Book Review: The Selection Stories

The Selection Stories (The Prince & The Guard)
by  Kiera Cass
Date Read: 3/26/14
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

I enjoyed this addition to the Selection series.  It was nice to get some background info on both the boys.  It also had quite a  bit of extra content at the end of the book as well.

The Prince:

I had already read this book in its ebook  format.  But I skimmed through it again as a refresher.  I like seeing the world through Maxon’s eyes.  I really liked that it actually started before the Selection and we could see his anxiety about it, his preparations.  It was very interesting.  We got to see more of his relationship with his mother and father as well.  The King is cruel, but the Queen loves her son and tries to look out for him.  The best part was seeing scenes from Maxon’s POV that we saw in The Selection.  Specifically the scene where she knees him because she thought he was going to try to seduce her.  Haha!  His reaction was priceless.  It’s such a sweet touch to the story we already enjoy.

The Guard:

It’s no secret that I am on Team Maxon.  With that said, I wasn’t sure how I was going to like The Guard, since it is from Aspen’s POV.  But I actually ended up really liking it.  This story actually starts in the Elite, when Aspen becomes a guard.  We watch as he has to deal with being around America and watching her spend time with another man.  Even though I’m rooting for Maxon, it was still hard to imagine being in love with someone and watching them swoon over someone else.  The insider info on the rebel attacks was very interesting.  We were able to see things happening at the palace that we didn’t know before.  It made me like Aspen more, but it didn’t take my desire for America to end up with Maxon away.

The One (sneak peek):

I loved that we got to see the first 3 chapters of The One!!  It was hilarious.  America’s actions trying to win Maxon’s affections back made me laugh so hard!  There was a little bit of recap mentioned in it, which I appreciated because I didn’t quite remember everything that had happened.  But I love that Maxon seems to really care about America.  This sneak peek has me very excited for the book to come out.  I hope she doesn’t ruin the series like Veronica Roth did with the Divergent series!

Extras:

There are quite a few extras we also get with this book.

1. There is a short Q&A with Kiera Cass.  I skimmed over these looking for questions or answers I actually cared about.  I always enjoy hearing how stories comes together for authors though.  I think I especially appreciate them now that my husband is an aspiring author.  And every story is different!
2. There’s a list of the Selected girls, where they are from, and their caste number.
3. There’s a list of jobs that would be related to each caste, just to help us classify ourselves if we lived in that world.
4. America’s Family tree – there is a history added also which is very interesting to read.
5. Aspen’s Family tree – also a history is included, but it wasn’t as interesting to me.
6. Maxon’s Family tree – very interesting history added here.  I especially enjoyed this piece of extra that we received.  Gave me more insight in to King Clarkson and Queen Amberly.
7. The Selection official playlist
8. The Elite official playlist

If you have read and enjoy the Selection Series, you should definitely pick up this book before The One is released.  It’s a good read as a refresher and to give you a little extra insight in to many of the characters.

Book Review: Of Poseidon

Of Poseidon (audiobook)
by  Anna Banks
Date Read: 3/26/14
Rating: ★ ★ ★

I enjoyed this story enough. The concept of the story was pretty good.  I really liked the Syrena (merpeople) and the story between the two mer-kingdoms.  But there were some frustrating and annoying aspects of the story as well where the author didn’t execute, which is why I’ve only given this 3 stars.

Things I liked: I liked Galen and Rayna.  They were interesting characters to get to know and I liked seeing their lives on land and in the water.  We also got to know their history in the Triton kingdom.  Sure Galen was the typical YA male love interest (super sexy, everyone wants him), but I’m okay with that.  As long as he wasn’t annoying.

I thought the overall story was good, if you ignored the annoying things that I list below.  The whole half-human half-mermaid thing was interesting.  The history between Poseidon and Triton was pretty interesting. The gifts that show up in royal bloodlines were really interesting – even though we aren’t sure what the Triton gift is anymore.  The overall concept of this story was pretty good – the author just failed to execute in areas and put some of things you shouldn’t ever have in your novel in other areas which is what hurts the rating for me.

