Title: Kiss of Broken Glass
Author: Madeleine Kuderick
Publisher: Harper Teen
Release Date: September 9, 2014
Pages: 224
Rating: 4 Cows









Goodreads Description:

Madeleine Kuderick’s gripping debut is a darkly beautiful and lyrical novel in verse, perfect for fans of Sonya Sones and Laurie Halse Anderson. Kiss of Broken Glass pulses with emotion and lingers long after the last page.

In the next seventy-two hours, Kenna may lose everything—her friends, her freedom, and maybe even herself. One kiss of the blade was all it took to get her sent to the psych ward for seventy-two hours. There she will face her addiction to cutting, though the outcome is far from certain.

When fifteen-year-old Kenna is found cutting herself in the school bathroom, she is sent to a facility for mandatory psychiatric watch. There, Kenna meets other kids like her—her roommate, Donya, who’s there for her fifth time; the birdlike Skylar; and Jag, a boy cute enough to make her forget her problems . . . for a moment. 




“Kiss of Broken Glass” is a verse novel, written about the serious issue of cutting.  From the start, what I really liked about this book was that it was written in verse.  For me, it took off some of the edge that can come with reading about such a serious topic.  Not to say that it sugarcoated it by any means, but poetry and writing in verse always seems to add some beauty to the subject itself, no matter how dark the topic gets to be.  It was my first time reading anything by Madeleine Kuderick, and I thought her writing was compelling and beautiful.  I’m definitely going to keep an eye out for any other books from her, because I’d be interested to see how her writing is on a less serious topic or just another story in general.

In “Kiss of Broken Glass” the main character Kenna is sent to a psychiatric ward where is she put under watch for 72 hours.  How she handles being in the ward determines her future: if she is let out, or sent to rehab.  When she is there she makes a few friends.  Donya (her roommate) and Skylar are both there for the same thing as Kenna, and warn her how to act if she wants to get out. They tell Kenna her freedom is dependent on what she says at group discussions and to her nurses.  If they think for a second that she’s not going to change when she gets out, they’ll send her to rehab.  At first, it’s the threat of getting sent to rehab that forces Kenna to straighten out and behave for a few days.  Over time though, she questions her reasons for cutting.  Eventually, by the time she is let out, she realizes she has a new chance to start over and Kenna honestly seems willing to try to get help.

These days before she is let out though, prove to be tougher than she’d ever thought.  The urge to cut is great, and the book describes the thought process Kenna goes through every time she wants to take the blade to her skin.  As someone who’s never dealt with this before, I found it really hard to read this book at first.  Madeleine Kuderick leaves nothing to the imagination, and is pretty graphic with her word choices in “Kiss of Broken Glass.”  As I got further into the book though, I realized how important it was that Madeleine’s writing was like this.  It was so descriptive that I put myself in Kenna’s shoes without even realizing it.  I believe Madeleine’s choice to be so descriptive in the book, was to present the reader with the harsh realities of what people who suffer from the urge to cut, are going through.  That connection that is formed when you start reading this book is crucial to understanding the pressures people go through.

One aspect of the book that I really want to touch upon was the motives behind Kenna’s decisions to start cutting.  While many people believe this is an issue associated with depression, low self esteem, or other issues (such as family problems) Kenna isn’t doing it for any of those reasons.  In fact, she is cutting because of something I’d never considered before: peer pressure.  When she first gets to school she meets a girl by the name of Rennie, who encourages her to start cutting as an escape.  In order to fit in with all the girls at her school who are cutting competitively, Kenna starts to do it.  As sad as it is to think that girls her age are actually doing this as a source of competition, it’s a phenomenon that’s been happening in schools all over the country.  After reading this book I did a lot of research on this because I couldn’t believe it.  What I found was shocking, and even if you don’t get a chance to read this book I urge you to research it as well.  Being informed is always a good thing.

