Invencible Covers #1

      Although they always say never to judge a book its cover, it is still a flamboyant feature in a book, at least for me. So, every now and then I will be sharing with you guys a cover that I really like.
     And this time, Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver really attracted me and even before knowing that it was Oliver's book cover of her second book, which I'm currently reading, it just caught my eyes.

       And this is the UK cover, which I also liked but I feel that it shows, or embraces the main idea of the book a tiny bit more, but its just first impressions since I just started reading this book.

xoxo, Mariam

Book Review : The Host

        Our world was invaded by parasitic but peace-loving aliens called  the souls. Melanie, a human being who refuses to fade away and leave Jared, her boyfriend and her brother, Jamie. Wanderer, the soul inserted into Melanie's body who had an honorable past in other planets, other than the Earth, seemed to be falling for humans. And as a result she helped Melanie on a journey she have never planned and thought was impossible, she went searching for Jared and Jamie, in Melanie's body and with her in her mind. But what kind of journey could that be? And how would it turn out to be? And which side would Wanderer be on, the humans or the souls? Whom will she betray, or will she....      

    
      Again, Stephenie Meyer enchanted me by this book. This story was nothing about vampires but rather another world of its own, a creative one, Wanderer's world. The scene opens with Wanderer, the soul being inserted into Melanie's body, a repel whom they hoped to tame but it turns out that Melanie is much stronger as well as her love and loyalty. What Wanderer always feared happened, she found human resistance.

      I'm a huge twilight saga fan but I feel that I absolutely loved this book maybe even a bit more. I think it was written better than the Twilight saga, maintained better, I guess. It was just breathtaking and addictive, I had a hard time trying to put it down. 

      

      If you can get through the first few chapters then you'll just love it and I think that's because you don't understand anything at all, yet its so unpredictable but as you go on you'll be hooked up, don't worry. But I'll try to clarify a tiny bit of it for you guys:

Okay, so when they refer to the souls they mean here the aliens who invaded the Earth. And the Seeker is just sort of a jailer or a policeman who gets the humans leftover  to the souls to insert one in their body, and by inserting a soul in their body it means they invade the body as well. A Healer is like a doctor and a Comforter is just a therapist for the souls. And they have some really weird names like Wanderer and Petals Open to the Moon, just plain weird.

    Those souls saw in us humans brutality and thought invading it was safe the world our savageness. Wanderer was different, she did hate those emotions of humans like hatred and cruelty but then her relationship with Melanie develops, and her feelings toward humans change, she found love. At the very beginning, Melanie just fills her head with memories of Jamie whom she had a mother like bond with him. And Jared, her boyfriend and how it felt to be with him and eventually she feels some initial affection toward him and sets off on a journey to find the man they both loved. Yet, i think that her love toward Jared wasn't that strong, i think it was because how she was hugely affected by Melanie's deep love and memories and when Ian, the missing part of the love triangle came into the view, the suspense was even more. I enjoyed how it at some situations was a sort of an internal struggle in Melanie's body, it gave it a huge twist.

    The ending which I thought at some point was horrific, that's when I actually cried, which I don't do that often, turned to have an unforeseen twisted, real ending which I loved. Also, another thing that I liked was the titles of the chapter, don't know why they caught my eye so much but they were so simple and gave me what I wanted to know about it.

  
    I just honestly really enjoyed reading this book and I can definitely see myself reading it again and I just can't wait for the two sequels to be out, which I don't know when will that be. But anyway, I really do recommend this book if you love that sort of thriller sci-fi novels with some romance, just give it a try. I loved it.     

Author : Stephenie Meyer

Grade Rating : A+
Pages : 867 ( Paperback )

Book Review : Delirium #1

      Lena Haloway, who is almost eighteen years old, preparing herself to get the procedure to be cured from the disease that everybody in her world feared, amor deliria nervosa aka love. It's a society where love is forbidden and scientists found a cure to eradicate it. Lena was always an obedient girl, can't wait to get her procedure done but just then with few weeks left, everything changes and she is the one who changes it. But what kind of change could that be in a cruel world like hers?

