Follow Friday: They are 150 weeks old!

Feature & Follow is hosted by TWO hosts, Parajunkee’s View & Alison Can Read.

 

The goal is to increase blog followers and make friends. Basically how it works is you follow them, they follow you. Win. Win. So looking forward to making new blogging friends & following blogs!

Q: The #FF is 150 weeks old! And we want to hear from you! What would you change about the hop? What do you like about it? Or just suggest a question to be used for next week!

A: As someone who was once one of the featured blogs, I don't think I would change a thing about the program. It was a great way to put my name out there in the blogging world and I found some other cool blogs out there in the process. I also gained some friends from this as well.

So, what about you, would you change anything?

Dare You To by Katie McGarry

e-ARC, 479 pages
Release Date: May, 28, 2013
Published By: Harlequin Teen
Companion (Pushing the Limits, #2)
Source: NetGalley (A HUGE thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this galley! It was given to me in exchahnge for a just and honest review.)
For fans of: Contemporary romance, Sparkly covers, Chick lit, Realistic Fiction, YA

     Ryan lowers his lips to my ear. "Dance with me, Beth."
     "No." I whisper the reply. I hate him and I hate myself for wanting him to touch me again....     "I dare you..."
     If anyone knew the truth about Beth Risk's home life, they'd send her mother to jail and seventeen-year-old Beth who knows where. So she protects her mom at all costs. Until the day her uncle swoops in and forces Beth to choose between her mom's freedom and her own happiness. That's how Beth finds herself living with an aunt who doesn't want her and going to a school that doesn't understand her. At all. Except for the one guy who shouldn't get her, but does....
     Ryan Stone is the town golden boy, a popular baseball star jock-with secrets he can't tell anyone. Not even the friends he shares everything with, including the constant dares to do crazy things. The craziest? Asking out the Skater girl who couldn't be less interested in him.
     But what begins as a dare becomes an intense attraction neither Ryan nor Beth expected. Suddenly, the boy with the flawless image risks his dreams-and his life-for the girl he loves, and the girl who won't let anyone get too close is daring herself to want it all....

*MY THOUGHTS*
          Before I get started though, there was something really cool that happened when I was reading this book. I was just reading this and then I get on Twitter to play for a minute and see this:

     Ok obviously my phone screen shots suck, but yeah, the words are pretty clear... I was on Twitter and reading when I saw Katie mention Taco Bell's drive thru. After I had JUST read the Taco bell drive thru scene in Dare You To! That was like freaking awesome timing lmao 

     Anyways, as you know, Pushing the Limits was one of my favorite reads of 2012, so when I heard about Dare You To, I was superrrrr excited. And then I got upset when I saw that the names were Beth and Ryan and not Beth and Isiah. I was sad that they weren't going to get together, but then I found out the reasoning behind it..... Isiah will get his OWN story, Crash Into You. Mrs. McGarry, you are indeed an evil genius. 

     But even though I wasn't 100% on the Ryan bandwagon in the beginning, the story definitely turned me into a Ryan fan. Granted he's no Noah, but he and Beth had their own story and I loved something about each one of them. As for Beth, its a little hard to say what I thought of her. I loved that she was so passionate about certain things, but that was also her downfall. She was so passionate about the wrong things. Her mother and her past life smh, I would have left it all behind. If I had been her, in that first scene with her mother I would have sent her to jail. She can be fed, clean, and free of the monster in there. But Beth was too busy focusing on the fact that she wanted her mother free, but she didn't think about the fact that even while she's not in jail, she's still not free of the bad things holding onto her. As she held on to all those things, she seemed ungrateful and it was hard to read through her temper tantrums. But as her shell begins to crack, Beth turns into a different person. I loved the person she became when she was finally with Ryan. She had hope and finally knew the real meaning of love.

     When it came to Ryan, he had his own demons following him. His parents are both idiots in my opinion. His father is a man who I could NEVER talk to or understand. So many things in this story he steered his son down the wrong path. I was floored that his mother never said anything about it as scared as she seemed of him. But the persona they put on for their community makes them all seem perfect. To everyone except Ryan. At first I wasn't just in love with him, but as the story went on I began to see why everyone was falling for him so hard. He had to figure out a few things about him self just as Beth had to figure out somethings about her self. 

     Together, their romance felt real and it didn't seem rushed. It was nice to see their changes as things went by. There was so much growth for the both of them throughout the story and it was nice to see that love can really change even the hardest things. 

Overall, I give this

Waiting on Wednesday: 5/22/13

This bookish meme tells the blogosphere what we're waiting patiently (and sometimes not so patiently!) for!

