March 15, 2016

Book Review | The Chaos of Stars

The Chaos of Stars by Kiersten White follows Isadora, who is the daughter of Egyptian gods, Isis and Osiris. When she was very young Isadora believed that she would become a god just like her parents, only to learn that eventually she would die and her parents would bury her in a tomb in the family home with her brothers and sisters who have already existed. After that day Isadora’s relationship with her parents is strained. The story then shifts to present day, where Isadora is a teenager still living with her parents in their hidden palace in Egypt. The gods learn there is a dark force at play and send Isadora away to live with her brother in California where she will be safe. Isadora spends her time in California working at a museum where relics of her family members are on display. She makes a few friends, as well as meets a cute boy named Ry, and she tries to help figure out what is going on with this darkness that is taking over her dreams and forced her away from home.

First of all, this cover = GORGEOUS! The navy and the gold are just so so so so so beautiful together!

And as for the inside of the book I enjoyed it a lot (3.5 out of 5 stars on Goodreads). So many books are focused on Greek mythology (which I do find very interesting), and it was very refreshing to have an introduction to another type of mythology that up until this point I knew nothing about, apart from the names of Isis, Osiris, and Anubis.

As for characters, I liked Tyler, Isadora’s friend from the museum. She was feisty and funny, and was always there for Isadora.

Speaking of our main character, Isadora was sort of annoying at times. She was not as frustrating a main character as some others I could think of (America Singer in The Selection immediately comes to mind), but she was very closed off and bitter and seemed to have that #FirstWorldProblems mentality when she didn’t get her way from her parents. However, for the most part I liked her. I felt like I understood her behavior toward her parents because she did love them and wanted to be with them forever, but was “cheated” out of that option.

The writing was fast-paced and I managed to read this book in one sitting. I felt like there were a few things that were revealed towards the end of the story that should have been discussed earlier in the book regarding the love interest’s family (or even adding a few more pages to the end to discuss it), but overall I enjoyed the read. If you have any interest in mythology and enjoy books that have similiarities to the Percy Jackson series (or really anything Rick Riordian has written) then I would suggest checking this one out.

March 10, 2016

Book Review | A Little in Love

Posted by Lauren in Blog, Book Reviews, Recommendations

Ever since I read The Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet I’ve been looking for more famous literary stories told from the point of view of the secondary characters. It gives you the chance to see the story from a different angle. So when I was strolling through Books-a-Million and saw an adaptation of Les Miserables told from Eponine’s P.O.V., I automatically picked it up.

Anyone who has seen or read Les Mis knows who Eponine is. She is the daughter of thieves, a girl who is in love with a boy named Marius who is in love with another girl, a girl who Eponine herself grew up with.

A Little in Love starts when Eponine was young. She talks about living with her parents in Montfermeil, the birth of her sister, and the life of thieving that she is forced into. Unlike her family, Eponine tries to be good. She never wants to steal or to kill. She only wants to do good, and it’s hard to do good when your family insists you do bad. She is teased by her family and scolded for not being as committed to their “family business” as her sister is. Eponine becomes friends with Cosette, a little girl who is brought to Montfermeil to stay until her mother can earn enough money to support the two of them. However, Cosette’s mother never returns, and she becomes the Cinderella of Eponine’s family until Jean Valjean adopts her. Later on we see Eponine meet Marius, whom she falls in love with, as well as see her reconcile with Cosette when they meet again in Paris.

I’ve never read the actual Victor Hugo novel. I, like I’m sure most of the general public, have only seen the movie that came out in 2012. It was my first introduction to the story. One of my favorite songs was “On My Own,” both because Samantha Banks has an amazing voice and because she put so much emotion into her performance. And it was her that popped into my head when I was reading this story.

From what I have heard about the actual Victor Hugo book, Eponine is not that big of a character. She’s just sort of there, but A Little in Love was her chance to shine.

