Review: The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken

Title: The Darkest Minds (The Darkest Minds #1)
Author: Alexandra Bracken
Published: December 18th 2012
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Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Book Depository

When Ruby woke up on her tenth birthday, something about her had changed. Something alarming enough to make her parents lock her in the garage and call the police. Something that gets her sent to Thurmond, a brutal government "rehabilitation camp." She might have survived the mysterious disease that's killed most of America's children, but she and the others have emerged with something far worse: frightening abilities they cannot control.
Now sixteen, Ruby is one of the dangerous ones.
When the truth comes out, Ruby barely escapes Thurmond with her life. Now she's on the run, desperate to find the one safe haven left for kids like her-East River. She joins a group of kids who escaped their own camp. Liam, their brave leader, is falling hard for Ruby. But no matter how much she aches for him, Ruby can't risk getting close. Not after what happened to her parents.
When they arrive at East River, nothing is as it seems, least of all its mysterious leader. But there are other forces at work, people who will stop at nothing to use Ruby in their fight against the government. Ruby will be faced with a terrible choice, one that may mean giving up her only chance at a life worth living.

With dystopians becoming sort of a joke around blogosphere, this book has managed something that very few accomplish—raving reviews and fans everywhere you turn. I was hesitant, to say the least. I was all: “Why did I purchase The Darkest Minds and pre-order the sequel on top of that? Dystopians seem to be not my thing lately.. Why did I follow the hype yet again? It’s going to be bad, I know it.” Fortunately, I had to eat my words, because this book was anything but bad.

“The Darkest Minds tend to hide behind the most unlikely faces.”

Let’s start with the characters. We get to know Ruby—the protagonist—in a pretty intimate way before we jump into big action scenes and get to know her companions for the rest of the book. With dystopians, we usually have main characters who are strong, independent, selfless and pretty kick-a from the start. While Ruby became all of these, she wasn’t heroine-material throughout the first 100 pages and even after that. She was scared to great lengths and who wouldn’t?! The world she lives in is absolutely crazy. We watch her go through immense character growth though and it made me believe in her abilities to become the heart of the story and perhaps even pull off a revolution of sorts.

My favorite  character by far was Zu. Oh, gawd. This little girl with the cutest personality was so humbling and adorable to watch. While Chubs and Liam were great and brought smile after smile on my face, Zu was the real ray of sunshine in this story. The scenes where Zu and Ruby were sharing the stage were really cute to read and I will remember their shopping spree for quite a while. The last thing Zu said wrote to Ruby still haunts my mind and I hope that we will get to the bottom of it soon.

Good news to insta-love haters—no insta-love in sight whatsoever. The relationship between Ruby and her love interest is the very definition of slow-build and had me dying of swoon by the end of the book and, of course, sharing crocodile tears for obvious reasons. *tries not to sob*

The dialogue is written very well and brings fits of giggles and big smiles to this otherwise quite dark tale. With dystopians, we often see books follow this sort of unwritten guideline. While I can’t say that The Darkest Minds didn’t have dystopian characteristics, it was most definitely an original, creative and unique world with a character-driven plot. Not only does Ruby evolve from a scared little duck to a beautiful, brave and strong swan so to speak, we also get to see progress in the secondary characters and it was probably one of my favorite aspects of this book. I also loved the aspect of super powers. BIIIIIIIG superheroes fan here so yes, me approves!

Perhaps I wasn’t as invested in Ruby’s emotional state as I could have been at the beginning. I didn’t cry nor get teary-eyed, but there wasn’t much of a chance either. The first quarter of the book excluded, the rest of it was packed with fast-paced plot and didn’t really slow down with building the world and the characters. While I wasn’t taken aback by all of the revelations, I did find myself turning page after page, eager to find out more.