Also, I read this as an audio book.  So far, this has been the best reader.  She had a lot of different voices which helped me keep track of who was actually talking.  Though she still didn’t pull off a great man’s voice, at least she was able to differentiate them all enough that you know who was who.  I applaud the reader for that and it helped me keep track of the story better.

First, I hated the overuse of “Oh my sweet goodness!” – something minor and small, I know.  The first time it was kind of funny.  But the sixth and seventh time I was annoyed.  No one talks like that and it just jarred me from the dialogue that was going on.  If the author had just left it at “Oh my gosh” or “Oh my God”, the dialogue in those scenes would have flowed so much better.

Second, the whole stalker thing was kind of just thrown in there.  At the end it kind of all made sense, but it annoyed me that they didn’t “sense” the stalker right away.  So it just seemed like it came out of nowhere.  And it didn’t even play a part until right at the very end.  If the author was going to do this (which would have been fine in my book), she should have had it come up a lot earlier in the story.

I also didn’t like how Emma’s mother pushed her to admit that she and Galen were dating even though they weren’t.  It was a really stupid part of the book because it didn’t even become part of the story!  It felt so forced and I hated it, and then I really hated it when it didn’t even matter.  I’m not sure why the author chose to do that.

Emma got pretty annoying by the middle of the book as well. I’m not sure why female main characters end up being annoying in the books anymore.  It’s so frustrating.  How hard is it to write a likeable character?  Her obstinance was so frustrating.  If you’re learning about a new world, you should probably listen to the people who are from that world and are teaching you.  UGH.

The cliffhanger. Okay.  There is a HUGE difference between wrapping up your story and leaving with a cliffhanger and then just cutting your story off right in the middle.  This story was cut off right in the middle.  The author didn’t know how to leave a cliffhanger but still leave the reader feeling like they have some sort of closure to the book.  This one just cut off.  I found myself with only 10 minutes left in the book wondering how so much was going to happen…and I was right.  It didn’t!  She just ends it!  Seriously?  Of course now that I’ve invested so much time in to the story, I need to read the second one, but I can tell you right now that I won’t be buying it myself after that ending.  Basically this author is writing one giant story and chopping it in thirds, as opposed to writing 3 books with an arc that covers all three books.

Due Date after Miscarriage

 

March 21, 2014.  Today is a day that I should be celebrating.  Instead, I’m grieving.  Our baby boy’s due date was today.  Instead of holding him, kissing him, and introducing him to our family, we can only light a candle and remember what could have been.

It is such a terrible feeling to have to grieve for your baby.  And though after experiencing it, I’ve found that many other people I know have gone through it, I still feel like I’m alone.  I’ve been blogging about it ever since it happened, and I’ve had several people tell me that my blog has helped them with their own experiences, or to understand how someone who has had a miscarriage is feeling.  Honestly, that was the main reason I wanted to blog about it.  Talking to other people who know what it feels like really helped me deal with the situation.  Helped me understand that what I was feeling was normal.  But today I still feel alone.  It’s been 6 months since our miscarriage, and most other people have forgotten about it.  Only a few select people still ask me how I’m doing.  The world has forgotten about our lost baby, but we haven’t.  And we never will.

In reviewing how I felt at the time, I still have some of the same feelings.  My hopes and dreams for my baby boy still haunt me.  I want to know what he would have been like.  I want to have had an impact on his life.  I still want us to be mommy and daddy.  I’m still angry that our baby was taken from us when so many other women CHOOSE to end their pregnancies or women who don’t want kids have healthy pregnancies.  I am still irritated when I hear women complaining about their pregnancies.  Bringing a life in to the world is a gift – so stop complaining about it.

