Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

So back in 2005, I read this book because of the movie. I remember back then that I absolutely loved this book because not only did it show a side of Japanese culture, but it was also a well-told love story. I really want to know what the fourteen-year-old me was thinking, because this time around I literally want to claw my eyes out as I was reading this book.

This book tells the story of Chiyo – Sayuri as she is called later in the book – as she struggles through her life and tries to become a geisha. At a young age she is sold to an okiya by her father and separated from her sister. Thrown into this new world, she is shocked to find that one of the mistresses of the house – Hatsumomo – hates her because she thinks that one day she will be her largest rival. In fact, this geisha does everything in her power to make sure that Chiyo never becomes a geisha.

Much to her dismay, Chiyo does in fact become a geisha, a very successful one at that, and kicks Hatsumomo out of the house for everything that she has done. But the reason that Chiyo becomes a geisha is because of a man named the Chairman who she runs into one day when she was down on her luck and set in being a maid for the rest of her life. He shows her a bit of kindness, and as it turns out gets her help from one of the most successful geisha of all time.

It’s a beautiful story, really, but the details and side stories are just overdone. Seriously a chapter that could have ended in five pages went on for fifteen because of either descriptions of unnecessary items or a side story that was just filler. Also Chiyo is quite gullible. At the beginning when she tries to run away and Hatsumomo tries to help her escape she forgets the one lesson that Auntie taught her. Hatsumomo would never help her, ever. Little Miss Stupid indeed.

Final Rating: 3 out of 5 stars. The story is good, but there was just too much detail that wasn’t really needed.

Bookshelf worthy? Anyone want my copy?

The Luxen Series Book #5: Opposition by Jennifer L. Armentrout

The world is going to hell. War of the Worlds? Forget about it. The Luxen have landed and they don’t want to leave anytime soon and they’re destroying everything in their wake. Kat, Archer, Beth, and Luc are tucked away in the cabin not sure what to do. Dee, Dawson, and Daemon are gone, they left when the Luxen landed. Not sure what they’re next move should be Katy is blown away when she learns that Beth is pregnant and Archer and her go out to get supplies. This is where they run into a group of Luxen destroying things and assimilating human bodies. Archer and Katy are about to escape and get the hell out of dodge when she feels Daemon, but instead she runs into Dawson.

The next thing she knows she’s waking up in a mansion surrounded by Luxen who are less than friendly, even her best friend Dee is against her. Turns out that the Luxen are all connected by their thoughts and when the new guys showed up, the leader infiltrated all their thoughts and brainwashed them into thinking that humans were evil and deserved to be subjugated. So what does that mean for Dawson and Daemon? It doesn’t look good when Katy finally sees him again, he treats her like she’s nothing but human trash and their love was nothing. Like Katy, I think my heart broke for a second when he treated her like that, but I knew that the brainwash hadn’t taken him over, he was just acting that way.

As the rest of the book plays out, Katy, Daemon, and Dawson get away and meet up with Archer and Luc at an army base. The army’s grand plan to get rid of these Luxen – who are also revealed to be working with the Origins – is to drop giant EMP bombs over cities they are believed to be lost. Katy and company realize that this isn’t the best plan. By doing this, the army is making refuges of humans and setting civilization back. So they come up with a plan, a really insane plan, to get the Arum to help them out.

As usual, Armentrout combines sci-fi with a touch of romance and drama. The Daemon/Katy moments were just… fluff overload and I just wanted to curl into a ball and bawl my eyes out at how cute they were together. The ending, like most endings, nearly killed me twice. Not only do you have that character’s death – hey I’m all about being spoiler free sometimes – but you also have the attempted killing of that character too. My heart rate jumped a few times in the last fifty pages or so. I loved the ending, especially with Katy’s ‘room of precious babies.’ She’s a true book nerd ‘til the end.

Final Rating: 5 out of 5 stars. Beautiful ending. Everything was tied together beautifully and this little side story that Armentrout wrote was just as aw worthy as a bunch of kittens.

Bookshelf worthy? What’s up with the new covers? My eBooks look odd with this cover and then the original four.

