Recommendations: Mystery

Mysteries aren't exactly my favorite books to read, I usually find them a bit hard to get through as I am someone without patience. If you are someone who is also impatient, I can honestly say that these are some mysteries for you.

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

This was a book I had to read for school so it already had a negative connotation attached to it. Once I started it though, I couldn't stop. This book was like crack, it was probably one of the best books I've ever had to read for school and one of my personal favorite mysteries. All the characters are very morally ambiguous, you really can't like any of them, I mean I liked a few just because they were total snakes and I found it very entertaining. I also really shipped two characters together because they were both incredibly devious. Overall, It isn't that long and it doesn't have any boring filler scenes.

Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King

You can never go wrong with a little Stephen King. This book was, I guess, more of a crime novel, but the identity of the antagonist was a mystery so we spend the book trying to piece together who he is alongside Bill Hodge. It's fast paced and the characters are incredibly likeable.

The Dead List by Jennifer L. Armentrout

This is more for the YA lovers out there. This is a book about a girl who is trying to figure out who is murdering people around her town and it is completely addicting. I first read this one when the author put it on Wattpad as a fun little extra story, but I do believe it is now available in print. It's really good for someone who isn't that into mystery, but maybe wants to give the genre another try.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson

This book, I don't know where to start. Lizbeth Salander is the most badass character in literature. I don't care who you try to pit up against her, they will lose because Lizbeth is just that awesome. Along with that is this entire conspiracy that you just don't see coming. It follows Lizbeth and Mikael as the try and piece together what happened to Harriet Vanger after she disappeared fourty years before. It's so completely epic and there isn't ever a moment where you are bored because the story is so engaging. If you decide to read one book from this list i would highly suggest it be this one.


What mystery novels do you want to tell everyone to read?


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Waiting on Wednesday

Brave
by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Release Date: December 11th, 2017

Synopsis:

Ivy Morgan hasn't been feeling like herself lately. Not like anyone can blame her. After all, being held captive by a psychotic fae prince hell-bent on permanently opening the gates to the Otherworld is bound to leave some mental scars.

It’s more than that, though. Something dark and insidious is spreading throughout Ivy, more powerful than she could ever imagine... and it’s coming between her and the man she’s fallen deeply in love with, elite Order member Ren Owens.

Ren would do anything to keep Ivy safe. Anything. But when he makes a life altering choice for her, the fallout of his act has far reaching consequences that threaten to tear their lives apart. If Ivy is going to have any hope of surviving this, she must put aside the hurt and betrayal she feels, and work with not only those she loves, but with an enemy she would rather kill than ever trust. War is coming, and it soon becomes clear that what Ivy and Ren thought they knew about the Order, themselves, and even their enemies, has been nothing but a cluster of dangerous, deadly lies. Ivy knows she must be more than just brave to save those she loves--and, ultimately, to save herself.

Because behind ever evil fae Prince, there’s a Queen…

My Thoughts:

I will read anything Jennifer L. Armentrout writes, no matter what (well, unless it's really offensive for some reason, but I highly doubt that would happen, so my statement stands.) I can't say too much because this is the third book in the series, but I can say that I am highly anticipating the release of this book. I was hooked from the moment I found out that there was a character named Ren (I am obsessed with the name Ren, some of my favorite characters are named Ren). If you are interested in checking out the other books in this series I will leave a link here.

Top 5 Books I Discovered from Booktube/Blogs

I have to say that I get most of my book recommendations from booktube and blogs. I have for a very long time, before that it was just a completely random pick if I picked up a book and decided I liked what it said on the back. Needless to say blogs and booktube have added a lot of structure to my TBR. It was actually pretty hard to narrow it down to only five, but I think I have a pretty good list planned. For this list I couldn't decide which order to put them in so I just decided to go with the order in which I read them.

1. Obsidian

I discovered this book from the very first blog I ever read. Honestly, it's what introduced me to the idea that I could even blog in the first place. I read this blog post back in 2012 of Top 10 Book Boyfriends of 2012 and I was immediately drawn in. The blogger used quotes to sell us on it and it worked! I literally went out the very next day and bought this book because of those quotes. You can check out that post here.

2. The Secret of Ella and Micha

That very same post as above also hosted The Secret of Ella and Micha and I was instantly sold on it. I didn't read it as soon as Obsidian, but once I did I read it several times back to back because of how much I loved it.

