Kaleidoscope by Mindy Hayes

TL;DR average "turns out I'm not human" coming of age

TBR #1804, added Dec 5, 2016

finished 12/10/16

It wasn't too bad of a read, it just wasn't all that dynamic.

There were some minor editing errors, which aren't so bad if this is a self-published book, but I'm surprised that they stuck through the book all the way through revisions. Things like word confusions ("him" in place of "his") and awkward grammar (missing commas or having too many) and some quotation marks being dropped at the end of dialogue or being tacked onto the end of a narration paragraph. That stuff isn't that bad in the long run. It didn't hamper me reading much more than me stopping to look at them.

The characters weren't all that bad but they felt one-dimensional. They felt like fictional characters, you know? Honestly I didn't like any of the guys that were hinted to be love interests (though I will give props for having three, that's a new one). I found it a little hard to believe that Calliope rolled with the punches after only a few days of denial, but whatever. Maybe it's just me that would have been kicking and screaming a lot more.

(That's not true. I'd probably be overjoyed if I learned I could do magic.)

I also feel like I should acknowledge that Calliope's parents were both alive and well and in the picture in the story. And they actually did have more than one appearance each! And contributed to the plot a little bit! That's so rare.

The dialogue was a little stilted in a few places -- the semantics didn't contract things sometimes, which made it feel a little robotic, but other than that it wasn't too bad. The message of what was being said usually felt realistic enough.

I had been hoping for some good insight about Faylinn, so I was a little disappointed that all we got in Kaleidoscope was the boys talking about it. There wasn't really any action until the very end and it wasn't all that satisfying in terms of establishing anything; it's too much of a "you have to read the next book to find out!!" cliffhanger to be useful, and those are usually just off-putting for me.

TL;DR It's an easy enough read but most of the plot is talking and worrying rather than anything really being done. At this point I doubt I'll continue with the series unless I can find the sequels for free.

I downloaded my copy of Kaleidoscope for free from Amazon via Bookbub, so I do have a little hope that the next books might show up as deals one day as well.

The Mermaid's Sister by Carrie Anne Noble

TL;DR family isn't always blood

TBR #1793, added Nov 12, 2016

finished 11/15/16

I downloaded this because it was included in Amazon's Prime Reading. I'm glad I decided to check it out!

The aesthetic of the book was very cute and fairy tale-like, which was what I was hoping for. I really enjoyed the relationships the main characters had with each other. I was a little disappointed that Maren wasn't as big of a character as I was expecting, though. Like, she's the driving force behind the plot, but she's just kind of there for a lot of the book.

The plot also didn't have as much ... momentum as I was expecting? I was hoping for all sorts of adventures and shenanigans but they get stuck with one problem for most of the rising action. I mean, it was a good challenge for them, and it was interesting, but I thought there would be more variety in what they faced. Maybe it's just me.

This is a standalone book so it's perfect if you want a good read without committing to a series!

TL;DR I enjoyed my read but the plot and one of the characters weren't quite what I was expecting, and that was a little more disappointing to me than it should have been. Other than that it's a great book.

I Forgot Today's Blog Post

I was supposed to have a blog post go up today. I forgot. To be fair I did finish all of my final projects that were due and handed them in this week ...

I'm in the middle of reading a few books but I haven't finished any of them yet :/ Today's post was supposed to be a review. I've been making about the same progress in all three of the books I'm picking at so I might finish them all around the same time.

Sorry I messed up my schedule a little bit! I have two more school obligations next week and then I'll be done for the semester, so hopefully I can get back into reading a bunch of books and writing their reviews before I forget. (Ha.) I'm so ready to have a bunch of free time to myself. I'm exhausted.

10 Free Amazon Kindle Books [Dec 2016]

So I may have a problem of downloading free ebooks because they're available. They're like my dragon hoard.

I found all of these using Bookbub! Some of them were from emails as I was cleaning out my inbox, and I decided to check their webpage afterwards to see if there were any more. (There were.) I haven't had the time or motivation to read ebooks from my library, so I figured I would stockpile the free ebooks to have since they wouldn't expire on me.

