Source: Purchased

Feb 06

Bite-Sized Reviews of Firestarter, The Lonely Ones, We Come Apart and The Life-Changing Manga of Tidying Up

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Reviews 24

I’ve got four reviews for you today: a YA steampunk, two YA verse novels (one of them is borderline YA/MG), and a manga. I hope these bite-sized reviews will be enough to feed your fiction addiction! (Check out my review of the first two books in this series and Sim’s Top Ten Addictions!) What a fabulously wild ride! Though Timekeeper is still my favorite book in this series, the very end of Firestarter made the whole series journey more than worth it. Sim puts her characters through a lot in this book–it’s full of action, a whole lot of twists and turns, and brutal loss. Still, I’ll confess that it took me a long time to read the book, and there were times that it dragged a bit for me. Maybe that’s just because I wasn’t ever as invested in the newer characters as I was in Danny and Colton. But luckily, this book… Read more »

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Jan 08

Things I Learned About Fairy Tales By Reading the Grimm’s Versions

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Let's Discuss 52 ★★★★★

I have a collection of Grimm’s Fairy Tales that I’ve owned for as long as I can remember, possibly even since birth. It was published in 1973, a year before I was born, and it seems like the type of book my eccentric dad or one of his eccentric friends would have thought was really funny to gift to a baby due to all the cannibalism and cutting off of body parts, etc. Anyway, I’m fairly certain I read the whole thing as a child, but apparently it didn’t scar me for life because I didn’t remember much except for the fact that they were sort of bloody and brutal. Since I’m currently plotting a fairy tale retelling (The Selfish Giant), I decided to go back and read some other original fairy tales to get more of a flavor of those stories. Thus, I picked up my copy of Grimm’s Fairy… Read more »

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Nov 20

Bite-Sized Reviews of The Lying Woods, What If It’s Us, Between Shades of Gray and The Hotel Between

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Reviews 34 ★★★★★

I’ve got four reviews for you today, a YA mystery, a YA contemporary, a YA historical fiction and a MG fantasy. I hope these bite-sized reviews will be enough to feed your fiction addiction! I always think I don’t really like mysteries, but then I read a book like this and it blows me away and I just want MORE! I have no idea how to review this book without giving things away, so I’m actually not going to say much at all except that I read this in one day (practically in one sitting), and I LOVED every minute of the reading experience. Okay, at the very beginning, I wasn’t so sure I was going to like Owen (the MC) and his friends, and there were a few moments when I thought certain characters were being ridiculously judgy toward the Owen (and his responses weren’t always great). But the story was engrossing,… Read more »

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Oct 27

Bite-Sized Reviews of Dear Evan Hansen, When My Heart Joins the Thousand, A Touch of Gold, and In Your Shoes

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Reviews 16 ★★★★

I’ve got three YA reviews and a MG review for you today. I hope these bite-sized reviews will be enough to feed your fiction addiction! I actually discovered this musical when I saw the book listed on NetGalley. I know, that’s weird and backward, and I have to stop living in a cave (a cave filled with books?), but that’s how it happened. I saw a YA book based on the “hit Broadway musical” and thought, I need to check this out. So, I headed over to Amazon for a quick listen—and instantly fell in love with the music. So, I went into this book loving the musical and knowing the basic storyline (since I read a synopsis to fill in the gaps between songs). I wasn’t sure how the book would hold up, but I have to say it did pretty darn well. I love the addition of Carter’s perspective, especially…. Read more »

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Sep 27

Bite-Sized Reviews of Shadow of the Fox, The Talon Series, Misfits, and Drama

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Reviews 20 ★★★★

I’ve got four reviews for you today: two YA fantasies, a MG fantasy, and a YA/MG graphic novel. I hope these bite-sized reviews will be enough to feed your fiction addiction! Steeped in Japanese folklore, Shadow of the Fox is sure to please anyone who’s a fan of anime or manga or any reader who loves fantastical stories based on traditional lore. The book is dual-narrated: First we have Yumeko, who is half kitsune and is constantly trying to balance her human and yokai sides. Her yokai brethren encourage her to shed her humanity, something she is loathe to do, but she also fears how humans will react if they know about her kitsune heritage. Then there’s the mysterious samurai, Tatsumi. His powerful sword that is infused with an angry and bloodthirsty demon killer who constantly threatens to overcome Tatsumi and turn him into a senseless killing machine. When these… Read more »

