★★★★★ 5/5 stars!!!

This was such a lovely end to a gem of a series. If you just base this series off of it's appearance, then you are completely wrong. Yes, it is labeled as a "children's" book but it's a lot more mature than you would think it is, and the main character Desi is really mature for a 13/14 year old. I was NOT that mature when I was that old!!! Lindsey Leavitt should have at least made Desi 15/16... But oh well.

Anyways. This novel reaches beyond the scope of the hey-let's-just-invent-magic-for-the-sake-of-using-it-for-this-agency-and-the-plot-and-not-mention-it's-uses-for-world-peace-and-shit. It actually asks the question "If we have this magic, why don't we use it for the greater good of the planet? which is totally something that I don't see often. Did I mention that this is labeled as a children's book?

The ending to the series' conflict was realistic. Using subs' magic and stripping of their memories sounds reasonable to me, (I mean, for the sake of the plot of course lol) and if Facade had been doing it for so long, it would be unrealistic for Desi to suddenly just change everything. Genevieve offering them to run another branch of the company made sense, and I guess everything just wrapped up really nicely for me!

I don't get why Leavitt had to throw in that doubt of whether Reed was the one subbing for Prince Karl... but it did add some spice to the book. Reed and Desi are really cute! BUT I JUST CAN'T IMAGINE DESI AS A 13/14 YEAR OLD. Leavitt you are too mature to be writing about a 13/14 year old.

All in all, I really loved this series. The synopsis sounds really stupid and kiddish, but the prince/princess/royalty/magic thing is handled really well and there's some cute romance in it.

 If you're looking for a guilty pleasure read or you're just bored out of your mind, read this. It's awesome :3 Leavitt is a surprisingly awesome writer.

Rating: ★★★★★ (5/5)

Seraphina is a well-spun tale that will touch your heart, grapple you in with hooks and refuse to let you go. The world is unbelievable, each character sparkles like a gem and finally, an amazing plot spun with fine golden threads holds this story together.

Rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5) Wow. What a doozy. I originally had anticipates something more clean-cut but Harkness surprised me. She wrote Elizabethan England quite well and the Roman Empire was really great as well. She captured the essences of each world perfectly and I loved everything. Each character was absolutely lovely and I gave my heart to SO many of them. Jack, Annie, the Earl... Each of them were so likeable! Especially Goody and Corra. Harkness also inserted a lot of side events that sometimes bored me but I absolutely LOVED Philippe. He was a great father figure, and his interactions with Diana made me smile. Speaking of fathers... We get to meet Diana's! Stephen was exactly how I imagined him to be. (Plus, his appearance was very unexpected for me too.) ALSO. Marcus and Phoebe. THAT IS MY NEW OTP. Oh my god. I love them. We only got a short introduction of them... and we didn't even find out how they got together!! Darn you Harkness. I was looking forward to that. :-(( BTW ANYONE NOTICE CORRA? THAT TOTALLY REMINDED ME OF THE LEGEND OF KORRA. In this novel, we really get to see Diana and Matthew in their married life, and I felt that that their relationship was so much better written than in the first book. They had real issues, and they got through them in a realistic way... and I actually really loved their dynamic in this book. Surprisingly, they actually handled the miscarriage less severely than I would have imagined. Overall, I felt that the "darkness" Matthew was experiencing was quite realistic and wasn't extremely eye-roll-inducing like in other vampire books. Funny... Diana even talked about those sappy vampire rape books in the novel. That made me laugh. (lol) Anyways. although Harkness really indulged in the world and spent a great deal of time within it, I felt that the pacing worked well, and everything was really well written. Highly recommend!!! (Albeit it is a bit long... but you should be used to that.)

I received this Advance Reader's copy thanks to Marissa Meyer herself! Many thanks.

Rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5)

Phew! I finally received this long awaited ARC! (Funny enough, it was squished into my tiny apartment mailbox, but came out perfectly intact.)

First Impressions
The fairytale twist in Cinder is a bit different than I expected, but I'm totally down for it. Wolf was a fantastic character (although I thought his introduction was a bit hilarious for some reason) and the only word I can use to describe him and Scarlet is... sexy.
The novel started off slightly slower than I expected, but it definitely picked itself up. I didn't really like Scarlet at first, because she seemed like a typical hotheaded young lady. When the POV switched to Cinder, I was really glad for the first half of the book. Scarlet was a little bit too angry for my liking. I guess she sort of redeemed herself with Wolf!

Characters


Cinder, of course, was absolutely fantastic. I could tell that she was still wavering in her resolve, but she proved to be a strong lead in the end.

Scarlet, bored me at times with her cliche lines and feelings... I think Cinder was too much of a refreshing POV for me! I slowly came to admire her bravery in the face of adversity, and also her weaknesses, which were of course... merely human weaknesses. She couldn't help them.
An interesting switch in  POV from Cinder who was always mistreated and had many doubts, to Scarlet who is loud, angry, and strong. 


P.S. WOLF IS HELLA SEXY.


