Ash Reads Stuff

Well, another year has come and gone and here I am (again) with nothing but a big pile of books that I've read. Trust me, though, I'm not complaining. Last year I read just over 150 books so I feel like I'm slacking a little bit this year because, as of today, I'm only at 133. Yeah, play your tiny violin, Pine. Anywho, here are some of my favorite books for 2015 and some things I'm looking forward to reading in 2016. All books have My Goodreads Rating and a Quick Review   of why I enjoyed it. These books are mostly my four and five star reads from this year. Also, just because I read these books in 2015 does not mean they were published in 2015.  Code Name Verity My GR Rating: 5 Stars Quick Review: If you know me, you know I love to read about WWII and strong women (or girls). This book has both of those things. To me, this was an amazing story about friendship. It was one of the first books I read in 2015 and one of the first books to ever make me ...

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion Publication Date: 2013 Pages: 357 (Hardcover) Genre: Adult Fiction My Goodreads Rating: 3 Stars Goodreads Synopsis:  Don Tillman, professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. He is a man who can count all his friends on the fingers of one hand, whose lifelong difficulty with social rituals has convinced him that he is simply not wired for romance. So when an acquaintance informs him that he would make a "wonderful" husband, his first reaction is shock. Yet he must concede to the statistical probability that there is someone for everyone, and he embarks upon The Wife Project. My (spoilerish) Review:  I'm going to preface this by saying this book wasn't even on my TBR pile. I showed up for teacher training and a friend had brought me three of her own personal library books. (Best friends let each other borrow library books.) We often trade books back and forth and we know what the other likes,...

Watch the Sky by Kristen Hubbard Publication Date: April 7th, 2015 Pages: 272 (Hardcover) Genre: Middle Grade/Young Adult Fiction My Goodreads Rating: 3 Stars Goodreads Synopsis: The signs are everywhere, Jory's stepfather, Caleb, says. Red leaves in the springtime. Pages torn from a library book. All the fish in the aquarium facing the same way. A cracked egg with twin yolks. Everywhere and anywhere. And because of them Jory's life is far from ordinary. He must follow a very specific set of rules: don't trust anyone outside the family, have your works at the ready just in case, and always, always watch out for the signs. The end is coming, and they must be prepared. School is Jory's only escape from Caleb's tight grasp, and with the help of new friends Jory begins to explore a world beyond his family's farm. As Jory's friendships grow, Caleb notifies Jory's mother and siblings that the time has come for final preparations. The...

Saint Anything by Sarah Dessen Publication Date: 2015 Pages:   417 (Hardcover)   Genre: Young Adult My Goodreads Rating: 4.5 Stars Goodreads Synopsis: Peyton, Sydney's charismatic older brother, has always been the star of the family, receiving the lion's share of their parents' attention and—lately—concern. When Peyton's increasingly reckless behavior culminates in an accident, a drunk driving conviction, and a jail sentence, Sydney is cast adrift, searching for her place in the family and the world. When everyone else is so worried about Peyton, is she the only one concerned about the victim of the accident? Enter the Chathams, a warm, chaotic family who run a pizza parlor, play bluegrass on weekends, and pitch in to care for their mother, who has multiple sclerosis. Here Sydney experiences unquestioning acceptance. And here she meets Mac, gentle, watchful, and protective, who makes Sydney feel seen, really seen, for the first time. My Rev...

Don't Get Me Wrong  by Marianne Kavanagh Expected Publication Date: August 25, 2015 Pages: 336 (Paperback)  Genre: Adult Fiction My Goodreads Rating: 3 Stars Goodreads Synopsis: For fans of Jojo Moyes, David Nicholls, and Sophie Kinsella, here is a Pride and Prejudice for the modern era: Londoners Kim and Harry can’t see eye to eye...until the life of the person they both love most hangs in the balance. Kim and Harry are total opposites who happen to have the same favorite people in the world: Kim’s older sister, Eva, and her young son, Otis. Kim has never seen what her free-spirited big sister sees in a stuck-up banker like Harry and has spent her childhood trying to keep him out (must he always drive the most ostentatious cars and insist on charming everyone he meets?), while Harry’s favorite occupation is provoking Kim. Both Harry and Kim are too stuck in their prejudices to care about what’s really going on beneath the surface of each other’s ...

Charm & Strange by Stephanie Kuehn  Publication Date: 2013 Pages: 224 (Paperback)  Genre: Young Adult My Goodreads Rating: 4 Stars Goodreads Synopsis: He's part Win, the lonely teenager exiled to a remote Vermont boarding school in the wake of a family tragedy. The guy who shuts all his classmates out, no matter the cost. He's part Drew, the angry young boy with violent impulses that control him. The boy who spent a fateful, long-ago summer with his brother and teenage cousins, only to endure a secret so monstrous it led three children to do the unthinkable. Over the course of one night, while stuck at a party deep in the New England woods, Andrew battles both the pain of his past and the isolation of his present. Before the sun rises, he'll either surrender his sanity to the wild darkness inside his mind or make peace with the most elemental of truths--that choosing to live can mean so much more than not dying. My Review:  This boo...

