Best of 2013

Now I know this is a little different to things I normally do on here, but I thought in celebration of the New Year (which is in two days! where has this year gone?!) I'd do a "Best of 2013" post, which I guess is similar to the last post I did, but I thought I'd better do it now if I was going to do it.
So here it is, the best books, movies, and authors during 2013!

Best Books
For me, this year, I have discovered so many great books, but these two were my favourite-
The Fault in Our Stars
Published in early 2012, and written by King of Young Adult, John Green, this book was one of my favourites I've read all year. It follows the journey of two cancer patients and their love story. It is a fantastic book which has had lots of critic acclaim and I suggest you get on this train soon before it becomes a huge thing when the movie comes out next year. I think this is on it's way to being a modern classic.

Clockwork Princess- Infernal Devices 3
Published in March 2013, this was the stand-out book published this year for me. It is the conclusion to the wonderful Infernal Devices trilogy by Cassandra Clare, the writer of the Mortal Instruments series. I love this trilogy, which is set in nineteenth century England, and focuses on Shadowhunters, the secret community of half-angel half-human beings who live to fight demons and protect our world. At the moment it is being considered as a possible TV show, which I think would be pretty good if they could pull it off! So I suggest getting yourself a copy of Clockwork Angel, the first in the series, and reading them all.

Best Movies
A lot of book-movie adaptations came out this year, along with other movies that were really great, so here's my favourites.
Warm Bodies
This was a brilliant movie. Released in February 2013, and starring Nicholas Hoult and Teresa Palmer, this has to be one of my favourites. Based on the book with the same title, my friends and I affectionately call it a "zom-rom-com", a zombie romantic comedy. It is hilarious and beautiful, and most of all, full of zombies! Most characters are lovable, particularly R and Julie and their friends. It's set in a post-zombie apocalyptic world, where zombies roam around and humans are forced to lock themselves away. But one zombie falls in love, and turns everything upside-down. I suggest this to anyone who likes a good supernatural romance with a bit of comedy.

The Great Gatsby
Released in May 2013, this film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Carrey Mulligan was of course, huge. I didn't expect to like it as much as I did, however. I love the 20s; I love all the glamour and parties and everything about them, so I guess I should have known I'd like it. This movie, adapted from the classic with the same name, was fabulous. It follows the story of Jay Gatsby, a mysterious man with a mysterious past, who throws extravagant parties every weekend. Nick Carroway unknowingly moves in next door to Gatsby, and gets tangled up in his dreams and hopes. This was filmed brilliantly, acted brilliantly and the soundtrack was fantastic. I really, really liked it.

Best New Authors I've Discovered
There are a few authors who have written things I think deserve to be huge hits, because they are so good. Here are the authors who've written them.
Gemma Malley
Gemma Malley is the writer of The Declaration series. She is a beautiful writer; her words and characters jump out of the book and grab you, pulling you into the story. I admire her way with prose, and the way she writes things out, because it is so beautiful. She will turn something she needs to write that is very mundane into something to behold. But under all the beauty, there is extremely dark things happening, and the whole thing just engrosses you. Her world building is the best I've seen since Harry Potter; she creates a world so believable and scary that you start believing that this is the future. I seriously suggest you run to a book store or library and grab a copy of this book.


Melissa Keil
Melissa Keil is the author of a romantic comedy called Life in Outer Space, which I managed to get my hands on an uncorrected bound proof copy of. It's such a cute, happy book with realistic characters and brilliant storyline. It was released earlier this year, and it really reminded me of a John Green book (with less characters dying). It made me laugh and made me smile, and I really think it deserves to be up there with The Fault in Our Stars and other bestselling YA novels. Its story focuses on a boy called Sam, who is a self-proclaimed geek and in his eyes, in no need of girls. But then a quirky girl called Camilla enters the picture and messes up all his life plans of staying in his room playing World of Warcraft forever. Its so sweet and cute and really just an awesome book. I really recommend it.

