If I Stay

If I Stay, By Gayle Forman.

On a day that started like any other…

Mia had everything: a loving family, a gorgeous, adoring boyfriend, and a bright future full of music and full of choices. Then, in an instant, almost all of that is taken from her. Caught between life and death, between a happy past and an unknowable future, Mia spends one critical day contemplating the one decision she has left—the most important decision she’ll ever make.
Simultaneously tragic and hopeful, this is a romantic, riveting and ultimately uplifting story about memory, music, living, dying, loving.

I had heard so much rave about this book, as well as the movie. Quite a few of my friends had read the book and/or seen the movie and they were all telling me that this book would make me cry and it was just super sad. However I didn't find that it made me cry (at least not at the sad bits, I always seem to cry at the happy bits), maybe I had imagined it to be this horrifically sad book and that's why I didn't find it that sad, but I still loved the book none the less.

This was one of those books that gave me such a warm fuzzy feeling in my tummy, even though most of it was about some horrific, heartbreaking event. This book wasn't super long which I liked, I managed to read it fairly quickly so the story was just a nice constant flow for me. However this was just another one of those books that has lead me to have such high expectations for the male race, Adam is just so sweet and loving, they have such an adorable relationship which now leaves me expecting this from every boy. So I'll probably spend my life alone with cats or something tragic like that... and you are all welcome to join me!;) This book did end on quite a cliff hanger, which did leave me wanting more. As a result if this I did find that I just sat there wondering what to do with my life for a while, but then I realized that there was a sequel, so it's all good!;) If you want a bit of a lovey dover book to make you feel all happy and gooey, I would definitely recommend reading this book!

We Were Liars

We Were Liars, by E. Lockhart

We are the Liars. We are beautiful, privileged and live a life of carefree luxury. We are cracked and broken. A story of love and romance. A tale of tragedy. Which are lies? Which is truth?

Kind Of Spoliery!

If you plan on reading this I will tell you now, this is a sad book.
No one told me that and it came as a huge shock and I cried, I didn't even have any tissues ready! 

This book is magnificent! I honestly don't know what to say about it, I just know that I loved it.

When I started reading this book I thought it was going to be some kind of romance story between two teens from different kinds of families. I was wrong. It was so much more than that, and so much better! Towards the end of the book I was super confused for a solid few chapters, I had no idea what was going on and what to think. Then as I carried on it began to make sense and it hurt! The feels! They were all over the place and it took me a while to recover. 

This review is bad, I'm aware of that. I'm just really struggling to put into word how this brilliant book made me feel. I CAN'T EVEN! I'm so sorry, this review probably hasn't helped you at all, so just go and read this book and you will understand what I am feeling! I recommend this book, go and get it now. Right now. I don't care what you're doing, go and get it!

On a serious note, Amber from The Mile Long Bookshelf wrote a brilliant review that certainly puts mine to shame :')  so go and check that out, it is much better than my own haha!
http://www.themilelongbookshelf.com/2014/06/we-were-liars-by-e-lockhart.html#.VE1wAxYufYA

Ed Sheeran: A Visual Journey

Ed Sheeran: A Visual Journey, by Ed Sheeran and Phillip Butah. 

With words by Ed Sheeran and illustrations by his childhood friend, artist Phillip Butah (who produces artwork for Sheeran's albums and singles), and accompanying photos, Ed Sheeran: A Visual Journey is an exclusive, fully authorised, first-person account by Ed of how he became an internationally renowned singer-songwriter.

In the book, Ed explores his early musical experiences and influences as well as his time recording and touring, right up to the release of his second album, 'x'. The book reveals what drives and inspires Ed as he continues to evolve as an artist, while coping with stratospheric success, and is an honest account of what it takes to make it in the music business.

With Phillip Butah's distinctive portraits of Ed throughout, this is a unique book celebrating a unique musician. It includes Ed's recollections of working tirelessly on the London gig circuit and self-releasing EPs, working hard on finding his sound, signing to Asylum Records and recording his huge hit album, '+', performing at the Grammys, touring with Taylor Swift and sell-out headline gigs at Madison Square Garden. It takes us up to Ed as a musician today, including recording his new album, 'x'

I don't usually read autobiography type books, but this was Ed Sheeran's so of course I was going to read it! I was given this by a friend as an early birthday present, and I loved it! This book was a lot bigger than I thought it was, and it looked a little bit daunting, but as I had a quick flick through the pages I realized that there were quite a lot of pictures, beautiful pictures at that! I should have expected this from the title of the book, but I'm not always the smartest person. 

