Top Ten Books I Want To Be Movies

Good afternoon! Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme at The Broke and The Bookish. Every week they post a new list for bloggers to participate in. This week’s list is a past one being the top ten books you want to see as movies or tv shows. My list is very contemporary heavy, but I have a couple in there that aren’t. 🙂 You can link up here.

The Statistical Probability of Love At First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith

I think The Statistical Probability of Love At First Sight would be a great movie. It’s actually set to be a movie out next summer though, so that’s super exciting! Our wo main leads:

Making Pretty by Corey Ann Haydu

Making Pretty uses it’s New York City setting so well, I would love to see it all live in a film. I think it would be a great summer movie.

The Truth About Alice by Jennifer Mathieu

This one would be interesting since Alice isn’t actually in the story much with a point of view, I think that could/would be worked around in the film though. It would seem very Speak-esque to me if they used only voice overs, which sounds fantastic.

Because You’ll Never Meet Me by Leah Thomas

If you don’t know, this amazing book is out today and Goodreads and Amazon are LYING about it not coming out until July 2nd. Silly GR and Amazon. I think this would be so interesting, particularly with the laboratory aspect in it.

All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

This one is set to be a movie as well. I can’t wait for it! This was my first ’15 book of the year that I really fell for. Elle Fanning is starring in this one as Violet! 

I’ll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios

And this is the second ’15 book of the year that I really fell for. I would like to see this as a film because of the setting. It takes place in a not so financially well off setting in a small town in California. It would be great.

The Walled City by Ryan Graudin

This is the first of two non-contemporaries on my list. It takes place in China with an all Chinese cast. I would love to see all the different parts of the film with the three perspectives.

Anna and The French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

Of course this book is on my list. The Paris setting would be so fun to see. It’d be fun to see Anna exploring Paris.

5 to 1 by Holly Bodger

And this is the second non Contemporary book and one of my most recent reads. I think they could do a lot with this. It gives me a Hunger Games vibe so a similar dark world like shown in The Hunger Games movie at the reaping would be interesting.

More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera

This is my most recent read and I adored this book. It would be perfect as a film because of all the diversity and the writing it has. The main character Aaron has such a unique, genuine voice. I would love to see this Bronx setting in movie form, especially since not many YA books tackle poverty in them like More Happy Than Not (and i’ll Meet You There). THIS BOOK WAS ALSO PUBLISHED TODAY SO GET ON BUYING IT. 🙂

~Bonus~

Fans of The Impossible Life by Kate Scelsa

I read this book, I loved this book, I need it to be a movie. I think it would be great.

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Well there’s my list. What’s on yours? 🙂 Do our lists overlap any?

Top Ten Tuesday – Top Ten Books I Read In 2014

Hey guys, it’s Top Ten Tuesday (TTT). Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme put together by the women at The Broke and The Bookish. To find future lists you can go here and to participate you can go here.

This week’s list is the top ten books you’ve read in 2014, either by genre, publishing year or just overall. I thought I would discuss my ten favorite overall books I read this year.

~Top Ten Books I Read In 2014~

~From 2014~

1. Free To Fall by Lauren Miller

I have a review coming up for this one right after this post. To make it short though, I loved this book. I loved the characters, plot, the mystery. I really don’t want to say too much so I’ll actually have something to say in my review. 🙂

2. The Truth About Alice by Jennifer Mathieu (Review)

I want to read more books like this. I need to read more books like this. The way Mathieu creates these characters and the overall story is just interesting. Like I said in my review, it’s like a mashup of Easy A and Fast Times At Ridgemont High, two movies I love so much and need to watch again.

3. We Were Liars by E. Lockhart (Review)

I loved the poetic language in this book, the mystery, the fairytales, the literary references in general, the sort of non-linear style it took on. I only wish it was longer, but for being so short, it definitely contained a lot.