It's hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine.

The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

     Seventeen-year-old Cassie is a natural at reading people. Piecing together the tiniest details, she can tell you who you are and what you want. But it’s not a skill that she’s ever taken seriously. That is, until the FBI come knocking: they've begun a classified program that uses exceptional teenagers to crack infamous cold cases, and they need Cassie.
     What Cassie doesn't realize is that there’s more at risk than a few unsolved homicides— especially when she’s sent to live with a group of teens whose gifts are as unusual as her own.
     Sarcastic, privileged Michael has a knack for reading emotions, which he uses to get inside Cassie’s head—and under her skin. Brooding Dean shares Cassie’s gift for profiling, but keeps her at arm’s length.
     Soon, it becomes clear that no one in the Naturals program is what they seem. And when a new killer strikes, danger looms closer than Cassie could ever have imagined. Caught in a lethal game of cat and mouse with a killer, the Naturals are going to have to use all of their gifts just to survive.

Why I'm waiting: "Seventeen-year-old Cassie is a natural at reading people. Piecing together the tiniest details, she can tell you who you are and what you want. But it’s not a skill that she’s ever taken seriously. That is, until the FBI come knocking: they've begun a classified program that uses exceptional teenagers to crack infamous cold cases, and they need Cassie." Enough said. Plus, we all know I love a good mystery, so I'm all for trying to figure it out before its revealed in the end!

Release Date: November 5, 2013

Published by: Hyperion

What are you waiting on this Wednesday?!

TTT: Fave Book Covers of Books I've Read

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. Each week we will post a new Top Ten list. Everyone is welcome to join.    

This week's topic is:

Top 10 Fave Book Covers of Books I've Read

*These are in no particular order.*

1. That Time I Joined the Circus J.J. Howard

2. Splintered by A.G. Howard

3. Cinder and Scarlet  by Marissa Meyer

4. The Archived  by Victoria Schwab

5. I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga (And this one has an extra surprise underneath it!)

*picture taken from Tumblr

6. Unearthly by Cynthia Hand (The real cover features silver shimmery words!)

7. Firelight and Vanish by Sophie Jordan

8. Apollyon by Jennifer L. Armentrout

9. Dare You To by Katie McGarry

10. Masque of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin

What are your favorite book covers?!

The S-Word by Chelsea Pitcher

e-ARC, 322 pages
Release Date: May 7, 2013
Published by: Gallery Books
Standalone
Source: NetGalley (A review copy was recieved from them in change for a just and honest review.)
For fans of: Mystery, YA, Suicide

     First it was SLUT scribbled all over Lizzie Hart’s locker.     But one week after Lizzie kills herself, SUICIDE SLUT replaces it—in Lizzie's looping scrawl.
     Lizzie’s reputation is destroyed when she's caught in bed with her best friend’s boyfriend on prom night. With the whole school turned against her, and Angie not speaking to her, Lizzie takes her own life. But someone isn’t letting her go quietly. As graffiti and photocopies of Lizzie’s diary plaster the school, Angie begins a relentless investigation into who, exactly, made Lizzie feel she didn’t deserve to keep living. And while she claims she simply wants to punish Lizzie’s tormentors, Angie's own anguish over abandoning her best friend will drive her deep into the dark, twisted side of Verity High—and she might not be able to pull herself back out.
     Debut author Chelsea Pitcher daringly depicts the harsh reality of modern high schools, where one bad decision can ruin a reputation, and one cruel word can ruin a life. Angie’s quest for the truth behind Lizzie’s suicide is addictive and thrilling, and her razor-sharp wit and fierce sleuthing skills makes her impossible not to root for—even when it becomes clear that both avenging Lizzie and avoiding self-destruction might not be possible.

*MY THOUGHTS*
     I was expecting something else from this book. Something else entirely. Normally I wouldn't write a review for this because I didn't even make it to page 50, but I just had to tell someone what I really disliked about this story from its beginning pages. 
     The writing style was terrible. Every other word was hard to follow. Most of the book was about the description about the people in the book. There was no set up for the actual story. It was like the story line was what was at the back of the author's mind and the characters were what was most important. By page 40 something, I was still lost, but knew almost all the cheerleaders and whether or not they started writing the words on the lockers again. This is especially a problem when you're describing the characters like "She had the kind of ass they rap about." and "Rumor has it they mix love spells into their lip balm." Just from those entries you may think its funny, but surrounding the rest of the words in the book, I thought it was stupid. 
     This synopsis stopped me in my tracks when I read it on NetGalley and I just knew it was going to be good. Unfortunately I couldn't get past the writing style to find out. 

Overall, I give this