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Friday, January 29, 2016

REVIEW:

All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

Rating: 5/5

All the Bright Places follows two characters, Violet Markey and Theodore Finch. They both find themselves on top of the bell tower at their school contemplating death and kind of "save" each other. They then become partners on a school project that requires them to see different wonders of their state. The novel focuses on their adventures as they discover each other and battle their inner thoughts.

The novel deals with serious issues such as bipolar, loss of a love one, depression and suicide. It portrays these illnesses in an extremely realistic way, it doesn't glorify or romanticize them. It's blunt. It's powerful. It's heart breaking.

However, the story also had humor and romance. It had me laughing and smiling like a goon on one page and crying my eyes out on the next.

That's the best part. All the Bright Places makes you feel. It makes you think. It's raw and brilliant and I'm completely in love with it. I will recommend this novel to anyone and everyone because it quickly became one of my favorite books of all time.

I read this book in less than a day, I could not put it down. So bravo Jennifer Niven. You, my dear, are an excellent author.

Another reason I love this book is that it takes place in the state that I live in, Indiana. So I felt a connection to it. I know these places they visit. And while I've never been to any of them I've always wanted to. I grew up hating Indiana. The only thing I wanted was to get out of this state, this book changed that. While I still am desperate to leave and see the world, I now appreciate the beauty this state brings to the world. 

I'd love to hear your thoughts about this novel, do you agree or disagree? If you haven't read it yet, I recommend that you pick it up sometime.

Thursday, January 28, 2016

REVIEW
The Maze Runner trilogy by James Dashner
So for this trilogy I decided to do the review over all three of them in one post. Simply to make it easier on me! Lol I will put no spoilers in the review.

Rating: 4/5

The Maze Runner trilogy follows a group of teens that were put into a maze with all of their memories wiped. They can remember basic things like what a tree is and how to talk however, they don't remember names, faces, or their life before entering the maze. All they remember when they wake up is their name. The maze is called the Glade and is made up of all teen boys. They must find a way to survive but also try to find a way out of the maze. When Thomas is put in the maze everything changes. The next day a girl is put in, Theresa. All hell breaks loose after that and the "Gladers" try harder than ever to find a way out of the maze.

I don't want to spoil anything so that's all I'll say about the series for now, however, that pretty much just covers the first book so definitley check out the series if you want to know more.

I loved this trilogy. I picked up the series because I'm obsessed with the movies. I was super surprised to see that the movies were drastically different from the books and yet I really enjoyed both versions.

There were parts of the series that I found to be pretty dragging which is why I only gave the series four stars however, overall I really loved this world. It's an end of the world type of series, which I don't usually enjoy so I was shocked at how much I love The Maze Runner.

The story keeps you on your toes and throws so many curve balls at you that my head was spinning. I laughed, I cried, I gasped, I loved. In the second book a slight love triangle begins and it's quite interesting how I kept switching sides of which girl I was rooting for to end up with Thomas.

While there are some things I didn't like that happened (some deaths of some great characters) all the good and bad added so much more to the story that I ended up being extremely happy with the ending.

Let me know if you've read this trilogy and what  you thought! And who you wanted Thomas to be with :) You can find me on here or @ncreads on Instagram.