All in all, I’ll say what almost every other person has been saying since this book came out: READ THIS. I don’t regret for a second that I purchased The Darkest Minds and Never Fade in hardcover and get to read them time and time again. I have marked so many places that made me either swoon, laugh or think. This is most certainly a book, and author, not to be missed and I’m eagerly anticipating what’s next to come.

Overall rating: 4.4 out of 5.0 
Stars: ★★★★

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On My Home Country. Welcome to Estonia!

Since February is the month of love AND it’s also Estonia’s birthday month (February 24th), I thought I’d share something about my home country with you on each Friday this month. Most of you know it’s in Europe, but I’m pretty sure that except for Jenny, who visited Tallinn last summer [her recap post], none of you have ever visited Estonia before.

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It’s one of the smallest countries in Europe as well in the world. We have only 1.3 million people, but there’s a saying that there’s an Estonian in every port in the world. Why? LOL. When you’re travelling and thinking that no one will understand what you’re saying and you can say whatever you want? Haha. That’s not exactly true, because there’s always an Estonian next to you asking: “Tere! Kas te olete Eestist?” which in translation means “Hello! Are you from Estonia?” Oh, no, I’m just practicing for an Estonian test I’m about to take tomorrow. Well, obviously we’re from Estonia lol. Oh, that reminds me, when you go to Egypt or even Gran Canaria aka Spain (true stories) then in every store you go to, the shopkeeper tells you “Tere, tere, vanakere” which means “Hello, hello, old body/person”. It’s an old saying in Estonian to greet one another like that though people rarely use it. The last time I did was when I was in kindergarten because I found the word vanakere to be extremely funny. *eyeroll*

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Estonian flag has 3 colours on it: blue (the sky, lakes and the sea), black (the soil) and white (symbol of trying to achieve happiness and all things made of light). I'm under that flag, btw! It was captured last year during the play-offs of European Championships 2015 in basketball (the um.. where you fight for a place on the ECs.) We got the place and it was literally one of the most incredible things I have ever witnessed. The way the people sang and cheered, it was pretty much amazing and being in the fan sector with my family was the best thing ever. (Our family is big on sports.)

Supposedly Estonian is the second most beautiful language in the world after Italian (based on some survey, but I don't remember where, it was years ago when I read the results). Estonian is very similar to Finnish. If you want to listen to it, you can listen to the song below which talks about how important it is to listen to wind, darkness, light, rainbows, silence, the earth, shadows, your heart and everything that is in the simple moments and tiny details. The guy singing is one of the most loved Estonian singers and he has a voice that really makes you listen. He also won the third (I think) season of Estonian Idol lol.

Estonians are considered to be very cold and reserved. I remember when we I spent 3 weeks with a host family in Torquay, England, there were 5 more girls with me: Austrian (2), Swedish (2) and one girl from Spain. When it was time to say goodbye and ride back to London, the Spanish girl cried like a baby. I basically didn't even know her, I spent my time with other people and she hugged me and sobbed like I was dying while I just stood there and gave an awkward hug back. It was plenty of weird for me. I didn't cry a single tear, but I was still sad. Though, you should see me when I'm reading Point of Retreat or watching Marley & Me, for instance. When we went to see M&M in a theatre with my friends, I laughed over the whole room, because I cried so much it was funny. I couldn't even see the screen lol. Cold and reserved? You betcha! Since I'm adding pictures to illustrate the post, here's me (at 16) that summer with two other Estonian girls and two of our teachers (it was a language camp basically) Phil and Phillip. (I'm the middle one. In case you didn't know.)

