The Book Bratz Present: Best Books of 2017 Awards!

Welcome to The Book Bratz's Fourth Annual Best Book Awards!

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Happy New Year's Eve! If you're unfamiliar with our Best Book Awards, it's a tradition in which we showcase some of our favorite books from the year. It's lots of fun and we want YOU to get involved too -- by commenting down below and telling us what YOU would choose as the winners for certain categories, and what you thought of our choices! There was no voting process on these books and there aren't actually any official awards -- this is just a fun way of celebrating all the books we loved this year! Without further ado, here are our favorite books of 2017! 

And the winners are...

Best Fantasy:

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Best Sci-Fi:

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Best Contemporary:

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Best Romance:

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Sexiest Book:

 

Best Stand-Alone Novel:

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Least Favorite Book This Year:

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Best Love Triangle:

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Biggest Thriller:

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Best World-Building:

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Best Cover:

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Favorite Main Character:

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Best Debut Author:

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Best Book-to-Show Adaptation:


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We hope you all enjoyed this year's showcase - now comment down below and let us know what books YOU would choose to win each of these categories! Go forth and enjoy celebrating the coming 2018!

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Books We Got For Christmas!

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We hope that everyone has been enjoying the holidays and getting tons of awesome presents and family time! In addition to all of that, we got lots of books (and gift cards to go buy books!) that inevitably led to a book haul (of course). So without further ado, here are the books that we got for Christmas this year!


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We also included some books that we plan on getting with all of the gift cards we got as well!

Which of these books have you read? Did you get any of these for the holidays? What else did you get? Comment down below and tell us everything -- we'd love to know!

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Here's to another great year of good books and good friends! Happy (almost) New Year -- be on the lookout for our Best Books of 2017 post tomorrow! ;-)

2017 Blogging Recap!

Hey, everyone! As 2017 comes to a close, it's time to recap on the incredible year we've had, all of the books we've read, the places we've been, and the friends we've made. We've done recaps for 2016, 2015, and 2014, and looking back on these are always super great. So without further ado, here are some of our highlights on The Book Bratz for 2017! 

JANUARY 2017

1. We Started The College Diaries. Blogging in college is definitely a challenge, and we collaborated with tons of college bloggers to get their opinions on how they managed to keep up with blogging in college -- and we kept up with it ourselves!

2. We started our monthly book recommendations. In which the first day of every month was spent recommending three of our most recent reads that we thought you guys would love!

FEBRUARY 2017

3. We helped bring a bookstore to the Bronx. We shared the fundraiser being put together by the Lit Bar, and it turns out that they reached their goal and even rented out the space for an upcoming bookstore -- and the only bookstore -- in the Bronx!

JUNE 2017

4. We went to BookCon. Emily also did her own recap here! It was another great convention filled with great books and great friends.

5. We went to the Jomny Sun book signing. It was one of the most wholesome and adorable book events we've ever been to!

JULY 2017

6. We said goodbye to Sarah Dessen. And then jumped for joy when she replied and confirmed that she was going to be writing more books and that Once and For All being her last book was just a rumor.

AUGUST 2017

7. We started another year of college. And so far, it's been great!

OCTOBER 2017

8. We celebrated the release of Turtles All the Way Down. And we cried through every page.

9. We teamed up with publishers, agents, and authors to give you professional advice on the publishing industry. And it still remains one of our most popular posts of all time -- we are so glad that we were able to give you all such incredible advice with the help of so many people!

NOVEMBER 2017

10. We participated in NaNoWriMo 2017. And we're proud to announce that we crossed the 50K finish line again! :-)

DECEMBER 2017

11. We wrapped up this incredible year with all of you! And we're so excited to see what 2018 will be bringing for us here on the blog!

And now, we assessed our goals for The Book Bratz that we put together right after New Year's -- let's see how many of them we stuck to!

1. Keeping up with our review archive. Done!

2. Tweet the links to our posts each day. Also done! TweetDeck is a godsend.

3. Be more active on Twitter in general. Even though school was crazy, we made an effort to spend at least a little bit of time on our blog Twitter every day, and it was a lot easier than we thought!

4. Read and review more books. College kicked our butt last year, but as 2017 being our first full start to finish calendar year in college, we ended up reading a lot more than we thought, even if it still wasn't as much as we read in high school. So we'd consider this one done!

5. Comment on more blogs. We are still terrible at this because we always forget or don't have time. :-( So it looks like this one will also be a 2018 resolution!

6. Read more backlisted books. Done! We've read almost exclusively backlisted books this year for some odd reason.

7. Request less ARCs. We've actually (unfortunately) been really good at this, since college sucks up all of our reading time. 

8. Make blog improvements. We'd like to think that even though the layout of the blog hasn't changed, the quality of our content has. :-)

9. Put up more College Diary posts. Done! 

10. Go to more book events! This year we went to BookCon and also a few author events at The Strand, so we consider this one done!

Overall, it seems like we did a good job with keeping our 2017 resolutions. Be on the lookout for our 2018 resolutions post, which will be coming soon! 

2017 was an incredible year with so many great books, events, and blog-related fun.  We are so grateful for all of the opportunities we've had, and we're really looking forward to another great year in 2018!

Review: How to Disappear by Sharon Huss Roat


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Title: How To Disappear
Author: Sharon Huss Roat
Publisher: HarperTeen
Rating: 4/5 Stars
Hardcover
Published August 2017


Summary: Vicky Decker has perfected the art of hiding in plain sight, quietly navigating the halls of her high school undetected except by her best (and only) friend, Jenna. But when Jenna moves away, Vicky’s isolation becomes unbearable. So she decides to invent a social life by Photoshopping herself into other people’s pictures, posting them on Instagram under the screen name Vicurious. Instantly, she begins to get followers, so she adds herself to more photos from all over the world with all types of people. And as Vicurious’s online followers multiply, Vicky realizes she can make a whole life for herself without ever leaving her bedroom. But the more followers she finds online, the clearer it becomes that there are a lot of people out there who feel like her— #alone and #ignored in real life. To help them, and herself, Vicky must find the courage to face her fear of being “seen,” because only then can she stop living vicariously and truly bring the magic of Vicurious to life.



