June Book Haul

Hey everyone!!

This month I acquired a lot of books. I'm not exactly sure how, but it looks like I'm going to need a new shelf soon! Let's get started!

1. City of Heavenly Fire by Cassandra Clare

My rating: 5/5

I bought this book at the tail end of May so I decided to include it anyways. Fantastic read and a great conclusion to the Mortal Instruments series!!

Click here to see a summary and click here to see my review and discussion!

2. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares

My rating: 4/5

My good friend gave me this book as an end of the school present. I ended up really enjoying it, it was a cute and sweet contemporary.

Click here to see a summary!

3. Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater 

My rating: to-be-read

I haven't heard the best reviews on this book, so I'm not rushing to read it, but I have it, as my coach gave it to me,

Click here to read a summary!

4. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

My rating: 5/5 

I had to buy this book in paperback so it could look pretty on my shelf!

Click here to see a summary and click here to see my movie review!

5. Bajo la misma estrella by John Green 

My rating: to-be-read or 5/5

I also bought it in Spanish so I could practice.

Click here for a summary!

6. Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins 

My rating: 5/5 

I love this book so much--it is one of my favorite contemporaries ever and it is super sweet.

Click here for a summary and click here for my review!

7. Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins

My rating: 5/5

Another adorable contemporary for you :)

Click here for a summary!

8. Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

My rating: 3/5 stars

I found this at my library for 50 cents. That's what I call a bargain.

Click here for a summary and here for my spoiler free series review!

9. New Moon by Stephanie Meyer

My rating: 3/5

Another 50 cents buy.

Click here for a summary and click here for a series non-spoiler review!

10, 11, and 12. The Infernal Devices Series by Cassandra Clare

Clockwork Angel rating: 5/5

Clockwork Prince rating: 5/5

Clockwork Princess rating: 5/5

I love this series so much and I had to buy the whole series so I could have it on my shelf in real life!

Click here for a Clockwork Angel summary, click here for a Clockwork Prince summary, and click here for a Clockwork Princess summary.

Wow--12 books this month! I hope you enjoyed my book haul and found some inspiration for the next books that you pick up!

Happy reading!

Becki xx

My Favorite Booktubers!

Hey everyone!

Today I thought that I would talk about my favorite booktubers! A booktuber is someone who does what I do, but in video format. I watch more booktubers than the ones I listed below, but these are my favorites and the ones I go to first when they have a new video out. I discovered Booktube in February 2013 when I was searching for the TFiOS trailer on youtube. I saw that someone made a video that was a trailer reaction and the girl looked like Lily Collins. Ever since, I've been hooked! Here are my top five favorites (not in order...)

1) Abookutopia

This is Sasha, and she is Lily Collins's twin! She is obsessed with the Mortal Instruments and makes many other great review videos. She never fails to make me laugh and is the first booktuber I discovered. Here are some of my favorite videos from her:
Her TFiOS review
Her Dauntless Cake Video
City of Heavenly Fire Review and Discussion




2) PeruseProject

This is Regan and she is a hilarious booktuber who loves fantasy! Regan cheers me up when I watch her and she loves books so much...it's amazing.
Her Top 10 Fictional Boyfriends
Her Top 10 Favorite Book Quotes
The Summer I Turned Pretty Review and Discussion






3) polandbananasBOOKS

Christine is one of the most energetic people ever. She has amazing hair which she always flips around, a lot of enthusiasm, and always fangirls over books which makes me happy.
"Cry Me A Book River" where Christine talks about what books made her cry
On the Swings with Shailene and Ansel
City of Heavenly Fire Booktalk which is one of her famous booktalks
(P.S. I will post a link to all of her collab videos below from BEA that she did with some other amazing booktubers because you will laugh so hard you cry)



4) emmmabooks

Emma is a relatively new booktuber but she has so much enthusiasm and is really comfortable in front of the camera! She also loves TMI, which is a very popular booktube series by the way...
TMI May: One Liners Emma did this thing called TMI May for the celebration of COHF coming out.
TFiOS Movie Review
TBR Jar

5) ArielBissett

I recently discovered Ariel and she has some of the best discussions ever! You will be hooked. (Her hair is amazing. Just saying)
Mermaid Book Reviews
Marry, Kiss, Cliff Tag
How to Read More





I love so many more booktubers, but that's all for today! If you are interested in the collaboration videos with polandbananasBOOKS, ArielBissett, and more booktubers such as jessethereader, katytastic, and elizziebooks, go here! That is the link to one of the videos, and the rest are in the description bar.

Happy reading!
Becki xx

City of Heavenly Fire Tag

Hey everyone!

Today I thought that I would do the City of Heavenly Fire tag! I first saw this on emmmabooks's Booktube channel here and the original video is from the TheFandomsAddict here. So let's get started!

