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In My Mailbox is a weekly meme created by Kristi, The Story Siren, who is beautiful and wonderful and has amazing books!

This week, In My Mailbox I got-

I had a seriously amazing week here, my grandparents were so kind as to fund basically a new shelf on The Mod Podge Bookshelf with some titles I have been yearning to read and own! About a week after surgery my grandmama came outside and said, “I big box just arrived from Amazon.com” I said, "Bring it here!" And this is what was inside…)

I Am Number Four by Pittacus Lore (I have been dying to get my hands on this one, the movie rights are already sold I posted the trailer here- http://themodpodgebookshelf.blogspot.com/2010/09/like-whoa.html )

The Keepers Tattoo by Gill Arbuthnott (wow, what a last name, I read the back cover and was swept away to sea!)

All Unquiet Things by Anna Jarzab (I can’t believe this is finally here, I went to the bookstore way back last spring and saw this book)

Take Me There by Carolee Dean (The cover is Hawt)

Faithful a novel by Janet Fox (I love this cover the very most of all!)

The Clearing by Heather Davis (I just finished The Time Travelers Wife, I wonder if it would be fair to compare and contrast)

Winter Longing by Tricia Mills (My heart broke at the description, it has me, I’m sucked in!)

Forget You by Jennifer Echols (I was so surprised at the small size, I nearly missed it at the bottom of the box!)

So I am thrilled, what about you? Let me know in the comments section what you got in your mailbox.

The Siren

The Siren by Kiera Cass


Abandoned. Alone. Drowning in the frozen waters of The Ocean, Siren’s call out, and they are chosen.


Healing and acceptence can take one-hundred years, but Kahlen doesn’t have one hundred years to wait for true love…





My review:

I am a devout Kiera Cass fan, my very first Kiera expierience was when I watched her video (down below) and spit out my Dr. Pepper from laughter. I was hooked and Twi-curls was what I logged onto Youtube for daily.

Then Kiera created her own channel (I miss you, Liz!) and started talking about her first self-published book, The Siren, which was coming out soon! I pre-ordered my copy and sat around to wait for it. I was super excited, I love Siren’s! I think they are so cool, and no one really feels for them, they are murderers, that’s it. Not in this book, baby!

In a well-written tale of forgiveness and love, Kahlen is stuck in the world between worlds, watching the years go by and never able to participate herself. Speech is forbidden, if she spoke those around her would race to drown themselves in the nearest source of water. What then, can she say to the man who rescues her and falls in love with her?

The best relashionship in the novel was that between the main protagonist, Kahlen, and The Ocean, who feels a deep regret for needing human sacrifice to function. Kahlen comes to understand her “mother” better than all the Siren’s before her, and possibly all those who will follow.

The storyline is very sweet, at times the pacing stretched the boundry between too slow and progressing peacefully, but it doesn’t hurt the story. Attention to detail is the authors strongest advantage IMO, and I greatly look foreward to her coming book, called The Selection, and discribed as The Hunger Games meets The Bachelor.

My personal favorite attention-to-detail was Kahlen’s cherry dress from the 50’s, it was as sweet as cherry pie!

Also, the kissing scenes are epic and awesome, awesome, hot, awesome! I’m just saying…

Thoughts on the cover: I really don’t like it very much. The color scheme is gorgeous, however!

Notes on the names: Great names! Let’s just start listing them, Aisling, Aiko, Marilyn, Elizabeth, Akinli, Benjamin, Julie, Bex, Ifama, Tova… one name I didn’t mention is Kahlen. I really do love the name, but I think it is so out of place for the time and place she was born, it’s too trendy to belong to a “historically” set protagonist in my mind.

The pictures you are seeing all scattered about are fan-works I did for her contest, for which I got an honorable mention! Hooray!

BLOG updates!

Hey there Page Turners.

Some updates for you, one, I finally broke down and got a Twitter. You can follow me by clicking the link.

