Mirrored by Alex Flinn

Author: Alex Flinn

Publication Date: September 15, 2015

Number of Pages: 384

Genre: Romance, YA, Retelling

                                                    Goodreads | Book Depository

Mirror, mirror in my hand…

Beauty is the key to everything. At least, that’s how it seems to Violet—ugly, bullied, and lonely. To be beautiful, in her eyes, is to have power and love. And when Kendra, the witch, teaches Violet how to use magic, she may finally get what she wants.

For Celine, beautiful since birth, her looks have been a hindrance. She discovers that beauty is also a threat—especially to her stepmother, Violet, who doesn’t want anyone sharing the attention she worked so hard to get and who will do anything to be the fairest of them all.

But beauty isn’t only skin deep and love isn’t based on looks alone. And though Violet and Celine may seem to be completely opposite, their lives are almost… mirrored.

This review contains more spoilers than usual, you are warned!

Let me start this review by saying that to me this was one of those books you just jump into without even reading the synopsis (don’t tell me only I do that). Who knows why I chose this one, maybe it was the cover… Okay, it was the cover. I thought it was so pretty so I decided to jump into it without giving it much thought. Now, since I gave it three stars you must know that this book wasn’t all that bad. There were a lot of fun and interesting scenes and I mostly loved the first part with the PoV of Violet. But before I start confusing you more let me explain more about this book.

Of Beast and Beauty by Stacey Jay

Author: Stacey Jay

Publication Date: July 23rd 2013

Number of Pages: 391

Genre: Romance, Fantasy, Young Adult

Goodreads | Book Depository

In the beginning was the darkness, and in the darkness was a girl, and in the girl was a secret…

In the domed city of Yuan, the blind Princess Isra, a Smooth Skin, is raised to be a human sacrifice whose death will ensure her city’s vitality. In the desert outside Yuan, Gem, a mutant beast, fights to save his people, the Monstrous, from starvation. Neither dreams that together, they could return balance to both their worlds.

Isra wants to help the city’s Banished people, second-class citizens despised for possessing Monstrous traits. But after she enlists the aid of her prisoner, Gem, who has been captured while trying to steal Yuan’s enchanted roses, she begins to care for him, and to question everything she has been brought up to believe.

As secrets are revealed and Isra’s sight, which vanished during her childhood, returned, Isra will have to choose between duty to her people and the beast she has come to love.

“Beauty is wherever you find it, and Beast is there when you need to defend it.”

Oh, this book was unexpectedly beautiful. I expected a quick read to fill my free time, but instead I ended up loving this book! It is a beautiful retelling of The Beauty and the Beast (not that I read much retellings but this is definitely one of my favorites) that tells you that love can change the world in a non cheesy way.
Now, one of the main reasons I loved this book is because they did the Beast part just right. In the other retellings of The Beauty and the Beast that I have read they portray the Beast as anything but a beast; In Cruel Beauty he was a beautiful demon, in A Court of Thorns and Roses he was a beautiful fae with a mask. So none was really much of a Beast, and honestly the best thing about The Beauty and the Beast is that the Beauty manages to see the man behind the beast and she falls in love with him. But if he is beautiful, charming and has no defect whatsoever it becomes kind of pointless as you could put any woman and she would fall in love with him anyway.

The Weight of Feathers by Anna-Marie McLemore

Author: Anna-Marie McLemore

Publication Date: September 15th 2015

Number of Pages: 320

Genre: Young Adult, Romance

Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository

For twenty years, the Palomas and the Corbeaus have been rivals and enemies, locked in an escalating feud for over a generation. Both families make their living as traveling performers in competing shows—the Palomas swimming in mermaid exhibitions, the Corbeaus, former tightrope walkers, performing in the tallest trees they can find.

Lace Paloma may be new to her family’s show, but she knows as well as anyone that the Corbeaus are pure magia negra, black magic from the devil himself. Simply touching one could mean death, and she’s been taught from birth to keep away. But when disaster strikes the small town where both families are performing, it’s a Corbeau boy, Cluck, who saves Lace’s life. And his touch immerses her in the world of the Corbeaus, where falling for him could turn his own family against him, and one misstep can be just as dangerous on the ground as it is in the trees.

Oh this book was just so beautiful! I loved the mix of magical elements and a bit of Romeo and Juliet feeling. The Palomas and the Corbeaus are two families of traveling performers, once only rivals now enemies. Each family thought that the other was dangerous because of the black magic they used and that touching one could mean death.

Lace knew the danger of touching a Corbeau. Her abuela said she’d be better off petting a rattlesnake.

One Lovely Blog Award!

Thank you Lily @Reading by Torchlight for nominating me for this award, be sure to check her amazing reviews and follow her lovely blog.

Rules:

♥ You must thank the person who nominated you and include a link to their blog.

♥ You must list the rules and display the award.

♥ You must add 7 facts about yourself.

♥ You must nominate 10 – 15 or so other bloggers

Facts about me:

♥ I love singing! And no matter where I am you will usually find me singing random parts of any song that comes to my mind at the moment. Although, I do have to admit that my voice tends to annoy the people around me so whenever I start singing they all tell me (politely) to shut up.

