Stephanie Perkins - Anna and the French Kiss

I am so excited for the release of 'Anna and the French Kiss'.  It's out in the UK on December 2nd and I have it preordered on Amazon already!  It's the first book from debut YA author Stephanie Perkins, who promises that it will feature lots and lots of KISSING!

Goodreads synopsis: Anna was looking forward to her senior year in Atlanta, where she has a great job, a loyal best friend, and a crush on the verge of becoming more. So she's less than thrilled about being shipped off to boarding school in Paris — until she meets Étienne St. Clair. Smart, charming, beautiful, Étienne has it all . . . including a serious girlfriend.


But in the City of Light, wishes have a way of coming true. Will a year of romantic near-misses end with their long-awaited French kiss? Stephanie Perkins keeps the romantic tension crackling and the attraction high in a debut guaranteed to make toes tingle and hearts melt.
 
On Stephanie's website, one reviewer describes it in the following way:

"Imagine a mug of rich, thick hot chocolate. Now add a swirl of sweet whipped cream. Yummy? Oui. Well, Anna and the French Kiss is richer, sweeter, and—yes—even hotter. You're in for a very special treat."

Now, how can anyone resist that?!

I'm super excited for this novel because Stephanie has an amazing blog on her website which I regularly read and through which she shares her love of super-gorgeous British men.  It's one of the first places I check each day when I go online.

Yet another lovely YA cover:

Even better, she also has another pending novel 'Lola and the Boy Next Door'.  So if you like 'Anna' you have something else to look forward to.

Review: Jenny Han - The Summer I Turned Pretty

Goodreads synopsis:
Belly measures her life in summers. Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August. Winters are simply a time to count the weeks until the next summer, a place away from the beach house, away from Susannah, and most importantly, away from Jeremiah and Conrad. They are the boys that Belly has known since her very first summer -- they have been her brother figures, her crushes, and everything in between. But one summer, one wonderful and terrible summer, the more everything changes, the more it all ends up just the way it should have been all along.

Review:
I had heard good things about this book so when I saw it in my local Waterstones I snapped it up.  It's actually the first in a trilogy of 'Summer' books and I'm eagerly awaiting the next two installments to see what's going to happen to Belly next.  Belly (or Isabel) is spending the summer the same way she always does, in her friend's beach house, with the boy of her dreams Conrad and his brother Jeremiah.  Belly wants everything to be the same it always has but she discovers that life keeps on changing whether you want it to or not. 

I loved this book - it's a perfect teen read.  It beautifully captured the feelings of adolescence and growing-up and that excitement which comes from your first love.  I liked the central character of Belly and I thought Han's writing really drew the reader in and allowed us to understand the emotions and feelings she was experiencing.  If I had any criticism it would be that I would have liked to have seen more development of the relationship between Belly and her mother.  Their problems were hinted at but never really touched upon in any depth.  Perhaps this is something that Han will concentrate more on in her other books. 

The other thing I liked about this book is the gorgeous cover.  Here's the UK and American versions of the book :

The sequel by Jenny Han is called It's Not Summer Without You. I can't wait to read it!  The third book in the trilogy, We'll Always Have Summer is published in the UK on 3rd May 2011.  That's ages away!

Twilight saga

When these books were first published, I have to admit that they kind of passed me by. Then the films were released and I thought it was about time to see what all the fuss was about. I'm so, so glad that I did because I have not enjoyed reading a series of books more than these for a long time. While I was devouring each one, I couldn't sleep properly for thinking about Bella and Edward and worrying about what was going to happen to them. Would Jacob ever find his perfect match? Would Charlie discover Bella's secret? How was it all going to end?

These books completely took over my life. They were all-consuming. I was torn between wanting them to last and last, which resulted in me reading passages really slowly and then dying to find out what was going to happen in the next chapter, so that I ended up not being able to put each one down for hours at a time.

If I had to sum up what I loved about the series the most, it would obviously be the relationship between Bella and Edward. They love they had for each other was pure and true and pretty much unshakeable. Whether they lived forever as immportal beings or only spent a mortal lifetime together, they were always meant for each oter. They would have been prepared to die rather than live on without the other. Bella was selfless and Edward devoted. Their love was everything you'd hope love to be.

I've read some reviews of the books that have criticised Stephenie Meyer's writing for being clumsy and juvenile, but I didn't find that at all. I thought that there was an extraordinary depth and emotion to each story and she'd created an incredible world that when you were reading, you felt totally a part of.

I'd definitely give each one of the books in the series 5 out of 5. I'm desperately hoping that Stephenie Meyer might eventually add to the saga too! I'd love to read the full version of 'Midnight Sun'.

Introduction

I decided to set this blog up to post about all the fantastically amazing books I read. I'm going to focus mainly on young-adult books (even though I'm not a teen anymore!) although now and then I may post about other books too.

I am a complete bibliophile and cannot leave the house without taking a book with me! I will read just about anything and love receiving recommendations for new titles. I mainly enjoy young-adult books, 19th century fiction and more recently I've been enjoying paranormal/supernatural stories.

As well as being a complete book-aholic, I work in a library too so I get to spend all day being surrounded by books. What could be more perfect than that!! I thoroughly enjoy rooting around second-hand bookshops and I'm also active on a number of sites such as Goodreads, Bookmooch and RISI.

I hope that others will enjoy reading my blog and I look forward to sharing all the book love.