Sunshine by Robin McKinley

    I have never read any books by Robin McKinley before, to be honest I have never heard of her before either. I've had Sunshine for about five years now and I've tried to read it three times before this time. I could never get into it enough to even get halfway through before. I was determined to finish it this time, and it was very difficult.

    For a book that is full of magic and vampires I really thought I would get into this, but I couldn't. The only reason I did finish is because I skim read, I never skim read but I had to or I would have stopped reading it again.

    I think what annoys me the most about this is how she keeps saying she is in a relationship with Mel. They never talk, ever, you can't have a relationship where you don't talk to each other. They hardly ever kissed, if they did at all. Sunshine talked more to, Con, than to anyone else in the book.

    Sunshine (her name is really Raven but everyone calls her Rae or Sunshine.) leads a very dull life, in my opinion, she works at a diner as a baker, she is famous for her cinnamon buns. Then for some reason she gets the urge to go to her parents old lake house. The lake is a dangerous area after the "Voodoo wars" because of all the bad spots there and all the "others" that lived there. (Others are any supernatural being. Vampires are considered the worst of all.) She gets abducted by a group of vampires and forced to stay in a mansion, chained to the wall beside a starving vampire, Constantine. (Con for short.) She is supposed to be a meal for him but he refuses to kill her.

    She conveniently remembers after being chained up for two days that she is a magic handler. She uses her magic to not only free herself but Con also. What she doesn't know is the magic in her blood is powerful, powerful enough to help a vampire walk in the sunlight without bursting into flames.

    She eventually goes back to her normal, boring life. Not for long though because, Con, shows back up. He heals her and tells her that the Vampire that chained him up, Bo, was looking for both of them, to kill them. After he heals her, they are bonded together and it makes it easy for both of them to "call on" the other. They both have to go on a small journey into "nowheresvile" (a realm that vampires live) to find and kill Bo and his little army.

    I like how well she adapted to fighting for her life. She killed vampire after vampire with her bare hands, by shoving her hands into their chest and ripping out their hearts. That was awesome but I hated how freaked out she got after it was all over. I guess a normal person would but in a book you don't really want the heroin to lose her mind after she kills a bunch of vampires. (Just look at Buffy the Vampire Slayer for that.) The ending kind of sucked, so they kill the baddie and now what? She is just going to return to "dating" Mel and baking cinnamon buns. BORING!

What's your one thing?

    Have you ever had someone ask you this question: What is the one thing you can't live without? I was scrolling through my Instagram the other day and came across someone that asked this as their QOTD. (question of the day) 

    I read through some of the answers and they were the generic: cell phone, computer, internet, air, food etc. It made me think about what I generally could not live without. Of course air, food, and water are the tops but I wasn't going to answer with those because those are a given. I wanted to think about something that was not a necessity but felt like one to me. 

    I wasn't going to say my family because it said a thing and though I would be completely lost without my husband, and the rest of my family, don't want any hurt feelings here. (Even though I know my family probably never reads my blogs.) I didn't want to answer that way. I view my dog as apart of my family so I wasn't going to say her either. 

    I thought about the usual answers like: cell phone, wifi and laptop and as much as I love all of these things, could I go without them? If the zombie apocalypse happens and I pretty much have to throw out my cell I would live. Don't get me wrong, I love my phone with my constant attachment to the internet. It would be difficult but eventually the hole in my chest from my phone being gone would heal. 

     The thing that popped into my head after all the things listed above was something that means a ton to me. It's something that some people in the world doesn't have and some older people still don't have. The ability to read. 

    Without the ability to read, the internet wouldn't matter anyway. My cell phone would go back to just being for phone calls, my laptop would be for playing games and that retro paint game. Why would I need my tablet if I wasn't going to use it as an E-reader anymore.  

    It would be a sad world for me! I am surrounded by books in my office, my favorite places to go are Barnes and Noble and The Book Rack. I always have a book to read and usually carry one in my purse in case I get a chance to read a few pages at anytime. A big part of writing is reading. Especially if you're like me because then it's mostly rereading stuff you've already written.

    So if I suddenly have a stroke and lose my ability to read...I don't know what I would do. It would involve a lot of crying though! I mean I would hope I could reteach myself but if I lost it completely and could never get it back. If I could never get it back, if I could never enjoy such a huge part of my life anymore...just put me down! Or buy me lots of audiobooks and tissues.