Something that has always put me off reading books about people's life is the pointless stories that they feel they need to tell to gain a bit of sympathy, or the constant name dropping. However I didn't find any of that in this, of course Ed spoke of the obstacles in his life, but they always seemed to be told in an upbeat and positive which only made me respect him more. This book was pretty informative and it did really show you the journey he's been on to get to where he is now and the hard work he's put in to get things in life. 

It's fair to say that I probably am being biased towards this book because it's about Ed, and I am slightly in love with him. But honestly this is a good autobiography and the artwork is incredible. I think the books costs £18.99 which is really quite expensive considering that the book isn't particularly word heavy, but I loved it none the less and I'm sure that any fan of Ed will too.

Out Of The Ashes

Out Of The Ashes, by Michael Morpurgo.

This story is not a story at all. It all happened.

 On New Year's Day Becky Morley begins to write her diary. By March, her world has changed for ever. Foot-and-mouth disease breaks out on a pig farm hundreds of miles from the Morleys' Devon home, but soon the nightmare is a few fields away. Local sheep are infected and every animal is destroyed. Will the Morleys' flock be next? Will their pedigree dairy herd, the sows with their piglets, and Little Josh, Becky's hand-reared lamb, survive? Or will they be slaughtered too?

 The waiting and hoping is the most agonizing experience of Becky's life . . .
  
I found this book the other day in a drawer and I decided to read it, I wanted to read something light and this was a pretty short book. I don't really know where this book came from, I'm assuming my mum bought if for me a few years ago when I went through a stage of reading Michael Morpurgo but I just never got round to reading it. I wasn't expecting this book to wow me or anything, and it didn't. The book wasn't bad, I just found it all a bit mundane for me. I often read fantasy, adventure, dystopian types of books with magic and action and mystery. But this books didn't have any of that, I knew it wasn't going to be a book that would particularly interest me, but I thought I'd read it anyway.

This book was by no means bad, it just didn't do anything for me. I like to read books that take me away from my normal world, which is why I don't always find books about factual events particularly interesting. However that doesn't mean that I rule out all books based on factual events, it all just depends on the event really. I didn't really feel any attachment to any of the characters in this book, I think maybe it was just a fictional book to promote the events of the foot and mouth outbreak, and because I already knew about this there was nothing new to learn really, nothing that surprised me and no great mystery to uncover. I suppose that to those who aren't aware of the devastation this disease caused then maybe it would be a little more interesting to read, I wouldn't tell you to avoid reading this book, I just don't think that you would be missing out on a great deal if you chose not to.

Teardrop

Teardrop, by Lauren Kate.

Never, ever cry . . .

Seventeen-year-old Eureka won’t let anyone close enough to feel her pain. After her mother was killed in a freak accident, the things she used to love hold no meaning. She wants to escape, but one thing holds her back: Ander, the boy who is everywhere she goes, whose turquoise eyes are like the ocean.

And then Eureka uncovers an ancient tale of romance and heartbreak, about a girl who cried an entire continent into the sea. Suddenly her mother’s death and Ander’s appearance seem connected, and her life takes on dark undercurrents that don’t make sense.

Can everything you love be washed away?


I hadn't actually heard anything about this book before I got it and I hadn't read anything by Lauren Kate before this, although I had been told good things about her fallen series. I won this book on twitter when I entered a mystery prize, and I am so glad that I did otherwise I probably wouldn't have gone out and bought it for myself.

Like I said, I had never read anything by Lauren Kate so I wasn't sure what to think. At first I found it a little bit wordy at times and I found myself getting quite confused reading the prologue, but that was probably just me. However, after I got through the prologue I found it a lot easier to understand and I was really getting into it, I didn't want to put it down! This is definitely my kind of book, a world within our own but we just can't see it, people protecting us from things we are unaware of.

I thought that this book dealt with issues that are becoming a lot more common in our generation, issues such as depression, the loss of a family member, slightly dysfunctional families and most importantly the love and social life of a teen. What I enjoyed most about this was the way it was written, it was real,  it wasn't sugar coated it was written from the point of view of a teen, and teens often are upfront and abrupt.

There was a lot of mystery in this book that kept me guessing. It really made me think about the characters and their actions which I don't always do, often a character does something and I just accept it and I don't question why they did that, but not when I was reading this. There were also many tragic events, and it left me exhausted. All I was doing was sitting there reading, but I was feeling the strain that was put on these characters, it was one thing after the other, things just kept on getting worse. The romance... blossoming relationships, it left me feeling fuzzy inside and girly. I'm not a girly person, but these relationships in books always get me, they're just so perfect but not at the same time and i love it! Oh and there was magic! Well I don't know if you would consider it magic but it certainly wasn't ordinary, and I love that kind of thing.

