The Heir by Kiera Cass [DNF review]

TL;DR role-reversed America Singer 2.0

TBR #1779, added Sept 17, 2016

DNF 12/25/16

This review's gonna be really short. Honestly, I have no idea why I decided to pick this up, because I thought I swore I was done with The Selection series. (Though trends suggest I'm a masochist so like .....)

I will admit that I was kind of curious about Eadlyn, but she sure killed that quick. She was more of a brat than I felt like dealing with, and so were just about all the other new characters introduced. And I never cared enough about America and Maxon's story (or any of the other characters) to truly care about their "happily ever after".

I'll concede that it was an interesting enough premise -- enough to get me to be like, "eh, what the hell, let's try it". I'm just too bitter to actually enjoy any of this series. If you read The Selection series because you actually enjoyed it, then you might actually like The Heir? Though I only got to the point where the boys were introduced before I lost interest and decided to move on.

TL;DR it was pretty standard for the series in the small bit that I actually did read and I decided to sacrifice The Heir back to the library in order to check out different books.

Undertow by Michael Buckley

TL;DR American political problems but now with sea-people

TBR #1242, added Jun 15, 2015

finished 12/27/16

I've stared at Undertow every time I encounter it at Barnes and Noble and I was lucky enough that my library had an ebook version of it.

(My TL;DR isn't the best, I'm sorry ;;; )

It wasn't quite what I was expecting, though that's really my fault. I underestimated the potential for grittiness. It didn't hold back on the negative aspects of the concept or the progression and it was honestly a little uncanny -- if you take away the supernatural aspects, it could definitely be a parallel to the conflicts we're having (or have had) in the US.

The characters were nice enough but I didn't get very attached to any of them. This is definitely a plot-driven book (or at least, the progression of events is almost entirely out of the main characters' control). I do like that all the characters were given depth and different facets but I don't think the plot of the book gives much opportunity to explore those.

The plot itself was interesting. It was kind of a wild ride for me since my expectations almost completely missed the mark. Some of it was a little hard to believe for me, but I think that was mainly because I didn't have much history of the conflict to frame the current events. We get bits and pieces of what's happened as the story progresses but a lot of the details of it (specifically, the government's overall reaction when this started) weren't as clear as I would've liked. And I guess part of that is explainable in the context of the narrator: I'll admit I'm not the most keen with current events, so I can't expect Lyric to be, either.

The romance was kind of "eh", but that's probably something on my end. I don't feel like a romance was a good addition with this plot's aesthetic. I mean, it did add some stakes to the plot, but were they really neccessary stakes? I feel like they were high enough as it was.

The Alpha were interesting but it was a little hard for me to keep track of all the different types, especially since it's a written medium -- I suck at creating mental pictures. It might've been a little easier for me if there were only two or three sub-species (if that's the right term). Other than that I think the idea execution was good.

Honestly, this was a good read, but I don't know that I'll continue with the series? I wanted to give it a try, but I'm not all that gung-ho about continuing from where I left off, and I think that's mainly because of the aesthetic. Grim books like these always make me feel kind of depressed / jaded -- I like believing there's hope, but this world was set up almost too realistically (lol) in terms of possible outcomes. I don't feel like there's a good-end even though that's something I want to see with this series; every ending I can imagine feels kind of Pyrrhic.

TL;DR this was darker / grittier than I was expecting, and it was nice, but I'm not really sure I was the intended audience.

Midnight Star by Marie Lu

TL;DR the apocalypse is impending

TBR #1767, added Aug 31, 2016

finished 12/26/16

I finished another series! Yay! I actually read through the entire thing in less than a year -- I finished The Young Elites in, like, May.

This was definitely a good and satisfying conclusion to the whole thing, but it also wasn't quite what I was expecting. I thought Adelina would be a little bit more ... resistant than she was. I guess maybe she was just weary, or knew she didn't stand much of a chance digging in her heels, but the ending went a lot more smoothly than I expected. I guess I was kind of hoping for a bad-end? Almost all book series end on a (fairly) nice note, so I figured this series would be my best bet at finding a "game over" kind of ending.

Surprisingly I don't have much else to say OTL

Overall I definitely enjoyed this series and I'm glad I decided to pick up The Young Elites from the thrift store. (Though, I think I passed my copy on to a friend ...) Marie Lu is definitely one of my favorite authors and I'm looking forward to whatever she does next.

