BookBlogWriMo | Wrap-up

Welcome to Day 30 of BookBlogWriMo! Sadly, this is the last day of this challenge, but not the last time we will be participating in an amazing challenge by Book Bumblings!

This fantastic challenge was hosted by Book Bumblings. She had the idea to try and get bloggers into the NaNoWriMo spirit, without making us want to pull out all of our hair. And, she succeeded! I think the challenge was an amazing success!

If you have no idea what I am talking about, you should check out our intro post. It explains the challenge and has the links to all of our other posts.

Thanks to this challenge, we got back into the habit of blogging. I might even say that we are still here because of this challenge. We found our motivation (it was hiding underneath a pile of old books) and made new goals for the future.

Feedback

As I said before, I loved this challenge and thought that it was a huge success for our blog. We had more traffic and gained a lot of followers. More importantly, I made new blogger friends!

The daily topics were diverse and never got boring. 

The only complaint that I have is that I wish that there was an easy way for participants to connect. I had trouble finding the other participant's posts. Apparently, if you have a Facebook page (which is what I use for the blog), then you cannot join a group. I was not aware of this until Facebook denied me access to the BookBlogWriMo group. I also found that not a lot of people were using #BookBlogWriMo. 

Since we enjoyed this challenge so much, we would love to participate in Book Bumblings' newest scheme, which was inspired by BookBlogWriMo. 

We would be happy to participate (or even help) with BookBlogWriMo next year.

All of the previous BookBlogWriMo posts are listed here:

Day 1: History of Crazy for YA
Day 2: How We Read
Day 3: Where We Read
Day 4: Why We Read and Why We Blog
Day 5: Where We Blog
Day 6: Our Favorite Childhood Books
Day 7: Our Blog's First Design
Day 8: My Blogging Toolkit
Day 9: My Blogging Workflow
Day 10: Memes we Meme
Day 11: Our Top Ten Most Popular Posts
Day 12: Advice for Newbie Blogger
Day 13: Our Review Process
Day 14: Our Ratings System
Day 15: Favorite Blogging Things
Day 16: Least Favorite Blogging Things
Day 17: Our Favorite Book Tropes
Day 18: Our Favorite Subgenres
Day 19: My TBR List
Day 20: Best Books of 2014
Day 21: Our First Reviews
Day 22: Show Me Your Shelves
Day 23: Our Book Boyfriend Criteria
Day 24: Our Reading Cave Fantasies
Day 25: How I Deal With Book Hangovers
Day 26: Cheating on Book: Our Favorite Movies and TV Shows
Day 27: Authors We Are Thankful For
Day 28: Book Pet Peeves
Day 29: The Future of Crazy for YA

If you want to see what the other participants did, I recommend using the Linky below. The links will take you to their introduction posts, which have links to all of the other posts.

BookBlogWriMo | The Future of Crazy for YA

Welcome to Day 29 of BookBlogWriMo! This is also *sniff**sniff* the second to last day of this amazing blog event.

Thanks to this challenge, hosted by Book Bumblings, we have all really upped our blogging game. So, we are planning a lot of new and exciting things for the blog, and we are going to give you a sneak peek today!

Today's topic is....

The Future of Crazy for YA

Tessa

1. Posting at least 3 times a week. Before the challenge, we were lucky if we posted once a week. 

2. Catching up on memes. Cassia is going to continue with Soundtrack Saturdays. We are also going to try and start up with Top Ten Tuesday again.

3. More discussion posts. Up to this point, we have mainly been posting reviews and memes. Now that we have more followers, we are going to try to do some discussion posts. (Now that we think people will actually comment!) If you have any ideas for what you want us to talk about, then leave a comment!

4. GIFs! If you have not noticed, I have (finally) discovered the magic of GIFs. You can look forward to more of them popping up in my posts.
5. Being more active in the blogging community. I will be honest, we are not good with visiting and commenting on other blogs. I have come to realize that this is a pretty important part of book blogging. So, I am going to start browsing other blogs and leaving more comments.

6. The one that I am the most excited for.... a Christmas surprise for you all! This will be coming in the next week or two, so keep a look out for it. It is something we have never done before!

Cassia

7. More reviews, faster. At least for me, my reading (and reviewing process) has been slow lately, and I hope to read faster and give you all some more reviews.
8. Promoting new books. We've been asked to review ebooks for new authors, and we hope to do more of it. 

