Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Waiting on Wednesday

"Waiting on Wednesday" is a weekly meme hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine. It lets us all gush about what soon-to-be released books we are jumping-up-and-down excited for.
by Aprilynne Pike

hitting shelves October 25, 2016
from Random House BYR
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Aprilynne Pike comes a truly original new novel—Breaking Bad meets Marie Antoinette in a near-future world where the residents of Versailles live like it’s the eighteenth century and an almost-queen turns to drug dealing to save her own life. 

Outside the palace of Versailles, it’s modern day. Inside, the people dress, eat, and act like it’s the eighteenth century—with the added bonus of technology to make court life lavish, privileged, and frivolous. The palace has every indulgence, but for one pretty young thing, it’s about to become a very beautiful prison.
When Danica witnesses an act of murder by the young king, her mother makes a cruel power play . . . blackmailing the king into making Dani his queen. When she turns eighteen, Dani will marry the most ruthless and dangerous man of the court. She has six months to escape her terrifying destiny. Six months to raise enough money to disappear into the real world beyond the palace gates.
Her ticket out? Glitter. A drug so powerful that a tiny pinch mixed into a pot of rouge or lip gloss can make the wearer hopelessly addicted. Addicted to a drug Dani can sell for more money than she ever dreamed.
But in Versailles, secrets are impossible to keep. And the most dangerous secret—falling for a drug dealer outside the palace walls—is one risk she has to take.

My thoughts:  Holy WOW look at that cover. L♥VE. Plus this story sounds so crazy bizarre. Breaking Bad meets a modernized Marie Antoinette's court---that just sounds wildly entertaining. 

Sunday, March 27, 2016

New Shelf Goodies & The Weekly Nutshell {160}

For New Shelf Goodies, I'll be showing you what lovely books I acquired this week, whether from publishers, or the library, or from whatever half-crazed book-buying binge I happened to go on. :D (Inspired by Tynga's Stacking the Shelves) The Weekly Nutshell will be just that...my week here at Stories & Sweeties, in a nutshell. (inspired by Ginger @ GReads and her recaps at the end of the TGIF posts)


My lovely bookish goodies this week:

For review:
The Peculiar Haunting of Thelma Bee
This looks so fun! Creepy MG with great illustrations (always a sucker for illustrations lol) and a pretty irresistable comparison to Stars Hollow, Ghostbusters, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer! :D
And I Darken by Kiersten White
Heir to the Sky by Amanda Sun
These two are both duplicates for me, but I'm super excited for both just the same!!
The Land of 10,000 Madonnas by Kate Hattemer
European road trip story of 5 teens memorializing their friend. I'm pretty excited for this one. 
Learning to Swear in America by Katie Kennedy
I don't usually go for the "astroid coming at earth" scenario, but this sounds witty and fun (how can it not be with this funny title and cover!), told from a teen physicist prodigy whose trying to save the world. 
Chasing Stars by Helen Dounglas
I hadn't heard of this until it showed up today! Time travel romance for fans of Claudia Gray, Amie Kaufman, & Meagan Spooner---heyyyy, that's me! :D

From Trade/Gifted
The Marked Girl by Lindsey Klingele
Wink Poppy Midnight by April Genevieve Tucholke
The first is from a fantastic trade. You all know how much I love WPM, so I used a recent gift card to purchase a gorgeous pettable finished copy. Both from the lovely Britt. Love you, lady!!

Many thanks to Mighty Media, Random House & Harlequin Teen for the review books!


The Weekly Nutshell
{Tuesday} Wink Poppy Midnight Book Birthday Giveaway!
{Wednesday} Waiting on Wednesday: Kingdom of Ash and Briars

So I feel a bit bad about the lack of review this week. Life is just not letting my brain settle enough to sit down and write the 3 or 4 reviews that I need to! :( I'm still sick and I would do anything to just. stop. coughing.  Plus some house stuff, a bathroom reno, kidlet home for spring break, Easter baking...you know. The usual suspects that make getting to this blog just a bit challenging!  
So since my last Nutshell post two weeks ago, I've set aside Firstlife. Ugh, my second DNF this month.  More on that later.  I started Behind the Canvas, which is a fun MG so far about an entire world hidden behind paintings, and I'm reading Broken Crowns, which finishes out (I think?) the Internment Chronicles . Really enjoyed this series.

