ARC Clean Sweep: Mini Challenge!

How have you guys been doing with the ARC Challenge? I hope you're all doing really well and getting through all those ARCs and meeting your goals! It's time for my mini challenge and it's really self explanatory. All you have to do is make a sentence out of book titles! You can omit the small words like "the", "or" and "and" but the main words of the title must be in the sentence and you can't leave out any of the main words either. Divide book titles with slashes. Leave your answer in the comments and the winner will win a mystery box full of books! The winner will be the one that I think is the most creative. 

Rules:

• US residents only!
• No cheating I will figure it out!
• One sentence per person
• Contest ends May 17 at 11:59pm EST!!!

Good Luck!!!!

The Clean Sweep ARC Challenge Begins Today!

It's time to get out those dusty ARC's that are sitting on your shelves that you promised yourself you would read as soon as you finished your current read because the Clean Sweep ARC Challenge is finally here! I'm so excited to be a part of this awesome month long adventure because I have so many ARCs to read. There is going to be so many fun challenges to participate in and a whole lot of giveaways! Below you can find the schedule of ALL the happenings!

Clean Sweep ARC Challenge

Saturday May 4th

• 9am (EST) Barbara @ Basia's Bookshelf
• 4pm (EST) Thuy @ Nite Lite

Saturday May 11th 

• 9am (EST) Kristen @ My ParaHangover
• 4pm (EST) Crystal @ Elegantly Bound Books

Saturday May 18th 

• 9am (EST)  Ali @ My Guilty Obsession
• 4pm (EST) Nicole @ The Reader's Antidote

Saturday May 25th 

• 9am (EST) Lola @ Lola's Reviews
• 4pm (EST) Jenn & Mary @ YA Book Twins

So don't forget to come back here, Elegantly Bound Books, on May 11 for my mini-challenge where you will get a change to win some awesome books!

Stacking the Shelves: LA Book Festival Edition

Hey there! Welcome to this week's Stacking the Shelves! This awesome meme is hosted by Tynga's Reviews and we get to show each other the books we acquired this week whether bought, from the library or for review!

Where have I been? I don't even know!! All I know is that being boy crazy is distracting! My Goodreads Reading Challenge is constantly telling me that I'm 11% behind! I didn't even read the last two books for book club! I feel a little bit like a failure and something has to change. I need to come back to my first love which is reading. I must read more books. I'm about to finish A Game of Thrones and I'm jumping off from there and diving right in! Thing aren't really changing so much as to going back to normal.

So I went to the LA Time Festival of Books last weekend held at the USC campus and it was sssooo much fun!!! There wasn't anyone I HAD to see because I was just tagging along with Thuy, Nicole and Kimberly! I even got to see Ava and I'm telling you, you have to check out her book blog that she just launched! It's awesome. Anyway, you probably want to see all the books I bought!

The Black Prism by Brent Weeks

The Reckoning by Alma Katsu

The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline B. Cooney

What Tears us Apart by Deborah Cloyed

Mind Games by Kiersten White

Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare

The Dark by Lemony Snicket and Jon Klassen

Great weekend with so much cuteness! Happy reading :)

Waiting on Wednesday (93)

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine that spotlights upcoming releases that we are eagerly anticipating. This is one of my favorite memes because not only is my TBR pile so much bigger at the end of the night but also the covers are always amazing!

Title: 3:59
Author: Gretchen McNeil
Hitting the Shelves: September 17, 2013

Josie Byrne's life is spiraling out of control. Her parents are divorcing, her boyfriend Nick has grown distant, and her physics teacher has it in for her. When she's betrayed by the two people she trusts most, Josie thinks things can't get worse.

Until she starts having dreams about a girl named Jo. Every night at the same time—3:59 a.m.

Jo's life is everything Josie wants: she's popular, her parents are happily married, and Nick adores her. It all seems real, but they're just dreams, right? Josie thinks so, until she wakes one night to a shadowy image of herself in the bedroom mirror – Jo.

Josie and Jo realize that they are doppelgängers living in parallel universes that overlap every twelve hours at exactly 3:59. Fascinated by Jo's perfect world, Josie jumps at the chance to jump through the portal and switch places for a day.

