Top Bookish News Post

Here are all of the top bookish stories, blog posts, pictures, and videos I found this past week. I put this post up every Sunday so come back again next week for more bookish awesomeness. 

Click away and enjoy your Sunday!

I have an amazing, if I do say so myself, roundup of bookish news this week! I think it more than makes up for my lack luster post last week. Please read and share what you think below.

ARTICLES

Amazon launched Kindle Worlds this week! I'm not even sure how I feel about this, but in the end I think it is pretty cool. Kindle Worlds is a place where fans can submit their fan fiction, and if it is approved it will sell on Amazon. Crazy right? I know there is a whole lot of ethical and legal issues with this but Amazon is supposedly doing it correctly. They have select companies/authors that agree to let them sell fan fiction based off of their work, whether it is a television show, movie, or book you name it you can have fun with it. They have some pretty big titles up right now that they are accepting fan fiction pieces for. There are a bunch of guidelines for each category on how far a fan can go with their work. This is all very interesting, especially with books such as 50 shades that was originally fan fiction and became incredibly popular. To find out more about this you should really read this article. I know I'm not explaining it very well so see for yourself.

As I've mentioned before my beloved Harry Potter books are getting a cover makeover. Luckily I love them! The new cover for The Prisoner of Azkaban was just revealed. What do you think?

I really get upset when there is a huge change in plot from the book to its movie adaptation when it is critical to the story, or just a big part of it. I know everything can't be the same and stay perfect, but there are some instances where the change is just too much for me to handle. Read this list of 11 Unforgivable Changes Made to Book Adaptations. 

We all judge books by their covers. Admit it. We also judge them by the synopsis, authors, and sometimes publishers. Well fear not! If you ever want to just find a book to read based soley from its writing then you must check out the website No Names, No Jackets.  Each post has only the genre of the book and the first chapter, or at least a good chunk of the first chapter for you to read. I think this is a very interesting idea and I will continue to check out this website.

BLOG POSTS

Bookshelvers Anonymous introduced me to Better World Books. A great website to buy books cheap with free shipping. Sure I think most of the books are used, (but still new titles) but it tells you what kind of condition they are in and at these prices I'm not sure it matters. Did I mention that Better World Books gives back to literacy charities and donates books from their sales? Trust me, this site is worth taking a look at.

I was supposed to participate in a blog tour this week on Thursday, I had the post formatted and the review ready to go, until I received an email saying that the book was plagiarized. I was pissed. I was not mad at the blog tour host, this was not her fault, I was upset with the author. What a waste of my time. Sadly, I didn't even like the book so it was a super waste of my time. Why even write a book if you are just going to plagiarize huge chunks of it from other books? Sigh. Here is a post over at Bookish Treasures that talks about this huge big icky situation. The whole thing is a big joke if you ask me. I can't believe the "author" did that.

Have you ever written a discussion post and it wasn't getting any love? Or maybe you love reading discussion posts and can't get enough of them. The Fiction Conniption has a post up where people can share their discussion posts with others every week. I think this is a great idea and I will have to participate the next time I write a discussion post. (I've had a really good one in the works for a while and I think it may finally be ready to post, get excited!)

If you have every been in that sticky situation where you have to review a book but you really didn't like it, then you should read the Caffeinated Book Reviewer's tips and tricks post. Kimba makes some excellent suggestions on how to deal with negative reviews, and although I pretty much do all of that already it is a great reference! Luckily for me I haven't encountered this problem too much.

Intermission/Funny Photo

From Zero to Well-Read in 100 Books

Book Riot recently came up with a list to see how well-read you are. I have posted the list below and I have crossed off all the ones I have already read. (33 total, a few of them that I didn't cross off that I have started reading before but never finished or can't remember if I have read them or not) Now, I'm not saying I agree with every book on this list, but I am a huge fan of lists and love seeing which books I have read from them. Sadly my number is small and sad. I guess I will have to change that. Several of these books are already on my TBR pile. :) How many have you read from this list?

