What's Up? Anime, Video Games, and Now a Junior in High School

What's Up? is a feature where I talk about my personal life and any blog updates I have.

{Review} The Falconer - Elizabeth May

The Falconer by Elizabeth May
Genre: YA Fantasy / Historical Fiction
Release Date: May 6 / 2014
Publisher: Chronicle Books

Heiress. Debutant. Murderer. A new generation of heroines has arrived.

Edinburgh, Scotland, 1844

Lady Aileana Kameron, the only daughter of the Marquess of Douglas, was destined for a life carefully planned around Edinburgh’s social events – right up until a faery killed her mother.

Now it’s the 1844 winter season and Aileana slaughters faeries in secret, in between the endless round of parties, tea and balls. Armed with modified percussion pistols and explosives, she sheds her aristocratic facade every night to go hunting. She’s determined to track down the faery who murdered her mother, and to destroy any who prey on humans in the city’s many dark alleyways.

But the balance between high society and her private war is a delicate one, and as the fae infiltrate the ballroom and Aileana’s father returns home, she has decisions to make. How much is she willing to lose – and just how far will Aileana go for revenge?

{Review} Landline - Rainbow Rowell

Landline by Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Adult Romance
Release Date: Jul 8 / 2014
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Georgie McCool knows her marriage is in trouble. That it’s been in trouble for a long time. She still loves her husband, Neal, and Neal still loves her, deeply — but that almost seems beside the point now.

Maybe that was always beside the point.

Two days before they’re supposed to visit Neal’s family in Omaha for Christmas, Georgie tells Neal that she can’t go. She’s a TV writer, and something’s come up on her show; she has to stay in Los Angeles. She knows that Neal will be upset with her — Neal is always a little upset with Georgie — but she doesn’t expect to him to pack up the kids and go home without her.

When her husband and the kids leave for the airport, Georgie wonders if she’s finally done it. If she’s ruined everything.

That night, Georgie discovers a way to communicate with Neal in the past. It’s not time travel, not exactly, but she feels like she’s been given an opportunity to fix her marriage before it starts...

Is that what she’s supposed to do?

Or would Georgie and Neal be better off if their marriage never happened?

{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!