...and last but not least, what I liked and didn't liked. It was a bit slow going with the introduction but it slowly picked up the pace towards the end and I felt that this novel paced the story for Cinder, and allowed her to gather her thoughts and come to a resolve. Scarlet's plot seems independent, but I'm sure she'll play an important role in the novels to come.

What I didn't like was that I felt that I was being dragged along, whereas when I was reading Cinder, I was on my toes constantly.

What I liked was the refreshing originality, romance, and overall plot.
Seriously looking forward to the next novel. OASIDFLKASJF (I might have to wait the same time as everyone else next time though D:)

-vivian

Well hello! Long time no see. So, it's 4:52PM, and around three hours ago I was at my local mall (is two blocks away local? or neighbourhood pfft.) to attend a signing!

Marissa Meyer was at Chapters Metrotown!

I admit, walking in and finding a small audience facing a podium was startling. I thought it was going to be somewhere more public, but it was nestled right inside the store, right infront of the YA section. (I guess that makes sense, right?) So I passed by all the adults and perched myself in a seat in the second row (after bumping into a girl with my gigantic backpack and crashing into a bookshelf). I sat there reading my ereader (because I was forty minutes early) and voila! Meyer was there!

She was a lot skinnier than I expected her to be (her goodreads photo must be outdated). Meyer talked about how she got the idea for her novel, and it was pretty entertaining.

I'll summarize her story for all of you guys!

Meyer apparently got into writing from Sailor Moon, and writing fanfiction. (lmfao this sounds eerily like me) So she wrote for 10+ years, and somehow she found a competition where you needed to choose two elements from the list and include it into her story, So she chose...

Futuristic, and fairy tale. 


Meyer wrote a puss n' boots set in the future, and thus, she became interested in the genre!

Then, nanowrimo came up, and there was an event for seattle residents. It stated that if you wrote the most words in November, you could be on Star Trek! She told us (with great humour) that her whole family were Trekkies. She got third place, but she wrote drafts for the Lunar Chronicles! After two years from that point, she revised Cinder and ta-da!

She then told us to ask her questions and what not, and the gist of the whole thing was that...

1. The future books will be based on new heroines, with Cinder in them as well, but it's not going to be completely Cinder!
2. All the heroines are going to meet up at the end and join forces against the Queen.
3. Book two will be 40% Cinder, 50% Scarlet.

So I went up, she signed the inside with my name, and I asked her to sign the front with a silver sharpie. :) Apparently she has this red shoe event thing going on so I happened to be wearing white converse with red stars on them (lmao) so she told me to write down my address so I would receive A CINDER MIRROR! COOL. I CAN'T WAIT :D

I took a picture with her and that was it. Here are the pictures.

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Alright. I'll admit it. I thought this was gonna be a light romance that takes place all on a plane where they get off and exchange #'s. TADA. HAHAHA. Well it does say that it takes place over a 24hour period. Flights to Taiwan take 12 hours okay? Nice cover by the way. Looked forward to reading this.

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Okay okay. The romance wasn't really believable. I guess it could happen that you become super comfortable with someone you met for a few hours... and especially if you're setting right next to each other on the airplane. But it was a little too coincidental for my liking. Oliver was too perfect, and I didn't get to see more about him, but then again... twenty-four hours. I'll let this go.

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What I really loved about this was the whole divorce-marriage-funeral thing. I could totally relate to it, since my relationship with my father is almost non-existant. When Hadley was describing how uncomfortable she was with the change with her two parents, I felt my heart ache in a way that I already experienced before. The HEA was expected and they came to terms with what they couldn't a little too fast, but the feelings were genuine.

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I wish I could meet a guy for a few hours on the plane, follow him to his dad's funeral, have him follow me back to my dad's wedding reception, dance with me, kiss, and fall in love.

But that's never gonna happen.

Wow! Long time no see. :( I've been reading a Discovery of Witches for a whole week. Don't know why it took me so long to re-read it. Anyways. Read on!

To be quite honest, I thought this was gonna be crap. It was ok, actually! (better than ok.)

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So the cover is kind of. Um. You know. Crappy. HAHAHA. So I didn't have high expectations. So I just kept reading and reading. Let's just say, I wasn't impressed just by the summary or the cover.

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I barely knew what the characters looked like!! Same issue as a lot of the books but I guess the relationship was more important right? Oh. And sex right after ten minutes of talking? I don't know if sexual attracting can be that sizzling. Right?

I mean, come on. I know the author let the relationship carry on AFTER the sex, but it didn't seem special, and it just seemed physical. I'm glad it was addressed though. It made the ~love~ seem more believable?

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I love dirty history. God. I loved the background stories of the two main characters!! It makes it worth a second read. I thought the dirty history was gonna be some stupid thing, but it was actually pretty bad! I really liked that. Mmmhm. Two thumbs up.

Ｏｎｅ　Ｓｅｎｔｅｎｃｅ　Ｒｅｖｉｅｗ
Don't let the crappy cover and ten-minute-talking-lets-fuck first few chapters fool you, this book can worm it's way into your heart.