Disclaimer: This may have either COHF or TID spoilers. Read at your own risk.

1) How did I discover the Mortal Instruments?
I was in Barnes and Noble one day last May and I saw City of Bones. It looked interesting so I bought it. The next day I ordered City of Ashes, City of Glass, and City of Fallen Angels from Amazon because I was hooked.

2) Favorite and least favorite book?
(Note: I am including TID in this). Favorite is Clockwork Princess and least favorite is City of Fallen Angels.

3) Most beautiful part of the whole series?
Will and Tessa becoming engaged.

4) Favorite song on the City of Bones soundtrack?
I don't know what it is called, but it is the song during the fight scene at the Dumort.

5) Favorite cover?
Clockwork Angel because of Will Herondale.

6) Favorite and least favorite female character?
My favorite female character is either Isabelle Lightwood or Cecily Herondale. My least favorite is Maureen.

7) Saddest part of the whole series?
Either Jem or Will's death (or what we thought was Jem's death). I can't decide. I just cried through the whole thing.

8) Favorite Cassandra Jean drawing?

9) Am I more excited for The Dark Artifices or the Last Hours?

The Last Hours because then we will get more Will...

10) Favorite quotes?

I have too many! Probably either:

"It was books that made me feel that perhaps I wasn't completely alone." or

"One must always be careful of books, and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us."

11) Funniest part of the whole series?

Either Alec saying "Why can't people control themselves?", Magnus saying, "That's awful! Someone should have told you. Tell him the wards are down.", Jace saying that weapons bring him peace, or Will being right about demon pox.

12) A character you love and hate at the same time?

Jessamine Lovelace.

13) Favorite and least favorite male character?

Favorite is Will and least favorite is the Magister or Valentine.

14) Favorite Shadowhunter family?

I love them all, but Herondales for sure.

15) What Mortal Instruments books and merch do you own?

I own all six TMI books and all three TID books. I also own the City of Bones movie.

16) Favorite and least favorite ship?

Favorite ships include: Wessa, Jessa, Malec, Clace, and Sizzy. 

Least favorite ships include: Climon, Magnus/Camille

17) Your City of Heavenly Fire theories?

Well the book already came out, but you can find mine here.

18) Favorite scene from City of Bones?

I think this means the movie, and that would be the greenhouse scene.

19) What chapter/part made you cry?

Okay. There's a list. When Jessamine dies, the whole second half of Clockwork Princess, the second time I read City of Ashes when the Inquisitor dies (after I read the TID series), when Max dies, when Malec broke up, whenever Will was mentioned in COHF, when Sebastian died, when Simon lost his memories, when Simon was chosen for ascension, when Tessa and Clary meet, and when I saw Will at Jem and Tessa's wedding at the comic online.

20) Are you ready for COHF?

I have read it twice, so yes.

I hope you enjoyed this tag! Feel free to complete it! :)

Happy Reading!

Becki xx

CITY OF HEAVENLY FIRE REVIEW AND DISCUSSION

Hey everyone!

Today I am going to be reviewing and talking about City of Heavenly Fire by Cassandra Clare. The first part of this post will be spoiler free, and then the second part will be a discussion with spoilers for both COHF and the Infernal Devices trilogy.

Review:
I gave this book a 5 out of 5 stars on Goodreads. This book was truly amazing and it was a great conclusion to this epic series. It contained so much character growth from the first book City of Bones until now. It is definitely one of my favorite books.

SPOILERS BELOW. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK

I have so many feels from this book!! Most of my feels were actually from the Infernal Devices references though, because every time they mentioned Jem, aka Brother Zachariah, or Tessa, or Charlotte, or Church, or Jessamine, or, my personal favorite, Will, I squealed. If you haven't read TID you should not be reading this, because I will spoil it for you, but you will not appreciate this book to its full capacity. I loved seeing Jem and Tessa finally together, and every time that Will was mentioned I started crying. For example, when Tessa says he is at Jocelyn's wedding...SO MANY FEELS. And Jessamine protects the London Institute, and Magnus says, "I hope she's at peace now" or something like that. We also saw Jem steal Church, which was hilarious. And when Tessa gives Clary Will's ring...amazing part. When Jem was speaking Mandarin as well and when he said the people who raise you are your family, he was thinking of Charlotte. And when we find out that Fray is from Fairchild and Gray...I cried.

The character development in this book was phenomenal. Alec grew so much as a character and I LOVED him in this book. Izzy finally gave her heart away and she became so much more opened and we saw her how Simon sees her. Jace grew up. Magnus learned what it means to love, and I love him...his development from Clockwork Angel to City of Heavenly Fire is tremendous! And Clary finally became less headstrong and was a strong and worthy female protagonist. I thought that she matured so much from City of Glass to here and I loved seeing her growth.