Hush, Hush Saga Book #4: Finale by Becca Fitzpatrick

After everything Nora has been through, she has one last task to complete before she can fly off into the sunset and be happy with Patch. She has to lead the Black Hand’s Nephilim army to war against the fallen angels. If she doesn’t, she and her mother will die. But, if she does, the archangels won’t be so pleased with her and Patch. What happened to normal seventeen-year-old problems?

At least she isn’t alone. She’s got Patch, she’s got Scott, she’s got the Black Hand’s right man Dante and shockingly she even has Marcie. Yeah, that’s right, Marcie is on Nora’s side, or at least, she’s helping Nora so she can find out who killed her father. Okay. Dante is an interesting character. He’s kind of a hard ass as he helps to train Nora so she can lead the army to war if it comes to that. But something about him just isn’t right. That something is revealed when he forces a mysterious drink down her throat.

It’s devilcraft. The substance that Hank Millar was using to help fuel his Nephilim powers and that Patch and Nora thought died with him. Apparently not. Hank entrusted the devilcraft to Dante and Blakely, and Blakely has been working on weapon prototypes that will destroy the fallen angels. There’s also the drink that basically supercharges the Nephilim’s powers. Dude.

Okay, so honestly, the only reason I didn’t one hundred percent love this book was because of Nora’s decisions and the ending. After a brief tussle with Blakely, he ends up stabbing her with a devilcraft infused knife. The problem with the stabbing is that there was so much devilcraft on that blade that Nora becomes addicted to it. Reading about her trying to overpower the addiction was painful. I actually liked Nora the last book and part of this one, until she became addicted to the devilcraft. She should have known better. As for the ending…well, if you’re into the whole ‘perfect ending’ thing, then you would have liked this ending. But I didn’t. I love when books end perfectly, really, I do, but it ended too neatly and easily. Seriously. Nora’s final plan backfires, all the fallen angels are sent to hell, and Dante is after her head. How can things end well after that? Well, apparently, Dante is the devilcraft prototypes, so with help from Scott, Nora is able to kill him, which in turn kills the fallen angels who pledged allegiance to him to get out of hell. Patch possessed Rixon to get out of hell, and Nora and him go off into the sunset together, because as a final gift from the archangels – Detective Basso, who knew? – Patch can now feel. Wow.

Final Rating: 4 out of 5 stars. Nora has come a long way from her character in the first book. She’s grown stronger, but she still makes some bad decisions. The ending was great, but it was gift wrapped a little too well.

Bookshelf worthy? After a year of sitting on my shelf, I finally read it. Yay!

Hush, Hush Saga Book #3: Silence by Becca Fitzpatrick

Nora Grey has been through it all in the last few years. Her father was murdered. She had a stalker. She thought she was going insane. She was almost killed a few times. She fell in love for the first time. She found out that her father wasn’t really her father and that there are fallen angels and Nephilim walking around in the real world. So what could possibly happen to top all of that? Well…

It’s been three months since the end of Crescendo and Nora wakes up in the cemetery having no idea how she got there or what day it is. When the groundskeeper finds her, he tells her her worst fear. It’s not April like she thought, but actually September. She’s been missing for three months and she has no memory of the last five. She may not remember anything, but she does get the feeling that something isn’t right with her mom’s new boyfriend – Hank Millar. As she tries to unravel the mystery of what happened to her, she meets old friends and new foes.

So I have to say that I liked this book a whole hell of a lot more than I did the last one. Making Nora forget not only the three months she was being held captive by Hank but also the two months previously that she was with Patch was an evil but fantastic move. I also liked how he was still part of her life, but went by his real name Jev instead of Patch. Was I ever glad when Nora sort of kind of remembered him and what happened between the two of them. The character of Scott, like I predicted, became a major player in this book. Not only does he help jog Nora’s memory of what happened, but he also helps her start to bring down Hank at the risk of his own life, since the Black Hand was still after him. Vee, as usual, was her annoying self, believing that she – and Nora’s mother – knew what was best for Nora. I was sort of able to tolerate her character in the last two books because sometimes her attitude and quips were funny, but in this book. Wow. I didn’t like her at all. She was supposed to be Nora’s best friend and help her connect the dots, not lie to her.

Final Rating: 4 out of 5 stars. I’m still kind of confused with the whole oath thing that Hank made Nora swear upon, but I’m sure that it will resolve itself in the next book.

