February Book Haul!

Hey guys! So you know how in my last post I said that I was on a roll and hopefully didn't jinx myself? Well yeah, apparently I did... 😂 School has been a jerk... But I'm going to try to stock up on posts for the next few weeks so it won't happen again! That being said, I got 16 books this month! More than I planned, but I only bought a few of them, so it's okay. 😂

1.  The Clockwork Three by Matthew J. Kirby - I read this book four or five years ago when I got it from the library and I remember really enjoying it but I can't really remember what all happened, so when I found it at a thrift store, I bought it out of curiosity to read it again and see if I still enjoy it. 😂
2.  The Humming Room by Ellen Potter - My dad found this one at a thrift store and bought it for me, thinking it would be something I would like. It's got a bit of a ghost story-type feel to me, which is something I don't read much of, so we'll see how this goes! I really like the title's font, though. 😂
3.  Uglies by Scott Westerfeld - I've had Uglies on my TBR for a while now and just hadn't gotten it from the library yet. But I found this copy at my local used bookstore so I decided to just go ahead and get it! Plus, if I don't like it, I can take it back and get half of my money back in store credit for a different book, as long as I keep the sticker on the back. 😁
4.  Dawn Undercover by Anna Dale - I found this book at my used bookstore as well and thought it sounded cool. I'm on a major spy kick right now. I'm addicted to the Gallagher Girls series by Ally Carter at the moment. It's seriously so good, guys. 😂
5.  The Fool's Girl by Celia Rees - This book is based on the Shakespeare play Twelfth Night and my best friend said the play was absolutely amazing so I am really curious about this book! I'm expecting humor since Twelfth Night is a comedy, but we'll see how it goes!
6.  A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas - Since I got A Court of Thorns and Roses for Christmas, I thought I'd go ahead and get this one since it was only $8 so that I would have it when I need it. Which is hopefully soon, considering I really want to read this series. 😂
7.  Battle of the Beasts by Chris Columbus & Ned Vizzini - I read the first book in this series a few years ago and liked it but never grabbed the second book when it came out. But this book... was a dollar at my Dollar Tree. A dollar, guys. This is a pretty popular series too, so I was shocked. And therefore I bought it because I have no self-control. 😂
8.  Battledoors: The Golden Slate by Brian Wilkinson - Okay, this book, along with the next three, are e-books that I have received for review on Netgalley.com and will be reading/reviewing within the next few months. I was actually shocked that I received this book, much less the other three. 😂 I'm a pretty small blogger who's just now starting their blog back up and my Instagram doesn't have thousands of followers like a lot of others, so I wasn't expecting much, but I guess in order for me to get a good reputation on Netgalley, some people have to give me a chance and I'm really happy about it! 😁 
9.  Olympian Challenger by Astrid Arditi - Another review book; I'm super excited for this one! It's Greek mythology, guys. Right up my alley. 😂 It sounds really cool and I really can't wait to read it! 
10.  Song of Blood & Stone by L. Penelope - This. Cover. 😍 I swear, it's absolutely beautiful, and I kind of wish I had a paper copy of this just so it could sit on my shelves and be shone off. This is actually the first one of the four that I'll be reviewing since it comes out on May 1st, so I'll be reading it either this month or the next! 
11.  Fawkes by Nadine Brandes - I think this was the review copy that I was the most surprised about receiving... 😂 I honestly was not expecting this one at all since I'm a pretty small blogger right now, but I was so excited when I got it. I seriously squealed. 😂 My friend Sierra also received a copy and is already almost done with it and she's shared some really good quotes that make me even more excited to read it! Plus, that cover! 😍
12.  The Flight of the Silvers by Daniel Price - And now, of course, the other monthly Dollar Tree buys. I'm pretty sure this is going to be an ongoing thing now that there's a Dollar Tree right next door to my acting/youth building... 😂 It's very unsafe for a book dragon with absolutely no sense of self-control when it comes to book buying. But I'm sorry if a book is a dollar or less and in brand new or like new condition, I'm going to buy it, even if it only sounds vaguely interesting. Again, no self-control. 😂 But this book looked really cool and it sounds kind of A Wrinkle in Time-esque based on the synopsis, so we'll see!
13.  Jack of Ravens by Mark Chadbourn - Okay, last Dollar Tree buy of the month, I swear! 😂 I honestly can't even remember what this book is about... Obviously, it sounded interesting if I bought it, so we'll just say that it probably sounds really cool and the cover is epic. 😂 
14.  The World of the Hunger Games by Kate Egan - My dad came home from the thrift store one day with this little piece of amazingness, and I am seriously so excited to read it. 😂 I can't wait to see what it says and what it's actually about because the synopsis is kind of vague... But it now has a position with the actual Hunger Games trilogy in my library. It should feel very proud of how far it has come. (Oh my gosh, I'm so weird😂) 
15.  The Neverending Story by Michael Ende - I was totally not expecting to get any more books after The World of the Hunger Games, but when I got home from acting practice last Monday, my dad hands me this and asks if I've ever heard of it. Now, I've seen this movie so many times because my brother and his daughter are addicted, and when I found out that it was a book, of course, I added it to my TBR. But I was not expecting my dad to say that he looked it up online and found out that it's a $50 book. 😱 I don't know about you guys, but I always get super excited whenever I find a rare or expensive book and even if this book wasn't on my TBR, I probably would have kept it because it's so pretty! It's illustrated and the text is colored and there's a pattern beneath the dust jacket... 💗
16.  Rain in the Morning by Flo - This is another book that my dad found at a thrift store and considering I don't own a single book of poetry, I felt especially inclined to keep it. 😂 I'm not entirely sure how this book was distributed because there's no ISBN number or barcode or anything for it to be sold... So maybe it was sold by the author/artist or it was given away or something? Either way, it's a book full of poems and drawings describing Tanzania and I'm really excited to read it! 

