Looking For Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta - A.K.A. greatest book ever written

Hello Readers! 
I recently re-read one of my favourite books and it is easy to say that it is now my favourite book! I think that the reasons why I didn't like it as much when I read it the first time as the second time was because I was younger and couldn't really read between the lines as much. So! I'm going to tell you everything there is to the book without spoilers!

The first thing you should know are the facts about the actual book:

Author: Melina Marchetta

Adaptations: Looking for Alibrandi (2000)

Country: Australia

Genres: Young-adult fiction, Bildungsroman

Originally published: October 5, 1992

The book summary:

Josie Alibrandi is an girl from Italian descent who is growing up in Sydney, Australia. Josie is on scholarship at a prestigious Catholic school where it matters what her father does. Josie doesn't know who her father is as she lives with her mum, Christina, all she knows was that her mother had her against her fathers wishes when she was in her late teens. Josie and her mother's lives are interfered with by Nonna Katia, Christina's mother. 
Josie's father, Michael Andretti, comes back into Josie's life with no idea that he had a daughter. When he finds out he and Josie decide to have nothing to do with each other.

At school Josie hangs out with her misfit friends, Sera, Anna and Lee. She has a crush on the school caption of their brother school, John Barton. She also meets Jacob Coote, the school caption from the local state school, who asks her out... and I know you guys probably want to know more but I can't write any spoilers! 

The main characters:

Josephine Alibrandi

• The main character in the book

• The school vice captain of a high class school

• She is Italian

• She is the only child of single mother

Jacob Coote 

• The school captain from a local state school

• Has a crush on Josie 

• Is kind of a badass

• Is Australian

Christina Alibrandi
• She is Josie's mother
• Had Josie at 17
• She's not married
• She constantly gets told off by her mother
• She is Italian

Katia Alibrandi
• She is Josie's grandmother and Christina's mother
• She is referred to as Nona
• She treats her daughter badly because she is an only mother
• She is Italian











Michael Andretti
• Josie's father
• Lives in Adelaide
• He is unaware that Josie exists
• He owns a fair amount of money









John Barton 
• He's the school captain of a hight class school
• He has been Josie's crush since as far as sh can remember
• Josie's closes boy friend
• His father puts a lot of pressure on him

So now that you have brief idea of what the story is about the characters are in going to tell you what were the best things and the not so great things about this book:

Best Things:

-Such an fast and easy book to read
-Amazing and interesting storyline that makes you wanna keep reading and never let go of the book
-Really good character development throughout the book
-Makes you realise a lot of good and bad things about having different cultures 
-Teaches you so much about Australia

Not so good things:-Cliffhanger at the end! So if that annoys you...

-When I read the book, I would have liked to know more about how Jacob was feeling through the book
-Even though it will teach you a lot about Australian culture, there are some things that you could miss if you don't know a lot about Australia.

 Michael Andretti and Christina

Josie, Nona Katia and Christina Alibrandi

Josie Alibarndi and Jacob Coote

And for you guys who like watching movies... There's a Looking for Alibrandi movie!

Initial release: May 4, 2000
Director: Kate Woods
Running time: 1h 43m
Adapted from: Looking for Alibrandi 
Movie summary and actors:  Josie (Pia Miranda) is struggling to cope with her teenage existence. She lives with her single mother, Christina (Greta Scacchi), and attends a prestigious private school, where her snobbish classmates mock her Sicilian heritage. She contends with the dramas of teen romance, divided between John (Matthew Newton) and Jacob (Kick Gurry). When her family receives a visit from Michael (Anthony LaPaglia), her mother's former lover, Josie is overwhelmed when she discovers that he is also her father.

 

Christmas TBR List

Hello Readers! 
We are officially 25 days away from Christmas and that means that holidays are coming really soon. That also leads into a lot of free time... which ends up being amazing reading time! So I've put together a list of books that I am looking forward to reading this Xmas and hopefully this will inspire to pick up a book to read during this cozy time. 

