Books and Sensibility

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Audiobook Review: The Young Elites by Marie Lu

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  • Release Date: October 9, 2014
  • Genre: Historical Fantasy 
  • Narrators: Carla Corvo, Lannon Killea
  • Length: 10 hours 9 minutes
  • Publisher: Putnam (Penguin)

I don’t fangirl for many authors, but if there is one author I will consider flailing over it’s Marie Lu. Her Legend series is one we’ve been talking about on this blog since day one.  The series has great story building, action and interesting female characters. Needless to say when I heard about The Young Elites I was excited to get back into Lu’s head….

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Like No Other by Una LaMarche

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  • Release Date: July 24th 2014
  • Pages: 368
  • Genre: Contemporary 
  • Publisher: Razorbill (Penguin)

Like No Other has an easy pitch; take the star crossed lovers trope and apply it to a  Hasidic Jewish girl  and West Indian boy in 21st century Brooklyn with a meet cute in a broken elevator during a storm.

 I really like  what this book is doing in terms of the current state of YA publishing. It’s like yeah diversity in YA,  yeah diverse cover art and oh look The New York Times is reviewing a diverse book by a female author.  But despite my cheering for its successes I kind of take issue with LaMarche’s portrayal of the male protagonist Jaxon

I didn’t necessarily hate his character. Jaxon is a nerdy first-generation West Indian who represents the average teen boy and I actually like many of his introductory paragraphs.

It’s funny; I forget sometimes how I might look to other people. I could be reading The Great Gatsby on the 3 train, or walking down the street listening to a podcast on my phone, or coming out of the orthodontist’s office with Invisalign braces feeling like the biggest nerd on the planet, but some people don’t notice anything but an almost six-foot-tall black man.

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Opening Up Book Riot’s First YA Quaterly Box

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Last week my Book Riot YA Quarterly Boxcame in the mail ! This is a quarterly bookish subscription box from Bookriot.com. Each box comes with two YA books and some book-related items. Let’s open up and see what’s inside.

Spoilers Ahoy !…

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Audiobook Review : Reboot by Amy Tintera

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  • Release Date: May 7th, 2013
  • Pages: 365 
  • Genre: Dystopian/Thriller
  • Publisher: HarperTeen

I’ve been in a bit of a fictional hangover. Which is to say I binged watched Nickelodeon’s The Legend of Korra series and was searching for a book to fill this void. I wanted adventure, world-building and action girls so I immediately started browsing YA dystopians. I settled on Reboot after getting a rec from a regular reader….

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So You Want To Review A Galley: The Basics For Beginners PT 1

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At Books and Sensibility, we like to do things we probably aren’t qualified for. Like judging book coversor attending the largest publishing event in North America after blogging for all of 9 months. Now we want to talk about galley or  Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) requests. Getting advanced copies isn’t everything in blogging, but it can be fun to be apart of the promotion for a book you’re excited about!

We want to share our tips on how we request ARCs. We don’t have many chances to network with publisher connections, so our ARC requests are basically like cold calls, which if you are a new book blogger you will be doing.

Check out the second part here.

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Now and Forever by Susane Colasanti

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  •  Release Date: May 20, 2014
  •  Pages: 273
  •  Genre: Contemporary YA
  •  Publisher: Viking Juvenile (Penguin)

So, I’m starting to realize I may have a new book kryptoniteand it’s the what I like to call “I’m with the band” stories.  These are the books were either a friend, parent, or the love interest is a rock star. I haven’t read many of them, but if I see one it instantly goes on to my TBR pile. I’m not sure why I’m so interested in this.  Maybe its because my guilty pleasure movie is the Disney Channel Original Movie Starstruck or that Sarah Dessen’s This Lullaby was my favorite book as a teen. Either way, pair this knowledge with the fact that I’ve been meaning to read Susane Colasanti for years and Now and Forever was the perfect choice….

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