4. Rites of Passage by Joy N. Hensley

I love the main character Sam and her backstory with her family. The military school and hazing aspects made me really want to read this and I’m so glad I did. It’s really great and I’ll be reviewing it within the next couple weeks.

5. Falling Into Place by Amy Zhang (Review)

What can I even say about this? From the first sentence, gosh, from the summary, I was completely hooked into this story. It gave me so many feelings and I really connected with the main character, Liz, which seems to be rare for readers of this book. It’s definitely one of my favorite books ever.

~Before 2014~

6. If I Stay (#1) (Review) and Where She Went (#2) (Review) by Gayle Forman

I really loved the non linear style both of these books took. I like how they contrasted each other in plots and alternated point of views. The first one was such an emotional read and the second was such a breath of fresh air, full of second chances.

7. A Midsummer’s Nightmare by Kody Keplinger (Review)

Whitley is a character I always knew I needed but wasn’t sure I would ever find one. I love Whitley’s attitude, her behavior, her character growth. I loved the family dynamics in this and the romance. I like how it dealt with a sort of taboo subject, but didn’t make it sound so taboo necessarily.

8. Aristotle and Dante Discover The Secrets of The Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz (Review)

This is one of the greatest coming of age stories I’ve ever read. It definitely gave me a Perks of Being A Wallflower feeling with it’s simple writing style.

9. The Statistical Probability of Love At First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith (Review)

Ah, I wanted to read this book for years before I finally did. It wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be plot-wise, but I loved it. It made me just want to take an airplane going anywhere, but mostly London. Like A Midsummer’s Nightmare, I loved the family dynamics in this as well. I love that the romance isn’t the focal point of the story, but rather just two people connecting to each other.

10. The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games #1) by Suzanne Collins (Review)

I can’t believe I took so long to read this, I don’t even know WHY I took so long to read it….Other than the fact I hadn’t owned it before September, but you know. Minor details. I loved Katniss so much and Panem sounds so interesting.

Bonus:

Anna and The French Kiss (#1) by Stephanie Perks

Every Day by David Levithan

Let me know in the comments what your favorite read books were for the year. 🙂

The Sunday Post (#10) + Stacking The Shelves (#6)

Hey everyone. It’s time for The Sunday Post and Stacking The Shelves.

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme created and hosted by Kimba at Caffeinated Book Reviewer. The Sunday Post is a place to share your past and upcoming blogging week. Feel free to make it your own. For more information you can go here and to link up, here.

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~Last Week on YA Indulgences~

The Sunday Post (#9)

Review: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Top Ten Tuesday – Top Ten Books That Were Hard For Me To Read

Wondrous Covers Wednesday (#7) – Water Theme

Review: The Truth About Alice by Jennifer Mathieu

Amber’s Rambles (#5) – Introduction to Book Buying Bans, Binges and Budgets

Featured Fairytale Friday (#7) – The Red Shoes by Hans Christian Andersen

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~This Week on YA Indulgences~

The Sunday Post (#11)

Musical Monday Part 2  (#3.5) – Five Storytelling Songs

Top Ten Tuesday – Ten Books For Readers Who Like Character Driven Novels

Review: Cut by Patricia McCormick

Waiting on Wednesday

Wondrous Covers Wednesday – Music Theme

Amber’s Rambles (#6) – Book Buying Binges

Review: Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn

Featured Fairytale Friday (#8)

Review: The Chance You Won’t Return by Annie Cardi

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~Possibilities~

Review: Let’s Get Lost by Adi Alsaid (Thursday or Friday)

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~Reading Wise~

I finished Cut by Patricia McCormick, I’m almost finished with The Chance You Won’t Return by Annie Cardi, and I’ve started Let’s Get Lost by Adi Alsaid.

I’m putting Dangerous Girls by Abigail Haas on hold. Just Listen by Sarah Dessen is still placed on hold for the time being.