This Raging Light by Estelle Laure Expected Publication Date: January 5th, 2016 Pages: 288 (Kindle Edition) Genre: Young Adult My Goodreads Rating: 4.5 Stars Goodreads Synopsis: The novel follows a teenager and her younger sister as they try to deal with their mother’s sudden disappearance. Things become further complicated when older sister Lucille falls for her best friend’s brother. The publisher said the book is a “luminous portrait” of two young girls enduring hardship. My Review:  This book is...something else. It gets you where it counts.  Lucille is a seventeen-year-old girl whose mother has up and left her and her nine-year-old sister to fend for themselves. You don't find out what happened to their dad for a while, but it's pretty bad too. It's bad enough that it drove Lucille's mom to abandon her children. Right off the bat, Lucille's life is pretty terrible.  While things are looking pretty bad for Lu and her sister ...

What You Left Behind by Jessica Verdi Publication Date: August 4, 2015 Pages: 320 (Hardcover) Genre: Young Adult My Goodreads Rating: Four Stars Goodreads Synopsis: It’s all Ryden’s fault. If he hadn’t gotten Meg pregnant, she would have never stopped her chemo treatments and would still be alive. Instead, he’s failing fatherhood one dirty diaper at a time. And it’s not like he’s had time to grieve while struggling to care for their infant daughter, start his senior year, and earn the soccer scholarship he needs to go to college. The one person who makes Ryden feel like his old self is Joni. She’s fun and energetic—and doesn’t know he has a baby. But the more time they spend together, the harder it becomes to keep his two worlds separate. Finding one of Meg’s journals only stirs up old emotions, and Ryden’s convinced Meg left other notebooks for him to find, some message to help his new life make sense. But how is he going to have a future if he can’t let go of the...

Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon Publication Date:  September 1, 2015 Pages: 307 Genre: Young Adult My Goodreads Rating: Four Stars Goodreads Synopsis: My disease is as rare as it is famous. Basically, I’m allergic to the world. I don’t leave my house, have not left my house in seventeen years. The only people I ever see are my mom and my nurse, Carla. But then one day, a moving truck arrives next door. I look out my window, and I see him. He’s tall, lean and wearing all black—black T-shirt, black jeans, black sneakers, and a black knit cap that covers his hair completely. He catches me looking and stares at me. I stare right back. His name is Olly. Maybe we can’t predict the future, but we can predict some things. For example, I am certainly going to fall in love with Olly. It’s almost certainly going to be a disaster. My Review:  I'll start out simple. I loved this book. I loved the whole idea of it. I loved everything, everything about it, i...

Olivia Christakos and Her Second First Time by Dani Irons Publication Date:   June 1, 2015 Pages: 244 Genre:  New Adult My Goodreads Rating: Three Stars Goodreads synopsis: My perfect life… True, I’m in the hospital waking up from a coma, but my loving parents and adorable boyfriend, Wyatt, are here by my side. It’s weird that I don’t remember them—thanks, amnesia! Wyatt’s an amazing person. He’s a Big Brother, volunteers at soup kitchens, delivers food to the hungry—your basic angel. Your basic filled-out-in-all-the-right-places, naughty-thoughts-inducing angel, that is. Might be the perfect lie… In fact, the more I get to know Wyatt the harder it is to believe he’s my boyfriend. The more I find out about my life before the accident, the more I don’t like who I used to be. I can’t understand what a guy like that—kind, considerate, generous—would see in a girl like me. I don’t know what’s worse, living in the darkness of amnesia or discovering the ...

Just Little Kiss by Renita Pizzitola Publication Date: August 25, 2015 My Goodreads Rating: Four Stars All the l-words! This book was super sweet and a little sexy, which is how I like my fluffy reads. I loved the relationships between Felicity and all of her friends. They didn't feel forced or superficial at all, not even with the boys trying to protect her. Felicity was a great character, too. Her fears weren't absurd and she definitely wasn't a damsel in distress. I loved her resoluteness about her former relationship and how she overcame it.  Mason was, of course, perfect. He didn't come on too strong and I loved that about this book. The banter was great between the two of them and their relationship didn't happen overnight, another plus! I didn't care for the drama at the end, but I understood it to a point. I'm just glad it wasn't long and drawn out.  I loved that Felicity managed to overcome her fears and that Mason was ...