So these are the Best of 2013. I hope you enjoyed this post and as always, comment, tweet (to either @awordisanarrow or @lilypherondale) and share your opinions! Also, if you leave a comment, be sure to leave your twitter name there and I will follow/shout you out!
Anyways have a lovely, lovely New Year!
Love,
Lily xoxo

My Favourite Books So Far

A quick collection of my favourite books I've ever read… No spoilers, just quick synopsises and explanations. Enjoy :)

• Harry Potter series- as per usual, this series is still my most favourite book series ever. If you  haven't read Harry Potter, you are most definitely missing out on not only a fantastic story but thousands of references and a world-wide phenomena.

• Mortal Instruments series- this falls in place behind Harry Potter purely because it is brilliant. This is a urban fantasy set in New York about a group of demon hunters called Shadowhunters. The story follows Clary Fray, a teenage girl who stumbles into the world of the Shadowhunters and realises she's more involved than she thought. It is a great series and I highly recommend it to everyone and anyone. The first book is called 'City of Bones' and the series is by Cassandra Clare.

Infernal Devices series- being the prequel series to The Mortal Instruments, written after the Mortal Instruments, you would assume that these books were just a lazy attempt for more money. Well, that might be a little harsh, but you get my drift. But no. I have a hard time deciding whether TID takes over TMI's glory. Similarly to TMI, TID focuses on a girl who falls into the world of the Shadowhunters. However, this series is set in nineteenth century England. I recommend you read this after TMI. The first book is 'Clockwork Angel' by Cassandra Clare. 

• Coraline- this spooky book by the brilliant Neil Gaiman, a girl who loves adventuring finds a small door in the drawing room of her new house, and a whole world behind the door unfolds in creepy and scary glory. This is one of my al time favourites; not a hard read exactly but quite creepy. You may know it by the film directed by Tim Burton based on the book. One of my favourite movies as well. I recommend this to anyone who likes a little scare and a good adventure.

• Divergent series- I read this series just over a year ago and the final book, Allegiant, just came out a few months ago. I literally sobbed. It's a dystopian series where the city is divided into 'factions' based on their personalities. It is an action-packed series with different characters and good morals behind the story. Once you finish, you can read my Allegiant Review and we can discuss! The first book is called Divergent by Veronica Roth.

the ever-growing collection of books...

• Once, Then, Now and After (four books)- this series is about a boy, Felix, living in Nazi Germany, and his struggle to keep himself and his friend/adopted sister Zelda safe. It is one of my childhood favourites, and is content suitable for ten years and up. The first two books focus on their journey whilst living in Germany, but then the third book, Now, skips to the future and we see Felix as a grandfather, and his modern life in Victoria, Australia with his granddaughter, named after his adopted sister, Zelda. In the fourth book, we once again travel back to Nazi Germany where Felix is thirteen years old, and we see the last snippet of his story. The first book is called 'Once' and the series is by Morris Gleitzman.

• The Declaration series- I have only read the first book in this series (look forward to a review soon) but it was absolutely fantastic so I can only assume the others wifollow. I will update as I read them. It is another dystopian, but what makes this one different is the main character. I won't spoil her, but you must read this series, because I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I can't wait for the rest of the series to arrive in the mail! The first book is called 'The Declaration' and it's by Gemma Malley.

The Fault in Our Stars book and quote

• The Fault in Our Stars- I refer to John Green by two nick-names- King of YA and The Breaker of Hearts. When you combine the two, you get this wonderful book. This book is extremely highly acclaimed and it has reason to be. It is fantastically written, a great story, characters that you fall in love with, everything. This particular novel focuses on a girl, Hazel, and a boy, Augustus, who are both cancer patients and their battles with it. It is beautiful, it makes you laugh and cry and cry some more. I highly recommend it.