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~Everything Else~

Well my mom’s birthday was this past week, on the third. 🙂 It went pretty okay. My birthday’s on Saturday, the 11th! I’ll be 23. Like the past five years, I can’t believe it. Time’s flying by, but I never feel any older. I don’t really want much for my birthday, minus books, because, I always want books…But my parents never buy me books since I always have so many to read… It’s not my fault. I’d really like copies of Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar”, “Ariel”, “The Unabridged Journals” and “The Collected Poems”…Like really like them…

Oh, bookshelves would be great too! Because I don’t have any, all my books are spread through out the house, the ones in my room are in a variety of stacks.

Sleeping Beauty and The Fault In Our Stars would be nice to receive.

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Stacking The Shelves is a weekly meme hosted at Tynga’s Reviews where bloggers can share what they have bought, borrowed, won or received book wise that week. 🙂 You can link up here.

This week wasn’t too eventful. I won Don’t Touch by Rachel M. Wilson from Pam at Strong In The Broken Places by participating a ton! Ah, now if only I had done that with my college classes, one of my grades would have been a lot better. 😉 Anyway, I’m so excited to read this!

Goodreads (Abridged) Summary: 

Step on a crack, break your mother’s back. Touch another person’s skin, and Dad’s gone for good.

Caddie can’t stop thinking that if she keeps from touching another person’s skin, her parents might get back together… which is why she wears full-length gloves to school and covers every inch of her skin.

It seems harmless at first, but Caddie’s obsession soon threatens her ambitions as an actress. She desperately wants to play Ophelia in her school’s production of Hamlet. But that would mean touching Peter, who’s auditioning for the title role—and kissing him. Part of Caddie would love nothing more than to kiss Peter—but the other part isn’t sure she’s brave enough to let herself fall.

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I was also granted acces to an e-arc of The Walled City by Ryan Graudin via Netgalley (Thanks Little, Brown Books for Young Readers!)

Goodreads Summary:

There are three rules in the Walled City: Run fast. Trust no one. Always carry your knife. Right now, my life depends completely on the first. Run, run, run.

Jin, Mei Yee, and Dai all live in the Walled City, a lawless labyrinth run by crime lords and overrun by street gangs. Teens there run drugs or work in brothels—or, like Jin, hide under the radar. But when Dai offers Jin a chance to find her lost sister, Mei Yee, she begins a breathtaking race against the clock to escape the Walled City itself.

This reminds me of The Maze Runner, which I haven’t read, in the whole, running aspect and the escaping aspect. Other than that, it sounds pretty different. I love the gang aspect it has, that’s rare. It sounds really fascinating and I can’t wait to read it.

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~Weekly Quote(s)~

“Well, everyone needs at least one long road trip in their lives,” (Let’s Get Lost by Adi Alsaid)

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~Weekly Poem~

Mad Girl’s Love Song by Sylvia Plath

“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)”

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I hope everyone has a great week. 🙂
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Review: The Truth About Alice by Jennifer Mathieu

Title:  The Truth About Alice

Author: Jennifer Mathieu

Published: June 3rd 2014 (Roaring Brook Press)

Pages: 208

Genres: Young Adult, Contemporary, Social Situations

Format: Hardback

Source: Borrowed

Rating: Four Stars

Goodreads Summary:

Everyone knows Alice slept with two guys at one party.

But did you know Alice was sexting Brandon when he crashed his car?

It’s true. Ask ANYBODY.

Rumor has it that Alice Franklin is a slut. It’s written all over the bathroom stall at Healy High for everyone to see. And after star quarterback Brandon Fitzsimmons dies in a car accident, the rumors start to spiral out of control.

In this remarkable debut novel, four Healy High students—the girl who has the infamous party, the car accident survivor, the former best friend, and the boy next door—tell all they know.

But exactly what is the truth about Alice? In the end there’s only one person to ask: Alice herself.

Purchase: Barnes and Noble / Amazon / Book Depository

Cover Thoughts: I like how the girl on the cover is simply an outline with words all around her. I can feel the pain the main character has. I love how the title forms inside her body with the insults in the back.