 For me, reading the authors note in the back of the book really touched me.  Madeleine’s daughter suffered from the urge to cut, and she wrote this for all the people out there like her daughter who feel the urge to do this.  I admire her for writing this on such a touchy subject, and for giving her daughter the benefit of the doubt on this.  I’d imagine many parents would have a hard time understanding that their kids might be cutting out of peer pressure, and not for any other reason.  By using her daughter’s own experience, Madeleine wrote a book that will hopefully help and impact many girls worldwide that are dealing with the urge to cut.

“Kiss of Broken Glass” is an inspiring and informative read.  Whether you’ve dealt with something similar to this before, or whether you’ve never experienced this or known anybody who has, you should read this book just for perspective alone.  It can really teach you a lot about a struggle that many people are going through, and being aware of this is really important.  Overall, I really enjoyed reading this book and I felt like I took a lot away with it.  When I’m reading books for review there’s one question I always ask myself before I rate it, and that’s whether I would read it again or not. If I know I won’t, I take that into consideration on how many stars/cows I will give it. Although I enjoyed reading “Kiss of Broken Glass,” it’s not something I could see myself reading again. That was one of the only things that prevented me from giving this a 5.  Otherwise, “Kiss of Broken Glass” is a must read!

I am so excited that LOVE, LUCY by April Lindner releases today and that I get to share the news, along with an awesome guest post from the author in which she shares “Some Rules of the Road” for traveling abroad, as Lucy did in the book.


If you haven’t yet heard about this wonderful new book by Author April Linder, be sure to check out all the details below.


This blast also includes a giveaway for a copy of the book courtesy of Rockstar Book Tours and 3 signed JANE posters courtesy of the author. So if you’d like a chance to win, enter in the Rafflecopter at the bottom of this post.

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About LOVE, LUCY





Title: LOVE, LUCY
Author: April Lindner
Release date: January 27, 2015
Publisher: Poppy
Pages: 304
Formats: Hardcover, eBook






Description:

While backpacking through Florence, Italy, during the summer before she heads off to college, Lucy Sommersworth finds herself falling in love with the culture, the architecture, the food...and Jesse Palladino, a handsome street musician. After a whirlwind romance, Lucy returns home, determined to move on from her "vacation flirtation." But just because summer is over doesn't mean Lucy and Jesse are over, too.

In this coming-of-age romance, April Lindner perfectly captures the highs and lows of a summer love that might just be meant to last beyond the season.

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About April Lindner

April Lindner is the author of three novels: Catherine, a modernization of Wuthering Heights; Jane, an update of Jane Eyre; and Love, Lucy, releasing January 27, 2015. She also has published two poetry collections, Skin and This Bed Our Bodies Shaped. She plays acoustic guitar badly, sees more rock concerts than she’d care to admit, travels whenever she can, cooks Italian food, and lavishes attention on her pets—two Labrador retriever mixes and two excitable guinea pigs. A professor of English at Saint Joseph’s University, April lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two sons.

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SOME RULES OF THE ROAD

Like Lucy Sommersworth, the heroine of Love, Lucy, my parents gave me the gift of a lifetime: a backpacking trip to Europe. I was a bit older than Lucy—22, and just out of

college—but when I arrived in Milan, Italy with a Eurail pass, a copy of Let’s Go: Europe, and a seventy-pound backpack I could barely lift, I was a wee bit terrified. Like Lucy, I spoke only a little bit of Italian, just barely enough to get by, and I wasn’t particularly good at

reading maps or train schedules. Unlike Lucy, I was travelling solo.


Luckily, my journey began with training wheels. I’d just taken a college Italian class, and my professor had offered a safe crash pad for the first few days of my trip—in

her family home in the Alps. Less luckily, when I reached Malpensa airport, nobody was there to pick me up. Giddy with excitement and jet lag, I wandered around the airport, eavesdropping on Italians as they hugged each other hello and goodbye, and had noisy arguments. I’d never felt more alone in my life. Where would I sleep that night if my ride didn’t show up?




Luckily, my professor’s brother arrived at last to whisk me away to the family home in Domodossola. The extended family welcomed and fed me, gave me tours of their city

with its charming medieval center, helped me practice my Italian, and, when the time was right, brought me to the train station where my solo travels began for

real. It was time to take off the training wheels. 