• Girl Online • by Zoella (Zoe Sugg)

Girl Online follows a typical girl-meets-boy storyline with a few 21st-century twists. The "girl online" is Penny – a clumsy, anxious but thoroughly likeable lead character who struggles with panic attacks that have plagued her since she was involved in a car crash. Like all teenagers today, Penny has to deal with the cripplingly awkward period of young adolescence while also coping with her life being broadcast online. She struggles with growing up in a world where her friends post bitchy comments on her blog and publish a video of her accidentally flashing her knickers during the school play. Her blog is the only place where she feels safe to open up to the world – but she learns the hard way that it's not where personal secrets should be shared. After falling in love with a boy called Noah on holiday in New York, she returns home to find that he is, in fact, a famous musician with a huge YouTube following – and a girlfriend. Her supposed best female friend leaks her relationship with Noah to an online celebrity news site and her blog goes viral. Penny vows never to write on her blog again. Penny's best male friend is her next door neighbour Elliot, who is rejected by his father after coming out to his family. The pair mock Elliot's dad's comments that you can "grow out of being gay".

So as you can probably tell, it's more of a contemporary novel rather than Sci-Fi, which is what I usually read. But the reason why I'm going to read it is because this book has been recommended to me by more people than I can remember. So after a few months of people telling me that i have to read it, i have finally picked it up and I'm really looking forward to reading it. 

• The Iron Witch trilogy • by Karen Mahoney

Freak. That's what her classmates call seventeen-year-old Donna Underwood. When she was seven, a horrific fey attack killed her father and drove her mother mad. Donna's own nearly fatal injuries from the assault were fixed by magic—the iron tattoos branding her hands and arms. The child of alchemists, Donna feels cursed by the magical heritage that destroyed her parents and any chance she had for a normal life. The only thing that keeps her sane and grounded is her relationship with her best friend, Navin Sharma. When the darkest outcasts of Faerie—the vicious wood elves—abduct Navin, Donna finally has to accept her role in the centuries old war between the humans and the fey. Assisted by Xan, a gorgeous half-fey dropout with secrets of his own, Donna races to save her friend—even if it means betraying everything her parents and the alchemist community fought to the death to protect.

I've actually had this trilogy waiting on my bookshelf ready to be read for about a whole year now! But in that whole year, I was never able to even bother to pick it up Recently, I was rearranging my shelf and found this books. So I did some research on them and it turn out that they look amazing! And I will definitely write a review about them when I finish reading them!

• Dance of Shadows • by Yelena Black   

Dancing with someone is an act of trust. Elegant and intimate; you’re close enough to kiss, close enough to feel your partner’s heartbeat. But for Vanessa, dance is deadly – and she must be very careful who she trusts . . . Vanessa Adler attends an elite ballet school – the same one her older sister, Margaret, attended before she disappeared. Vanessa feels she can never live up to her sister’s shining reputation. But Vanessa, with her glorious red hair and fair skin, has a kind of power when she dances – she loses herself in the music, breathes different air, and the world around her turns to flames . . . Soon she attracts the attention of three men: gorgeous Zep, mysterious Justin, and the great, enigmatic choreographer Josef Zhalkovsky. When Josef asks Vanessa to dance the lead in the Firebird, she has little idea of the danger that lies ahead – and the burning forces about to be unleashed . . .

• Breath of Snow and Ashes • by Diana Gabaldon 

A Breath of Snow and Ashes continues the extraordinary story of 18th-century Scotsman Jamie Fraser and his 20th-century wife, Claire.

The year is 1772, and on the eve of the American Revolution, the long fuse of rebellion has already been lit. Men lie dead in the streets of Boston, and in the backwoods of North Carolina, isolated cabins burn in the forest.
With chaos brewing, the governor calls upon Jamie Fraser to unite the backcountry and safeguard the colony for King and Crown. But from his wife Jamie knows that three years hence the shot heard round the world will be fired, and the result will be independence — with those loyal to the King either dead or in exile. And there is also the matter of a tiny clipping from The Wilmington Gazette, dated 1776, which reports Jamie’s death, along with his kin. For once, he hopes, his time-traveling family may be wrong about the future. 

