Top Ten Tuesday: Posts That Best Represent Me

Hosted By The Broke and Bookish

1. Well My About Me would be a good Place to start!

2. My first post ever. Since it is shows you how I began and how I have expanded since!

3. One of My Favorite IMM 

4. The first time an author mentioned me on their own post!

5. My Online Store 

6. Hmm My Twitter Feed on the side of my blog..

(@thelbreports)

7. My Last Post of 2011

And that is all I can think of cause this is REALLY REALLY hard!! 

Apologies

Hello.

Some of you may have noticed, but I haven't blogged a lot this month and I am sorry. Towards the end of June I became very busy with family members on my side and my husbands visiting and then having to travel to Northern California for a friends Grad. party. I became behind on my reading, then add an unexpected busy July.. going back up North for 4th of July, running a 5k, getting busier at work, a friend from school passing away (at a WAY too young age) and again, family members visiting on both sides and ending the month with another trip up North for my Grandpa's 85th birthday. I just haven't been able to maintain my blog this month. However, I have so far been able to catch up pretty well and hopefully August will be filled with tons of posts. Thank you for your understanding and I hope you all are everything a great summer.. or winter.. for some.

Seraphina

Summary:

"Four decades of peace have done little to ease the mistrust between humans and dragons in the kingdom of Goredd. Folding themselves into human shape, dragons attend court as ambassadors, and lend their rational, mathematical minds to universities as scholars and teachers. As the treaty's anniversary draws near, however, tensions are high.
Seraphina Dombegh has reason to fear both sides. An unusually gifted musician, she joins the court just as a member of the royal family is murdered—in suspiciously draconian fashion. Seraphina is drawn into the investigation, partnering with the captain of the Queen's Guard, the dangerously perceptive Prince Lucian Kiggs. While they begin to uncover hints of a sinister plot to destroy the peace, Seraphina struggles to protect her own secret, the secret behind her musical gift, one so terrible that its discovery could mean her very life.
In her exquisitely written fantasy debut, Rachel Hartman creates a rich, complex, and utterly original world. Seraphina's tortuous journey to self-acceptance is one readers will remember long after they've turned the final page"

Plot: The plot is excellently written, with tons of layers and writing a plot that has a complete story and ending, while still leaving a lot for a series to be based off of.

Characters: I think that each character is written so well, with enough background that it just adds to the story. Seraphina is a great heroine, because for the most part she is just normal and brave.

Final Thoughts: I love love love this story, involving dragons. It has a fantasy feel while almost being historical fiction-esque. The whole story is amazingly written and is perfect for a general audience to read. The story had the right amount of  love, mystery and suspense, something that I think books, do not always balance well.

Princess Diaries Books 2 & 3

I read Princess Diaries about a month ago, and was not really impressed. However, since this is a beloved and talked about series and I adore Meg Cabot.. I wanted to still read the rest of the series. As of right now, I am not upset with this decision. 

Princess in the Spotlight deals mainly with Mia finding out her Mom is pregnant, Grandmere wanting to plan a huge wedding and Mia having a secret admirer. As well as, getting used to being in the spotlight. Although, I knew the book and the movies were different from reading book 1. Princess in the Spotlight definitely proved that minus taking certain things from the books and making a movie plot line out of them. They really are completely different and should not be compared. Which for me is hard to do! Overall, Princess in the Spotlight was ok. You begin to see Mia somewhat mature, but not too much yet, at times I found her political whining annoying but I could get over it. Lily, however pisses me off and is a HORRIBLE friend in this book, and in general.. I really don't know why Mia is friends with her at all. If I hadn't already checked out Princess In Love, I may have considered ending my attempt at reading the series though. Since The plot in this book wasn't really much.. (although though most likely crucially to the building up of the series story) I just felt let down, since I was hoping for a rebound from the first book.

Which brings us to Princess in Love and I LOVED it. It was great to see Mia blossom into her royal duties and start to embrace herself more. She was still dorky, but making progress. I think I loved this book so much though because of Michael Moschivitz though. He is just the perfect geeky,charming love interest for Mia and the way the book ended was perfect. Lily was mildy less annoying in the book, but I think that is because she played less of a roll. Who I really began to adore as a character was Tina. I really want to see Tina become Mia's best friend. Since she can really understand what Mia is going through and not be self- absorbed like Lily is. 