But I’ve also grown in these 6 months.  I’ve learned that I can’t freeze time.  That there is a reason that God took our baby from us, and though I don’t understand it, He has a good reason.  I know that I’m not to blame for what happened.  There was nothing I did wrong or could have done differently to save our baby.  I know that I will never forget my baby.  He will always be on my mind and in my heart and no one can ever take that away from me.  And just because I move on with my life, doesn’t mean that I’m forgetting him.  I’ve also learned that I was able to help a lot of other people with having made our announcement before losing our baby.  Though I didn’t know how many other friends have been through the same thing, I have been able to help other people, and those same people have helped me.  I think God knew that I would need that.

The experience has also brought to our attention what a loving support system of friends and family we have.  Many of them were just as excited as we were, and were just as devastated as we were - even if they’ve never experienced a miscarriage in their own lives.  It has made our marriage stronger.  It brought us closer together and really helped us to open up to each other more.  Under all those raw emotions, there was no way to conceal anything.

So today I will cry.  I will ask God why he took our baby.  I will send love up to my baby.  I will light a candle in remembrance.  It will be a hard day for me.  For us.  But I also know that our baby would want us to focus on the new baby.  To not want us to love this baby any less.  And though I feel like the world has forgotten our baby, especially now that we’ve announced we’re expecting again, we never will.  And our baby boy knows that, and keeps watch on us from Heaven.

Remember, cherish every day, every breath you are given, because tomorrow is never promised.

 

“Take our million teardrops, wrap them up in love, then ask the wind to carry them, to you in Heaven above.” – sayinggoodbye.org

“As a butterfly graces our lives with one moment’s fragile beauty, so too has your baby’s presence blessed you, and those that surround you with their short life, and unique spirit. May you find peace, and joy with each butterfly that passes, knowing that your baby lives on in the hearts of all they touched.”

Pregnant after Miscarriage!!

 

As you can see from the picture above, we are pregnant again!  Today is officially a day farther along than we were last time (13w6d).  Since everything seems to be going much better this time, we decided that it is time to announce our news.

This week has been especially stressful for two reasons: 1) this is the week in which we miscarried last time, so every twinge has had me freaking out, and 2) this Friday (March 21) was our original due date.  It has been super tough to deal with all these emotions this week.  I think that is probably part of the reason that I haven’t been sleeping well.  There seems to be a lot of coincidences this time.  Not only did these two dates coincide, but we had miscarried on Sept 18, 2013, and this baby is due on Sept 19, 2014.  Talk about a rollercoaster of emotions then too!

This time around though, I have been experiencing many more pregnancy symptoms than last time.  From extreme fatigue, to nausea when I was hungry, to severe back pain, it makes me feel a lot safer.  We also had a strong heartbeat at 175 bpm at 8 weeks.  We also elected to do the nuchal screening at 12 weeks (which was recommended by our doctor due to our past experience) and baby still had a strong heartbeat at 161 bpm.  The results came back with no detection of any chromosomal abnormalities, and we also got to see our sweet baby still growing on target!  Phew.  I have a few great ultrasound pictures from this that I will upload later today to this post.

Though we still have worry in the back of our mind, we both feel much better about this pregnancy – almost a sense of calm – at least as calm as you can be after experiencing a miscarriage.  Last time I had had a dream around 8 weeks that we had miscarried.  It actually would be classified as a nightmare…and then it came true.  This time though, I’ve had no such dreams.  And Brandon says he doesn’t have a sick feeling in his gut that something would go wrong like he did last time.  We are also praying very hard and we know many of our friends and family are also praying for us, and we can’t thank you enough.

Overall this pregnancy seems to be flying by compared to the last.  I think we’re grateful to be pregnant again and we’ve had so much going on with cleaning up the house and putting it on the market, that time just seems to be flying by.  It seems like just yesterday I was heading to my sister-in-laws baby shower, knowing I was going to be taking a pregnancy test that night.  I can’t believe it’s been over 2 months since then!

Now we wait for the gender ultrasound.  We will see our doctor again at 16 weeks (instead of 18 weeks) to be sure everything is going well.  We’ll get to hear the heartbeat again.  And then we’ll be scheduling our gender ultrasound!  We cannot wait.  We want to be able to call Baby “him” or “her”.  We feel so silly using “Baby” like a pronoun! But saying “it” just sounds awful!

