Review: A Little Something Different by Sandy Hall

Title: A Little Something Different

Author: Sandy Hall

Publisher: Swoon Reads

Publishing Date: August 26, 2014

Pages/Format: 272, ARC
Add on Goodreads!

The creative writing teacher, the delivery guy, the local Starbucks baristas, his best friend, her roommate, and the squirrel in the park all have one thing in common—they believe that Gabe and Lea should get together. Lea and Gabe are in the same creative writing class. They get the same pop culture references, order the same Chinese food, and hang out in the same places. Unfortunately, Lea is reserved, Gabe has issues, and despite their initial mutual crush, it looks like they are never going to work things out.  But somehow even when nothing is going on, something is happening between them, and everyone can see it. Their creative writing teacher pushes them together. The baristas at Starbucks watch their relationship like a TV show. Their bus driver tells his wife about them. The waitress at the diner automatically seats them together. Even the squirrel who lives on the college green believes in their relationship. 

Surely Gabe and Lea will figure out that they are meant to be together....

Book in One Word: Different!

Be Our Tattooed Guest: Rachelle + A Winged Mind

Welcome to Be Our Tattooed Guest, an original feature here on Beauty and the Bookshelf! This feature is all about tattoos of the literary, poetic, and bookish variety, and people showing them off! To learn more about Be Our Tattooed Guest, please go here.

Today's guest has a tattoo that may give you wings (and no, it's not Red Bull)...

Blog Tour: Watch Out, Hollywood!: More Confessions of a So-called Middle Child by Maria T. Lennon

Hello, starlets! Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for Maria T. Lennon's tween novel sequel, Watch Out, Hollywood!: More Confessions of a So-called Middle Child! I've got all the info on both books, how to avoid unwanted people, where you can follow the author, and a giveaway, so tune in!

Review: Heir of Fire by Sarah J. Maas

Title: Heir of Fire

Author: Sarah J. Maas

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Childrens

Publishing Date: September 2, 2014

Pages/Format: 565, eARC
Add on Goodreads!

Lost and broken, Celaena Sardothien’s only thought is to avenge the savage death of her dearest friend: as the King of Adarlan’s Assassin, she is bound to serve this tyrant, but he will pay for what he did. Any hope Celaena has of destroying the king lies in answers to be found in Wendlyn. Sacrificing his future, Chaol, the Captain of the King’s Guard, has sent Celaena there to protect her, but her darkest demons lay in that same place. If she can overcome them, she will be Adarlan’s biggest threat – and his own toughest enemy. 

While Celaena learns of her true destiny, and the eyes of Erilea are on Wendlyn, a brutal and beastly force is preparing to take to the skies. Will Celaena find the strength not only to win her own battles, but to fight a war that could pit her loyalties to her own people against those she has grown to love?

Book in One Word: BADASS!

Waiting on Wednesday (97)

Waiting on Wednesday

is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine
 that showcases upcoming releases 

that people are very much anticipating.

This book has a MAP in the title AND in the cover, so I'm basically drooling.

Blog Tour: The Gateway Through Which They Came by Heather Marie

Hello, summoners of books! I'm super excited about today's post and for two reasons: it's pretty freaking cool, and it's Heather Marie, who I knew post-authordom! Her debut The Gateway Through Which They Came JUST published (literally JUST--it published yesterday), and Heather's here today to share a scene of the book with you in a fun way. And I'll have all the info on the book for you, plus where you can stalk Heather, so read on, yes? Oh, and welcome to the gateway.

Top Ten Tuesday (97)

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature meme created by The Broke and the Bookish.

This Tuesday's theme is...

Top Ten Books I Really Want To Read But Don't Own Yet*

Review: The Girl from the Well by Rin Chupeco

Title: The Girl from the Well

Author: Rin Chupeco

Publisher: Source-books Fire

Publishing Date: August 5, 2014

Pages/Format: 267, ARC
Add on Goodreads!

You may think me biased, being murdered myself. But my state of being has nothing to do with the curiosity toward my own species, if we can be called such. We do not go gentle, as your poet encourages, into that good night. 

A dead girl walks the streets.

She hunts murderers. Child killers, much like the man who threw her body down a well three hundred years ago.

