A to Z Bookish Survey

This tag was created by Jamie from The Perpetual Page Turner. I've done a few tags now, and I'm really starting to love doing them! This one is called the A to Z Bookish Survey tag.

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Author you’ve read the most books from:

Cassandra Clare! I think I've read almost every single book she has published, multiple times. I'm a die hard Cassey Clare fan, and I always have been.

Best Sequel Ever:

I'm only going to count the sequels in a duology, because I have too many favourite sequels. Either Eona by Alison Goodman or The Girl of Nightmares by Kendare Blake, they were both absolutely amazing and I loved every second of both of them.

Currently Reading:
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Drink of Choice While Reading:
Either water or  lemonade, or hot chocolate if I want something hot.

E-reader or Physical Book?
Physical book, always. I've never owned an e-reader or anything like that, I just love the feel of the pages in my hands too much.

Fictional Character You Probably Would Have Actually Dated In High School:

Gansey from The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater. No doubt there at all.

Glad You Gave This Book A Chance:
Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor. It had been sitting on my shelf for the longest time, and the trilogy is my all time favourite trilogy ever. (Beside The Infernal Devices, of course).

Hidden Gem Book:

We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates. I had to read this last month for an essay for class, and it was an amazing book!

Important Moment in your Reading Life:

When I started by bookstagram and my book blog last year, they really changed who I was as a reader and who I was as a person. Making them made me even more enthusiastic about reading and writing, and they helped me to meet so many more people than I could have without them.

Just Finished:

The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black (and I loved it!)

Kinds of Books You Won’t Read:
Anything with a lot of romance or a very adulty-type romance. I like lighthearted, YA much better than steamy.

Longest Book You’ve Read:
Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon, at 947 pages.

Major book hangover because of:
Looking for Alaska by John Green. It was such an amazing book the first time I read it, that all I wanted to do was re-read it.

Number of Bookcases You Own:
5, with boxes in my closet, as well as stacks everywhere throughout my room.

One Book You Have Read Multiple Times:
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, it's a book that can always get me out of a bad slump.

Preferred Place To Read:

My bean bag chair, my dad's armchair, the couch, or my bed. Pretty much anywhere I can, but I prefer the comfiest places.

Quote that inspires you/gives you all the feels from a book you’ve read:

"Live in the present, remember the past, and fear not the future, for it doesn't exist and never shall. There is only now." -Christopher Paolini, Eldest. This series was one of the series that really got me into reading and into writing, and it always helps me to try and believe in myself when I need to.

Reading Regret:
Not getting into more classics when I was younger. I've been collecting them for so long, and I've barely read any of them.

Series You Started And Need To Finish(all books are out in series):
I still need to read The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater to finish the series. Also, I just have to read the final book in the Under the Never Sky series by Veronica Rossi.

Three of your All-Time Favorite Books:
I'm keeping Harry Potter out of this, because obviously it's one of my all time favourite books, ever.

1. TID and TMI by Cassandra Clare (I just can't pick, I love them all too much!)

2. Dreams of Gods and Monsters by Laini Taylor

3. The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

Unapologetic Fangirl For:

Cassandra Clare anything. Movies, books, fandom stuff. If Cassandra Clare writes 3000 books in the Shadowhunter world, I will read all of them. Multiple times.

Very Excited For This Release More Than All The Others:

Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor. Ever since I finished the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy I've needed MORE from her. I'll read anything she writes. I'll read her grocery lists.

Worst Bookish Habit:

Buying more and more and more and...more books before I have even put a dent in my TBR pile.

X Marks The Spot: Start at the top left of your shelf and pick the 27th book:

Just One Day by Gayle Forman.

Your latest book purchase:

The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black and Ice Like Fire by Sara Raasch.

ZZZ-snatcher book (last book that kept you up WAY late):

Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater. I read that book super late into the night, and I regret nothing.

May 2016 TBR

I was so insanely happy with the amount of books that I read last month, and I really want to keep the pace up this month and really start to cut down on my massive TBR pile. I also have insanely awful luck and sprained my ankle a few days ago, so I'll be lying down and hopefully reading a lot this month!

This month I plan on reading:

     1.   Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

I bought this book last month because I saw it on the list of books that were recommended for us to read for our essays for my English class. It kept calling me so I figured I would pick it up! I already read it, but I will discuss my thoughts on it in wrap up at the end of the month.