If I’d felt alone back in the airport, I was even more so on that train to Verona, a city where I didn’t know a soul. In those pre-internet days, I could disappear into thin air and nobody would even notice I was gone. The thought was chilling, but oddly exciting.

By nightfall, I’d made it to Verona. I’d figured out the public transportation, found a youth hostel, and booked myself a bed. Best of all, I had introduced myself to a handful of other backpackers. We hung out together in the hostel’s common area, sharing bread and cheese, exchanging stories, discussing the rules of the road—those bits of practical wisdom our travels were teaching us. Here are a few.




Time passes differently on the road.  Spend a few very intense hours seeing the sites with strangers and by the end of the day, those strangers have become a part of your story. Years later you’ll see their faces in your photo album and still remember stray details of the adventures you shared together, even if you can’t quite recall their names. 



Spontaneity is key.  There are few things as magical as showing up at a train station with no idea where you’re headed next, picking a random train, and hopping on. 

Janis Joplin said it best: Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.  When you’re carrying all your possessions on your back in a city where you don’t know a soul, you’re absolutely free. You can go anywhere, do anything. That freedom has its lonely moments—but it can be the doorway to all kinds of adventures.




Embrace misadventure.  As carefully as you plan there will be crazy mistakes: wrong turns, slept-through train stops, multilingual misunderstandings, and all kinds of other blunders—and these will make the best stories. My misadventures are some of my favorite memories. The time I missed curfew and had to climb into my hostel through a second-story window. The morning when, hanging out my recently washed clothes to dry, I dropped my wet underthings out the window, onto a

stranger’s head. The night when, with no room to stay in, I slept on Venice’s train station steps with about a hundred other backpackers, the stars above us and the Grand Canal stretched out before us.

Would I trade that last memory for a safe, comfy night in an actual bed?  Not on your life.

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There is a blast-wide giveaway, ending February 6th at 11:59 p.m. Pacific, for:

• 1 copy of LOVE, LUCY to be ordered from Amazon or The Book Depository – Int’l
• 3 JANE posters (signed) – US only

Enter in the Rafflecopter below...


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Today, we are happy to kick off the blog tour for Kristy Centeno's new book, Payback is Sweet!

Janessa Rowe is a twenty one year old college girl with little respect for other people. She’s a rich, spoiled brat of a girl who gets her kicks out of humiliating others. When she discovers that her boyfriend of three years has in fact engaged in a physical relationship with someone else, Janessa will stop at nothing to get a little payback. Even if that means using her new rival’s disgruntled fiancée to get what she wants. Dakota Blackwater is everything Janessa is not. He’s kind, sweet, gentle, and a stand-up guy all in all, but when his girlfriend’s betrayal hurts more than his pride, he agrees to take part in a plan that will test both their self-restraints and their feelings for one another.

Problems arise, however, when Janessa’s interest for Dakota shifts from being a pawn to achieve her ultimate goal, to potential lover. After having her heart broken in the past, the last thing she wants is to get involved in matters of the heart, but how can she follow through with her plan when the more time she spends with Dakota, the less she cares about getting payback? Sooner rather than later they are forced to confront the reality that their game has slowly transformed into something else and that what seemed like a scheme to exact revenge, now comprises both their hearts in ways neither of them anticipated.

When I heard Kristy Centeno was releasing a new book, I scrambled to sign up for this blog tour!  I was recently introduced to Kristy a few months back, when I received an ARC of her book Keeper of the Innocents, the second book in The Keeper Witches Series.  After devouring the prequel, Keeper of the Lost Souls and then reading Keeper of the Innocents in almost one sitting, I knew I had found a new favorite author.  Kristy’s writing is fun, exciting, and extremely hard to put down!

 

That being said, I expected a lot from Payback is Sweet, and Kristy did not disappoint whatsoever with this one.  Admittedly, I was a little worried at first to see if I would enjoy her writing in another genre just as much as I did when reading her other two books.  Payback is Sweet is a NA romance novel, as opposed to her Keeper Witches Series, which are YA fantasy.  Also, this was only my second time reading anything NA!  It is a relatively new genre for me, and so far I’ve been loving it!

