Cinder- Recommendation

Hello internet peeps! So today I am going to recommend a book called Cinder, by Marissa Meyer, which I
loved. If you haven't heard of this or read this, you must have been living under a rock, because I feel like everyone's been saying lately, "READ CINDER ITS GREAT ASDFGHJKL!". And because I can be a little, well, picky, I'd been avoiding it purely on the basis that the cover wasn't very pretty. YES I KNOW I JUDGED A BOOK BY ITS COVER AND YES I KNOW I WAS PROVED WRONG LET'S MOVE ON NOW, SHALL WE?

So if you hadn't already worked this out, Cinder is the retelling of Cinderella in a future society. It's set in New Beijing, and Cinder is a cyborg. Cyborgs aren't uncommon in this society, however they are sort of outcasts. With a plague breaking out and killing lots of humans, an evil moon race trying to attack and the Emporor dying, New Beijing and Earth are in no shortage of problems, and Cinder tries to keep out of it, working hard as a mechanic for her awful stepmother and family. But Cinder gets caught up in gorgeous Prince Kai's problems, and suddenly, everything is dependent on her.

There's no dilly-dallying with boring, angsty descriptions of this dystopian universe, we get straight into the action and all of a sudden BOOM you're sucked into the story. I loved all the main characters, they were really great and I loved the way they interacted…

I highly recommend picking this novel up, even if you're not a sci-fi fan, because it really did feel like more of a contemporary, like Sisters Red (see review here) and Beastly (see review here).

If you want, I can do a review of it and post it soon, but you've got to let me know in the comments! Yay okay so as always, leave a comment with your twitter name and I shall shout you out and or follow you!

Have a lovely day,
love,

lily xoxo

Jet Black and the Ninja Wind Review

Okay so this week I shall be reviewing a book I read called Jet Black and the Ninja Wind. I will start off
being brutally honest- I really didn't like this book. Though it seems I may be the only one, according to good reads. So if ninjas are something that interests you, go check out other reviews because apparently I am the only person in the world to dislike this book…

That's the end of the non-spoilery section because I really don't want to skew you away from this book if you might like it. So go do some more research, read it and come back to discuss!

***SPOILERS***
When I picked this book up, I was giddy with excitement. Vampires, werewolves, zombies, assassins, all so over used. But ninjas, ninjas is something I've never seen in YA before. So I bought it, and I immediately texted my book friend Renee, she immediately told me it was going to be rubbish. Now, to be fair, the name is pretty cheesy, but since I was so looking forward to reading it, I made excuses for it, like the Harry potter titles. So I take it home and hurriedly finish Hallowed by Cynthia Hand, the sequel to Unearthy by Cynthia Hand, so I can read my wonderful book about ninjas. I start reading the book, get two chapters in and stop reading for the night. I think this is why ninjas aren't in YA a lot.

I had three major complaints that I will rant on about first, and then I will talk about scenes and characters and everything else.

Complaint Number 1-
It was so inconsistent. All the content was spent info dumping Japanese history and cultural history in huge chunks, and everything else was just slotted in sideways, squished so hopefully it sort of fitted in somewhere. I did enjoy the Japanese culture and all the history, I mean, I love history, but info dumping just doesn't engross a reader, and certainly not someone who is tired after a long day, and wanting to wind down. And it was made even worse by the characters never understanding things that they'd been told, to which the other characters had even more paragraphs of explanation.

In the blurb, it talks a lot about a love story between Jet and the boy who's meant to kill her. And yes, it's in there, but there's like five scenes where he's present and only three scenes where he'd be mentioned by her. It was really just squished into the plot and I think that they really could've done something with it, covered it better and gotten it more involved in the storyline. At least with something as interesting as that tied in with the info dumping, it might have made it a little less squished. But even at the end, he just sort of… disappeared. It was really not addressed, and he got given a bad case of Gale syndrome (that was a Hunger Games reference).

There were also a number of scenes that were sort of just… put in there and not addressed. Like the scene where Hiro goes and attends the illegal punk rock concert. I know it was meant to be inspirational and such, but… why was it in there? It wasn't like Hiro ever sort of thought back to it and went "Oh yeah I see that what they were doing was right/wrong/influenced me in this way". And also the scene where Jet says she has a massive fear of caves… Hiro just says that she needs to accept her fear, she steps in the cave, Ojiisan shows up and suddenly she has no problem with it? I know it was vaguely addressed at the end with a line about her being no longer afraid and such, but I just think things were inconsistent in general.

Complaint Number 2-
The dialogue was so cheesy. I read things in my mind and almost compared them to a soap opera. This was how most things sounded in my head-
"Jet. Your mother was a ninja."
"Gasp! No!"
"Yes. And so was your father and your uncle and your grandpa."
"How can this be true?!"
Yeah, I'm not sure if that was just me, but the characters just conversed so awkwardly and unrealistically. And when a book is pretty much 35% dialogue, well… yeah.