Two, I’m sure many of you have noticed that I don’t have a rating system (mostly because I am so technologically challenged) but if you follow me on Goodreads, you can know the books I want to read and the star (1-5) ratings I give a book. (if you pay close attention you’ll know what reviews are up-coming on my blog!)

Three, yes, my blog posts are for the most part pre-written. This means that there will be a blog post almost everyday and three to four book reviews a week. I am very consistent and you (and those friends you need to tell about the blog) should check back daily.

Four, let me give you a little guided tour around the blog. First let us stop due right of this post where you will find the current most popular blog posts. Take a look. Up above that you should see my button. Please take it, add it to anything you want, then come back and give me the link, there should be contest news soon and your efforts will be rewarded. You can also see my new blog award! Hooray! I have also received news that Holly Schindler, the author of A Blue So Dark and the up-coming release Playing Hurt will be stopping here on her blog tour. Grab the widget right over there, yeah, no a little lower, oh, good, you found it. You should also see my book case, full of books I have recently read and the rating I gave them. Now, go back up to the top. You should see the Page Bar! If you are an author or publisher check out my mission statement of review. If you like what you see on the blog, check out Messenger Photography where I post my photographs. My wishlist is a fraction of the real thing, but I’ve listed many cool titles. Under Challenges you can find my 2010 reviews as well as the books I have read this year. And if you are interested in a guest post, please look at that page, it’s awesome. Still with me? Good. Now, scroll all the way down, keep going, keep going, keep going. STOP! You have just found my blogroll and my easy links. Click away!

Five, if you are technologically savvy please contact me, I’m not afraid to beg.

Six, tell me in the comments what you are dressing up as on Halloween.

Keep turning those pages!

Blessings,

Gabrielle Carolina <3

Gabrielle's bookshelf: currently-reading



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New and Fantastic Blog Award!

Thanks to Ms. Kelsey Sutton for her sweetness in giving The Mod Podge Bookshelf it’s first official blog award! Now it's time to pass it along to fifteen new bloggers! My fifteen went to book bloggers, Photographers and Name Nerds, three things I love!

Rules:



1. Thank and link back to the person that gave this award.

2. Answer the 10 survey questions.

3. Pass the award along to 15 bloggers who you have recently discovered and who you think are fantastic.

4. Contact the bloggers you’ve picked to let them know about the award.



Questions:



1. If you blog anonymously are you happy doing it that way; if you are not anonymous do you wish you had started out anonymously so you could be anonymous now?

I don’t think I am anonymous, I’m southern, so I use my full given name Gabrielle Carolina. I’m a Belle that way, think Katie Scarlett, ah, now you get it. I like being able to be real.



2. Describe one incident that shows your inner stubborn side:

Inner stubborn side? How about outer stubborn side.



3. What do you see when you really look at yourself in the mirror?



Some days (today actually) I think, “Hey, movie star.” Other days I think I look exhausted and beat down. I feel like I’m good at knowing the difference, but don’t try and disagree about my off days. When I’m on, I’m on like Donkey Kong, but when I’m off, there is no wattage.



4. What is your favourite summer cold drink?



Virgin Strawberry Daiquiris.



5. When you take time for yourself, what do you do?



I’m not making this up to make myself sound more literary, I swear, but I go to my local half price bookstore and get lost in the vibe. Then I pull out my wallet and fork it over.



6. Is there something you still want to accomplish in your life? What is it?

Totally, everything. I can’t wait to fall in love, I can’t wait to be a mom. I want to adopt from foreign countries as well as adopt foster children. I want to have a private psychology practice centered around music therapy for children in the system, children who are adjusting to their new, adoptive families and children suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I want to write a couple of novels and I want to live in Europe. I also plan on volunteering at different orphanages throughout my life.



7. When you attended school, were you the class clown, the class overachiever , the shy person, or always ditching?

Depended on the school. You know Sarah Dessen’s newest book, “What Happened To Goodbye.” I wouldn’t be surprised if the main character’s name was Gabrielle.