Well, that concludes my book haul for the month of February! If you've read any of the books above, let me know in the comments! 

~ Allie 

First Wrap-up of the Year! Jan. 2018

Hey guys! So far so good with the posts, but it's only been a month, so let's hope I didn't just jinx it. 😂 I read five books this month and they were all amazing reads! Even though two of them were books from last year that I hadn't finished yet, and the other three were novellas, I still consider this a great accomplishment considering how little reading I'd done last year! Hopefully it'll only get better from here! I'm absolutely determined to get a lot of reading done over the summer before college starts! I'm also participating in a 48-hour readathon in a couple of weeks that another bookstammer is putting on and I am so excited! I plan to get a lot of reading done during this. 😁 But on to the books! 

•   Nov. 17th, 2017/Jan. 17th, 2018 - The Heart of Betrayal by Mary E. Pearson - 5/5 ⭐s - Okay, this book is the second book in The Remnant Chronicles and let me just say, I'm loving it so far! Contrary to what you might think since it apparently took me two months to the day to finish this, though it doesn't feel like it. In my defense though, I put it down during November and December to focus on other books that I was actively reading because I was starting to get overwhelmed by the number of books I was reading at the same time. 😂 I really started reading this book again closer to the end of December or the beginning of January and then I felt like I was speeding through it! I do think I need a break between this one and the third and final book, The Beauty of Darkness, just because it felt like this book had been on my current reads list forever and I need a break before I start that 700-page monster. 😂

•   April 10th, 2017/Jan. 18th, 2018 - A Time To Die by Nadine Brandes - 4.5/5 ⭐s - Honestly, I'm absolutely ashamed that it took me this long to finish this book... Maybe because it was a buddy read? I'm not entirely sure because it's a genre that I absolutely love, dystopian, with the added amazingness of also being a Christian book. I do have a tendency to take longer to read parts that I'm afraid to see how they turn out though, and this book definitely had a lot of them. 😂 That being said, this book was still really good, and unlike The Heart of Betrayal, I didn't feel like it took me forever to read it even though it totally did. And oh my gosh, that ending... It tore my heart into tiny pieces, and yet somehow I loved it. It was amazingly well written, especially Chapter 40 (oh, the pain...) and the last two pages of the book! Nadine Brandes is honestly the kind of author I aspire to be, and I plan on buying A Time To Speak and A Time To Rise really soon!

•  Jan. 15th/Jan. 21st - The Assassin and the Pirate Lord by Sarah J. Maas - 4.5/5 ⭐s - I technically read this as part of The Assassin's Blade, which has all five novellas in one book, but I'm counting them individually in my Goodreads goal, so I figured I would do it here as well! Really, my only reason for not giving this one all five stars was because I can't say that I absolutely loved it. But it was absolutely amazing and I went back and forth on the rating for a while before deciding on 4.5! I tried and tried not to get attached to a certain character (if you've read Throne of Glass, then I'm sure you know who I'm referring to), but by the end of the story, I couldn't help it. I absolutely love him now... 😂😍 I really enjoyed seeing Celaena before the events of Throne of Glass, too! You can tell she was a lot more light-hearted, and somewhat full of herself 😂, in this story than the main storyline, for obvious reasons, but she was still mature and knew how to handle herself. All-in-all, I really enjoyed this story, from the plot to the characters! 

•   Jan. 21st - The Assassin and the Healer by Sarah J. Maas - 5/5 ⭐s - Honestly, this rating is because there was absolutely nothing I didn't like and I loved Celaena and Yrene! I'm really hoping Yrene shows up again somehow because 1 - it kind of alluded to it, and 2 - I really want to see what ends up happening with her! I loved the fact that she learned how to stand up for herself and protect herself and I'm just really happy with how this one turned out. 😂

•  Jan. 21st/Jan. 29th - The Assassin and the Desert by Sarah J. Maas - 4/5 ⭐s - It kind of pained me to give this one a four-star rating, but I just didn't like it as much as the other two. It was still amazing and I seriously love how these books have life lessons woven into them! It's nice to see Celaena actually having a hard time controlling her emotions. I feel like she hides them a lot more by the time she gets to Throne of Glass... The ending was good, though there were a couple of events that made me sad. I love the Master though. 😂

Well, that's my January wrap-up! Hope you guys enjoyed! If you've read any of these books, let me know what you thought in the comments, and let me know what you read in January!