As you may know if you are one of my readers, I am currently reading the Outlander Series and it is safe to say that I am in love with this books. I have read the first 5 books and I'm really, really looking forward to reading this 6th one. Everyone of this books is outstanding and from what I've heard, this one won't disappoint me since it is great as well. 

You can probably tell that I'm not reading the books one after the other, instead I'm reading books in between them. This isn't because I need a break from them, but instead because i don't want to get bored or sick of them since I am not use to reading such long books and so many of them. By separating them, it gives me a bit of time to get into my normal reading speed and stuff and then I get back onto reading them! 

So! this are the 6 books that I will be reading over Christmas. But also, I have very exciting news! As I said in one of my earlier posts, Sarah J Maas came to Melbourne this month! And meeting her and talking to her was so amazing and it was such a great experience. I will definitely write a post about this event so stay tuned! 

City Of Bones Review!

hey Readers!

During the Christmas holidays, I've read a few books, but I just wanted to share a review about my favourite one; that doesn't mean I didn't like the rest, becuase, NO way, all the books I've read over the holidays were amazing, I loved Ruby Red and the book after it, I loved reading Angel's Fury, it was breath taking; and I also really enjoyed reading An Abundance Of Katherines by John Green, which you probably already know, wrote The Fault In Our Stars. So, as I was saying, during Christmas I read the whole The Mortal Instruments series. I will write a review about the City Of Glass and City of Heavenly fire soon, so if you are interested, it will come up soon. But this post is going to be about the first book in the series: City Of Bones!!!! Which also is a movie, but, as I always say: "Read the book before you watch the movie!". The book was just briliantly written by Cassandra Clare and I personally think it had a great storyline.

The summary of the book:

 When fifteen-year-old Clary Fray heads out to the Pandemonium Club in New York City, she hardly expects to witness a murder― much less a murder committed by three teenagers covered with strange tattoos and brandishing bizarre weapons. Then the body disappears into thin air. It's hard to call the police when the murderers are invisible to everyone else and when there is nothing―not even a smear of blood―to show that a boy has died. Or was he a boy?

This is Clary's first meeting with the Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the earth of demons. It's also her first encounter with Jace, a Shadowhunter who looks a little like an angel and acts a lot like a jerk. Within twenty-four hours Clary is pulled into Jace's world with a vengeance, when her mother disappears and Clary herself is attacked by a demon. But why would demons be interested in ordinary mundanes like Clary and her mother? The Shadowhunters would like to know... 

My favourite quotes:

1. “Have you fallen in love with the wrong person yet?' - Clary

"Unfortunately, Lady of the Haven, my one true love remains myself." -Jace

"At least, you don't have to worry about rejection, Jace Wayland." -Clary

"Not necessarily. I turn myself down occasionally, just to keep it interesting.” -Jace

2. "Is this the part where you start tearing off strips of your shirt to bind my wounds?"  -Clary

"If you wanted me to rip my clothes off, you should have just asked.” -Jace

3. “Don't touch any of my weapons without my permission." -Jace

"Well, there goes my plan for selling them all on eBay," -Clary

"Selling them on what?" -Jace

"A mythical place of great magical power.” -Clary

• So, as you can see, this book has a lot of fantasy in it. There are a lot of vampires and werewolves and shadowhunters (the ones who keep the demons away from the mundane world (human world)). And I think this is mainly why I kind of fell inlove with this book series; because there is so much fantasy and fiction involved, but still, you can relate to it becuase it all hapens in our world, in New York to be exact. There is a bit of romance involved too, between Clary Fray and Jace Wayland, the two main characters. But still, it's not like one of those romantic novels, that are all about thier realationship, it's more about the way they behave when they are around each other and it shows how different things can be when you fall inlove. But as I was saying before it is defenitely not romantic book, it just has a touch of it to make it more interesting.  This book is great, amazing, perfect, whatever good adjective comes up in your head, it belongs to this book series. It is mind blowing; and is you like  young adult fiction, you should really, really read this book, or even if you don't really enjoy reading that much; there is also a great movie, though, I recommend you read the book first. the movie is called City of Glass and it has great actors in it, such as Lily Collins as Clary and Jamie Campbell Bower as Jace. So enjoy, reading this book is defenitely worth it.

