The Nrrdling (Aryn)

trees talk bark and grow beyond names. flowers outbloom blooms. roots too settle deep or shallow until they overthrown their own reason for being roots.

Meet Bruce and Selina.  They are just the sweetest new addition to our family. Free range bunnies!  I didn't even know you could litter train bunnehs. I'm in love. 

nah, we're not batman fans in this household or anything. 

Well, this book comes out Tuesday, I won it in a drawing.  Thought it would be a good time to start it.

Well, I finished that in less than three hours.

Perhaps this was not the most original of tales, but holy crap it was a fun, easy, love-filled, and just fun romance.  And I'm really not one for the romantic tale, especially the young adult romance, where that is the entire focus of the novel.  I'd rather read about dragons any day, but this went down like a tasty hoppy beer.

The twist towards the end of the book was lame.  It almost lost stars there.  I almost lost my reading momentum and put the book down.  So fail for the twist.  But the rest of the book was such reading popcorn, that I didn't even begrudge the book a half a star.  It got to keep its 5-star rating.

I can't believe I haven't read this one yet.  What's wrong with me!?

So.  My first review of the new year.

First a little update?  I did a purge of my TBR shelves right before the new year (not my digital ones, my physical ones) and donated two big boxes of books that I've owned for so long I clearly have no intention of reading.  However, this seems to have freed me up and I've actually been reading more!

I got this one in my Book Riot YA subscription box, in October.  And can we say holy creepy as fuck Batman.

Amanda is 16.  Last winter she got a serious dose of cabin fever and had a mental breakdown, scaring her entire family half to death.  She can't seem to forgive herself for this, even though it's clearly not something she had any control over.  She hates herself and hates her family, and has some seriously dark thoughts towards her disabled baby sister.

And then the family resettled in the prairie, and things take a turn from bad to worse. First, the cabin they find is drenched in sticky old blood, so much that it has eaten through the floor.  Why they thought living there would be a good idea is totally beyond me.

Anyway. Is she mad?  Is it a devil?  Decide for yourself.

Creepy motherfucking book.

So this happened at midnight on Halloween. While I was dressed as the pink ranger and he was dressed as Thor. 

I started this book not hating it. By the time the flat, irritating, ending rolled around I did. 

"WHAT DID YOU PUT IN THAT DRINK?"

"...  Uh ... Alcohol?"

gigglesnort

So, I guess the theme of this trip to the library was: takeout books that are parts of series that you had no idea were part of series.  Whoops!

I'm super confused how to rate this book.  I basically found it fairly mediocre.  Both of these authors are authors that I've read books by and been blown away - this was not one of them.  Yet, somehow I found myself sobbing through the last chapter.  So I'm super confused.

Ending: 5 Stars

The rest of the book: 2 Stars

Average(ish): 3.5 Stars

...I guess.

I was not attached to any of the characters in either Will Grayson's or will grayson's life.  Will Grayson was super irritatingly attached to his sort of douchebag group of ex-friends, and mad clingy to the super gay best friend who actually liked him but he couldn't possibly appreciate.  will grayson was just whiny.  Period.  NOT a good representation of a depressed person.  He was more interesting than Will Grayson, for sure, but about as likeable as Holden Caulfield. Have I ever mentioned how much I hated Catcher in the Rye?  Mostly because I just wanted to smack Holden Caulfield upside the head.

Yet somehow, the ending had me in tears ... go figure.

So far, I much prefer the gay will grayson to the straight Will Grayson.  Straight Will Grayson sort of bores me.  I'm reading through his chapters as fast as I can to get to gay will grayson's chapters.

Is anyone else strangely intrigued by this gender swapped Twilight, Life and Death?

... nothing's even happened yet, but they just revealed something and I'm like:

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I must say, I was impressed at how well the convention was tackled.  I read a lot of young adult with nerdy characters, that this was the first one that I felt that the author actually knew what he was talking about.  It felt like an appropriate level of pop culture reference was thrown into each conversation with Zak.  It wasn't over done or ignored, or super judged.  Of course Ana judges, but the judgment doesn't feel like it comes from the author.  It felt like the author actually appreciates the culture of a convention.  It made me want to go to one again, that's for sure - though a small one.

Anyway, Ana is totally focused on what's next - getting into college and getting out of her parents' house.  Her parents and older sister have completely warped her.  And Zak spends the entire time trying to get through to her.  Though the only reason he's even there is because he was failing health and was required to be an alternate on the quiz team instead of going to Washing-con.  And then Ana's younger brother runs away to check out the con and Ana and Zak team up to find him.

An epic rescue adventure.

At a convention.

And a love story.  But not insta-teen love.