      I was hypnotized by Lauren Oliver's style of writing and her creativity in forming Lena's world. A superb prose, leaving the boring details, yet I was able to picture it all.

     Oliver's world-building and perspective of the story which I thought was overstated turned out to be something that I fantasize and I feel it's something that exists in our real world, not to the point of course but just the concept of it.  

    Lena's character transition was fantastic, she was torn, almost through the whole story, between what's right and wrong, seeing Alex, continuing with procedure, I mean she was confused and I don't blame her. She started off as a true believer in the whole cure thing, but not until she meets Alex. 

    Alex was an Invalid, a perfect guy and just lovable, she falls in love with him, and gets infected by the end. Regarding how she first met Alex on her evaluation day, I think was admirable and we witnessed it from the very beginning.

   The friendship relation between Lena and Hana was rather convincing and touching, I saw in Hana a tough girl yet I really wanted to know more about her. Oliver just lightened up in her innovation of the characters. Despite being annoyed by the fact that it reminds me of the Uglies series at the beginning, especially in the part of Hana's influence on Lena, I really liked it. A cliff-hanger ending, it was intense and left me startled. Even in the middle of the story where things were starting to get even more suspense, I was like " Oh my God, no way " for the rest of it. I just can't wait to start reading the second book Pandemonium which I'm super excited about. I'd recommend this book, one of my favourites.

Author : Lauren Oliver
Grade Rating : A
Followed by : Pandemonium
Pages : 441

Book Review : Where She Went #2

       Three years ago, the accident that altered Mia's life and separated her from Adam, affecting their lives and destroying their love. With  her moving to NewYork at Julliard and Adam in Oregeon, playing with his band. After Mia's sudden cut off with Adam, his strong stream of depression resulted in his band's breakout records. Yet Adam couldn't just forget her, let her go as he promised without a goodbye at least and without knowing the reason for leaving him. Now Adam is a popular rock-star and Mia is a professional cellist, living across the country from each other. Luckily, Adam by chance went to one of her concerts in NewYork and met her, spend a night roaming in NewYork. But will Adam be able to handle Mia's answer to his question? And will they rekindle their love or ever be together again?   
      
      Where She Went is the sequel to Forman's If I Stay which i have a review on. However, being one of the few readers who weren't wowed by If I Stay, I should say that I enjoyed this book and I was eager to finish it. Yet this isn't one of my top favourites, I mean there are lots of books out there and this was just a fun read.
      Nonetheless, the fact that this book was written from the point of view of Adam was tremendous actually. The book was well written and to some point unpredictable.    

" If you stay, I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll quit the band, go with you to New York. But if you need me to go away, I’ll do that, too. Maybe coming back to your old life would just be too painful, maybe it’d be easier for you to erase us. And that would suck, but I’d do it. I can lose you like that if I don’t lose you today. I’ll let you go. If you stay. "
     
      This was the vow that Adam gave to Mia during her coma three years ago which sort of touched me but now they have a new vow, but can you guess what it could be?
      Forman was able to take this tagic story to a whole another level in this book, once from Mia's POV and now from Adam's, totally different and emphatic to get in his mind. Although I saw that Adam sometimes overreacted, I liked him as a person and as for Mia, I can see how vulnarable she is and its totally okay after what she had been through, yet she did make wrong decisions.
      Overall, I liked this book much more and if you're like me and didn't enjoy the first book, you'll enjoy this one. I'd recommend it.

Author : Gayle Forman
Grade Rating : B+
If I Stay : Review

Book Review : If I Stay #1

   The 17 years old Mia once had  a traditional teenage life with a lovely family. She was a passionate cellist with big dreams and a chance to be at Julliard. But in a single moment, everything changes. On a snowy day, school is off as well as her parents' work. Mia couldn't remember except that she was riding along a snow, wet road with her family to visit her grandparents and winds up in a coma and wakes up to see that she had lost her parents and her brother, Teddy in an accident. This accident which has changed her life abruptly and forever. Yet, Mia finds herself between life and death, watching her shattered body in a ghost like state. What will she choose, to stay and fight for what she has left or to give up and follow her family and leave her life, present and future ?
        
