{Review} The Girl from the Well - Rin Chupeco

The Girl from the Well by Rin Chupeco
Genre: YA Horror
Release Date: Aug 5 / 2014
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire

You may think me biased, being murdered myself. But my state of being has nothing to do with the curiosity toward my own species, if we can be called such. We do not go gentle, as your poet encourages, into that good night.

A dead girl walks the streets.

She hunts murderers. Child killers, much like the man who threw her body down a well three hundred years ago.

And when a strange boy bearing stranger tattoos moves into the neighborhood so, she discovers, does something else. And soon both will be drawn into the world of eerie doll rituals and dark Shinto exorcisms that will take them from American suburbia to the remote valleys and shrines of Aomori, Japan.

Because the boy has a terrifying secret - one that would just kill to get out.

The Girl from the Well is A YA Horror novel pitched as "Dexter" meets "The Grudge", based on a well-loved Japanese ghost story.

Stacking the Shelves: October 2014

Stacking the Shelves is a meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews

that showcases what we have in our hauls

{Review} The Kiss of Deception - Mary E. Pearson

The Kiss of Deception by Mary E. Pearson
Genre: YA Fantasy, Romance
Series: The Remnant Chronicles #1
Release Date: Jul 8 / 2014
Publisher: Henry Holt

A princess must find her place in a reborn world.

She flees on her wedding day.

She steals ancient documents from the Chancellor's secret collection.

She is pursued by bounty hunters sent by her own father.

She is Princess Lia, seventeen, First Daughter of the House of Morrighan.

The Kingdom of Morrighan is steeped in tradition and the stories of a bygone world, but some traditions Lia can't abide. Like having to marry someone she's never met to secure a political alliance.

Fed up and ready for a new life, Lia flees to a distant village on the morning of her wedding. She settles in among the common folk, intrigued when two mysterious and handsome strangers arrive—and unaware that one is the jilted prince and the other an assassin sent to kill her. Deceptions swirl and Lia finds herself on the brink of unlocking perilous secrets—secrets that may unravel her world—even as she feels herself falling in love.

{Bookish Tag} Top 10 Books that Have Stayed with Me in Some Way

Thank you to Leigh at Little Book Star for tagging me! Yep, I'm doing this post a month after she tagged me. I'm terrible at doing things according to schedule; it's a known fact among my friends. I'm now (finally!) getting to it. The rules are that you have to choose your top ten books that have stayed with you in some way (pretty self-explanatory) and tag 10 other people to do it!

Let's do this!

(I'm mostly talking about the whole series so I just put the first book there)

- Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

- Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

- Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

- The Last Apprentice: Revenge of the Witch by Joseph Delaney

- The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare

- Wait for You by Jennifer L. Armentrout

- Divergent by Veronica Roth

Most (if not all) of these books are very memorable. Some of them even taught me a few things and I'll definitely remember the quotes for a long time. The first three are, hands down, the most amazing books I've read. The others are close behind, but I gotta hand it to the first three. The characters are realistic; they teach really good things that add to my forever-forming worldview. 

And now I tag:

1. Kezia @ Chaperiosity

2. Jon @ Bookish Antics

3. Hazel @ Stay Bookish

4. Montana @ The Book Belles

5. + 6. P. E. and Mari @ The Sirenic Codex

7. Melnaie @ YA Midnight Reads

8. I can't think of anymore! Whoever wants to do it can do it!

{Review} Sway - Kat Spears

Sway by Kat Spears
Genre: YA Romance, Contemporary
Release Date: Sept 16 / 2014
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

In Kat Spears’s hilarious and often poignant debut, high school senior Jesse Alderman, or "Sway," as he’s known, could sell hell to a bishop. He also specializes in getting things people want---term papers, a date with the prom queen, fake IDs. He has few close friends and he never EVER lets emotions get in the way. For Jesse, life is simply a series of business transactions.

But when Ken Foster, captain of the football team, leading candidate for homecoming king, and all-around jerk, hires Jesse to help him win the heart of the angelic Bridget Smalley, Jesse finds himself feeling all sorts of things. While following Bridget and learning the intimate details of her life, he falls helplessly in love for the very first time. He also finds himself in an accidental friendship with Bridget’s belligerent and self-pitying younger brother who has cerebral palsy. Suddenly, Jesse is visiting old folks at a nursing home in order to run into Bridget, and offering his time to help the less fortunate, all the while developing a bond with this young man who idolizes him. Could the tin man really have a heart after all?

A Cyrano de Bergerac story with a modern twist, Sway is told from Jesse’s point of view with unapologetic truth and biting humor, his observations about the world around him untempered by empathy or compassion---until Bridget’s presence in his life forces him to confront his quiet devastation over a life-changing event a year earlier and maybe, just maybe, feel something again.

{Review} A Little Something Different - Sandy Hall

A Little Something Different by Sandy Hall
Genre: YA Romance
Release Date: Aug 26 / 2014
Publisher: Swoon Reads

The creative writing teacher, the delivery guy, the local Starbucks baristas, his best friend, her roommate, and the squirrel in the park all have one thing in common—they believe that Gabe and Lea should get together. Lea and Gabe are in the same creative writing class. They get the same pop culture references, order the same Chinese food, and hang out in the same places. Unfortunately, Lea is a reserved, Gabe has issues, and despite their initial mutual crush, it looks like they are never going to work things out. But somehow even when nothing is going on, something is happening between them, and everyone can see it. Their creative writing teacher pushes them together. The baristas at Starbucks watch their relationship like a TV show. Their bus driver tells his wife about them. The waitress at the diner automatically seats them together. Even the squirrel who lives on the college green believes in their relationship.

Surely Gabe and Lea will figure out that they are meant to be together...