Cova Reviews | To All The Boys I've Loved Before - Jenny Hann

Hey, guys! First of all, Merry Christmas everyone! I have been away for some time due to my finals, but I am back to say goodbye to 2016 :D Today I bring to you a YA, contemporary novel by Jenny Han - To All The Boys I've Loved Before (the first of the to-be trilogy To All the Boys I've Loved Before). I hadn't heard a lot about this novel, but what I'd  heard was great, so I (wrongly) decided to pick it up just before my exams period. I started listening to the audiobook, but then I just really wanted to know what was going to happen next quicker than the audiobook would let me and I picked up the e-book. I absolutely loved this novel! But let's just get right into the details :) 

To All the Boys I've Loved Before is about a girl named Lara Jean who has the habit of writing a love letter to every boy she likes when she stops liking them. She keeps them in a box, and never sends them -it's just so she can move on, like a good-bye letter. The thing is that one day, the letters are somehow sent to the boys, and her secrets exposed.

Cova Reviews | Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline

I HAVE FINALLY GOTTEN AROUND TO READ THIS BOOK! Ever since I first heard about it I've been wanting to read it! (just thought you should know about my excitement haha).

As an introductory introduction, Ready Player One is a young adult, science-fiction, dystopian novel by Ernest Cline. It is his first novel and... Holy crap. 

It follows our main character Wade Watts, who lives in the year 2044, in which technology has gone through great changes, but the energy crisis makes the world not a very nice place to live in. Both his parents are dead, and so he lives with his aunt, who steals away his food rations as a payment method for letting him live at her place. The odd thing about the year 2044 is that everyone seems to live inside the OASIS, a virtual reality created by the greatest videogame designer James Halliday. In the OASIS, you can go to school, make your own business, visit thousands of planets and basically do whatever it is you can think of. The thing is now, Halliday dies at age sixty-seven with no-one to leave his insane fortune to, so at the time of his death, a video is released in which he says he's set up a contest inside the OASIS: the first person to find the Easter egg he's hidden somewhere inside the virtual empire will inherit everything he owns. 5 years after the first clue was released by the multibillionaire, after almost everyone had given up, a name appears at the top of the scoreboard.

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer (Michelle Hodkin)

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin is one of those books I look forward to rereading every time. I have done so 3 times already, and I love it every single time. It is a Young Adult, kind of fantasy, kind of mystery novel about love, friendship and mental health (which I personally find fascinating). It's the first novel to the Mara Dyer Series.

"Mara Dyer believes life can't get any stranger than waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there.

It can.

She believes there must be more to the accident she can't remember that killed her friends and left her strangely unharmed. 

There is.

She doesn't believe that after everything she's been through, she can fall in love. 

She's wrong." (Goodreads)

A Thousand Pieces of You - Claudia Gray

Hello everybody! I know it's been quite a long time since I last posted anything. Being a college student is hard! As you may know if you follow me on Twitter, I have a few reviews to write, so I'll start posting them whenever I get the chance.  

As for this one, it is about A Thousand Pieces of You, by Claudia Gray. It is a young adult, science-fiction (some even say fantasy, though I wouldn't quite agree) novel - the first part of the Firebird Series.

"Cloud Atlas meets Orphan Black in this epic dimension-bending trilogy by New York Times bestselling author Claudia Gray about a girl who must chase her father's killer through multiple dimensions.
Marguerite Caine's physicist parents are known for their groundbreaking achievements. Their most astonishing invention, called the Firebird, allows users to jump into multiple universes—and promises to revolutionize science forever. But then Marguerite's father is murdered, and the killer—her parent's handsome, enigmatic assistant Paul— escapes into another dimension before the law can touch him.
Marguerite refuses to let the man who destroyed her family go free. So she races after Paul through different universes, always leaping into another version of herself. But she also meets alternate versions of the people she knows—including Paul, whose life entangles with hers in increasingly familiar ways. Before long she begins to question Paul's guilt—as well as her own heart. And soon she discovers the truth behind her father's death is far more sinister than she expected.
A Thousand Pieces of You explores an amazingly intricate multi-universe where fate is unavoidable, the truth elusive, and love the greatest mystery of all." (Goodreads)

Scarlet (The Lunar Chronicles 2) - Marissa Meyer

Hello once again! This post will be about the second novel to The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer. The first novel of the series -Cinder- already has a review on the blog, which you can find here. 

