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The Ballad Of Songbirds and Snakes is here! I am so excited(and a bit nervous) to re enter the world of Panem(is that spelled right?) once again.

Literally the only thing I know about it is we are following Coriolanus Snow and I don’t know how I feel about that…

Did you guys enjoy this character choice or did you really wish she went somewhere else with this book… well we’ll see what I think soon(oh lord please let it be good)!

Talk about a completely unexpected read! When I first started this I was thinking it would just be following our five main characters AFTER fulfilling their prophecy to take down the evil man known as The Dark One. Yes, I did get some of that but Holy Moly did this book take a turn. Getting sucked into an alternate universe? Didn’t see that coming.

Chosen Ones follows Sloane, who is one of the five chosen ones selected to defeat a very destructive man known as The Dark One, who murders by using what is called drains, which literally just rips people to pieces. What brought my attention to this book was that we would be following Sloane and the other chosen dealing with the aftermath of them defeating The Dark One, not following them as they fought The Dark One. Their prophecy has already been fulfilled and I have not read many stories that follow the so called happily ever after.

It is the ten year anniversary of The Dark One’s defeat and a tragedy befalls the chosen ones. One of them has died and when they gather for the funeral, they are taken from their world and pulled into another.

In this world, they are asked to defeat their Dark One which is known as The Resurrectionist. After already having been through a similar fight, they may not be so keen on having to repeat it.

Chosen Ones really kept me hooked through it all. I will say that I really wasn’t expecting the dimension twist. It was not horrible how it was added but I guess my mind thought this story would be more simple. Simple is good in some stories but Veronica Roth definitely went a completely different route than what I had imagined and I’m not mad about it.

I did enjoy it but I would not call it a five star read for me. I have settled on a four star(which is still excellent).

To be honest, I thought this was going to be another island survival book(maybe because of the birds on the cover…I really don’t know why my brain just assumed this). So that goes to show that I didn’t even read anything about it before picking it as an add on for my Book of the Month box(don’t be a dumb dumb like me and pick a book without knowing what it is). Fortunately, that was not a problem in the end.

Dear Edward follows 12 year old Edward Adler after he is the sole survivor of a plane crash, outliving his parents and his brother. It also shows us glimpses of others on the flight before the accident, including a military vet, an elderly wealthy man, a wunderkind, and a hippie woman running away from domestic life.

Edward goes to live with his aunt and uncle who try to protect him from the media and to of course be the type of guardians to give him what he needs.

Before the crash, Edward was usually called Eddie. He accepts being called Edward now because the crash had made him feel like a different person. He feels as if a piece of him still lives in the sky.

Edward becomes friends with his neighbor named Shay, who really becomes an important person in his life and she was responsible for helping bring him back into the light. I feel like he is at his most depressed when he cannot be close to her in certain parts of the book.

After a couple years, Edward finds that his uncle had hidden mail from him, and it is with Shay that he finds the strength to go through all the info his uncle has gathered on the crash and sees that family members and friends of his flight mates have written him, and some with requests.

For example, a woman from the flight was a photographer so her loved one had written to Edward that he should take more photos in his life. Some were a bit more demanding requests but I was happy that a couple were just about their lives or asking about his.

Do I feel it was rude for people to make requests of him? Only the ones written in ways to make him feel bad if he didn’t. Edward didn’t ask to be the only one to survive the crash. Was it luck or fate that he made it and not another soul came close?

Edward and Shay eventually responded to some of the letters and If I remember right, they planned on responding to all of them. I believe connecting with these people and learning more about his flight mates was his biggest light in the darkness.

I read that Dear Edward was actually based on a true story. It was based on Ruben Van Assouw, the soul survivor of a plane crash in 2010. His aunt and uncle did a great job with protecting Ruben, so Ann Napolitano had no way of knowing if he was doing okay. Because of this, she needed to create a set of circumstances under which a little boy in that situation could believably become a whole person, in spite of or even because of what he’d lost(I found this statement on bookclubchat.com).

Dear Edward was an emotional read but it was not a book that brought tears to my eyes. It was more of me watching a young man recover but also knowing that no matter what, it will follow him. But with the support of those left that love him, Edward will live his life to the fullest.

Hey guys! I’ve decided to do some book discussion questions for some of the books I read more than writing reviews. I’m still learning how to write decent reviews and I believe this may help me get there. Now just to warn you, these book discussions will have spoilers in them. What this is is basically like we’re at a book club discussing a book that we had just read so if you have not read the books that I will be posting about but plan on it then you should probably not read that post. If you don’t plan on reading that book or do not care about getting spoiled then I hope you will visit all of my discussions to see my views anyways!

Synopsis:

The Woman In The Window follows our main character named Anna Fox who is not able to leave her home because of a tragic event that has happened to her. She does not leave the house for any reason and others take care of all her needs for her. One of the things she loves to do is spy on the neighbors until one day she sees something she was not supposed to see.