Obsession by Jennifer L. Armentrout

    I have read many books by Jennifer Armentrout; She has quickly become my favorite author. This is a spin off, stand alone, from the Lux series. I read all of the Lux series so it was a no brainer that I would pick this one up too. 

    Unlike the Lux series this is an adult book, filled to the brim with more adult...situations. I enjoy reading YA (Young-adult) books but sometimes I just want a steamy romance, full of hot alien sex. I've never read an adult book by Armentrout but I was not disappointed!  

    Hunter is an Arum, an alien race that pretty much existed with the purpose of killing the Luxen, another alien race. Both alien races have taken up residence on Earth but most humans don't know about their existence. When a human finds out they are usually "silenced." Meaning they are killed. 

     Serena was your typical twenty-three year old woman living in Colorado. Her best friend, Mel, finds out something she shouldn't have about the boy toy she was sleeping with. When he turned into a man shaped lightbulb, Mel freaks out, like any normal person would. She does what every girl would do, she turns to her best friend and alcohol. Well the luxen wasn't pleased by her finding out his secrets and has her killed by another luxen, in front of Serena. 

    Serena spills her guts about what happened to Mel to the police, FBI, DOD (Department of defense) and pretty much anyone else that would listen. Hunter was called in by the DOD to keep her safe, something that he finds more challenging than he first thought. He has to protect her from luxen, other arum, the DOD and himself. He surprises himself with how far he will go to protect her.

    It's amazing seeing the change in Hunter from the jackass that we first meet to the sweet guy at the end. It seems to be a theme amongst alien books I've read. (I like alien books!) The aliens think they are Gods gift to women, and crazy hot. So I guess as long as you're crazy hot, you can also be an arrogant dick. But even when Hunter is a total d-bag you love him! Just as much as I fell for Hunter, I guess, I got a girl crush on Serena too. Her feisty attitude with his extreme bossiness was hilarious!  

    Now the only problem I have is I don't really know who the bad aliens are anymore! When reading the Lux series it was the arum but when reading this it was the luxen. So I don't know what to think anymore, I guess there are good and bad guys in both groups.  

    The only warning I have to people reading this is it has a lot of sex in it. So if you don't like that kind of thing then don't read this. But if you don't read this then you are truly missing out!

City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett

  City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett was an amazing book! I have never read a book by Bennett before but after reading this I'm looking into his other works. City of Stairs is in the fantasy genre but I think it could also be considered a mystery. Fantasy books are not usually my go to genre, neither are mystery's for that matter, but I could not put this book down. The only thing that annoyed me about this was the names in it, my gosh how is someone supposed to pronounce these names?

    I loved how incredibly detailed this story was. There were times I could see everything that was being described, as if it was a show playing on t.v. The fight scenes were amazing to read and had me holding my breath at times.

    This doesn't even take place in a specific time, it has it's own reality. The main character, Shara, is in the city of Bulikov many years after the "Blink." Which was a war so a lot of the town was destroyed. She is one of her continents best operatives and she is in Bulikov to investigate a murder of a dear friend of hers. She gets much more than she bargained for once she arrives. People are rude to her and automatically don't like her because of her race. She holds her own though and put a lot of people in their place.
 
    I absolutely loved the man, Sigrud, he is Sharas secretary. I wish he would have had a bigger part in this whole book! I would have been perfectly fine if it was written about him. He was funny, extremely tough and oddly very profound at times.
 
     Unless you are a Saypur, which Shara is, you can not talk about faith, religions, Divinities (Gods) or history. It is illegal to speak of these things. Which in turn makes everyone hate Saypur or Shallies (because of the amount of shallots they eat) as the locals call them. It's almost like a futuristic race thing.

    After further investigating Efrem's murder things start to get weird. People that Sigrud is following start to literally vanish into thin air. Ancient, believed to be dead monsters start showing up and then before she knows it a Divinity shows up as well.

    I was afraid that after the ending fight scene was over the book was going to end stupidly. But it didn't I was so proud of Shara at the end, it felt like she was someone I knew and I was rooting for her.  I highly recommend this to everyone, it has aspects I think everyone would like.

     Disclaimer: I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

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Mentally constipated.

    This is what it's like to be a writer. I'm a writer, I've always loved english, reading, writing it's just my thing. Loving english and wanting to be a writer are two different things. Loving english is one thing, so you like to read or write poetry, that's fine. But deciding to spend your life writing is hard work.