First Line: I, Elaine O’Dea am going to tell you two definite, absolute, indisputable truths.

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~Review~

In The Truth About Alice, the plot revolves around the rumors surrounding what happened at Elaine’s party involving Alice. Alice is believed to have slept with not one, but two guys, Brandon and Josh . This happens over the summer and by the time school starts again for the students, the rumor has mostly been forgotten. After Brandon dies though, Alice is believed to have played a part in his death. This leads to more backlash from the old rumor in addition to the new one about Brandon’s death.

I love how we saw the rumors expand from just one thing someone said to someone else, to the major thing it becomes throughout The Truth About Alice. At various points in The Truth About Alice, even the adults believe the rumors which I thought was crazy. It makes sense though, when readers think about the small town they live in. Everyone knows everyone and you can find yourself in the spotlight with a wrong move. There’s one incident in The Truth About Alice which really sets off the slut shaming involving a bathroom stall, which ironically enough, Alice’s ex best friend ends up doing. This, in a way, launches the entire school against Alice.

The closest thing I can compare The Truth About Alice to would be the movies Easy A, because of the slut shaming and rumors and Fast Times of Ridgemont High, because of the realism it showed for high schoolers. I like that The Truth About Alice tackled slut shaming in a realistic way.

The Truth About Alice deals with other high school aspects than slut shaming such as texting and driving, rumors, drinking and peer pressure. I felt The Truth About Alice showed all of these things very realistically.

There are four main narrators in The Truth About Alice. The first is the party thrower, Elaine, who’s rich, pretty and popular and was involved in an on-again, off-again relationship with Brandon. Elaine was a terrible character who I mostly despised throughout the book. I didn’t like her at all much until the end of The Truth About Alice.

The second character we’re introduced to is Josh, Brandon’s best friend and football jock. I thought Josh was an interesting character, he was under pressure for being in football, dealing with his best friend’s death and the part he played in Alice’s rumor.

Then there is Kelsie, Alice’s ex-best friend who wants to remain popular with Elaine. My feelings for Kelsie were up and down, I initially hated her because of her icing out Alice to remain popular. One of her plots involved The Really Awful Stuff which she references multiple times and partially blames Alice for it. I thought her reason for blaming Alice was really ridiculous and over the top. She was a bit of a dramatic character who blew up small things.

Finally there’s Kurt, the slightly nerdy guy who lived next door to Brandon. Kurt also has had a crush on Alice for years. We learn that Kurt knows the truth about Alice through Brandon himself. I loved the addition of this in the story.

What I liked about Kurt is that although he’s an outsider, it’s by choice. I like that he isn’t the typical nerd who’s bullied and didn’t mind being left alone. Although I felt the romance in The Truth About Alice was unnecessary and predictable, it helped delve more into Alice’s character through someone who interacted with her rather than just believed rumors. He seemed the most evolved out of the four.

Brandon himself was an okay character. I really liked him in the beginning, but that ended up changing twice in the novel. I love the interesting conversation he and Josh have the night he dies. It was shocking and I thought it was going to go a different way than it had.

While some of these characters definitely fit the usual high school stereotypes, Mathieu expanded their characters and gave each of them depth. I loved how Mathieu was careful when creating these characters so they weren’t one dimensional people I didn’t grow attach too.

My favorite thing about these characters is that Mathieu did make a lot of them unlikeable. I found myself hating Elaine, Kelsie, Josh and even Brandon at times.

The other key character in The Truth About Alice is Alice herself, who we see mostly only through the eyes of the narrators.The alternate viewpoints were nice to see because I saw other people’s perspectives.

It was interesting to see how the characters viewed her after the rumor and what part exactly they may or may not have had in it. Alice’s behavior seemed really realistic and heartbreaking. After the rumors spread, she was withdrawn and quiet to everyone. She never hung around school longer than she had to. It was sad to see how a girl who was pretty popular and liked in her school, quickly became the school slut and shamed all because of a couple rumors.

