October Wrap Up

Hello, Internet! This is a little bit overdue, so I apologize. Among the stress and rapidness of my life, I love the fact that, even though I’m not posting as much as I used to, I can come and write something down for my blog, because it’s what I love to do: talk about books. So it comes the time for another wrap up, so let’s get started, shall we?

In the month of October, I finished three books, started one, and abandoned two. I’m pretty proud of myself, because I’ve been feeling myself slipping into yet another reading slump. Either that, or a book hangover that was induced by…

The first book I read this month, which was Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard. I gave this book 4 ½ stars. Red Queen was a book that I was mentally debating reading because I was scared that the hype about it would be wrong. So many people have said that it’s amazing, but on the other hand, so many have said that it’s disappointing. NOT FOR ME SUCKAS! Red Queen was phenomenal! I loved it so much! One problem I had though was with grammar and punctuation. The author often used the dreaded “?!” to accentuate a question. I can’t even tell you how much it makes me mad. That is not something you do when writing literature. You either write the question in italics, or follow the phrase with a verb sentence that says something along the lines of “he/she/they yelled” To say the least, it made me mad. The other problem I had with it was the fact that the author didn’t use contractions very often. She wrote phrases like “I am sorry,” or “It is impossible,” and that just made the words awkward to read. It’s the twenty first century, please use contractions when writing. But other than those two things, it was great! If you haven’t read Red Queen yet, I really recommend it. If you like dystopian books, then you’ll definitely like this one! Here’s the Goodreads page.

That brings me to the next book I read this month, which is Glass Sword by Victoria Aveyard. It’s the second book in the Red Queen series, and I loved it soooooo much! The only addition to the problem from above is that Mare became so insensitive and cold all of a sudden. I just hope that changes in the next book.

The last book I finished in the fine month of October was Also Known As by Robin Benway. This book was a freaking blast! I was cracking up after every page, and the storyline was amazing! This is a book about a teen spy who has a mission to complete, but falls in love in the process. It’s not as cliche as it sounds, I promise. I’m so happy that this book worked out for me, considering that my first experience was not good *cough, Gallagher Girls, cough*

Ari Presents: My Favorite Quotes from Also Known As

“Let’s not forget that our family can never re enter Luxembourg without being arrested!” my dad yelled back. Touché.

“Okay, Maggie,” I said to myself after my shower, wiping the steam off the medicine cabinet. “You could eat these kids for breakfast. You won’t, though, because that would be cannibalistic and wrong.”

“This just means so much to me! I'd like to thank all the little people I crushed on my way to the top”

“Harold, you’re a gem. A pristine gem honed over years of trial and fire.”

“That’s how I would describe my job, too,” Harold replied.

I think I also learned how to crack open a push button lock (hold a thirty dollar magnet up to the lock and BOOM! It’ll pop right open)

Needless to say, this book was amazing, and you should go read it.

The book I started this month was The Black Key by Amy Ewing, which is the third book in The Lone City Trilogy. Let’s be honest, I probably won’t get to finish this book by monday. Actually, scratch that, I might. I’ll just edit this post if I do end up finishing it.

EDIT: I did not finish it :|

I’m not going to put a synopsis here, because spoilers, duh, but I will put a link to the first book, The Jewel, here.

Now onto the funeral for books I abandoned.

The first book I abandoned was The Initiation by Ridley Pearson. He came to my school to talk to us about this book, and it sounded really, really good for an MG novel, so I decided to read it. I didn’t even get halfway through before I abandoned it. I had no idea what was going on half the time, and it was just boring, so I didn’t finish it.

The next book I abandoned was Splintered by A.G Howard. I had really high hopes for this book. It’s printed in purple ink, for crying out loud!

I'm going to try to be nice. I'm going to try to not let my anger and complete dislike of this book take me over. I don't know how easy that's going to be, but I'll try.

Alice in Wonderland has to be my favorite classic book ever. It's weird, wacky, and I absolutely love it. But I did not like Splintered. Like, at all. I stopped reading it halfway through because I was not into it.

My first problem was with the historical accuracy: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was not written because a little girl spewed an absurd story about falling down a rabbit hole to an author. The real life Alice Liddell asked Charles Dodgson (aka. Lewis Carroll) to tell her a story on a boating trip to Oxford. I get that the author needed a gateway into the whole "Liddell Family Curse" concept, but it just really bugged me that it wasn't accurate.

I didn't like Alyssa's character. She was kind of clueless, and to be frank, weak. She did whatever Jeb told her to do. Though she did sometimes step up for herself, she was quickly shut up by Jeb with either a kiss, or a simple touch on the shoulder. She went weak at the knees for him, and I didn't like that at all, because he always treated her like a child, not a capable person who can do things for herself. It was an unhealthy relationship that wanted to come across as Jeb simply being protective, but in reality, he was controlling and mean. And the other corner of the love triangle-Morpheus, I think that's his name-is a creep. Plain and simple.

This is more of just a complaint, but I absolutely loved the idea of Alyssa's art medium being making portraits with bug corpses, as morbid as it sounds. She only does that like, once, and I was really disappointed with that. I would have loved it if the author explored that side of her more.

My next problem with this book was the speed that the book was going. I got like, two or three chapters in and they were already in Wonderland. I would have liked some more development than just jumping right in.

Another problem with the speed was this: the characters would be doing one thing during one paragraph, and then a sentence later, they're doing something else. To put it simply, it confused the heck out of me. THAT BEING SAID, I love the concept of this book, it just could have been executed so much better if put into the right hands. An Alice in Wonderland retelling sounds like the best thing in the world to me. This book wasn't.

Don't even get me started on how it completely glorifies mental illnesses. It's disgusting.

I honestly don't know how this book went past all those editors and beta readers and still came out like this. It was confusing and disappointing. I'm am definitely not planning on finishing Splintered or reading the next books, unless someone pays me to. Even then I probably won't. Like I always say, if this book looks appealing to you, then have at it. I'm not going to dictate what books you read, because that's your choice, but just know that there is a good chance you'll be disappointed by this book.

Well, that was like a mini-review. Oh well. If you read that book and liked it, then that's great! This is just my personal opinion. That just about sums it up for my October wrap up. Thanks for reading,

-Ari