Review: The Fallen Star - Jessica Sorenson

The Fallen Star by Jessica Sorensen
Released: April 11, 2011
Free e-book on Kindle for Amazon

Description from Goodreads:

For eighteen year-old Gemma, life has never been normal. Up until recently, she has been incapable of feeling emotion. And when she's around Alex, the gorgeous new guy at school, she can feel electricity that makes her skin buzz. Not to mention the monsters that haunt her nightmares have crossed over into real-life. But with Alex seeming to hate her and secrets popping up everywhere, Gemma's life is turning into a chaotic mess. Things that shouldn't be real suddenly seem to exist. And as her world falls apart, figuring out the secrets of her past becomes a matter of life and death.

Review after the break...

Pitch Dark: Dark Days Book Tour

Pitch Dark, an online community from HarperCollins Publishing, is hosting 9 authors for their Dark Days book tour which takes place in the next couple of months. For the first leg of the tour, the first four authors will be visiting 4 bookstores in: Huntington Beach, CA, Decatur, GA, Cary, NC, and Cambridge, MA. 

The Cambridge, Massachusetts tour stop is next month, February 7th. Since I live in Rhode Island, I’m usually not able to visit book signings or author meet and greets, so when I researched the bookstore it is being held at, The Coop, I arranged a way to attend (with multiple forms of transportation :O ).

The four authors who will be present are Veronica Rossi, author of Under the Never Sky and Through the Ever Night, Tahereh Mafi, author of Shatter Me and Unravel Me (out Feb. 5), and Cynthia Hand, author of Unearthly, Hallowed, and Unbound, and Brodi Ashton, author of Everneath and Everbound.

As I had only read the works of Rossi and Mafi, I figured I would try Hand's and Ashton’s books so I could participate and enjoy the entire event, not just specifically half of the authors present. Over the next few days, I am going to post reviews of some of these authors work as I prepare myself for the event. 

I plan on reviewing these books in no particular order:

Through the Ever Night (Under the Never Sky #2) by Veronica Rossi 

Unravel Me (Shatter Me #2) by Tahereh Mafi

Unearthly by Cynthia Hand

Hallowed (Unearthly #2) by Cynthia Hand

Unbound (Unearthly #3) by Cynthia Hand

Everneath by Brodi Ashton

Everbound (Everneath #2) by Brodi Ashton

I have already reviewed Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi and Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi which you can check out here and here. 

Please bare with me as there are only a handful of days left under the tour and I plan on having everything read so I don't overhear any spoilers at the event, so if my reviews are a little rushed and wonky, I will do my best to revise them...although they might just come out stream of conscious style. :)

For more information about Pitch Dark, the Dark Days tour, or just to interact with the online book community, check out their website, www.pitchdark.com. 

Happy Reading!

My apologies

As all of us know, blogging can take up a lot of your time, whether it's scheduled or free time, it seems that sometimes it can fall between the cracks with reality takes center stage.

Over the Christmas holiday, I lost an uncle. I am not going to blame my lack of blogging on this, but it has definitely helped me put things into perspective more clearly since I found out. While it feels like we have forever to accomplish what we want on this earth, some of us get the short end of the stick and have to visit heaven earlier than scheduled.

I started blogging in January 2012, and it was slow going and interesting to experiment with learning what I could about the blogging community and how I could adapt it into other aspects of my life. At this moment, looking back on my blog posts, I'm happy with what I put out there. But each time I posted, I didn't feel particularly good about any of them. What I've come to learn and respect is that blogging is not fun or enjoyable when you stop having fun doing it. It sounds silly to say out loud, but it's true. The moment I start to stress about posting a review or doing a "Showcase Sunday," it loses that appeal and interest it held previously. I admire those bloggers who dedicate hours to their blogs, and they have so much to show for it as many of their blogs are fantastic and well organized and inviting.

But I didn't start blogging to acquire followers. I started blogging to meet new people and learn about books I might not have a chance to have heard of otherwise. Over the past year, I have infinitely more knowledge about the publishing business and what it takes for a book to actually make it to the bookstores. This is information I wouldn't have been able to garner with just sly curiosity. Many bloggers have experienced the publishing world first hand through author interviews, book signings, author tours, events and panels that are not readily available to someone of my location, on a small island, in the smallest state in the U.S.

I have made friends with bloggers and authors which I value above all else because sharing an interest in reading with people from all over the U.S. has broadened my chances of learning and honing a skill that can only be exercised with conversation and enthusiasm.

There's always a moment before the New Year when I tell myself that if I don't make a resolution, I won't be letting myself down if I fail. But this year, I was thinking about the stress of having more than one item on your plate and how that could be alleviated. I told myself that no matter how much or how little I blog, whether it's a short review, a long rambling one or a simple update on how my TBR pile is growing and not decreasing, I blog for me. I blog for the experience. I don't want to put a deadline or a due date on what I choose to spend my free time doing. Going through school and finishing college has taught me that finishing a project is the worst thing you could do to yourself. Everything is always a work in progress and I seem to forget that from time to time. It's okay if I post an extra long review of a book that really bothered me. I can go back and edit it, trim it, delete it all together.

