Title: Model Misfit (Geek Girl #2)
Author: Holly Smale
Published: September, 2013 by Harper Collins
Pages: 386
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

Harriet knows that modelling won’t transform you. She knows that being as uniquely odd as a polar bear isn’t necessarily a bad thing (even in a rainforest). And that the average person eats a ton of food a year, though her pregnant stepmother is doing her best to beat this.

What Harriet doesn’t know is where she’s going to fit in once the new baby arrives.

With summer plans ruined, modelling in Japan seems the perfect chance to get as far away from home as possible. But nothing can prepare Harriet for the craziness of Tokyo, her competitive model flatmates and her errant grandmother’s ‘chaperoning’. Or seeing gorgeous Nick everywhere she goes.

Because, this time, Harriet knows what a broken heart feels like.

Can geek girl find her place on the other side of the world or is Harriet lost for good?

Final Thoughts:
Having read and loved Geek Girl a week prior to this, I jumped straight in, ready to lap up another instalment of Harriet Manners, haphazard model-slash-know-it-all and all of the whacky characters that came along with her. However, and I hate having to say this, I think a bit of second-book-syndrome came into play this time. A lot of the crazy antics that her agent, Wilbur, as well as her wannabe-teenage father and lawyer, but loveable, stepmother brought were gone. And that’s just because the characters were. Shipping Harriet off to Japan—while cool—left all of the side characters I’d come to love behind, and so, it felt like the book had lost something…

Title: The Distance Between Us
Author: Kasie West
Published: July, 2013 by Harper Teen
Pages: 312
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

Seventeen-year-old Caymen Meyers studies the rich like her own personal science experiment, and after years of observation she’s pretty sure they’re only good for one thing—spending money on useless stuff, like the porcelain dolls in her mother’s shop.

So when Xander Spence walks into the store to pick up a doll for his grandmother, it only takes one glance for Caymen to figure out he’s oozing rich. Despite his charming ways and that he’s one of the first people who actually gets her, she’s smart enough to know his interest won’t last. Because if there’s one thing she’s learned from her mother’s warnings, it’s that the rich have a short attention span. But Xander keeps coming around, despite her best efforts to scare him off. And much to her dismay, she’s beginning to enjoy his company.

She knows her mom can’t find out—she wouldn’t approve. She’d much rather Caymen hang out with the local rocker who hasn’t been raised by money. But just when Xander’s attention and loyalty are about to convince Caymen that being rich isn’t a character flaw, she finds out that money is a much bigger part of their relationship than she’d ever realized. And that Xander’s not the only one she should’ve been worried about.

Final Thoughts:
Effortless. I soared through the pages of this. Caymen was just such loveably sarcastic narrator that I wanted to read more, more and more. I love dry wit—nothing makes me laugh more. And laugh I did. I cracked up reading this book. Sure, it’s a romance, but if you’re a sarcastic person, you’ll find it hilarious at the same time. It’s kind of fluffy, with rich boy meets poor girl, different worlds—the stuff you could make a montage out of—but it’s the slow build of their romance, all of the interactions, that make it worth it.

Title: The Coldest Girl In Coldtown
Author: Holly Black
Published: September, 2013 by Little, Brown Books
Pages: 419
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

Tana lives in a world where walled cities called Coldtowns exist. In them, quarantined monsters and humans mingle in a decadently bloody mix of predator and prey. The only problem is, once you pass through Coldtown’s gates, you can never leave.

One morning, after a perfectly ordinary party, Tana wakes up surrounded by corpses. The only other survivors of this massacre are her exasperatingly endearing ex-boyfriend, infected and on the edge, and a mysterious boy burdened with a terrible secret. Shaken and determined, Tana enters a race against the clock to save the three of them the only way she knows how: by going straight to the wicked, opulent heart of Coldtown itself.

Final Thoughts:
With my interest waning in Holly’s Curse Workers series, I was reluctant to start Coldtown. Borrowing it from my local library, I’d renewed it twice before I had actually started reading it. Within the first few pages, I was bored. I wondered to myself whether I’d have to give up on it, but by page ten things had taken a turn and I couldn’t stop. It became really engrossing, with characters you could care about, ones you really wanted to win—or to lose—and a lead girl that didn’t irritate me one bit. Tana was fully of worry, but incredibly strong willed and at times, morally conflicted. It all added together making her someone I really wanted to read about.

Title: City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments #6)
Author: Cassandra Clare
Published: May, 2014 by Margaret K. McElderry
Pages: 725
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

Shadowhunters and demons square off for the final showdown in the spellbinding, seductive conclusion to the #1 New York Times bestselling Mortal Instruments series.

Darkness has descended on the Shadowhunter world. Chaos and destruction overwhelm the Nephilim as Clary, Jace, Simon, and their friends band together to fight the greatest evil they have ever faced: Clary’s own brother. Sebastian Morgenstern is on the move, systematically turning Shadowhunter against Shadowhunter. Bearing the Infernal Cup, he transforms Shadowhunters into creatures of nightmare, tearing apart families and lovers as the ranks of his Endarkened army swell. Nothing in this world can defeat Sebastian, but if they journey to the realm of demons, they just might have a chance.