So Far, the series has redeemed it self with me, but I personally do not think it is Cabot best work. 

Bewitching

Summary:

"Bewitching can be a beast. . . .
Once, I put a curse on a beastly and arrogant high school boy. That one turned out all right. Others didn’t.
I go to a new school now—one where no one knows that I should have graduated long ago. I’m not still here because I’m stupid; I just don’t age.
You see, I’m immortal. And I pretty much know everything after hundreds of years—except for when to take my powers and butt out.
I want to help, but things just go awry in ways I could never predict. Like when I tried to free some children from a gingerbread house and ended up being hanged. After I came back from the dead (immortal, remember?), I tried to play matchmaker for a French prince and ended up banished from France forever. And that little mermaid I found in the Titanic lifeboat? I don’t even want to think about it.
Now a girl named Emma needs me. I probably shouldn’t get involved, but her gorgeous stepsister is conniving to the core. I think I have just the thing to fix that girl—and it isn’t an enchanted pumpkin. Although you never know what will happen when I start . . . bewitching."

Plot: I like the concept of the plot being one married story with, little stories in between. And of course the use of history and retellings of fairy tales was interesting. Classic Alex Flinn.

Characters: Kendra, for being someone from 1666, sounded a lot like a modern teenager and that kind of bugged me a little. The other main characters were Lisette and Emma and I think the were written nicely and worked out each other perfectly as opposites.

Pros: Cute fun retelling.

Cons: would have liked a little more of Kendra's stories and Kendra to sounded too modern.

Final Thoughts: I enjoyed Bewitching and found the stories to be fun and entertaining. A great light read in a true Alex Flinn fashion.

Diva (Book 3, The Flappers Series)

Summary:

"Parties, bad boys, speakeasies—life in Manhattan has become a woozy blur for Clara Knowles. If Marcus Eastman truly loved her, how could he have fallen for another girl so quickly? Their romance mustn't have been as magical as Clara thought. And if she has to be unhappy, she's going to drag everyone else down to the depths of despair right along with her.
Being a Barnard girl is the stuff of Lorraine Dyer's dreams. Finding out that Marcus is marrying a gold digger who may or may not be named Anastasia? A nightmare. The old Lorraine would have sat by and let the chips fall where they may, but she's grown up a lot these past few months. She can't bear to see Marcus lose a chance for true love. But will anyone listen to her?
Now that the charges against her have been dropped, Gloria Carmody is spending the last dizzying days of summer on Long Island, yachting on the sound and palling around with socialites at Forrest Hamilton's swanky villa. Beneath her smile, though, Gloria's keeping a secret. One that could have deadly consequences ."

I don't know why.. but I thought Jillian Larkin's Flapper Series was going to have four books in her series.. not three, so Diva was the final book in the series and after finishing Diva, I wish there was a fourth book. I would have like Diva to have been a little more like Ingenue, with some action and developing our love for the characters. Because, although I like most the characters I was not deeply emotional about them. Making the finality of their stories kind of "eh" for me.

Besides, giving a ending to the series, Diva wasn't an overly exciting book. Once I was into the plot, was when the plot changed and the story ended. I would of liked Jerome to either have been more apart of the story line, or axed. Since, the roll he played didn't make me invested in his and Gloria's relationship. I did enjoy however, Gloria and Forrest. I thought her time with him at his place was very reminiscent of The Great Gatsby and I would have liked to have seen that carried over in a fourth book. As for Lorraine, it pissed me off how easy she ended up getting off, for how horrible she was in Vixen and Ingenue.

Bottom line. Diva was a decent book, but I really would have preferred a fourth book!

In My Mailbox (40)

Hosted By The Story Siren

Last week, My Grandma, Aunt Elena and Cousin Selina came down south to visit and while we were down here my Grandma brought me some books. = ) So Thank You VERY Much Grandma!

Gifts

The Fifth Witness By Michael Connelly

The Black Echo By Michael Connelly

The Black Dahlia Files By Donald H. Wolfe

Outlander By Diana Gabaldon

NetGalley

Serephina By Rachel Hartman

Mystic City By Theo Lawrence

Also, Thank You To Random House