     2.   The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer


I also picked up this book last month, and I've been meaning to read it for awhile. It looked like a relatively fast read, so I thought I would give it a go this month and see how it is.


     3.   The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black


I've wanted to read this book for awhile, and I am really in the mood for a fantasy type book without the long series. This is a standalone fantasy book (which you NEVER see) so I'm definitely going to read this one this month!

     4.   The Raven King (The Raven Cycle #4) by Maggie Stiefvater

I never got to buy this book last month, and it is definitely happening this month. It's one of my most anticipated reads of 2016 so I need to get to a bookstore and read it ASAP!

     5.   The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson

My book club was planning on reading this book last year for one of our reads, but we ended up not reading it and reading another book instead. I've been meaning to read it ever since, and since I saw it for super cheap last month I bought it, and I really want to get to it this month!

     6.   The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

One of my goals for this year was to read at least one classic a month in order to slowly cut down on my classic TBR pile, and since I need to read this one for English class this month, I figured I would count this one as my classic for the month!

April 2016 Wrap-Up

This month was actually an awesome reading month for me, which I am pleasantly surprised with! School is really picking up, but I still managed to read a total of 7 books! I read every one on my TBR as well, expect for The Raven King, as I haven't gotten it yet.


I read:

• ★★★★☆ King Lear by William Shakespeare
• ★★★★★ We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates
• ★★★☆☆ Brave New World by Aldous Huxley7
• ★★★★★ The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle #1) by Maggie Stiefvater
• ★★★★★ The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle #2) by Maggie Stiefvater
• ★★★★★ Blue Lily, Lily Blue (The Raven Cycle #3) by Maggie Stiefvater
• ★★★☆☆ The Ghosts of Heaven by Marcus Sedgwick

The first book that I completed this month was King Lear by William Shakespeare. It wasn't my favourite of his plays, but overall I enjoyed it and I thought that it was definitely one of his best. King Lear is a tragedy, but I still really enjoyed the extremes that some of the characters went to, as well as the humor in it. Shakespeare has a tendency to put a lot of dry, dark humor into his tragedies, and it always makes the play much more enjoyable for me.

The second book I completed was We Were the Mulvaneys, which I needed to read for my English class. I picked it on a whim, and I am so insanely glad that I did. Not only was the novel very detailed and the plot attention-grabbing and interesting, the novel also had many important messages and I think it is one of those books that everyone should read at some point in their lives. I have a full review here if anyone is interested in reading more of my thoughts on this book!


The third book I read, and the first book I fully read this month was Brave New World. I have many mixed feelings about this book, from the beginning all the way through. I found it to be very rushed and also lacking a lot plot wise, as well as making some of the characters just disappear at points and never bringing them back. The writing of the characters was great though, and the way that they spoke was just amazing to read. This book was enjoyable, but I'm glad it was only 220 pages. I feel kind of neutral about it, as I didn't particularly enjoy the whole book, but I also didn't not enjoy it. Some parts I loved, some scenes are some of my absolute favourites from a classic novel, but other parts I just couldn't stand, so therefore I gave it three stars.

I then powered through The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater, which was a re-read for me. I read it back in 2013, and I still loved every page of it. Maggie's writing is always amazing and intoxicating, and I love how she manages to string words together and create worlds and characters that are so unique but are also so relatable. The Raven Boys is an amazing book and I have absolutely nothing but the highest praise for it. Her characters are different while still being relatable, her stories are fascinating and heart-grabbing, and her characters' relationships are so beautiful to read about. I loved every second of reading this book, the first time I read it as well as this re-read. I have a full, spoiler free review of The Raven Boys here if you want to read more!

I also powered through The Dream Thieves, which is the second book in The Raven Cycle. I didn't love this one as much as I loved The Raven Boys, mostly because we didn't get as much Gansey as in the first one, but I still completely loved it. Maggie Stiefvater's writing is so beautiful and wonderful and I love it so, so, SO much. Her characters developed so much in this book, and we learned so much about all of them in such a short time. I have a full, spoiler free review up here if you're interested in reading more of my thoughts!

I then read Blue Lily, Lily Blue, the third book in The Raven Cycle. This one was probably my least favourite out of the first three, but it was still easily a five star book. The characters and the plot become darker, we start losing characters, and everything becomes more intense. I cant say too much about this book without having any spoilers, so I'll leave it at that! I also have a spoiler free review here if you want to read more of my thoughts!

