Saturday Situation- Link Up Your Reviews & Give-Aways Here! 12/3

 Saturday Situation is hosted by both Lori at Pure Imagination and myself.  It's a linky for you to link your  Giveaways and Reviews (and whatever neglected posts you may have).  You'll find the same linky's at Pure Imagination, so don't enter them twice!

Keep in mind that you can add your links through the entire week.  

You can find this post again by clicking the button on the right side of my blog.  I'll try to keep it up to date to go to the newest Saturday Situation post.

Review: Love Story by Jennifer Echols

She's writing about him. he's writing about her. And everybody is reading between the lines..

For Erin Blackwell, majoring in creative writing at the New York City college of her dreams is more than a chance to fulfill her ambitions--it's her ticket away from the tragic memories that shadow her family's racehorse farm in Kentucky. But when she refuses to major in business and take over the farm herself someday, her grandmother gives Erin's college tuition and promised inheritance to their maddeningly handsome stable boy, Hunter Allen. Now Erin has to win an internship and work late nights at a coffee shop to make her own dreams a reality. She should despise Hunter . . . so why does he sneak into her thoughts as the hero of her latest writing assignment?

Then, on the day she's sharing that assignment with her class, Hunter walks in. He's joining her class. And after he reads about himself in her story, her private fantasies about him must be painfully clear. She only hopes to persuade him not to reveal her secret to everyone else. But Hunter devises his own creative revenge, writing sexy stories that drive the whole class wild with curiosity and fill Erin's heart with longing. Now she's not just imagining what might have been. She's writing a whole new ending for her romance with Hunter . . . except this story could come true.

 Tricky tricky tricky... I honestly was feeling a little unsure about this book when I was in the middle of it.  So much of it I liked, but I was finding myself irritated at the characters and their lack of communication.  I wasn't loving the MC, Erin and wasn't connecting with Hunter because I didn't feel like I was really getting to know him.  But the reason I say tricky is because when I finished the book I was happy.  Now I'm not sure how that happened but somehow I ended up liking how things went. 

There's a lot I liked about the book from the beginning.  I like that Erin, the main character, writes.  I liked that she wanted to be a novelist and the book starts out with us reading her story for her writing class.  That was our introduction and it was very creative.  I liked that Erin and Hunter communicated through stories, though I also wish they'd actually talked more. I liked that the characters are in college and the setting is in a college in NYC.  {Keep that in mind when deciding whether this is for you, I definitely recommend to a more mature crowd.} I like that Erin is from Kentucky and a  horse farm {maybe that shouldn't really impact the story, but I hadn't read a character like her before}.  I liked the minor characters and their personalities.  And in the end I liked the romance and the spark between Hunter and Erin. 

But it took some warming up.  Once something finally happened the story took off and I started really feeling Hunter and really liking him {probably because I finally felt like I was getting to know him}.  And while Erin is very stubborn and it's frustrating it's just the way she is and I did like her.  She just had to grow on me. 

This is my second Jennifer Echols book and so far it seems her MC's are a bit frustrating for me.  I do love her writing though and I think she's pretty creative in creating characters in a setting that's very different.  She also matches people up that I feel like we don't really see so much of.  She definitely seems to write to a older YA crowd but that's a bonus for me.  It's like almost adult, but not quite ;)  I'll definitely read more by her but I'm not a die-hard fan, yet.

3.5/5

Review: Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley

Just when seventeen-year-old Cullen Witter thinks he understands everything about his small and painfully dull Arkansas town, it all disappears. . . .
In the summer before Cullen's senior year, a nominally-depressed birdwatcher named John Barling thinks he spots a species of woodpecker thought to be extinct since the 1940s in Lily, Arkansas. His rediscovery of the so-called Lazarus Woodpecker sparks a flurry of press and woodpecker-mania. Soon all the kids are getting woodpecker haircuts and everyone's eating "Lazarus burgers." But as absurd as the town's carnival atmosphere has become, nothing is more startling than the realization that Cullen’s sensitive, gifted fifteen-year-old brother Gabriel has suddenly and inexplicably disappeared.
While Cullen navigates his way through a summer of finding and losing love, holding his fragile family together, and muddling his way into adulthood, a young missionary in Africa, who has lost his faith, is searching for any semblance of meaning wherever he can find it. As distant as the two stories seem at the start, they are thoughtfully woven ever closer together and through masterful plotting, brought face to face in a surprising and harrowing climax.
Complex but truly extraordinary, tinged with melancholy and regret, comedy and absurdity, this novel finds wonder in the ordinary and emerges as ultimately hopeful. It's about a lot more than what Cullen calls, “that damn bird.” It’s about the dream of second chances.

This is one of those reviews you dread just because you wanted to love it so badly but just didn't.  I know we can't all love the same kinds of books so I'll try to point out why it wasn't so great for me.  First of all this is more literary fiction.  It's full of hidden and deeper meanings and at times I felt bored, other times I felt a bit confused and most of the time I just wanted things to be different.  I liked the story itself, I just didn't like the way it was done.  The style it was written in. 

Cullen is a great character, I actually really loved him but I still felt like I wasn't really getting to know him.  I can't really pinpoint why that is.  Cullen tells the story in first person in his portions of the book but sometimes it's first person past tense which was weird for me how it changed like that.  And sometimes he was imagining weird things happening, like what he wished would happen and I felt my eyes kind of glazing over at those times.   Alternating chapters we get other people and for the longest time I wasn't getting why these strange people were in the book.  What was their connection to Cullen and to Lily Arkansas?  Eventually it cleared up but I still am not a big fan of the way it was done.  But I do think that it fits with the literary style of the writing so I guess it fits fine, it's just not really something I cared for. 

Cullen isn't the only great character in this book.  I liked his brother Gabriel a lot and his best friend Lucas was absolutely terrific.  Even his parents and the other characters that made appearances were all amazing and I have to say the characters were the best part of the story for me. 

This book has a bit of a mystery to it since Gabriel goes missing.  It didn't read like a mystery at all though and I wasn't piecing things together at all until shortly before we find out.  I think I just sort of felt like everything was over my head and I was just wanting answers. 

Now this book wasn't for me but I read it on a super high recommendation and I've seen some loved it.  There are a wide range of reviews out there so I recommend you read more then just my review and determine if it sounds like your kind of book. 

2/5 stars