As you may know, I am taking part in two challenges at the moment: 2016 Finishing the Series Challenge and the 2016 Audiobook Challenge, and Scarlet qualifies for both! I did listen to this novel in audiobook, and The Lunar Chronicles is one of the series I am aiming to finish by the end of the year :) yay!

"Cinder, the cyborg mechanic, returns in the second thrilling installment of the bestselling Lunar Chronicles. She’s trying to break out of prison—even though if she succeeds, she’ll be the Commonwealth’s most wanted fugitive. 
Halfway around the world, Scarlet Benoit’s grandmother is missing. It turns out there are many things Scarlet doesn’t know about her grandmother or the grave danger she has lived in her whole life. When Scarlet encounters Wolf, a street fighter who may have information as to her grandmother’s whereabouts, she is loath to trust this stranger, but is inexplicably drawn to him, and he to her. As Scarlet and Wolf unravel one mystery, they encounter another when they meet Cinder. Now, all of them must stay one step ahead of the vicious Lunar Queen Levana, who will do anything for the handsome Prince Kai to become her husband, her king, her prisoner."(Goodreads)

Fangirl - Rainbow Rowell

Hello everyone :) Today I bring to you Fangirl - a young adult, contemporary novel written by Rainbow Rowell - a book which so many people are talking about. 

Honestly, I had seen Fangirl in bookshops so many times before, but I did not bring myself to buying it until quite recently after I read and watched so many good reviews about it. It is nothing like what I thought it was going to be. It is the first novel I read from the author, and I am really happy I did.

"A coming-of-age tale of fan fiction, family and first love. 
Cath is a Simon Snow fan.
Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan...
But for Cath, being a fan is her life—and she’s really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it’s what got them through their mother leaving.
Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.
Cath’s sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can’t let go. She doesn’t want to.
Now that they’re going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn’t want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She’s got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words... And she can’t stop worrying about her dad, who’s loving and fragile and has never really been alone.
For Cath, the question is: Can she do this?
Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? Writing her own stories?
And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?" (Goodreads)

Cinder - Marissa Meyer

I was lucky enough to win Amanda's Back to School giveaway at her blog Orandi et Legendi, from which I got this book which I really wanted to read. I am very grateful to her for that :) 

Cinder is a Young Adult, fantasy novel inspired in the classic Cinderella - the first of The Lunar Chronicles' trilogy by Marissa Meyer. 

"Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl.
Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future." (Goodreads)

Thirteen Reasons Why - Jay Asher

Thirteen Reasons Why is a Young Adult, fiction novel which tells us the story about a guy, Clay Jensen, who randomly receives a box with his name on it in which he finds seven double-sided tapes recorded by his deceased friend Hannah Baker, explaining the 13 reasons why she decided to commit suicide. Only those people who made the list will ever listen to the tapes, which leaves us with one single question - what did Clay do to be in the list?

I found this book absolutely refreshing. The story is just so original and creative, and the flow of the story is very good. This is the first book I ever decided to listen to on audiobook, and I think I made such a good choice! I wasn't really sure about listening to something you are meant to read, but if you ever think about trying it out, this book definitely is the right one to do so because the story is mainly the tapes of Hannah Baker explaining her story, so I literally felt as if I was listening to the tapes. Moreover this audiobook has two different voices - a male one for the part narrated by Clay and a female one for Hannah Baker's tapes, which I think is a brilliant idea. The audiobook definitely got a 5/5 from me. If you ever have the chance, please try it out. 

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe - Benjamin Alire Sáenz

When I first heard of this book, I was a bit cautious with it because I thought the title implied it being a middle-school read which I wouldn't enjoy as much. However, I heard and read so many good reviews on it that I changed my mind about it, and decided to buy it. Here's what I thought about it.

First of all, let me please tell you that if you are thinking that maybe you'd like to read it, don't rely on the back-cover insight to the story. It's pretty poor, and it will make you think of it as a boring on, which is not.

It is about two 15-year-old boys, Ari and Dante, who don't really have many friends, and find each other at the town's swimming pool. From that moment on, they become really good friends, and you'll start knowing more about the two of them as the story goes on - as will them, really.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs

I read this book a couple of months ago and I really, really enjoyed it. It was, indeed, quite peculiar  itself. 

It is about a boy, Jacob Portman, who convinces his parents to let him travel to Wales (The UK) in order to learn about the truthfulness of his grandfather's stories -- who has recently died in what seems to Jacob some very strange circumstances. The old man used to tell him stories about his notoriously exceptional adventures with some really strange friends of his in an orphanage for war refugee children when he was little. At some point he stopped believing them, but he's not so sure they're not true anymore...

