The rest of the books...

Hey friends. In an end of the year whirlwind, I finished a couple books before 2015 came to a close. Here are the reviews (end of the year thoughts and recap in the next post).

taken from Goodreads.com

You remember a couple days ago when I reviewed Gary Schmidt's book First Boy and said I felt kind of "eh" about it? And I said that I was really bummed about the idea of feeling "eh" about one of Gary's books because Gary is kind of my favorite of all time? Well this book is why he's my favorite of all time. Orbiting Jupiter is Gary's newest book - came out in October - and praise the Lord my dad had knee surgery so he could be laid up on the couch browsing Kindle options and find it (I'm not really thankful my dad had to have knee surgery, but you know what I mean). This book...whew. It's a tough subject matter, like most of Gary's books, but he handles it with ease and an incredible talent and smiles and tears (lots of tears) just like most of the rest of his books. Yes, it's a book about an eighth grade boy who has a child and has just been released from jail, but you need to read this book. Read this book, but have an entire box of tissues ready.

taken from Goodreads.com

I've been reading this book since about September. It was one of those that I started reading with a friend for us to meet regularly and discuss together, but life got busy and we don't live near each other so huge gaps of time would pass before I'd read a chapter or two and then forget about it for another huge gap of time. But I saw the end of the year approaching and decided it would only be fair to Jen if I finally finished this book. It was really good! Typical Jen with lots of laughs, lots of conviction, lots of tears (there's a couple pages at the end where she talks in detail about the adoption of her two little Ethiopian kids...cried like a baby), and lots of contemplation. It's the kind of book where some of it will really hit home because of how much you relate to her struggles, and some probably won't resonate as much, but it's still worth it. I definitely recommend it.

taken from Goodreads.com

In an effort to squeeze out as many books as possible before 2015 ended, I zoomed through this one this week. I chose it mostly because it was already on my kindle from when I'd bought it a while ago. It's three separate mini-books, written by three different YA authors, that all kind of connect and intersect with each other. It's simple, easy YA rom-com Christmas lit, and it was a really easy one to knock out in a couple days. I will say that in my personal opinion, the first two stories were really good and the third one kind of annoyed me, but it all wrapped up really nicely in the end.