So that's the best books I've read so far. Of course, there are more, so if you enjoyed this, just say in the comments below or tweet me at @awordisanarrow and I'll do another list. Also, if you've read or want to read any of the above books, say and I will write a review for them. And as always, any books you want me to read and review, any comments, questions or etc just leave them in the comments or tweet me and I'll get back to you as soon as possible :)
I'm also having a lot of trouble using the blogger formatting system it just resists me... so if you have any tips, feel free to offer them up, but otherwise please forgive me if the formatting may be a little sloppy.

Have a lovely day!

lily xo

Beastly Book Review

Okay so today I finished a book called Beastly, by Alex Flinn, which is essentially about an arrogant jerk who is all about looks and beauty who learns his lesson through ticking off a witch and her casting a spell on him.

I think people who like high-school sort romances and cute stories that are plays on classic fairy tales will quite like this book, as it is a quite obvious play on Beauty and the Beast. It is quite didactic in its whole story and all, so it does have a moral and meaning.

Okay so if you are still intrigued and haven't read it, go read it now, come back and we can discuss! Bye!

**SPOILER SECTION**

So let's start with the characters.

Kyle: I normally really love the arrogant jerks in books (to some extent) so when I disliked Kyle I was pretty sure things were looking grim. He wasn't a super- endearing character, but they never are, but really, I just disliked reading from his perspective. As his character progressed, I still didn't love him, but I also didn't hate him as much. I think when he became Adrian I just wished for someone else's perspective, because he went from being so horrid and boring that I didn't like him to being so kind and boring that I didn't like him. It was disappointing, but there have been worse characters I've heard narrate. I also didn't like how he went about finding his love, and about finding Lindy. I feel like the way they did it wasn't realistic, but I'll delve into that later.

Will: I think out of all the main characters, Will was my favourite. He was smart, kind, funny and obviously the person who was there to distract us from being in Kyle's mind so much. He gave me someone else to focus on when Kyle was annoying me. I liked his character. Point done.

Lindy: Ok I know this is more my fault than anyone else. I watched the trailer for the movie before I read about Lindy's character but I had already met Kyle. So where I loved Alex Pettyfer as Kyle, I already had Kyle in my head, but where I hated Vanessa Hudgens as Lindy, I couldn't change my mind's view of her. It was pretty suckish. I also found her character not as spunky as I like female characters to be, and I know they all can't be spunky, but she was just the general stereotype of a not-spunky girl, one who reads Jane Austen and sits looking at roses. I just felt like her character could have been more fleshed out and cooler.

Magda: From the start I had a feeling Magda was a witch, or something of the like. She was weird and I didn't have that much of an opinion on her other than my initial thoughts that she was supernatural, where I was round about right.

Kendra: I really liked Kendra and I would've liked to see more of her. She had the spunk I wanted Lindy to have, and she had a cool, witchy feel which I really liked. I loved how she punished Kyle, because let's face it, he deserved it. What I didn't like was that as the book progressed, she became softer. I'm pretty sure this was done so her character could develop, but honestly, I don' think she needed to be developed. She was making the right choices, and was teaching Kyle a lesson, I don't think she needed to be developed as well. I also didn't like how she eluded to regretting cursing Kyle. He was awful! He deserved it!

So the general good/bad comments about this book.

The opening scene is set out like a chat room, where a man is talking about setting up a chat room for those who go through strange changes. Immediately, I think someone is trying to find out more about Kyle and his condition, and that cyber-safety will be an underlying issue in the book, but that was fleeting. I really love stories being set out differently, like in chat rooms or web history or diary entries. It really intrigues me. And like every other time, I loved these parts of the book. I was waiting for the chat room characters to appear in real life, to pop into Kyle's real world. I was more than sad when they didn't.

My main negative point about this whole book has to be the whole Lindy/Kyle love story.

