The Selection

Title: The Selection
Author: Kiera Cass
Series: The Selection #1
Publisher: HarperTeen
Published: April 24, 2012
Pages: 327, Hardcover

For thirty-five girls, the Selection is the chance of a lifetime. The opportunity to escape the life laid out for them since birth. To be swept up in a world of glittering gowns and priceless jewels. To live in a palace and compete for the heart of gorgeous Prince Maxon.

But for America Singer, being Selected is a nightmare. It means turning her back on her secret love with Aspen, who is a caste below her. Leaving her home to enter a fierce competition for a crown she doesn't want. Living in a palace that is constantly threatened by violent rebel attacks.

Then America meets Prince Maxon. Gradually, she starts to question all the plans she's made for herself—and realizes that the life she's always dreamed of may not compare to a future she never imagined.                                                              -Goodreads

                                                                                       
When I first read this description was like a month before it came out and I said to myself that I was definitely going to read it. Just look at the cover: it's stunning and beautiful and also the trailer made me want to read it. 

America Singer is a 5 and 17 years old from the Carolina district whose a passionate redhead who is a singer and classical musician. She is very fierce and has a temper just like her mother. She has a secret boyfriend named Aspen and has been dating him for two years since her fifteenth birthday. They end their relationship on something I find completely stupid which was (spoiler, maybe) America made Aspen a pretty great dinner when they met up but he wanted to be the one to spoil her and didn't like her doing that so he broke up with her (spoil done!). Anyway when America turned in the form, of course she'd win and when she first gets there she sees lots of people changing looks wise like someone who was a blond can be turned into a brunette, but she stands her ground and make sure she doesn't look completely different, which I think is amazing and love it. When America and Maxon first meet, it was a bit of a disaster but eventually they became friends but soon they start to have feelings for each other. What I like about the two relationships of love for America is that Aspen's is more passionate and fierce while Maxon's love is light and sweet like puppy love which I think is cute.

Maxon Schreave is the Prince of Illea and is sweet and caring man whose 18. America had only seen him from the castle's TV show and thought he was a stiff and a snobbish man but she soon learned that he was more than that. He  first met America when she has having a break down but he stayed calm and sweet. Maxon has a lot of ideas for Illea and cares for the country and its people. He is in a way extremely innocent because he had never been outside the palace and so he doesn't have any experiences with women but with the help of America that won't last long. 

Aspen Leger is a 6 and is 19 years old from the Carolina district and is the oldest of seven so he has to take care of his siblings and mom. He believes he has to take care of all his loved ones. He was America's secret boyfriend when he cornered her on her fifteenth birthday. Aspen is also the reason America entered the Selection because he wanted her to take the chance. He loves America fiercely and doesn't let her go even when she's in the Selection. In the book, it doesn't end with him breaking up with America. Farther into the book he comes back into the story by becoming a palace guard because he was drafted. At the palace, he is determined to get America back even if it's against the rules and laws.

It only took like a day to read it and the love triangle in it is awesome~. The plot is something special and I really like it. I think a recent trend in Sci-Fi and Fantasy and things like that, a real trend is about the destruction of our government and I sorta like that.

The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight

Title: The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight
Author: Jennifer E. Smith
Publisher: Poppy/Little Brown
Published: January 2, 2012
Pages: 236, Paperback

Who would have guessed that four minutes could change everything?

Today should be one of the worst days of seventeen-year-old Hadley Sullivan's life. Having missed her flight, she's stuck at JFK airport and late to her father's second wedding, which is taking place in London and involves a soon-to-be stepmother Hadley's never even met. Then she meets the perfect boy in the airport's cramped waiting area. His name is Oliver, he's British, and he's sitting in her row.

A long night on the plane passes in the blink of an eye, and Hadley and Oliver lose track of each other in the airport chaos upon arrival. Can fate intervene to bring them together once more?

Quirks of timing play out in this romantic and cinematic novel about family connections, second chances, and first loves. Set over a twenty-four-hour-period, Hadley and Oliver's story will make you believe that true love finds you when you're least expecting it.

                                                                                                             -Goodreads
                         
 I LOOOOVE this book. I think it's cute yet quirky.
Hadley Sullivan's father left her family when he went to Oxford to be a professor but met a woman and had an affair before he had a divorce. Hadley isn't ready to forgive or meet the woman who took away her father. Hadley is forced to go to England to go to the wedding of her father and a woman who she's never met but she had missed her plane by four minutes and is forced onto a later plane. As she's waiting for next plane and some other things had happened that caused her and Oliver to spent some time together waiting for the plane. While boarding the plane Oliver sat in the seat next to get 18B when his seat was 18C. They start chatting as passengers get on the plane and it was cute when the old lady let Oliver take her seat and she sat in 18C, thinking that Oliver and Hadley were a couple.

Oliver is an 18 year old British boy who goes to Yale. Through out the entire book Hadley tries to figure how Oliver's major and that is where the title came in: 

               She can hear the smile in his voice. "I'm doing my summer research project on different styles of dancing." 
             "So does that mean we'll be doing the tango next?"
             "Only if you're up for it."
             "What are you really studying?"
             He leans back to look at her. "The statistical probability of love at first sight."
                                                                          -page 235

He also has a past he isn't the most proud of and we learn what he was really doing in England.