So here’s the list, in alphabetical order:

1. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
2. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
3. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
4. All Quiet on the Western Front by Eric Maria Remarque
5. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay  by Michael Chabon
6. American Pastoral by Philip Roth
7. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
8. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
9. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
10. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
11. Beloved by Toni Morrison
12. Beowulf
13. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
14. Brave New World by Alduos Huxley
15. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
16. The Call of the Wild  by Jack London
17. Candide by Voltaire
18. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
19. Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
20. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
21. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
22. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
23. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
24. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
25. The Complete Stories of Edgar Allan Poe
26. The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor 
27. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
28. Crime & Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
29. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
30. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
31. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
32. Dream of Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin
33. Dune by Frank Herbert
34. Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
35. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
36. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
37. Faust by Goethe
38. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
39. Game of Thrones by George RR Martin
40. The Golden Bowl by Henry James
41. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
42. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
43. The Gospels
44. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
45. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
46. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
47. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
48. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
49. Harry Potter & The Sorceror’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
50. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
51. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
52. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
53. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
54. House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
55. Howl by Allen Ginsberg
56. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
57. if on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino
58. The Iliad by Homer
59. The Inferno by Dante
60. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
61. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
62. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
63. The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
64. The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
65. The Little Prince by Antoine  de Saint-Exepury
66. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
67. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
68. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
69. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
70. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
71. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
72. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
73. The Odyssey by Homer
74. Oedipus, King by Sophocles
75. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
76. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
77. The Pentateuch
78. Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
79. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
80. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
81. Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare
82. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
83. Slaughterhouse-5 by Kurt Vonnegut
84. The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner
85. The Stand by Stephen King
86. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
87. Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
88. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
89. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
90. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
91. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
92. Ulysses by James Joyce
93. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
94. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
95. Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee
96. Watchmen by Alan Moore
97. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
98. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
99. 1984 by George Orwell
100. 50 Shades of Grey by E.L. James

Always Watching by: Chevy Stevens

Always Watching by: Chevy Stevens (2013) 

352 pages

Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Source: I received a free ARC copy from St. Martin's Press for my honest review.

Purchase: Barnes and Noble | The Book Depository | Amazon

Goodreads Summary: She helps people put their demons to rest.

But she has a few of her own…

In the lockdown ward of a psychiatric hospital, Dr. Nadine Lavoie is in her element. She has the tools to help people, and she has the desire—healing broken families is what she lives for. But Nadine doesn’t want to look too closely at her own past because there are whole chunks of her life that are black holes. It takes all her willpower to tamp down her recurrent claustrophobia, and her daughter, Lisa, is a runaway who has been on the streets for seven years.

When a distraught woman, Heather Simeon, is brought into the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit after a suicide attempt, Nadine gently coaxes her story out of her—and learns of some troubling parallels with her own life. Digging deeper, Nadine is forced to confront her traumatic childhood, and the damage that began when she and her brother were brought by their mother to a remote commune on Vancouver Island. What happened to Nadine? Why was their family destroyed? And why does the name Aaron Quinn, the group’s leader, bring complex feelings of terror to Nadine even today?

And then, the unthinkable happens, and Nadine realizes that danger is closer to home than she ever imagined. She has no choice but to face what terrifies her the most…and fight back.

Sometimes you can leave the past, but you can never escape.

Told with the trademark powerful storytelling that has had critics praising her work as “Gripping” (Kirkus), “Jaw-dropping” (Publishers Weekly) and “Crackling with suspense” (People magazine), ALWAYS WATCHING shows why Chevy Stevens is one of the most mesmerizing new talents of our day.

My Review

Always Watching was a nice change of pace from the romance and young adult books I have been reading recently. Before reading Always Watching I hadn't read any other books by this author, including the two previous books that I think Dr. Nadine Lavoie, the main character in Always Watching, plays some role in. This didn't affect my reading experience at all. This book was not hard to follow and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I even want to go back and read the previous two books that she has written! 

Dr. Nadine Lavoie leads an interesting yet hard life. I never once was uninterested in her even though she is quite older than me, sometimes I don’t enjoy books featuring a much older main character, but I really did like Nadine. She is strong and full of love. She possibly has the strongest resolve of any main character that I have ever encountered.

