I GOT A CAR!!!!!!

I got a car, people!!!!! I real, brand-new, working car!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm kind of in shock! And completely and totally in love!!! It's a Nissan Altima:) It's got a sunroof, leather interior, backup camera and several very cool blind spot/safety features, a built-in GPS, it connects through bluetooth to my phone, I can even get some apps for it! It's awesome!:) We weren't even seriously going to buy anything. We just went to look and see if there was anything I liked. Then a salesman that we know came out there and showed us several that we were kind of "meh" about. So he was like, "I've got this really nice, brand-new 2013 Altima on the showroom floor that's fully loaded. Why don't you take a look at it?" And I fell in love! But it was looking like the payments were going to be too high. So mom put her foot down and said, "this is the highest I'll go and if you can't work with me on that then we don't need the car." So the guy goes and talks to the manager and comes back looking disappointed. Then he walks into the office, throws his pen on the floor and goes, "DING DING DING!! Best deal of the day!" Mom, Dad, and I are sitting there going, "Huh?" and he's going and driving the car out of the showroom! Which was a dig deal! Because they only do that when they are for sure getting rid of the vehicle! And an hour later and we're driving off the lot in my new car!:) Mom and I are kind of "sharing" it for a while and when I go off to college in a few years it's going with me:) But she said it was mine, so that's what I'm going with too;P I'm struggling with whether or not naming it is weird/creepy. If I do I'll probably go with "Red"XD Thoughts? 

You may now bask in it's/his/her/Red's beauty!XD

Tag Time and Happy Birthday to One of my Favorite Blogs!!

First off, I want a say a big, huge Happy Birthday to The Notebook Sisters Blog which turns 3 this week!!!:D

In honor of their birthday, Cait and Mime are doing an Alice In Wonderland themed blog party all this week with awesome giveaways!:) They're also doing a tag. You can find that here.

Incase none of you knew, I've always kind of loved Alice in Wonderland:) It's been a childhood favorite:) Then when the Tim Burton version came out I really loved that!:D 

Ok, so, here's the tag and their party button:)

Now for the tag questions!:)
1. Just Alice: What book cover(s) has made you super curious?Unremembered by Jessica Brody! I mean, look at it!

2. Mad Hatter: List the craziest character(s) you've ever read.Umm...well....Queen Levana from The Lunar Chronicles is pretty psycho. Then there's Dr. Erland from the same series who has hallucinations. Oh, and Winter from Cress...which is part of The Lunar Chronicles. I'm beginning to see a pattern here.
3. Red Queen, Off With Your Head! What book have you felt like beheading?Oh wow. It's been a long time since I've read a book I didn't like. Let's see here. This may take some digging. Nothing is really coming up.
4. White Rabbit: What books or series have been insanely popular but you've been "late" to pick them up?Get ready for this. Divergent, Insurgent, and Alliegent. The Percy Jackson Series. I've only read 3 of the Harry Potter books. The Mortal Instruments books. The Fault in our Stars. I could go on, but I won't for the sake of you guysXD
5. Caterpillar: What's the most confusing book you've read?Dark Eden. Unremembered and Unforgotten. 
6. Dormouse: What was the last book that sent you to sleep?Ok, I literally have not read a boring book in like 5 years!
7. Cheshire Cat: Book that made you laugh and smile?All the books in The Lunar Chronicles!!
8. Knave of Hearts: Most recent character who stole your heart?Most recent? Well, the new side of Carswell Thorne from The Lunar Chronicles was really swet:) Then there's Ty from Dark Life. Not exactly romantic or charismatic or anything, but I loved his personality!!:) He was kind of sarcastic and snarky and I love snarky characters?
9. Jabberwocky: Best villain you've read this year?So far this year, I haven't read a villain that I haven't completely and utterly despised! Seriously. Of all the books (yes, all 5 of themXD) there wasn't a single villain that I sort of liked or pittied in any way! So, if you mean the one I despised the most: Queen Levana from The Lunar Chronicles.
10. Down the Rabbit Hole: What's the latest book/series/author that's completely swallowed your interest?The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer.
I've come to the realization that The Lunar Chronicles pretty much dominates my bookish mind. I can't help it if they're more-than-amazing books!!:)
Vale!

Help me!!

A while back I told you all about a new fantasy series I was starting. 

I started.

I won Camp NaNoWriMo with it. I set my goal at 20K and made it!:)

Now I'm around 25-30K in and stuck. I do this with every book I've ever tried to write. I get just over halfway and tap out. I need motivation! I need help!! 

That's where you guys come in. I need advice, motivation, anything you can give me! I would be extremely grateful and indebted to you for your help!:)

 

Happy Happy Birthday

I want to wish a big, huge HAPPY SWEET SIXTEEN to one of my favorite bloggers and a good blogger friend of mine, Mime!!:D So,

HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!! 