I had high hopes going into the next book I read this month, which was The Ghosts of Heaven. I didn't know going into it that it was split into four different parts, of which I enjoyed some but not others. The first quarter of the book I was not a fan of, as it was in more of a poetry style. The second part I enjoyed, and the third even more so. The fourth part I thoroughly enjoyed, and it was what saved the book for me in the end and pushed me through to the end of it. The book was good overall, and I did enjoy it, but I personally feel that I will never re-read it as I don't believe that I would be able to find anything in it to make it worthwhile for me to re-read it.

April 2016 Book Haul

This month I got 18 books...kinda insane for me. Hopefully I can keep it down to a minimum next month. I got:

Adult:

1. Room by Emma Donoghue (Movie tie-in paperback edition)
2. You Had Me at Hello by Mhairi McFarlane (Paperback)
3. The Shock of The Fall by Nathan Filer (Paperback)
4. It Started with Paris by Cathy Kelly (Hardcover)
5. Burial Rites by Hannah Kent (Paperback)
6. The Promise of Stardust by Priscille Sibley (Paperback)
7. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North (Hardcover)

Young adult:

1. Envy (Luxe #3) by Anna Godbersen (Paperback)
2. My Beating Teenage Heart by C.K. Kelly Martin (Paperback)
3. The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson (Hardcover)
4. Zeros by Scott Westerfeld (Hardcover)
5. Ghosts of Heaven by Marcus Sedgwick (Hardcover)
6. Trial by Fire by Josephine Angelini (Hardcover)
7. The Infinite Sea (The 5th Wave #2) by Rick Yancey (Hardcover)
8. The Here and Now by Ann Brashares (Hardcover)
9. The Accidental Highwayman by Ben Tripp (Hardcover)
10. The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black (Paperback)
11. Snow Like Ashes by Sara Raasch (Paperback)

Review: Blue Lily, Lily Blue (The Raven Cycle #3) by Maggie Stiefvater

Title: Blue Lily, Lily Blue

Series: The Raven Cycle #3

Author: Maggie Stiefvater

Genre: Fantasy/Realistic Fiction/Paranormal

Age Group: Young Adult

Pages: 391 (Hardcover)

Publisher: Scholastic Press

Publication date: October 21st, 2014


**The below synopsis may contain spoilers if you have not read The Raven Boys or The Dream Thieves. My review beneath is spoiler free**


Synopsis from Blue Lily, Lily Blue's Goodreads page


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.


I'm going to start off by saying that this is probably tied for my top three series ever. I absolutely love this series, and I know I'm going to love it for a very long time, if not forever. It's that good!
This book was definitely not the best book out of the first three books, but it was still very, very good, and very easily a five star rating. This specific book was much darker and a bit more violent than the first two books in this series, which is to be expected. The series, as well as the quest, is slowly coming to an end, and there is competition for who can find the Welsh king. So therefore, there will be violence when it doesn't go in a certain person's way. Although this book was much darker than the other three, I felt like the darkness was definitely needed at this point in the story. The characters are slowly coming to terms with school ending and how life will be for them past the point of the school year, and the darkness, in a way, is showing the end. The end of school, the end of a quest, and the end of their childhood, in a way. The characters are growing up and are becoming different people than they were in the beginning of this series. I'm happy they're changing but sad they're growing up.
Something that I absolutely love about this series is how the small and supposedly insignificant details are what affect the entire story line. The smallest of details can be something that is extremely massive, and you don't realize until later on in the story how significant it actually was until it is too late. I also really love how the main plot of the story, finding the king, is delayed constantly throughout the books with other smaller plots that ultimately affect the characters more than actually finding the King at times. Sometimes with series, the sub plots take over and it feels like the book is just becoming the sub plot as it takes too long to get back to the main plot, but that is the exact opposite of this series. The sub plots help the characters to work on the main plot of the story, and it's fascinating to see how everything in these books interconnect and join together to create one massive plot line.
This book was written wonderfully, with the plot pace picking up, the characters still having their wonderful senses of humor, and the setting bleeding into the plot, affecting everyone and everything.
Overall - ★★★★★

Review: The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle #2) by Maggie Stiefvater

Title: The Dream Thieves
Series: The Raven Cycle #2

Author: Maggie Stiefvater

Genre: Fantasy/Realistic Fiction/Paranormal
Age Group: Young Adult

Pages: 439 (Hardcover)

Publisher: Scholastic Press

Publication date: September 17th, 2013

**The below synopsis may contain spoilers if you have not read The Raven Boys. My review beneath it is spoiler free**


Synopsis from The Dream Thieves' Goodreads page


If you could steal things from dreams, what would you take?
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.


