For all those teens who like to write!

For those of you who haven't figured it out, I am a teenager. I love to read and write and be just plain awesome! But see, I have a blog dedicated to reading, and my whole life is dedicated to being awesome. The only thing missing is a writing blog....right?

WRONG!

I've started a new blog called WriTEEN Adventures and it is dedicated to the craziness of trying to write a book as a teen. However, unlike my other two hobbies, others can take part and help me with this! (Nobody can take part of my awesomeness, and nobody can help me with my reading...because I don't need it.) On this new fancy blog of mine, I am calling for all teens who love to write! I'm calling it the WriTEEN Team. I'm looking for others who want to share their writing life with others. What they're good at, what they're bad at, they're accomplishments, revelations as to why they love writing so much, etc.

If you'd like to be part of the team, all you have to do is GO TO THE BLOG and look in the sidebar for the link of the application. It's only a few questions and it's super quick. Just fill it out and I'll get back to you.

WriTEEN Adventures is a great way fro teens to share what they love and bond with others who love it! It's also a great way to receive feedback and opinions and just have FUN!

I'm not going to be kicking off the blog until I have my team together (who knows how long that will take!) but you can always follow the blog for when I DO kick off the blog.

If you have any questions, just email me at gabbicalabrese@hotmail.com

I look forward to seeing your application :D

Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme from The Broke and the Bookish.

This week's topic:

Top Ten Books I've Read Because of Other Bloggers

I honestly haven't read that many books because of other bloggers. Usually I read bookks because I want to. So, I'm going to post some books that I have read, some books that I'm going to read, and some books that I desperately want to read because of other bloggers.

Books I have read:

1. Paranormalcy by Keirsten White
2. If I Stay by Gayle Forman
3. Divergent by Veronica Roth
4. Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins
5. Matched by Ally Condie

This next book falls somewhere in between books I've read and book I'm going to read because I got halfway through it, fell in love with it, and then my dad decided to take it back to the library >.<

6. Hourglass by Myra McEntire

Books I'm going to read:

7. Fury by Elizabeth Miles

8. Witchlanders by Lena Coakley

Books I desperately want to read:

9. Isle of Night by Veronica Wolff

10. The Faerie Ring by Kiki Hamilton

So there you have it. That's my list. How have other bloggers affected what you've read?

The Mephisto Covenant by Trinity Faegen (ARC REVIEW)

(how awk. I spelled her last name wrong and I'm far too lazy to go change it)

Genre: YA Paranormal Romance - Publisher: EgmontUSA - Publication Date: September 27, 2011 - Pages: 439 - Source: NetGalley

Sasha is desperate to find out who murdered her father. When getting the answer means pledging her soul to Eryx, she unlocks a secret that puts her in grave danger—she is an Anabo, a daughter of Eve, and Eryx’s biggest threat.

 

A son of Hell, immortal, and bound to Earth forever, Jax looks for redemption in the Mephisto Covenant—God’s promise he will find peace in the love of an Anabo. After a thousand years, he’s finally found the girl he’s been searching for: Sasha.

 

With the threat of Eryx always looming, Jax knows he has to keep Sasha safe and win her over.  But can he? Will Sasha love him and give up her mortal life? (Goodreads.com)

First of all, I'm not sure that the cover has much relevance to the story. When I saw it, I expected there to be a beautiful ball that Sasha attended - hence the ball gown. But no. Sasha is indeed blond, but she doesn't wear a big fancy dress. The only dress she wears is red and and it's not big and fancy. Just sayin.

Anyway, EgmontUSA is really on a roll with their covers, because this was another story that I was immediately attracted to due to the cover. However, this reading experience wasn't nearly as unpleasant as my last one. I'll admit that in the beginning I had a lot of troubles enjoying this because of the GI-FREAKING-NORMOUS info-dump that left me more than a little confused. But I pushed through it because the premise still intrigued me and I was certain that the details would become more clear as the novel progressed. After reading it, there are still some things I wonder about, but not enough to make the novel unenjoyable.

This book didn't really start getting good until about page eighty when we begin to learn more about the other characters and the lost souls. Once that happened, the plot kind of slowed down and gave me time to catch my breath before diving into the next catastrophe. I was really able to enjoy the natural flow rather than having everything flung at me all at once.

There were a lot of parts in this book that were very plot convienant and definitely made me roll my eyes. Like people buy the lies without a second thought and somebody just so happens to be in the right place at the right time, but that sort of stopped after the first hundred pages as well. So, I warn you if you're going to read this to just push through because it gets better!

One thing I must point out is that this is more of an older YA novel, best for teens sixteen and older. Since some of the novel takes place in Jax's point of view, there are quite a few thoughts that made me feel a bit uneasy. There is a lot of lust and sexual content and references to rape.

