Teaser Tuesday: Glass Sword by Victoria Aveyard

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm.
To play along just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Glass Sword by Victoria Aveyard.

Glass Sword – HarperTeen

I fear being alone more than anything else. So why do I do this? Why do I push away the people I love? What is so very wrong with me?
— Chapter 18

I must believe enough for all of us. I must put up my mask again, and be the lightning girl they need. Mare can wait.
Dimly, I wonder if I’ll ever get the chance to be Mare again.
— Chapter 23

My reading mantra should be something along the lines of “Do not turn into a blubbering mess in public”... maybe I should choose different books for that. But then again, why would I want to read books that don’t make me feel? Therefore, blubbering mess it is!
This is the second book in this series and basically picks up where the cliffhanger from the first book left us. And from there on it becomes a big chase against just about everything and everyone. I can’t say much about what is going on without giving anything away and I think this book needs to be experienced with as little previous knowledge as possible. Otherwise you won’t be clutching at your armrest on the train only to realise that your stuffy seat neighbour actually had his arm resting there ... oops. (Served him right though, he was hogging the thing!) I’m not quite sure where my loyalties lie, I don’t even know if I’d support our main character. I certainly understand where she is coming from and I think there are worse options, but I’m not going to call her a heroine anytime soon. Neither am I going to do that for any of the other characters though. In this world it seems like you can only choose the path of least traumatic assaults on your conscience. No one is actually born a monster, but anyone can become monstrous in their choices and actions ... or their inaction. And I think this story is also great in making you think about the kind of monster someone is willing to become when faced with seemingly impossible choices.

The English language has this saying of being caught between a rock and a hard place. Have you been in such a situation and how did you decide between the two options? Share your thoughts and teasers in the comments.

Teaser Tuesday: Cinder by Marissa Meyer

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm.
To play along just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Cinder by Marissa Meyer.

Cinder – Feiwel & Friends

“Vanity is a factor, but it is more a question of control. It is easier to trick others into perceiving you as beautiful if you can convince yourself you are beautiful. But mirrors have an uncanny way of telling the truth.”
— Chapter 19

“It will, I promise. Listen carefully, as this may be something of a shock to you.”
“A shock? You mean all that was just the precursor?”
— Chapter 25

For various reasons I feel like I’m haunted by fairy tales this past week ...time to dig out the trusted version with cyborgs and androids to make sense of the situation and save the world. This amazing series has recently been completed with the publication of the short story collection and if you haven’t been living beyond the moon (trust me on this, you wouldn’t want to live on the moon in this case), you have probably heard about the serie’s overall perfection. But in case you were looking for another nudge to pick it up or maybe re-read, let me assure you that you’re not making a mistake in opening the first page of this series. You don’t have to be a fairy tale buff to appreciate the series, but you can find some hidden gems in names and story arcs if you’re looking for them. And actually a lot of cultural observation when it comes to accepting and living together with people who seem other to us.

Do you have a favourite retelling of a fairy tale? Let me know in the comments along with your teaser!

Teaser Tuesday: The Year We Fell Apart by Emily Martin

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm.
To play along just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

The Year We Fell Apart by Emily Martin.

The Year We Fell Apart –
Simon Pulse

Every time a solution was offered, his dad came up with another justification. He was just trying to find a shortcut to the end of the grief. I guess we’ve all been guilty of that at some point.
— Chapter 6

As perfect as that night turned out, that second kiss was still the worst, most desperate one we ever had. Up until the kiss I stole at the bonfire last week.
— Chapter 10

Isn’t that cover beautiful? I could totally see these cut outs as little pretty postcards decoratively standing around. Or maybe in frames on the wall ... Enough with the cover love, but I needed to get that off my chest first before continuing on to the content: It’s an entertaining and well-written contemporary YA romance with teen angst, family issues, friend and image problems, and second chances. Depending on my mood there is maybe a little bit too much of miscommunication and a little too slow development for the main character. Or something like that, because overall the writing itself is very on point and I enjoyed reading about Harper and especially Declan.
I would have wished for the story arc of the family thrown into a tailspin by the mother’s diagnosis. And maybe not so much dwelling on the past and mistakes made without moving on or trying to learn from or rectify them. If you’re old enough to drive and think you’re old enough to drink, then you’re certainly old enough to have an adult conversation without taking away the other person’s right to make an informed decision. And possibly that’s also one of the big take aways from this story ... apart from the obvious that sometimes second chances are well worth taking.