The way he was determined to love her and vice versa, the way he kidnapped her and held her there, it just felt artificial and unrealistic. You don't just fall in love with the one person you're around a lot. It's not really realistic to find "the one" that way. I felt like Kyle was forcing himself to love her. I also felt that finding they loved one another was rushed, yet I don't think I want this book any longer. I thought that whole thing was rather messy, but I guess it can be overlooked.
Another thing that really annoyed me was the way that Kyle begun looking for girls on the internet. I don't know why, maybe it was because it was just so jerkish and horrid that he'd be thinking of using someone that way, or if it was because he was stalking girls everywhere, or if it was because he was just getting on my nerves, but it really ticked me off. In fact, let's just  say that most of the way any romance was done in this book was really disappointing for me to read.

Despite a few flaws, I think this book has taught me something as well. As I was reading it, and after Kyle became the beast, I wanted him human again, because I guess I didn't like reading about someone who wasn't at all attractive. As the story went on, I realised what I was thinking and I realised just how superficial and horrid that way of thinking was, but it's true. And I'm sure it  wasn't just me who was thinking things like that. I do think the messages and morals in this book are fantastic and I totally think it was a brilliant premise and idea to write off. However, as always, with a few tweaks, it could have been even better.

Favourite scene? My favourite scene has to be at the dance, where he gives Lindy (before he knows she's Lindy) the flower. I felt like we could see a bit of soft but still encased in jerk which is the way I love characters. I also felt like this was the only scene where Lindy had depth and made me intrigued by her character. I also liked the girl from the halloween party, she was cool. However I can't make this one of my favourite scenes because I am about to explain why it was one of my least favourite scenes.

And also the scene where Will got his sight back, that was so wonderful I was like

Least favourite scene? Where Kyle is trying to break the spell with Sloane, that was pretty bad, and also the scene where he was stalking the girls on the internet. And as mentioned earlier, the halloween party scene because he broke the cool girl's arm. That made me angry and sad and hate Kyle even more. I was like

Anyways feel free to leave your opinions about Beastly in the comments I love friendly debates :)

I hope you liked this review! I have another review I'm working on of a book I really, really love, so look forward to my rambling on about how good it was ;)

Anyways leave book recommendations or really anything in the comments with your twitter user name and I will shout you out and maybe even follow you :)

Okay so have a nice day and see you soon!

Love, Lily xoxo

Allegiant Book Review

Divergent, 2014
http://goo.gl/3NXwD3

Okay let me just start out and say I am still emotionally traumatized from the ending of this book so I'm sorry if I am writing a little weirdly I shall try not to. Also, I am still finding my style of writing book reviews, so feel free to give me constructive criticism and such.

Okay, so non-spoilery section.

This book, in my opinion, wasn't as good as the first two. It wasn't as fast-paced, it was a bit slow and political, the split narration made it confusing to work out who was narrating what and it was quite confusing at different points.

But anyways the Divergent Series is definitely worth a read, it's fast-paced, awesome and well written so go and read it and then come back and check out the review to compare it to what you think! Okay bye!

**SPOILER SECTION**

Okay. Time to start.

This book is really quite slow compared to the other books. In Divergent, every five pages something again hits you in the face and it never overloads you but it keeps you very interested. In this book, it is every maybe twenty pages that something that grabs you happens.

I think this is due to several things, one being the info dumping.

I felt like in this book we were getting new opinions on the Genetically Pure and Deficient every page and people were starting like eight revolutions at the one time and with all this fast-paced political madness, it really just doesn't grip you and you can get very confused very fast.

I think it is also due to the split narration, which despite how much I love Veronica Roth and her writing, was not executed well in this book.

Tris is quite a monotone, level character who narrates very much that way, which is all well and good when there are other characters who level out the story (examples; Uriah, Christina). But when we got Tobias' point of view, I was hoping for a very different thinking style to Tris, to solidify the thoughts I had of him in my mind.

I didn't get that.

I got chapters that were written just like Tris', and it was extremely hard to distinguish between the two. I also had so many problems with Tobias' character, but I'll bring those up later.

But enough complaining about info dumping and split narration, time to discuss the things that leave everyone emotionally traumatised. There are, from general consensus I have collected from around me, three main things that made people upset in this book.