The writing wasn't bad. It was a little inconsistent since there were some parts where the writing was amazing, and other parts where it wasn't as great. I feel like Sasha's voice changes a bit throughout the novel. Some may pin that on character development and the changes that occur to her throughout the book, but there were some parts where I was thinking that it didn't sound like Sasha at all.

And speaking of Sasha. I actually didn't hate her character. There were some parts where she made me angry or she annoyed me because her logic didn't make sense or she kept blabbering on about Jax. She wasn't a particularly save-the-day character, but she also didn't ALWAYS rely on Jax to save her. I mean, she can hit people with her mind powers and she even put someone in a choke hold. But even putting those things aside, she's still a pretty tough cookie. There's a lot of painful yet important questions that needed to be asked and she had to be the one to ask them. I also liked that she stayed true to herself and her moral qualms. She made decisions for herself. She didn't just take the backseat while her boytoy made all the decisions for her. And while she's not the overtly sarcastic kind, there are definitely lines that'll elicit a chuckle or two.

As for Jax, I didn't particularly adore him at first, but after a little while I really began to love him. There is a minor case of insta-love for him, but it's almost acceptable because at the same time it's not really love. Sasha was the only person that could save him, and for that he completely admired her and wanted to be with her, but he didn't really know what love was. Like I said before, some of his thoughts made me uncomfortable, but they were to be expected considering he's a man...He's actually really sweet, even when he wasn't trying. By the end of the novel, I was taken with him.

There was no love triangle in this book, which a lot of people will be thrilled about! But their relationship was far from perfect.

I loved all of Jax's brothers. They were funny and oblivious. I especially loved Pheonix. There was one line in particular that had me cracking up:

Phoenix sat up and turned toward him. “You better be real careful, Jax. If she ever finds out, she’ll hate you for being an invisible creeper who spies on her when she’s alone."

And there's a part towards the end where all the brothers do something so awkward and utterly hilarious, but I can't say it without revealing something major.

There were parts that were a little too Twilight for my taste. And, usually, I hate when people compare books to Twilight, but I mean, seriously:

“You’re not answering. Does that mean you are afraid?”

“No. Should I be?”

This book relied a lot on religion, which was something I probably should have anticipated. And since I'm not exactly bible-savvy, that was probably one reason I was so confused! But.....the unique twist that this book has is pretty awesome.

I'm pretty sure that this book is going to be a part of a series, but it does a pretty decent job at standing alone. The ending was a tad bit confusing, but really cute. I'd probably read this book again in the future.

• Uniqueness. As I mentioned earlier, this book has a super cool twist to the typical angel-good-vs-evil thing.
• The age difference. There was a GINORMICOUS age difference between Sasha and Jax, considering he is an immortal, but it's not something that is highlighted a lot in this book. And it's not all that creepy that Jax is into Sasha, because there's a legit reason he wants her, and she's not JUST a whiny teen.
• The good bad guy. Okay, I'm not actually sure whether I like this or if I'm disturbed by it, but Lucifer, AKA the devil, is portrayed as a pretty okay guy in this book.
• Character backgrounds. Every character had their own unique background and tragedies and all of them were interesting to learn about, sometimes a bit confusing.

If you liked...

Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick

Fallen by Lauren Kate

(I hate to say this) Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

then you'll like The Mephisto Covenant as well!

Amazon - Kindle - B&N - Nook - Indiebound

In My Mailbox (2)

In My Mailbox is a weekly meme hosted by The Story Siren!

Hey everyone and welcome to my second IMM! I didn't post last week because I didn't have much to show off, but I do this week! This time I did things a little differently by making a video. I don't talk in it or anything, but there is an awesome song (Boys Will Be Boys by Every Avenue). The pictures aren't the greatest quality because my camera is broken and I had to take them with my webcam. But, I had a lot of fun toying with my editing system.

Enjoy!

And I am so sorry if I forgot you. My organization habits are...well, politely speaking I could say that they just aren't good. If you sent me an eBook that I forgot, it's nothing personal. Just email me at gabbicalabrese@hotmail.com and let me know! 

Survey

Hello lovely readers! I just have a quick survey for ya'll today! The purpose of this is to let me know what aspects of my blog that you guys and enjoy and want to see more of. This will help me understand what would make this blog more fun for you. I'd really appreciate it if you took the time to answer these three questions :D

Thank you!

Tris and Izzie by Mette Ivie Harrison (REVIEW)

Tris and Izzie by Mette Ivie Harrison

Genre: YA Fantasy - Publication Date: October 11, 2011 - Publisher: EgmontUSA - Pages: 304 - Source: NetGalley

A modern retelling of the German fairy tale "Tristan and Isolde," Tris and Izzie is about a young witch named Izzie who is dating Mark King, the captain of the basketball team and thinks her life is going swimmingly well. Until -- she makes a love potion for her best friend Brangane and then ends up taking it herself accidentally, and falling in love with Tristan, the new guy at school. (Goodreads.com)

*This review contains spoilers.  