The Truth About Alice is slightly non-linear as the novel jumps around from each character. As always, I liked that we learn a little about the narrators experiences and home life. That helped make the characters more real to me. I enjoyed the flashbacks that were in the book as it helped fill in the blanks I had while reading.

We learn the characters goals, what they struggle with, and pieces of their past. I was most interested in Kelsie’s past involving The Really Awful Stuff, which was really awful.

I thought using the different perspectives in The Truth About Alice worked really well because we see how everything happened and the different thoughts all the characters had. By the time we reach the end, I was practically in tears. I think this book has a lot to say about society. Specifically about how much damage rumors can cause, how in high schools, guys are glorified for sleeping around and don’t get nearly the same backlash as females, sometimes even praised, but the slightest rumor about a woman can ruin her entire reputation. The slut shaming was done in a believable way. I loved that the topic of this book is slut shaming because that’s a topic, readers don’t find too often in literature. This was a powerful book and I wish it were longer.

At the end of The Truth About Alice, there is no parade for Alice, no one suddenly forgets the rumors about her and let her back into the popular group and I love that. I like how real it was that there is no true satisfaction perfect ending for Alice. There will still be struggles with her and not many people know the truth about it all. There may even be trouble trying to convince people of the truth about Alice. I rate this book four stars out of five because the length was a bit short and I didn’t know Alice as much as I wish I did and I would have liked. I’ll definitely be looking forward to Mathieu’s future works. 

Top Ten Tuesday – Top “Ten” Books That Were Hard To Read

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created and hosted at The Broke and the Bookish. Every week there is a new bookish list for book bloggers to participate in. 🙂 To join in and link up, you can link here.

I really like this week’s list and I’ve liked looking at what other books bloggers had a hard time reading for various reasons. 🙂

This week’s list is

Top Ten Books That Were Hard For Me To Read 

The first five books on this list are books that were hard for me to get into or hard for me to finish if they did have a satisfying beginning.

This book was originally hard for me to get into because of the main characters Hazel and Augustus. In the beginning I found them to be a bit pretentious, which was a turn off. However, I overlooked all that and ended up really loving this book.

I couldn’t get into An Abundance of Katherines because I found the main character, Colin to be a bit whiny, which annoyed me. Other than that, I enjoyed the book by the end.

In the beginning I adored Anna and the French Kiss, however once I hit the second half, Anna and St. Clare became a bit hard to tolerate or like. Overall the ending was satisfying and I did enjoy it.

Lola and The Boy Next Door didn’t grab me at all when I was reading it. I felt it was a gender-bent version of Anna and The French Kiss, which was exactly why I had a hard time finishing it. The characters annoyed me a lot, namely the main character, Lola and the “boy next door”. It was just extremely hard to get into and I had to set it down several times before picking it back up again. When I did pick it back up again, I would only be able to read a couple pages before getting frustrated and putting it back down. Out of all my choices, Lola wasn’t the hardest one to read.

I initially liked Love Letters To The Dead, unfortunately that didn’t last too long as I found the main character to be not so interesting and I had a small problem with her friends. The plot didn’t seem to grab me like I hoped it would so the first half was a bit boring for me, with exceptions. As with The Fault In Our Stars though, I did like it.

~My next picks are books that were hard to read because of the emotional content of them. I’ve seen the first two on lists today~

If I Stay had such a great emotional overload that I found myself putting the book down several times to “get ahold of” myself. This was a huge emotional read for me and the entire book was satisfying.

The Truth About Alice was hard to read because of the emotional content of it. I felt really bad for the main character. The other side characters frustrated me to no end that I was just so mad with the way they were acting.

My final pick is…

Like If I Stay and The Truth About Alice, this was an emotional novel that caused me to feel completely awful for the main character. With Falling Into Place, I seem to be in the minority with that thought. There’s also a specific scene that is similar to one of the above books that I just couldn’t read about it then because I couldn’t bare going through that again.