Throughout the plane ride Oliver distracts Hadley and tries to make her feel better because of she's claustrophobic. When they both stand to use the restroom they have an intimate moment (and some other moments). >.< Anyway... They share a passion and both have some past that they have to move past and they do that for each other. Both have and had had family issues and flaws that brought them closer. They both just kept coming after each other.

They both end up in a way helping and fixing each other. Both accept each other for what's happened. The book teaches a lot about lost, hope, and love at first sight.

Pushing the Limits

 

 

Title: Pushing the Limits
Author: Katie McGarry
Series: Pushing the Limits #1
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Published: July 31, 2012
Pages: 392 (+ Excerpt=403), Hardcover

No one knows what happened the night Echo Emerson went from popular girl with jock boyfriend to gossiped-about outsider with "freaky" scars on her arms. Even Echo can't remember the whole truth of that horrible night. All she knows is that she wants everything to go back to normal.But when Noah Hutchins, the smoking-hot, girl-using loner in the black leather jacket, explodes into her life with his tough attitude and surprising understanding, Echo's world shifts in ways she could never have imagined. They should have nothing in common. And with the secrets they both keep, being together is pretty much impossible.

Yet the crazy attraction between them refuses to go away. And Echo has to ask herself just how far they can push the limits and what she'll risk for the one guy who might teach her how to love again.                                                                                -Goodreads

   

Okay... So when I read the little summary I was a little wary about getting the book but after a while the book kept calling me to read it. So I finally bought the book and was shocked about how amazing the book was! I enjoyed the two point of views between Noah and Echo. Both of them had pasts that were hard to deal with and both wanted to move past but they couldn't until they met each other. And when you figure the tragedies then you could be really hurt. When I read the beginning, the arguments Echo and her family had made me want to laugh at little because of how much she hated it them. At first I hated the Dad but eventually I loved like Echo did. Also how I hated the couple that took in Noah's brothers and thought they were wrong to keep Noah's brothers but I also loved them in the end. The way Katie wrote the book made me feel like I was actually there and experiencing it. It only took me like (technically) three days.

Echo Emerson has been through a traumatic night that ruined everything for her nearly two years ago. She also lost her brother after he joined the Army. That night somehow her mother was involved and now she has scars all over her arms. It turns out the she had suppressed the extremely traumatic night into the entire day. The night terrors she has at night turns out to be her memories coming and going but had been forced into therapy by her pushy father and stepmother who she had despised and had been her former babysitter,Ashley, to remember that night. But that isn't her only problem. Her father has been pushing into business classes but her passion stays in art. Ashley is also pregnant with a child and her father only focuses on Ashley. He seems to be ready for a normal family and so he's trying to fix Echo and Ashley's baby will also help with the "normal" family. Echo lost her popularity, her friends, her family and boyfriend to that one night.

Noah Hutchins is bad boy, drug-user, and girl-user with a goal to unite with his brothers again after a house fire took his family away. He is considered "emotionally unstable" by Social Services and has limited visits to his brothers. To gain custody, he has to prove his worthiness and believes the current family the inhabits his brothers are abusing them. His goal begins to change after spending time with Echo. The more time they spend together the more of choice he has to pick. His brothers or Echo? And I loved the outcome.

When they first met it was a little...ok, it was a huge disaster. When Echo left Mrs. Collins's office (I LOVE Mrs. Collins) and sits down waiting for the dates to the ACT and SAT (forced to take again because of the control freak of a father), Noah happened to have been sitting down the row from hers, but he happened to have said the most stupidest thing possible:

                "You've got a fucked-up name," I mumbled. I didn't know why I wanted to rattle her, I just did.
               "Shouldn't you be getting high in the bathroom?"
               So she did know me. "They installed security cameras. We do it in the parking lot now."
               "My bad." Her foot rocked frantically back and forth.
               Good, I'd succeeded in getting under that perfect facade.
"Echo...echo...echo..."
               Her foot stopped rocking and red curls bounced furiously as she turned to face me. "How original. I've never heard that before." She swept up her backpack and left the office. Her tight ass swayed side to side as she marched down the hallway. That wasn't nearly as fun as I'd thought it would be. In fact, I kind of felt like a dick.
                                                           -page 20, Noah's POV

But that didn't stop fate from making them meet over and over. Mrs. Collins also butted in and Echo became Noah's math tutor which is also when he saw her scars. They were in the parking lot and she slipped and when he grabbed her, he saw the scars but he wasn't revolted, he asked instead. And that's where their relationship began.

Some flaws I found where that sometimes I just felt like skipping parts but I didn't because I knew that they were important to the plot. Also some details were... I have no way to describe it's that I guess the scene would cause an emotion I wouldn't want whether it's a scene that will make me grin like an idiot or the protagonists fight.

Welcome!

My First Post! Yay! I have always been meaning to start a book blog and now my dream is about to be reality. I review YA and Paranormal books! I will try hard to do good reviews (not great because I don't want to set the bar to high) Thanks! (soo... short post -.-)