    Especially if you work from home, there are so many distractions. Now my husband works from home too and sometimes that's good but sometimes it's more of a distraction. If I get stuck on a paragraph or a chapter it's so easy to log onto Pinterest and spend an eternity searching for cupcake recipes I'll never try or workouts to get killer abs. My dog will bring a toy to me and I'll spend an hour playing fetch with her. My husband will get tired of being in the house and want to go for a walk. You'll hear of a marathon of a show you like, or twelve days worth if you watched The Simpsons marathon a couple of weeks ago. Everything becomes a distraction when you work from home. EVERYTHING!

    I've tried all kind of things to stay focused. I wake up early and go for a walk around the neighborhood with some neighbors, I workout in the mornings, I do yoga, I meditate. Anything to get rid of pent up energy and clear my mind but that's not always a good thing. Sometimes I clear my mind too much and can't remember how I wanted to go about the next chapter.

    I don't know about other writers but I get stuck A LOT! Sometimes it takes me months to unclog my mind, I call it mental constipation. When I get mentally constipated the only thing that helps me dislodge the clog is to re-read everything I have already written. It takes a while but it helps me. 

    Then I go through a moment of panic when I question everything that I wrote. I wonder if it's good, if it will make sense to anyone other than me, if I'm cut out to be a writer, or if I'll forever be a freelance writer that doesn't get paid for the work I do. 

    Like I said before I love writing, it will always be my passion but geez does it have to be so difficult. I don't think I'll ever choose a different path for me. Writing is my life. And now I'm furthering my career by becoming a book reviewer. That brings two of my passions together, reading and writing. I don't get paid actual money right now but I get free books which is a win to me! 

    

Halo by Alexandra Adornetto

     First of all the cover of this book is Gorgeous and very unlike me I judged it because of it's cover. I really wanted to like this book but I just couldn't get into it. Aside from the pretty cover there wasn't anything interesting about this. I feel like it could have been cut in half and it would have still made perfect sense, because that is how much useless irrelevant  crap was in it. I ended up skipping around a lot, desperately wanting to finish it so I could read something good.  It follows a young female angel named, Bethany. She along with her older brother, Gabriel, and older sister, Ivy, have come to a Earth to stop dark forces from messing with it. They are trying to bring people closer to their faiths like in Bible times.
    Bethany was thrown into the life of an average teenage girl so naturally she falls for the first pretty boy she finds, Xavier. Of course she gets in trouble for breaking the rules by telling him she is an angel and that her brother and sister are also angels. But like any "good" book nothing happens and the two lovebirds can stay together.
    This new guy, Jake, comes along and it is so obvious to me that he is the "evil force" they went to stop in the first place from the moment he was introduced. It took her far too long to figure it out! He tries to mess her relationship with Xavier up but fails.
    Beth being the stupid "heroin" that she pretends to be ends up almost getting herself killed to save her boy toy. Long story short, good prevails over evil.
    This book could have been so much better!
 

I know I'm weird but am I the only one?

     Have you ever watched a really good movie? Like so good that it made you dread having to live in this reality anymore? If you haven't then you must either live under a rock or have an amazing life; to not want to leave the usual for the special.

    I've seen some movies that I would give up my house and everything inside to be able to exist in their dimensions of time and space. I've also read some books so good that I try to picture myself in them (I'm lame, I know). 

    I read a lot! I read at least one book a week, sometimes more. So when I find a book good enough that I wish I could be a part of it then; I know I found a good read! I wouldn't want to be in The Hunger games! Not because it's a bad book but because I just really wouldn't want to be in that. Fighting for food? No thank you, I'll just sit over here eating cupcakes while watching it on Netflix. 

    But come on, who hasn't pictured themselves going to Hogwarts. Being best friends with Harry, Ron and Hermione, changing Draco to be with the good guys. Helping them defeat Voldemort and enjoy getting my mail from owls instead of the post office...Just me? Cool. 

    Anyways back to the point of this, how do you cope with reality? How do you just continue living your mundane life after reading a spectacular book or watching an epic movie? I'm at a lose here! 

    Kind of like after I watched The Avengers for the first time and wanted to be in it. I wanted to be fly around with Iron man and beat the crap out of evil robotic looking aliens. Yes I am aware of how incredibly weird I am, I have come to enjoy my oddness. 

    It took me weeks to get back to my normal state of mind after that movie. So maybe I should ask how do normal people cope with it because I am far from normal. Please don't tell me I'm alone in this because if so then maybe I need to be in a padded room screaming pudding at everyone that walks by me. (Supernatural reference)