Bookshelf worthy? What font do they use for the title?!

Love Letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira

Losing someone is hard. Losing a family member is especially hard. For Laurel, losing her sister was extremely hard because she was there when her sister May died. Add in the fact that she’s not only starting high school, but also a new school all together, and she has hit the extreme angst teenager scale. Her first assignment in English class though, throws things over the top. Write a letter to a dead person

Understandably, Laurel has a little trouble with the assignment, although you wouldn’t know it when she keeps writing letters to get her feelings out. Through these letters, everything that has happened since even before her sister’s death starts to come out, especially that she feels responsible.

I wanted to like this book. Seriously. It was written really well. The characters were fantastic. The story line was just the right amount of depressing and uplifting while still being a coming of age story. But…the whole time I was reading it I had this feeling that I had read this kind of story before. Person writing letters after a tragic event, trying to fit in with new friends, and at a new school…

It was The Perks of Being a Wallflower, just instead of having Charlie writing letters to some unnamed person it was a girl writing letters to dead people.

Final Rating: 3 out of 5 stars. This book was good, I just felt like it was too much a duplicate of The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

Bookshelf worthy? Support your local library!

Now & Forever by Susane Colasanti

Like Sarah Dessen and Meg Cabot, I have a soft spot in my heart for Susane Colasanti’s books. So when she announced that she was coming out with a new book this year, I was so excited, especially when I read the summary of the book. Sterling has the perfect boyfriend. Ethan is the lead singer in a band whose about to hit it big and he only has eyes for her. But sometimes fame can change a person, and Sterling has to decide if being a rock star’s boyfriend is worth it.

Okay, so like I said when I first heard about this book I was really excited to read it. A girl dating a rock star that just got discovered? Sounds fantastic and in some ways it was. But in other ways… Yikes. Sterling is a very insecure character, and when she’s put under the microscope by the media those insecurities are multiplied. I get where Sterling is coming from, compared to those other girls and celebrities that are out there, how is she supposed to compete? But on the other hand, Ethan has said many times how she’s the only one for him, and yeah, he’s changed since the band was discovered but he still loves her.

Until he changes for the worse. Fame starts to get to his head and it shows. He becomes more self-involved and I totally agreed with Sterling when she realized that he was more about his dreams then about hers. Like when she revealed to him her idea about the cooking videos, he was so down on them, like how are these cooking videos supposed to help my career? Self-obsessed much? Even in the beginning, before he got signed, I didn’t really care for him. What was the harm of adding someone else’s song to the mix?

Final Rating: 3 out of 5 stars. Although I didn’t care for Sterling and Ethan, it wasn’t too bad of a read. I liked the ending the best, when she realizes that she’s better off without Ethan – granted it’s after she finds out that he cheated on her – and she does her own thing.

Bookshelf worthy? Colasanti is another one of those author’s who if I had more bookshelf space I’d own everything.

Hush, Hush Saga Book #2: Crescendo by Becca Fitzpatrick

Recently, Becca Fitzpatrick revealed on Twitter that Crescendo was not her favorite book to write out of the Hush, Hush Saga, and I can tell. When this book first came out, I read it in one day and was supremely confused and angered by the events that transpired. How is it that a sequel to a book that I loved could turn in to such…well, crap? Now, that I’ve read it again, I still don’t have an answer, but I kind of understand things better than that first reading.

Nora is used to her life being turned upside down. Her father was murdered almost two years ago, she’s learned that she is descended from a race called Nephilim, and that her lab partner from biology was a fallen angel until he saved her life two months ago. Now, Patch is a guardian angel her guardian angel and she couldn’t be happier. But as the book begins, Nora isn’t on the path to normal just yet. Feeling overwhelmed by her feelings for Patch, she declares her love for him and he doesn’t say it back.

The next morning in summer school she learns from Marcie Miller – her arch nemesis for years – that Patch went to her house right afterwards and stood watching. Nora asks Patch about it, but he doesn’t give her an answer. Feeling hurt and betrayed she breaks up with him causing a rift. Add in a new character named Scott with a dark past of his own, and the fact that Nora is seeing her father around town and you’ve got one interesting sequel.

