what am i doing?

This book could have been five stars. The stories themselves were good and incredibly intriguing. However, the entire thing was riddled with simple grammatical and spelling errors that, after awhile, got incredibly irritating. I can forgive an odd error, but tons of them? And on easy things, such as forgetting to make a word plural or having sentences that don't make sense? Someone should have proofread it...

I go, "woenlflq."
She went, "wojiweofnq."
He was all, "ewbwekjn."
Above are the typical dialogue tags in Something Like Fate. WHY.

I once read another Susane Colasanti book, When It Happens. I hated it and decided never to read another one by her. But my friend insisted that this book was amazing and she couldn't put it down.

This book was so damn stupid. About three chapters in I just gave up and started skipping around to read. On about the third page, Lani was kind enough to inform us that she does her homework at her desk, but when she's online, she's on her bed, because her bed is a relaxation-only zone. That literally has nothing to do with anything. Later in the story, we're treated to a delightful listing of Lani's favorite berries -- in order! Stupid, irrelevant details such as these make the story laughable to read.

The characters were all annoying. From what I've gathered reading other reviews, Connor and Blake were the only ones with potential, but also weren't featured in the story enough, which explains why I feel no more connection to them than to any of the others. Lani and Jason had the most random things in common, such as how they compare brands of water to colors and shapes. Because clearly that and that they have the same poster, abbreviate words while speaking, and played in the sandbox when they were kids means they're soulmates.

Also: I currently attend high school. It's a fairly smaller one. Nobody outside of the certain friend group of those involved really cares if someone steals someone else's boyfriend. Certainly not to the extent of making a hateful website and forwarding email explanations of why two people are dating. That whole part was unbelievable and ludicrous.

Just don't bother with this.

Everyone else hates these books. I love them no matter how many times I read them.

Okay, so about halfway through I had a fairly good idea of what was going to happen. I mostly guessed the ending. However, I was still seriously creeped out while reading it, and just generally loved Before I Go To Sleep.

Lately, I've been struggling through Meat by Joseph D'Lacey.

It's not that it's bad. It's just so... sickening. I can't read more than a chapter or two at a time before I have to stop and take a break.

The townspeople in Abyrne eat meat from the meat processing plant. This meat is supplied by "cattle"--but not the kind of cattle you're thinking of.

For now, I'm putting this on hold. It's just too gory. I'm getting freaked out--nightmares and things. I do intend to finish it eventually... just not now.

I should have loved this book. I went into it expecting to love it. I love novels following different characters, I love trying to figure out how everyone's story connects... But I hated this book.

Looking at reviews on here now, I see everyone talking about the powerpoint chapter. Personally, I found that stupid and skipped over much of it. And the chapter in second person? God, was that irritating. Then the end chapter, where all people did was 'T'... Really? Alright, if that's your vision of the future, that's cool and all, but at least make what people write make sense? Their abbreviations capitalized random letters and half the time you had to think about what it was supposed to be communicating. Aren't you still supposed to understand what abbreviations mean...?

There were so many characters it was hard to keep them straight, mostly because none of the characters particularly stuck out or left anything to be remembered. The timeline was all over the place, so that was an added difficulty. Once you actually found out who the chapter was about, you then had to remember what they had done, and then chronologically figure out what they had already done and what would be in their future relative to the piece of their life you were actually reading about at that moment.

I can see why other people would think this is fantastic just because it's so different and everyone is about being different these days - hell, it even won a Pulitzer - but I'm just glad I finished it.

Won in a First Reads giveaway.

I've said it before and I'll say it again that books focusing on many characters, usually a family, and the way they deal with life over several years will always hit the weak spot in me. I love them. Red Hook Road wasn't as good as other books written in that way - The Lovely Bones or [b:The Year We Left Home|8979518|The Year We Left Home|Jean Thompson|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41UxwBbi9HL._SL75_.jpg|14617268], for instance - but it was still thoroughly enjoyable in a quiet way. It isn't one of the books where I will tell absolutely everyone I know that they must read it, because this isn't a book for everyone. It wasn't earth-shattering, but rather slow and simple. The final chapter, "Coda," was beautiful, and I would read the whole book over again just to get to that chapter if I had to.

I read this book when I was barely old enough to understand what the Holocaust was about. I've read it over and over and it is still, to this day, the only Spinelli book I like. It's beautiful and so incredibly heartbreaking.

I got this as an ARC from a first-reads giveaway.

The Year We Left Home has basically no plot, but chronicled the lives of an extended family. I can't get enough of stories like this, ones centered on different people and how they deal with life, how everyone reacts and chooses things differently. I felt the same draw to The Year We Left Home that I did with The Lovely Bones, though the two don't have anything in common besides the fact that they take place over decades and follow several different characters.

Thompson did such an incredible job with the characters, making each one realistic to the point where I forgot--and still find it hard to believe--that they weren't real people. I love her writing style. Nothing seemed forced, and she didn't try too hard to use dialect or flowery writing.

This novel was so simple, but it was beautiful. I know it won't be a book for everyone, but I personally thought it was amazing, and it will definitely be one of those ones I can read over and over again.

This is one of the most amazing books I think I've ever read. Most of it was completely heartbreaking, but it was still so beautiful. I spent most of the end crying, and I read most of the middle while in class so it was difficult not to break down and cry in public. I've read some of the negative reviews and while many of them have some point, it doesn't detract anything from how brilliant I think this book is, although the random Farsi words did get to be rather annoying.

