Happy Halloween!

In celebration of one of my all time favorite holidays, I thought I'd do my first ever tag post. This is the "Creatures of the Night" created by Katytastic on YouTube. Go check out her booktube channel if you want to see her video. Basically for this tag there is a list of supernatural beings, and I'm going to pick my favorite of these monsters from books I've read. So let's get going!

1. Vampire: Gotta go with a classic for this one. I choose the vampires from Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. These will forever be my favorite vampires. Not only are they super hard to kill, but they each come with a sort of super power. What more could you ask for?

2. Werewolf: I'm going to count a new read for this one. I choose the beast from The Madman's Daughter by Megan Shepherd. I can't tell you who the beast/werewolf man is, but he is very scary and intriguing.


3. Zombie: For this one I choose the "zombies" from Stung by Bethany Wiggins. This is a post-apocalyptic book about what happens when bees go extinct, and the the genetic modified bees they create carry a disease. The cure for the disease is only given the the countries most gifted children, how it's the cure that turns them into flesh eating beasts. There is just something really ironic about the gifted children they're trying to save being the ones who turn into the beasts.

4. Ghost: Hereafter by Tara Hudson. This is about a ghost and a human who fall in love. Not the most original story, but the the book is actually quite entertaining.

5. Which/Wizard: I've been wracking my brain and I cannot think of a book with a wizard in it. And before you recommend Harry Potter, well...I'm not the biggest Harry Potter fan. There's nothing wrong with the books, and I actually enjoy the movies, but I have no interest to read seven books about a genre I usually get bored with within the first two chapters. I've tried, and they are just not for me. But yeah, no books with a wizard. Sorry.

6. Fairy: I don't read many books with fairies in them, just because I'm not a huge fantasy fan. But, one fairy book I've read and loved is Wings by Aprilyn Pike. These fairies are basically like flowers and the society that they set up is actually very interesting.

7. Demon: For this one I am going to count Everneath by Brodi Ashton. There aren't any demons in the book, but a lot of it takes place in the underworld, so I feel like Cole and the other underworld dweller can count as demons.

8. Angel: My favorite angel is Patch from Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick. He's just great. Seriously, read the book.

9. Alien: I love the aliens from The Host  by Stephenie Meyer. These aliens, or "souls," are interesting because they are very peaceful, kind creatures, but they still manage to take over the human race.

10. Superpowered Human: Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi. This book is a lot like X-men but the superpowers some of the characters have are actually really cool. Like the main character who kills anyone who makes contact with her skin.

I hope you enjoyed this post, and hopefully got some recommendations for a spooky Halloween read!

A Cold Legacy
By Megan Shepherd
Genre: Young Adult Horror
Personal Rating: 10/10

This is the third and final book in the Madman's Daughter trilogy. I've noticed that these books get more spooky and scary as the story goes on, and man was this one frightening!  I can't say much about the plot without giving away too much away about the other books, but I can say that this one is based off of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. I can also say that this one was by far my favorite in the series, and a wonderful conclusion to the story of Juliet, Montgomery, and Edward. These were the absolute perfect books to read in October before Halloween--so spooky and suspenseful. However, this one was way more gory than the rest, so keep that in mind before going into it, there is a lot of blood and guts. But still, I did really enjoy reading this series. I am sad it's over.

Bossypants
By Tina Fey
Genre: Autobiography
Personal Rating: 7/10

I picked this book up looking for a light, funny read and that was exactly what I got. This was a very entertaining book. This book doesn't actually reveal a lot about Tina Fey's life growing up, which is actually what I wanted to read the most about. There were a few chapters about her father, her times at drama camp, and so on. But the majority of the book focused on her life once she began working for SNL. I wasn't crazy about the overall structure of the book--certain chapters seemed out of order and random--but I did love some of the things she included in the chapters. For example, she has one chapter dedicated to hilarious responses to mean fan mail. She also included scripts from SNL skits and some very funny lists. There is a lot of bad language and sexual reference in this book, however.

The Odyssey
By Homer
Genre: Classic
Personal Rating: 9/10

I read this book for a class this semester and I am very glad that I did. I had very little knowledge about The Odyssey before and I actually sincerely enjoyed the story line as well as the complex writing.

This book is one of the oldest classic epics we have today. It follows a man names Odysseus as he tries to make his way home to Ithaca after the Trojan war. Odysseus is praised for his cunning wit and strength, but the reason he is stranded from his home and family for over ten years is because of simple recklessness. The story stars in medias res--in the middle of the story--and later discloses the trials he faces getting home, the struggle his wife and son face back home, and what happens when Odysseus finally returns to his home land.

While I did over all like the story and themes of this book, I did have some issues with the characters that were hard to look past. Also, because of the culture of this time period, there is a lot of graphic bloodshed and infidelity that is expressed very flippantly. So while it took a little to overlook that, I did enjoy learning about this culture, and I did find the themes of human recklessness very compelling.