I liked the way Eponine interacted with Cosette and Marius. Even though she knew Marius loved Cosette and not her, she was never spiteful. In fact she was the one who brought them together (don’t think that’s really a spoiler because they showed in the movie that Eponine knew where Cosette and Valjean were staying in Paris). She risked her life to bring Marius a note from Cosette in the barricades, and in my mind, that made her fearless. She didn’t care about the war, she cared about Marius and Cosette and their happiness. She put them before herself.

Overall I greatly enjoyed this. I would recommend this to fans of Les Mis, and really anyone that wants to see a classic story from a different perspective. Even if you know the whole story, you can still find something new from these types of re-imaginings.

Have any of you read this book before? If so, please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below!

Thanks for reading!

March 7, 2016

Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge Checklist

Posted by Lauren in Blog

Hi everyone!

In the post I made the other day I talked about how I plan on taking on the Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge, which contains the 339 books mentioned throughout the seven season run of Gilmore Girls. As I said in the previous post, I will not be finishing this challenge this year, and probably will not have it finished by next year either. It’s just something I want to attempt to accomplish at some point in my life. What I really hope is that it will help me broaden my reading tastes.

Below I am posting the names of the books I have read from this challenge already. Tell me in the comments below if you have read any of these books or which ones you are most looking forward to reading (even if it isn’t right this moment).

Thanks for reading!

– – – – – – –

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

Candide by Voltaire

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffery Chaucer

Carrie by Stephen King

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Eloise by Kay Thompson

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

Freaky Friday by Mary Rodgers

Goldilocks and the Three Bears

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling

How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss

Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Anderson

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

The Miracle Worker by William Gibson

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Rapunzel

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

Snow White and Rose Red

Stuart Little by E.B. White

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Bambi: A Life in the Woods by Felix Salten

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

March 6, 2016

Book Review | Finding Audrey

Posted by Lauren in Blog, Book Reviews

Hello everyone!

I’ve been reading some more Sophie Kinsella books lately, and decided to do a review on the first book of hers I read a few months ago: Finding Audrey.

Finding Audrey is Kinsella’s first Young Adult novel, which follows a girl named, you guessed it, Audrey. Prior to the beginning of the book Audrey suffers through an incident that causes her to now have social anxiety, for which she has to go to therapy for. Audrey is too afraid to make eye contact with anyone, including the members of her family, all except for her youngest brother Felix. Because Audrey can’t make eye contact she hides behind a pair of sunglasses, even when indoors. She mostly keeps to herself and watches her mother and her little brother Frank argue about Frank’s obsession with video games. Frank plays with a team for one particular game, and invites his friend Linus over to play with him. Audrey initially freaks out when she sees Linus because he is a new person for her to be around, but she soon develops a crush on him. The two start a romance and Linus pushes Audrey to step out of her little bubble of anxiety by doing little tasks, such as ordering a drink at Starbucks, or going up to a stranger and asking a random question.

Overall this book was cute. Light, quick, fast paced. That said, it was irritating.

What the title should have been was Audrey’s Mother Has Some Major Issues (With Video Games). Because 70% of this story was just reading how Audrey’s mother is “concerned” about her brother constantly playing Land of Conquerors (which in my head was some sort of Call of Duty game). The issues with the mother and Frank take up pretty much the entire book, with little pieces here and there of our actual main character doing some stuff with Linus, or figuring stuff out in her head.

Audrey’s anxiety was confusing to me. Maybe it’s because we never learn what actually happened to her. I don’t know. I think if Finding Audrey had been even thirty pages longer, and it included what happened to Audrey, I might have liked it a bit better. But it’s nice to read about a book addressing social anxiety.

The best character in the book to me was Felix, who is four and adorably clueless about what is going on around him. There’s one scene in the story where Linus has Felix deliver a note to Audrey and when Audrey gives her response to Felix to take it back to Linus, Felix sticks the note in his pocket, saying he wants to keep it as his “pocket paper.”

Like I said before, this book was cute. If you are a big fan of Sophie Kinsella, or are just looking for a quick read for the beach, I recommend you checking this out.

