Transitive Verve

Thoughts at a glance: ***** (It was amazing!) Summary: It's a retelling of the Scheherazade story - every day, Khalid, the Caliph of Khorasan, takes a new bride and every morning she is executed, with no explanations. Shahrzad is determined to avenge the death of her best friend as well as all the other girls, so she volunteers to be Bride #72. She manages to do the impossible - she escapes execution, by telling Khalid a story so compelling that he postpones her death another day. And so through her wit and personality, she keeps managing to convince Khalid to keep her alive, day after day after day. The entire kingdom is a-buzz - he must truly be in love with her. Except that while she is trying to assess his weaknesses in order to exact her revenge, she realizes that she is falling in love with him too, and that he is actually not a monster. So then why did so many girls have to die? As she tries to uncover the truth, various other factions are plotting against Khalid too...

This book was provided to me for free through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thoughts at a glance: **** (I really liked it) Summary: Iris was the twin with the hot boyfriend, popularity, a car, and freedom; Andria was the twin with epilepsy, an over-protective mother, and an all-black wardrobe. However, Iris was the twin with the drug problem and dark secrets; Andria was the twin left behind, her own life in tatters six months after Iris' possibly-not-accidental death by overdose. How could she have not known how bad things were for Iris? Andria is racked with guilt. They were twins , after all. Andria has a few good things to hang onto, though: she has been seizure-free for almost six months (the last one having occurred the day Iris died), so she may finally be allowed to get her driver's license; she has a love of astronomy, and when her nightmares of Iris wake her up in the night, she takes comfort in looking at the stars; and she exchanges lines of poe...

Happy birthday, Transitive Verve! A year ago today, at the encouragement of some friends, I decided to split up my blogging and create a book blog and a makeup blog (so happy birthday to Vivre Glam too!) in addition to maintaining Editions of Me , and I haven't looked back since. While I did do TONS of beauty posts before, I didn't do a whole lot of book-blogging, and starting Transitive Verve really gave me the impetus to dive deep into my love of reading and writing. Thanks for being along for ride, and here's to (hopefully) many more years of being book nerds!

Thoughts at a glance: **** (I really liked it) Summary:  This is the first book of Clare's Dark Artifices  series, but the series itself is a continuation of the Shadowhunter universe, so if you have not read any of the books from her Mortal Instruments  or Infernal Devices  series, you're going to get rather lost. This book takes place five years after the events of City of Heavenly Fire  (the last Mortal Instruments  book), and centers around Emma Carstairs, Julian Blackthorn, and the Los Angeles Shadowhunters Institute. Emma has spent the past five years trying to find clues as to who killed her parents. The Clave believes that it was Sebastian Morgenstern, but she knows deep down that it wasn't him, and that the killer is still at large. When some new clues arrive that tie in to some recent faerie deaths, Emma finds herself in a bind, because ever since the Dark War with Sebastian Morgenstern, any sort of affiliation with the faeries has been pr...

This book was provided to me for free through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thoughts at a glance: ***** (It was amazing!) Summary:  Jake was always doing crazy, stupid dares. That was just who he was. Was , because one day his luck ran out, and he died attempting to do a backflip off the top of a swing set. He was even still wearing his graduation gown. Five years later, his little sister Jaycee has just graduated high school herself, but she's never been able to shake the image of seeing him hit the ground. Jake's death has turned her abrasive and reckless, and she's lost much more than just her big brother - she's lost track of herself. Every year, she and Mik, Jake's best friend, meet up on the anniversary of Jake's death, but this year it's different, because this year she is joined by her ex-best friend Natalie, Natalie's boyfriend Zach, and Zach's best friend Bishop, all of whom are struggling with their own issues. When...

This weekend I went with some friends to the Hunger Games  exhibition at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. It's basically a cool glimpse behind the scenes of the movies. It was AMAZING to see costumes, props, etc., up close and to check out what went into creating the world of Panem on-screen. If you're a HG fan and you're able to come visit, I highly recommend it - click the link to go to the official website. (There is also an exhibition in New York.) I took a TON of pictures, so this post will be pic-heavy.

There is a neverending battle between those who love e-readers and those who love physical books. I fall somewhere in the middle. I love my Kindle, I love how easy and convenient it is to own hundreds of books and to be able to access them at any time, and I like how easy it is to read privately on a Kindle (because, let's face it, no matter how well-written a book is, if it has an embarrassing cover, I won't be carrying it in public). But I love physical books too. I know people talk a lot about the smell of books, but to be honest, I don't sniff books, unless there is some scratch-and-sniff feature to it. Old books smell like... really old books. Like dust and must and other people's hands. So the "old book smell" is not what draws me to physical books. Nope. What wins me over? Beautiful endpapers and interesting design features. These are things that you absolutely need physical copies to appreciate.