The Cast 

Where She Went book review

Hello Readers!

Because I haven´t done a book review in a while, I decided to do one now. This book review is going to be about one of the books that I have read recently, Where She Went by Gayle Forman. I read this book for the BookTubeAThon, which was extremely fun. I will write more about it soon in another post... So, I really loved this book. It was a really nice short read and like all of the books by Gayle Forman, it was beautifully written. 

Here´s a summary:

It’s been three years since the devastating accident … three years since Mia walked out of Adam’s life forever.

Now living on opposite coasts, Mia is Julliard’s rising star and Adam is LA tabloid fodder, thanks to his new rock star status and celebrity girlfriend. When Adam gets stuck in New York by himself, chance brings the couple together again, for one last night. As they explore the city that has become Mia’s home, Adam and Mia revisit the past and open their hearts to the future—and each other.

Told from Adam’s point of view in the spare, lyrical prose that defined If I Stay, Where She Went explores the devastation of grief, the promise of new hope, and the flame of rekindled romance.

And here are the 3 reasons why i think everyone should read this amazing book:

1. A continuation of book #1. The ending was so… wide open. It could have went anywhere, and I prefer when there is a definite resolution. I don’t wanna come up with the “ending” myself. I’m not a fan of “left up to interpretation” endings. What if my conclusion is wrong? I always have that “what if…” worry . *sigh*
2. A more mature story in regards to the characters (as this book occurs three years after the “incident”) – so now everyone involved is pretty much an adult.
3. More of Adam (I adored him in book #1) Adam. The ultra famous rock star. Need I say more? The whirlwind of his stardom, the chaos, the demands, and his ever-broken heart that instead of healing, just continues on it’s downward spiral.

· 2015 Booktube-A-Thon reading challenges·

Hello Booklovers! 

The Booktube-a-thon is so close!!! 

For all of you who don't know what that is; it's a 1 week read-a-thon when you have to try to read as much and as many books as possible. There are no rules, but there are challenges to make it more fun and challenging. Everyone is free to be part of it, it doesn't matter if you don't have a youtube channel or a blog or anything like that. It's hosted on Youtube on the account Abooktubeathon. This year's Booktube-A-Thon begings on the 3rd of August and ends on the 9th. If you want more information about it, I posted another post about it earlier this month so you might want to have a look at that.

So, not long ago (I think it was last week) we found out what the READING CHALLENGES are going to be. They all sound like they are going to be really fun and, of course, challenging. I personally don't think I'm going to be able to complete them all, but in this post i'm going to show you what the challeges are and what books I'm going to aim to read for every one of them. 

1. Read a book with BLUE on it's COVER

I think this is a fairly easy challege since nearly half of the books I own have blue on their front cover. So, for this challenge I will be reading Savage by Nancy Holden and Debbie Viguié. 

2. Read a book by an AUTHOR who shares the same FIRST LETTER OF YOUR SURNAME

For this challenge I will be reading If I Stay by Gayle Forman. I know! its really bad that I haven't read it until now, BUT i haven't watched the movie so it's all good. And even though this isn't a kind book that i would pick up, I've heard so many good comments about its so I'm really excited to be reading it!

3. Read SOMEONE ELSE'S favourite book

I'm really lucky to have friends that love to read as much as I do, so I was fortunate enough to ask them what their favourite books were. And most of the books they said were books that I've already read, but this one, I haven't read yet and it's been sitting on my bookshelf for about 5 months but i never got a chance to read it. The book I'm talkin about is Teardrop  by Lauren Kate.

4. Read the LAST book you ACQUIRED 

For this challenge I'll be reading Waterfall by Lauran Kate! because it's the last book I bought. And yes!, this is the second book in the Teardrop series which is really good because I'll be reading the first book too during this challenge.