This book left me on one of the biggest cliffhangers going, and it actually made me panic at first because I wasn't aware that this was part of a trilogy. I was over the moon when I realized it was because I just need more, I want it in my life! What makes it even better is that the next book 'Waterfall' is set to be published on my birthday...so feel free to buy me a copy ;)

If you're like me and you like a fantasy/mystery kind of book, then I would certainly recommend this book, I thought it was brilliant and I'm sure you will too!

The Book Thief

The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak.

This is the tale of the book thief,as narrated by death. And when death tells a story,you really have to listen.

It's just a small story really, about, amongst other things:

A girl

An accordionist

Some fanatical Germans

A Jewish fist fighter

And quite a lot of thievery.

 

 

My friend had told me to read this ages ago after he read it and decided it was his most favourite book of all time. It took me a while to get round to reading it as I just didn't have any motivation at all to do absolutely anything, but I made myself start it and I was so happy that I did. When I first started it I was finding it a little bit hard to get in to, but once death had done it's little introduction and the story really got going I was fine. That's something it took me a while to get used to, the book is told from deaths point of view, as if death is a person narrating the story. At first I wasn't keen on that, but as I continued I warmed to it and by the end it was one of the features from the book that I liked the most! Death doesn't like surprises, and because of this he often warns you of things that are going to happen in the future, in other words death just constantly gives away spoilers, just slipping them in casually. That can get kind of annoying sometimes, especially when he tells you something you didn't want to hear.

 

I usually only get really attached to characters in a series as I have longer to get to know them and read about them, but I found that I got very attached to the characters in the 552 pages I was with them, and because of this there were many tears. I was very emotional reading this book, it didn't register with me that this book would be sad even though it is about Nazi Germany in WW2, and me being the smart person I am I didn't think to link the two together... good one Ellie! I found the characters so likeable, even the ones that were horrible, I liked them and I don't really know why that was. I think it was because despite the flaws of some characters the fact that they were in this horrible place with horrific events taking place, it just made me feel bad for them, because you know that ultimately with war comes death, and I'm sure that war would of course bring out the worst in people. (Those last sentences may not have made sense, the words wouldn't come out how I wanted them to!)

I really liked the fact that this book was based around real life events, which to me made it feel all the more real and to top it off they even used the German language with translations, which is something I always enjoy in books, using different languages such as the Latin used in The Mortal Instruments series, I find it interesting and it often makes me want to learn that language just so I could understand what they are talking about more easily and without needing to rely on the translations. In some ways I find this book relatable, it's a book about a girl who loves books, how the power of words helped her through life and to overcome obstacles. 

I thought this book was absolutely amazing and you would be silly not to read it! But I will warn you, the feels are all too real and you might need to keep some tissues on hand.

 

The Kill Order.

The Kill Order, by James Dashner.

 
Sun flares have unleashed devastation on the Earth. Mark and Trina were there when it happened, and against the odds they survived.

But now a violent and highly contagious disease is spreading like wildfire. Worse still, it's mutating, and people are going crazy. Mark and Trina will do anything to save their friends - if only they can avoid madness and stay alive...

This is the prequel to the Maze Runner series, which I've already posted reviews about, so feel free to have a look!
 
To begin with I found this book quite hard to get into, as I had literally just finished The Death Cure, so I had to go from one set of characters that I knew to a completely different group of characters in the same world with similar problems. It doesn't sound very confusing, but my brain just couldn't cope and I kept on forgetting who everyone was.
 
As with all the books in the Maze Runner series, this was also completely action packed, in my opinion too much action. I think that the action kind of took away from the story line, and made it slightly predictable and repetitive... there's a problem, they fight their way out of the situation, then they run into another problem, and fight their way out of that too, and this more or less carried on throughout the whole book. 

There were lots of new characters in this book, some of which I absolutely loved, particularly Alec, an old war veteran. He was so tough and harsh on the outside, but on the inside he was loving and soft and he always put others before himself. And of course there were plenty of characters I hated from the word go!;)
 
This book was helpful, it answered a few of my questions I had after finishing the other books in the series, but at the same time I don't think you'll miss out on too much if you don't read it. It kind of told you about how the Flare came about but only to some extent, I don't think they said enough about that part really, and I was more or less expecting the whole book to be about that in particular, I didn't really think there was much else to write about but of course there was.


I did enjoy this book and I did find it quite helpful, but if for any reason you can't or don't want to read this book, you won't be missing out on anything great in my opinion.




I would also like to apologise for my laziness, in my last post I said I'd post in the next two weeks, and it's been two months! :O I'm sorry, I didn't mean for that to happen, I just get distracted super easily and have absolutely no motivation to do things, but I will try and be better! Thank you for being patient with me, I really appreciate it!:D