So, like I said before when I first read this book I thought it was a bunch of crap. Here was another second book of a series that breaks up the main characters for really stupid reasons. True, I get that Nora didn’t want Patch to rebel on the archangels, and that she was still kind of miffed about Patch not telling her why he was hanging with Marcie – although I kind of had a feeling why he was – but still… Nora is very quick to assume the worst of people and that’s kind of one of things that I really hate about her. She knows that Patch is a guardian angel now, and once he explains that the archangels are just looking for a reason to cast him back to hell, shouldn’t she guess that the reason he’s hanging with Marcie is because he’s protecting her now?

Scott was an interesting character to throw into the mix. He seemed like such a jerk at the beginning – kind of like Patch – but at the end when it’s revealed what is really going on with him, I was kind of intrigued to see him come back in the next book. And can we talk about Marcie’s dad actually being Nora’s dad too?! What was Blythe thinking? And holy crap, holy crap! The ending! Just when you think there’s going to be some much-anticipated Patch/Nora make up making out, Mr. Miller shows up and confronts Nora about the death of Jules aka Chauncey. The end. WHAT?!

Final Rating: 4 out of 5 stars. So the ending still kind of confused me. Nora’s dad – Harrison – was told to marry Blythe and claim Nora as his own child even though it was really Mr. Miller’s kid? And Mr. Miller is the Black Hand, but he didn’t kill Harrison, that was actually Patch’s friend Rixon? And Rixon was after Nora because not only does she have the blood of Chauncey in her veins but the blood of Barnabas, who was Rixon’s blood oath host? Ouch. My brain hurts.

Bookshelf worthy? Gray scale cover art is gorgeous. I still want to know what font they use for the title.

Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick

Nora Grey has a normal life. She has a chatty best friend, a mom who worries way too much, and she worries herself about getting into a good college. But everything she knows is about to change when her biology teacher decides to change the seating chart. No longer is she sitting next to her best friend – Vee – she now has to sit next to the mysterious senior transfer who seems to make it his mission to make her blush.

But things are starting to get really weird. On her way home one night, she runs over a person who somehow is able to knock out her window and try to go after her. When she drives to her friend’s house, all the damage is gone. It looks like nothing happens. A few days later, she walks in on someone rummaging through her things, when she calls the police, her room is pristine. She thinks she’s finally going crazy, especially when Patch – the mysterious senior transfer – keeps showing up everywhere she goes.

Hush, Hush was one of those books that I stumbled across at the bookstore a long time ago because of intriguing cover art. Once I picked it up though I couldn’t put it down. The same goes for the second read through I did. The story flows hard and fast, and the character of Patch is as mysterious as Fitzpatrick makes him out to be on the page. Along with Nora, you go through the motions of hating Patch, being embarrassed by Patch, and slowly falling for him. When it’s revealed that he’s a fallen angel sent to kill her, but couldn’t do it because he likes her, I totally lost my shit. As for the school psychiatrist, Mrs. Greene, I totally called it. She was acting a little bit too controlling over Nora seeing Patch to just be a school administrator.

Final Rating: 4 out of 5 stars. Even through the second read through, I still got a little bit confused over some of the plot points in this book, but I think I got the gist of them to understand what was going on.

Bookshelf worthy? I got my copy for $4.99 at Borders before it closed. One of the best deals for a hardcover.

The Moon and More by Sarah Dessen

One year and two months after the release of The Moon and More, I finally got around to reading the latest from Sarah Dessen. I’m not sure if it was the build up of anticipation, or knowing what I was expecting from a Sarah Dessen novel, but for the first time I found myself not really caring for the novel, at all.

Emaline works at her family’s realty company. They rent out houses to those families visiting Colby. It’s the summer before she takes off for college, and after many pages of back story you find out why she isn’t really thrilled. Her mother, Emily, met this guy in Colby the summer before her senior year of high school. They were in love and promised to try and keep their relationship together even though he didn’t live in Colby. She got pregnant, and although he tried to stay in touch and support her, he lost contact. The only thing he did was have his father send her checks every month. But at ten, Emaline had to do a family tree project and wanted to know her true roots and not her ‘dad’ who adopted her when she was three. This started a chain reaction of content that mostly had to do with her studies. Her ‘father’ promised to help her with her college tuition if she got into a good school.

