Book Review | Emmy & Oliver | Robin Benway

Book Review | Emmy & Oliver | Robin BenwayEmmy & Oliver by Robin Benway
Published by Harper Teeen on June 23, 2015
Genres: Contemporary YA, Relationships, Young Adult
Pages: 352
Format: ARC
Also by this author: Also Known As, Going Rogue
Source: a fellow blogger (thanks for sharing!)
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four-half-stars

Emmy’s best friend, Oliver, reappears after being kidnapped by his father ten years ago. Emmy hopes to pick up their relationship right where it left off. Are they destined to be together? Or has fate irreparably driven them apart?

Emmy just wants to be in charge of her own life.

She wants to stay out late, surf her favorite beach—go anywhere without her parents’ relentless worrying. But Emmy’s parents can’t seem to let her grow up—not since the day Oliver disappeared.

Oliver needs a moment to figure out his heart.

He’d thought, all these years, that his dad was the good guy. He never knew that it was his father who kidnapped him and kept him on the run. Discovering it, and finding himself returned to his old hometown, all at once, has his heart racing and his thoughts swirling.

Emmy and Oliver were going to be best friends forever, or maybe even more, before their futures were ripped apart. In Emmy’s soul, despite the space and time between them, their connection has never been severed. But is their story still written in the stars? Or are their hearts like the pieces of two different puzzles—impossible to fit together?

Readers who love Sarah Dessen will tear through these pages with hearts in throats as Emmy and Oliver struggle to face the messy, confusing consequences of Oliver’s father’s crime. Full of romance, coming-of-age emotion, and heartache, these two equally compelling characters create an unforgettable story.

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Waiting on Wednesday (55) | A Thousand Pieces of You

Waiting on Wednesday

A Thousand Pieces of You: Firebird #1 by Claudia Gray

Book cover A Thousand Pieces of You Claudia Gray

 

Every Day meets Cloud Atlas in this heart-racing, space- and time-bending, epic new trilogy from New York Times bestselling author Claudia Gray.

Marguerite Caine’s physicist parents are known for their radical scientific achievements. Their most astonishing invention: the Firebird, which allows users to jump into parallel universes, some vastly altered from our own. But when Marguerite’s father is murdered, the killer—her parent’s handsome and enigmatic assistant Paul—escapes into another dimension before the law can touch him.

Marguerite can’t let the man who destroyed her family go free, and she races after Paul through different universes, where their lives entangle in increasingly familiar ways. With each encounter she begins to question Paul’s guilt—and her own heart. Soon she discovers the truth behind her father’s death is more sinister than she ever could have imagined.

A Thousand Pieces of You explores a reality where we witness the countless other lives we might lead in an amazingly intricate multiverse, and ask whether, amid infinite possibilities, one love can endure.

Can we talk about this cover? I know I’m maybe missing the point by talking about the cover of A THOUSAND PIECES OF YOU before anything else, but I love it. I love covers that have lots of white. But I also love that this cover has lots of other colors, too, and WHOA, WHAT IS THAT CITY ON THE FLIP SIDE THERE? Incredibly stoked, just from looking at it.

A THOUSAND PIECES OF YOU sounds fantastic, though. Parallel universes always bring out the extreme nerd in me. Plus this murder sounds like more than meets the eye for sure, and THAT intrigues me to no end. I’ve never read a book by Claudia Gray, but I’m very excited for A THOUSAND PIECES OF YOU to be the first.

A THOUSAND PIECES OF YOU comes out November 4, 2014 from Harper Teen

A thousand pieces of you

Waiting on Wednesday (35): Maybe One Day

Waiting on Wednesday

Maybe One Day by Melissa Kantor

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Five-Star Friday: Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson

Five-Star Friday is a periodically regular (say what?!) feature that I’m planning on running on Fridays (but not every Friday) in which I talk about (or verbally drool over) a book that I’ve read and ADORED (sometimes they’ll be recent releases and other times they might be older…my piles are tall and the bottoms are old). Yay! I always feel so happy and light and wonderful when I am beside myself with delight over a book, and I want to share the love with you all in the hopes that we can all get together and have an embarrassing, squeal-filled love-fest full of lots of high-pitched “Ohmygod, I KNOW!s” and chest-clutching sighs of contentedness. Huzzah!*

Hello, there, old friend! It’s been a little while since we last caught up with one another. Don’t get all frowny-face on me, though, because have I got a good one for you! TIGER LILY by Jodi Lynn Anderson, one of my favorite books of the year no question or doubt at all. Because I loved it so much, and because the writing was so sublime, I’m going to do something a little different and review the book in quotes. Just a few; just a taste. But it’s a good, juicy taste, I promise.

Book cover for Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson

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Book Review: Insurgent by Veronica Roth

Book cover for Insurgent by Veronica Roth

Title: Insurgent

Author: Veronica Roth

Series: Divergent #2

Genre: Dystopian

Publisher: Harper Teen

Release date: May 1, 2012

Amazon | Goodreads

Source: Bought

Summary: One choice can transform you–or it can destroy you. But every choice has consequences, and as unrest surges in the factions all around her, Tris Prior must continue trying to save those she loves–and herself–while grappling with haunting questions of grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love.

Tris’s initiation day should have been marked by celebration and victory with her chosen faction; instead, the day ended with unspeakable horrors. War now looms as conflict between the factions and their ideologies grows. And in times of war, sides must be chosen, secrets will emerge, and choices will become even more irrevocable–and even more powerful. Transformed by her own decisions but also by haunting grief and guilt, radical new discoveries, and shifting relationships, Tris must fully embrace her Divergence, even if she does not know what she may lose by doing so.

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Book Review: Epic Fail by Claire LaZebnik

Book cover for Epic Fail by Claire LaZebnikTitle: Epic Fail

Author: Claire LaZebnik

Genre: Contemporary YA

Publisher: Harper Teen

Release date: August 2, 2011

Challenge: Completely Contemporary Challenge

Source: Bought

Summary: At Coral Tree Prep in Los Angeles, who your parents are can make or break you. Case in point:

As the son of Hollywood royalty, Derek Edwards is pretty much prince of the school—not that he deigns to acknowledge many of his loyal subjects.

As the daughter of the new principal, Elise Benton isn’t exactly on everyone’s must-sit-next-to-at-lunch list.

When Elise’s beautiful sister catches the eye of the prince’s best friend, Elise gets to spend a lot of time with Derek, making her the envy of every girl on campus. Except she refuses to fall for any of his rare smiles and instead warms up to his enemy, the surprisingly charming social outcast Webster Grant. But in this hilarious tale of fitting in and flirting, not all snubs are undeserved, not all celebrity brats are bratty, and pride and prejudice can get in the way of true love for only so long.

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