But Jo’s world is far from perfect. Not only is Nick not Jo's boyfriend, he hates her. Jo's mom is missing, possibly insane. And at night, shadowy creatures feed on human flesh.

By the end of the day, Josie is desperate to return to her own life. But there’s a problem: Jo has sealed the portal, trapping Josie in this dangerous world. Can she figure out a way home before it’s too late?

From master of suspense Gretchen McNeil comes a riveting and deliciously eerie story about the lives we wish we had – and how they just might kill you.

Waiting on Wednesday (91)

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine that spotlights upcoming releases that we are eagerly anticipating. This is one of my favorite memes because not only is my TBR pile so much bigger at the end of the night but also the covers are always amazing!

Title: Acid
Author: Emma Pass
Hitting the Shelves: 2014 (Dang you UK readers! You guys get it this year!)

2113. In Jenna Strong’s world, ACID – the most brutal, controlling police force in history – rule supreme. No throwaway comment or muttered dissent goes unnoticed – or unpunished. And it was ACID agents who locked Jenna away for life, for a bloody crime she struggles to remember.

The only female inmate in a violent high-security prison, Jenna has learned to survive by any means necessary. And when a mysterious rebel group breaks her out, she must use her strength, speed and skill to stay one step ahead of ACID – and to uncover the truth about what really happened on that dark night two years ago.

Waiting on Wednesday (90)

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine that spotlights upcoming releases that we are eagerly anticipating. This is one of my favorite memes because not only is my TBR pile so much bigger at the end of the night but also the covers are always amazing!

Title: Revelations
Author: J.A. Souders
Series: The Elysium Chronicles #2
Hitting the Shelves: November 05, 2013

Six weeks ago, Evelyn Winters was locked away in Elysium, a city hidden miles beneath the sea, brainwashed into submission. With the help of Gavin, she fought free of her captors and the fog in her own mind. He took her back with him to the Surface, a world she's never known. Now she will begin a new life.

But her past is closer than she thinks...

Why I want this: I loved Renegade and I'm super excited to know more about the underwater community!

Review: Hysteria

Title: Hysteria
Author: Megan Miranda
Publisher: Walker Childrens
Source: ARC from Netgalley and Publisher

Mallory killed her boyfriend, Brian. She can't remember the details of that night but everyone knows it was self-defense, so she isn't charged. But Mallory still feels Brian's presence in her life. Is it all in her head? Or is it something more? In desperate need of a fresh start, Mallory is sent to Monroe, a fancy prep school where no one knows her . . . or anything about her past.But the feeling follows her, as do her secrets. Then, one of her new classmates turns up dead. As suspicion falls on Mallory, she must find a way to remember the details of both deadly nights so she can prove her innocence-to herself and others.

In another riveting tale of life and death, Megan Miranda's masterful storytelling brings readers along for a ride to the edge of sanity and back again.

My thoughts:

I have really been putting off this review. I just don't know what to write! I didn't hate Hysteria but I didn't love it either. The only way I can put it, is that it's weird in a weird way. I absolutely loved Megan Miranda's debut Fracture and I was so excited to hear that she had another book coming out and I was couldn't wait to get my hands on it!

Sadly to say, I was somewhat disappointed. The story could have been great! A girl who murders her boyfriend but was so traumatized by the event, she can't really remember what happened. Now she's being stalked by her dead boyfriend's mom and brother and to help her get away from all the drama, her parents are sending her to boarding school. That's the basic premise. And of course there's a new boy because what YA novel wouldn't be complete without a love interest.

I've read other reviews and people have talked about Hysteria being some sort of retelling of The Tale Tell Heart by Edgar Allen Poe and if I had known that going in I might have liked it a little more.  Honestly the parts when she could hear the mysterious heart beat kidn of annoyed me. They seemed a little out of place. Maybe if it had been pitched at a re-telling everything might had made more sense.

The main character Mallory didn't really do it for me. I didn't feel her guilt over killing her boyfriend nor could I feel her desperation that led up to that situation. I didn't have anything invested in the character so I didn't really care how it ended.  I really on continued to read so I could find out what really happened that night and why she killed him.

Hysteria was a flop for me.  Like I said before, I didn't hate it but I also didn't love it. Have you read Hysteria? How did you feel about it?