Tuesday 12 January 2016

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!

Tuesday 5 January 2016

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!