8. If you close your eyes and want to visualize a very poignant moment of your life what would you see?

The Best Is Yet To Come...



9. Is it easy for you to share your true self in your blog or are you more comfortable writing posts about other people or events?



When a book really hits me and lodges itself in a familiar place within my heart, I usually share why the book affected me so much. Also, I hope I’m funny when I write, I’m really funny in real life. I know I am truthful on the blog and that is something you can count on always coming from me. That sounds like my true self.



10. If you had the choice to sit down and read or talk on the phone, which would you do and why?



Read, why even ask?



The Recipients:

Rebecca’s Book Blog

Books Complete Me

Lost in a Y.A. Wonderland

Vania’s Life Captures

YA Bliss

Vision Quest Fail

Just Read

Princess Bookie

Holly Cupala

Reading Nook

Squeaky Books

Icey Books

An Addicted Book Reader

Blog of Characters

You Can’t Call It ‘It’

Cast of Villains

I know that my blog isn’t really diving into the Halloween scene, but I don’t take part in the festivities in “real life.” However, I saw this challenge and thought it would be cool, so Page Tuners, I give you the villains I love to hate.

Cast My Villain is inspired by Book Spooks.

My villains are from the Wondrous Strange series by Lesley Livingston.
Auberon (Ian McKellen)
Tatiana (Catherine Zeta Jones)
And Mabh (Anna Paquin)
…because they are all culpable to something…

Gabrielle's bookshelf: currently-reading



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Leaving Paradise

Leaving Paradise by Simone Elkeles


What happens when the person who damaged you for life, becomes the person you trust the most?



My review:



My very favorite Elkeles thus-far, and the sequel just came out! Hooray, if you feel like sending me a copy, I am all for it!

Alright, so a lot of people think this story is sad, and yeah, it has those twinges of grief and the ending it’s a happily ever after, but the storytelling that happens here is monumentally spectacular!

I will try and remain spoiler free, but you shouldn’t have to read my review to be convinced of Leaving Paradise’s awesomeness!

Alright, so right from the beginning when we are meeting Caleb, you can just feel that he has no sense of grief, or guilt that he ran Maggie over with his car! He is so unremourseful that he maimed the poor girl that you will almost immediately feel a deep and unapologetic sense of anger and even, dare I say, hatred towards one Caleb Becker. He even wants everyone’s complete trust and forgiveness restored, which is just unrealistic, I mean, can’t he get it through his thick skull what he had done?! Geesh.

And then there is Maggie, and she is so weak, almost childlike and is searching desperately for the easy way out of things, you kind of wonder why an injury like that didn’t make her stronger, you know?

So you have these two total opposites, who have a shared history and live right next to each other, might I add. And you have about two hundred pages to go. You will begin to question Mrs. Elkeles brain cells, because how in the world is she going to bring these two together and make you fall in love with them, while they fall in love?

Oh, ye of little literary faith.

Basically, magic happens and a wise old woman gets a project, but it’s never conspiratorial, she sort of walks blind into her own way to help the two kids who stumbled into her life. When they all three say goodbye, I just kept reading and “watching” that scene over and over, it’s the most well-written last scene of a book! Gorgeous! Gorgeous!

I want to read the sequel because by the end of the book the two characters changed places, Maggie got stronger and stopped running, while Caleb gave up and kept going. Wow. Simone Elkeles, you are a miracle worker! I can’t wait to see how they return to each other, and return to Paradise.

Thoughts on the cover: One cover, the one I own, is very campy, and yet so very perfect, you can see a dimly lit road is the scene on the back cover and on the front are a bunch of neon lights that just scream, “How to get yourself the heck outta here!” The second cover is much more romantic, but boring IMO.

Notes on the names: Caleb and Maggie, I think they work well together and work for the characters, but all the names in this book only appear to “work” not really to stimulate.