Always Watching is very strongly/well written, with a perfect mix of scenes from the past and present. The whole story flowed well. I will warn you that there are some very tough subjects and detailed scenes that will have your skin crawling. It didn’t make me enjoy this book any less but it was at times hard to read about. I can’t say exactly what because I don’t want to give anything away, but I just wanted to give you a warning about the ick factor  There were a few times when the tears wanted to come out when reading. So although I would say this book is depressing, it also has its uplifting moments. It really makes you stop and think about how you are choosing to live your life.

Basically, Always Watching is a very well written book with a great plot line, some interesting twists, many shocking moments, and a great main character. 

I recommend this book to people who love a psychiatrist as the main character in their stories, a good mystery, and a killer ending. Always Watching may have a few slower moments but it was a really good read and I'm glad I took the time to sit back and dive deep into Dr. Lavoie's life.

**Thanks again to St. Martin's Press for giving me a free ARC copy of Always Watching. This in no way impacted my honest review.

Top Bookish News of The Past Week

Here are all of the top bookish stories, blog posts, pictures, and videos I found this past week. I put this post up every Sunday so come back again next week for more bookish awesomeness. 

Click away and enjoy your Sunday!

Sorry about the short amount of news I'm bringing you this week. Due to the fact that life happens and I've been busy as of late I haven't had as much time to do bookish things as I normally do. Hopefully that will change soon.

ARTICLES

There is going to be another Jessica Darling book by Megan McCafferty and the cover has been revealed. I was a fan of these books a few years ago and I have to say that I'm intrigued. It's a prequel!

Best-selling author Vince Flynn has tragically passed away from cancer at such a young age. He will be missed. 

Alright Divergent fans, are you in love with Four as much as I am? Veronica Roth will be releasing four short e-stories all about Four. One of them will be released a month before the last book is released. I'm ready! Although Roth has written the knife throwing scene from Four's perspective, these stories will give us some more background information on Four. 

One more thing... This showed up in my mailbox this week! I may have squealed just a little. So if you want a copy go grab one! There are some very interesting things about the movie in here.

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Apparently to claim my blog on Bloglovin I had to do this post. Since Google Reader will no longer exist in July I decided to join the Bloglovin train. I already have a way to follow via Bloglovin on the sidebar but I guess they needed this post too. Anyway, please follow with Bloglovin if you haven't already. Just click the text above. :)

Happy Friday!!

A Pile of Mini Reviews: Entwined With You, Beautiful Disaster, & Losing It

Entwined With You (Crossfire #3) by: Sylvia Day (June 2013)

Genre: Steamy Romance
368 pages
Purchase: Barnes and Noble | The Book Depository

Goodreads Synopsis: From the moment I first met Gideon Cross, I recognized something in him that I needed. Something I couldn’t resist. I saw the dangerous and damaged soul inside–so much like my own. I was drawn to it. I needed him as surely as I needed my heart to beat.

No one knows how much he risked for me. How much I’d been threatened, or just how dark and desperate the shadow of our pasts would become.

Entwined by our secrets, we tried to defy the odds. We made our own rules and surrendered completely to the exquisite power of possession…

My Review: Entwined with You was the same old same old as the last two for the most part. There was no forward movement of the plot for what seemed like forever. It did get better however, but I started to wonder why I was taking my time to read this. I guess it is just a guilty pleasure that I can't kick. I'll probably read the next one although I'm not sure why. The ending seemed to get even more ridiculous so maybe I just want to see where Sylvia Day takes us next.
My Rating: 2.5/5


Beautiful Disaster by: Jamie McGuire (2012)
Genre: New Adult
319 pages
Purchase: Barnes and Noble | The Book Depository

Goodreads Synopsis: Abby Abernathy is a good girl. She doesn’t drink or swear, and she has the appropriate number of cardigans in her wardrobe. Abby believes she has enough distance from the darkness of her past, but when she arrives at college with her best friend, her path to a new beginning is quickly challenged by Eastern University’s Walking One-Night Stand.