Complaint Number 3-
Jet was such an annoying character. I also found her a little dumb… Her mum's been teaching her Japanese fighting techniques and telling her stories of warriors in their family all her life, and she never even once thought it through? Never even once questioned whether she was like them? It was just kind of annoying. She also had an obsession with giving detailed descriptions of what she was wearing… when she basically wore the same thing every time. "Mini-skirt, black tank top and thigh-high boots". It was also from her perspective for majority of the story, and when she narrated, in addition to her inability to piece together facts, her thoughts were also very messy. They felt like they were scattered everywhere, floating over the pages.

I was immediately judging her in the first chapter or so, when her mother died, and very little time was spent explaining her grief. When a girl's mother dies, you're going to be upset, and especially in this case, where we are given no reason for Jet to actually resent her mother in any way, shape or form. In fact, it actually says that she loves her mother a lot. So I think that there needed to be a bit more emotion when her mother died, because Jet sort of cried in the moment and then moved on, flew to Japan and casually became a ninja. I think the same for when Ojiisan died; both she and Hiro got over it emotionally quite quickly.

Okay, now that my major complaints are over, let's talk characters and scenes.

Hiro- Hiro was exactly what the book makes him out to be- a strong little boy. However, for someone so young, I think the things he did and said were a bit above his age, to be perfectly honest. I mean, he was allowed to go out by himself to a pretty dodgy part of town. I wasn't even allowed out of the house alone at his age!

Takumi- As I said, we didn't see a lot of Takumi in this book, but for an angsty love interest, he was incredibly boring. He was just sort of… there. He didn't make me hate the book, or like it more, he was just a character and I didn't really care about him, which was really sad because I'd love to have thought he was great.

J-Bird- At first, J-Bird creeped me out. I didn't trust him, but after a while, I just realised he was another character, just like all the others. Not overly interesting, not completely annoying, just there.

My favourite scene was where Hiro and Jet are eating porridge, and Jet puts brown sugar on hers and Hiro puts raw egg and soy sauce on his and they both think what the other is eating is disgusting...  I just thought that was quite funny and it was a cool contrast in cultures, and I also learned about the raw-egg-soy-sauce-porridge thing, because in all my study of Japanese culture, I never found that out until now.

Speaking of that scene, what I did like in this book was the culture... I love Japanese as a language and I love Japanese things as a general rule. So that was another reason why I bought this book. And I was really pleased that there wasn't any stereotypical Japanese things, like they didn't sit down and eat sushi for every meal. I loved seeing Japan through Jet's eyes (when she wasn't being annoying), and exploring it through this book. It was exciting to see other cities than Tokyo, and to see a lot of aspects of the country and culture. That was probably the most enjoyable thing about this book.

So yes, if you loved this book, and you want to have a friendly debate (emphasis on the friendly) or discussion, leave a comment below and I will reply to you. Also leave your twitter name and I will follow you/shout you out :)

Have a lovely day,
lily xo

Update of Updateyness

Hiya friends! So I thought I was probably a good idea to do a post just explaining how things are going at the moment. So, my posting has been super irregular at the moment, and trust me, it's annoying me as well. I wish I wasn't so busy and that I could just sit down and type things for you all day, because honestly, I feel so guilty not giving you guys the posts you want to see, seeing as though you're supporting my blog. Speaking of support, I am now getting 50 pageviews on average for one of my weekly posts, and I'm coming up to 1000 page views in total. That is absolutely mental and I am completely speechless at how great all you regulars are.

Anyways, I have come up with a new, proper structure to make life easier for everyone. I will post once a week, every week (unless I'm doing a special or something) and I will post on Sunday at around either 7am or 8pm AEST. I hope this is helpful. Also, if you want to be emailed every time I post something new, there's a box where you can be put down on the list to the right of the post section right here. You can also follow either of my twitters, my personal; @lilypherondale, or my blog account; @awordisanarrow, where I tweet links to new posts.

Also, I thought I'd do a check-in of all the books I've read lately, and the ones I'm planning on reading, which you can expect reviews from soon. So over the past two months, I've read ten books, and I'll talk about them below-

The Dream Thieves, Maggie Stiefvater: I left you after my last "what I've been reading" post with The Hunt by Andrew Fukuda. Next, I picked up The Dream Thieves, which was the sequel to the Raven Boys. I rather liked it, and the review for it is here. I give it 4/5 stars.

The Prey, Andrew Fukuda: Next came The Prey, sequel to The Hunt. I liked this book a lot less than The Hunt, probably for a few reasons, the biggest one being that I hated Sissy, missed Ashley June and the heart racing adrenaline associated with Gene living in dusker society, and thought Gene's character was completely overlooked and dismissed. I give it 3/5 stars, because I desperately hoped that the next book was taking this somewhere.

