Monthly Archives: July 2016

Three Truths and a Lie

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“It was my fault, everything that happened that weekend. It’s hard for me to admit that, but it’s the truth.”

Title: Three Truths and a Lie

Author: Brent Hartinger

Series: Standalone

Publication: August 2nd 2016 by Simon Pulse

Pages: 272

Source: Publisher in exchange for a honest review

Summary from Goodreads:

A weekend retreat in the woods and an innocent game of three truths and a lie go horribly wrong in this high-octane psychological thriller filled with romantic suspense by a Lambda Award–winning author.

Deep in the forest, four friends gather for a weekend of fun.

Truth #1: Rob is thrilled about the weekend trip. It’s the perfect time for him to break out of his shell…to be the person he really, really wants to be.

Truth #2: Liam, Rob’s boyfriend, is nothing short of perfect. He’s everything Rob could have wanted. They’re perfect together. Perfect.

Truth #3: Mia has been Liam’s best friend for years…long before Rob came along. They get each other in a way Rob could never, will never, understand.

Truth #4: Galen, Mia’s boyfriend, is sweet, handsome, and incredibly charming. He’s the definition of a Golden Boy…even with the secrets up his sleeve.

One of these truths is a lie…and not everyone will live to find out which one it is.

My Thoughts:

Three Truths and a Lie is one of those books that captures your attention with its creative and intriguing synopsis but then blindsides you with the actual story. What could go wrong? I mean, it’s a mash up of Cabin In The Woods, Pretty Little Liars, and the game of Truth or Dare. Just picture that for a second. A group of friends staying in the woods on vacation while things start going wrong, people start dying, and chaos runs rampant? Hell to the yes.

While the book isn’t perfect, Three Truths and a Lie is perfectly entertaining. It will make you guess and wonder and the ending will take your breath away because you won’t see it coming. It’s a topsy turvey thriller of a novel and the narrator only adds to the overall atmosphere of “what the hell is going on”. I actually thought Rob, the narrator, was one of the best plot devices. He’s telling the story to you. It’s not an action as you go, it’s a “this is how I saw what happened” – and it will make you question everything.

If you’re a fan of horror films, or even the widely loved Scary Movie parodies,  I highly recommend Three Truths and a Lie. It is entertaining, exciting, unique in certain ways, and getting to that plot twist of an ending is well worth suffering through the horrible, scary movie-esque decisions the characters make. Both surprising and satisfying, Three Truths and a Lie is the perfect summer thriller to pass the time with.

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Blue Lily, Lily Blue

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“Humans were so circular; they lived the same slow cycles of joy and misery over and over, never learning. Every lesson in the universe had to be taught billions of times, and it never stuck. Maybe it was good that the world forgot every lesson, every good and bad memory, every triumph and failure, all of it dying with each generation. Perhaps this cultural amnesia spared them all. Perhaps if they remembered everything, hope would die instead.”

Title: Blue Lily, Lily Blue

Author: Maggie Stiefvater

Series: The Raven Cycle # 3

Publication:  October 21st 2014 by Scholastic Press

Pages: 391

Source: Purchased

Summary from Goodreads:

There is danger in dreaming. But there is even more danger in waking up.

Blue Sargent has found things. For the first time in her life, she has friends she can trust, a group to which she can belong. The Raven Boys have taken her in as one of their own. Their problems have become hers, and her problems have become theirs.

The trick with found things though, is how easily they can be lost.

Friends can betray.
Mothers can disappear.
Visions can mislead.
Certainties can unravel.

My Thoughts:

Well, holy hell that was an adventure. I AM SO NOT OKAY RIGHT NOW! Too much death and too many feels, but I fucking loved it. Just… ARGH! The more of this series I read the more I am falling in love, and now there is only one left and I don’t know what to do with myself. Blue Lily, Lily Blue was just as intoxicating at the other books in The Raven Cycle have been, yet it also holds it own certain charms. Blue Lily, Lily Blue is one of those special books in a series: it transcends its middle heritage and transforms into something other, something else entirely. It is a black hole that I will forever willingly dive into, that much is certain.