So what are you reading this week? What's the last book you DNFed (if you do that--I know some will stick it out to the very end no matter what lol)?


Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Waiting on Wednesday

"Waiting on Wednesday" is a weekly meme hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine. It lets us all gush about what soon-to-be released books we are jumping-up-and-down excited for.

hitting shelves September 1st, 2016
from Holiday House
Bristal, a sixteen-year-old kitchen maid, lands in a fairy tale gone wrong when she discovers she has elicromancer magic in her blood. Elicromancers are an ancient breed of immortal people, but only two remain in Nissera after a bloody civil war. Bristal joins the ranks of Brack and Tamarice without knowing that one of them has a dark secret . . . Tamarice is plotting a quest to overthrow the realm’s nobility and take charge herself. Together, Bristal and Brack must guard the three kingdoms of Nissera against Tamarice’s black elicromancy. There are cursed princesses to protect, royal alliances to forge and fierce monsters to battle—all with the hope of preserving peace.

Building on homages to Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Jane Austen’s Emma and the Chinese legend of Hua Mulan, Hannah West makes a spectacular and wholly original debut.

My thoughts:  There really are TOO many gorgeous covers this year. I love illustrated covers, especially for fantasy stories. This one is just wonderful. And that last paragraph there, with the list of inspirations for this story--makes me absolutely weak in the knees. GIMME. 

What are you waiting on this week?

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Speaking of Wink Poppy Midnight...

So if you read my previous post, you'll know how much I adored this lovely, bizarre, extraordinary book. If not, see my review here. Well, today, Wink Poppy Midnight hits the shelves! Happy Book Birthday, WPM!! :D

 LOL :D  

And at this lovely news, I feel compelled to get this into my blog reader's hands! :D 
So here comes a giveaway! 
Open internationally, one finished copy of gorgeousness :)
Enter away! :D

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Wink Poppy Midnight by April Genevieve Tucholke {review}

Wink Poppy Midnight
by April Genevieve Tucholke
♦publisher: Dial Books
♦release date: March 22nd, 2016
♦hardcover, 352 pages
♦intended audience: Young adult
♦stand-alone
♦sounce: from publisher for honest review
Every story needs a hero.
Every story needs a villain.
Every story needs a secret.

Wink is the odd, mysterious neighbor girl, wild red hair and freckles. Poppy is the blond bully and the beautiful, manipulative high school queen bee. Midnight is the sweet, uncertain boy caught between them. Wink. Poppy. Midnight. Two girls. One boy. Three voices that burst onto the page in short, sharp, bewitching chapters, and spiral swiftly and inexorably toward something terrible or tricky or tremendous.

What really happened?
Someone knows.
Someone is lying.

Review: I make it no secret---I like my stories bizarre and a little bit twisted. Stories that lead you off one way and then explode your mind with things you might never have seen coming, and in completely off-the-wall ways. I like them haunting, enchanting, mind-boggling. Stories like Never Let Me Go, The Accident Season, The Walls Around Us,...undeniable weird and eerie, but completely awesome.  Yes, what I'm saying here, is that Wink Poppy Midnight falls right in line with these wonderful examples of books that are just my taste. Weird, wild, heart-crushing. Absolutely loved every page.

The dynamic of these three characters feels like an enigma, you get an inkling from the get-go (and the synopsis lends to this as well) that you're going to get more from these characters than they initially seem. Midnight seems lonely and a bit tortured, longing to get away from his unhealthy "thing" with Poppy and gets swept along in Wink's whimsical fairy tale view of everything. Poppy seems to lay everything out so straight that there could be no denying her brand of evil. And Wink keeps you guessing if she's just spacey or incredibly naive or just above it all--or maybe something else.

There are times when the writing is literally like reading poetry, with a very defined repetition and rhythm that really hammers the thoughts, feelings, or vivid imagery that each character is trying to convey home.  I loved the use of alternating POV and the short chapters, each one like little intense bursts of voice and thought. Sigh---just writing this review makes me want to read it again right this second. I know this brand of weird won't be everyone's cup of tea, especially with a somewhat not-exactly-cut-and-dry ending.  But this was definitely my kind of book.