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Okay, those are my picks. What are yours? 🙂 Have a good Tuesday.

The Sunday Post (#9)

Hey everyone. I hope you all have had a great week. The Sunday Post is a weekly meme created and hosted by Kimba at The Caffeinated Book Reviewer. In The Sunday Post, you can share your past and upcoming week blog-wise and not, feel free to personalize it. 🙂 To link up and look at other bloggers posts’ you can go here.

If you read my Stacking The Shelves post for this week, you would know that I got the last of my books this week! Yay! Feel free to check that out, I’m so excited all of them.

I barely got a review out this week. I originally planned to review The Truth About Alice by Jennifer Mathieu on Tuesday, then review We Were Liars by E. Lockhart on Thursday, but I just didn’t have the energy and the words weren’t coming. 😦

I finally, finally, made my first review for the Mental Health and Suicide Awareness Theme Read going on by Rachel at RachelIsReading this month. It’s kind of sad since I’d been wanting to write a review every Saturday for it but….I don’t know what happened.

I think I’ll begin just reviewing the books for the Theme Read whenever I finish them.

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~Last Week on YA Indulgences~

The Sunday Post (#8)

Musical Monday Part 1 (#3) – Bare: A Pop Opera

Top Ten Tuesday – Top 10 Books on My Fall TBR

Amber’s Rambles (#4) – Breaking Blogging Schedules

Stacking The Shelves (#5)

Review: Falling Into Place by Amy Zhang (ARC)

I went way overboard on last week’s Top Ten Tuesday. Haha… I kind of had three lists…

I ended up completely missing Wondrous Covers Wednesday and Waiting On Wednesday due to figuring I’d do those that night after Life Group, but then I kind of didn’t get home from Life Group until….after midnight.

I have no excuse for not doing Featured Fairytale Friday other than I didn’t feel like reading a fairytale and commenting on it. Which is ridiculous.

Last week’s Amber’s Ramble was on breaking blogging schedules. It was originally going to be on something else, but with my Sunday post being late, my Top Ten Tuesday post being late and then entirely skipping Wednesday’s posts, I felt the need to write about breaking schedules.

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~This Week on YA Indulgences~

• The Sunday Post

• Review: The Truth About Alice (Monday or Tuesday)

• Review: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart(Tuesday or Thursday)

• Top Ten Tuesday

• Waiting on Wednesdays

• Wondrous Covers Wednesdays

• Amber’s Rambles

• Featured Fairytale Friday

• Review: The Chance You Won’t Return by Annie Cardi (Saturday)

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~Possibilities~

• Review: Cut by Patricia McCormick

• Review: Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn

I may save these two reviews for next week.

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~Reading Wise~

• I finished We Were Liars! Oh my gosh, that book….

• I started Dangerous Girls by Abigail Haas which I’m really looking forward to, minus the huge spoiler I read about it….I hope to finish that this week.

• I’ve also started Just Listen by Sarah Dessen because I needed something light to read after Falling Into Place, I’m thinking of putting in on hold now that I’ve recuperated.

• I’m still in the middle of The Chance You Won’t Return by Annie Cardi, but I’ll be reading that today.

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~Weekly Quote(s)~

If you want to live where people are not afraid of mice, you must give up living in palaces. (We Were Liars)

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~Weekly Poem~

Alone by Edgar Allan Poe

From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were; I have not seen

As others saw; I could not bring

 My passions from a common spring.

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow; I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone;

And all I loved, I loved alone.

Then- in my childhood, in the dawn

Of a most stormy life- was drawn

From every depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still:

From the torrent, or the fountain,

From the red cliff of the mountain,

From the sun that round me rolled

In its autumn tint of gold,

From the lightning in the sky

As it passed me flying by,

From the thunder and the storm,

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view.

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Have a great week. 🙂