And when a strange boy bearing stranger tattoos moves into the neighborhood so, she discovers, does something else. And soon both will be drawn into the world of eerie doll rituals and dark Shinto exorcisms that will take them from American suburbia to the remote valleys and shrines of Aomori, Japan.

Because the boy has a terrifying secret - one that would just kill to get out. 

The Girl from the Well is A YA Horror novel pitched as Dexter meets The Grudge, based on a well-loved Japanese ghost story.

Book in One Word: Interesting.

Be Our Tattooed Guest: Alexandra + Seize the Book

Welcome to Be Our Tattooed Guest, an original feature here on Beauty and the Bookshelf! This feature is all about tattoos of the literary, poetic, and bookish variety, and people showing them off! To learn more about Be Our Tattooed Guest, please go here.

Today's guest has a tattoo with some carpe--but not necessarily some diem.

Review: If I Stay by Gayle Forman

Title: If I Stay

Author: Gayle Forman

Publisher: Speak

Publishing Date: April 2, 2009

Pages/Format: 262, Paperback
Add on Goodreads!

On a day that started like any other,

Mia had everything: a loving family, a gorgeous, admiring boyfriend, and a bright future full of music and full of choices. In an instant, almost all of that is taken from her. Caught between life and death, between a happy past and an unknowable future, Mia spends one critical day contemplating the only decision she has left. It is the most important decision she'll ever make.

Simultaneously tragic and hopeful, this is a romantic, riveting, and ultimately uplifting story about memory, music, living, dying, loving.

Book in One Word: Good!

Waiting on Wednesday (96)

Waiting on Wednesday

is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine
 that showcases upcoming releases 

that people are very much anticipating.

This book could be so good. It's a competition, but not like the Hunger Games or anything dystopian. It's all over the world, and I feel like this could be such good, detective-work-esque fun.

Top Ten Tuesday (96)

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature meme created by The Broke and the Bookish.

This Tuesday's theme is...

Top Ten Books People Have Been Telling Me I MUST Read

Review: Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi

Title: Under the Never Sky

Author: Veronica Rossi

Publisher: Harper Collins

Publishing Date: January 3, 2012

Pages/Format: 374, Hardcover
Add on Goodreads!

Since she'd been on the outside, she'd survived an Aether storm, she'd had a knife held to her throat, and she'd seen men murdered.

This was worse.

Exiled from her home, the enclosed city of Reverie, Aria knows her chances of surviving in the outer wasteland--known as The Death Shop--are slim. If the cannibals don't get her, the violent, electrified energy storms will. She's been taught that the very air she breathes can kill her. Then Aria meets an Outsider named Perry. He's wild--a savage--and her only hope of staying alive. 

A hunter for his tribe in a merciless landscape, Perry views Aria as sheltered and fragile--everything he would expect from a Dweller. But he needs Aria's help too; she alone holds the key to his redemption. Opposites in nearly every way, Aria and Perry must accept each other to survive. Their unlikely alliance forges a bond that will determine the fate of all who live under the never sky.

Book in One Word: LIKEY!

Blog Tour: Evil Fairies Love Hair by Mary G. Thompson

Hello, hairy creatures! I'm very excited to feature Evil Fairies Love Hair on the blog today! Mary G. Thompson, the author, will be sharing some fun things about hair (of course), and I'll be telling you all about her new book! (Which sounds adorably fun, yes?) And it all ends with a giveaway you'll definitely want to enter, so read on!

Be Our Tattooed Guest: Adi Alsaid + Calvin and Hobbes

Welcome to Be Our Tattooed Guest, an original feature here on Beauty and the Bookshelf! This feature is all about tattoos of the literary, poetic, and bookish variety, and people showing them off! To learn more about Be Our Tattooed Guest, please go here.

Today's guest is an author you maaay have heard of. (Perhaps you got lost, or want to get lost, in his book), And he has a tattoo of two characters you've prooobably most definitely heard of...

Waiting on Wednesday (95)

Waiting on Wednesday

is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine
 that showcases upcoming releases 

that people are very much anticipating.

First off, this is inspired by The Nutcracker, a play I saw once upon a time, but all I really remember is going to the bathroom and getting a big cookie during intermission. (Sorry.) Secondly, this book is set in New York AND 1899, and it sounds good. Maybe it will put a (cold) spell on you? (See what I did there?)