~Allie📚

First Book Haul of the Year! Jan. 2018

Hello again! It's time for my first book haul of the year! Thankfully, it is drastically smaller than last month's, but it's still a whopping 13 books. 😂 Only half of them were from thrift stores this time, too... 😂 But on to the books! 

1.   The Fall by Garth Nix - So, this author sounds really familiar to me, but I can't at all remember why... And obviously, I was too lazy to look and see what else he writes. 😂 Maybe I'll figure it out by my next post. The Fall is the first book in The Seventh Tower series and it sounded pretty cool and was super cheap at my local thrift store (plus my dad was paying) so I bought it. 😂
2.   The Society of Unrelenting Vigilance by Glenn Dakin - Let me just say, I had no idea this was the actual name until I went to add this book to my Goodreads. 😂 The cover literally says nothing at all about "the society of unrelenting vigilance", just "Candle Man", which is actually the name of the series. 😂 The actual title isn't revealed until you open the book to the title page where it is there before you written in a very pretty font. I'm actually pretty happy that that's the title because I like it a lot better than Candle Man. 😂 At least the cover told me that it's book one. That's the important thing. 
3.   Flambards by K. M. Peyton - Honestly, the main reason I got this book was because... horses. 😂 Horses are one of (if not my absolute) favorite animals and I love reading books about them, even though it makes me want one of my own even more... According to this cover, it's considered a classic? 🤷 I'd never heard of it until I found it at a thrift store, so... 😂
4.   Swindle by Gordon Korman - This wasn't exactly a series that I planned on reading, but Gordon Korman is basically an auto-buy author for me. From what I can remember, I've loved absolutely every one of his books that I've read so even though I'm not sure about the storyline, I have very high expectations for this book. 😂
5.   The Frog Princess by E. D. Baker - I've owned the second book in this series for years and when I was around 13 or 14, I got this one from the library. But for some (pretty stupid, now that I think about it) reason, I stopped reading it because of like, one sentence that the mother says in the very beginning of the book about romance or something... I was 13... I'm a homeschooled, kind of sheltered, Christian girl... I'm sure I'm capable of trying this again now. 😂
6.   Caraval by Stephanie Garber - I am so excited for this book!! 😂 I found it in the bargain section at Books a Million for like, 7 dollars (😱) and they had a "buy 2, get 1 free" sale going on their bargain books... So I was super excited. I bought this for my best friend last year and honestly, I almost kept it for myself. 😂Needless to say, I was really happy when I found that they still had some copies. This is supposed to be a buddy read with two of my friends soon, so I can't wait to see how it is! 
7.   Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte  - This was the "free" part of "buy 2 get 1 free". 😂 My parents got me this absolutely gorgeous Wuthering Heights coloring book for Christmas and I realized that I should probably actually read the book before I start coloring in it. What's bad is that I barely even know what this book is actually about... So I guess I'll find out when I read it. 😂
8.   Once Again by Liz Braswell & Cameron Dokey - I saw this book at Walmart sometime last year and thought it sounded really cool, but I'm pretty cheap and stingy with my money unless something's a great deal, so I didn't get it. But BAM! had it as one of their bargain books so I finally got to grab it! I love fairytale retellings so I'm really excited for this one, and it's so pretty! 😍
9.   The Fever Code by James Dashner  - I have waited forever to get this book because I own the entire series in paperback... So I had to get this one in paperback too. 😂 Two of my best friends and I are actually starting a buddy read of this tomorrow, so I'm excited to get back into this world! Confession: I haven't actually read all of the books yet... 🙈 But I already know the main parts of how it ends because at first I didn't plan on finishing the series, so I let my friend tell me... And now that the movies are all finished, I really want to binge the series this Summer! 
10.  Drums of Change by Janette Oke - Okay, I actually already own a copy of this book in another edition... My dad found it at a thrift store and bought it for me, not knowing that I already had it, and I just really love it and don't really want to give it away... But I also don't want to get rid of the other edition because it matches my set... So maybe I'll have two copies of this?? I already own two copies of A Gown of Spanish Lace... 😂🤷
11.  One Dark Throne by Kendare Blake - Did you know Walmart occasionally has signed copies?? Up until a couple of months ago, I didn't. And then I found this... A signed first edition... And even though I have yet to read the first book, I bought it anyway. I have a weakness for signed copies. 😂
12.  The Book Jumper by Mechthild Gläser - Even though this book was full price at BAM!, I couldn't help but get it... It's just so pretty and I've been wanting to read it for a while... (P.S. I sincerely apologize for the way I probably butchered this name in my upcoming book haul video on my YouTube channel, but I honestly have no idea how you pronounce this...😂)
13.  The Reluctant Assassin by Eoin Colfer - And finally, a book that I actually completely forgot was on my TBR on Goodreads until I got home, but it was on sale for 5 dollars and it's about an assassin in the Victorian era, so I had to get it! 😂 The Reluctant Assassin is the first book in the W.A.R.P. series and I'm super excited to read it! 

Well, that's it for this post! If you see any books that you've read, are currently reading, or even want to read, let me know in the comments along with what books you bought this month!

~Allie