Top 7 Books That Surprised Me

1. Reading in the Dark: This book isn't the type of book that I usually read but I ended up finding myself very invested in the main character and how he deals with discovering more and more secrets about his family and how learning the truth put a strain on his relationship with his family.
2. Catch 22: Since all I knew about this book before I read it was that it's a war book I assumed that I wouldn't like it but once I started reading it I found that I actually really enjoyed this book because of it's absurdist sense of humor.
3. Slaughter House Five: This is another war book that I thought I would hate but actually ended up enjoying although not for exactly the same reason, this one I more enjoyed that it had a science fiction element and a non-linear timeline.
4. Anna and the French Kiss: I really expected that I would love this book because everyone seemed to love this book and couldn't stop talking about how dreamy St.Clair was so I figured that I would feel the same way, I didn't. While I do think that the book was well written and it certainly isn't the worst book I ever read, I found that I couldn't get invested in the romance because I ended up hating St. Clair for flirting with Anna for months while having a girlfriend and I found that I didn't like Anna much better. I also found it really annoying that Anna was suppose to be a film geek but thought that Paris didn't have movie theaters because anyone who knows anything about films knows that the Cannes film festival takes place in France so anyone with common sense would assume that Paris would at the very least have a movie theater.
5. Lola and the Boy Next Door: Since I wasn't a big fan of Anna and the French Kiss I didn't think that I would like this one much better but to my surprise I found that I really loved this book. I found that Lola was a flawed but likable heroine and that Cricket was a very sweet and swoonworthy love interest and that I really loved the two of them together.
6. Splintered: I thought that I would like this book a lot more than I actually did because I thought the premise for this book sounded great but unfortunately I ended up not really liking any of the main characters so it made it hard to become invested in the story.
7. Miss Mayhem: I really loved Rebel Belle so I assumed that I would love this book just as much but I sadly found that I didn't love it as much although I still did like it this book didn't leave me eager to read the next book because I was worried that book would end up disappointing me as well.

Book Review: Splintered

                                                              Splintered Review

Splintered is about a girl named Alyssa Gardener who is an ancestor of Alice Liddell the girl who Alice in Wonderland is based off and the females in Alyssa's family have been cursed to hear the voices of flowers and insects ever since. Alyssa fears that she will one day she will loose her last thread of sanity and  be committed to a mental health hospital like her mother or jump out a window and kill herself like her grandmother did. Early on in the story Alyssa starts to understand that neither her mother or herself are really crazy but rather that Wonderland is real and that she has to go there to break her family's curse before the doctors treatments make her mother truly lost to her. While in Wonderland Alyssa learns about who and what she truly is as she face many trials to prove her worth to Wonderland.

In this book there are two love interest for Alyssa including her friend and neighbor  Jeb who is an artist like Alyssa is and as a less than perfect family like she does but he also has a girlfriend but the two grow closer when Alyssa accidently drags Jeb with her to Wonderland. Alyssa's second love interest is the manipulative netherling Morpheus that lured Alyssa to Wonderland to help him break his own curse but still claims to care for her even after he continues to put her in danger. Unfortunately for me I disliked both of Alyssa's love interest so I found these parts of the book to be pretty boring.

Overall I thought the book was okay, it had an interesting concept and I liked how it dealt with the Alice and Wonderland story as well as how it related to mental illness and I thought that the character of Alyssa was good and I liked that she motivated by trying to save herself and her mother's sanities. On the other hand I disliked Morpheus and found Jeb boring so the romance angle in this book didn't work for me at all. Please tell me your thoughts about this book in comment section below.