3. Throne of Glass

Technically, I had heard about this book before booktube, but I hated the cover and thought it looked stupid so I didn't even bother to see what it was about, but then I kept hearing about it everywhere all the time and figured I should at least find out what it was about. Long story short I loved it and I've never looked back.

4. Mistborn

What booktuber hasn't raved about this book? Honestly, name one who hated this book and you get an imaginary gold star. I hadn't heard about this book before I started watching booktube and I'm honestly confused as to how I never heard of it considering it's overwhelming popularity.

5. Ready Player One

I'm almost certain I first heard about this book on Katytastic's youtube channel. She always raves about it and finally this year I finally decided to give it a go. I was not disappointed in the slightest. 

What books have you guys loved that you discovered through booktube and blogs?

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Top 10 Twins in Books

I myself am not a twin, but I've always thought having a twin would be pretty cool. If you're identical, you could pretend to be each other, if you got along, you have a built in best friend, you guys have never been without each other, so you have someone to lean on all the time. All in all I think it would be pretty cool. I was just thinking about the topic of twins when I decided to do a top 10 on it because we do see a lot of twins in literature.

10. Sheldon and Dash from the Broken Love Series

These two are brother and sister who always have the others back. They're best friends and love to bicker and they somehow make everything brighter when they are together even if their separate lives can get a bit dark. What makes everything worth while is the fact that you know they will defend each other to the death if they need to.

9. Harper and Cole from Why I Loathe Sterling Lane

While this book is mostly a romance with mystery elements, it's overall a story about a girl who is trying to look out for her twin brother and keep him out of trouble while he is doing his best to keep his troubles a secret from her.

8. Sawyer and Sebastian from the Royals Series

We don't get to see a ton of these characters, but they are really important to our protagonists and hopefully they will one day have their own books. There isn't too much I can say about their closeness without getting into spoilers, but know that they wouldn't be the same without each other.

7. Dean and Lesley from Hopeless

Dean is one of the main characters in Hopeless and while we don't get a lot on his relationship with Les in Hopeless we do delve a lot more into that in Losing Hope. Dean and Lesley are the epitome of functional siblings. At times they would disagree but they would always wanted the best for each other.

6. Cather and Wren from Fangirl

One of the biggest struggles that Cath faces in Fangirl is the fact that her sister is starting to branch off and make other friends. Up until that point they were pretty much inseparable and I feel like they really figured out where they were with each other in the book. They found a balance between what they both wanted from their relationship.

5. Ty and Livy from Lord of Shadows

These two had plans to be Parabatai, that's how serious their bond as siblings went. These two are two parts of a whole, they're just better together.

4. Cersei and Jaime Lannister from A Song of Ice and Fire

We may not always like these two, but you have to admit they are pretty iconic.

3. The Shining

Probably the most iconic twins of all time, even Cersei and Jaime can't touch them. If you don't know what I'm talking about then do you even pop culture?

2. Jude and Noah from I'll Give You The Sun

You should have seen this coming. My favorite stand alone of all time, it's about the relationship between these twins and how it has changed throughout the years. Honestly, that's all I can say other than read it. It's a game changer.

1. Fred and George Weasley from Harry Potter

If this came as a surprise to you than this must be your first time reading one of my blog posts. Welcome, I'm Jessie and I love Harry Potter. Fred and George were the older brothers I always wanted. They are fun an mischievous and out to cause chaos. Harry Potter wouldn't be the same without them adding some elements of lightheartedness.

Who are some book twins that you guys think are worthy of the list?


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Things That Are Over Romanticized in Books

I'm on a blogging kick, I've already written three other blog posts in advance. I just feel like talking about books right now. Today I decided I wanted to talk about some things I thought were over romanticized in books, as you should know if you read the title of this post.

Death

There are so many books out there over romanticizing death that it isn't even funny. There are even romances where death is the fricken love interest. In reality death is scary and sad and we don't want to see it happen to those we love and we ourselves don't particularly want to die. Death is played out as if it isn't as terrible as it truly is.

Trauma

I feel like authors play a game of "who can give their protagonist the most tragic backstory." This is especially evident in Fantasy, I don't think I've ever read a book about a protagonist with a happy backstory. It's all death and destruction and pain. It gets to the point where in our real lives we don't feel validated in our sadness unless we have something that has caused it.