Until then, we have a lot planned to keep us busy instead of focusing on the wait.  We get to see some friends this weekend, we just accepted an offer on our house, so we will be focusing on getting that through and packing up over the next 30 days, we have a weekend trip to San Diego planned, and then we have a wedding and the Tough Mudder the same day!  Then we’ll get to hear the heartbeat on the Doppler.  And then we’ll finally have the day we’re waiting for!  What a busy month!

Thank you to everyone who has prayed for us.  We will need strength tomorrow, because as excited as we are for this new baby, we still miss our baby boy very dearly.  We will be lighting a candle for him so he knows we still think about him.  But our future babies have something special that not all children have: a sibling in Heaven watching out for them.  And that is something special that I am clinging to. And I try to remind myself every day to not take any day or any of the people in my life for granted, because tomorrow is never promised.

Accepted an Offer on Our House

 

We put our house up for sale on Friday, March 7, 2014.  On Tuesday, March 18, 2014 we accepted an almost full price offer.  11 days.  That’s pretty fast in the real estate market, especially when it has been swinging back toward a buyer’s market.  So why am I not as excited as I should be?  Because I’m giving my only home to someone else.  The home that we built.  The home that we came home from the wedding to.  The home that we brought our puppies home to.  The home where we had and lost our baby boy.  This home has all our memories.

We were able to get an offer for only $2000 below our asking price within 11 days.  I’m very excited, and to be honest, I expected it. Our house looks amazing.  Once we cleaned it all up and got a lot of the clutter out, I loved walking through our house.  Our backyard is beautiful.  It’s on a prime lot in the neighborhood.  It’s a great location to Westgate (football and hockey) and across the street from Spring Training.  When I try to sell it this way, I ask myself why we are selling it?  Then I remember it’s because we don’t quite have enough space to grow a family in it.  And right now, housing prices are still low, but our house had gained value.  So it seemed like the optimal time for us to move so we can get more house and land in a location closer to family, and also still make money on our house.  Interest rates are still low as well.  But I do love our house.

After being very excited about the strong offer, and knowing how much this young couple liked it also, we accepted the offer and now just wait for the inspection and appraisal.  We shouldn’t really see any issues here since the house is only 4.5 years old.  But now I’m getting very sentimental.  We have so many memories there and it was such a good house to us.  I wish we could move a wall for a little more space and pick it up and place it closer to family.  But I can’t.  I know people move all the time, and I know I probably have more attachment than most people do…but it’s really hard for me to think about leaving our home and having someone else living there.

So last time I started putting together a Shutterfly book to record all the memories we had in our first home.  I want to remember what it looked like, but also everything that we accomplished while we were there.  Starting with buying the house and getting the keys, to getting married, bringing our puppies home, all our trips, the Tough Mudder, and the loss of our baby.  This way, we can always look back and see all that happened during those 4 years.

But I also know that as we start our family, we’ll create so many new memories in a new home.  And it would have been that much harder to leave this house if we had brought our baby home to it.  We should be able to have new memories pretty quickly at the new house.  And maybe we’ll be able to get a pool so Cinder can swim all day long.  A grassy area big enough for a swing set and the dogs to run around. A kitchen where we aren’t bumping in to each other when we’re both cooking.  Enough bedrooms to have 2 kids and an office.  And close enough to our parents so that they can babysit.  It’s a tall order, but I think we can find something that will be just as good to us now with these new needs, as our house was with our needs 4.5 years ago.

If all goes well, we’ll be closing just after Easter.  We’ll have to pack up our home and put it all in storage the weekend before that.  April 22 sounds so far away right now, but when I think about it (we have so much going on the next few weekends!) it really doesn’t give us very much time to pack up and say goodbye.  I’m going to miss our home so much, but I think it will take just as good of care of the new couple as it did us.  And a new home will fit our needs now and take care of us.

