Wishing on Wednesday [33]

Wishing and hoping, and thinking and praying...

"Coming down from the mountain to a new life in the city seems a thrill beyond imagining. When Miri and her friends from Mount Eskel set off to help the future princess Britta prepare for her royal wedding, she is happy about her chance to attend school in the capital city. There, Miri befriends students who seem so sophisticated and exciting . . . until she learns that they have some frightening plans. They think that Miri will help them, that she should help them. Soon Miri finds herself torn between loyalty to the princess and her new friends’ ideas, between an old love and a new crush, and between her small mountain home and the bustling city.

Picking up where Princess Academy left off, this incredible stand-alone story celebrates the joys of friendship, the delight of romance, and the fate of a beloved fairy tale kingdom."

Confession time! This one popped up on the listings on Netgalley and I requested it the second that I saw it...and was lucky enough to score and E-ARC which I'm super psyched to read...after a reread of Princess Academy of course. Why am I wishing for it then? I'm wishing for a hard copy to go with my paperback of Princess Academy of course! I loved the first book, and everything else that I've read by Shannon Hale, and have the strongest feeling in the world that I'll feel the same about this one.

For those that haven't yet, go read Princess Academy now! And pre-order this one.

Sidenote: I was wondering how you, my darling followers, feel about Wishing on Wednesday. Would you like me to continue it? Do you bother reading it? Or should I discontinue it and either leave Wednesdays blank or fill in with something new? Sound off in the comments! :]

Tiara Talk: Camp NaNoWriMo

I swear every time I write Camp NaNoWriMo I hear that theme song from that one Nickolodeon show...I think it was called Salute Your Shorts? I'll post a video if I can find it.

Anyway.

Hi you guys! Its me, your resident princess, here with a friendly warning: I'm not going to be around a lot over the  month of June. Why you ask? 

Camp NaNoWriMo!

For those of you who have read Typing Tiara for awhile you may have seen/read another post I did about NaNoWriMo awhile back, a really awesome event that encourages writers from all walks of life to write a novel of fifty thousand words in a single month. NaNoWriMo is usually held in November, which those of you in university/college know is a real b**** since that falls into Finals Season. So I've been fail the last few years.

Then I heard of the wonder that is Camp NaNoWriMo, an event held by the same group of wonderful people to accomplish the same insane task...only its held in the summer months! Say whuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut?! June and August this year, I think it was July and August last year which was its first year running.

So I'm going to give it a go. I've missed writing, outside of the academic world and Typing Tiara, and I have absolutely nothing going on in June (that I know of as of this moment) and no school until the end of August (so I might give that month a go too). So there you go.

I would like to say that you probably won't see much of me on Twitter and Facebook, blog posts will continue to run as normal though Tiara Talks may start revolving more around the writing process if you don't mind too terribly much, but I know myself better...those are two of my favorite procrastination tools after all. And I am the queen of procrastination when I'm writing...and the rest of the time too.

So here's the promised video of ridiculousness:

Have you ever participated in NaNoWriMo? Do you plan on doing the main event or Camp NaNoWriMo this year?

Review of Impulse

My review of Impulse by Ellen Hopkins is based on a hardcover copy of the book that I purchased for myself. The following review is my honest opinion of the work.

Goodreads Summary: "Sometimes you don't wake up. But if you happen to, you know things will never be the same.

 
Three lives, three different paths to the same destination: Aspen Springs, a psychiatric hospital for those who have attempted the ultimate act -- suicide.



Vanessa is beautiful and smart, but her secrets keep her answering the call of the blade.



Tony, after suffering a painful childhood, can only find peace through pills.



And Conner, outwardly, has the perfect life. But dig a little deeper and find a boy who is in constant battle with his parents, his life, himself.



In one instant each of these young people decided enough was enough. They grabbed the blade, the bottle, the gun -- and tried to end it all. Now they have a second chance, and just maybe, with each other's help, they can find their way to a better life -- but only if they're strong and can fight the demons that brought them here in the first place."