If anyone is interested in reading this great work, I highly recommend reading this version translated by Robert Fagles. This version makes reading The Odyssey much more enjoyable and easier to understand.

Her Dark Curiosity
By Megan Shepherd
Genre: Young Adult Horror
Personal Rating: 9/10

This is the second book in The Madman's Daughter trilogy. Each one of the books in the series is a play off of a Gothic classic--this one based off Robert Louis Stevenson's novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 

After escaping her father's island, Juliet is back in London, but her father's dark work wasn't completely destroyed as she'd intended. Bodies all over London are being found with three claw marks on their chests, the same marks fond on the islanders on her father's island. A beast--man by day and animal by night--is terrorizing the town. But, even stranger, all the victims are people Juliet knew personally, people who had wronged her in some way.

I loved the first book because it was a scary and frightening book that I actually enjoyed. This one was even more frightening, but also slightly more graphic. These books are perfect for reading in October, under the covers with a flashlight. I do love these books for both the spooky aspect but also for the wonderfully complex characters. There were more than a few times were I was a little annoyed with Juliet for her indecisiveness, but as the story went on I found that to be an important part of her character development. Overall, I'm really enjoying this series and I cannot wait to get into the last book soon.

Life and Death
By Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Young Adult Paranormal
Personal Rating: 7/10

Anyone reading this who knows me personally is probably thinking, What? You giving less then a 10/10 to something Stephenie Meyer wrote? Well I am just as surprised as you are. I am a huge Twilight fan, so when I saw that she was publishing a novel length special feature for the tenth anniversary, well it's safe to say that I was pretty excited. The novel game as a double book: the original Twilight on the front and then you flip it over for Life and Death. I really had no idea what the extra book was going to be about, but once I started reading it I was...surprised.

Life and Death is basically the story of Twilight but gender bent. So instead of a human Bella and vampire Edward, we have human boy, Beau, and vampire girl, Edyth. And the rest of the characters are switched around as well. In the forward for this book, Stephenie Meyer explains that the reason she wrote this was in response to everyone's complaints that Bella was a constant damsel in distress. By switching the gender of the human, she shows that Bella is simply a human in distress. Any human--male or female--would have a hard time coming across as strong when they are surrounded by extremely strong and dangerous vampires. I understand what she was trying to do and I definitely saw her point, but I wasn't a big fan of how she went about getting the point across. This book is the exact same plot of Twilight and the same dialog, only switched to accommodate the gender switch and the very different--but interesting--ending. If she would have written this book with a slightly different story line I would have been a lot more intrigued. Instead it just felt like I was re-reading my favorite book in a sort of bad fan-fiction flip.

Would I recomend this book to anyone? No, not really. It was still a fine book--if I had read that before I ever read Twilight--but because it was so similar, and yet so strange, I had a hard time getting into it.

The False Prince
By Jennifer A. Nielsen
Genre: Young Adult/ Jr. Adventure Fiction
Personal Rating: 10/10

I realize that I've been giving a lot of books 10/10 rating lately but what can I say? I've been reading some great books. I was assigned to read this book for my Children's Literature class and I'm so glad because this isn't a book I would have picked up on my own.

Sage is an orphan, stealing to survive. Until the day a man named Conner collects him and three other boys from the streets, promising them a life of luxury. But the promise is laced with more deceit and danger than it may be worth. The entire royal family is dead, and Conner needs a young boy to pretend to be the long lost prince Jaron, otherwise the entire kingdom may collapse under the rule of a tyrant. Each of the boys share similarities with the lost prince and have two weeks to impress Conner enough. The remaining boys will be killed. The idea sounds more appealing than the street to the rest of the boys, but to Sage a life of lies doesn't feel right. And as the time draws near, the danger becomes more real, and the lies start to unfurl.

This is more of a middle grade novel but I could honestly see it appealing to anyone between 10-20. It's a perfectly clean and wholesome book, but it is incredibly suspenseful and entertaining. I loved Sage as a narrator, and as a character in general. He is very humorous and clever. I loved the clean and clear writing style, and the ending was incredible! I'm so glad that I read this because it's a book I can recommend to every member of my family. It's fantastic!

A Little Something Different
By Sandy Hall
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary
Personal Rating: 4/10

This book is a great example of a good idea that was poorly executed. The whole premise of this book is a love story told in every perspective but the two people who actually fall in love. It's a super cut idea and I was very excited to read it, but I found that this story really fell below its potential. A lot of the perspectives were unique--a bench, a squirrel, Chinese food delivery guy--but after a while I had absolutely no interest in the story because of the bland narrators. This story spans over an entire school year of these two people liking each other but avoiding each other and random strangers making comments about it. It was cute for the first chapter, but the repetition got real old real fast. The cover is adorable and the concept interesting, but there was really nothing worth while in the actual book.