Top Ten Tuesday (95)

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature meme created by The Broke and the Bookish.

This Tuesday's theme is...

Top Ten ARCs I Was Excited To 
Get But Still Haven't Read

Blog Tour: Storms of Lazarus by Karen Kincy

Hello, book punks! Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for Storms of Lazarus by Karen Kincy, hosted by CBB Book Promotions! And don't worry--even though Storms of Lazarus is her second novel in the Shadows of Asphodel series, you'll be free of spoilers. So be prepared to get the low down on this New Adult dieselpunk series in a super cool interview. Also, there's a giveaway!

Review: Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

Title: Code Name Verity

Author: Elizabeth Wein

Publisher: Disney Hyperion

Publishing Date: May 15, 2012

Pages/Format: 343, Hardcover
Add on Goodreads!

Oct. 11th, 1943-A British spy plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France. Its pilot and passenger are best friends. One of the girls has a chance at survival. The other has lost the game before it's barely begun.

When "Verity" is arrested by the Gestapo, she's sure she doesn't stand a chance. As a secret agent captured in enemy territory, she's living a spy's worst nightmare. Her Nazi interrogators give her a simple choice: reveal her mission or face a grisly execution.

As she intricately weaves her confession, Verity uncovers her past, how she became friends with the pilot Maddie, and why she left Maddie in the wrecked fuselage of their plane. On each new scrap of paper, Verity battles for her life, confronting her views on courage, failure and her desperate hope to make it home. But will trading her secrets be enough to save her from the enemy? 

A Michael L. Printz Award Honor book that was called "a fiendishly-plotted mind game of a novel" in The New York Times, Code Name Verity is a visceral read of danger, resolve, and survival that shows just how far true friends will go to save each other.

Book in One Word: WOW.

Be Our Tattooed Guest: Stacie + Darren Shan's Saga

Welcome to Be Our Tattooed Guest, an original feature here on Beauty and the Bookshelf! This feature is all about tattoos of the literary, poetic, and bookish variety, and people showing them off! To learn more about Be Our Tattooed Guest, please go here.

Today's featured tattoo is a wee bit different (and totally cool): an ode to a series and favorite author!

Cover Reveal: Bone Deep by Kim O'Brien

Hello, bookish people! I'm very excited to share the cover of Kim O'Brien's Bone Deep with you today! I interviewed her last month--well, her main character, and she was actually interviewed by Chris Harrison--and it was a blast. And now I get to show you her book's cover and tell you what it's all about. Enjoy!

Waiting on Wednesday (94)

Waiting on Wednesday

is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine
 that showcases upcoming releases 

that people are very much anticipating.

Have I not paid attention to this synopsis? Because it makes this book sound like an excellent thriller. SO GIMME.

Top Ten Tuesday (94)

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature meme created by The Broke and the Bookish.

This Tuesday's theme is...

Top Ten Books For Readers 
Who Are Hesitant About Series

Keepin' it Real with Kevin Emerson

Hello, real-life people (and aliens and imaginary friends)! Welcome to my stop on the Keepin' it Real blog tour, hosted by Kaitlin from Reading is My Treasure and Eli from RealityLapse! This tour is all about contemporary books and the authors who write them, and several authors will be featured. And lucky me, I get to have Kevin Emerson (Exile, The Atlanteans series) on the blog (and he's a local author)! So stick around, because Kevin is keepin' it real with a super cool interview, yo, AND there's a giveaway!

Cover Reveal: Date With a Rockstar by Sarah Gagnon

Hello, bookish rockstars! I've got an awesome cover reveal for you today: Date With a Rockstar by Sarah Gagnon! Based on the title alone it sounds pretty cool, so be sure to check out all the info below!

Be Our Tattooed Guest: Tara + Alice in Wonderland

Welcome to Be Our Tattooed Guest, an original feature here on Beauty and the Bookshelf! This feature is all about tattoos of the literary, poetic, and bookish variety, and people showing them off! To learn more about Be Our Tattooed Guest, please go here.

Ooh, look what popular book (and major literary tattoo inspiration-er) is finally on the blog!