The Last Little Blue Envelope

Title: The Last Little Blue Envelope (Little Blue Envelope #2)
Author: Maureen Johnson
Publisher: HarperTeen
Date: April 26th 2011
Rating: 3 Stars

Ginny Blackstone thought that the biggest adventure of her life was behind her. She spent last summer traveling around Europe, following the tasks her aunt Peg laid out in a series of letters before she died. When someone stole Ginny's backpack—and the last little blue envelope inside—she resigned herself to never knowing how it was supposed to end.

Months later, a mysterious boy contacts Ginny from London, saying he's found her bag. Finally, Ginny can finish what she started. But instead of ending her journey, the last letter starts a new adventure—one filled with old friends, new loves, and once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Ginny finds she must hold on to her wits . . . and her heart. This time, there are no instructions.-GoodReads

The Last Little Blue Envelope is the sequel to 13 Little Blue Envelopes. It wasn't much better than the first one, in my opinion, but I feel the writing was a tad better, not that the writing was bad in the first one it just got better. Ginny's, once again, character was flat but I think she got a lot more out of this trip than the first. I was disappointed that Johnson didn't get into Oliver's character anymore than she did. His character had a lot of potential for major drama but not much was done. There was a lot of hinting about his character, come to think about it there was more hinting than actual character development, but I kind of liked him in the end. Keith was funny but most of the time he just seemed to be an ass, at first he just seemed to be doing it for Ginny's sake but after a while he just seemed cruel for the sake of being cruel. Ginny really didn't stick up for Oliver much, she didn't like how Keith was acting towards him but for a long time she didn't voice any complaints for a long time and when she did it wasn't strong. This book had a much more satisfactory ending than the first and you begin to think that Ginny really is starting to get it. The traveling was once again a joy to read, I love reading about Europe. I still say this is a 3 star rating but it's closer to a 3 1/2

Graveminder

Title: Graveminder
Author: Melissa Marr
Publisher: HaperCollins
Date: May 17th 2011
Rating: 3 Stars

Rebekkah Barrow never forgot the tender attention her grandmother, Maylene, bestowed upon the dead of Claysville, the town where Bek spent her adolescence. There wasn't a funeral that Maylene didn't attend, and at each Rebekkah watched as Maylene performed the same unusual ritual: three sips from a small silver flask followed by the words "Sleep well, and stay where I put you."

Now Maylene is dead and Bek must go back to the place--and the man--she left a decade ago. But what she soon discovers is that Maylene was murdered and that there was good reason for her odd traditions. It turns out that in placid Claysville, the worlds of the living and the dead are dangerously connected. Beneath the town lies a shadowy, lawless land ruled by the enigmatic Charles, aka Mr. D--a place from which the dead will return if their graves are not properly minded. Only the Graveminder, a Barrow woman, and the current Undertaker, Byron, can set things to right once the dead begin to walk.-Amazon

There were so many great things about Graveminder but I feel that it didn't reach it's full potential. The world was fantastic, both the world of the living and the dead. I love the idea of the Graveminder, someone connected to the dead and watching after them, protecting them, and also making sure they don't ever come back. Also, the Undertaker who's responsible for dealing with the bodies left behind and a partner to the Graveminder.

Marr loves writing from many character points of views and that isn't bad, but it can also connect you with side characters that aren't supposed to be important and in the case of Elizabeth, Alice(I think that's her name), and Amity I feel like she didn't give them satisfactory endings.

The story was a bit slow to start off, considering the length of the story I feel that there should have been more accomplished in the first 150 pages. Rebekkah and Byron were only just their getting into their jobs as Griveminder and Undertaker by the end of the book and it just felt too short, like their should have been more.

Overall, it was an interesting book. It had a great world and storyline and I did enjoy it.

Emily the Stange: The Lost Days

Title: Emily the Strange: The Lost Days(Emily the Strange Novels, #1)
Author: Rob Reger
Publisher: HarperCollins
Year: 2009
Rating: 3 Stars

I can't find a good summery of this book to post so I'll describe it in one sentence. Strange goth girl genius gets amnesia and finds herself in a town called Blackrock that has no black rocks.

In the style of Emily herself I thought I'd write my review in lists of 13 things.