Now excuse me, I need to hop to the next art supply store and get some coloured construction paper ... and maybe acquire some drawing skills. Share cover beauties and teasers in the comments.

Teaser Tuesday: The Truth About Peacock Blue by Rosanne Hawke

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm.
To play along just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

The Truth About Peacock Blue by Rosanne Hawke.

The Truth About Peacock Blue –
Allen and Unwin

It had taken only that morning almost a year before to shift the way I viewed the world, to see the danger we lived with daily. I was not yet thirteen and still thought life consisted of cricket and songs.
— Chapter 2

It lifted my spirits above the crowd of angry men shouting for my death to learn of a girl fighting for girls everywhere to have an education and to be treated justly. I imagined she was also meaning me.
— Chapter 25

I didn’t go easy on myself this week regarding my book choice and in the end out of two possibly controversial books I chose the political cultural one rather than the social cultural one. Because I think it’s easier to talk about? Which in itself is quite a double meaning as that is exactly the core problem the main character faces in this book in a way: the freedom of speech, but more so the freedom of religion. This book deeply moved me and made me think and made me angry and made feel powerless. All those who should read this book and feel the same way are never going to read it and those who read it and feel like I did will most likely not have any possibility to initiate any real change.
The place of our birth and our upbringing is such a random lottery and if you’re reading this, chances are that you are lucky to live in a place where you don’t have to fear that speaking your mind will land you in prison or that not being a member of the dominant religion could secure you a place on death row. Double that if you’re female.
The case presented in this book is fictional, but it is written so well that at times I forgot. And when I remembered I had no difficulty imagining that this does happen in real life. Maybe not exactly like this but also not completely different. And in those moments I am so grateful for my fate, which was handed to me through no doing of my own, just by being born in a certain place at a certain time with a certain set of chromosomes. Yes, it is not all peachy rosy happy here either, but it can be so terribly and unfairly worse due to no other cause than a combination of geographical and genetic factors.

It’s not often that I read issue books of any kind mostly because I want my reading to be firmly settled in a comfortable fictional space and I don’t want the real world to invade that. Perhaps that’s escapist and a little cowardly of me, but when I read such a title I keep them with me quite a while and maybe that makes up for it a little. Let me know your thoughts and preferences if you like along with your teasers in the comments.

Teaser Tuesday: See How They Run by Ally Carter

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm.
To play along just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

See How They Run by Ally Carter.

See How They Run –
Scholastic Press

And, most of all, these women remembered what their mothers and grandmothers had learned from the Romans, the Byzantines, the Turks, and the Mongols: that history almost always repeats itself. And it is almost always written by men.
— Chapter 1

“You should not be concerned about me,” he says.
“But you get to worry about me? That doesn’t quite sound fair.”
— Chapter 28

None of us are entirely free of our past and in some way or another it will always catch up to us. Your past might even come back to haunt you and that is fine ... to some extent. But when it comes back to hunt you there is definitely something very very wrong.
Second book in this series and I couldn’t be more invested if I put all of my (imaginary) trust fund in it. I admire Ally Carter for her ability to write these completely inscrutable characters whom you don’t quite trust. Even or especially when they are your narrator. Add to that political intrigue and some crime investigation or other and you can be sure that I won’t come up for air unless absolutely necessary. Well, that and other pesky things called grown-up responsibilities (really, whoever invented those).

Have you ever considered playing hooky with a book (or have you?)? And if so, which one? Share your thoughts and teasers in the comments.

Teaser Tuesday: The Golden Specific by S.E. Grove

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm.
To play along just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

The Golden Specific by S.E. Grove.