5. Start and FINISH a book... WITHOUT LETTING OF IT!

this challenge is going tobe the hardest one, I think. I'm really excited about becuase I've never done anything like it which makes it even more exciting! so for this challenge I'm going to use the same book as for challenge number two and the book is If I Stay by Gayle Forman. I'm just using this because it'll make it easier to complete the 7 challenges ( 1 book, 2 challeges done) and also because it's the shortest book I'm planning on reading.

6. Read a book you REALLY WANT TO READ

I'm going to be reading Heart of Tango by Elia Barceló. I'm choosing this book because I met the author not long ago and i was really excited to read it the, but then forgot about it. But a few weeks ago, i was looking through my bookshelf and found it and now I'm really excited to read it. And btw, Elia is so nice and her books are all amazing!

7. Read 7 books during the week

So, I will be reading all of the books above, plus Where She Went by Gayle Forman. This book looks like nice, short read so that's mainly why I'm choosing it. 

And that's all! What do you think? What are you going to read?

·2015 BookTube-A-Thon·

Hey Booklovers!

there is a very important event for all readers coming up this month. This event is... the BookTube-A-Thon!

If you have no idea of what to do during the holidays, here's a great idea!!!

For all of you people who don't know what this is what it is. It'll be easier if we start with Read-a-thons. As the word itself  says, read-a-thons are like marathons, but instead of running, you read. The whole point of read-a-thon is to read as many books or pages as possible. BookTube-A-Thons are similar, but the point of them isn't to read as much as you possibly can (it kind of is), but there are challenges! You can´t just read random books, they have to follow the rules and challeges. AND, everyone is welcome to be part of them, no exceptions. 

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Most of you are probably now thinking: "why would she blog about a booktube-a-thon if she is a blogger? Booktube-a-thons happen on youtube!". Well, yes, I know. But the thing is, this years booktube-a-thon is going to be huge and superfun. Plus, I'm going to be part of it. This year there are all kind of new, really exciting challenges. Some of them are hard and most people won't be able to complete them, but it's going to be really fun giving them a shot. 

The dates for this BookTube-A-Thon this year are: 

It start off on August the 3rd at midnight. Wherever you are. when the clock hits 12:00am, it starts.

Until August 9th!!

So you get an idea of the challeges there are going to be, last  year's reading challenges were....

· to read a book with pictures in it.

It could be a fanfiction book, a kid book, a graphic novel. It doesn't matter how long it is, it doesn't matter how big the writting is, the only rule if that it had to have pictures in it.

· to start an finish a book seires. 

I reckon this was one of the hardest ones. But the thing is, it didn't matter how many books there were in the series, it can be 2, 3, 4, 20! it didn't matter, so it was great! 

· to read a book with red on the cover.

I was actually really excited about this one because I had sooo many book with red on the front cover on my TBR (to be read) list. For this challege, the whole front cover didn't have to be red, it could be just a dot on it, like the book "Shiver", but if ther whole front cover is red, then great!

· to read a book that somebody else reads for you.

This one was kind of hard for me becuase the person I chose to pick a book, chose the longest book on my TBR list! But anyway, there weren't really any rules for this challege, the only important thing is that you were not allowed to pick the book. Someone else had to do it for you, it could be your sister, brother, friend, mum, dad, granny, grandpa, worker from the bookshop, you teacher even! It didn't matter as long as it wasn't you.

· to read a book in the genre you´ve read least this year.

This challenge I think was also hard; mainly because the genres I read least are the genres that I don't like. And if I don't like the genre, I probably won't like the book ither, which makes it extremely hard to enjoy or even read the book. But yea!!!

· to read and watch a book to movie adaptation.

There weren't a whole lot of good book to movie adaptations out there at then. At least not many great one that I heard of. But anyway, this one was really fun since after reading the book, you got to see it come to life!!

· to read 7 books or 300 pages a day

So, this challenge is kind of different to the rest. All you have to do is ither read 7 books during the week or read 300 pages a day, which is pretty much 1 book a day... unless you are reading a really long book!

So! i hope you guys are as excited as I am for this! I will post more details about this event very soon, but for the time being, start choosing books from your TBR list. 

Stay Tunned for 2015 BookTube-A-Thon!

Byeeee