When I was ten, this book was hilarious.

Med Head is one of the most beautiful, inspirational stories I have ever read. This is a book that everyone should read at least once. It's an inside view on what dealing with Tourette's or OCD is truly like. It helps understand the true horrors of what people go through--and also the miracles you can make happen if you have enough determination.

I started reading this book both because the movie looked interesting (where did the movie even come from? Pettyfer doesn't look like a literal beast with claws and the like, and Hudgens looks nothing like Lindy, who has red hair, pale skin, and is average-looking), and a group I'm in is reading it for this month. I wish I had not. If it wasn't such a quick read, I probably would have given it up.

Everything about Beastly was awful--Twilight awful, in my opinion. I honestly finished this book hating every single character. They were all so one-dimensional and just plain irritating. I can't even explain how much I dislike both Lindy Owens and Kyle Kingsbury (who halfway through the story, decided he wanted to be called Adrian King instead... Really). Kyle was incredibly creepy and obsessive at times. Will was alright, I suppose, not that he did much besides tutor them, be blind, and offer random advice. His being blind was stupid. It served no purpose besides getting a tutor in there for Kyle/Adrian. It bothered me. I don't mean to say that I mind a blind character, more so that the fact that Will is blind was emphasized so much and seemed to be the only character trait Will had besides being a kind tutor. Kendra was just obnoxious. Kyle/Adrian's father was a joke. Honestly, the guy was a news anchor. I don't doubt that the guy had money, but was it seriously unlimited? Kyle/Adrian bought what he wanted when he wanted with his Dad's wonderful Amex. He bought out the entire juniors section in Macy's on a whim when he redid the floor for Lindy. Of the tons of books he bought for her, he made sure to buy two of every one so he could read them as well. The Kingsburys had an apartment in Manhattan, a house out in the woods somewhere, and an enormous five-story apartment somewhere in New York City. And Lindy's dad? Offering out of nowhere to just hand her over to the beast? Yeah, okay. He's a drug user, sure, but did he offer to literally give his daughter to everyone whose things he stole? These people seemed to live in their own tiny, unrealistic world in NYC and I couldn't get absorbed into this novel because of it. Even the dialogue was bad. Characters randomly started speaking differently, having an entire different way of speaking than they had even pages before.

It doesn't even feel to me that Kyle/Adrian and Lindy really loved each other. He spent so much time, it seemed, convincing himself to love her, telling himself that he needed to because she was his only chance to break the spell. It was weird. Maybe Lindy loved him.. I'm not sure, her "love" seemed more like the stupid teenage kind of love where you're crazy in love with absolutely everything about him for a few months at most before breaking up.

There's a line, in fantasy, between what's obviously unreal but is still made believable and what is so ridiculous it can't be believable. In my opinion, Beastly crossed the line into the latter.

The only thing Girl in the Arena did was make me ask questions, and not in the way it was intended to. I still can't figure out when exactly the novel is supposed to be set: if it's in an alternate-reality or in the near future or... what? I don't understand why, if this is set present-day, the government is letting gladiator fights happen. Surely they could stop it any second. Or what about human rights people?

I was also pretty bored by most of this book. It was very, very repetitive until the very end when Lyn actually went into the arena. It seemed like nothing happened through most of it besides everyone avoiding the paparazzi, Allison being off-the-wall constantly (it always annoys me when people call their parents by their first name, like Lyn called Allison), and everyone freaking out about Thad. Not to mention that Thad was not only autistic, but he also made random, chilling prophecies that everyone thought was completely normal. What? And every time he did make one, the characters would ignore it like every other time he had made a prophecy the exact thing Thad said would happen didn't.

There was way too much emphasis on the fact that Lyn is "the daughter of seven gladiators." I swear, if I heard that phrase one more time I was going to throw the book. Lyn mentioned the fact that she was bald and now had a scar the shape of a T in the back of her head at the most random, pointless times.

The formatting of this book, also, was obnoxious and pointless. It added nothing to the story. Every time someone was speaking I usually had to reread the lines a couple times to figure out when they were actually speaking or when they were tagging the dialogue. For instance (I opened to a random page, which happened to be 28):

—I wrote down a name and number for you, he says.
—LeRoy Gangstonguay? New York? And he would be?
—He works in Ceasar's Incorporated. He's down in New York headquarters. If you're ever in a bad strait, this is the guy.
—I don't want this, I say, trying to hand it back to him.
—Just hold on to it. And look, the other thing. . . He pushes the nose of one of his shoes into the wood chips packed around the bench. —Don't feel like you have to come tomorrow.
—No, I want to be there, I say.

It was so distracting, trying to follow when a character was speaking or when their words had faded into actions. I don't understand what Lise Haines was trying to accomplish by not using quotation marks, but whatever the reason was it made this book one star instead of two.

I've spent the better part of two years trying to get through this book on and off, but I'm giving up at page 246 and after skipping ahead to the epilogue. It's so incredibly boring. Don't bother.

This was like reading really, really bad fanfiction.The first three books in this series were so amazing. I wish James Patterson hadn't decimated everything amazing about the Maximum Ride series, but he did, and now we're stuck with stupid excuses for books like this one, 4, 5, and 6.