Review | The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

The Naturals

Picture Courtesy of Goodreads

Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Series: The Naturals #1

Release Date: November 5, 2013

Pages: 308

Review by: Tessa

Cassie cannot forget being at her first crime scene--her mother's.
Cassie is a natural at profiling people. Just by looking at the clothes you wear she can practically read your mind.
When the FBI finds out about Cassie's talent, they want to recruit her for their new program, The Naturals. She would be given the opportunity to work with others like her and help to solve cold cases that have been dead for years.
All Cassie wants is to avenge her mother's death-- by finding the murderer.
Soon, Cassie is caught up in a flow of murder cases. The killer is slowly escalating and Cassie needs to work with the other Naturals to find the solution to a seemingly dead case, before the killer strikes them next.

BookBlogWriMo | Book Pet Peeves

Welcome to Day 28 of BookBlogWriMo!

Everyone has pet peeves. This is a broad spectrum that covers everything from biting your nails to texting during dinner. As a slightly OCD book lover, my list of pet peeves is longer than most people's.

Today's (fun) topic is...

Book Pet Peeves

1. When someone borrows a book and gives it back in terrible condition. 

2. Dog earring pages. This is an irreversible sin in my book, because once that crease is on the page, you cannot get rid of it (Did I mention that I am "slightly" OCD?) Is it really that hard to find a piece of paper to mark your spot in the book?

3. People who are obnoxious in libraries. For some reason, people believe that libraries are social hangouts. I do not mind book discussion and stuff like that, but anything that I also believe that parents should actually watch their children while they are in the library.

Now, on to my peeves about books.

1.  Love triangles. I hate it when books stop focusing on the actual story and create unnecessary drama by adding a love triangle. Most of the time, it is obvious who the character is going to end up with anyway, so why even make the stupid thing in the first place? There are some exceptions, like in the Throne of Glass series, and The Hunger Game series. Personally, I think that readers get too caught up in the Edward versus Jacob rivalry that they do not pay attention to the plot.

2. Dead/absent parents. In YA, there is an abundance of characters without parents. Kat, from the Lux series, Harry Potter, almost everyone in the Percy Jackson series, and on it goes. Basically, if characters have their parents at the beginning of the series, they end up dying, becoming lost, or getting sick somewhere throughout the series.

3. Manic Pixie Syndrome. Sometimes called "Manic Pixie Dream Girl," this is my least favorite kind of character. She (normally a girl, but in some cases is used with males) is practically perfect-- she is beautiful, smart, funny, kind, etc. The main character develops a creepy obsession crush on the Pixie Girl. But, this girl always remains aloof and unattainable. The reason that this character exists is to teach the main character "valuable life lessons." Unfortunately, the first example that comes to mind is Margo from Paper Towns by John Green. I have tried reading this book, but I truly did not really care about Margo. Sorry John Green.

4. Insta-love

The only thing that I can think of when it comes to insta-love is this song (and I am not even a Carly Rae Jepsen fan!). I knew that this is harsh, but I think that insta-love is a way for authors to avoid trying to write a meaningful relationship between characters. Authors need to realize that there is a difference between love and attraction. I believe that real love is made over time. I understand that most authors do not have books that are long enough to sustain a relationship like that. I have found that my favorite character relationships are from longer series, like the Divergent trilogy and The Mortal Instruments series. My favorite relationship that was made in one book, is The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. I believe that he makes up for Margo with this book. Even though it is not a long span of time, the relationship between Hazel and Gus is real.
Thank you for patiently reading my rant! What are your most annoying book pet peeves?

BookBlogWriMo | Authors We Are Thankful For

Welcome to Day 27 of BookBlogWriMo!

And to all of the Americans out there, Happy Thanksgiving. For those of you who are not celebrating, I promise that I will eat some turkey for you.


Today's topic is..... Authors We are Thankful For
Tessa
1. John Green Thank you for teaching me that every great story does not have to have a happy ending. Also, that there can be humor in sorrow when you look for it. Thank you for breaking the stereotypes that have been forced onto authors for decades. Finally, thank you for reminding me to be awesome!  
2. J.K. Rowling Thank you for helping me to discover my love of reading. Thanks for showing me that love can conquer everything, even death. You made me realize that reading can be magical.
3. Cassandra Clare Thank you for teaching me to never give up, and even if you already reached your goal, make a higher one. Also, thank you for adding humor to the world of YA fantasy.
4. Veronica Roth Thank you for showing me that it is alright to be different. Also, for explaining that I do not have to fit into a category. Thank you for showing that it is important for authors to stay true to their characters, even if it is not the popular choice with your readers.  5. Suzanne Collins Thank you for reinforcing the fact that in order for a story to be great, there has to be humor, love, and sorrow. Thank your for showing me the power of one spark that can start an entire revolution.
*If you have not noticed, I finally figured out how to get GIFs into posts. For better or for worse, you can expect a lot more of them coming your way.