I first read this book back in 2013 when it first came out and I absolutely loved it. I loved it even more when I re-read it this past month.
Maggie Stiefvater's writing is absolutely amazing and always has been. Every single one of her books is beautiful inside and out, and she has not written a book yet that I have not given anything less than four stars. Her stories are beautiful, hilarious, heart-wrenching and intriguing from the very first page, and this book is no less.
Although The Dream Thieves focuses more on Ronan's life and is mostly following him, there is still more than enough of the other characters in this book. Usually with the second and sometimes third book in a series I feel that it is just a continuation of the problems in the first book, and that it doesn't really advance the plot because it just creates more problems then there needs to be. With The Dream Thieves, I feel that this was not at all what happened. This book does create some problems, but ones that are needed in order to advance the plot. This book also resolves some of the smaller problems from the first book, as well as giving us very important character development, especially details about Ronan and his life which we need to understand him and why he does what he does. This book did not seem like a filler book at all, but instead a very important book that developed many, if not all, of the characters in this story.
This book also has the many aspects of a Maggie Stiefvater book, the fast cars, the sometimes harsh jokes, and the unbreakable love between characters (who usually never admit it). It helped to answer some questions but it also created more. It questions characters' relationships and choices, and it makes for a very enjoyable read.
Overall - ★★★★★

Review: The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle #1) by Maggie Stiefvater

Title: The Raven Boys
Series: The Raven Cycle #1

Author: Maggie Stiefvater

Genre: Fantasy/Realistic Fiction/Paranormal
Age Group: (Young Adult)

Pages: 416 (Hardcover)

Publisher: Scholastic Press

Publication date: September 18th, 2012


Synopsis from The Raven Boys' Goodreads page

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.

I first read this book back in 2013, and I remembered almost the entire story, but it needed a re-read so that I could get to The Raven King (which I am SO excited for!!).
Firstly, the cover. I mean, it's gorgeous. It's definitely one of my favourite covers ever. EVER. I also rarely buy full price hardcovers, and I have the entire quartet in hardcover. So you know it's beautiful.
I remember going into this book with so much enthusiasm and so much energy. It was the newest Maggie Stiefvater book that had just came out, and I was so insanely excited for it. Even though it has been three years since then, and I have already read it and experienced it for the first time, I still remember how excited I was and I still had the same level of energy I did the first time I went into it.
Maggie Stiefvater is a wizard with words (a witch? a wizard? king? She can be whatever she wants as long as she keeps writing more!). Her stories are so beautiful to read, and her writing flows so smoothly and beautifully that it's just...I can't even describe it.
Her characters as well as always so unique and so wonderfully described that it feels like they're right there in the room, that you know them and have known them your whole life. Her characters are different, I mean Blue Sargent, Richard Gansey III, the names are so unexpected, but they're so fitting. The names are the characters' identities, they are those names, they are the embodiment of them. Her characters are so humorous as well, with them poking fun at each other and at other people in the story. They get angry and they love each other, they fight but they get through it. They feel like real people, and they always have to me, no matter how many times I read the story. They just become more real each and every time.
The setting as well is different, taking place in Henrietta. Who else has read a book that takes place in Henrietta? I haven't. I haven't even heard of another book that takes place there. But it seems fitting, in its own way. Maggie Stiefvater's writing makes it feel like it just couldn't take place anywhere else in the world. Henrietta is the place that it has to take place.
The story is one of the most amazing stories to me not only because of the author, the characters, the writing and the setting, but because of the plot. I'm from a Welsh family, but I live in Canada. This story is about Gansey trying to find Glendower, who is a Welsh king that he believes was buried along a ley line, and he believes that if he can find him and wake him (because he's not dead, he's just been sleeping for six hundred years) he will be granted a favour. When I found out that it was going to be a book that takes place in America and it had Welsh kings and history and magic in it...how could anyone possibly say no to that??
Overall - ★★★★★