Review: Wicked

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire

This book took me forever to get through and I was very disappointed. I saw the Broadway musical and I loved it so when I heard it was a book I had to check it out. It was not at all what I expected in many different ways. When the book started it was just a lot more blunt about life, which is fine, but as it went on, there were more chapters that were just unnecessary and frankly disturbing and had no place in the plot. I'm not talking about in that 'Oh, good heavens to Betsy! Did that young man just engage in inappropriate sexual activities?' It seems when Maguire could not think of repugnant scenes to add, simply for shock value, he rattled on about politics for pages before abruptly, and without any explanation, jumping 5, 6, 9 years at a time. I found it hard to care about most of the characters and many of them did things that did not seem to fit with their 

Some of the gems that this book had to offer were: page long descriptions of someone having diarrhea, a threesome with a tiger, descriptions of a 9 year-year-old playing with her mother's nipple, and a creation story featuring a goddess's urine. I got the impression that the book was trying to be edgy with some of it, but it just came off terrible. 

I also later found out that this was written as a metaphor for something (different people say it's about different things, so I'm not sure) and maybe if I understood more about it, I could appreciate this book more, but I doubt it. 

This book was quite a disappointment and I'll probably not read the rest of the series. I do not recommended reading this book. 

Wicked on Goodreads
My review on Goodreads

Review: Frozen

Frozen - by Melissa De La Cruz and Michael Johnston

I recently got this book as an ebook Advanced Reading Copy from NetGalley.

An adventure right from page one, this book was fast paced and engaging from the get go. I felt like a kid on their first trip to the aquarium, wide eyed and staring around at every new and exciting detail! From the beautiful and creatively crafted world, to the mysterious twists that urge you to turn the page! I couldn't put this book down! I also really like the way the book is broken into sections and chapters because it was really hard to put this book down and the sections offered a good breaking point for necessities like eating and sleeping.

The characters are interesting, and incredibly likable, and there was just enough mystery to turn up the excitement for book two!
The only issue I had was that it was a little difficult to figure out the world at first, but in the end, piecing it together added to the experience and only made it better. 

I recommend this book to anyone who loves fantasy and dystopian books and I can not wait for the second book to come out!

Frozen on Goodreads
My review on Goodreads

Review: Queen of Someday

Queen of Someday by Sherry D. Ficklin
I received this as an advanced reading copy from Clean Teen Publishing  through NetGalley, so first of all I'd like to say a big thank you so much to them!

Did you love season one of Reign? Are you itching for a historical fiction about a younger historical figure? Allow me to introduce Queen of Someday.

I was initially drawn in by the beautiful cover of this book, and the interesting summary. This book follows the life of Catherine the Great before she was Catherine the Great, so obviously it's a historical fiction. Who is Catherine the Great you say? Well in this book, she is the young Sophie, who has been invited with her mother as a guest of the empress Elizabeth in Russia.

It sounds so cliche but I could not put this book down. I expected to take a week and read this book and it ended up taking me two days. Fast paced, and full of twists, I found myself  one-more-chapter-ing all night until I realized that I had no more chapters. I already can not wait for the next book in this series (Stolen Empire). I actually know very little about historical Russia, Catherine the Great, or most of history for that matter, but even I found a few references that I understood. There is an author's note about historical accuracy and creative liberties, and I'm not sure how a history buff would feel, but with my casual knowledge level I enjoyed this book very much.

One of the things that I really enjoyed about this book was the way that the romance aspect played out. It did not feel rushed, or forced, but it was also not drawn out or exaggerated. Sophie's love life felt natural, and of course passionate! Something that I felt was not quite as natural feeling was Sophie's mother. I wasn't sure if I was just frustrated with her, or if it seemed like a skewed point of view.
I would have to say that my favorite part was the beautiful way the author gave the feeling of time drifting past our dear Sophie in the way that she went from a day to day description, to a faster week by week chapter. Well done!

This book comes out on October 7th 2014, and I will most definitely be getting my copy!

Queen of Someday on Goodreads
My review on Goodreads

My First Post!

Hello everyone! My name is AngelaRenea and this is my brand new book blog!

I think for this first post I'll just start out with a little bit about me and what I want to do with this blog! Basically I've always loved reading and books and I have always thought about starting a blog so what better topic to blog about? The thing that actually pushed me to go ahead and start this blog was that recently I discovered BookTube (which if you didn't know is just a corner of YouTube where people have channels about books) and I just really loved the community, so I decided to give it a try! 

The kinds of books that I read are all over the place, but I do tend to have bursts of one genre or another. I went through kind of a great book depression in college where I think I read a total of 2 books one year (I know, for shame) and have been trying to find my place in the book world ever since. I am generally willing to give almost any book a try as long as it seems interesting. I've been reading a lot of young adult recently, but I've also been (slowly) starting to read more science fiction (a genre I feel like I was conditioned to stay away from which makes me very sad). I have always loved fantasy books, and even when I read other genres I always seem to like the ones with a fantasy aspect to them best. But that's not all! I have read (and loved) general fiction, classics, and even (gasp!) a non fiction book!

So this blog. I think that a lot of what I post is going to be reviews of books that I've read, recommendations, and other miscellaneous book related posts. There is also a possibility that at some point I will start a YouTube channel but not just yet!

Thanks for sticking around till the end, and I hope to see you around! 

You can find me at 
Goodreads here --> https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5020800-angela
Tumblr here      --> http://angelarenea.tumblr.com/
Twitter here     --> https://twitter.com/AngieRenea

Just fair warning, I don't tweet that often, and when I do it's nonsense, and my tumblr is a mash of all sorts of things not just books, so if you are looking for just books... its you know, not that.  But my Goodreads is 100% books 100% of the time! Feel free to friend me!

Ok, I think that's all! 
Happy Reading!
-AngelaRenea