Waiting on Wednesday (35): Illuminate

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly meme, which is brought to you by Jill at Breaking the Spine! This meme is where you can post about what book(s) you're really look forward to.

This week, I absolutely can't wait for... 

Illuminate by Aimee Argesti

Haven Terra is a brainy, shy high school outcast. But everything begins to change when she turns sixteen. Along with her best friend Dante and their quiet and brilliant classmate Lance, she is awarded a prestigious internship in the big city— Chicago—and is sent to live and work at a swanky and stylish hotel under the watchful eyes of a group of gorgeous and shockingly young-looking strangers: powerful and alluring hotel owner Aurelia Brown; her second-in-command, the dashing Lucian Grove; and their stunning but aloof staff of glamazons called The Outfit.

As Haven begins falling for Lucian, she discovers that these beautiful people are not quite what they seem. With the help of a mysterious book, she uncovers a network of secret passageways from the hotel’s jazz-age past that leads her to the heart of the evil agenda of Aurelia and company: they’re in the business of buying souls. Will they succeed in wooing Haven to join them in their recruitment efforts, or will she be able to thwart this devilish set’s plans to take the souls of her classmates on prom night at the hotel?

Illuminate is an exciting saga of a teen’s first taste of independence, her experience in the lap of luxury, and her discovery she may possess strength greater than she ever knew.

Oh my goodness!  Look at that cover!  Isn't it stunning?  That's partly why I want to read it.  The other reason?  Did you read the description of the book?  It sounds like nothing that I've ever read before and a total mystery.  Secret passageways, a mysterious book, and an evil agenda?  Count me in!  I definitely can't wait until it comes out on March 6th!

What are you waiting for today?

Cleo :)

*Description and cover from goodreads.com

Review: Freshman Year & Other Unnatural Disasters

Title: Freshman Year & Other Unnatural Disasters
Author: Meredith Zeitlin
Date Released: March 1st, 2012
Pages: 288
Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Description:
Kelsey Finkelstein is fourteen and FRUSTRATED. Every time she tries to live up to her awesome potential, her plans are foiled – by her impossible parents, her annoying little sister, and life in general. But with her first day of high school coming up, Kelsey is positive that things are going to change. Enlisting the help of her three best friends — sweet and quiet Em, theatrical Cass, and wild JoJo — Kelsey gets ready to rebrand herself and make the kind of mark she knows is her destiny.

Things start out great - her arch-nemesis has moved across the country, giving Kelsey the perfect opportunity to stand out on the soccer team and finally catch the eye of her long-time crush. But soon enough, an evil junior’s thirst for revenge, a mysterious photographer, and a series of other catastrophes make it clear that just because KELSEY has a plan for greatness… it doesn’t mean the rest of the world is in on it.

Kelsey’s hilarious commentary throughout her disastrous freshman year will have you laughing out loud—while being thankful that you’re not in her shoes, of course…

Review:

Kelsey Finkelstein has had one heck of a year.  In Freshman Year & Other Unnatural Disasters, Kelsey goes through Freshman year with some shining moments…  And some not so shining moments.  It was kind of like a coming of age story, I guess, if you put it that way.  Kelsey is trying to find herself and start off fresh in her first year of high school. 

Kelsey was such a fun and quirky character.  I loved how she handled every situation and added so much personality to the book.  Her friends were awesome and were equally as funny as Kelsey.  Sometimes they added a bit of drama into Kelsey’s life, but overall I really liked them.    

Freshman Year & Other Unnatural Disasters was definitely a very funny book.  Kelsey had her fair share of embarrassing moments throughout the year.  She’s had pictures on the front page of the school newspaper… But seriously embarrassing ones.  She made the school play… But as the fat butcher.  You can probably see where this is going, and I will assure you that there are plenty more hilarious moments. 

I definitely hope that there will be a sequel of some sort to Freshman Year!  I really liked reading about Kelsey’s Freshman year, and I’m sure that her Sophomore year will be even funnier.  There were also some relationships and surprises left hanging in the end that I’m dying to find out more about.  Overall, I really liked Freshman Year & Other Unnatural Disasters.  If Meredith Zeitlin could have written my Freshman year, it probably would have been the best year of my life.  

Cover Review:
I think that this is a really cute and fun cover that really matches the what the book is about.  It's really cool how they tied in the rain to go with the "unnatural disasters" part of the title.  I also really love the colors that they chose.  They just kind of scream "teenager" and make it seem really modern and contemporary.  All together, it's a great cover!


Cleo :)


*Description and cover from goodreads.com
**Review copy received for review.

Getting Back Into the Swing of Things

Credit

I basically took the whole entire month of February off, if you've noticed because of my lack of posting.  Honestly, I would blame it all on homework.  Urgh... Evil homework.  February itself has been incredibly stressful for whatever weird reason.  The teachers were all like, "Here's a project!" and "Here's another gigantic pile of homework!" or "Let's have a super duper hard test next class!" So, it was hard to find the time to write up a post and put it out into the world.  

Yes!  Oh my goodness please eat my homework!!
Or at least do it for me?
Credit

But, I also kind of took a break because I realized that Booklopedia needed some organization to kind of keep a somewhat consistent schedule so that I'm not just posting reviews on the weekend and memes like Cover Crazy and Waiting on Wednesday just throughout the week.  So, I wrote a schedule down, sort of.  It's not a very, very cohesive schedule, but it's something that will work out... maybe... so I don't repeat the whole reviews on the weekend and memes on the weekdays thing because it doesn't really make Booklopedia a great blog if that's all I do.

I also had to think about other things that I could add to Booklopedia as well so that I'm not just stuck on the same bland schedule of reviews and memes because in my opinion, it makes Booklopedia a little boring and Booklopedia needs a bit of life.

Now, I'm back, and hopefully March will be a better month so I won't have to take anymore crazy long breaks because I missed being able to write up posts and blog and tell you guys about the amazing books that I'm reading!!  Also, I hope that I'll be able to balance both blogging and homework in the future!

I'll have a review up tomorrow because I've completed a few!!  Yeah!  And I have some plans for the future of Booklopedia.  Hopefully I'll be able to go through with them... I know one thing has been trying to get like a Facebook page for it, but I don't really know how to do that... I'll have to work on figuring that out :D  If you have any tips, then tell me below in the comments!  It would be much appreciated!

Cleo :)