♥ There is nothing in this world that I love more than Final Fantasy (sorry books), and Lightning is my favorite character.

♥ My favorite color is midnight blue, followed closely by black

♥ I love animals! My favorite domestic animal is the cat (I have a lovely black kitty) and my favorite wild animal is the wolf. Although the bat would be the cutest animal in my opinion. They are just so cute!

♥ I love anime and manga! In case you are curious, Naruto is my favorite anime and manga. And in case you would like to know Itachi is my favorite character, followed (although by far) by Naruto and Kakashi.

I know these facts are kind of random, but as I already used the most important facts about me for the Creative Blogger Award I had to think of more facts and these were the only ones I could think of.

I Nominate:

Now for the nominations I nominate all this lovely people and their lovely blogs but if for whatever reason you don’t wish to do it, don’t worry. You don’t have to do it, I just wanted to let you know that I think your blog is lovely and that you should continue to enjoy it!

♥ Alyssa @Alyssa is Reading

♥ Anjie @Love thy Shelf

♥ Meghan @Meghan’s Blog

♥ Sarah and Faith @Sublime Reads

♥ Rachel @Rachel Reads

♥ Annelise @The Book Adventures of Annelise Lestrange

♥ Marie-Sophie @A Heart for Books

♥ Find me at the Library

♥ Ace @All ‘Bout them Books and Stuff

The Stars Never Rise (The Stars Never Rise #1) by Rachel Vincent

Author: Rachel Vincent

Publication Date: June 9th 2015

Number of Pages: 368

Genre: Young Adult, Dystopia

Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository

Sixteen-year-old Nina Kane should be worrying about her immortal soul, but she’s too busy trying to actually survive. Her town’s population has been decimated by soul-consuming demons, and souls are in short supply. Watching over her younger sister, Mellie, and scraping together food and money are all that matters. The two of them are a family. They gave up on their deadbeat mom a long time ago.

When Nina discovers that Mellie is keeping a secret that threatens their very existence, she’ll do anything to protect her. Because in New Temperance, sins are prosecuted as crimes by the brutal Church and its army of black-robed exorcists. And Mellie’s sin has put her in serious trouble.

To keep them both alive, Nina will need to trust Finn, a fugitive with deep green eyes who has already saved her life once and who might just be an exorcist. But what kind of exorcist wears a hoodie?

Wanted by the Church and hunted by dark forces, Nina knows she can’t survive on her own. She needs Finn and his group of rogue friends just as much as they need her

“I feel like my life is a book, and someone turned the page before I was ready, and now I can’t follow the story”

To be honest I didn’t really had any expectations from this book, but decided to read it anyway because it was one of those days when you just can’t decide what to read so you end up choosing the first book with a beautiful cover that appears in your way (or is it just me?). And hey, This was such a fun book to read! No, it isn’t a funny book (unless knowing that humanity is coming to an end because of soul eating demons makes you laugh) but the character’s personalities are sarcastic and funny and will make you smile from time to time.

The book was also fast-paced which, as always, is something I love in books because I get bored easily and tend to never finish a book that makes you feel as if each chapter takes you four hours to finish. Other thing I loved was all the twist the story had! They were clever and changed the way I saw everything about this book, turning it from simple into a deeper one. Yet as this post is spoiler free, you will have to read the book to fully understand what I’m talking about.

“It was kind of hard for me to worry about the state of my immortal soul when my mortal body’s need for food and shelter was so much more urgent”

Nina Kane gave me a lot of mixed feelings during the extent of this book. There were times I liked her and enjoyed reading from her point of view,  but there were other times when I didn’t liked her and reading from her point of view annoyed me immensely. But don’t worry, as the book advances Nina stops being annoying and finally decides to cooperate in order to save humanity from the demons that threaten to annihilate them. Or will do so, after she saves her sister from the Church while doing so could threaten the life of her friends and other humans. But oh well, it had to be done because the life of her sister is worth more than any other’s.

Finn; the hooded exorcist that saves Nina and has beautiful deep green eyes; is, by far, the best character in this book. And in case you were wondering, the author decided to put the color of his eyes because they are relevant to the story (I won’t explain further or it will spoil and important part of the book) and not because she wanted for you to swoon over him only because his eyes were deep green.

But forgetting about his eyes, I just loved his funny, sarcastic and carefree personality! And if you ask me, I believe that this book would have been way better if Finn would have been the main character instead of just the love interest. He was way more enjoyable than Nina, and his… um, condition that I can’t mention because I don’t want to spoil it, would make his point of view way more interesting. But well, I guess there is nothing to be done when the book is already out.

Scarlet by A.C. Gaughen

Author: A. C. Gaughen

Publication Date: February 14th 2012

Number of Pages: 287

Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Fairy Tale Retelling

Goodreads

---

Will Scarlet is good at two things: stealing from the rich and keeping secrets – skills that are in high demand in Robin Hood’s band of thieves, who protect the people of Nottingham from the evil sheriff. Scarlet’s biggest secret of all is one only Robin and his men know…that she is posing as a thief; that the slip of a boy who is fast with sharp knives is really a girl.