Um, what else? We have 4 seasons: spring, summer, fall and winter. Most of us aren’t religious at all. I think there was a survey carried out where Estonians were declares as the most pagan or atheistic people in the entire world. I’m not sure if that holds any water, but there are very few people I know who are even the tiniest bit religious. We do celebrate Christmas though—it’s more like a holiday to celebrate friends, family, love, closeness. Me and my family always spend it with our extended family: we are either at our house (like this year) or at my aunt’s house or my uncle’s place. I know that many countries have 3 Christmas holiday days, but we only have 2. Which reminds me that some say that Estonians are work people—we are supposedly always working. During Chrismas the Old Town looks like this:

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I happened to watch this um.. interview or something with people who had just came off a cruise ship, people from Canada, the States, UK, Denmark, Japan—everywhere actually, and they were asked different questions about Estonia. LOL. People thought that we lived in huts and basically didn’t have any technology whatsoever and were surprised by how modern Tallinn looks like. Well, you know, among the guys who invented/founded Skype were two Estonians and we did have the first e-elections in the world, so. LOL, one of my best friends was a tutor to foreign exchange students in her college last year and people e-mailed her asking if they should bring their own pillows because they didn’t know if we sold these here or not. You have no idea how hard I laughed when my friend told me that.

Ok, that’s it for now, because this post is getting very, very long. If you have any topics you want me to tackle or talk about, just leave them in the comments. I have something planned for Feb 14th, but not for the rest of the month, so anything you want to read about or ask or whatever, I’m basically down with everything. I may talk about local cuisines and people, some you might know or discover (like music artists etc), the Song- and Danceparties etc. I need to think about it, but yes, if you have any ideas, let me know! :)

Review: Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas

Title: Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass #1)
Author: Sarah J. Maas
Published: January 1st 2012
Add It: Goodreads
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Book Depository

In a land without magic, where the king rules with an iron hand, an assassin is summoned to the castle. She comes not to kill the king, but to win her freedom. If she defeats twenty-three killers, thieves, and warriors in a competition, she is released from prison to serve as the king's champion. Her name is Celaena Sardothien.

The Crown Prince will provoke her. The Captain of the Guard will protect her. But something evil dwells in the castle of glass--and it's there to kill. When her competitors start dying one by one, Celaena's fight for freedom becomes a fight for survival, and a desperate quest to root out the evil before it destroys her world.

Honestly, I have kept my eye on this series ever since I discovered it on Goodreads during summer 2012. I’m not quite sure what has kept me from reading it so far, but there’s no excuse since this book... This book was brilliant! My review is mostly about the characters because that’s what makes this thrilling read so special. There are a million things I liked about Throne of Glass, but since I don’t want to bore you all to death, I’m going to name a few. *My apologies though, after writing my review, I couldn't help but notice that it's forever long. I am truly, terribly SORRY, BUT NOT THAT SORRY, my friends:)*

“Sometimes, the wicked will tell us things just to confuse us–to haunt our thoughts long after we've faced them.” 

Main characters

It isn’t a New Adult novel per se, but I really appreciate the fact that the characters are all older than 16. Celaena is 18, Dorian is 19 (if I’m not mistaken) and Chaol is 22. They are still young, but they aren’t in their teenage years. Don’t get me wrong, they’re still searching themselves, but they are way past the beginning of the search. There were five points of views in this book, but the king and Kaltain rarely spoke to us. 

Most of the story is told by Celaena who is an amazing heroine. Her strength was so inspiring. What she has had to endure in her life have made her a captive inside her emotional walls and I enjoyed reading about Dorian, Chaol and Nehemiah breaking these walls down piece by piece. Also, her character is full of contradictions and I love it! The way she can kill a man without breaking a sweat is just one side of this wonderful girl. Celaena is a great friend; she has a wicked sense of humor, drools over books, loves to dress well and come on! She devours a half bag of chocolate in one sitting. What’s not to like?!

Dorian and Chaol. What can I say about these two young men? I really came to care about both of them and even though I’ve been team Chaol from the beginning, I have no issues with Dorian. He’s a prince while Chaol doesn’t have that privilege and they’re still friends. They’re honorable, great and caring. I think that Celaena is the best thing that could have happened to either of them since she brings out the best qualities about them and vice versa. My only problem is that I wish there had been more Chaol POV. Oh, and after that thank you hug in ch. 53? I can’t wait to read Crown of Midnight.

