Review of Dear Luke, We Need to Talk, Darth: And Other Pop Culture Correspondences by John Moe

I received a copy of this book from Blogging For Books in exchange for an honest review.

The book is a collection of letters, emails, blog posts, message board posts, memos, etc. from famous people. I really like the All Points Bulletin about an outlaw named Bon Jovi and Dorothy’s letter to Glinda was funny.  I also liked the letter from Dora the Explorer’s mother.  My best friend and I have wondered where she was during the show, and I’ve finally figured it out.

The other parts of the book were pretty boring though.  The Rejected Super Bowl Halftime Show ideas were ok, but most of those were repetitive.  I finished it, but I really didn’t want to because I lost interest about 3/4s of the way through it.  I wouldn’t recommend  it.

I gave it 2 out of 5 stars.

Review of Confessions From A Coffee Shop by T.B. Markinson

I received a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Confessions From A Coffee Shop is about a girl named Cori who lives in Boston with her girlfriend, Kat, and works 3 jobs.  Kat has a bit of a spending habit and thus they’re in debt.  She also has to deal with her melodramatic mother and she needs to finish her novel.

I like the main character, even if I don’t understand the way she thinks sometimes.  Her mom is a bit difficult, but I like her aunt.  I spent most of the book being annoyed at her girlfriend, Kat, but I liked her a bit more by the end.  I think Harold was a fun character just because of how clueless he is.  Sam and Lucy are nice as well.  I sort of thought Cori was going to try to cheat on Kat with Sam, but I’m happy that I was wrong. My least favorite character in the book was Kat’s dad, Phineas Finn. He’s a pompous jerk.  He just informed Cori that she was working for him now.  Both of Kat’s parents were boring and frigid, though I think that was the point.

I loved Cori’s “inner dialogue.”  I think that part was really well done.  She’s pretty introverted most of the time, unless alcohol is involved.  I just wish she wouldn’t have blamed herself for Kat’s spending habits.  It really wasn’t her fault. If I was her, I would’ve cancelled the credit card account.  I like that she’s vegetarian too.  I might be a bit biased though since I’m also a vegetarian.  I really liked Cori’s relationship with her father.  I like that her and her mom do stuff together too, but books don’t seem to show nice father/daughter relationships.

I figured out one part of the story before it was revealed, but that didn’t make me like it any less.  The book was a light read and I read most of it in one night.  The ending was cute. I’d recommend this to anyone who likes romance.

Review of Hidden (House of Night #10) by P.C. & Kristin Cast

I think Hidden is a good addition to the House of Night series.  I really like Shaunee more now that she’s on her own.  She’s a much better character now and she uses her brain more.  I’m still not sure what I think of Shaylin.  She’s just kind of there.  She’s part of Zoey’s group, but she’s not very interesting yet.  Erik (Zoey’s ex-boyfriend) is in this one for a bit and he annoys me.  He’s still a self-centered jerk.

One of the main characters changes a lot in this book.  I was surprised about it and disappointed in her. I get  little too into the characters sometimes and think of them as actual people. *shrug*  This character wasn’t ever one of my favorites, but the change was pretty abrupt.  There is more death in this book. They’ve been killing someone, or something, off in each one.  To balance it, two characters have been given love interests.  I hope it works out for them as the series continues.

This one has quite a bit of action because of the showdown with Neferet.  It’s crazy that it took this long for the vampire council to realize that she’s evil.  Have they not seen her? Zoey and her friends have to throw everything they have at her in order to save someone they love.  I was slightly disappointed with how the book ended, but I knew they wouldn’t be able to kill her off that easily.

I already started book 11 (Revealed) and pre-ordered book 12 (Redeemed), which will be the end of the series.

Just My Typo: From “Sinning with the Choir” to “the Untied States” compiled by Drummond Moir

I won this book in a First Reads giveaway on Goodreads.com.

Just my typo is a collection of typos from around the world. According to the footnote in the Acknowledgements section, “Just My Typo is the first book to concentrate almost entirely on a single letter, punctuation mark, or space being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Each chapter of the book focuses on typos from certain areas (media, schoolwork, etc.). My favorites were Autocorrect Dystopia and Immaculate Contraption.  My favorite typo in the book is the kid’s homework one on page 43.

The book is a quick entertaining read. I’d recommend it to anyone who likes books about grammar or typos, teachers, editors and authors.

Review of How to Survive a Sharknado and Other Unnatural Disasters: Fight Back When Monsters and Mother Nature Attack by Andrew Shaffer

I got this book from Blogging For Books in exchange for a review. That doesn’t effect my opinion.

The book came out right before the second Sharknado movie premiered on the Syfy Channel. It’s featured in the movie as the book that Fin and April wrote after the events of first movie. It’s pretty entertaining. It’s a satirical version of those survival guides that they have for different situations. It will teach you how to survive all of the Syfy channel movies.

The book is broken down into sections and each entry has ratings for how likely you are to encounter it, the damage level, and Fin’s WTF rating as well as who is in endangered by it (B-Movie stars, contractors, etc.) and how to stop it or kill it. It got a little less entertaining by the time that I was half-way through the book, but I liked that the author included random facts about whatever kind of creature or disaster is being described.

I’d recommend this to fans of the movies made by the Syfy Channel and people who like satire. How else will you know how to survive an ice twister or an attack by a piranhaconda?

Review of My Last Kiss by Bethany Neal

I won this book in a First Reads giveaway on Goodreads.com.

My Last Kiss is about a girl named Cassidy who died at her birthday party.  The police have ruled it a drunken suicide, but she’s pretty sure it was murder. The question is, which one of her friends did it?  She comes back as a ghost and has to figure out what really happened to her so she can rest. Her boyfriend, Ethan, is able to see her and helps her figure everything out.

I like the author’s writing style and the story was engaging. I didn’t want to put it down and kept thinking about the book while I was at work. I wanted my shifts to end so I could just read. The descriptions of everything were really well done. I could picture everything, which made me like this even more.

My favorite character was the main character because she’s flawed and knows it. Her parents are getting a divorce and she had started doing things that she normally wouldn’t have been doing.  Mica was my least favorite character. The guy is a creep and a stereotypical “player/jock” combo.

I like how Cassidy switches from the present to her memories of her life and the night of the party. The transitions are abrupt sometimes, but that’s because she basically gets sucked into the past. A lot of clues are revealed that way. It kind of sucks that she can’t control it, but she does figure out how to “ghost-port” between places in the present.

One of the sort of shocking things in the book was that one of her best friends betrayed her and kept a lot of secrets from her. She was pretty deranged. I had a few different guesses about who the killer was, but I didn’t figure out who it really was until right before it was revealed. The author does a good job at keeping you guessing.

The bridge was basically a character in the book. It’s very central to the plot. Her first and last kisses took place there, her friends and sister keep going to the bridge, and the climax of the book takes place there.

If you like mystery, contemporary romance, young adult books, and/or nice imagery, you might like this. There is underage drinking and some swearing, incase that bothers anyone.