I have to say I bought this book for its appealing title and wonderful cover, but it definitely did not let me down. I found the story very new and original, and I surely did not expect what was coming. I think the characters are very interesting -- the main one is quite strongly developed while the rest are not a much, though I believe it was made on purpose, so nicely done (no spoilers, you'll see!). 

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender - Lesley Walton

Simply wonderful.

To my great misfortune, I was once mistaken for an angel

I am completely destroyed by the effect this book had on me. As a quick description, I will just say it is such a beautiful story, so beautifully written. 

"Magical realism, lyrical prose, and the pain and passion of human love haunt this hypnotic generational saga.
Foolish love appears to be the Roux family birthright, an ominous forecast for its most recent progeny, Ava Lavender. Ava—in all other ways a normal girl—is born with the wings of a bird.
In a quest to understand her peculiar disposition and a growing desire to fit in with her peers, sixteen-year old Ava ventures into the wider world, ill-prepared for what she might discover and naïve to the twisted motives of others. Others like the pious Nathaniel Sorrows, who mistakes Ava for an angel and whose obsession with her grows until the night of the Summer Solstice celebration.
That night, the skies open up, rain and feathers fill the air, and Ava’s quest and her family’s saga build to a devastating crescendo.First-time author Leslye Walton has constructed a layered and unforgettable mythology of what it means to be born with hearts that are tragically, exquisitely human." (Goodreads)

Cova Reviews | Will Grayson, Will Grayson, by John Green and David Levithan

Will Grayson, Will Grayson tells the story of two guys who have the same name - there are two guys called Will Grayson living nearby. They do not know each other, and their lives are pretty different: one of them has a stable family, with two surgeon parents and a gay best friend; the other Will Grayson lives with his mum, needs pills for his mental health issues, does not want any friends and has a big secret. Eventually their lives intertwine in the most unexpected circumstances. Will Grayson, Will Grayson is a book about love, friendship and finding one's sexuality.

As you have probably already noticed, it is written by two different authors, who have tremendously different writing styles. They write alternate chapters, each of which is about a different Will Grayson. This means that each author writes only about one of the Graysons, following the order Green, Levithan, Green, Levithan... This makes the book and the characters so much richer, because the writing of the authors is as different as the two main characters, shown through the 1st person narration. 

Sway, by Kat Spears

"Boy meets girl. 

Boy charms girl...

For someone else."

Sway is a young adult novel about a guy, Jesse Alderman, who makes a living at school out of arranging stuff for people. Whatever you want, he can get for you. He has everything under control, but one day he is asked by the captain of the football team at school to get him the most beautiful girl in the school, Bridget Smalley, whom he's asked out before, with no good result. However, everything is turned up-side down when Jesse starts to have feelings for this girl, who is not only pretty, but also the most attentive, intelligent, and good person.

I personally really enjoyed this book, mainly because the story is original and refreshing. 

The writing is good, though nothing spectacular. Spears uses different types of language depending on the situation the main character is in, which also helps the reader learn things about Jesse's personality, and the style changes quite a lot when the narrator (Jesse) talks about Bridget.

The characters in general are well developed, and I think the author did something quite impressive and original with the main character: the reader learns more things about him, his past and what he does the more he realises that he likes the girl. As it is written in first person, it feels as if he started giving secrets away to the reader the more he opened his heart to himself.

Something else that really caught my attention is that the chapters are very much differentiated one from another, which I am still not sure how I feel about as, even though it is another thing that makes the book original, also causes for a certain discontinuity in the plot.

What really got to me was the story per se, and the development of the main character throughout the book. He makes decisions that, even thought are not the ones I would have made, are justified through his beliefs and the consequences that different ones would have brought. As you read further, you learn enough about him as to guess the lies he tells other characters and himself, which is somewhat rewarding.

I really liked this book as a whole, and I gave it a 3.5 out of 5 stars (3 stars on Goodreads).

Let me know what you thought about it or the feelings you got from the review!

wonderful literature.

The Ruining - Anna Collomore

I will start this review by stating that I find psychological thrillers quite very interesting. I think that novels that take into account the complexity of the human mind and all the problems that this carries along can either be fantastic and blow your mind, or simply just not quite get to you.

