Showing posts with label Hush Hush. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hush Hush. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

The Teen Read Awards and My First Book Signing

Since I live less than an hour north of Toronto, you would think that I'd get to attend some pretty cool book signings in the city.  Well... that couldn't be further from the truth.  For whatever reason, authors and their managers/publishers avoid Toronto like the plague (really people... it's only cold here in the WINTER).  So, when I heard about the Teen Read Awards I was so super excited I couldn't contain myself.  That is, until I found out that you had to be UNDER 18 to purchase tickets.  Yep, seriously.  I was going to miss my chance to rub shoulders with the likes of:
  • Becca Fitzpatrick
  • Alyson Noel
  • Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl 
  • Kelley Armstrong
  • Alexandra Bullen
  • Carrie Jones
  • James Dashner
  • Lesley Livingstone
  • Melissa de la Cruz
  • Tim Wynne-Jones
  • Ally Carter
::tears::  Honestly I was so disappointed.

BUT, I was perusing the Upcoming Events page on Indigo.com and saw that Becca Fitzpatrick will be doing a signing at a bookstore in Toronto at noon the day of the show! 

HOORAY!  I LOVED Hush, Hush (read my review here) and am anxiously awaiting the release of Crescendo, so I'm super pumped to have her sign my copy. We're actually going out of town on Saturday for the night (family thing) but have to drive through Toronto, so I'm hoping the timing works out and we can make a stop! I've never been to a book signing before, so I'm really happy that my first one will be with an author that I'm really genuinely excited to meet.

Then Sunday is the annual Word on the Street Book Fesitval downtown Toronto.  I'm not super impressed with the list of authors posted so far, but there are a few authors I'd like to meet... so I think we'll make a stop there on the way home.  I can only hope that some of the authors in town for the Teen Read Awards will make a stop at the book festival!?!?!  Fingers crossed!!!!!

Man! I'm so excited I can't even contain myself.  I'm such a nerd!

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick

What a great read! Easy and super fast, I loved this book from start to finish. 

First of all, Patch = HOT! I’m always drawn to the bad boy type, and Patch, as sort of the ultimate bad boy, was no exception.

This was my second brush with Fallen Angels and I really, really enjoyed it. Having been raised Christian and now being completely agnostic, it’s interesting to have references, however brief, to the stories I was told as a kid and to be able to look at them from a totally different perspective.

I’ve read several reviews that say it was another copy of previous YA paranormal romance books, and I can definitely see the similarities- but let’s be honest; it would be incredibly difficult to write a book that had absolutely no similarities to others in the same genre… that’s why it’s called a genre. I really had no idea where the story was going. Yes some parts were obvious (based on the cover of the book, or the genre that it falls under) but Patch’s secret where it related to Nora was very surprising to me and the identity of some of the other characters shocked me as well. This makes up for the similarities in my head. As long as I don’t know what’s coming the whole way, it’s a winner for me.

Were there a few things here and there that bothered me? Yes. However, there are very few books in the world that don’t have elements that I don’t like or don’t “get”:

-I never seem to like the best friend… ever. Vee was meh to me.

-I can’t stand that parents are made out to be completely clueless or incredibly gullible in most YA novels… my parents were usually one step ahead of me. Nora’s Mom just buys her stories without much question and it’s a little unbelievable to me. Maybe I just had really smart parents?

-Nora was obviously really flawed as most girls would have run the other way if they suspected Patch of what she did. But I guess you have to have a flawed protagonist to write a story like that or they would all end the same boring way- mysterious boy, perfectly smart and rational main character gets weird vibes and is afraid of him, immediately tells her parents and they move far, far away to somewhere safe, never see the boy again, girl meets “safe” boy falls in love, marries him and has babies, everyone lives happily ever after, book ends.

Beyond the few things I didn’t like or the few things that bothered me, I really loved this book. It sucked me in more than any books I’ve read in a while and I couldn’t put it down. I can’t wait to read Crescendo even though I was happy with the ending of Hush, Hush. It was refreshing to read something that wasn’t concluded as a setup for the next book.