Lives will be lost, love sacrificed, and the whole world will change. Who will survive the explosive sixth and final installment of the Mortal Instruments series?

Final Thoughts:
This book ate my whole weekend. It was just so long. I’ve spent the past six hours on my couch getting through the last 300 pages, feeling like I just wanted it to end. Don’t get me wrong, it was a great book, a great end to the series, but it was just so…I guess ‘tiring’ is the word. All of the characters get a look in, with most getting a fair share of the time spent exploring and wrapping up their plots, but in doing this, it really slowed down the pacing with all of the jumping back and forth to all of the different perspectives. It’s probably a good thing for people who are sick of certain characters, but I just wanted to get to the end and put the heavy (you could use it as a brick) book down.

Title: Unremembered (Unremembered #1)
Author: Jessica Brody
Published: March, 2013 by Farrar, Straus, & Giroux
Pages: 320
Rating:  
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When Freedom Airlines flight 121 went down over the Pacific Ocean, no one ever expected to find survivors. Which is why the sixteen-year-old girl discovered floating among the wreckage—alive—is making headlines across the globe.

Even more strange is that her body is miraculously unharmed and she has no memories of boarding the plane. She has no memories of her life before the crash. She has no memories period. No one knows how she survived. No one knows why she wasn’t on the passenger manifest. And no one can explain why her DNA and fingerprints can’t be found in a single database in the world.

Crippled by a world she doesn’t know, plagued by abilities she doesn’t understand, and haunted by a looming threat she can’t remember, she struggles to piece together her forgotten past and discover who she really is. But with every clue only comes more questions. And she’s running out of time to answer them.

Final Thoughts:
Though this took place over only a matter of days, possibly a week, Unremembered felt like such a journey, character-wise. Even from the beginning, I knew it would be. This girl woke up in the middle of the ocean, clinging to a piece of plane wreckage, no memories of herself or the world. She was an enigma, such a deviation from the usual YA heroine we usually get handed. I kept bursting into fits of laughter at all of her inane responses to things that would seem like basic knowledge to most people. I mean, this girl didn’t know what a hug was.

Title: Heist Society (Heist Society #1)
Author: Ally Carter
Published: February, 2010, by Disney Hyperion
Pages: 287
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

When Katarina Bishop was three, her parents took her on a trip to the Louvre…to case it. For her seventh birthday, Katarina and her Uncle Eddie traveled to Austria…to steal the crown jewels. When Kat turned fifteen, she planned a con of her own—scamming her way into the best boarding school in the country, determined to leave the family business behind. Unfortunately, leaving “the life” for a normal life proves harder than she’d expected.

Soon, Kat’s friend and former co-conspirator, Hale, appears out of nowhere to bring Kat back into the world she tried so hard to escape. But he has a good reason: a powerful mobster has been robbed of his priceless art collection and wants to retrieve it. Only a master thief could have pulled this job, and Kat’s father isn’t just on the suspect list, he is the list. Caught between Interpol and a far more deadly enemy, Kat’s dad needs her help.

For Kat, there is only one solution: track down the paintings and steal them back. So what if it’s a spectacularly impossible job? She’s got two weeks, a teenage crew, and hopefully just enough talent to pull off the biggest heist in her family’s history–and, with any luck, steal her life back along the way.

Final Thoughts:
Somehow I knew that I would enjoy this book even before I had even picked it up. This hard-cover copy of Ally Carter’s Heist Society had been sitting on Brett’s shelf for quite some time, untouched. And every time I walked by, I saw it in the corner of my eye and said to myself: I really want to read that, some time. And, oh boy, was I satisfied when I did, at last.

Title: One Man Guy
Author: Michael Barakiva
Published: May, 2014 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Thanks: Macmillan via NetGalley
Pages: 272
Rating:  
Purchase: The Book Depository

Alek Khederian should have guessed something was wrong when his parents took him to a restaurant. Everyone knows that Armenians never eat out. Between bouts of interrogating the waitress and criticizing the menu, Alek’s parents announce that he’ll be attending summer school in order to bring up his grades. Alek is sure this experience will be the perfect hellish end to his hellish freshman year of high school. He never could’ve predicted that he’d meet someone like Ethan.

Ethan is everything Alek wishes he were: confident, free-spirited, and irreverent. He can’t believe a guy this cool wants to be his friend. And before long, it seems like Ethan wants to be more than friends. Alek has never thought about having a boyfriend—he’s barely ever had a girlfriend—but maybe it’s time to think again.

Final Thoughts:
This book was so much fun! It was just what I needed after a five week slog through my last book. I was finished One Man Guy in a matter of hours, not even bothering to get dressed for the day. I just couldn’t stop reading. It was refreshing to find gay YA where everyone was as accepting as they were, skipping the angst in favour of a light-hearted yet heart-warming piece of escapism. Set amidst New York and the outer suburbs, it took well advantage of the setting and created something that I felt added an extra dimension to the rom-com playing out in my head.