The terrible events in her past that led Scarlet to hide her real identity are in danger of being exposed when the thief taker Lord Gisbourne arrives in town to rid Nottingham of the Hood and his men once and for all. As Gisbourne closes in a put innocent lives at risk, Scarlet must decide how much the people of Nottingham mean to her, especially John Little, a flirtatious fellow outlaw, and Robin, whose quick smiles have the rare power to unsettle her. There is real honor among these thieves and so much more – making this a fight worth dying

“We do what we do because there’s something we can do about it. Things like ‘how long’ and ‘what if’ aren’t part of that. It’s about the hope, not the horror.”

Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge

Author: Rosamund Hodge

Number of Pages: 342

Publication Date: January 28th 2014

Genre: Romance, Fairy tale Retelling, Mythology

Goodreads 

 

Graceling meets Beauty and the Beast in this sweeping fantasy about one girl’s journey to fulfill her destiny and the monster who gets in her way-by stealing her heart.

Based on the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, Cruel Beauty is a dazzling love story about our deepest desires and their power to change our destiny.

Since birth, Nyx has been betrothed to the evil ruler of her kingdom-all because of a foolish bargain struck by her father. And since birth, she has been in training to kill him.

With no choice but to fulfill her duty, Nyx resents her family for never trying to save her and hates herself for wanting to escape her fate. Still, on her seventeenth birthday, Nyx abandons everything she’s ever known to marry the all-powerful, immortal Ignifex. Her plan? Seduce him, destroy his enchanted castle, and break the nine-hundred-year-old curse he put on her people.

But Ignifex is not at all what Nyx expected. The strangely charming lord beguiles her, and his castle—a shifting maze of magical rooms—enthralls her.

As Nyx searches for a way to free her homeland by uncovering Ignifex’s secrets, she finds herself unwillingly drawn to him. Even if she could bring herself to love her sworn enemy, how can she refuse her duty to kill him? With time running out, Nyx must decide what is more important: the future of her kingdom, or the man she was never supposed to love.

---

Demons are made of shadow. Don’t look at the shadows too long or a demon might look back.

I finally finished this book! After reading Crimson Bound, an awesome book by the same author, I decided that I would read this one as it has been in my TBR pile for a time and I had read lots of positive reviews. To be honest I like Crimson Bound more than I liked this one, mainly because it had more action and didn’t concentrate in the romance as much as this one. But in the end I ended up liking this book as the story was catching, even if I wasn’t all that happy with the ending (don’t worry, I’m not going to spoil it).

Top Ten Tuesday | Top Ten Finished Series I Have Yet To Finish

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This weeks’ topic is: Top Ten Series I Have Yet To Finish. As always, they are in no particular order:

1- Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

2- The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani

3- Fallen by Lauren Kate

4- Blood of Eden by Julie Kagawa

5- Robert Langdon by Dan Brown

 

6- Maze Runner by James Dashner

7- The Hybrid Chronicles by Kat Zhang

8- The Iron Fey by Julie Kagawa

9- Divergent by Veronica Roth

10- Penryn at the End of Days by Susan Ee

 

Top Ten Tuesday | Top Ten Characters I Didn’t Click With

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This weeks’ topic is: Top Ten Characters I Didn’t Click With. I don’t know about you, but to me the phrase ‘Characters I didn’t click with‘ is just another way of saying: ‘Characters I Just Couldn’t Stand and Wanted to Hit Them With Their Own Book‘. So this are the most recent characters I just couldn’t stand and, as always, they are in no particular order:

1- Violet | All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

2- Clary | City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

3- Anna | Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

4- Meghan | The Iron King by Julie Kagawa

5- Sonny | Lying Out Loud by Kody Keplinger

6- Aria and Perry | Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi

7- Kelsey and Ren | Tiger’s Curse by Colleen Houck

8- Chloe | The Nine Lives of Chloe King by Liz Braswell

9- Lara Jean | To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han

10- All the Main Characters of Panic by Lauren Oliver

The Sin Eater’s Daughter by Melinda Salisbury

Author: Melinda Salisbury

Publication Date: October 6th 2014

Number of Pages: 336

Genre: Fantasy, Young Adult, Romance

Goodreads

---

I am the perfect weapon.
I kill with a single touch.

Twylla is blessed. The Gods have chosen her to marry a prince, and rule the kingdom. But the favour of the Gods has it’s price. A deadly poison infuses her skin. Those who anger the queen must die under Twylla’s fatal touch.

Only Lief, an outspoken new guard, can see past Twylla’s chilling role to the girls she truly is.

Yet in a court as dangerous as the queen’s, some truths should not be told…

It doesn’t matter how many men, women and children I execute, it still tears at me inside

I’ll admit it. I judged this book by its cover and thought: ‘This book looks awesome! I’m surely going to love it’. Now it’s my fault that I feel disappointed (although the cover is indeed amazing). Not that I completely hated it or anything, in fact for the first half of the book I was intrigued about the story and the way it developed and was eager to continue reading even if it was really late.