Questions:

I found all of my discussion questions at bookclubchat.com

1. What was your initial impression of Anna? Did it change as the book went on?

Of course I did feel sorry for Anna not being able to leave her house but I was impressed by how she kept herself busy with learning French, playing online chess,etc. She was a woman that had gone through something traumatic but was able to find ways to get through the day. Did it change? A bit when I realized that some of the things that she was doing were not healthy for her at all(other than just staying locked inside of course), like constantly drinking and talking to her deceased husband and daughter.

2. Why do you think Anna was so obsessed with observing her neighbors? How did it make her feel connected to the outside world?

Anna’s life is lived through the computer. She talks to people about their lives and what they’re doing but she is not able to meet with them(espescially since some of them were like her and didn’t leave their home), so she watched her neighbors to actually see into their lives and it could have also reminded her of what her life used to be.

3. Did you believe her husband and daughter were still alive or were you surprised when it was revealed they passed away?

In the beginning I did believe that Anna and Ed were only just seperated and that their daughter was with him. I spoiled it for myself though when looking up discussion questions too early and seeing that they were actually deceased but this didn’t take away my desire to keep reading. I was a little surprised because their conversations were so real to her that I never doubted it.

4. Anna serves as an unreliable narrator. Did you believe that she did see a murder or did you wander if it was in her head/she made it up?

I did start to believe that she was hallucinating because she was taking her pills with alcohol which her doctor had told her a few times not to do, but at the same time I didn’t fully doubt her and I think it was because she still had the photo that the woman who was murdered had drawn for her. Even though that is not a lot to go on it just made me believe that no, this woman is not crazy.

5. Did you suspect Ethan at any point?

Again, I spoiled this for myself while looking up discussion questions but before that no, I didn’t think of him in that way because how vulnerable he acted but that ended up being his trick to keep eyes off of him and to help befriend Anna.

6. What did you think about the many film references Finn included in the story? Several times what’s happening on screen is almost happening in Anna’s world as well.

I liked that addition because there is only so much you can do when the plot mostly takes place in Anna’s house, so that helped add a lot of suspense to the setting and another interest of Anna’s that helped her through the day and some of the movies had connections to past events in her life as well.

I rated The Woman In The window a 5/5! I am so sad that I’ve put off reading this book for over 2 years! It is now on the list of my favorite mystery/thrillers.

Thank you so much for coming to my book discussion! I hope you have an awesome day!

American Dirt follows a woman named Lydia and her son, Luca, who are on the run from their hometown Acapulco in Mexico when a local cartel murders their whole family after Lydia’s husband writes a story on their main man, Javier.

Reporters and journalists in Mexico that mention cartels in their stories put their lives in danger, but Lydia had developed a friendship with Javier before finding out who he is and doesn’t think the story her husband wrote will anger him, but the story costs Javier more than Lydia knows.

I have seen some controversary about this book regarding the author and of course the subject. I will not get too into it but based on some reviews I’ve read, people are saying that the author does not understand what it’s like to go through this situation. This is the first book I’ve read by Jeanine Cummins so I do not know much about her writing or her past. How I viewed this is that she may not really know but she has heard stories and has done some research. This is a story that she could have based off true accounts.

Going back to the story, I could not imagine losing my whole family so violently and just trying to push forward. We follow Lydia and Luca as they overcome many scary obstacles to make it to the border and Lydia having to decide who to trust and who to fear on her way.

There were a few slow parts but that doesn’t mean those parts were unnecesary. No, I don’t know what it is like to be in a situation like this, but this is the first story I have read that has given me some insight to what these migrants go through, or maybe something close to what some have had to go through to escape horrible situations.

Thank you for visiting my blog! Have a nice day!

I know I look crazy because I’m hella tired but I am FINALLY picking up this book after eye balling it for months!

The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren has my favorite hate to love trope. It follows our main characters Olive and Ethan who have seemed to hit the jackpot when they have to take the place of her sister and his brother’s honeymoon when they fall ill from the food served at their wedding. Unfortunately they don’t really get along so they have to agree to a truce so they can enjoy a vacation acting like the newly weds.

I have heard nothing but good things about this book! If you have read The Unhoneymooners what did you think?

Thank you for visiting my blog! 😃

Hey guys! There is only one week left in February and I still have several romances I have failed to read. I highly doubt I will have time to read every single one of these books so I am trying to decide which ones to put my focus on. Which one of the these would you recommend? I plan to spend my days off this week reading so we’ll see just how much I can get through!

What will you be reading this week?

Hey guys! Welcome to my new blog that will focus mostly on what I am reading and…well, basically anything I feel like sharing. To tell you a little about myself, my name is Mattie. I am 23 years old and something that I plan on discussing on this blog is my fight with mental illness. I have been fighting severe anxiety and depression for years now and am on a journey to find ways to help calm my mind and sometimes just finding ways to keep myself busy. Books contribute a lot to keeping my sanity lately and I love to share my thoughts and hear what you guys think as well.

I hope you enjoy my site! I’m happy to have you as a follower

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton