Month: October 2016

I Don’t Do Scary (But Books Don’t Scare Me). Let’s Discuss!

I Don’t Do Scary (But Books Don’t Scare Me). Let’s Discuss!

I’m one of those wimpy Halloween spoilsports who doesn’t like any of the scary stuff. When I was younger, I forced myself to play along a little more—I went to haunted houses with my friends occasionally and I saw all the (now) classic Halloween movies like Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween. But, I don’t think I’ve seen a scary movie since college and I never go to haunted houses, much to my husband’s chagrin. I […]

Posted October 14, 2016 in Let's Discuss / 57 Comments
Bite-Sized Reviews: Gemina and Our Chemical Hearts

Bite-Sized Reviews: Gemina and Our Chemical Hearts

Once again, there are so many releases this time of year that I’m resorting to bite-sized reviews for some of them. Hopefully these bite-sized reviews will be enough to feed your fiction addiction! Gemina by Jay Kristoff and Amie Kaufman Series: The Illuminae Files #2 Published by Knopf Books for Young Readers on 10/18/16 Genres: Young Adult, Science Fiction Pages: 608 Source: BEA My content rating: YA (Violence, Drug use, Swears are “censored”) My rating: The highly anticipated sequel to the instant […]

Posted October 12, 2016 in Reviews / 12 Comments
Holding Up the Universe by Jennifer Niven

Holding Up the Universe by Jennifer Niven

Holding Up the Universe is an incredibly complex story about the struggle for self-acceptance and the strength that can come from knowing exactly who you are. This book is painfully beautiful. (But, don’t worry, it’s not as painful as Niven’s last book. Your heart may be torn to shreds in certain moments, but you won’t have to then proceed to stomp on it.)  What Fed My Addiction: Jack’s struggle with face blindness. I think that I had vaguely […]

Posted October 11, 2016 in Reviews / 23 Comments
Sunday Post & Giveaways Galore – 10/9/16

Sunday Post & Giveaways Galore – 10/9/16

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimba @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer ~ It’s a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week on my blog and share news about what’s coming up in the week ahead. Last week on FYFA (and in my life):   Yesterday I attended the YA Lit Conference at Anderson’s Bookshop – it’s a conference aimed at educators with 33 YA authors. I took notes […]

Posted October 9, 2016 in Sunday Post / 25 Comments
September Wrap-Up Round-Up Giveaway

September Wrap-Up Round-Up Giveaway

I created this giveaway as a scavenger hunt to encourage people to visit the wrap-ups. There are entries for commenting on wrap-up posts and then there are additional entries for visiting specific posts and answering a question about them. The Link-Up Check out the September wrap-up posts in the linky below. These are the posts that can be used for the giveaway (Random.org chose ten of them to for the scavenger hunt portion of the giveaway). Didn’t […]

Remember Yesterday by Pintip Dunn – Review & Giveaway

Remember Yesterday by Pintip Dunn – Review & Giveaway

***NOTE: Remember Yesterday is the sequel to the NYT Bestselling and RITA™ Award-winning book, Forget Tomorrow. This review may contain spoilers for the first book in the series. If you haven’t read book one, click the link to read my review of Forget Tomorrow to read about why I loved the first book and then scroll down to the bottom of this post to enter for a chance to win an annotated copy!!!*** Remember Yesterday picks up […]

Posted October 7, 2016 in Giveaways (Ended), Reviews / 6 Comments
I Have Giveaway Guilt! Let’s Discuss.

I Have Giveaway Guilt! Let’s Discuss.

I absolutely love giveaways. I love hosting them AND I love winning them. There’s just something so exciting about the feeling you get when you’re the winner!! But I’ve noticed that, while I adore giveaways, I also feel a certain amount of guilt over them—both the ones I host and the ones I win. What’s that about? Giveaways are fun, so why am I stressing myself over them?! Well, it turns out that I pretty much just have […]

Posted October 6, 2016 in Let's Discuss / 38 Comments
Gilt Hollow by Lorie Langdon – Review for the Fall Favorite Things Blog Tour

Gilt Hollow by Lorie Langdon – Review for the Fall Favorite Things Blog Tour

Gilt Hollow feels more like a YA romance with a bit of mystery thrown in than like a true mystery, which suited me just fine. (In fact, that’s the way I prefer my mysteries since the romance element typically holds my attention more than the actual mystery does.) I cared a lot more about Willow and Ashton’s personal journeys than I did about who specifically killed their friend. Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely plenty of clues to […]

Posted October 3, 2016 in Reviews / 3 Comments
Sunday Post & Giveaways Galore – 10/2/16

Sunday Post & Giveaways Galore – 10/2/16

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimba @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer ~ It’s a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week on my blog and share news about what’s coming up in the week ahead. Last week on FYFA (and in my life): My youngest turned 12 yesterday! Hard to believe. How are my kids getting so big?!!! I’m finally starting to settle into my schedule a bit and stress […]

Posted October 2, 2016 in Sunday Post / 17 Comments
September Recap & Best of the Bunch

September Recap & Best of the Bunch

My Goings On in September: September turned out to be crazily busy for me because of co-op classes starting. I’m teaching a writing class, an acting class, and a blogging class AND my kids’ classes are just generally more challenging (and time-consuming!) this year. It doesn’t help that I stress about my son’s schoolwork more than I probably should. He’s a freshman this year, and he would prefer it if I were completely hands-off (all of […]

Posted October 1, 2016 in Best of the Bunch, Monthly Recap / 12 Comments