*Rating on Goodreads: 3 stars out of 5

March 5, 2016

A New Challenge

Posted by Lauren in Blog

Hello everyone!

Last year I set a goal to read at least one classic a month in order to broaden my reading options, and to narrow down my TBR pile.

However, life got in the way and I ended up failing that challenge I had set for myself.

But today I have decided to set myself a new goal.

Over the past week I have been re-watching Gilmore Girls. I never watched Gilmore Girls growing up, and I never saw an episode until last year because Netflix had uploaded the entire series and I had the chance to binge-watch. I loved Lorelai and Rory’s relationship, all the quirky people who lived in Stars Hollow, season one Dean, and the bad boy bookworm that is Jess. And most of all I loved Rory’s passion for reading. The interactions between her and her grandfather where they discuss literature (and life in general) reminded me of the conversations I had with my grandfather when we would grab coffee or browse through Borders when I was growing up.

And as I am re-watching the episodes now I’ve gotten the sudden urge to read Sylvia Plath and Dorothy Parker and all these wonderful classics that I always see or hear about, and that I tell myself I will read one day, but have been too scared to try. UNTIL NOW (*cue dramatic music*).

So I’m planning on taking the Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge.

This will not be completed by the end of this year, and probably not next year either. There are 339 books on that list. I don’t know how I would find time to read that much, especially with college graduation in 63 days followed by a 6-week internship over the summer. But this is a challenge I want to finish in my lifetime.

There is a website I found which I will link below that helps you check off what you already have read. So far I have made it around 45 books, which I think is a pretty good start. I’ll link a separate post that includes which ones I have read and which ones I need to get to.

The checklist is right here: http://www.listchallenges.com/rory-gilmore-reading-challenge

Go through it and tell me in the comments below how many you have already managed to check off.

Thanks for reading!

**Edit: Here is the link to the list of the books I have already read from this challenge 🙂

http://laurenecox.com/rory-gilmore-reading-challenge-checklist/

March 2, 2016

Book Review | Hook’s Daughter

Posted by Lauren in Blog, Book Reviews, Recommendations

Hook’s Daughter by Heidi Schulz is a middle grade novel that talks about, as the title suggests, Captain Hook’s daughter, Jocelyn. Jocelyn is an adventurer in a society where girls are expected to be prim and proper. Due to her wild antics, Jocelyn is sent to a finishing school, but after receiving a letter from her now deceased father, she runs away to avenge his death by the hand (or mouth, as the case may be) of the Neverland Crocodile. Along with Mr. Smee, Jocelyn gathers a crew and set sail on her ship, Hook’s Revenge, to find and kill the Crocodile.

I don’t read middle grade books very often, but this one was too good to pass up. I mean, t’s a Peter Pan retelling. I love Peter Pan so of course I wanted to read about the dear Captain’s daughter.

I thought the writing in this was great. It reminded me of Lemony Snicket’s writing style. The narrator of the story (possibly the deceased Captain Hook) will say very sarcastic things every now and again that remind me of passages from A Series of Unfortunate Events. Here’s an example from page 41:

“I have faced down some horrors in my day – ferocious animals, fangs gleaming and hungry for human flesh; fierce men with murder in their eyes; my own dear mother on wash day.”

This is the type of stuff you will find when reading this book.

As far as the characters go, Jocelyn is a great main character. Even though she is a little kid, she isn’t portrayed as being painfully immature. She is intelligent, caring, and has the makings of a phenomenal pirate captain. The secondary characters are also wonderful, especially Jocelyn’s crew on Hook’s Revenge. The crew is made up of these low-tier pirates who have fake injuries and battle stories, but she puts up with it/plays along with it.

If you look at the tagline on the cover it says that “Peter Pan has met his match.” However, Peter isn’t in the novel very much. He appears maybe twice, although his name does pop up a lot. However, other familiar characters appear in Neverland, such as the Lost Boys and Mr. Smee.