 

When I began reading Payback is Sweet, I hated the main character Janessa.  I almost want to believe Kristy wrote her this way, so that the reader would hate her character originally!  It was hard not to! She’s full of herself, and doesn’t care what anyone thinks about her.  There was more than one line in the book where Janessa openly admits to having it all (think good looks and lots of daddy’s money).  One of my favorite parts about this book was the character development!  I know I’ve talked about character development in my reviews before, but it’s something that not all authors can get quite right, and it’s honestly one of my favorite aspects of reading.  I love to see the characters grow and learn from their mistakes!  As Janessa goes through her breakup, and learns to open up to someone again, some of that attitude is replaced with some modesty.  Whether it’s the influence of a new boy in her life, or just her growing up in general I can’t tell, (you’ll have to read it for yourself and let me know what you think it is!) but I loved watching the progression of this throughout the book.  Although she didn’t do a complete 180, part of loving Janessa means laughing at her not so humble behavior at times, and by the end of the book I was totally in love with her character!  You got to give it to the girl for having extreme confidence in herself!  I think at times we all wish we could have that quality!

 

One of my other favorite parts of this book was the diversity.  One of the main characters, Dakota Blackwater, is from a reservation where he grew up most of his life.  Payback is Sweet addresses some of the problems many children from reservations face, when leaving their homes to go to college or find a job.  I’ve read very few books in the past that have addressed these issues or included characters from a reservation, and I’m extremely glad Kristy chose to do so with this book!  

   

 Although it goes without saying, NA is an adult genre, so expect some steamy scenes in this book!  I’ve read some complaints about NA recently, where people mentioned the genre is pretty racy, even going so far as to compare it to 50 shades.  This is NOT true of all books in this genre, despite what is being said at the moment. It comes with the terriroty though.  What’s awesome about moving from YA to NA is that it gives authors the freedom to push the boundaries more, and expand on their characters’ relationships.  I think NA was the perfect genre for this book to reach it’s potential.  Payback is Sweet explores many of the issues people face after getting out of a messy breakup, and where to go from there.  It also looks at how people learn to trust again, after being cheated on.  I don’t believe YA would have been the right genre for the topics addressed in this book, and had Kristy choose to write this book for a YA audience, I don’t think I would have loved it as much as I did!  All in all, I flew right through this one, and enjoyed every minute of it!  With a rating scale using cows, I had to give this a 4, but it’s closer to a 4.5 in all honesty!  This is a great read, and if you’re new to NA or just looking for a good romance read in general, I highly suggest this one!  Kristy has outdone herself once again!

Emily

Click on the links and check out my reviews for each book and decide which one you might be interested in because I am giving away an audible download of one the books mentioned above to one lucky winner.

Flashback Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Fiction Fare and Swoony Boys Podcast, showcasing books that are at least two years old!


The book I am featuring today is one of my all time favorites!! I love this series so much and the final book in the spin-off series is coming out next month! If you haven't read these books you need to now!!





Title: Vampire Academy
Author: Richelle Mead
Release Date: August 16, 2007

Goodreads Description:

Prepare to be Tested.
The story that kicked off the international #1 bestselling Vampire Academy series is NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE.
Hit Theaters February 7th, 2014!

St. Vladimir’s Academy isn’t just any boarding school—it’s a hidden place where vampires are educated in the ways of magic and half-human teens train to protect them. Rose Hathaway is a Dhampir, a bodyguard for her best friend Lissa, a Moroi Vampire Princess. They’ve been on the run, but now they’re being dragged back to St. Vladimir’s—the very place where they’re most in danger...

Rose and Lissa become enmeshed in forbidden romance, the Academy’s ruthless social scene, and unspeakable nighttime rituals. But they must be careful lest the Strigoi—the world’s fiercest and most dangerous vampires—make Lissa one of them forever.

Title: Into the Still Blue

Under the Never Sky series is a good solid series. While it's not my favorite series, I still enjoyed it. I plan to read more books by Veronica Rossi in the future and I can't wait to see what she comes up with next.