Review | Anatomy of a Misfit by Andrea Portes

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Synopsis: 

Outside Anika Dragomir is all lip gloss and blond hair — the third most popular girl in school. 

Inside, she’s a freak. A mix of dark thoughts, diabolical plots, and, if false rumors are to believed, vampire DNA.  After all, her father is from Romania. Everyone else in Nebraska is about as American as an apple pie…wrapped in a flag…on the Fourth of July. 

Spider stew. That’s what Anika is made of. But she keeps it under straps to maintain her social position.  One step out of line and Becky Vilhauer, first most popular girl in school, will make her life a living hell. 

So when former loner Logan McDonough shows up one September hotter, smarter, and more mysterious than ever, Anika  knows she can’t get involved.  It would be insane to throw away her social safety for a nerd.  So what if that nerd is now a black-leather-jacket-wearing-dreamboat, and his loner status is clearly the result of his troubled home life?

Who care if the right girl could help him with all that, maybe even save him from it….?

Logan. Who needs him when Jared Kline, the bad boy every girl dreams of, is asking her on dates? 

Who?


RATING: 9/10
FANTASTIC READ

For a book that offers you a lot of laughter at the turn of each page this one sure does leave you with a tear drenched face at the final flip.

For lovers of The Fault in Our Stars, We Were Liars, and even Mean Girls, Anatomy of a Misfit needs to be on the top of your to-be-read pile.

I am officially in love with Andrea Portes. She is now marked on my list of favorite authors and I am baffled this is the first read of hers that I have gotten my hands on. Her honest and comedic portrayal of Anika is a refreshing twist in the midst of so many YA contemporaries. She captures Anika so beautifully and so authentically it makes it very difficult to get her character out of your head.

Since The Fault in Our Stars I have been looking for a novel that holds a sense of power.  A novel that grabs my attention so firm that even after the last word I am not able to let it go. Anatomy of a Misfit is that story. I beg you to go pick it up-at the library, your local bookstore, or, heck, from Amazon. It will make you laugh, it will make you cry, and more importantly it will make you aware. It will make you fight for who you are and what you believe in. It will force you to bare witness to the futility of appearance and the extremity of holding what others think of you over your head. This is a coming-of-age story for everyone and it’s one I will not forget for a long time to come.


Quotes I Loved:

Honestly, Portes writes with such a comedic air it is hard to only serve up a handful of my favorites. Really the whole book is like one gigantic thrilling quote, but to write the entire story on this tiny blog would be absurd. So I’ll make due with only a few of my ultra favorites.

  • “If you turned a Labrador into a person you would make Brad Kline. He’s happy and gushy and about as interesting and complex as a tree stump.” (28)
  • “Our house kind of looks like a Pizza Hut, if you wanna know the truth.  We used to have the best house ever, this farmhouse on the outskirts of town, with a barn and everything, but we got kicked off of it so they could build a Walmart. So, now it’s Suburbs City and a house where you might as well just drive up and order breadsticks.” (34)
  • “I just want you to know, I hired a black girl. Don’t be scared.”
    It’s late afternoon at the Bunza Hut and Mr. Baum drops this news like he’s telling us the Rapture has begun. Shelli and I stand in silence at the soda machine.
    “Why would we be scared?”
    Nothing.
    “What’s she gonna do, eat us?”
    Mr. Baum and every other adult I know, seems to actually think this stuff makes some kind of difference.  Even smart people.  It’s weird. And you can never get them to talk any sense about it because it’s like it’s important to them, having something to hold themselves over. Someone to hold themselves over. (61-62)
  • This moment here. This is all you get. Before you are part of the sky. (328)

All opinions are my own and are not endorsed or affiliated with any company or organization. 

27 Books Parents Should Read to Their Kids Before They Grow Up :: via BuzzFeed Books

stephanie-l-dockery's avatarThe Night Owl's Guide to Reading

27 books to read to kids27 Books Parents Should Read to Their Kids Before They Grow Up

Awesome list from BuzzFeed… I’ve read the majority of books on this list, and they’re all fantastic, but my favorites are The Giving Tree, the Miss Nelson books, and the Louis Sachar books!  And read them now, even if you’re a grown-up without kids.  – sld

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Review | Opposition (Lux Series #5) by Jennifer L. Armentrout

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Source: Goodreads

Synopsis:

“Katy knows the world changed the night the Luxen came.  She can’t believe Daemon stood by his kind threatened to obliterate every last human and hybrid on Earth.  But the lines between good and bad have blurred.

Daemon will do anything to save those he loves, even if it means betrayal.  But when it quickly becomes impossible to tell friend and foe, and the world is crumbling around them, they may lose everything to ensure the survival of their friends…and mankind.”

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Rating: 8/10
GREAT READ

Firstly, a round of applause for Armentrout and her stunning conclusion. All ends were neatly packaged, topped with a shiny yellow ribbon, and handed to us, adoring fans, with a deep bow and a kiss. Closing the last page I breathed a heavy sigh of relief knowing that I finished the series with no questions left unanswered.  So a big thank you and congrats to her!

Secondly, “YES!” When I say that every book is better than the one before I mean it in an all-encompassing way. From the characters, to the plot, to the writing—“whew”, SO good.  

Opposition, will make you breathless (for more reasons than one), ecstatic, heart-broken, and exhilarated. There is so much jammed between the pages you will have a hard time keeping up. Alliances are formed that you would never fathom, friendships will waver, and lives will end.