Can we talk about Alec's sass for a moment? He was so so so funny! I loved his character way too much in this book. Here are some of his best lines: "I did not make a pie for three reasons. One because I do not have any pie ingredients. Two, because I don’t actually know how to make a pie." "And three?" "Because I am not your bitch." 
"You BROKE my PHONE." (Total white girl moment, Alec)
"Straight people. Why can't they control themselves?"

Jace was just as humorous as usual too. I love in the beginning when Jordan is trying to teach him to be calm and he is like what brings you peace, and Jace says war and weapons. 

Now let's discuss Simon. Everyone thought that nothing could happen to him, but then he forgets everything he's been through because of Magnus's dad. But luckily, thanks to Magnus and Izzy, he will ascend like Sophie. I was heartbroken over this part, but this was honestly the worst thing Cassandra did to us in this book, as she didn't kill off any main characters.

The deaths! Actually if you read TID seven main people died: Woosley Scott, Jordan, Meliorn, Maureen, Raphael, Sebastian, and Amatis. Other deaths include Emma Carstairs's parents, the parabatai, one of who was Endarkend, and Andrew Blackthorn. I wasn't too heartbroken about these and I thought that Cassandra was kind of too nice almost. I was most heartbroken about Sebastian's death, believe it or not, because of the way that Clare wrote it. Honestly, this book wasn't as heartbreaking as I thought it would be though and we can all tell that Cassandra Clare likes her happy endings.

END SPOILERS


That's pretty much all for my review! The last thing is that today I am going to rank Cassandra Clare's books:

1) Clockwork Princess

2) Clockwork Prince

3) City of Glass

4) City of Heavenly Fire

5) Clockwork Angel

6) City of Ashes

7) City of Lost Souls

8) City of Bones

9) City of Fallen Angels

Thanks for reading my review! I will see you back here tomorrow for the City of Heavenly Fire tag! Let me know your thoughts on this book below :)

Happy reading!

Becki xx

The Fault in Our Stars: Movie Review

Disclaimer: This review contains spoilers of the book The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. Do not read this unless you have read the book or watched the movie.

Hey guys,

Today I'm going to be talking about The Fault in Our Stars movie. Yeah. I saw this movie at an 11:35 pm showing on Thursday night and it was so emotional.

The Acting:
Shailene Woodley was the perfect Hazel. She was so capable of showing the raw emotion and her expressions were so so so good!! (I never saw Tris or Caleb).
Ansel Elgort. Perfection. He was the best Augustus that we ever could have hoped for. He has the cutest little smirks that he makes and he was so sweet. In the first half he was the cocky, arrogant, sweet guy that he was known to be and then he slowly loses that and becomes sadder and weaker.
Nat Wolff was a great Issac. I wish we could have seen more of Issac but the trophy scene was amazing.
William Dafoe was a great Peter...I hated him so much so it was obviously a good representation.

The Book to Movie Translation:
This was so so so accurate!! The movie starts off with John Green's line..."Late in the winter of my seventeenth year..." and it was so accurate! There were a couple of things off and missing, but the two most obvious to were the video game scene with Issac where he says "I dislike living in a world without Augustus Waters." and the very very end. They say "Okay" at the end (the most emotional word ever) instead of  "I do, Augustus. I do." Except for that, the movie was extremely accurate. There were so many lines from the book in the movie and that made me really happy. This is a book to movie adaptation done right.

My Experience Seeing the Movie:
So what you have to know is I am a huge book crier. I have read TFiOS about twenty-five times and it is in my top three books of all times. I re-read the book before I went to the movie and I was dressed in my 'Okay? Okay' shirt with my infinities necklace. I went in expecting to cry a lot, as I had previously cried reading the book. So I went in with my friends and started watching. I first started crying when Hazel was taken to the ICU. I was laughing whenever Ansel made a joke, and the trophy part was funny and emotional all at once. When they went to Amsterdam I was crying and when they went up to the Anne Frank House I was crying. And when Augustus tells Hazel I pretty much began sobbing and bawled the whole rest of the movie. The pre-funeral scene was so emotional and so perfect. So was the gas station scene. And when Shailene and Nat point out how pretentious Ansel is....oh so beautiful! Anyways... I cried a lot in this movie and was the loudest sobber in the theater. My friend's mom, after the movie, was like, who was crying so loudly? And that would be me.

My Thoughts on the Movie: (aka a really long ramble)
It was really really really really really good!!!!! There were a couple of flaws in the book, like when it might sometimes be a bit unrealistic. But then the movie admitted that was unrealistic...for example, Gus's speech to Monica's mom, and then he says "I can't believe that worked." Also, the end. I needed my "I do, Augustus. I do" line. The letter that she was reading was exact and then it wasn't. But I still loved it.Overall, I loved this movie so so much and I am probably going to see it again.