I'd also definitely love to revisit the world, whether it's exploring the rest of the Elites (especially Maeve and Lucent!!) or the aftermath of the conclusion. I sincerely hope we get at least a short story or a novella or something that utilizes this setting again.

TL;DR I definitely recommend this series! It's definitely dark and has some serious CWs to it but it was a good read all the way through.

TBR Update: Jan 2017

This is my 300th published post! (ﾉᐛ )ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧

I know I've talked about my TBR before; the last I can find was last January. I've decided to make it a reoccurring thing just because my TBR on Goodreads just keeps getting longer and longer ...

This post is about my TBR shelf on Goodreads. I've talked about my own TBR lists for the books I've bought, but honestly, I'm not making progress on those at all lol. I have a tendency to roam around on Goodreads and add more books than I can possibly ever read. ┐(° ヘ° )┌

So, last year in January, my TBR was 1567 books. As of January 1st this year it's 1799. (Which is actually an improvement, since I got up to 1803 at one point in December.) I read 75 books in 2016, so if I can keep up that exact pace, it would take 24 years to demolish my TBR. Last time I calculated the statistic it was like 30 years, so at least it's gone down ...

The good news is, I finally got into the habit of reading Kindle ebooks this past year! It's definitely helped me burn my way through books a lot faster than I had been, because it's more portable and more instantaneous than physical library books. My library has a pretty good ebook library so I've been making use of that, but it's a little harder since those have wait lists and due dates. Amazon and Bookbub have been great for finding free ebooks so I've been reading more of those lately.

The problem with that is that I'm still buying physical copies of books from secondhand or bargain stores lol. At some point I do need to sit down and specifically tackle all of these, because I may be able to sell them back to the secondhand bookstores and earn some money back ... (I've become the typical broke college kid OTL)

I've also gotten marginally better at deciding to DNF books. Honestly, I'd rather be able to try out more books than say that I finished them, which is ... probably a little weird. And mainly because my TBR list is obnoxiously long.

I don't know that I can set a quantitative goal to reach, since that would depend on how much I finish / DNF vs add to the list, but I definitely want to work on getting it further under 1800.

We'll see how this goes.

Goals for 2017

I found my goals for 2016 post, and I've gotta say, I did better than I expected!

• I wrote every day of 2016 instead of just 70% of the days! (Though to be fair I did change that goal to "every day" shortly after I made that post ... but I did manage to reach it!) 
• I do kind of have a readable draft of Casanova, though I haven't checked it past putting together the scenes I had in my outline. So like, I do have a chronological draft, I just don't know if it makes sense yet lol
• I posted here every 3 days! I did take a couple cheat days where I posted "I forgot to write something for today OTL" but like ... that's technically still a post ...

So what are my goals this year? 

1. Keep writing every day

My (updated) goal for 2016 was to reach at least 500 words every day, which was definitely a good challenge, but I think I'll be a little more forgiving with myself this year. Pushing myself to get 500 words every night was definitely hard some nights.

(Though I could definitely fix this problem by doing my writing earlier in the day ...) 

2. Work on more writing projects

I think I still have this lingering fear that if I have too many writing projects ongoing at the same time, that I'll never get very far with any of them. (Which, I guess is true in some respect?) I have a bunch of ideas I've amassed over the years that I'd love to do at least something with, though. 

This past month I started writing for a story idea I'd literally come up with that day, which is really unusual for me. And I enjoyed it! It gave me the courage to try out a couple different ideas and even finally start writing out an idea I'd been working on for almost two years.

This year I'm hoping to keep a "misc" column in my word count Excel sheet for little projects I'm not actively trying to draft. I've proven to myself that I can keep myself dedicated to the big projects so there's no reason I can't shake things up a little and try out some new ideas. 

3. Talk to more people

This is definitely the most ambitious goal lol. I'm super introverted but I've gotten better at holding up my end of conversations and going out to do things with friends. I actually decided on this goal because of tumblr; I want to get better at sending people messages and holding up conversations online. (In all honesty, this goal is just so I can maybe make more internet friends.) 

This goal isn't really measurable other than, like, the frequency of sending messages lol. It's just something I wanted to commit to so I'd maybe get somewhere with it. 

I set three goals last year, so I'm gonna keep with that again lol. I guess continuing to post here every three days is a goal, but that's also the blogging schedule I decided on, so I don't think that really counts. 

Here's to hoping that 2017 is a much better year!