Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick

Now, I'll say loud and proud that I read a TON of teen books. I've read the Twilight books, the Gemma Doyle trilogy, everything Garth Nix has written... the list goes on and on.

But this book was just... bad. I chose to read it because the cover art is freaking beautiful. I gotta say, whoever the designer was for that cover, it's just awesome. I was honestly hoping it'd follow the other trend for YA fiction these days, and that's mythology. It could've made a wonderful story about Icarus with that cover.

It was about a young, brunette self-described average-looking girl in high school... and a mysterious black-eyed loner type she's paired up with in science class.... yes, that DOES describe the beginning of Bella and Edward's illustrious romance... but Patch (the loner) is a fallen angel, not a vampire.

Huh.

I mean, it was done... well? I don't particularly mean well-written or well-constructed. I just remember being sad that the storyline was so simliar to Twilight because it had some real potential. If it had explored more of the history of the angels, both fallen and otherwise, or gone into details in other ways or any of a number of other things, it could've been really really awesome. As it was, I valiantly finished and felt disappointed.

Becca Fitzpatrick, if you see this, I'm sorry I didn't like your book. But I believe in you as a writer... I think you can do more. Make it into a series! Just don't go focusing in on the doomed love story and I think you'll find you've got a winner.

Chicken Soup for the Soul Cookbook

Yeah, I read these books. Sue me. My grandma used to get them all the time and we'd read them together. I have a pretty soft heart and anything like this tends to make me tear up, at least a little.

Though honestly, there was this one woman who apparently is a big deal in the cooking world (or at least in her her own head) and apparently is friends with the rest of the editors. And she wrote half the darn book. Seriously, it's sweet that her first husband died and she feels like her second husband was selected by the dead one just for her and they have this incredible bond, but still. I got tired of cute stories about Debra and Ted or whatever their names were.

Also, because these were selected primarily for the recipes, a lot of the stories were poorly written or completely unrelated to the dish they showed a recipe for. There were a couple cute stories, but all in all, none of the food sounded that great. One was even a rip off of Thundercake! Which was one of my favorite stories of all time as a kid! Lame, says I.

All in all, I kinda enjoyed reading it but it didn't exactly change my life. I probably should've spent the time on reading Anubis Gate, since that's next on the list.