Recently Finished Fri- Saturday.

Hey everyone! It’s Amy. I was so busy yesterday that I didn’t get around to posting an RFF! But hey, I have a perfectly good reason- I WAS READING!!! I got two books finished. TWO!!! XD HowEVER, this also means two more books that I’m behind on telling you guys about. Wow, I read too fast! 😉 I have actually read 8 so far this year, which is 8 to rant about because I haven’t done any bookish rants/informatives since Tiny Pretty Things at the very tail end of 2015! Obviously, ranting about 8 different books in one post is a bit of a stretch. So how is this going to work, you ask? Actually, four of the eight are truly full-post worthy, so I’m going to share the entire list with you today, but only tell you about the other four. (My post for Winter is already started- hopefully that will be posted Monday!) Here goes!

Winter by Marissa Meyer, A World Away by Nancy Grossman, Just One Wish by Janette Rallison, and Alice in Zombieland by Gena Showalter (all links to the Goodreads pages) are the four getting their own posts, so you should see those in the upcoming week/s. Now for the rules (LET’S GET STARTED!!!):

1. What’s the title and author of your book? Cover image optional, but preferred. Please include a link to the Goodreads synopsis if you can.
2. How long ago did you finish your book? (So we can see how fresh your feels are.) If you can’t remember, that’s okay.
3. On a scale of one to ten, what would you rate your book?
4. What’s your favorite and least favorite thing about your book? If you loved everything about your book, just say so.
5. LET THE RANTS BEGIN!

First up is Read Between the Lines by Jo Knowles. I finished reading it on January 4th, so it hasn’t quite been two weeks. On Goodreads, I rated it 2 out of 5 stars, because when you hover over it, they give you a definition of what that would mean. (Go Goodreads!) Two stars is “it was ok”. Definitely how I feel about this book, so I’m going to have to go with a three out of ten. Honestly, my favorite part about the book was that I started to feel for some of the characters. But… it really lost me aside from that. Least favorite would be how unorganized and character-based it was. Having finished this two weeks ago and still feeling it was “meh”, I don’t feel that I can properly rant, but I can tell you why it was “just” okay. Alright, so you first have to realize the whole “read between the lines” thing is not a deep metaphorical whatever whatever. It is essentially that the cover is flipping you off. The next thing you have to realize is that the book is throughout the course of one day (except for the very end), so you really don’t see long-term effects of everything that happens to the people in the story. What ends up happening is that you get a glimpse into each of the characters’ (the ones described in the blurb) days. The book starts off in the morning with one guy, goes until something major happens to him, and then backtracks a bit (but not all the way) to earlier, from another person’s point of view. And so on throughout the whole thing. What I WANTED to happen (and expected to) was that there would be three, five characters tops and then we would go through them all again. This I got from The Candymakers by Wendy Mass, because I liked the way it tied up all the loose ends. Next, there either was no plot, or it was threadbare, because all the story really consisted of was getting to know the character (for 3/4 of their part of the story), something tragic/upsetting happening to them/their friends, and people giving/getting the finger. To sum up this whole paragraph, (Yeah, you could’ve skipped the whole thing. But you didn’t, did you? DID YOU???) I felt that there was no point to the story. We got to know a bunch of random people, the finger was (excessively) used… That’s pretty much it. Hence three out of ten. I won’t be reading it again, but I hope that if you’ve read it or plan to (just be prepared), that you enjoy/ed it a lot more than I did. 🙂 NEXT!!!

Second up is How to Be Brave by E. Katherine Kottaras, which I finished on January 6th. I liked this one well enough, but it contradicted itself and didn’t stand out as amazing against all the other realistic fiction I’ve read, so I’d give it a 5.5. I definitely loved the mom. She was amazing and so inspiring, so let’s call that my favorite bit. My least favorite would be the sudden change. This book is about Georgia, the not-quite-picture-perfect (she’s heavier than she would like) good girl, who is trying to move on with her life, and not leave her mother behind at the same time. When the book starts, her mother has already been gone for a few months. One day, she just WAKES UP and decides she wants to do and try everything. Including pot and skinny-dipping. Where did that come from??? A day earlier she was puppies and rainbows, but all of a sudden, she wants to grow a horn. Well. INteresting. I don’t really know what to make of that. Anyway, she goes on to try new things similar to that, and becomes friends with Evelyn (who I hated until the very end, and then loved). I thought that it was a sweet story (with a surprising dark side), and was content with the ending, the characters, all of it. I guess, like I said, it just didn’t stand out as amazing like I had hoped.

Third we’ve got Half Bad by Sally Green, finished the seventh (of January, of course). It was really just okay, so I’d give it a four. For this one, I don’t really have a favorite and least favorite. And it completely puzzles me. I was reading this one for a couple of weeks (during which time I believe I picked up two or three others and finished those) because of it. I can tell this is confusing, but I’ll try to explain! Um… where to start? While I was reading HB (literally reading the words on the page), I was interested. It’s not that the book bored me or anything. I was curious to see what happened to Nathan. BUT, after I had put the book down and was looking to do something, I wouldn’t feel obligated to pick it up. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the story well enough and kind of wondered what happened, but I wasn’t all, BOOK MEET HANDS, HANDS MEET BOOK! GOOD, NOW NEVER LET GO! like usual. It was the oddest sensation. I have no idea what went wrong, but I hope it never happens to me again.

The fourth and final book to talk about today is The One Safe Place by Tania Unsworth. I finished it on the tenth, and would give it a 6 out of 10. I really liked how the story played out (it was carefully planned), but it had such an odd feel to it. It was obviously a dystopia, and Kit kind of creeped me out as the story went along. However, I realize that’s just the style of the book, not any kind of error. I definitely loved the whole kids vs. adults premise, and I would recommend it to anyone that’s a fan of dystopia/science fiction! (I really don’t have anything more to say about it, though)

Hmmm… making an entire post about books that were just meh. Good going, Amy! Way to depress all the followers! Maybe I should think this through better next time. Oh well. The word count is edging too high for comfort. Better go! Toodles!

Have you guys read any of the eight books mentioned? The four I talked about? How did you like them? Do you plan to read them? Did I dissuade you from reading any? Did you not like them either? Are any of you doing this meme or plan to in the near (or far) future? I know Nikki and I both would love to read your posts! Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve done a little interrogation, hasn’t it? Did you miss it? Do you want me to stop talking now? Just kidding! (Don’t answer that.) Please drop me a note in the comments. I’d love to chat with you all, and check out your blogs as well! 🙂

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