Blog Hop: Shut Out by Kody Keplinger

Shut Out

Kody Keplinger

273 pages

Publisher: Poppy Books

Release Date: September 5th, 2011

Rate: Loved it

Being in high school can difficult. And being with a high school boy who is in a sports team and loves pranks between other teams, it's just a living hell.

Lissa is sick of her boyfriend. Hamilton High is in war, a civil war! The football team versus the soccer team. The logic thing here would be to prank another high schools teams, but Lissa's school is different.

Her quarterback boyfriend, Randy, is more interested in picking a fight with someone from the soccer team than being with her, alone, in the car (Hello? Since when?) or doing stupid pranks to them. And it's not nice that while you're intimating with your boyfriend, someone throws at your boyfriend's car eggs or something like that. Why should she compete with a bunch of sweaty and huge boys? She should have her boyfriend's attention. Girls before pranks!

So Lissa plans to end up this stupid rivalry and make all the boyfriends from the teams, soccer & football, to choose girls over pranks. And what is it that boys love more than sports and pranks? Girls/intimacy/hookups. So Lissa convinces all the players' girlfriend to go on a hookup strike: the boys won't have any attention from their girls until the teams make peace.

But what started with a healthy plan turns out to be a girl against boys war that hinges on who will cave to their libidos first. Lissa had no problem with that until Cash Sterling put himself in her way, tempting her and making Lissa want to forget about war.

We love Kody Keplinger's books. Our first "Keplinger novel" we read was Shut Out and we fell for it instantly. Then we trusted our reading hopes to The DUFF and A Midsummer's Nightmare and now we're waiting, anxiously for more of Ms. Keplinger's stories. 

This teen love story is refreshing and lovable. Lissa is a control maniac and she's kind of mature in some points of the story. She sees this war between teams of the same high school ridiculous and tries to end it. How? Well, girl power. Why not? We've heard it from Madonna's songs and other books that what a woman can do no one can. So she tries to use that advantage. 

Boys love girls and sex and kisses and all that. So a hookup strike is the best thing Lissa cames up with after reading a book hot, cute and good soccer player Cash gives her. But everything ends up in a sex war: Boys vs. Girls. And Cash leads the boys and Lissa the girls. 

We loved Cash. Randy was an idiot and a childish guy and we didn't like him. Not at the beginning and surely not at the end of the book. And then Cash appears in Lissa's life. It was so cute. And then we now that he always liked Lissa and that just melted our hearts and made us do a team Cash flag.

This book is a perfect summer read and not just because the romance between the characters (all of them!) but because this is a story about war between sex, friendship, forgiveness and finding love in the unexpected places. 

If you love our summer reads, this is definitely one of them and all of Kody Keplinger's books. That's why we ranked the book with a five gorjuss dolls and we're doing our summer blog hop about this wonderful, funny and fantastic book! So don't miss the change to read it and/or win it!!

"Night Moves" by Bob Seger

"Potential Breakup Song" by Aly and AJ

"Dangerous" by Katharine McPhee

"One Girl Revolution" by Saving Jane

"Autumn" by Sparks the Rescue

"Don't Touch (The Zoom Zoom Song)" by Ashley Tisdale

"What it Feels Like For a Girl" by Madonna

"Impossible" by Shontelle

"Smile" by Lily Allen

"Can't Hold Us Down" by Christina Aguilera and Lil' Kim

"Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga

"Sweet Silver Lining" by Kate Voegele

"Come On Closer" by Jem

"Doll Parts" by Hole

"Tearin' Up My Heart" by *NSync

"Apology" by Safetysuit

"Vindicated" by Dashboard Confessional

Win a paperback copy of Shut Out by Kody Keplinger

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The Fantastic Flying Book Club: Reviewing Ink by Amanda Sun

Hello Books Addicts, 

This is the third day of our first The Fantastic Flying Book Club, as our schedule says, today we are hosting the Review of this astonishing book. The question of the day that you should answer in order to win more points and, in that way, have more chances to be our lucky winner, is at the end of our review. 

If you want to know what A Reading Nurse thinks about Ink, tomorrow is the Review stop in our friend's blog. We are dying to know her thoughts!

Without further ado, here is our review. Enjoy!

Ink (Paper Gods #1)

Amanda Sun

377 pages

Publisher: Harlequin Teen

Release Date: June 25th, 2013

Rate: Loved it

After her mother died, the last thing Katie wants to do is move to another country, with another  different language and culture. But, there is no other choice to make; she has to go to Shizuoka, Japan, with her aunt, who she barely knows.

