Top Five Thursday: Favorite Book Boyfriends/Girlfriends

Sorry this is being posted on Friday again, life got a little busy and I forgot to post it yesterday. This week's top five are your favorite book boyfriends/girlfriends. You know you develop very real feelings for your favorite fictional characters. This is your safe place to share your love! Who are your favorite fictional crushes? These are a FEW of mine.

1. Jace (The Mortal Instruments)
2. Will Herondale (The Infernal Devices)
3. Mr. Darcy (Pride and Prejudice)
4. Daemon Black (Lux Series)
5. Chaol Westfall (Throne of Glass)

The Infinite Sea Review

 

 

 

This is the 2nd installment in The 5th Wave trilogy in which we continue following our group of survivors. This was not a strong follow up to the first book. The beginning was a little jarring to me because in The 5th Wave we mostly read through Cassie's perspective and this book starts from Ringer's perspective, but it takes you a while to figure that out. You are left wondering why Cassie sounds so off for many pages before it's revealed who's POV you're reading. We start off with Ringer, then jump to Cassie and the exact same conversation from her POV, but the conversation is different in her version of it, which was a bit odd. Then we get a brief bit from Poundcake's POV before the entire second half of the book switches back to Ringer. In my opinion there was not nearly enough Cassie or Evan in this book. They were the best parts to read in the first book, but those scenes were few and far between in this one. We did get some insight through Ringer and even a love connection with a new character named Razor, who was a nice balance to Ringer's flat personality. Overall, it was a very short follow up where not a lot happens. It covers a very short time span and lacked the excitement and spunk of the first book. I also found the story line to be very confusing. With the first book we understood there were aliens invading and they were methodical in what they were doing, however by the end of this book I wasn't even sure if there was an invasion at all or if it was the government or if there were other possibilities. The writing of this one was a bit all over the place for me and wasn't laid out very well. It got a bit repetitive at times as though scenes were repeated from multiple POV's just to stretch the length and not to add anything to the plot. Overall, I gave this 3 stars, but it may really be more of a 2.5. I'm giving it a little extra love since I enjoyed The 5th Wave so much. I am still invested in the series though and can't wait to get my hands on the third book. Hopefully it can regain some of the luster it once had.

Top Five Thursday (Friday Edition): Favorite Female Protagonists

This week I'm doing the Friday edition of Top Five Thursday since I was sick and happily knocked out on cold medicine hehehe. This week's top five is your favorite female protagonist list. These are subject to change as I discover new characters, of course. But, this is my current list.

1. Celaena Sardothien (Throne of Glass Series)
2. Jane Eyre (Jane Eyre)
3. Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles)
4. Tessa Gray (The Infernal Devices)
5. Katy Swartz (Lux Series)

These ladies all overcome incredible odds and kick butt through it all, which is why they come to the top of my list. Please comment and let me know who your favorites are!

The 5th Wave Review/Discussion

 

 

In The 5th Wave we followed Cassie (short for Cassiopeia) Sullivan through the alien apocalypse. The aliens, or the "Others", arrived in the mother ship and sat silent for 10 days before the waves started to wipe out humanity.

 

1st Wave: Lights Out. In the first wave the Others destroyed human technology with an EMP that knocked out all power on the planet.

 

2nd Wave: Surf's Up. The second wave was literally a wave. The Others caused an earthquake so big the resulting tsunami killed everyone who lived near any shore.

 

3rd Wave: Pestilence. The third wave was a genetically modified plague that killed 97% of those who survived the first two waves.

 

4th Wave: Silencer. The 4th wave was when the Others revealed they had been among us for years and were now hunting the survivors in human bodies. This meant the human survivors couldn't trust anyone because they couldn't tell friend from foe.

 

5th Wave: Child Soldiers. The Others had now gathered up human children from refugee camps while pretending to be human soldiers. They then trained the children to become soldiers themselves and brainwashed them into thinking they were killing aliens, when in fact they were being groomed to kill other humans.

 

The best part about this book were the relationships. Cassie and her brother, Sam, who was kidnapped by the Others and taken to become one of their soldiers, were so loyal to each other and never gave up the hope of finding each other again. Ben Parish, who went to high school with Cassie and was her unrequited football jock crush, also ended up at boot camp with Sam (who was nicknamed Nugget) and the two of them formed a touching bond as Sam was missing his big sister and Ben was missing his little sister. Cassie was injured on her hunt for Sam and was rescued by the mysterious Evan Walker who had his own interesting backstory. But, we got to see Evan taking such care to nurse Cassie back to health and become really protective of her. And, possibly my favorite relationship of all, was Cassie and Bear, who was Sam's stuffed animal that she carried with her on all her travels in the hopes of returning it to her brother when she was reunited with him. Cassie took him everywhere and talked to him while she was all alone in the world. It was very sweet and somewhat comical since Cassie could be very snarky and sarcastic (in a good way!). We got to read through all the main characters POV, but my favorite was Cassie's because she was so quick witted and entertaining in the face of the world ending around her.

 

I gave this book 4 stars because, while I loved the relationships, some of the plot wasn't adding up for me. Perhaps some of the questions I have will be answered in the next book so I'm holding onto that hope. This is definitely a fast paced, edge of your seat ride that will leave you wanting more. I highly recommend checking this one out.

 



Top Five Thursday: Favorite Villains

This week's top five is your favorite villains list. Who doesn't love a good bad guy? You know you love to hate them. This is my current list. Leave me a comment below & let me know who are your favorites.

1. Sebastian Morgenstern (The Mortal Instruments)
2. The Darkling (The Grisha Trilogy)
3. Queen Levana (The Lunar Chronicles)
4. President Coriolanus Snow (The Hunger Games)
5. The Others (The 5th Wave...aliens freak me out!)

Who are your favorites?

The Shadow Society Review

In Darcy Jones's world, she is a foster kid who's been bounced around from home to home since she was five years old. She has finally managed to stay in one home for over a year and she's so excited to be able to start the new school year with familiar friends. Until, she meets the new boy, Conn, who is inexplicably hostile toward her. Through a series of events, Darcy discovers that she isn't human or from this dimension. She is a Shade, which is a different species that exists in an alternate dimension where her home town of Chicago never had the great fire. Conn, after pretending to befriend her at school, is revealed to be an inter dimensional police officer of sorts, who was on a mission to arrest her and bring her back. The story then continues to follow their exploits in the alternate  dimension to try to bring together humans and Shades in a world where they would just assume wipe each other out.

The idea of this new paranormal creature was like a breath of fresh air when so often these types of books fall back on vampires, werewolves, ghosts, etc... The Shades are able to "ghost" or disappear and manifest whenever they like. This story had so much potential, but it fell flat for me. The basic story line, when stripped bear, is good. But the writing style was a bit disjointed to me. It jumped ahead to move the story forward rather quickly, but without any of the details about how we got there. There were several instances where I felt like I had whiplash, but no organic growth of the story. It was like, here we are now, this and this has changed, but no conversation between the characters to get the reader there.

Perhaps, if the story had been fleshed out a bit more, it could have lived up to it's potential. Again, I didn't put it down, so it kept my attention. The story got a bit slow in some spots, but I did keep reading. I only wish it had been more. More plot development, more dialogue to make the relationships seem real and not so many flash forward moments. The story was entertaining, I only wish it had been executed better. Three stars.

Top Five Thursday: Favorite Series

This week's top five is your top five favorite series. Mine of course change with time and taste, but at this time these are my current favorites, in no particular order:

1. The Infernal Devices

2. Twilight Saga

3. Throne of Glass Series

4. The Lunar Chronicles

5. The Mortal Instruments

What are your top five favorite series?