Side characters

There were three side characters I truly enjoyed. One of them was Nox—the evercharming fellow competitor of Celaena. He brought brightness to the training and these Tests for the king’s amusement and I wonder if we’ll see him in the future. I sure hope so. 

Then we have Nehemiah. She was absolutely stunning as a person and her fierce loyalty to her people and her country was breathtakingly beautiful. I adored her friendship with Celaena. You know, there were two times my eyes got misty during the process of reading Throne of Glass and both of them were when I read about these two girls. It’s rare to find a friend like that. 

The third character I found absolutely compelling was Duke Perrington. Say whaaat???? O_O “But Siiri, how could you find that appalling man appealing in any way?” Well, my dear, I’d say that I wasn’t charmed by him in any meaning of the word, but his cunning personality just intrigues me to no end. I wonder what his end game is and I can’t wait to see what he and the king have planned for next. It’s going to be bloody, I’m sure of it.

World, plot and writing

I won’t start telling you about the world because it’s something you have to experience yourself. If you’ve read the book, you know what I’m talking about. I also adored the writing which was intimate even though it was from third person point of view. I rarely enjoy these kinds of narratives, but Maas made me feel like a character in the book rather than a reader outside the book. What’s more, the plot was rather nicely paced. I did feel a bit forced to pick it up when I was about halfway through, but I guess it was needed for character development, because despite being fantasy, this novel is very character-driven. From what I’ve heard, the sequel is non-stop action and plot-twists so… you probably get my excitement. 

So... Should you read it?

I think my last review with such length was Clockwork Princess, but I hope you don’t mind a tad longer review this time. There was truly so much going on and the book was magical just as everyone claims it to be. I can’t believe these books won’t stop until 2017. I know, right? That’s plenty of goodness to look forward to ;) If you haven’t read Throne of Glass yet and love fantasy, swoon-worthy romance, kick-a characters and a great plot, I don’t know why you're still sitting here, reading this review. Go grab it!!!

Overall rating: 4.6 out of 5.0 
Stars: ★★★★★

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January Wrap Up

For the past year I've watched people among blogosphere and booktube wrap up their previous months when it comes to reading, set goals for the next and just talk and gush about all things bookish. I always love reading two of them especially: Amber's [Books of Amber] and Rachel & Jasprit's [The Reader's Den]. Edit: since I forgot to add the giveaway and poll, then these will be added in the next month's wrap up post with double amount of books to choose from. 

January reviews (click on the covers for the links)

Books read in total? The total amount of books I read in January is 20. A LOT, I know. For me it is, at least. I just kind of had the month off except for work, because I managed to do so well last semester that I had zero exams. Plus, three of the books I read were novellas which read extremely fast. February will be a lot more laid back for me.

Lowest and highest ratings were 4.9 and DNF. I gave 5.0 to Under the Never Sky when I re-read it, because I realized that I love absolutely everything about it (even though I gave 3.5 when I first read it.. yep, I don't know how that happened...), but since it's a re-read then it doesn't count in my eyes, so 4.9 it is.

Book boyfriend of the month is a tie between Perry and Roar. I just love them both equally and you cannot make me choose to save my life. The runner-up is Braden Carmichael which Aman totally approves of, I'm sure ;)

Love triangles? There was only one book that had a decent love triangle and that is Hallowed by Cynthia Hand where Christian Prescott *scowls* and Tucker Avery *beams* fight for Clara's heart. Other than that, there were books that held some love-triangely tension, but I wouldn't call them love triangles because the choice is very, very obvious.