Hallowed, Cynthia Hand: I decided I needed to leave the world of hepers and duskers in The Hunt Trilogy, and tried again at the Unearthly Trilogy. I actually really liked once again immersing myself in the world of angels, and it was a nice book cleanser after reading The Prey. Unfortunately, it actually wasn't very good, and neither was the plot. I had to reread it to actually properly assess it, as anything I read after The Prey was going to appear perfect… I give it 3/5 stars.

Jet Black and the Ninja Wind, Leza Lowitz: I was going through a stage of picking bad books at this point, I think, because this looked so good but was a dramatic disappointment. It is a book set in Japan, and it's about ninjas. I love Japan and ninjas, but this book was so poorly executed, and there will be a review for this probably next week. I gave it 1/5 stars on Goodreads, because it had a good premise.

Sisters Red, Jackson Pearce: This was my saving grace during this period of reading, and I still think it's the one that stands out most to me as one of the best books I've read all year. I love fairy tale adaptations, and this was so well done. It's obviously a spin on Little Red Riding Hood, and if this interests you, check out my recommendation for it here. I gave this one 5/5 stars.

Grave Mercy, Robin LaFevers: This was where everything started to pick up. Grave Mercy was incredible, and had me wishing the sequel followed the same characters. All someone had to say was assassin nuns and I was there. The main character is strong and brilliant, and it's set in the 1400s. I highly recommend it; assassin books are becoming my favourite, I think. I give it 5/5 stars.

I Hunt Killers, Barry Lyga: I read this because I decided I wanted to read some young adult crime fiction, and because this looked really good. It follows the story of Jasper Dent, whose father is the most devious serial killer the state has seen in a long time. With his dad locked up, Jasper needs to work out what sort of person he is, and what he wants to do in life. Of course, crime and murder and creepy psychological elements are very, very heavy in this book, and I don't suggest it if you get scared easily or don't cope with mind twisty criminals and psych thrillers. I gave it 3/5 stars, because I didn't love it.

Of Mice and Men, John Stienbeck: One of these does not belong, can you pick it? Yep, I read OMAM for a book club-ish type thing I was doing. It is a classic, and I love classics by authors like Dickens and Poe, but I didn't love this. I just finished it and thought, "that really didn't change me or influence me in any way." A classic should make you want to rethink your entire existence *cough cough great gastby, great expectations etc cough cough*, and this really didn't do it for me. I gave it 2/5 stars.

The Trap, Andrew Fukuda: Ah. Another The Hunt book. Joy. I read this with such hope, desperately praying and wishing it would be better than The Prey. It wasn't. It was worse. I'm not gonna spoil, but I disliked it so much it made me too sad to write a review on it, and I really don't want to talk about it because THIS SERIES CRUSHED MY DREAMS. 2/5 stars.

Cinder, Marissa Meyer: This book was so fabulous. As I mentioned in Sisters Red, I love fairy tale adaptions, and this was another one that was done very well. It was a take on Cinderella, and its set in future society where Cinderella is a cyborg… I highly recommend it! I am going to pick up the next book in the series relatively soon, I hope.

And those are the books I've read lately, and at the moment, I'm reading Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, which, I've been told, is "compulsory reading". So far I'm really enjoying it; I'm picking up some Simon Snow/Harry Potter parallels and I love it (winky face).

Also, it was kinda my birthday a week or so ago *bashfully looks down* and I'd love to do a sort of book birthday haul or something of the like… would anyone like that sort of thing??

I am also very very open to recommendations at the moment, please rec me stuff, because if you do, I will write up a review for it and it will be dedicated to the person who recommended it. (Free promotion of your blog/twitter/instagram is something that I am willing to do on request).

As always, follow my twitters and my goodreads account (here) to keep up with what I'm reading and or doing :)

Leave a comment and get a shout out or follow, you know the drill! Have a lovely day :)

love,
lily xo

The Dream Thieves Review

Hi! So this week I will be reviewing the second book in the Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater called The Dream Thieves. If you haven't read the first book, The Raven Boys, I highly recommend it and you can find the link to my review (where there is a non-spoilery section) here.

If you have read The Raven Boys and you're wondering whether this book is worth reading, it most definitely is, and you should go get yourself a copy, read it, and then come back here to discuss!

***SPOILERS***
Ok. So in this book, Ronan was probably the main character and focus, and I always liked Ronan, but throughout this book, I think my love for him has grown even stronger, and I feel connected to him. Sometimes, it was annoying to read from his point of view, because he's such a hard to read and distant character, but I feel like as the book progressed, his character grew and we got to see much more of him.

I think that because Ronan was the focus of this book, there just wasn't enough space to put in many Blue/Gansey moments, which I was kind of very looking forward to. There was that scene where they were on the mountain and they sort of admitted that they liked each other but they wouldn’t do anything about it because of Adam and such. Ah, Adam. Let's discuss that.