I believe this is the first in a series of middle grade books. I don’t know if I will be continuing this series right now as I have other TBR books that are more of a priority, but maybe a little ways down the line, I will continue with it as I did enjoy the characters.

If you like Peter Pan as much as I do, action and adventure, and/or writing styles similar to Lemony Snicket, I highly recommend you check this out.

Thanks for reading!

March 2, 2016

Book Review | Carry On

Posted by Lauren in Book Reviews

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell is a fan fiction story about Simon Snow, a character introduced in Rowell’s previous book, Fangirl. The main character in Fangirl, Cath, is an avid fan of the Simon Snow book series which follows a boy wizard in the UK (sound familiar?), and she is writing her own fan fiction called ‘Carry On’ as she waits for the final book in the series to be released. Rainbow Rowell herself said she wanted to write a Simon Snow story as she enjoyed coming up with the world for Fangirl. However, this version of ‘Carry On’ is not the same one Cath is writing in the book. So this book is a fan fiction of a fan fiction of a fictional character of a fictional series in another Rowell book that heavily references another fictional series. IT IS ALL TOO META TO HANDLE. Which is probably why it took me way longer to read this than I expected.

I honestly had to listen to the audiobook while reading this. The multiple perspectives kept throwing me off too much to actually hold my focus without the audio. One thing I noticed is that the narrator was reading a proof or an early draft because some of the words and sentences were not the same in the book as they were in the audio.

Once I started to get a little more into the book I started to enjoy it. The story focuses primarily on Simon, the Chosen One who kind of stinks at being the Chosen One, and his roommate, Baz. Simon is convinced that his roommate and nemesis is a vampire and obsesses over it the entire time. Baz, on the other hand, is wrestling with the knowledge that he doesn’t actually hate Simon. There is also a story surrounding a point of time when spirits can return to the mortal world to visit with their loved ones and a secret power that could potentially save or destroy the magical community.

I did enjoy the story for the most part. I found all of the characters, with the exception of Simon himself (he could be kind of annoying), to be very interesting, especially Baz and Agatha. There were a lot of references to previous years at Watford that sounded a bit more interesting than some of the scenes we did get, but as this is supposed to be a fan fiction to an existing series in the Fangirl universe, I suppose we will just have to imagine those other adventures on our own. The only thing to me that was a little wishy-washy was the romance. The Simon-Baz story had some cute moments, but most of the time it came across as obsessive infatuation (specifically on Simon’s end). I might read this again, or at least listen to the audiobook during a commute to work, but if you are interested in giving this a try, check out from your local library first.

Rating: 2 out of 5 Stars.

What did you think of Carry On? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Thanks for reading!

March 2, 2016

February Wrap-Up

Posted by Lauren in Blog

Hey there Literature Lovers! I hope you are doing well! Sorry for the lack of posting. College graduation is creeping up, and, of course, with this being my final semester, there is a lot of work to get done.

Today I thought I would just quickly share what books I read during the month of February. I’m planning on doing some individual reviews of some of these books either on here or possibly on my YouTube channel (I’ve never filmed myself talking on there before and I’ve finally decided it’s high time I give it a shot!). Those reviews should be coming out soon.

Here’s what I’ve read last month:

Hook’s Daughter by Heidi Schulz (*renamed to Hook’s Revenge)

Review: http://laurenecox.com/hooks-daughter

A Little in Love by Susan Fletcher

Review: http://laurenecox.com/a-little-in-love

Signs Point to Yes by Sandy Hall

The Chaos of Stars by Kiersten White

Review: http://laurenecox.com/the-chaos-of-stars

Crush du Jour by Michel Ostow

The Potion Diaries by Amy Alward

Love by the Book by Melissa Pimentel

Remeberance (The Mediator #7) by Meg Cabot

Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

To All the Boys I Loved Before by Jenny Han

P.S. I Still Love You by Jenny Han

What books did you read last month? What are you currently reading? Let me know in the comments below.

Thanks for reading!

Archive for March, 2016