The Ruining is about a young girl, Annie Phillips, who moves from Detroit to San Francisco on her first year of university. She has a difficult relationship with her family, so she sort of runs away to the house that will be her home for the rest of the school year - the Cohen family, for whom she will work as a babysitter in order to earn money to pay for her university fees. She is very excited to start over. However, what seems like a dream will not look like so for too long, and everything will turn upside down, and eventually Annie will start wondering whether she's becoming crazy.

In my opinion, The Ruining, by Anna Collomore had all the chances to be a fantastic novel: the plot was interesting, and the way the author treated the psychological part of it was actually pretty decent. However, what made me quite dislike this novel is the writing of the author.  If the writing had been right, she could have written such an amazing novel... 

Let me explain myself. First of all, the length of the book is roughly 300 pages, which is not long enough to develop the plot that the author presents. This causes for the story to go too fast at times and for parts of the book to be unclear, which confuses the reader. Quite a few times I got the feeling that I had skipped parts of the book and found myself going back a few pages, unsuccessfully trying to find answers. Also, I think the way the main character reacts to situations is not believable sometimes. These two points made me consider a couple of times stop reading the book and just forget about it.

Anna and the French kiss - Stephanie Perkins

Hey there!

Anna and the French kiss is a romantic novel for teens. 

The story is about an American girl, Anna, who is forced by her father to spend her senior year of high school in a boarding school in Paris. There, she makes new friends, but she starts feeling attracted to one in particular, Étienne St. Clair. However, he has a girlfriend, so she starts denying to herself that she actually really likes him, because she know it's impossible. Moreover, one of her new friends, Meredith, has an eternal crush on him too, and she can't do that to her.

In general, the story isn't anything that I haven't seen before: girl is annoyed about moving away from her friends, girl meets boy, boy makes her forget about her past in her old town, they fall in love. The fact that he has a girlfriend and she left the possibility of a "something" with a guy back in Atlanta could be the addition to this typical romance. But, as you go through the story you'll find that there are other topics (that I won't mention, due to a possible spoiler) that have been quite used as well and, honestly, when I got to a particular one, I thought "Oh, please, not again". Luckily, that particular topic I'm talking about and that you'll surely recognise when you read he book is not a huge part of the novel and does not interrupt the flow of the story. The book as a whole is quite entertaining - not too long (around 400 pages), and quite a good one for in-between long, complex books. 

Something else that caught my attention is that in this book, the main male character (Étienne) is not the typical strong, tall, perfect guy. He does have that self-confidence factor, but he also has some weak points that make him unique, and I think that is something many authors lack lately. I'd say he is quite an interesting character.

The writing is quite simple and thus the book is easy to read. 

Overall, I quite liked it, and I gave it a 3.5 out of 5 stars (3 stars on Goodreads). Hopefully you'll soon get used to my rating and will understand what I mean with these numbers!

See you soon!

wonderful literature.

Bird Box by Josh Malerman

Hello everyone! Today I bring to you my thoughts about a book unlike any I have read before. Bird Box is classified as a Horror Book in webpages, but I wouldn't say it's one of the most scary ones - not that I have read many horror novels. It really impressed me because it is completely different from what I am used to reading. I am not going to write any synopsis because I didn't read any before getting myself into this wonderful book, so I'd recommend that you do the same. I will write something for you, though - the little text that made me buy it in that bookstore:

If you've seen what's out there... it's already too late.

Most people dismissed the reports on the news. 

But they became too frequent; they became too real. 

And soon it was happening to people we knew. 

Then the Internet died. 

The televisions and radios went silent. 

The phones stopped ringing 

And we couldn't look outside anymore.

This and, let's be honest, the awesome paperback cover of the edition I bought made me not think twice about buying this book, and it definitely did not let me down. 

The story is absorbing, and the characters are very interesting. You keep wanting to know where it is the writer is trying to go, and WHAT IS HAPPENING. I think Malerman did a very good job keeping the suspense, but it really killed me... Also, the story itself is very, very original.

The characters are interesting, and it seems as if every one of them has a specific role in the story. There are no characters just standing in the background. Very well done!

I gave it 4.5 out of 5 stars (4 stars on Goodreads), and the only factor that took away that one half star is that it lacked that special factor that kind of forces you to not close the book until you get to the very end - even though, as I said, the story did keep me reading. Also, I found it a bit slow at times. Other than that, I really did enjoy it. 

I would definitely recommend this book to book lovers in general. It's easy to read and the story is very refreshing.

Happy reading!