The cover of this book was so beautiful, I was certain that I was going to love it. I was so thrilled when I found this book on NetGalley, because I wanted to read it so bad. Now, I'm even more glad that it was on NetGalley because I would have been seriously pissed if I purchased this. Let me make it clear, that I have not read Tristan and Isolde, which is the original story that this is based off of. Therefore, if I say anything that may be considered criticizing to that story it is unintentional.

I thought that the plot of this story was cute and fun, but executed poorly. First of all, when Isolde drinks the love potion, it's just like, "Really, are you that stupid?" That's how I felt about a lot of the decisions that were made in this book. Some of it didn't even make sense.

The writing was nothing special. I hate to feel like I'm just completely flaming this book, but in all honesty I felt like I was reading fanfiction or something. The writing was okay, but not great. There were frequent switches in verb tense, and Harrison definitely broke the infamous "show don't tell" rule. Izzie's narration was not even that exciting. She had nothing especially intriguing about her. No little quirks in what she said or thought that made her entertaining. I had a hard time connecting with her and getting a firm grasp on her personality. Sometimes she was a coward, other times she was brave. Sometimes she was selfish, other times she was selfless. But one thing that I realized was that she only really did things that benefited her.

One thing that really bothered me was the love triangle-square-thing. I'm not one of those people who loathe love triangles. In fact, most of the time I adore them. I love cheering for the underdog and swooning for two hotties at once. However, in this book the love triangle felt forced and pointless. I mean, I wonder who Izzie is going to pick...perhaps the guy whose name is IN THE TITLE? Harrison didn't even make the guys that great, either. In fact, I thought Tristan was just creepy and unappealing. I love love loved Mark. Until he punched Izzie in the face. Yeah. You read that right. He fuggin punched her! And what bothered me even more was that when Izzie broke up with him, after TWO YEARS, after it was made clear that Mark was pretty damn whipped, all of a sudden he was head over heels in love with her best friend. It was completely unrealistic. And Branna...well, she was sort of a bitter bitch. Perhaps she had good reason, but she had no right to be as angry as she was with Izzie.

I feel horrible for trashing this book so badly, but I just wanted to get it over with. The action didn't leave my heart thumping in my chest, didn't get my blood pumping. The almighty big bad villain wasn't even frightening.

I feel like Izzie and Tristan fell in love much too fast, even if there was a love potion. They knew absolutely nothing about each other. I'm thinking that Tristan could have definitely grown on me throughout the novel--if we were to learn anything about him. We don't. Just how his parents died, really. In fact, we see more of Mark  in this book than we do Tristan.

I wish that we could have learned more about the magic in this story. The world just seems to undeveloped. Izzie goes from not knowing she has powers to suddenly being able to kill giants and heal her best friend with it with little struggle. It takes her a few hours to do a simple thing, but after that it was practically smooth-sailing. And supposedly, Izzie is supposed to be super powerful, but we barely even see any of that power go to use. And it is said that Tristan has magic through metal, but there is no further explanation.

The pacing was sporadic. There were several battle scenes, but they just sort of popped up. There was no intense build up or tension that made me jump up and down with anticipation. And they were all definitely stretched, focusing on things that were sort of irrelevant at the moment, like kissing while Izzie's best friend is probably dying. And fighting.

The dialogue was artificial and awkward and out of place. Like when Branna admits her love for Mark. The way she declares herself just made me feel itchy and uncomfortable. "Do you burn for me?" Who the hell says anything like that?

And please, do not get me started on the prologue. I don't usually mind prologues. In fact, just like love triangles, I usually love them. The gushy squishy happy endings. But my god, this one just made me roll my eyes.

I wanted so badly to love this book.I even kept reading it in hopes that it would improve. I wish that I could say my wish was granted, but it sadly was not. I think this book would make for a good fairytale for anybody under the age of ten, though I don't think that was the author's intentions.

The romance was forced and sort of painful to read. The characters lacked in every category. The action was not actionful. And the writing could have been improved by, like, 39857938798.

• The cover. It is so purrrdddy!
• The creatures. I thought the idea of the creatures was pretty nice. A giant, a two-headed dog, and a giant serpent.
• The ending. Just like the plot, there wasw a really good idea behind it. Clever and smart. However, just like the plot, I feel like it was too easy and executed poorly.

Supernaturally by Kiersten White (REVIEW)

Supernaturally (Paranormalcy #2)  by Kiersten White

Genre: YA paranormal -- Publication date: July 26, 2011 -- Publisher: HarperTeen -- Pages: 336 -- Source: Library

Evie finally has the normal life she’s always longed for. But she’s shocked to discover that being ordinary can be . . . kind of boring. Just when Evie starts to long for her days at the International Paranormal Containment Agency, she’s given a chance to work for them again. Desperate for a break from all the normalcy, she agrees.