Waiting on Wednesday (2)

Waiting on Wednesday is a meme created by Breaking The Spine to spotlight some pre-release books bloggers are itching to get their hands on!
I’ve decided to do things a bit differently here on the Mod Podge Bookshelf. As a penniless and raged college student, I can’t afford to just drop everything and buy a book at full price when it’s first released, sometimes there’s some waiting involved. So, not only will I spotlight pre-release books from my wishlist, but also books on my wishlist that have been released recently that are not in my possession.
Here we go!

First of all, Janet Fox just released the cover of Forgiven, this is it-

I am WOWing over this one!

You Against Me by Jenny Downham

The cover looks very passionate, and I love a book with passion!












Tempestuous by Lesley Livingston

Um, hello, Kelly is awesome and the cover is amazing, and the play of choice just might be The Tempest, which is one of my very favorite Shakespeare plays.

Wayfarer by R.J. Anderson

I think this cover is so sweet and different, I wonder if the plot follows suit.

Gabrielle's bookshelf: currently-reading



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Sea Change

Sea Change by Aimee Friedman


Many are drawn to Selkie Island. Few know why…



My review:



I have very mixed feelings about this book, my mixed feelings being, I loved it and what just happened here? My biggest “complaint” was that the book was too secretive and thank God Aimee announced that there will be a sequel, since most of our questions weren’t answered, merely our thoughts provoked.

I don’t want to complain too much, because I think it is a haunting, and stunning book! Sea Change was ripe in it’s setting and mystery; I felt enveloped by the fog of the island every time I cracked open the cover. I loved the characters, and I felt they were consistent.

The love story was lovely, I really thought the old southern princess and pauper bits were well emphasized, being southern myself, Aimee knew of whom she wrote, without making caricatures of her characters. Leo is super sweet and an absolute literary crush! I kind of thought it would have been interesting to make T.J. more likable, so that even though there was a choice between two guys who really felt for her, there was simply no contest! Leo loves Miranda, hooray!

I can’t wait for the sequel and am waiting with baited (no pun intended) breathe!

Thoughts on the cover: Such a mysterious cover, and so beautiful it hurts! The female model has such gorgeous make up on, and looks just as I imagined Miranda, however “Leo” looks more Teddy-like to me, which is all in my own mind, but it bugs me a little. Buy a hardback copy, it’s shiny, and has these gorgeous Ivy-leaf patterns near the spine.

Notes on the Names: This book is chock-full of astonishing name choices! Seriously delirious and my favorite aspect of the novel. Miranda was a name invented by Shakespeare for his play (don’t you hate when people call his works “books?”) The Tempest and Leo (full name Leomaris, Lion of the Sea) points this out, which is grate, it makes it less cheesy! Theodore, nn T.J., is totally the southern boy your mamma wants you to marry, so that was an effortless, and stunning choice. I only, only wish his nickname had been Teddy instead of using his initials, that bugged me a bit. The girl posse was Cecilia, called CeeCee, Jacqueline and Virginia, which, hah, Virgin, she was not. The boy posse consisted of Macon, Lyndon and Bobby which all seemed unique and spunky. Delilah and Amelia Blue were the mothers and bore my favorite monikers of all!

Gabrielle's bookshelf: currently-reading

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In My Mailbox is a weekly meme created by Kristi, The Story Siren, who is beautiful and wonderful and has amazing books!

This week In My Mailbox, I got-

Before I fall by Lauren Oliver (!!!!!!! I bought it full price and it is so worth it!!!!!!!!!)

The Maze Runner by James Dashner (The Scorch Trials just came out, can you say Santa Clause?!)

Annexed by Sharon Dogar (I think I’ll read this and Anne’s Diary together. I found this at my local half priced book store the week it came out! Who are these people who give books up like that?!)

In A Heartbeat ARC by Loretta Ellsworth (2010 debut!)

Deadly Little Secret by Laurie Stolarz (the third book comes out later this year! The cover has a texture BTW)

Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers (I think the model on the cover sort of looks like me, weird.)


If you were wondering, that is my pumpkin, Humphrey. He loves to read.


Let me know in the comments what you got!

Happy reading and many Blessings,

Gabrielle <3