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The Dream Thieves // The Book That Steals your Sanity

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A secret is a strange thing.

There are three kinds of secrets. One is the sort everyone knows about, the sort you need at least two people for. One to keep it. One to never know.

The second is a harder kind of secret: one you keep from yourself. Every day, thousands of confessions are kept from their would-be confessors, none of these people knowing that their never-admitted secrets all boil down to the same three words: I am afraid.

And then there is the third kind of secret, the most hidden kind. A secret no one knows about.

Title: The Dream Thieves

Author: Maggie Stiefvater

Series: The Raven Cycle # 2

Publication: September 17th 2013 by Scholastic Press

Pages: 437

Source: Purchased

Summary from Goodreads:

Ronan Lynch has secrets. Some he keeps from others. Some he keeps from himself.

One secret: Ronan can bring things out of his dreams.

And sometimes he’s not the only one who wants those things.

Ronan is one of the raven boys—a group of friends, practically brothers, searching for a dead king named Glendower, who they think is hidden somewhere in the hills by their elite private school, Aglionby Academy. The path to Glendower has long lived as an undercurrent beneath town. But now, like Ronan’s secrets, it is beginning to rise to the surface—changing everything in its wake.

Of The Raven Boys, Entertainment Weekly wrote, “Maggie Stiefvater’s can’t-put-it-down paranormal adventure will leave you clamoring for book two.” Now the second book is here, with the same wild imagination, dark romance, and heart-stopping twists that only Maggie Stiefvater can conjure.

My Thoughts:

This was basically my reaction to the mind blowing masterpiece that was The Dream Thieves:

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The Raven Boys

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“She wasn’t interested in telling other people’s futures. She was interested in going out and finding her own.”

Title: The Raven Boys

Author: Maggie Stiefvater

Series: The Raven Cycle # 1

Publication: September 18th 2012 by Scholastic Press

Pages: 409

Source: Purchased, after much coercion and urging from rabid fans whom I admire.

Summary from Goodreads:

Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue never sees them–until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks to her.

His name is Gansey, a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble.

But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul whose emotions range from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher who notices many things but says very little.

For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She doesn’t believe in true love, and never thought this would be a problem. But as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.

My Thoughts:

I, for some reason, have been very late to jumping on the Raven Cycle bandwagon. I didn’t even own the books until very, very recently – and I come to you now asking: WHY DIDN’T SOMEONE HIT ME UPSIDE THE HEAD EARLIER!?! The Raven Boys is fantastic in its own special way. It’s not the sort of book that you read and go “Oh yea, this is it” or something, it’s like how Hazel falls in love with Agustus Waters… slowly, and then all at once.

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Waiting On Wednesday

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Waiting on Wednesday is hosted each week by Breaking the Spine and lets us spotlight a book that we are eagerly waiting to be released.

This week’s Waiting On Wednesday is P.S I Like You by Kasie West!

Publication:  July 26th 2016 by Point

Summary from Goodreads:

What if the person you were falling for was a total mystery?

While Lily is spacing out in Chemistry one day, she picks up her pencil and scribbles a line from one of her favorite songs on the desk. The next day, someone else has written back to her on the desk! Soon enough Lily and the mystery student are exchanging notes, and lyrics, and even sharing secrets. When Lily finds out that her anonymous pen pal is a guy, she’s flustered — and kind of feels like she’s falling for him. She and her best friend set out to unravel the identity of the letter writer — but when the truth is revealed, the guy is the LAST person Lily could have ever imagined it to be. Now that Lily knows the truth, can she untangle her feelings and gather the courage to listen to her heart?

From beloved author Kasie West (The Distance Between Us) comes an utterly charming story about mixed messages, missed connections, and the magic of good old-fashioned secret admirer notes.

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