Amy & Matthew

[This review CAN contrain spoilers!]

For all the booklovers of Eleanor&Park, I introduce you: Amy&Matthew from the author Cammie M’Govern. It’s also a love story and if I’m being honest, it has the same hair-pulling-out-of-frustration reactions as in Eleanor&Park (by Rainbow Rowell). When I first saw the book in the same store as I bought Bones&All, it was love at first sight. The cover of the book is amazing and has a special feeling! Which I’m totally fan of! I just love the two hands forming a heart, as well as the girly as boyish aspect.

It’s about being different. It’s about feeling alone. It’s about finding each other. It’s about falling in love.

And who does not fall in love when you read the backside of the book, right? And wait until you read the actual story because it makes you fall harder and the only thing I got in my mind was: Will the author break my heart at the end of this story? Because then there’ll be no love left!

We start the story with going back in time, seeing how they first met and under what circumstances. What’s wrong with both of them and what makes them different from each other. Matthew for example, was fine until his parents divorced and then he felt the urge to count even objects and tap locker doors. He was afraid of money, bodies, germs, hurting people unintentionally and without realizing he does. He has so many fears and his anxiety just consumes him. I loved this character, just seeing a boy that's having a hard time. In most books it's always the girl with these problems and now the author reflects that on the boy.

Amy on her turn is totally different from Matthew, she is a disabled person. She can’t talk, that’s why she has this little machine where she types what she wants to say, and the machine speaks it out loud. She couldn't walk but learned over the years. She can’t undress and dress herself, she can’t eat like normal people and her left side isn’t her good side. Her left hand is cramped into a fist and she can’t undo it. Her body sometimes does things that she didn’t want it to do, which makes it harder for her to trust her body. From the beginning until 11th grade, she has this adults that were with her on school all the time, walking her to classes, helping her eat. She was the perfect student despite of her handicap. Wrote beautiful essays about how happy she was despite of her condition. But Matthew couldn’t believe it when he read it and in class, he spoke up in all honesty about what he thought. Something new for him since he barely spoke in class. Amy heard through other people what he has said and confronted him. He told her in her face what he thought. Which I liked because we saw a total other side of Matthew.

Because of that moment, Amy became interested in him and she now saw things differently. The teachers and adults that walked with her, her books have been the only friends she has had over the years. So she wants real friends, like Matthew. Secretly, she just wants to spend time with him so after she convinced her mother, students would be her helpers and get paid for it. She mailed Matthew himself to be her helper and he said yes to the proposal.

Throughout the book, we see Matthew struggle with his own sickness and anxiety to do something wrong. The more he spends time with Amy, the more it changes. He tells her his fears, something he’d never done before. And she was glad to listen to him, she even confronted him with his disease telling him he should get help. She starts giving him assignments such as going on a date in Taco Bell. The most disgusting place Matthew ever has been but the real challenge was: not going to the bathroom to wash his hands and eat his food out of the wrappers. They grow closer and both, especially Amy, started feeling things for each other. But as Amy’s mother planned her whole life, pressing her on collage, Amy will have to leave next fall. Above it all, Amy’s mother doesn’t like Matthew at all while Amy loves him.

Both friends struggle with themselves and with each other through the book and the only question that remains is if they’ll ever come clean to each other about how they feel. A true love story about finding each other and knowing nobody’s perfect.

Why I loved this book so much is simple: it contains everything that true life contains. Love, rows, differences, diseases: mental as well as physical, friendships that are hard to keep, friendships that are hard to start, family drama. It wasn’t some fairy tale it was something we all could imagine. The biggest part of the book we concentrate on people who are disabled and sick. And how they discover the consequences of it by themselves but also in this society. I love how Amy and Matthew grew closer but the author loved playing with my emotions and ripped them out of each other with every row they had which was so hard! Even after the terrible things that happen and Matthew starting over. Luckily Amy reaches out and things get ‘okay’ again.

What I might loved/hated about the book is the ending. I feel like it’s an open ending which makes me as well love as hate it. I know we can imagine now, let our fantasy throw a surprise but I don’t like open endings very much. Just because I don’t trust my mind with finding a good Happily Ever After. But forget the aspect of the open ending, this book was good if not excellent. It read easily which I like and has a nice style too. I loved the cover as already mentioned but also the inside of the book. I haven’t seen the style of emails or IM’s in books a lot which makes it all so much more real since nowadays we all just use email, Facebook and stuff. We don’t talk face-to-face all the time. This book shows real-life aspects and I really appreciated it in the book.

“This is the story of Amy and Matthew”

Half-blood

Fans of Jennifer L Armentrout, brace yourselves for another good book. What am I saying? Excellent beginning to a series, those are the words I need to use to introduce you to Half-blood by, as I already said: Jennifer L Armentrout. A friend of mine and also a bibliophile, Fien recommended this book to me. Thanks for that, Fien! She also has a bookblog which you can find here:My bookish rambles

The Hematoi descend from the unions of gods and mortals, and the children of two Hematoi pure bloods have godlike powers. Children of Hematoi and mortals--well, not so much. Half-bloods only have two options: become trained Sentinels who hunt and kill daimons or become servants in the homes of the pures. Seventeen-year-old Alexandria would rather risk her life fighting than waste it scrubbing toilets, but she may end up slumming it anyway. There are several rules that students at the Covenant must follow. Alex has problems with them all, but especially rule #1:Relationships between pures and halfs are forbidden. Unfortunately, she's crushing hard on the totally hot pure-blood Aiden. But falling for Aiden isn't her biggest problem--staying alive long enough to graduate the Covenant and become a Sentinel is. If she fails in her duty, she faces a future worse than death or slavery: being turned into a daimon, and being hunted by Aiden. And that would kind of suck.