Travis Maddox, lean, cut, and covered in tattoos, is exactly what Abby wants—and needs—to avoid. He spends his nights winning money in a floating fight ring, and his days as the ultimate college campus charmer. Intrigued by Abby’s resistance to his appeal, Travis tricks her into his daily life with a simple bet. If he loses, he must remain abstinent for a month. If Abby loses, she must live in Travis’s apartment for the same amount of time. Either way, Travis has no idea that he has met his match.

My Review: I feel like I just didn't love this book as much as everyone else did. Beautiful Disaster was a good read and had some interesting stuff going on, such as the underground fighting ring and Abby's messed up past. The interactions between Abby and Travis were great, unless they were fighting. I just felt like something was missing or maybe there was just too much drama for my taste. I do think New Adult fans with enjoy this though. 
My Rating: 3/5


Losing It by: Cora Carmack (2012)

Genre: New Adult
202 pages
Purchase: Barnes and Noble | The Book Depository

Goodreads Synopsis: Virginity.

Bliss Edwards is about to graduate from college and still has hers. Sick of being the only virgin among her friends, she decides the best way to deal with the problem is to lose it as quickly and simply as possible-- a one-night stand. But her plan turns out to be anything but simple when she freaks out and leaves a gorgeous guy alone and naked in her bed with an excuse that no one with half-a-brain would ever believe. And as if that weren't embarrassing enough, when she arrives for her first class of her last college semester, she recognizes her new theatre professor. She'd left him naked in her bed about 8 hours earlier.

My Review: This was my favorite out of the three books in this pile up. I loved the college setting. I really enjoyed the characters. There wasn't as much drama and when there was it seemed more believable.  The best part was that it made me laugh... a lot. This book had a certain charm to it and I would recommend anyone who likes a romance novel in a college setting to read it, especially if they are theater majors. Plus the male lead was to die for. He was English for goodness sake. This was a really fun read. I only wish it would have been longer. It was a pretty short quick read that could have included more interaction between Bliss and her college professor which would have made it even better. And no, there isn't a huge age gap so don't get grossed out about a student and her professor having a relationship.
My Rating: 4/5

Review: The 5th Wave by: Rick Yancey

The 5th Wave by: Rick Yancey (#1) (May 2013)
457 pages
Publisher: Putnam Juvenile
Genre: YA/Survival/Aliens/Sci-Fi
Source: I won a free ARC from goodreads' First Reads and Penguin.
Purchase: Barnes and Noble | The Book Depository

Goodreads Synopsis: The Passage meets Ender’s Game in an epic new series from award-winning author Rick Yancey.

After the 1st wave, only darkness remains. After the 2nd, only the lucky escape. And after the 3rd, only the unlucky survive. After the 4th wave, only one rule applies: trust no one.

Now, it’s the dawn of the 5th wave, and on a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs from Them. The beings who only look human, who roam the countryside killing anyone they see. Who have scattered Earth’s last survivors. To stay alone is to stay alive, Cassie believes, until she meets Evan Walker. Beguiling and mysterious, Evan Walker may be Cassie’s only hope for rescuing her brother—or even saving herself. But Cassie must choose: between trust and despair, between defiance and surrender, between life and death. To give up or to get up.

My Review

I kept putting off writing this review. I'm still not even sure exactly how I feel about this book. Giving it a star rating seems to be almost impossible. I guess I'll just start by telling you the the great, the good, the bad, and the ugly and go from there, and then maybe I will be able to give this one a solid star rating.

The Great: Cassie is a really kick ass heroine with her human flaws and all. Seriously, this chick rocks. I love her crazy/snarky narration. It actually reminded me a lot of the movie Zombieland. She was the best part of The 5th Wave. (Yes, she has one scene where I really wanted to strangle her and be like "you are making no sense," but besides that she is great.) The other great thing is the high creep factor in this book. 

The Good: The different view points. We get to see and feel what several different characters are going through and this added a lot of depth to the novel. The only downside, when the point of view was first switched I was really confused and had to reread a few pages to get a grasp on what was going on. It would have been nicer for a little heads up. Oh and another good thing, there are some pretty cool action/survival scenes and totally unrelated... a good evil person, although way too obvious.