What I'm planning on reading... I'm so bad with tbr-s, you have no idea. If I make a tbr, you can be certain that I won't read anything from the list. Though, since Nick is reading The Bone Season this month, I'm planning on reading it with her. Perhaps I'll join the Angelfall readalong with Aman and Janhvi. Perhaps I'll read Cress right away depending on how bad I need it after Scarlet. What's for certain though is that I will read Into the Still Blue BECAUSE. Because!!! I need it more than my next breath basically. So I'm definitely reading this pretty thing:

That's it for me on January. I think I'll take it slow this month, because it's the beginning of spring semester and my final one (hopefully) before I get my BA degree. I need to work on my thesis, finish the semester, graduate, go to work (hopefully more often than last fall), hopefully read some awesome books and hopefully blog without taking huge breaks. Anyhow, I have some questions for you, because I'm nosy like that and want to know :) ...

What were your favorite books last month? Any new book boyfriends I should know about? (Or any old crushes returning to the pages you were reading?) ;) How many books did you read? What are you planning on reading this month?

Review: Sweet by Erin McCarthy

Title: Sweet (True Believers #2)
Author: Erin McCarthy
Published: October 15th
Add It: Goodreads
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Book Depository

Jessica Sweet thought going away to college would finally make her free of her parents’ constant judgments and insistence she play chastity club role model for their church events, but if anything, the freedom has made her realize she can’t go home and be a hypocrite anymore. Tired of dodging their questions, she stays at school over the summer and lands in an unexpected crash pad: Riley Mann’s house.

Sarcastic, cocky, and full of opinions, Riley is also sexy personified with tattoos and biceps earned from working as a roofer all day. Not the right guy for her even if Jessica was looking for a relationship, which she is definitely not. But Jessica knows that Riley hides the burden of having to raise his younger brothers behind that grin and as she helps him get his house in order for a custody hearing, they begin to fall hard for each other, and she is forced to question what she’s hiding herself.

Jessica has never had a problem getting naked with a guy, but when it comes to showing Riley how she truly feels inside, her fear of rejection may just ruin the best thing—the best guy—to ever happen to her…

The fact that I really enjoyed True is still a surprise to me. I didn't expect to enjoy it that much, but I did. Very much so. When I got to the end of the book, there was a sneak peek at the sequel--Sweet. Imagine my surprise when one of my favorite characters--Riley--popped up there ;) Heh. It wasn't that unexpected though, because Jessica and Riley were already planning on living together despite their obvious attraction hate towards each other.

"I didn't go to prom," Riley said.

"You didn't miss a damn thing."

"What I was missing was you," he said.

I loved these characters in book one and boyyy did they have some chemistry together. While Jessica is a wild child of sorts and definitely from the upper class, Riley has had to protect his brothers throughout his whole life. Look after them, provide and care. He's responsible, honest and a sweet, sweet guy (look for proof in the quote above) who is fighting for custody of his youngest sibling Easton. He doesn't think very highly of Jessica at first, but his opinion will soon be shattered because Jessica isn't all that she seems. Their growing respect and friendship was beautiful to watch.

I read it back in October last year and really had a blast with it, though I must say that the constant hot and cold became a bit tiring by the end of it. It had more cute scenes than True--what with the painting, that sports event they attended etc. These scenes had me dying of swoon. *sigh* The constant back and forth kind of killed the mood though. I was ready for them to do something about the boling hot tension and attraction already, but of course they had other ideas. Or rather, Riley had (he isn't much for a fling, he's looking for a relationship) and Jessica was the one who was after him, which in retrospect was a nice change. It's usually the guy after the girl, right? Not to say that Riley didn't have the hots for Jess, he sure did. I just would have liked to have seen it solved a little sooner though.

It was a decent contemporary book, but it didn't exactly stand out hence me giving it 3 stars. There wasn't anything particularly wrong, but if you were to ask me about it in a few years, I probably wouldn't remember much. I will most definitely continue this series though because they are easy to follow, have great characters, sizzling chemistry and a decent plot so.. What's not to like really? Hope you give this series a try, my friends.

Overall rating: 3 out of 5
Stars: ★★★

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