(I hope.)

I'm also pretty sure I have iBook copies of at least half of these (also downloaded for free through Bookbub) which means those have been sitting on my iPod Touch for over a year ... I got my HTC last December and I've switched over to the Kindle app instead of iBooks.

So here we go! All of these I downloaded on December 3rd, so the deals should still be active. Some of them I think are free all the time as a hook to the series. I couldn't tell you which ones those are, though.

All of these links go to Goodreads (I wasn't paying attention when I was drafting this post), but all of these pages should have buttons that will take you to their Amazon page. They're under the description and the info like publishing date.

Jake and the Gingerbread Wars by E.G. Foley, TBR #1798*

Golden Blood by Melissa Pearl, TBR #824

Dirty Blood by Heather Hildenbrand, TBR #1387

Ever Shade by Alexia Purdy, TBR #1392

Flight by Alyssa Rose Ivy, TBR #1379

You Are Mine by Janeal Falor, not on TBR*

Forbidden by Amy Miles, TBR #1802*

The Shadow and the Rose by Amanda DeWees, TBR #1803*

Kaleidoscope by Mindy Hayes, TBR #1804*

Savor by Megan Duncan, TBR #1394

The starred books were ones I added to my TBR because they were free. (I had been making good progress at shrinking my TBR list ...) Jake and the Gingerbread Wars is book 3.5 in the series, so that's probably going to be an adventure to read, jumping into the middle of the story like that. I think all the others are the first in their series.

I started reading You Are Mine before I added it to my TBR. I was really curious about the execution of the premise. It's been ... interesting so far. I think I'm about 15 or 20% in by now.

I'll probably come back and update this post with my reviews as I upload them. (Hopefully. No promises.) My fall semester ends on the 15th so I'm hoping to get a lot of anti-social resting done between my last exam and Christmas. I haven't finished reading any more books since Nov 15th so I'm looking forward to devouring ebooks like candy again lol.

Let me know if you guys have read any of these! I'd love to hear more about them.

NaNo 2016 Reflection

Time for another NaNo recap! This month went by so quickly (;° ロ°)

This year I did Casanova again since I'd done some development for it since last November. I hadn't made as much writing progress as I'd wanted, so I knew NaNo was my only real chance of getting the ideas into any semblance of a working draft. This year I actually made an outline and everything and actually used it!

And I can officially say that the outline helped me through the month! I got through the outline a lot faster than I expected, so the last week or so of my writing is completely filler, but that's better than last year lol. I haven't tried to put my draft together in readable order (I made it about three days of writing chronologically before giving up) but if everything went well I should have everything I need to get from the beginning of the story to the end! 

Well, the end is still kind of open-ended, but I'm planning to fix that up after reviewing the draft. I'm also expecting to pull some of my writing from this past year (and even 2015's NaNo) to stick into the draft because there are some scenes I still like but didn't re-write this past month. 

Here's my chart on their website! I made consistently better progress than I have the previous three years. Now that I'm in the habit of writing every day, it was easier to push myself to reach the daily word count goal. And I did it up until I won! I slacked off the last four days after that lol. 

Here's what it looks like day by day.

I'm really glad that I decided to do Casanova over a newer idea. I'm really looking forward to getting it together to share with people, and hopefully someday I can maybe get it published. I've been going to Barnes and Noble a lot so that idea keeps popping up lol. Looking at all the books on the shelves is really inspiring tbh (•̀ᴗ•́)و ̑̑

This year I also did much better at staying on topic. I only wrote for Aperture once before I won. I celebrated my win by writing up an outline of Sugar Plum, which is a sci-fi Nutcracker retelling I wanted to write last December and never got around to. I don't know that I'll get around to it this year either, but at least I made a step towards it.

So yeah! I'd definitely call this month a success, and so far it looks like I can avoid the burnout I got last December. Ideally I'd love to get at least a minimal draft of Sugar Plum this month before Christmas, and then I'll jump into Casanova revisions in January during winter break. I guess we'll see how things go.