The Bad: This book is pretty predictable. I didn't feel like there was a whole lot of new ideas being brought to the table. It was kind of overly easy to tell what would happen next and who you could and couldn't trust, which was ironic since Cassie keeps saying over and over again that you can't trust anyone. Anyway, after all the hype I was just expecting more twists. I just didn't get the feel of this being a unique alien novel and I don't even read that many alien books. Also, it could be confusing at times, in a bad way, and too unbelievable even though "I know I'm reading a book and this isn't real." .

The Ugly: The ending was no good. The worst part about this is that I can't even tell you why it sucked so bad. Let's just say that if the ending is really going where I think it is then I won't be reading the next book. I mean come on...it is totally unnecessary and doesn't really make a lot of sense. Plus, it didn't leave me wanting more and didn't have a good set up for the next book. I'm keeping my fingers crossed though.

The Cover: I really liked it before I read the book and I loved it after. I think it works perfectly for this creepy book.

In the end I still say to give this book a shot. If you don't like it then you don't have to finish it, but so many other people have loved this book and just because I am not in that camp doesn't mean you won't be. I will say that this book kept me hooked and interested enough to keep me reading to the very end. That counts for something. So if you are a fan of aliens or survival books in general you will probably enjoy this.

** Thanks goodreads and Penguin for a free ARC of The 5th Wave. Receiving this did not affect my honest review.


My Rating 3/5

Top Bookish News of The Past Week

Here are all of the top bookish stories, blog posts, pictures, and videos I found this past week. I put this post up every Sunday so come back again next week for more bookish awesomeness. 

Click away and enjoy your Sunday!

ARTICLES

Who wouldn't want to eat at a literary restaurant? These are amazing! A lot of them are not in the U.S. but the one in Denver, which is my favorite from the list, featuring a cafe, book store, and bar all in one, happens to be in the same state my brother lives in. I think I see a road trip in the near future. Which of these are your favorites?

You know all the news about the NSA going on right now? Well, there has also been an unusual spike in sales for the classic book 1984. haha

I have yet to read Lauren Graham's novel and it is apparently already being adapted for TV. I need to read this book sooner rather than later. What do you guys think of this news? I'm not really surprised by this news but it's exciting all the same.

BLOG POSTS

Is your novel the next big YA book? Check out this post for information about a contest you can enter to get your book published! Good luck.

If you ever get the blogger blues you should read The Bookshelves' Tips on Surviving The Blogger Life. There is some good advice on here. Plus, its a funny read.

You must read Jamie's post where she created a book inspired date night. It's a great idea and a really fun post. I need to read this book and then do this date night!

PICTURE

VIDEO - For The Hobbit Fans (I'm especially fond of Legolas)

Blog Tour: Hidden by M. Lathan (Review)

Hidden (#1) by: M. Lathan (2012)

240 pages

Genre: YA Paranormal

Source: I received a free copy from Xpresso Book Tours and the author!

Purchase: Barnes and Noble | Amazon | Smashwords

Synopsis: Sixteen-year-old Leah Grant has given up on being normal. She’d settle for stopping the voices in her head, intrusive visions of the future, and better odds of making it to her seventeenth birthday.

That’s the thing about pretending to be human in a world where magic used to exist – at any moment, her cover could be blown and she’ll be burned to death like the rest of the witches.

Everything changes when she loses control of her powers and flees the orphanage she grew up in. She desperately wants to be invisible but finds her face plastered on every news channel as humans panic over the possible resurgence of her kind. And now the hunters won’t give up until they find her.

Making friends for the first time in her life and falling in love with one of them drives her to discover why she is unlike any being she’s ever met – human or otherwise. The dangerous powers inside of her that would repel Nathan, her new, handsome reason for living, are priceless to some. The locked up forever kind of priceless. And to others, they are too dangerous to allow her to live.

Let’s hope she can stay hidden.

My Review

Hidden is a very interesting paranormal young adult novel that has a shaky start but picks up and has some unique qualities, making it a nice refresher from the norm. It's a fun enjoyable read with some great OMG moments.