When I first picked up Impulse I wasn't sure how I was going to be able to keep up with all three narrators. I mean, I'm challenged enough when a novel is written traditionally but three different perspectives all told in alternating verse? Talk about a challenge. Or at least I thought it was. Ellen Hopkins has mad skills let me tell you. At first I found myself paying close attention to the title of each chapter, which was the character's name, but after only a few chapters I didn't have to. I knew these characters. I could tell one style of poetry from another.

I loved the different viewpoints. I loved getting to know these three characters so intimately, and after having read it in this way I can't see how Ellen Hopkins could have given Impulse that kind of depth in any other way. There's something so personal about verse, something so intimate about seeing a character's thoughts and actions portrayed through verse/poetry that lends itself to this kind of emotional rollercoaster well.

Impulse has the train wreck effect going for it, or at least it did in my case. As the reader you see the characters maturing, or at least trying to mature and not always succeeding at it, and you grow attached. At some point during the novel, I couldn't pinpoint an exact section, I started having this bad feeling. I just knew something was going to happen but I kept rooting for the character anyway, I kept devouring the book hoping that something would change, that it would go another way. But in that Impulse touches on something very true to life, we don't always get our happy ending.

Impulse doesn't hold back and gives readers an intimate look into the lives of the three teenagers without pulling any punches. Ellen Hopkins has written another hard-hitting, heart-breaking novel in verse that is without a doubt a five out of five stars.

Review of Matched

My review of Matched by Ally Condie is based on a hardcover copy of the book that I purchased for myself. The following review is my honest opinion of the novel.

Goodreads Summary: "Cassia has always trusted the Society to make the right choices for her: what to read, what to watch, what to believe. So when Xander's face appears on-screen at her Matching ceremony, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is her ideal mate... until she sees Ky Markham's face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black.

The Society tells her it's a glitch, a rare malfunction, and that she should focus on the happy life she's destined to lead with Xander. But Cassia can't stop thinking about Ky, and as they slowly fall in love, Cassia begins to doubt the Society's infallibility and is faced with an impossible choice: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she's known and a path that no one else has dared to follow."

Matched has received so many mixed reviews I wasn't really sure what to expect when I started reading it; bloggers I trust implicitly had said they loved it, others had said they hated it. I was anxious. The premise sounded like something that I would absolutely love so I knew despite mixed reviews I was going to have to read it for myself to find out for sure and I AM SO GLAD THAT I DID.

For those of you that crave action in your dystopians Matched might not be for you; it isn't The Hunger Games, Divergent or even Shatter Me...it's far more subdued. I wouldn't even call it psychological in its progression but I would say in some ways its far more realistic than a lot of dystopians out there. I say this because I don't think that in every case people would fight like is demonstrated in the other books, sometimes people just go with the flow, they are so brainwashed that their ideas of right and wrong are twisted...Matched portrays this perfectly.

Cassia was a realistic heroine in the same way that this felt a realistic dystopian. Her mind was changed all at once; she did not immediately find the world she lived in to be a false one rather gradually the reader will discover along with her that not everything is as it seems. I would say that she is a naive narrator but that she has cause to be, the world in which she lives is not one that lends itself to being experienced. You see why she is the way she is and you begin to hope as the novel progresses that she learns, that she becomes the type of person that sees not only what the world around her wants her to see.

Aside from the lack of what may have become expected action my only other qualm with Matched is the "love triangle". I put that in quotations because I'm not sure even yet if Ally Condie meant for her readers to see it that way or if its simply there because Cassia had reached the age where she would be matched with her partner. But at the same time she is matched with her BEST FRIEND. For me this love triangle fell in line with the one present in The Hunger Games, the whole Gale VS Peeta thing. Or even Edward VS Jacob if that's more your thing. In a certain world that match would have worked, would have been ideal, he would have been her one. But with the changes you [or at least I] can't see it working out, there's really only one choice for the heroine to make. That's how I felt about the "love triangle" in Matched.

I'm giving Matched by Ally Condie a four out of five stars review. It was exactly what I had hoped for when I read the summary and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the trilogy.