I wish I could post some birthday pictures for you, but I'm in the middle of the woods with barely enough signal to post this. But I just had to post this!:)

I hope you have a wonderful day!:)

P.S. Today is your day to get out of doing anything you don't want to and to eat all the candy/cake you want! Take advantage of that;P

Cress by Marissa Meyer

Ok, ok. I know I promised this post forever ago, but I typed it up on my phone and it mysteriously vanished. I blame my brother people who like to play with my phone. I had it all typed up. It was very eloquent and unbiased and everything and then I lost it!! So, I'm going to try and re-write this. Hopefully it will be just as well put!




My first book review on my blog!!! Yay! So, this isn't going to be a traditional book review and I'll try to be as unbiased as possible. I'll also try not to fangirl too much. Actually, let me just get all the fangirling out right now:


OH. MY. GOSH!!!!! Cress was AMAZING!!!!!! I loved it! I was on the edge of my seat the whole time!

Now, I realize that some of you live under a rock haven't heard of the brilliance that is The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer. The links for the first two books on Goodreads are here and here. The cover and summary for Cress is below!

In this third book in the Lunar Chronicles, Cinder and Captain Thorne are fugitives on the run, now with Scarlet and Wolf in tow. Together, they’re plotting to overthrow Queen Levana and her army.

Their best hope lies with Cress, a girl imprisoned on a satellite since childhood who's only ever had her netscreens as company. All that screen time has made Cress an excellent hacker. Unfortunately, she’s just received orders from Levana to track down Cinder and her handsome accomplice.

When a daring rescue of Cress goes awry, the group is separated. Cress finally has her freedom, but it comes at a high price. Meanwhile, Queen Levana will let nothing prevent her marriage to Emperor Kai. Cress, Scarlet, and Cinder may not have signed up to save the world, but they may be the only hope the world has.


I'll start with my overall rating:

I know, I know, five stars is a bit over the top, right? Wrong! Now maybe my love for this book is feuled by a love of Rapunzel (the happier versions, not the Grimm's Fairytale version) or a year-long wait, but I can easily say that this is my favorite book! That's something that's very hard for a reader to say. So, let's talk about what I loved about this book. Please understand that I can't make this review totally spoiler free since it's the third book in the series. I won't spoil anything major for Cress itself, but I can't say the same for Cinder and Scarlet.

Characters. 

I'm a sucker for awesome characters. And while a few of them had some minorly disappointing qualities, they were all pretty awesome! There are so many characters in this book. About nine major characters total. She tells the story in several different POVs. Eight out of nine characters get several chapters told in their POV. That's a lot of characters to handle. The remarkable thing about this is that they all have their own personalities. There isn't a single character that makes me go, "Wow. That character is a lot like this other character from the same book." There was, however, a character that reminded me of a character from a movie. Cress is a fairy tale twist on Rapunzel. Cress is supposed to be "Rapunzel" and Carswell Thorne is the "Prince". Thorne reminded me a lot of Flynn Rider. There were too many times that he tried to convince Cress that, no, he wasn't a good man no matter how bad she wanted him to be one. It didn't really ruin his character for me or anything, I still love Thorne, moreso that I did in Scarlet (when he was introduced), I just wish some of the scenes weren't so much like Rapunzel/Flynn Rider scenes. Here's an explample:


Cress quote: “Captain?""Yeah?""Do you think it was destiny that brought us together?" He squinted and, after a thoughtful moment, shook his head. "No. I'm pretty sure it was Cinder.”


Tangled quote: "Something brought you here. Call it what you will, fate, destiny-" "A horse"


So, It's not exact, but close enough! There were a few others, but, like I said, it didn't really ruin anything for me.

One complaint on characters is that there wasn't much Scarlet or Wolf time. There was a ton of Cress and Thorne time (which I absolutely loved) and quite a bit of Cinder time. There was actually quite a bit on Kai time and Levana time as well. 

Can we just stop for a moment and salute Mariss Meyer for creating a villain that is almost impossible to feel sorry for? Most villains have a soft spot or something that makes you secretly feel sorry for them or even like them. Take Loki from The Avengers and Thor movies. Everyone loves him because he's charismatic, funny, and we all feel sorry for him. He was never really loved as a child by his father. Levana is no Loki. There is literally nothing I can even remotely like about her. I hate her through and through. Which is hard for me. I'm one of those people who tries really hard to see the good in the villains. I just can't do that with Levana. Marrissa Meyer has a talent for writing despise-able and unloveable villains, apparently.