I hope you guys enjoyed my review...it was really long. I'm sorry if it was a boring rant. I just have a lot of feelings.

Happy reading!
Becki xx

P.S. My COHF review is coming...I really loved the book! I just need to re-read it so I can have a good discussion for you guys. See you soon!

Reading in School Tag

Hey everyone!

Today I was watching a video on Ariel Bisset's channel that she did a while ago about Reading in School. I found this subject really interesting, so I decided to complete the tag that she wrote.

Elementary:
1) What techniques do you think teachers should use to engage young readers?
I think that teachers need to encourage kids to read! Tell them why reading is so enjoyable, have discussions and clubs about reading, and overall make reading fun.

2) Do you think that it's the schools' job to instill a love of reading in children?
Yes, absolutely. The school and the parents' job.

3) What was your favorite elementary school read?
For what I read that was actually in class, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. For what I read outside of class, Harry Potter.


High School:
1) Do you think an incorporation of YA books should be made? If so, which YA books would you add?
I definitely think that YA books should be added to high school curriculum. I don't think that we should emit classics completely, because they are still important, but one YA book a year wouldn't harm anyone. I would add a John Green book (either TFIOS or Looking for Alaska) or The Book Thief by Markus Zusack. And my English teacher recently told me that The Book Thief is being added to the tenth grade curriculum, which is really exciting.

2) Do you think it's important to read books from a wide variety of nationalities?
Yes, I do. I only read books in general from US and the UK and I really want to change that. I think part of the problem is in school that is what they teach you are the 'right' books to read.

3) What was your least favorite book in high school?
My least favorite book was The Pearl by John Steinbeck. It really was a quite simplistic story and it didn't catch my attention at all. (Note: I am still in high school, so this question is only what I have read so far)


Beyond:
1) Do you think there should be an emphasis on creative writing?
Absolutely! I can write pretty good essays, but every time I try to write creatively, I find myself referring back to all the essays I have written. My English teacher this year told us specifically that the standards didn't give enough time to creative writing and that she wished that we could write more, but that there wasn't enough time. I think that maybe the teachers want to do more creative writing, but they can't because they have to follow the standards.

2) How do you feel that the reading you did in school has affected the reading you do now?
I feel like the reading that I did in school has almost made me want to read more, because I want to find books that I enjoy more than what I read at school. I think that for people who don't enjoy reading as much as me, however, this discourages them from reading because they think it is 'boring'.

3) If you had to choose one book that you've read in the past year, outside of school, that had to be taught in high schools, which would you choose?
I would choose probably The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. The reason is that this book has encouraged so many people to read and has made so many people who say that they 'hate reading' read. If this book can encourage people who dislike reading to read, then I say that it is an excellent choice for high schools to read. Plus, as I have re-read it like 15 times (literally) there are some great points that teachers could use for annotating/essays.


Thank you guys for reading that whole thing, if you did :) If you want to do this tag, go ahead and leave me a link below because I find this a really interesting topic!

Happy reading!
Becki xx


P.S. Come back within this week for my City of Heavenly Fire review (I am currently re-reading the series and am on the fourth book, then I will read it!) and my The Fault in Our Stars movie review (going to the premiere!)

Rebel Belle review and Blogger Shoutout!

Hey everybody!

I have a bit of free time right now so I wanted to post a quick review on a book I finished this weekend. Today I will be reviewing Rebel Belle by Rachel Hawkins. This is my first Rachel Hawkins book, and I went into it knowing only that it was like a Southern Belle who came into superpowers. I can tell you this book is so much more! Click here for a synopsis from Goodreads.

Overall I really enjoyed this book! The girly aspects perfectly combined with the action moments, making this a book for girls or guys. For any guys reading it, the first 50 pages are so may be a bit too pink for you, but continue to read after that and you will love it! Harper reminds me a tiny bit of Celaena from the Throne of Glass series, with her love for dresses and her still incredibly fierce personality. This book seemed like a mix of Legally Blonde, NCIS (one of my favorite TV shows), and The Sorcerer's Apprentice (Nicolas Cage movie). I read this book in one sitting, and it is very fast paced and very exciting! The supernatural and action elements were plentiful, but not as plentiful as some books can be. I did wish however, that there was more description of the Paladins and the history of who she becomes. (This isn't a spoiler...just something you will need to read the book to understand fully). 

I ended up giving this book a 4.5 out of 5 stars because it was a really good story.

One last thing... I want everyone to go check out the blog Spellbound Books! It's a really great blog with lots of fun hauls, reviews, and many more bookish things! Go check it out :) 

Happy reading!
Becki xx