1. The fights between Tris and Tobias.

Really, because Tobias didn't feel like Tobias in this book, those didn't kill me as much as they did others. Of course, I wanted them back together, but I wasn't dying over it. I felt like their relationship was desperately trying to squeeze itself into the plotline and it sort of failed until we reached the part where Tobias joined the revolutionaries and they got mad at one another, which really isn't the way I would have wanted that to pan out. I wasn't really focusing on Fourtris until the end where he was scattering her ashes where I was *quite* upset.

2. Tris' death.

This, now this I agree with you on. I had a feeling she was going to die due to spoilers from mean people, but I had already had my suspicions before the book even came out, except my mind was pushing them to the very back because it didn't want it to be true. It was so sad to see the girl who watched in the mirror as her mother cut her hair, wanting to see herself more often, the girl who jumped first, the girl who aced Dauntless initiation, the girl who shot Will, our Tris. Is dead now.

I think, however emotionally distraught I am, that if her character was going to die, it should have been for others. I think her character would've liked that. I think everyone was so worried about Tobias dying that we sort of pushed Tris aside, making her sort of immortal and unable to beat in our minds. Personally, I would have preferred if Tobias died; I would've been sad for Tris but other than that I'd be okay.

But this really took me by surprise and I kept hoping that she'd come back to life and she'd bounce back over the next few chapters, but no.

3. Tobias after Tris' death.

I think what I found the most taxing about this was that Tobias was literally taking what I was feeling and putting it into words. I felt like someone had sucked all the air out of me and then pushed me over, leaving me there in a puddle of feels. What really got e was that after she died, the chapters didn't have names on them because we knew it had to be Tobias narrating. She really was gone.

This leads me on to my major complaint. Tobias' character.

I love Tobias, I really do. But in this book, he changed and I think seeing into his mind really took away the ways we saw him in. His narration was boring, and I really wanted it to be more fun than Tris', but it really wasn't.

His reaction to finding out he was GD (genetically deficient for short term memory people) was not something I could see Tobias, my strong, fabulous Four, doing. I thought he was a lot more composed and calm than that. I mean, he is still the same person.

Also, when he went to see Nita and ignored Tris, and she ended up being right, I just couldn't see the previous Tobias doing that. This makes me wonder whether Roth made him make all these stupid decisions because she wanted to show how distraught he was when finding out he wasn't really Divergent. But I still felt like  it wasn't him.

I didn't like this book as much as I did Divergent and Insurgent, but it was still the end and it was an okay book, despite its flaws.

So leave a comment with your feelings and maybe just a rant on how sad you are now and I we can discuss our feelings on this emotional book in the comments :)

Bye and have a nice day!

Love Lily xoxo

Character Profiles :)

Hey everyone!

Today I will share with you the character profile for my main character of my current manuscript!
I like to think she's quite a different character... so I hope you enjoy!

Name- Eleanor Autumn

Age- 16

Interests- poetry, fighting, shooting practise, training her Raid Team

Appearance- Elle is very pretty, apparently. She has dyed black hair, is tallish and is pale. She wears a lot of black and leather, and sometimes is dressed head to toe in tight black material. She of course looks fantastic in it, but as a result of this, stands out a bit. She says at points that her signature outfit is a black shirt, black skirt, purple headband and purple belt, with converse shoes. However, she does alternate between black tights/jeans and the skirt.

Personality- Elle can appear cocky, cold and extremely arrogant. Some also may see her as sociopathic, as she is extremely good at acting like she doesn’t care. She is extremely introverted, and hates most things. However, she is not sociopathic. She has been turned cold by the deaths of her family members, who she tried and was unable to save. She is broken inside and does very well to cover it up. She is taken aback when she has feelings of any sort, and particularly for Jai, because she’s so used to hate and pain. She hates eating in front of people.

I hope that was to your enjoyment! If there are any questions or comments on how I write character profiles or any tips you have found are helpful for writing character profiles, leave them in the comments below :)
Till next time little writers!
Love,
Lily xoxo