Mental Illness (Disorders)

This sort of loops back to the trauma. People don't feel validated with their unhappiness unless there is something outright causing it. I know people who have even faked eating disorders to try and gain that validation. In some books it's like the characters and the author are reveling in their problems. There are some really good books about mental illness out there, but then there are the ones that make you want to pull your hair out because they get the emotions and the feelings attributed with it so wrong, it's almost like they are glorifying disorders. Like, when a character likes things to be neat and they're like, "Oh my god, I am so OCD!!!" like no, Monica Geller is OCD, you just don't like living in a dump.

Being Mean (Rudeness)

In books there is a fine line between being sassy and sarcastic, and just being a mean person. Now, I am all for the sass, but there have been times where I was reading a book and just thinking to myself, "How can this person think that's okay?" or "This character is a total brat". Being rude doesn't make you superior. If someone is being rude to you go right ahead and sass them to death, but if you just decide you don't like them and they've done nothing to you and you're just sassing them to try and prove you are superior, you aren't, you're just a bitch. This honestly happens too often in books.

What things do you guys think are over romanticized in books?

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Sunday Favorites: Practical Magic

This is going to be a new series on my blog! I'm gonna choose a new book or series each week, or close to each week. These are going to be books that I love and I just want to talk about everything I love about them. I'm excited!

In honor of me just finishing the prequel to Practical Magic, The Rules of Magic, I decided to make this my very first post in this series.

The first thing I love about this book is the writing style. Alice Hoffman has a way of writing her stories in a way where you feel like you're in a different world. I feel like I'm sitting there listening to someone tell me a story, sorta like a fairytale and I absolutely adore it. The writing feels so poetic and beautiful that you don't want to devour the entire story at once, you want to read it slowly and savour it.

Practical Magic is a world where the characters are dealing with real problems, but there just so happens to be a bit of magic mixed in. They're witches who have real problems just like any other human being. They can die, fall in love, fall out of love. The whole shebang. They even work day jobs.

I've mentioned this before, but I love the magic system. It's what I've always expected of witches and wizards for as long as I can remember. It's all about superstitions and weird things that happen that can never quite be explained, or can be explained away as an accident or a coincidence. They speak of magic and curses like they are living beings, it isn't quite something that can be understood, but they are okay with not knowing exactly what their magic is.

The romance in this book was full blown and I couldn't hate any matches that were made in this book. Even if it was insta love, I know I made a big deal about hating any and all instalove, but this book is my one exception to the rule. These characters are magic and have more intuition than the regular being and the way the emotions are described is too much for the reader to deny. Therefore, I will forgive any instalove that may happen in this book.

Because I am trying to do my best to avoid spoilers, that is all I will say. I truly do believe that this is an amazing book and if it sounds interesting you should definitely give it a shot.

If you've read Practical Magic what are some of your thoughts?

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Rant: Mary Sue

At first these rants were like a stress reliever because I like to not yell at people in real life, but it's actually gotten to the point where it is a bit exhausting being so angry. But I persist because I'm not  a quitter. Also, it starts discussions and those are good, for the most part.

Let's get into it, so this week I will be talking about why I hate the Mary Sue character trope. If you are new to this reading and writing thing and don't know what a Mary Sue is, then I shall explain. A Mary Sue is a flawless female protagonist. They never do anything wrong and have no problematic character traits.

These characters are "relatable" while not actually being relatable at all. There is all this justification that you can get behind, because most of us would like to be able to believe that we are always in the right and that we're perfect. This is never the case in real life, we all have problematic traits or do things that are wrong.

These characters are usually what the author wishes they were. Basically they want to create the perfect character because they have some undeniable desire to be perfect. Now, maybe some authors don't actually mean to reflect any of this into their characters, maybe they are really problematic themselves and they want to create a character who has none of those issues, maybe they have gotten into the habit of writing characters who are perfect and don't even realize that they're doing it. Either way, I would suggest working on that.

The very idea of a Mary Sue is pushing girls to believe that they have to be perfect to amount to anything in life, they have to be the prettiest girl to get the guy, they have to have perfect grades and perfect social life but most of the time they don't realize how "perfect" they are which makes them seem like they deserve all this good stuff more than anyone else. The real kicker being that they have no flaws which makes people envy the shit out of them and sad that they can't be as perfect as those characters. I just don't think the idea of a Mary Sue is healthy.

Also, when reading about a "perfect" character, it starts to get annoying because despite how "relatable" they are, they stop being relatable after a certain point because they don't have flaws like the rest of us do. Maybe the characters even critic some of these flaws that us human beings do have in their quest to prove how perfect they are.

Anyway, thoughts on the Mary Sue?

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