*ABOUT THE AUTHOR*

April Genevieve Tucholke is the author of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea and its sequel, Between the Spark and the Burn. She loves classic horror movies and coffee. She has lived in many places, including Scotland, and currently resides in Oregon with her husband.


Pre-order: Indiebound  •  BookDepository  •  Amazon


Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Waiting on...

"Waiting on Wednesday" is a weekly meme hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine. It lets us all gush about what soon-to-be released books we are jumping-up-and-down excited for.

Labyrinth Lost
by Zoraida Cordova

hitting shelves September 6th, 2016
from Sourcebooks Fire
Nothing says Happy Birthday like summoning the spirits of your dead relatives.

I fall to my knees. Shattered glass, melted candles and the outline of scorched feathers are all that surround me. Every single person who was in my house – my entire family — is gone.

Alex is a bruja, the most powerful witch in a generation…and she hates magic. At her Deathday celebration, Alex performs a spell to rid herself of her power. But it backfires. Her whole family vanishes into thin air, leaving her alone with Nova, a brujo boy she can’t trust. A boy whose intentions are as dark as the strange markings on his skin.

The only way to get her family back is to travel with Nova to Los Lagos, a land in-between, as dark as Limbo and as strange as Wonderland…

Beautiful Creatures meets Daughter of Smoke and Bone with an infusion of Latin American tradition in this highly original fantasy adventure.

My thoughts:  First off, Cover=GORGEOUSNESS. That, plus witches, untrustworthy boys, a missing family, and strange lands, all with an infusion of Latin American tradition??  Yeah, I'll definitely be reading this.

What are you waiting on this week?

Saturday, March 12, 2016

New Shelf Goodies & The Weekly Nutshell {159}

For New Shelf Goodies, I'll be showing you what lovely books I acquired this week, whether from publishers, or the library, or from whatever half-crazed book-buying binge I happened to go on. :D (Inspired by Tynga's Stacking the Shelves) The Weekly Nutshell will be just that...my week here at Stories & Sweeties, in a nutshell. (inspired by Ginger @ GReads and her recaps at the end of the TGIF posts)


What the mailman brought this week:
For review:
Sisters of Salt & Iron by Kady Cross
This one wasn't really on radar until it showed up at more door---it looks so good! Twins that are tethered spirits on either side of "the veil"!
The Wicked Will Rise by Danielle Paige
Yellow Brick War by Danielle Paige
I'm behind on this series, only having read the first, but I'm glad I have to second and third now. I loved Dorothy Must Die!
The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi (with pretty tattoos!)
If you saw my haul last week, you know this is a second copy for me, but I love having the pretty swag! Haven't decided if I'll be trading or holding a giveaway for this duplicate!

I also got some pretty Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies bookmarks from the fabulous Lindsay Ribar!! I have the book already and I can't wait to read it!

Thanks so much to Harlequin Teen, HarperTeen, St. Martin's Press, and Lindsay Ribar for making my mail awesome!


The Weekly Nutshell:
{Tuesday} Blog Tour Interview with Jeff Zentner
{Wednesday} Waiting on Wednesday: Scythe by Neal Shusterman
{Thursday} Blog Tour Review: Tell Me Three Things by Julie Buxbaum


This week has been sucksville---I have such a terrible cold!! :(  I've been couch-ridden since Tuesday. UGH. But luckily I've got some good books to keep me company.  :) And tea and puppy snuggles, and my lovely mama even sent over her wonderful healing chicken soup.
Reading has kind of been all over the place, I ended up setting aside A Study in Charlotte. I can't tell you how excited I was for that one, and while it started off good, I just lost interest after a while into it. I read Pull by Anne Riley and really enjoyed that one--review to come soon!  I just started Firstlife today and I'm about 70 pages in---so far, so good! I'm also planning to start the finale in Lauren DeStefano's Internment Chronicles, Broken Crowns. Very excited about that as I loved both previous books, and pretty much everything I've read by DeStefano! :D

So that's all for me this week! What's everyone reading???