(Although I sound a little harsh about the beginning of this book, I want you to know that it gets better and I really did enjoy reading it.) Now I’m going to be completely honest, this book was kind of a drag at first and a little confusing. I wasn’t a fan of the main character Leah, she had such low self-esteem it drove me crazy, it was due to her raising and having no knowledge of who she really was, but it was hard for me to read about her at first. Also, she is bullied relentlessly by mean girls at the orphanage and no one does anything about it, this drove me crazy since you would think the Sisters at the orphanage would have done something, anything. I was worried because I wasn’t enjoying the first 30ish pages, but then something happened that completely changed my mind.

There is a turning point in the book, when she leaves the orphanage, and this is when the book gets really really good and I start to really like Leah. We get to meet more supernatural people and Leah finally starts to get some answers about who she is. I love her friends and find all the secondary characters interesting, complex, and the friends that Leah really need.

Hidden features a world where witches aren’t a secret but were deemed evil and gotten rid of, giving Hidden a unique edge in the paranormal genre. There is way more than meets the eye in this novel. There are some good action scenes, fun moments with friends, and shocking secret reveals, basically a whole lot of stuff is going on in this first novel in this series, keeping me very entertained. The ending left me wanting more and I can’t wait to get a hold of the next book, which comes out later this month. I want to see how everything plays out.

This is a good investment for fans of young adult paranormal books that love action and romance, not to mention some pretty memorable characters.

** Thank you Xpresso Book Tours and M. Lathan for a free copy of this book! This in no way affected my honest review.

RATING 3.5/5

Author

M. Lathan lives in San Antonio with her husband and mini-schnauzer. She enjoys writing and has a B.S. in Psych and a Masters in Counseling. Her passion is a blend of her two interests – creating new worlds and stocking them with crazy people. She enjoys reading anything with interesting characters and writing in front of a window while asking rhetorical questions … like her idol Carrie Bradshaw.

WEBSITE | GOODREADS | TWITTER

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Review: Night School by C.J. Daugherty

Night School (Night School #1) by: C.J. Daugherty (2013)

400 pages

Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books (Harper Teen)

Genre: YA

Source: I received a free copy from Goodreads First Reads.

Purchase: Barnes and Noble | Amazon

Goodreads Summary: Allie Sheridan’s world is falling apart. Her brother’s run away from home. Her parents ignore her. And she’s just been arrested.
Again.
This time her parents have had enough. They cut her off from her friends and send her away to boarding school, far from her London friends.
But at Cimmeria Academy, Allie is soon caught up in the strange activities of a secret group of elite students.
When she’s attacked late one night the incident sets off a chain of increasingly violent events. As the school begins to seem like a very dangerous place, she finds out that nothing at Cimmeria is what it seems to be.
And that she is not who she thought she was.

My Review

Night School was a very enjoyable read. This is a perfect book for those that like the boarding school setting with an air of mystery. Just so you know in advance, this is not a paranormal book so please don’t expect one.

The school grounds sound amazing, I wish they were real. The school is in an old type castle with secret passageways and rooms and wings that certain students aren’t allowed to enter, not to mention the amazing library.

The school has a set of rules that everyone must follow, sadly we as the reader never get to see this full set of rules only a small portion, but the few we do get a chance to read seem only semi-normal. This book is weird, but creepy and interesting at the same time. We never get answers to everything but that may be because this is the first book of who knows how many. The mystery and suspense in this novel was excellent, but at times frustrating. Now let's talk characters.

Allie suffers from being a new student. Then she makes friends, gets some boy attention, and then all hell breaks loose. Allie was a complex character with some secrets of her own. There is however a love triangle that was executed okay but not amazing. There was one scene in particular toward the end that ruffled my feathers a little bit, if you read it you will know what I mean. Feel free to talk to me about it so I can gripe. There were also several really cute scenes that made me giddy like a school girl. So I guess I’m just 50/50 about almost everything in this book.

This was an enjoyable read that I finished within 24 hours. Although it was a little slow at times it was still intriguing enough to keep my attention. I wish I went to this school, even with all the weirdness and craziness that is happening. I mean they play different games at night in the dark with glow and the dark equipment and there is a library to die for. What more could I want?

Sorry this review is so vague but I didn't want to give anything away about this mysterious school.

Like I said, read this if you are a fan of mysterious boarding school campuses and the drama inside its walls.