Previous supporting characters will shine. You will come to find that Archer has one SERIOUS sense of humor and he will consistently have you laughing to the end.  Luc’s mystery is unveiled and you will be left with this overwhelming desire to coddle him. And Katy and Daemon—well, between every few pages you will be enraptured by their love and strength for one another.

I can’t say it enough, Opposition is a great conclusion to the Lux Series. Fans you will not be disappointed.

 

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All opinions are my own and are not endorsed or affiliated with any company or organization. 

Instagram Giveaway!

photo (57)Are you an instagrammer? Do you love Starbucks? 

The Book Trove is celebrating 100 followers on Instagram and the Pumpkin Spice Latte by giving away a $15 Starbucks gift card to one lucky instagram follower! 

To enter go to The Book Trove instagram site HERE
and…

like our 100 follower post.

Follow us.

Repost our Instagram 100 follower post with the tag #booktrovegiveway. 

All 3 must be done for full entry. US residents only.

The winner will be announced on Instagram September 8th.

Good luck! 🙂 

September New Book Releases

September is almost here and you know what that means? An entire new list of book releases! (Yay!)

Here are a few that I am “extra” excited for:

1. The Bone Clocks
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Source: Goodreads

Title: The Bone Clocks
Author: David Mitchell
Release Date: September 2 
Publisher: Random House

Following a scalding row with her mother, fifteen-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: a sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as “the radio people,” Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life.

For Holly has caught the attention of a cabal of dangerous mystics—and their enemies. But her lost weekend is merely the prelude to a shocking disappearance that leaves her family irrevocably scarred. This unsolved mystery will echo through every decade of Holly’s life, affecting all the people Holly loves—even the ones who are not yet born.

A Cambridge scholarship boy grooming himself for wealth and influence, a conflicted father who feels alive only while reporting from occupied Iraq, a middle-aged writer mourning his exile from the bestseller list—all have a part to play in this surreal, invisible war on the margins of our world. From the medieval Swiss Alps to the nineteenth-century Australian bush, from a hotel in Shanghai to a Manhattan townhouse in the near future, their stories come together in moments of everyday grace and extraordinary wonder.

 

2. The Infinite Sea
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Source: Goodreads

Title: The Infinite Sea
Author: Rick Yancey
Release Date: September 16th
Publisher: Putnam Juvenile

The riveting follow-up to the New York Times bestselling The 5th Wave, hailed by Justin Cronin as “wildly entertaining.”

How do you rid the Earth of seven billion humans? Rid the humans of their humanity.

Surviving the first four waves was nearly impossible. Now Cassie Sullivan finds herself in a new world, a world in which the fundamental trust that binds us together is gone. As the 5th Wave rolls across the landscape, Cassie, Ben, and Ringer are forced to confront the Others’ ultimate goal: the extermination of the human race.

Cassie and her friends haven’t seen the depths to which the Others will sink, nor have the Others seen the heights to which humanity will rise, in the ultimate battle between life and death, hope and despair, love and hate.

 

3. I’ll Give You The Sun
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Source: Goodreads

Title: I’ll Give You The Sun
Author: Jandy Nelson
Release Date: September 16th
Publisher: Dial

Jude and her brother, Noah, are incredibly close twins. At thirteen, isolated Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude surfs and cliff-dives and wears red-red lipstick and does the talking for both of them. But three years later, Jude and Noah are barely speaking. Something has happened to wreck the twins in different and divisive ways . . . until Jude meets a cocky, broken, beautiful boy, as well as an unpredictable new mentor. The early years are Noah’s story to tell. The later years are Jude’s. What the twins don’t realize is that they each have only half the story, and if they could just find their way back to one another, they’d have a chance to remake their world.
 
This radiant, fully alive, sometimes very funny novel from the critically acclaimed author of The Sky Is Everywhere will leave you breathless and teary and laughing—often all at once.

 

4. Afterworlds
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Source: Goodreads

Title: Afterworlds
Author: Scott Westerfeld
Release Date: September 23rd
Publisher: Simon Pulse

Darcy Patel has put college and everything else on hold to publish her teen novel, Afterworlds. Arriving in New York with no apartment or friends she wonders whether she’s made the right decision until she falls in with a crowd of other seasoned and fledgling writers who take her under their wings…

Told in alternating chapters is Darcy’s novel, a suspenseful thriller about Lizzie, a teen who slips into the ‘Afterworld’ to survive a terrorist attack. But the Afterworld is a place between the living and the dead and as Lizzie drifts between our world and that of the Afterworld, she discovers that many unsolved – and terrifying – stories need to be reconciled. And when a new threat resurfaces, Lizzie learns her special gifts may not be enough to protect those she loves and cares about most.

 

5. Not That Kind of Girl
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Source: Goodreads

Title: Not That Kind of Girl
Author: Lena Dunham
Release Date: September 30th
Publisher: Random House

“There is nothing gutsier to me than a person announcing that their story is one that deserves to be told,” writes Lena Dunham, and it certainly takes guts to share the stories that make up her first book, Not That Kind of Girl. These are stories about getting your butt touched by your boss, about friendship and dieting (kind of) and having two existential crises before the age of 20. Stories about travel, both successful and less so, and about having the kind of sex where you feel like keeping your sneakers on in case you have to run away during the act. Stories about proving yourself to a room of 50-year-old men in Hollywood and showing up to “an outlandishly high-fashion event with the crustiest red nose you ever saw.” Fearless, smart, and as heartbreakingly honest as ever, Not That Kind of Girl establishes Lena Dunham as more than a hugely talented director, actress and producer-it announces her as a fresh and vibrant new literary voice.