Plot

Like any good book, the plot has to be amazing! Cress had a downright amazing plot! I was on the edge of my seat the whole entire time. Something bad would happen and I would be like ok, it's over, they're safe! Nope. Within a chapter or two something major and dangerous happened again! By the halfway mark I was yelling (out loud), "CAN WE PLEASE JUST HAVE THREE CHAPTERS OF CALMNESS?! PLEASE?!" It takes a lot to make me yell at a book out loud. Cress went above and beyond on that one. I'm not complaining, it kept me engaged. 

Since this post is long enough already I'll skip the rest of the stuff I loved (which is pretty much all of it) and tell you about the one thing that wasn't a favorite thing about it.

The couple of major plot twists were kind of easy to guess. I love it when my theories are right, so I kind of liked that, but I also like it when I'm so surprised that my jaw literally drops. I think they were just fore-shadowed a little bit too much.

And that's about it. All-in-all, Cress was an amazing, exciting book with a great plot and loveable (and despise-able) characters:) And now I have to wait a year for Winter. Which is practically torture!

Hope you all liked my first book review! If there's any advice you have to make them better leave it in the comments please!!:)

Vale!

New Novel News!

First of all, I had my review for Cress all written and neat and I would venture to say that it was by best blog post by far! Then my dumb phone deleted it. Now I don't know where to start with it. I can't remember anything I wrote or anything! It's very frustrating!

This post won't be the review, sorry, that one will have to wait until I find the right words again. This post is about an exciting new project!

Remember when I posted my 2014 Writing To Do list? And remember the series of short stories I had on it? Well, I started them. What started as a simple series of medieval short stories has morphed into a six book novel series. What genre? Medieval Fantasy with some fairy tale themes mixed in. But it's going to be really really good!

Now, I have two points to this post. Up until now it's basically just rambling.

1. I'm continuing the first installment for Camp NaNoWriMo! I've started it already (about 15,000 in), but Camp NaNo is the one I always rebel for. It seems like it's more acceptable during Camp.

2. DON'T LET ME GIVE UP ON THIS ONE!! Seriously! Thus far I have never finished a novel! I get to about 30K and tap out! I take a "break" and end up never looking at it again! Don't let me do that! I planned this series with someone, so I kind of feel obligated to finish it. And I need you guys to keep me motivated! Be my accountability partners! I need your help!

So, that's my new book news! And I will have the review up asap! I promise!

Vale!!

The One Where I Take Fangirling To The Extreme

Most of you who know me and/or have been following this blog for a while know that I'm a Lunartic. No, not Lunatic, Lunartic. For those of you who don't know, there's a bigger difference in those two words than the added "r", so I'll explain. A "lunatic" is a mentally unstable person. A "Lunartic" is the name of the fans of the NYT bestseller series The Lunar Chronicles who just so happen to be slightly mentally unstable.

Note: These definitions are not the Webster Dictionary versions. Lunartic isn't in the dictionary (obviously) and I couldn't use one accurate definition and one inaccurate definition. My brain doesn't let me do things like that. It likes uniformity.

Now that that's taken care of, LET THE FANGIRLING BEGIN!!!

I FINALLY GOT MY COPY OF CRESS YESTERDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The following is an almost verbatim transcript of the words/sounds that came out of me when I received my copy.

*A very exited/aggravated girl tries to open the box that Barnes and Noble practically glued shut (I think they do that on purpose to drive fangirls like me totally nuts!)*

Me: GRRR!!! Open you stupid box!

Mom: Get some scissors.

Me: NO! I don't want to accidentally scratch the book jacket!

*The glue finally gives way. From there I practically ripped the box open.*

Me: Oh, it's so pretty!!! It's here, it's here! It's finally here!!! 

*Mom leaves the room knowing what will happen next*

Me: ASDFGHJKL!!!! I CAN'T BELIEVE I FINALLY GET THE READ IT AFTER WAITING FOR ALMOST A YEAR FOR THIS BOOK!!!! I KNOW I READ THE FIRST FIVE CHAPTERS ON MY KINDLE, BUT I'M GOING TO READ THEM AGAIN ANYWAY BECAUSE THIS IS THE REAL, TANGIBLE, BRAND-NEW BOOK!!! 

Transcript over

  

Then, after all the fangirling, I only got to read like three chapters because people wouldn't leave me alone. -_-

And I have this ominous feeling that something horrible happens to Thorne. I mean, I've read the Grimm's Fairy Tale version of Rapunzel and it's awful! I just hope I don't have to do one of those "I cried when Thorne died" posts by time this book is over. AND CAIT WON'T TELL ME ANYTHING!!!!!! Cait, if you're reading this, you're the cruelest Australian friend ever. Not really. You're awesome and no where near cruel, but, as you can see, this ominous feeling has me saying things I don't really mean ;P

The worst part of reading this book now is that I have to wait another year for the last book!!! 

I'm going to go now, but I'll probably have a post in the form of a fangirly review up within the next week!:)

VALE!!