I'm not in the spotlight. I don't depend on daily hits or followers or requesting books for early review. I make due with what I have and I try to enjoy it as much as possible. If my fingers hurt after posting, I know I've let a little bit of myself into the world, allowing it to begin its journey and start to form itself. Whether it happens quickly or over a long span of time, I'm okay with whatever it takes.

There will always be another book to read, but the experience will always stay with you.

Happy reading :)

Money vs. Time

The two questions I've had since I began writing this blog and following other reviewer blogs is how reviewers choose books to review and how they manage their time doing so. 


Almost all review blogs I've visited have a Review Policy which details the types of books they will review (whether it be genre, length, series, or personal interest), a loose timeline of when their review will be posted, and where they'll post it (their blog, Goodreads, Amazon, anywhere else the author/publisher requests). 


But when do you say no? Even if you can read a book every two days, when does it become a chore? Personally, I can't force myself to read. Some bloggers say they dedicated time each day to reading, and if they can do it and enjoy it, all the best to them. Two or three weeks will pass where I won't pick up a single book, and it doesn't phase me. I have to be in the right mood to read a book. Sometimes, I'm in the mood for contemporary and others it's dystopian or paranormal, but I never try to make myself read when I just don't want to. Although there are weeks where I can read a book a day, staying up through the night and falling asleep only when I've read the last page or there's a big enough plot pause that I can wait until the next day to continue. 


There are a few blogs I follow that buy, borrow and win books every week, yet their review turnover doesn't seem up to par with how many they take in. I think this is one of the issues that most review bloggers face, because it's easier to say yes than no. It makes you realize just how many novels are published and how valuable reviews and reviewers are, when one book can be chosen over another - it goes to show what people are willing to spend time on. Because that's what it comes down to. Yes, novels cost money for the publishers and the customers, but the time that people devote to reading and reviewing is what can push that novel up to recognition. 


Money translates into time. If I buy a novel for $18 the first week it's released and I sit down and devote 2-5 hours on a novel, I am more likely than not to tell someone about that book. And weirdly enough, the worse the novel, the more people talk about it. At least that's what I've noticed. Negative reviews get infinitely more attention because people are quick to defend, which can spiral out of control even more quickly because of the phenomenon that is the internet. People are drawn to drama whether they want to admit it or not.


Even bad publicity is good publicity, I've heard many times. Doesn't matter if the talk is bad, just as long as someone is talking about it. And to be honest, even if I hear or read a negative review, it won't deter me from reading it.

Preview Catalogs... Who knew?

I've been discovering amazing new things about the publishing world these past few months, and I'm getting more and more envious of those who work at publishing companies especially for these reasons. Not only do they get to develop literature when it's still undercover from the public eye, they get advanced reader copies and they get to talk to the authors and meet with them and just be in their awesome presence. I mean, for a book lover, authors are pretty much top shelf celebrities. Movie stars are sub-par compared to authors, especially the authors who have written works that I love.

But what I'm coming to realize is, even though it's completely necessary for publishing companies to market certain books/novels to certain age groups, I always find myself amazed at what I actually read. I've read Jane Yolen past the age that was considered "appropriate" and I still believe some of her books were what truly got me into reading for REAL. Not just to get it over with, but because I enjoyed the characters development and I enjoyed being scared enough to sleep with the light on, even if it was just a chapter book.

Besides that one book that was written by a 12 year old about how to talk to girls, almost all literature/novels/books are written by adults. So there is always that underlying theme of adult entertainment. Now wait a minute, "adult entertainment" sounds raunchy and X rated. But what I mean is that just when you watch a movie when you're a child and then you grow up and happen to watch the movie again, things are different. You notice what the characters are really saying, and how their actions have consequences. For an author to write a story, for an ADULT to write a story targeted for a younger audience, there's always room for an older audience too. There's not one chapter book or young adult novel I've read that wasn't written by someone older than 16. Most YA novels star main characters around the age 15-18. But what most people don't truly think about is how the authors are anywhere from 16-50+. It's such a wild and vulnerable time in a persons life that I think most people are drawn to those years of adolescence because we're as impressionable as can be. But what I've learned is that I can appreciate these stories more as an older person, not too far off from the YA novel target age, but far enough that that time has passed for me, and I'm able to mourn for it just a little.

I used to be upset with authors when I was younger, because I thought, what do they think they know? They're not my age. But what I failed to understand is that in order to truly understand something, you have to have lived past it. I experimented with writing frequently when I was in high school, and while I felt that I had a voice and I wanted to be heard, I also knew that my credibility as a young adult was yet to be achieved. I had to grow out of that, "I write in my diary because I'm original" phase and move on with what was going on to appreciate what was actually going on during those years. I don't look back and think, my goodness, I was so lucky to have experienced a healthy and angsty teenage youth.

I'd like to say that I'm still coming to terms with the fact that my teen years were not the best I could have made them, but I tried, and that's the best that I could have done.