The Golden Specific –
Viking

“Missing but not lost, absent but not gone, unseen but not unheard. Find us while we still draw breath.”
— Chapter 1

Perhaps it was: realizing the world was not obliged to give you what you wanted, and, more importantly, deciding what you would do and how you would feel once the realization arrived. Would you sit back and resent the world? Would you make peace with it, and accept the unfairness without rancor? Or would you try to find and take what the world had not provided? Maybe all three, she reflected, at different moments.
— Chapter 39

My memory is far from perfect (admittedly, it is quite good, but ... never mind) so for some series it takes a while before I manage to get back into the mindset the story requires. This might be for various reasons like a complex setting or a peculiar set of realities or a varying cast of characters. For this it was a mixture of the setting and the added rules during the last book that I needed a while to recover before the story gripped me again. But I remembered that I had needed a few chapters for the first book as well and was later so very glad that I stuck with it and the same is true for this one! What a great adventure and such an elaborate world. I still wonder how it works precisely, but that can be put aside to take part in this expedition.
I’m almost at the end an I’m dreading it ... but since it took me so long to get to this, the third and final book will be out in just a few months. I’m just counting my blessings that not all my anticipated books release at the same time. That would inevitably lead to an absolute melt down.

And that begs the question: If you could have all your most anticipated books at the same time how would you choose which to read first? Share your way of prioritising along with your teasers in the comments.

Teaser Tuesday: Never, Always, Sometimes by Adi Alsaid

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm.
To play along just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Never, Always, Sometimes by Adi Alsaid.

Never, Always, Sometimes –
Harlequin Teen

You can’t have smart people lingering around for too long in horror movies. Otherwise they come up with solutions and not enough people die.
— Chapter 12

Julia knew that there were moments in your life that meant something but passed by unnoticed, and she knew that this was not one of them.
— Chapter 21

Almost everyone has a To-Do list ... not necessarily a written one, but maybe a mental one (and then you forget the baking soda and are totally screwed). Then there are rules, and those can also be written down or agreed upon (and can be equally bad if you break them). Wishes, also written or just in your head. Humans love lists, but the question is if they have more power if they are solidified in ink on paper? For this book this seems true as the two protagonists follow their rules to high school quite religiously and while they make for an interesting experience they also function as a kind of cage. And maybe some rules are meant to be broken
I enjoyed quite a few aspects of this story as they are realistic and comprehensible. No one would set out to have a mediocre or unmemorable high school experience I think and by giving it this twist of actually having followed an agreed upon set of ideals for most of the time and then deliberately breaking them makes for a unique perspective. This wouldn’t have worked if the two weren’t so extremely co-dependent and sort of exploiting each other or I’d rather say existed in a symbiosis as they don’t wilfully harm each other.

What sort of lists do you have either physical or mental ones ... apart from you TBR? Share them and teasers in the comments!

Teaser Tuesday: Passenger by Alexandra Bracken

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm.
To play along just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Passenger by Alexandra Bracken.

Passenger – Disney Hyperion

Don’t mind him. He’s allowed one day of good nature a year and he’s already spent it.
— Chapter 3

“A bad idea is better than no idea,” Etta said.
“I’m glad you feel that way, because this is an exquisitely bad one.”
— Chapter 11

Happy 2016, everyone! I hope you had a good start of the year and I wish upon all of you some brilliant books this year. Please excuse my unplanned disappearance last week I was a little blindsided by non-book life (I know, the impertinence!). But now back to the pleasant things and I already don’t know how to put it into different words for this book apart from that I am absolutely and completely in LOVE with it! It is a hyped book and in this case it is so very much deserved. I want this book to succeed and to get all the attention it can because it is so utterly wonderful inside and out. I could constantly look at the cover to admire the not-mirrored mirror image ... and yes the writing is detailed and extensive, but that is also what invokes this lush, deep, and textured feeling.
There are some parts of the time travel technicalities that I didn’t completely understand, but that is the very nature of this premise I’d think ... at least it makes a lot more sense than many other time travel books I read before. Especially the rule that you can’t exist in the same moment twice and would therefore not be able to go back to re-write last week’s history.
In short: This book has all the things I wanted from history to adventure to scientific logic (to a certain degree), and yes, also a very compelling love story. And now I must find out how I can travel to 2017 to get my hands on the sequel. Damn you, cliffhanger authors, why must I love you so much?

Do you have any resolutions for this year? Mine is to avoid a certain online retailer as much as possible and order my books through other channels. Even if that means waiting longer for them to arrive. I was more or less unconsciously doing so already but now I want to find out how long I can actually manage without ordering there at all. Let me know your resolution and challenges along with your teasers in the comments!