/reader meetup in Brisbane on the 7th of April. It doesn’t particularly look like my kind of book, but it’s pretty thin so I might give it a go sometime in between the other bigger books I’ve got scheduled at the moment. Lastly, I got a copy of The Break-Up Artist to review. I’m really looking forward to this one. The blurb sounds like a lot of fun. I’ve been getting into contemporaries more and more lately, so I’m hoping this one clicks with me too.

Here are some of my latest reviews if you want to check them out:
Cross, Julie Tempest #3, Timestorm
de Pierres, Marianne Night Creatures #3, Shine Light
Hodkin, Michelle Mara Dyer #1, The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer
Rowell, Rainbow, Fangirl

That’s it for this time. So, what books have you gotten lately? Let me know in the comments.

Title: Shine Light (Night Creatures #3)
Author: Marianne de Pierres
Published: November, 2012 by Random House
Pages: 229
Rating:  
Purchase: Booktopia

Ixion. The island of ever-night.

If she had a choice, Naif wouldn’t go back. But her friends will die if she doesn’t find a cure for the badges that are slowly killing them, and her brother is there, fighting against the Ripers who hold everyone in thrall. And Naif has knowledge that might save them all.

First she must solve the mystery of Ixion’s eternal night. Then she must convince everyone – rebels and revellers alike – to join her cause. And all the while, she must fight the urge to go to Lenoir – her greatest love, her mortal enemy.

The secrets of Ixion must be revealed. The evils must be stopped. A new dawn will come.

Final Thoughts:
This was such an improvement on Angel Arias. I found the last book harder to get into, but I just breezed through this one. I think it was due in part to the return to the night world of Ixion. A couple years of passed and a bit of the magic has faded, but Shine Light proved to be a worthy successor, drawing me back into the carnival-esque land of church dorms, clubbing, rival gangs and life–stealing monsters. Book two left all of that behind. Perhaps if I had skipped straight from Burn Bright to Shine Light I may have enjoyed this series more than I did.

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