That’s just what the back of the book says and I’m already “This is so Jennifer!” and all hyped about the story. I like Jennifer’s books, it’s not to hard to read. She writes ‘simple’, in other words my brain doesn’t need to function. I’m from Belgium so English is not my mother tongue so some books just ask my brains to work and translate, with Jennifer L Armentrout’s books it’s not like that. I can enjoy it and I do. 

Back to the book! As explained Alex is a half-blood and the one she’s crushing on Aiden, is a pure. She’s been crushing on him for a long time while living under the protection of the Covenant. Though 3 years ago, Alex’s mother has taken her away from that protection for unknown reasons. And when certain things happen, Alexandra wonders why she ever decided to take her away from that safe place she ones called home, where she ones had dreams.  

3 Years later, Alex is back on the Covenant. Training, starting from the total begin to make sure she can start the academic year with her peers. But guess who her trainer is? Yes! Yes! Yes! The guy she has a crush on, the one she should never fall in love with, a pure. Aiden St. Delphi! Make sure you’re prepared to fall in love all over again with a reincarnation of Daimon Black. But more events start to reveal themselves: problems, forbidden love, people who are supposed to be death and even more! I recommend this book to everyone who loved other books from Jennifer L Armentrout but also to the ones who have never heard of her before. It’s time for all of you to get to know her! 

As always the characters all have their own personalities, nobody is the same even though some might be the same species. With that I mean that it's not because there are two half-bloods that that means they're the same. They all have their own strengths and weaknesses, so do the pures. You fall in love with how they act and how they are. It’s not only a ‘simple’ read, it has everything. Funny moments, romantic ones, frustrating ones, thrilling parts and if the end is near you only hope that the second book is already on your bookshelves. And I really don’t want to spoil anything which is why I’m not really going deeper into certain aspects, I want you to reveal the things. Discover everything there is about Jennifer L Armentrout’s books and most importantly: to fall in love with this series. My friend is two books ahead of me and she’s so thrilled about it, I can only imagine how good the rest will be and I know it’ll be better than I expected. 

If you read the Lux-series, then you sure know what I’m talking about if I say the ending of the series destroyed me. Like I literally felt lost, it was done. Over. Finished and I know this series won’t be any different feeling. But more updates about the following books will come! 

A fact about this book is that it’s apparently really similar to the vampire academy. So if you enjoyed those books, you might want to check it out! 

“People do the damnedest things when they’re in love.” 

Bones & All

So I finished the book Bones&all from Camille DeAngelis. I have to say it was something quite different from the books I normally read, let alone choose. I was in Paris, in this nice little, total English store named Shakespeare and company and took this book in my head, reading the back of the book and it said:

http://shakespeareandcompany.com/

Someday I’ll wake up and they will have built a maze around me. And I will be relieved. Sixteen-year-old Maren wants the same thing ever girl her age wants. She wants to be loved. She wants to be accepted. She wants to be normal. But she’ll never be any of those things. For Maren has dark urges. There is a hunger inside her she can’t control and no one is safe, not even the people she loves. Can Maren ever fall in love? Or is she doomed to destroy those closest to her?

When I read it I was like “I need this book in my life.” because it felt like something mysterious, yet paranormal stuff. Angelic or demonic alike so I decided I was going to take it with me. When I came home it was the first book I started reading and I was surprised that it wasn’t what I expected. The first chapter begins with explaining it and how she’s doing now, after all those years. Because what I didn’t knew and certainly didn’t expected was that Maren was a something other than what I expected. She picked her first victim when she was a little child, it was her nanny. And throughout the book we get to know more of her victims.

On her 16th birthday, her mother decides to leave her because she can’t do it anymore. Clean the mess after she did it again and then move, because that’s what they always did. “Because mothers can make things all better and good.” Move when she did it again. Her dad wasn’t in the picture but after she made a hopeless attempt to go back to her mom, she decides she wants to look for her dad instead. Find out if he is like her, and with alike I mean the thing she knows best: make victims. She meets new people, she hurts new people. But the most important question is if the friendships she made, would be strong enough to fall in love and another important question is if she finds her dad.

I loved this book so much, and I never expected I’d fall in love with it since it’s not something I’d choose if I knew what it was about. But I’m glad I didn’t know and let me surprise by the author. Although I didn’t really like the long chapters in the beginning, the things that happened in the book made all up for it.

I loved how Maren started to find people alike and gets to know herself a little better. She might be 16 years old but I find it stunning how she thinks and grows as an adult. But the thing I loved the most in the book was when Lee came in the picture. He’s 19 years old and also alike in the things he does, only he does it to certain people and not like Maren, to the ones that become close with her. In the beginning Lee was cold towards her, almost as if he hated her or thought she was a baby but near the end he starts to open up, even save her. I loved how their relationship grew from this distant to something very close.

That’s really the most important I can and will tell because I find the other aspects in the book far too valuable to tell when people didn’t even read the book yet. I know you might say now "What is she? I won't read it until I know what she is." but I was surprised by the author and I want to let you be surprised too. In case you were thinking or doubting to read this book, I tell you now GO. GET. THAT. BOOK. Like really, even if you think oh this isn’t what I read, I like more angelic or demonic. This will change your life (it changed mine). It’s amazing from beginning till the end and after a while I wasn’t bothered that the chapters were so long. This book definitely makes my Top 10.  

 “Someday I’ll wake up and they will have built a maze around me. And I will be relieved.”