       If I Stay is a heartbreaking story but honestly not to the point that could make you cry. Yet it makes you see what's worth it around you, and that life can be full of choices. Nonetheless, everything can be gone in a blink. 

    So I first heard of this book's sequel which is Where She Went and it was raved about, and so I knew that I had to read this book first which I honestly didn't enjoy that much at the beginning. Yet this book is a book where you can only either like or dislike. Forman did write this book well, and through out the story, Mia tells it in an out-of-body experience which is an catchy idea and interesting.

    After seeing herself in the hospital and during the 24 hour course after that horrific accident, Mia starts remembering her past and her memories with her family and how it would be if she is back to life without them, not in chapters but in different times during that 24 hours  and it's cool how everything and everybody she sees in her ghost state brings us a memory, showing us her past. Ultimately,  she was desperate, seemed to be realizing whats happening and that this choice might the most difficult choice she will ever have to take. She even once said: 

    " Its possible that her funeral will also be mine. There's something comforting in that. To go down as a family. No one left behind. "

which sort of struck me. As for her romance with her boyfriend, Adam. I needed more about it but still, the fact that they knew each other before the accident, something we didn't witness through reading, made it more real than a typical teenager love story.

    I do like this book, it exposes simple feelings of a teenager in our real world and the uncertainty and fragility against the world, and I recommend it, it's a good YA novel but I feel that I can't completely judge until reading it's sequel Where She Went which I'm looking forward to.


Author : Gayle Forman
Grade Rating : C
Followed by : Where She Went
Pages : 234

The Multiethnic Society : Brazil

       The sights and sounds were once drawn to the diverse of the Brazilian culture which reflects an ethnic and culture mixing due to the occurrence of colonization, involving mostly Native Americans, Portuguese, Africans, Spanish and Japanese and Arab immigrants, creating a multiethnic society.                                 
        After three hundred years of colonization by the Portuguese and as a consequence, the framework of the Brazilian culture was derived from the culture of Portugal, was then influenced by the Native Americans and Africans traditions and others. This diverse culture has helped boast many celebrations that have become known all around the world, such as the Brazilian Carnival and the Bumba Meu Boi, making it a destination for many tourists every year.
       The official language in Brazil is Portuguese spoken by 99% of the population making it a national identity. Minority languages are spoken throughout the nation, one hundred and eighty Amerindian languages spoken in some remote areas, also significant German and Italian speakers in the south. Catholicism was introduced and spread by the Portuguese Jesuits, which identified the religion of the Brazilian culture, was also recently introduced to Protestantism, which became the second religion right after Catholicism.

      The Amazon Jungle, a tropical forest which covers most of the Amazon River, which is the second longest river in the world. The Victoria Amazonica water lilies which is found in the Amazon River, is a species of flowering plants. A long time ago, the indigenous people from Northern Brazil, they had a legend that said that every night, when the moon hid behind the hills far off on the horizon, it was going to live together with its favorite young ladies, if it could like one single girl, it would transform her into a star of the sky.

      Once, a princess was impressed with that story. So, at night, when everybody was sleeping and the moon was traveling across the sky, the princess wanted to be a star, so she walked up to the hills and chased the moon, hoping the moon could see her up in the hills. And so she did, every night, for a very long time. But the moon didn't seem to notice her .One night, the princess saw, in the clear waters of a lake, the image of the moon. The innocent girl wondered if the moon had come down to take her away, so she jumped in the deep waters to join the moon. She was never seen again. The moon, in return for the beautiful princess's sacrifice, transformed her into a different star, the moon transformed her into a "Star of the Waters", whose flower is the "Vitória Régia".

   

     At that moment, a new plant was born, whose scented white flowers blossom and unfurl only at night. And, when the sun appears in the early morning, the flowers change their colo to soft pink.
                                       

Capital : Brasília
Population : 192 Millions
Currency : Real     

       
        So this post is just for fun. I hope you guys liked it, and my upcoming book review will be about If I Stay by Gayle Forman, so stay tuned.