13 Things I Liked About Emily the Strange
1. Emily
2. Amnesia 2
3. The strangeness
4. Pockets with Gallifreyan technology :D
5. Her lists of 13 things
6. Conversations with Raven
7. Her refrigerator box
8. Her inability to not write in her notebook
9. The matchstick Delorean
10.Molly's lines for Raven
11. How she found out she was a cat person not a dog person
12. Refreshing nightmares
13. Her tickets

13 Things I Disliked About Emily the Strange
1. The fact that I can't decide if I liked it or not
2. Calamity Poker
3. Attikol
4. Some of the Stupidness
5. Blackrock
6. I had to read it in short segments
7. More Stupidness
8. I have not become immune to stupidness
9. I still can't decide if I liked it or not
10. um
11. I'm having a really hard time coming up with 13 things
12. Beige
13. Let's just call that 13 things and be done with it

13 Little Blue Envelopes

Title: 13 Little Blue Envelopes (#1)
Author: Maureen Johnson
Publisher: HarperTeen
Year: 2006

When Ginny receives thirteen little blue envelopes and instructions to buy a plane ticket to London, she knows something exciting is going to happen. What Ginny doesn't know is that she will have the adventure of her life and it will change her in more ways than one. Life and love are waiting for her across the Atlantic, and the thirteen little blue envelopes are the key to finding them in this funny, romantic, heartbreaking novel.-Summery from GoodReads

13 Little Blue Envelopes is a fairly easy read, I finished it in one day. This should have been a book I loved. A teen girl traveling around Europe, it's the type of story I should love reading. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy it as much as I had hoped. With every letter Ginny traveled to a different place and with each challenge the trip seemed more pointless. Ginny didn't seem to get anything that her Aunt was trying to tell her, she didn't really enjoy anything, instead she went through Europe like a zombie. I know she just lost her aunt, but really, she should have some reaction to whats going on around her. The side character, Keith, was fun and quirky but Ginny was just flat, she really didn't seem like she had any life in her at all and that did not change by the end of the book. Her travels were interesting, the places she went, the problems she ran into but it would have been more interesting if she had some personality. The ending of the book is somewhat unsatisfactory but I guess that's life, and that's what the author was going for. So, after everything I'm giving this 3 stars mostly just because it's about traveling through Europe.

The Hunter's Moon

Title: The Hunter's Moon (The Chronicles of Faerie, book 1)

Author: O.R. Melling
Publisher: Amulet Books
Year: 2000

Gwen travels to Ireland to visit her cousin Findabhair, expecting a summer of backpacking, late nights, and the usual road trip adventures. But when Findabhair is kidnapped by the King of Faerie, Gwen must race to save her cousin before the rise of the Hunter's Moon, when the fairies need a human sacrifice.-Summery from Goodreads


I've had this book on my shelf for a couple of years now, I've just never got around to reading it until now. It was a fun read, there are a lot of problems I had with the book, but still it was fun. It took me a while to realize that it was written like a fairy tale(yes, I do realize that I am reading a tale about fairies but I'm talking about Fairy Tales, you know, the Grimm kind). There were tests that Gwen had to pass, random friends along the way who helped, people filled with courage and bravery willing to die for something they loved. Nevertheless the down sides to fairy tales were also apparent such as lack of believability, cookie cutter and underdeveloped characters, boring dialogue, and sudden professions of love.
One of my favorite things in the book was the constant adventure Gwen was on traveling around to a lot of Ireland's best Faerie places. And the best part had to be when the Leprechaun was giving Gwen his tour of Dublin, I couldn't help but laugh at his renaming of the statues, like Tart-with-the-Cart.
The thing that makes people like this book, I think, is that it's steeped in legends and folktales. Miller sure did put her B.A. in Celtic Studies to use, every place Gwen went there seemed to be a story to go along with it, everything in the book seemed connected to Faerie in some way. There were so many legends woven into this one story. Like I said, It was a fun read.

Feature & Follow Friday

Feature & Follow Friday is hosted by: Parajunkee and Alison Can Read. This week's question:

Q: Go count the number of unread books sitting on your shelf. How many?

I have 52 unread books in my bookshelf(and on the floor and on top of the dresser). I'm kind of shocked. It's not as many as a lot of people on book blogs have, but considering I only buy books twice a year and I usually stick to the books I know, it is a fairly large number. I need to start reading them. Does anyone else have trouble reading books on their shelf vs books from the library? Or is that just me? I can always make time for a library book but it takes me months to decide to read a book that I own.

Blogging About a Blog Post/Contest Entry

Maggie Stiefvater is having a Giveaway at her blog here. To enter you are supposed to blog about one of your favorite posts she has made. So, that is what I'm doing.... Well, I'll get around to it sometime in this post. She has a ton of really good posts. If you read author blogs have you every notice that YA Author = Funny? It seems that every YA author blog I've been to they always have a sense of humor. Just an interesting point I thought I'd point out.

As previously mentioned Maggie has a lot of posts. It took me a really long time(10 minutes. Oh shut up, it felt like a long time) to track down the one I was looking for.

Why We Love Authors Who Treat Us Bad

Be forewarned, there are spoilers for Twilight #4 and Harry Potter #5, #6, and #7. The thing that I love about this post is that at first you are shaking your head going 'that's not me' and then by the third paragraph your nodding your head going 'oh yeah, I forgot, that really is me. I'm actually like that.' I think this line really puts the point of the post in a nutshell "hell hath no fury like a reader who actually gets what they think they want."