I'M SO EXCITED!!!!!

I NEED TO WATCH THIS NOW!

HODGE AND SIMON ARE PERFECT!

I watched this the moment it came out, but seeing as how I had to get back to studying because of the monumental amount of tests I had the next day, I couldn't post my response. But alas, here it is in the form of gifs and valley girl words!

At first I was all OMG THIS IS GOING TO BE AMAZING.

Then it started playing and Jace appeared and I was all like

But then Jace SPOKE and Clary put out her hand.

 

And I was all like WHAT? MUDAAAANNNNEEE? 

I knew they were going to have British accents, but SERIOUSLY?! Jace just sounds weird.

 I know once I see that he's still the Jace I love, cocky jerk and all, then I'll be happy.

But for now all I have left is watching and rewatching the trailer as my friends console me.

So yeah. WATCH THE TRAILER AND BE AMAZED.

Sneak Peak Sunday (26)

Last Kiss Goodnight 

by Gena Showalter

Mass Market Paperback, 400 pages

Expected publication: December 26th 2012 by Pocket Books

The breathtaking first novel in New York Times best selling author Gena Showalter’s new paranormal romance series, Otherworld Assassins, featuring a black ops agent who is captured and enslaved…and the beautiful deaf girl who holds the key to his salvation…
THE SWEETEST TEMPTATION…
Black ops agent Solomon Judah awakens caged and bound in a twisted zoo where otherworlders are the main attraction. Vika Lukas, the owner’s daughter, is tasked with Solo’s care and feeding. The monster inside him yearns to kill her on sight, even though she holds the key to his escape. But the human side of him realizes the beautiful deaf girl is more than she seems—she’s his.
THE ULTIMATE PRICE…
Vika endures the captives’ taunts and loathing, hoping to keep them alive even if she can’t free them. Only, Solo is different—he protects her. But as hostility turns to forbidden romance, his feelings for her will be used against him…and he’ll be put to a killer test.

Here's me against fulfilling that terrible need for romance novels. What would me life be like without them? Well, for one, I wouldn't be so angsty about romance, and two, I'd probably go to more school dances rather than brood at home and read.
 *insert awkward laughter here*
Plus, I mean, it's Gena Showalter so it has to be good, doesn't it?

Sneak Peak Sunday (25)

Undeadly (The Reaper Diaries #1)
by Michele Vail
Paperback, 272 pages
Expected publication: November 20th 2012 by Harlequin Teen

The day I turned 16, my boyfriend-to-be died. I brought him back to life. Then things got a little weird...
Molly Bartolucci wants to blend in, date hottie Rick and keep her zombie-raising abilities on the down-low. Then the god Anubis chooses her to become a reaper-and she accidentally undoes the work of another reaper, Rath. Within days, she’s shipped off to the Nekyia Academy, an elite school that trains the best necromancers in the world. And her personal reaping tutor? Rath. Who seems to hate her guts.
Rath will be watching closely to be sure she completes her first assignment-reaping Rick, the boy who should have died. The boy she still wants to be with. To make matters worse, students at the academy start turning up catatonic, and accusations fly-against Molly. The only way out of this mess? To go through hell. Literally.

It sounds interesting, reminds me a little of Fallen, but we'll see how that goes! :)

Review: Austenland by Shannon Hale

Austenland
by Shannon Hale
Hardcover, 197 pages
Published May 29th 2007 by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Glasses: A Solid 4.0

Jane Hayes is a seemingly normal young New Yorker, but she has a secret. Her obsession with Mr. Darcy, as played by Colin Firth in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, is ruining her love life: no real man can compare. But when a wealthy relative bequeaths her a trip to an English resort catering to Austen-crazed women, Jane's fantasies of meeting the perfect Regency-era gentleman suddenly become realer than she ever could have imagined.
Decked out in empire-waist gowns, Jane struggles to master Regency etiquette and flirts with gardeners and gentlemen;or maybe even, she suspects, with the actors who are playing them. It's all a game, Jane knows. And yet the longer she stays, the more her insecurities seem to fall away, and the more she wonders: Is she about to kick the Austen obsession for good, or could all her dreams actually culminate in a Mr. Darcy of her own?

My Thoughts
I heard about this book initially on a period blog that I follow. I've been going through a Jane Austen phase again recently, and after rereading Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Northanger Abbey, and watching some BBC dramas, I had resorted to fervently following blogs about all period things.

(This is my favorite: Ask Mr. Darcy )

And so, when I found out about a book for people who love Austen's world as much as I do, and they were making a movie based on it, what else could I do? The next day I went to the library, borrowed it, and started reading immediately.

It started off pretty well. Jane's just a normal woman stuck in a rut, going from one relationship to the next, hoping to find her own Mr. Darcy - but to no avail. But wait! When her great aunt dies (one she barely knows) she leaves her great niece as vacation to  Pembrook Park, Kent, England (a.k.a. Austenland) in her will - a place where people pretend to live in regency era England. Filled with British actors, balls, and everything an Austen fan could ever dream of, Jane takes advantage of this vacation in the hopes that this will be her last hurrah in her day dreams before she has to move on into the real world. But, little does she know, a romance is brewing in Pembrook Park, and it involves a gardener and a man who's almost a little bit too similar to Darcy.

I loved almost everything about this book. Jane was funny, the insights on her past boyfriends at the beginning of each chapter were a hoot, the guys were so awesome, and the fact that it was all supposed to be in "Austenland" made it a gazillion times better. But, I suppose, that's also what I didn't like about it. When she's living in the fantasy land with these actors, a little blinking light kept going off in my head. She was living this one huge fat lie. There is no Mr. Nobley. There is no actual Ball. It's all a show that put on for people like her. And it's these times that I had trouble with - but luckly, they were few and far between.

Hale does a good job of keeping Jane set firmly in reality. Jane is self aware, assured, and doubts herself just enough to know she's not fully accepting this crazy illusion either. Mr. Nobley, however, I wasn't a huge fan of (and neither did I like Martin either). As adorable as the book was, the moments  where it turned into an "mock Austen" book, or where the guys had to do something that would have been really awkward to see an actor do in real life - even if it was for money - had me feeling a little awkward.

But, in the end, I loved Austenland, lies and all. And if J.J. Fields is going to play Mr. Nobley, then how could I resist!

Sneak Peak Sunday (24)

The Ingredients of Love
by Nicolas Barreau
Paperback, 272 pages
Expected publication: December 24th 2012 by St. Martin's Griffin

A charming restaurant
A book and its mysterious author
A little secret
A romantic meeting
Paris and all its magic . . .


Cyrano de Bergerac meets Chocolat and Amélie in this intelligent, charming, and entertaining publishing sensation from Europe.
While in the midst of a breakup-induced depression, Aurélie Bredin, a beautiful Parisian restaurateur, discovers an astonishing novel in a quaint bookshop on the Ile Saint-Louis. Inexplicably, her restaurant and Aurélie herself are featured in its pages. After reading the whole book in one night, she realizes it has saved her life—and she wishes more than anything to meet its author. Aurélie’s attempts to contact the attractive but shy English author through his French publishers are blocked by the company’s gruff chief editor, André, who only with great reluctance forwards Aurélie’s enthusiastic letter. But Aurélie refuses to give up. One day, a response from the reclusive author actually lands in her mailbox, but the encounter that eventually takes place is completely different from what she had ever imagined. . . . Filled with books, recipes, and characters that leap off the page, The Ingredients of Love by Nicolas Barreau is a tribute to the City of Light.

Paris? Romance? Comparing it to Amelie? Have an awe inducing synopsis? It basically the epitome of awe-inducing. I really want this for Christmas now!