Book Review: Tiger Lily

Tiger Lily (audiobook)
by  Jodi Lynn Anderson
Date Read: 3/14/14
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ 

This story ended up being different than I expected.  I didn’t expect such a deep story, especially in a book that was relatively short.  Tiger Lily takes place in the world of Neverland that we all know from the Disney movie.  We are given some brief history to Neverland and the reasoning behind no one growing up – though everyone stops aging at different times in their lives.  I thought this was most unique, and I really enjoyed how it all came back together at the end of the story.

This story is told from Tinkerbell’s POV.  It allowed us to see the story from multiple angles so it wasn’t all one sided.  I think that is what made this story so interesting.  Though, I did keep wondering that if she can’t communicate, how is she telling us a story??  But nevertheless, I really enjoyed that the author chose to write the story this way.  The reader is able to connect to all the characters a lot better with an unbiased (sort of) character telling the story.

This is a love story that may not have the happy ending you’re expecting.  I never in my wildest dreams thought of a relationship between Tiger Lily and Peter, but once it was there, it was quite sweet.  They were very different from each other, and seemed to not quite be able to be to each other what they needed.  One thing that I didn’t like about this story is that they were supposed to be 15 and 16, and yet, at times, they sounded much younger.  Their romance was neat to watch unfold, and how she had to keep it a secret from her village and the man she was betrothed to.

I didn’t expect to see the theme of the Englander coming and trying to force new beliefs upon the tribe.  As everyone else has said, it actually sounds a lot like when the English came to America and took over the Native Americans, forcing their beliefs, etc on them.  Tiger Lily’s tribe was fearful so they followed him, and a terrible sacrifice was made by a character we love.  I was shocked by it.

I didn’t expect Wendy to actually show up so early in this book. But I thought it added a great depth to the story.  It creates a jealousy in Tiger Lily – and Tink.  Though I still don’t think Tinkerbell was nearly as jealous as she is supposed to be.  And it shows us that jealousy can lead us down dark path.  And once you’re there, what do you do?  How do you come back from it?

There was a lot of wrap up to this story, which I enjoyed.  It spans 80 years after the events of the book.  Apparently the author is not planning a sequel.  But that is refreshing actually.  This story is a great standalone book, and those just don’t really exist anymore.  I’m happy about where all the characters ended up, and the letter at the end was very sweet.

Overall I really enjoyed this book.  Anyone who enjoys the Neverland world and Peter Pan’s story should pick this up.  And now I think I’m going to pick up the original Peter Pan books.

Book Review: Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Rift, Part 1

Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Rift, Part 1
by  Gene Luen Yang (Writer), Michael Dante DiMartino (Writer), Bryan Konietzko (Writer), Gurihiru (Illustrator)
Date Read: 3/12/14
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
 

I had heard this series was going to be about Toph.  When the book started, it didn’t seem to be about Toph at all!  But don’t worry, by the end, it switches to her, and I have a feeling most of the remainder of the series will be about her.

All the kids are starting to get older now.  I’m happy about this because there are still a lot of questions I want answered – specifically what happens to Sokka? From watching Korra, we know that he ends up on the council, but does he ever marry anyone (Suki)? Does he have kids?  How does Toph have a kid?

These questions are not answered in this book, but the kids are growing up, so it’s nice.  Although they still act like they did in the series.  I feel that the illustrator did a great job with all of them, except Iroh.  I had no idea that was supposed to be him until someone called him by name!

The story was pretty good.  I wasn’t sure where it was going.  It kept me guessing.  I enjoy watching the world move forward from the show and start evolving in to what we see in Korra.  Does anyone else think we’ll be seeing more of this new character that was introduced??

The characters still seemed true to themselves…but the “Sweetie” thing is still weird.  There’s still the humor we love and the tense plot.  I really enjoy these.  I think fans of the show will still continue to enjoy these graphic novels.  And I can’t wait to see what’s in store for Toph.  We should definitely get some character development in this series for her.  Can’t wait.