But as one disastrous mission leads to another, Evie starts to wonder if she made the right choice. And when Evie’s faerie ex-boyfriend Reth appears with devastating revelations about her past, she discovers that there’s a battle brewing between the faerie courts that could throw the whole supernatural world into chaos. The prize in question? Evie herself.

So much for normal. (Goodreads.com)

I put off writing this review for a few days because I wasn't sure exactly what I was going to say about it. I've come to the conclusion that Kiersten White's highly-anticipated sequel was...not as great as I had thought it would be. Don't get me wrong, I slurped it all up in one sitting, but I had higher expectations. Usually, sequels are supposed to be, like, the climax of a trilogy. Leave you desperate for more and all that. At least, in my opinion that is how it is supposed to be. And Supernaturally just sort of flopped for me.

Evie's character digressed. I figured she would have been working on her honesty and selfish issues, but it only seems to have gotten worse! She spends the entire book lying to Lend, who she claims she is in love with, and all of her other friends who have been nothing but good and helpful to her. When she's not lying, she is whining! "Wah, school is so boring." "Wah, nobody has tried killing me." "Wah, my boyfriend is too good for me." "Wah, I'm all alone." Seeing a trend here? That's not the Evie we all know and love. I mean, I don't even remember Tasey actually coming into play once in this book. I mean, at least in Paranormalcy Evie almost always came up with solutions herself. She used her FREAKING BRAIN! And in this book all she does is depend on Lend. Where she wants to go to college, what she's going to do with her life. It drove me insane!

And Lend. I would have loved to see him a lot more in this book. The times that we did get to see him, Evie just destroyed the whole experience by lying to him and wondering if she should tell him the truth. I felt so bad for him, because he's so sweet and it's obvious how much he loves Evie, and here she is, lying and sneaking around with IPCA. I've read a lot of reviews that say that all Lend did was nag, and that may be true, but could you blame the kid? Look at his girlfriend! Not to mention, I mean, where did all his witty snark go? It;s like all the spunk and funk and spark deflated from the two of them.

Not a lot actually happened in this book. I feel like it could have easily been compressed into half of its length and then added to. White's writing was just as good as before, and Evie definitely still provoked quite a few chuckles from me, but I feel like the whole thing could have been so much better! One of my favorite parts of the first book were Evie's kickass moments when she would deal with the paranormals. She was like a girlier Buffy with all of her cute banter with the paranormals. That only happened, like, once in this book. It was upsetting, to say the least.

I think my favorite part of this book was Jack. I know that a lot of people don't like him all that much, but I feel like he really brought the book to life. He was goofy and fun and more than a little messed up. What I don't understand is how Evie put up with him and why she decided to just always follow him in the first place. It was pretty damn obvious that he would bring about trouble. The Evie I remember would definitely stay away from him, and if he tried to mess with her, she would taser the crap out of him! I mean, there were several instances when she would walk into her room and he was just hanging out. Puhlease. Taseyyyy! Where are you!?

This book was pleasantly fast-paced, which was good. And Kiersten white brought in even MORE awesome paranormals to the table! And I feel like this review has been so negative thus far, but there is just one more thing that needs complaining about.

The ending.

I wasn't that impressed. I'm not going to give it away, but I will mention that it is focused ultimately on the power of love. And while that is an excellent theme for a book, it just didn't seem to fit for Supernaturally. I'm still not exactly sure how it even saved Evie, but I'm hoping that will be explained in the next novel. I guess I just had higher hopes for White and I thought that the ending was cheesy.

Just like Paranormalcy, this book was cute and quick and a very good distraction.

• The faerie realms. We get to learn a lot more about the realms and the doors and how it all works and it was pleasant.
• The scarce Reth. Okay, okay, before you chop off my head, let me state that I do love Reth's character. Which was why I loved his few appearances. I felt like having him in the book at every corner would get infuriating, and the little that he did show up made me want to see more of him and not groan when he popped in.
• Bleep. I don't think I mentioned this in my review for Paranormalcy, but I love how Evie says bleep instead of cursing, and I love that she still does it even after what happened to Lish. Usually something like that would bother me, but it just seems to fit in with Evie's character all too well.
• More Arianna. For some reason I just love her! And I love seeing more of her, and a slightly more kind version of her than we got to see in the first book. Plus, the little bits with Arianna about her video game made me crack up! I loved learning more about her past and how she became a vampire.

If you liked...

The Hex Hall series by Rachel Hawkins

The Vampire Academy series by Richelle Mead

The Fallen series by Lauren Kate

then you'll ADORE Supernaturally!