I won a copy of How To Disappear from author Sharon Huss Roat herself in a giveaway, and I was so excited when I found out that I won because this book had been on my TBR for quite some time!

As the summary explains, Vicky is a social anxious high school girl whose one friend that she felt comfortable with ends up moving away. In her absence, Vicky feels like she's flailing, and it doesn't take long for her ex-best friend to find a new group of people to hang out with -- people that make her totally unrecognizable and eventually goad her to say some pretty awful things about Vicky, who was supposed to be her best friend for life. Feeling totally lost and alone in her absence, Vicky turns to creating an online Instagram personality photoshopping herself into some pretty epic pop culture moments as a method of coping and living a crazy life through others.

Overall, I absolutely loved this book. The entire story was filled with a lot of things I really enjoy reading about -- coping with mental illness, a secret personality, and even some adorable romance. This book had me hooked from start to finish and even though it was almost 400 pages, I finished it in a little under two days because I just couldn't put it down! (Even though I may have been procrastinating studying for finals...) From the first page until the last page, Sharon Huss Roat created a story that didn't let me go. I kept wanting to find out what would happen next in Vicky's story, which got more complicated and captivating with each turn of the page. It really was that great!

My favorite character in the entire book was Lipton. He was so freaking adorable, with his brightly colored socks and quirky comments and his love of Minecraft. I adored him from start to finish -- and I really appreciated how much he went out of his way to care for Vicky and make her feel special and important even when she was feeling anything but. He was a friend that was there for her when nobody else was, even when Jenna left Vicky behind and went on to have new friends and a new life without her. But through it all, even when it may not have made sense why he was being stood up or mistreated or laughed at by other people, he stood by Vicky as a good friend. I found that to be something super admirable and important in a character, and that's what made me love Lipton so much. 

I also really enjoyed the aspect of having an alternate internet personality that you can feel much freer with than you ever would simply being "yourself." (I mean, now that I think about it, that's basically what I'm doing on this blog -- sitting in my living room writing a review of a book I read, "hiding" behind our brand and feeling much freer and less exposed to speak that way.) It's not a bad thing at all -- but it's certainly a feeling that's very used to get to, that sense of online anonymity. So I was able to sympathize with how quickly Vicky managed to get lost in it.

My favorite part of this book was definitely the ending. (Some spoilers ahead, so please skip to the next paragraph if you haven't read this book yet and don't want it ruined for you!) I was not expecting the book to take such a drastic, heart-racing turn, but that's exactly what it did and I absolutely flew through the last chapters of this book because I just kept wanting to know what would happen with Vicky and if Jenna would be found (and if she was found, if she would be found alive). And then what would happen after Vicky came out as Vicurious and Lipton confronted her and everything happened. It all snowballed super fast in a plot twist that I wasn't expecting and it ended up panning out really nicely.

If you're thinking about adding this book to your TBR, I highly encourage you to do so. This book tackles so many important topics and delves into multiple facets of the teenage experience and also mental illness and the dangerous of social media fame, which is all stuff that is always really relevant, but definitely moreso now during the social media boom we are all experiencing.  

Overall, I absolutely loved How To Disappear. It had me hooked from start to finish and it was such an easy read that it gripped me from the beginning and had me hooked up until the very end. I loved all of the drama and the plot twists, as well as seeing Vicky's social anxiety and recognizing part of myself in another character, as someone that struggled with social anxiety like that for a very long time. This book is just filled with so much important, thrilling, gripping material, and I'm so thankful to have had the chance to read it. Like I said, if you're not sure about this book, I absolutely recommend that you take the plunge -- you won't be sorry.

Excellent work by Sharon Huss Roat -- I'll definitely be reading more books by her in the future! :-) 





Waiting On Wednesday: As She Fades by Abbi Glines

"Waiting On Wednesday" is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking The Spine where we highlight some of the upcoming books we can't wait to read!

Emily's Waiting on:


Title: As She Fades
Author: Abbi Glines
Genre: New Adult Contemporary  
Publisher: Feiwel and Friends 
Publication Date: April 3rd, 2018

Summary:First there was an accident. What happened next changed everything.
On the night of her high school graduation, Vale McKinley and her boyfriend Crawford are in a terrible car accident. They were supposed to spend the summer planning for college, for a bright future full of possibility. Together. Instead, Vale spends long days in the hospital, hoping Crawford will awaken from a coma.
Slate Allen, a college friend of Vale’s brother, has been visiting his dying uncle at the same hospital. When he and Vale meet, she can’t deny the flutter of an illicit attraction. She tries to ignore her feelings, but she’s not immune to Slate’s charm. Slowly, they form a cautious friendship.
Then, Crawford wakes up… with no memory of Vale or their relationship. Heartbroken, Vale opts to leave for college and move on with her life. Except now, she’s in Slate’s territory, and their story is about to take a very strange detour.
Abbi Glines’ millions of fans will adore As She Fades, a novel as romantic as it is full of twists and unexpected turns. 

Believe it or not, I haven't really read any of Abbi Glines' books, I've only read the Existence Trilogy. I've heard so many great things about her other books that I'm excited about this new release. New Adult is easily becoming one of my favorite genres and I'm always ready for a new contemporary novel. If you've read any of Glines' other books, let me know your thoughts!  

What are you waiting on this week? Leave your links so we can stop back!