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Sep 14

Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu: A Classroom Reading Review

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Reviews 10 ★★★★½

I read this book with my homeschool language arts class (last spring—for some reason it’s taken me this long to post this—I have no idea why), and the class really enjoyed it! We started out by reading “The Snow Queen,” which the book is based on. It was fun to see the parallels between the two stories and to see where Ursu strayed from the original. The book is split into two parts—the first part takes place almost entirely in the real world (with a few small fantastical elements thrown in), and the second part takes place in a fantasy world as Hazel goes off to try and rescue Jack from the white witch. The two parts of the book are completely different, and I was slightly surprised how long it took to get to the fantasy portion of the book. The book focuses on Hazel’s sense of not belonging, both because… Read more »

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Aug 23

Dance of Thieves by Mary E. Pearson: A Spectacular Spin-Off!

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Reviews 16 ★★★★½

I can’t tell you how excited I was to see that Pearson was revisiting the Remnant Chronicles universe! This book takes place several years after the conclusion of the original series. You definitely don’t have to have read the original series to understand what’s going on in this one, but I LOVED it, so I highly recommend reading it for the background history. Some of the characters make appearances in this book. What Fed My Addiction: Thief turned warrior. Kazi is an accomplished thief who crosses the queen. I love that, instead of punishing her, the queen sees Kazi’s potential and puts her into her elite royal guard. Kazi has a tragic backstory that we learn as the story unfolds. Her sense of loyalty to the queen combined with her own search for vengeance against the man who sent her tragic story into motion—and anyone who would take advantage of the weak—make her… Read more »

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Aug 18

Bite-Sized Reviews of The Book Thief, Crank, The Chosen One and Writing Irresistible KidLit

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Reviews 16 ★★★★

I’ve got an eclectic collection of reviews for you today: one that’s probably considered a modern classic, one YA novel in verse, a YA contemporary about a Mormon fundamentalist group, and a nonfiction writing book. I hope these bite-sized reviews will be enough to feed your fiction addiction! I debated writing an “official” review of this book, since I mostly already said everything I had to say in a random Sunday Post, but I decided to go ahead and add it here. This book is magnificently and masterfully written. The unique POV (death) makes it stand out from the crowd, and it gives the whole story an otherworldly perspective. We see human triumphs and failures through neutral eyes, and that somehow brings them into clearer focus. The language is beautiful as well. The only thing that held me back from giving this book one of my highest ratings is the… Read more »

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Jul 14

Bite-Sized Reviews of Kiss of the Royal, Fukusha Model Eight, and Neanderthal Opens the Door to the Universe

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Reviews 14 ★★★★

I’ve got three reviews for you today, one YA fantasy, one adult sci-fi, and one YA contemporary. I hope these bite-sized reviews will be enough to feed your fiction addiction! I really enjoyed this fresh take on fairy tales. The book takes place in a world where a Kiss holds power to fight evil. It’s used as a weapon in war, completely devoid of the outdated concept of love. But there is a faction of people (the Romantics) who have rebelled—they believe that the kiss is being misused, that the meaning of True Love’s Kiss is much more important (and more powerful) than a kiss being used in war. I loved seeing Ivy’s views on the possibility of love change and grow—and her understanding of her way of life evolve as she learns that many of her basic beliefs are not only wrong, they’re dangerous. The romance is sweet, if… Read more »

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Jul 05

A Thousand Perfect Notes by C.G. Drews: Review & Giveaway

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Giveaways (Ended), Reviews 33 ★★★★★

Oh, guys, I had such high hopes for this book, and I am thrilled that it lived up to every single one of them! What Fed My Addiction: Be prepared to be put through the wringer. This isn’t an easy book, by any means. At points it’s downright traumatizing. You should just prepare now to have your heart ripped out and stomped on. (I love it when a book does this!) Beautiful writing. The writing flows beautifully, and I loved the gorgeous and understated use of metaphor. Plus, you can tell that Cait is a pianist herself because the way she describes Beck’s playing is masterful. The characters. There aren’t any undeveloped characters in this book. Every one makes an impression. Even the characters we hate (i.e. Beck’s mom) have a developed backstory that helps us understand them. I fell in love with Beck almost instantly (and his marshmallow of a little sister). The dialogue. Cait… Read more »

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