She did. She gets into Columbia, but due to unforeseen circumstances, her father backs out of paying, so she goes to East U instead. Her father doesn’t even attend her high school graduation and it isn’t until he comes to town with her half-brother to sell his aunt’s house, that the story is kind of revealed. Him and his wife Leah are separating. While this is going on a documentary duo come into town to do a story on a local artist – Clyde from the bike shop in Along for the Ride – and she meets Theo.

I really wished that this book had a point. Emaline was an interesting character but the people in her life were just so…I guess the word would be annoying. Emaline’s mother, and stepsisters don’t grasp the concept of personal space, especially Margo trying to make the company better all because she has a degree. Snobbish. Emaline’s boyfriend Luke is very presumptuous and I agree that he was a sex addict. Jeez. Theo is a go-getter, and I normally don’t mind that kind of attitude but he was very snobby about it. I honestly wonder what Emaline saw in him. The only true drama in this book was when Luke cheated on her and when she finally confronts her father about what really happened with the college tuition thing.

Final Rating: 3 out of 5 stars. This book lacked Dessen’s usual witty banter and intriguing characters. And while I was happy that Emaline ended up without a romantic interest, I kind of wished it was for another reason other than the boys she had her choice between weren’t total idiots.

Bookshelf worthy? I own a copy, but I kind of wished I had rented it from the library first.  

Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge

Once upon a time, a line of kings that did not allow the barbarians to invade ruled the land of Arcadia. One day, it all changed. Demons took over the land and held it in its grasp. The lord of these demons – The Gentle Lord – made deals with the people of the land. One deal in particular involved a young couple that desperately wanted to get pregnant, but couldn’t. The young man struck a deal with the demon lord. His wife would become pregnant with twins, but one of the twins must be given in exchange to the Gentle Lord as his bride when she reached the age of seventeen. The man agreed and his wife became pregnant and gave birth to twins. The first came out easy, but the second twin took the life of her mother. So it was determined that the first twin would be given to the demon lord…

Nyx has known her duty to the land of Arcadia her entire life. She is to marry the Gentle Lord and find a way to destroy him and his fellow demons hold on their land. She is to avenge her mother’s death. She’s known and trained for this duty her entire life. But there is hate in her heart. Hate for her father for liking her sister over her, hate for her sister for killing her mother, and hate for her aunt for sleeping with her father.

The Gentle Lord is different than what she has come to know. He is still a demon and a lord of bargains, but he also has some dark secrets of his own. On their wedding night, he gives two rules to his new bride; one, the key he gives her opens certain rooms in his palace. Those are the only rooms she is allowed to enter, but he cannot protect her from what’s inside. Two, every night she will be given the chance to guess his real name. If she fails to guess correctly, she will die. If she guesses right, she will free him from his masters.

I was really excited to read this book. When I got the email from Goodreads telling me about it in February, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. It sounded like a Beauty and the Beast retelling. But when I actually started reading it, it turned into something completely different. It combined Greek gods with demons, and a little bit of Rumpelstilltskin into the mix. It was a good mysterious fairy tale. My only complaint was that the ending was confusing. She helps destroy the Gentle Lord who actually turns out to be half of the lost prince? And then time is restarted? What??

Final Rating: 4 out of 5 stars. Great story, I just wished the ending had been more concise.

Bookshelf worthy? The cover art is amazing. I would love to have this on my shelf.

The Body Finder Series Book #4: Dead Silence by Kimberly Derting

A common theme in all four books of this series is the secrets that Violet keeps. But it isn’t really until this book that she realizes that she is keeping too many of them, and that her best friend in the whole world – Chelsea – is starting to get annoyed with them. Violet realizes it and doesn’t know what to do about it on top of everything else.

It’s been a few months since Violet’s kidnapping and she’s trying to deal with living with her own imprint. Her friends are worried about her, but she doesn’t know how to be around them with this imprint. She’s taking more of the sleeping pills to dull the echo. But it isn’t until her mother cleans out the attic and finds a box of her grandmother’s old stuff that Violet finds a way to deal with the imprint and that there is something going on with her team. It turns out that the only time the echo/imprint goes away is when the heart of the victim is taken out of the body. Rafe – because he still likes Violet – digs up Caine and removes his heart so Violet can be at peace. And then there’s the picture of the team her grandmother was on – The Circle of Seven – that includes Dr. Lee, Rafe’s mom, and Krystal’s mom too.