If that wasn't bad enough, being the new foreign in school and not be able to communicate as a normal person with a fluent Japanese, she overhears someone breaking up with the kendo star of her school, Tomohiro. 

Tomohiro has a big secret, and he won't tell anyone, but when Katie sees how the things he draws start moving, there is no way he could hide his secret anymore, or, at least, not from Katie. But then again, things are more complicated. When Tomohiro is with Katie, he loses all the control he has over his ability.

What would happen if the wrong people find out about Tomohiro's connection with ink? Will they survive the danger that entail having the gift to control ink? Will love conquer all?

“They tell you you'll forget how it used to be. You'll get used to it, that it's better to move on. They don't realize you can't. You're not the same person anymore.”

Wow! That is the only word that came to our mind while we were reading Ink. We had Ink in our shelves for a while, for one months more or so. 

We requested this book on Netgalley because we were so attracted by its cover (isn’t it amazing, the cover?). But once we had Ink, we read the description and we were a little bit doubtful… We have to admit that, by that time, we were not so much into Asian culture, and we say WERE, because after reading Ink something inside of us awake (Rosa: it remembered my old times reading manga *blushing*). We found each other looking forward to know more about Japan. We even tried to speak Japanese from the glossary. It did not go as we expected (Epic fail! Seems like we have Katie's problem as well. No worries, we'll keep trying, though). But we don’t regret having read Ink. We are glad we did. It is an astonishing, full of mystery and forbidden love story that would hooked you from the first page.

What we loved most was the plot. The fact that Tomohiro, a Kami or paper God, isn’t the I-can-beat-anyone-if-I-want type of hero, the kind we are totally familiarized with, if one of the things that made us got crazy in love with this book. Well, he can-beat-anyone-if-he-wants type of guy, if he wants to!

Tomohiro is just a teenager boy who is struggling with something he didn't not ask for, his so precious gift (as maybe someone may put), and the one that hunts him on his dreams. We loved so much that for once, the hero on the story is vulnerable and the thing that makes him so special, is the one that could destroy him. We loved how it was a unique weft, not something you read all days.

We should say that, if you haven’t guessed by now, we are madly and deeply in love with Tomohiro. He is such a badass and he acts like a jerk when he is around Katie. But deep down, he is a sweet boy with a big heart. We know he cares about Katie, although he is pushing her away with all efforts. The way he acts around people he care is because he wants to protect them from him. He is so afraid to hurt the people he loves that he prefers to be alone. So lonely and honorable. He's definitely one of our favorite hero's-non hero's! And, of course, he's already in our Unofficial Teams list (*wink, wink*)

We also love Katie’s character. She is always determined to get what she wants that she pursues her plans until the end. She did not give up because something was on her way. She is such a brave, and stubborn, girl. We like that attitude in our heroines; courageous, spirited, smart... (because God knows how difficult is to learn Japanese! We have tried a few words, you know that) and of course…
Not to speak for the fact that she's living in a different country, with a person she barely knows and speaking a language she's not familiar with, but she keeps trying. She tries to get to know her aunt and to be part of her life and she even tries to speak Japanese, though it's not her language. Even when people offer her to speak her language, she keeps speaking Japanese in order to learn. That's not an easy task. That's what we like about her.
Besides that, she is falling in love with our beloved Tomohiro, which helped her to make us fall in love with her as well.

As for the bad guys of Ink, well… there is Ishikawa, Tomo’s best friend. He is and he is not the antagonist character of the story. At first, we thought that he was an asshole because of everything he’s done (and will do *look of disapproval*). However, we think that he is just an misunderstood boy. We know for sure, or we want to think, that he is a good guy, deep down, and that he only made the wrong decisions. And that, maybe, he likes, again deep down, our beloved Katie.

Geez, we would be thrilled to keep writing about Ink, but we are afraid that we may not be able to stop. We have so much to say about Amanda’s work, that it would take ages to finish. Despite this, we think that if you want to find out more about Ink, the best way to do it is to read the book. You will see what we are talking about.

To end with our humble review, we would like to strongly recommend you Ink, and its prequel (which is FREE on amazon) as magical as the first Paper Gods series. This is a magnificent book that would make you want to be in Japan just to be part of the story. We can assure you that you are gonna love it and that you are not going to be able to stop reading until you know everything!
For all the reasons exposed before, we are honored to give Amanda’s book, Ink, 5 gorjuss doll.

INK BY AMANDA SUN BOOK TRAILER

             

The Prequel it's free on amazon!

What do you think about Ink, after reading our review?

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