We always knew that there was going to have to be a moment between Adam and Blue where she told him that she didn't like him, but it was such a hard scene to read and be in the moment with because she said it so harshly. However, I don't think there was going to be a non-harsh way to say it. But when he was saying "prove it then, kiss me if I'm not your true love" and she was trying to get through to him that she didn't actually want to, I felt sorry for Adam, possibly for the first time in this book. For some reason, during this book, Adam felt more distant than before, more hard. I'm not sure whether it was Cabeswater or him realising that Blue didn't actually like him, but he was certainly different.

I'm really confused about the whole Adam/Cabeswater thing. Is he Cabeswater in human form? Is that why Cabeswater is missing, because Adam is Cabeswater and only he has the power to get it back? Is he controlling Cabeswater, or his he just a tool it's using to scope out everything else in Henrietta? It's all very confusing and I'm extremely eager to see everything connect maybe in the next book or two.

There were so many confusing new elements to the huge puzzle that this series is introduced in this book, so I'll go through them now. When Blue and Orla went diving for the things at the bottom of the lake, and they found a tyre off the same type of Camaro that Gansey owns, I thought that maybe when Ronan destroyed the Camaro, one of the tyres had ended up in there because of all the time warp-y things? Or that maybe future Gansey threw a tyre in there as a sign to past Gansey. But still, that remained mainly unsolved.

Ronan's father and the whole Graywarren dreaming thing. I'm still a little confused as to why Ronan's father died, why the Gray Man killed him. And Kavinsky, how has Kavinsky managed to achieve the dreaming thing as well? Is Kavinsky a dream creature? I feel like he might be, and I'm not sure who dreamed him and if that's even possible. I also doubt whether he's dead or not; the ending was a fuzzy mix of confusion for me.

The Gray Man. The Gray Man started out as this character, a hit man, someone we thought would be a bad guy, someone who we were super-wary of. And to be honest, I still am a bit suspicious of him, but I know that he loves Maura, it's quite clear. It was also nice to see him try to fit in to life in Henrietta, to start to appear more soft and warm to us as the audience. I think I want him and Maura to be together, but there's still the issue of Butternut, or Blue's dad. At first, I thought The Gray Man might've been Butternut, but then I remembered that he was frequently visiting a bunch of psychics who surely would've known. It's all very confusing.

I think Blue was, in this book, a much more open character. In the first book, she was very up tight and sensible, and it was nice in this book to see her being more accepting of truths about her and others that weren't necessarily things she wanted to accept, like the fact that she likes Gansey, like her admitting she doesn't like Adam, like her telling both Adam and Noah her secret, like hinting to Gansey that she likes him. She was a lot more there  if you know what I mean… it's hard to explain, I guess, but it felt like she was starting to get more comfortable with the boys, getting more comfortable with herself and things about herself.

I think in this book, we were really made known to the fact that this is a whole lot bigger than just Gansey wanting to find Glendower. It involves Blue, and all the psychics, it involves people like the Gray Man, and Mr Whelk from the last book.

As always with this series, I am left extremely confused but extremely intrigued, and I will definitely be buying and reading the next book as soon as it comes out.

Share your thoughts in the comments and leave your twitter name there as well and I will shout you out/follow you (:

Thanks and have a lovely day,
lily xo

Sisters Red- Recommendation

So this week I will be recommending a fantastic book that I read called Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce.

This book is about two sisters, Rosie and Scarlett, who think they have one heart, who have an unbreakable bond (or so it seems). But their past is violent and bloody, and their occupation is even worse. They hunt werewolves. When Scarlett's hunting partner, Silas, returns from a year away, emotions stir again, and Scarlett is oblivious to the chemistry between her partner and her little sister. The things they find will threaten to tear their bond apart.

Remember when I did that review of Beastly by Alex Flinn here?? Well, if you did read it, you will know that I love modern fairytale adaptations. I loved the idea of Beastly, but it just didn't hit the mark of what I was expecting. Sisters Red, however, cleaned things up and neatened off corners where Beastly did not.

The sisters have a wonderful relationship, co-dependency and all those perfect sibling character traits, and it is quite a beautiful thing to read, because it is clear that they would both die to save the other, without a question. And I think that even though the prose is quite casual and laid back, it adds to the feeling that the girls are really telling you everything in their narration.

All in all, it is a fabulous book with a fabulous story, and you should definitely pick it up. If you do read it or have already read it, tell me in the comments and I will write up a proper review that we can discuss the book on.

Also, I haven't told you the fairytale that this book is based on, so if you've guessed it (it's fairly obvious) then type your answer in the comments and there will be an internet prize for you!

As always, comment and add your twitter name and I'll shout you out/follow you (:

Have a splendiferous day
lily xo