In the other three books, I really liked the interlude chapters that dealt with the killer POVs for that book. In this book, I really didn’t like it. The killer this time around has major, major issues with family and drugs. It kind of made me sick. And the prologue! That was just such a mean twist.

Final Rating: 5 out of 5 stars. This book was still really good, but I still didn’t like the killer this time around. Also there were a lot of unanswered questions for a final book of a series. What exactly happened to the Circle of Seven? Who is in control of Violet’s current team? And even though Violet ‘chose’ Jay, what about Rafe?

Bookshelf worthy? Support your local library!

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han

When I was growing up I always wanted a younger brother or sister. After reading this book, I really want to know what I was thinking.

The concept is kind of old school, and I liked the idea of it. Lara Jean is the middle sister and has never had a boyfriend. She’s had crushes and after a while something happens to make her realize that her crush on such a person is ridiculous. To find closure she writes letters and puts them into her hatbox that her mother gave her. At the beginning of her junior year, with her older sister Margot away in Scotland for college, she is blindsides with not only having to take care of her younger sister and father, but that somehow her letters have been mailed to the boys.

What follows is a chain reaction of three of the five boys coming up to her with their letters and asking her what its all about. With all of them it’s awkward. The boys were never supposed to get those letters. But it’s really awkward when one of the boys is her sister’s ex-boyfriend. To avoid the awkwardness she kisses one of the other boys, Peter, and enters into a fake relationship that changes everything.

There were some moments when this book was really annoying. Lara Jean was really ignorant about a lot of things, and although I get where she was coming from with the whole driving thing, she needed to get a grip. Margot was very judgmental about her sister’s interaction with these boys. Kitty was just cute. Peter was so egotistical, but he had his moments. And what was going on with Josh? He’s Margot’s ex-boyfriend, why is he getting jealous about Lara Jean and Peter? What business is it of his?

Final Rating: 3 out of 5 stars. I liked the quick read and short chapters. Peter and Josh getting along with Lara Jean’s family was pretty cool. But sometimes I just wanted to reach through the pages of the book and shake her. The ending was also a problem. It didn’t really have a finished feel to it. So I’m hoping there’s another book?

Bookshelf worthy? Support your local library!

The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory

As I have stated in my reviews for The Boleyn King and The Boleyn Deceit, anything that has to do with the Tudor court and Elizabethan England I find completely fascinating. Philippa Gregory is actually the main reason for this, six years ago I picked up The Other Boleyn Girl and I’ve been obsessed ever since.

The Constant Princess is the sort of prequel to The Other Boleyn Girl. The story follows that of Princess Catalina of Spain who is to become Queen Katherine of England. It follows her as she falls in love with her first husband Arthur – Henry’s brother – and is thrown for a ride when he dies and makes her promise that no matter what she will become Queen of England, even if that means telling the world a lie.

I found this book fascinating. I always felt bad for Katherine while I was reading TOBG. How sad is it to be married to the King of England, and not only does he sleep around with other women, but he has the gall to ask her to give up her crown so he can crown one of his other mistresses? Terrible. This book made me feel even worse for her. She goes through so much! First, trying to fall in love with her first husband, and then when she finally does he makes her promise on his deathbed that she will marry his younger brother. Then there’s trying to persuade the King that she’s the perfect fit for the only heir now to the throne, and it turns out the King has been lusting after her this whole time. EW. Then, when she spurns the King, he makes her suffer by having her wait in poverty for six years until his demise.

Finally she does get her way and marries Henry, but even that has its problems. When she is with child and goes in for her isolation, Henry strays. What did people see in this guy, honestly? If he strays once, he’s going to keep on straying, especially if you don’t give him what he wants. I think what was amazing to me was the fact that Katherine did actually bare Henry a son, even if he did die ten days after his birth. Who knew?

Final Rating: 4 out of 5 stars. A great insight on to how Queen Katherine came to be and what she went through to get her crown. The only thing that I didn’t like was the pages after the death of their son. There really wasn’t a point to the story and considering the jump to when she is called to court because of Anne Boleyn, it would have made more sense to end it with the death of their son.

Bookshelf worthy? Support your local library!