Review: Every Last Word by Tamara Ireland Stone

Title: Every Last Word
Author: Tamara Ireland Stone
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Release date: June 16th 2015
Source: Netgalley
Format: eARC

Rating: 4.5/5

Buy on: Amazon | B&N | BookDepository

If you could read my mind, you wouldn't be smiling.

Samantha McAllister looks just like the rest of the popular girls in her junior class. But hidden beneath the straightened hair and expertly applied makeup is a secret that her friends would never understand: Sam has Purely-Obsessional OCD and is consumed by a stream of dark thoughts and worries that she can't turn off.

Second-guessing every move, thought, and word makes daily life a struggle, and it doesn't help that her lifelong friends will turn toxic at the first sign of a wrong outfit, wrong lunch, or wrong crush. Yet Sam knows she'd be truly crazy to leave the protection of the most popular girls in school. So when Sam meets Caroline, she has to keep her new friend with a refreshing sense of humor and no style a secret, right up there with Sam's weekly visits to her psychiatrist.

Caroline introduces Sam to Poet's Corner, a hidden room and a tight-knit group of misfits who have been ignored by the school at large. Sam is drawn to them immediately, especially a guitar-playing guy with a talent for verse, and starts to discover a whole new side of herself. Slowly, she begins to feel more "normal" than she ever has as part of the popular crowd . . . until she finds a new reason to question her sanity and all she holds dear.

I like contemporary books that address difficult issues or issues with which I am not familiar, so when I read that the main character of this book has a mental disorder, I knew I had to read it.

Samantha belongs to popular crowd and on the outside she always looks perfect, but she has a secret that no one outside her family knows, she has Purely-Obsessional OCD, making her thoughts out of control and sometimes can be dark, so the day to day is a constant struggle to pretend to be normal and avoid at all costs that someone find out that she must visit a psychiatrist weekly and takes pills to control her thoughts and to sleep because her brain does not disconnect easily.

On her first day back at school she meets Caroline, a scruffy, frank and different from her lifelong "friends" and is through this girl that Samantha comes upon the Poet's Corner, which is a hidden room in the basement of her high school, that few know and she loves at first sight, because the attendees are an eclectic group of students that meet twice a week to read poetry written by them and no one is judged by it, where through poetry they say their fears, joys, sufferings and whatever they say it stays there, which is liberating for Sam. It´ss also there where Samantha meets AJ a guy who plays guitar, writes poetry and is her romantic interest.

Something that I liked is that Sam's mom is present through the story because she really helps to control her condition and she´s there to support her when she needs it. It's good to read about parents in a positive way, because usually they are absent or antagonists in YA books.

Every Last Word is a very good book about a girl struggling with her mental disorder and how she must learn to live with it. The plot is very well written and I was hooked from start to finish, plus it has a twist that I didn´t see coming and I loved the ending.

Review: Time After Time by Tamara Ireland Stone

Title: Time After Time (Time Between Us #2)
Author: Tamara Ireland Stone 
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Release date: October 8th 2013
Source: Netgalley
Format: egalley

Rating: 4.5/5

Buy on: Amazon | B&N | BookDepository

You can read my review of Time Between Us - here

Calling Anna and Bennett’s romance long distance is an understatement: she’s from 1995 Chicago and he’s a time traveler from 2012 San Francisco. The two of them never should have met, but they did. They fell in love, even though they knew they shouldn't. And they found a way to stay together, against all odds.

It’s not a perfect arrangement, though, with Bennett unable to stay in the past for more than brief visits, skipping out on big chunks of his present in order to be with Anna in hers. They each are confident that they’ll find a way to make things work...until Bennett witnesses a single event he never should have seen (and certainly never expected to). Will the decisions he makes from that point on cement a future he doesn't want?

Told from Bennett’s point of view, Time After Time will satisfy readers looking for a fresh, exciting, and beautifully-written love story, both those who are eager to find out what’s next for Time Between Us's Anna and Bennett and those discovering their story for the first time.

I love romance books like this one, where the romance is not so heavy, there isn´t a lot of drama without some sense, there isn´t much anguish or everyone suffers (or at least I did not feel it like that compared to some other books that I've read lately). It was very refreshing to read a book like Time After Time.

And what I loved the most is that this book from Bennett´s POV, personally I prefer books from the male point of view. Time After Time picks up shortly after the end of the Time Between Us, ** spoiler alert if you have not read the previous book ** Anna and Bennett are finally together and decide to live a long distance relationship for about 17 years apart, since she is in the year 1995 and he lives in 2012, so it's not like they can send emails, text messages or phone calls to keep in touch and because of what happened in the previous book Bennett can not be in 1995 for more than a few days at a time, so they decide to see each other sporadically and at special events, because after all, Bennett must continue his life in 2012, go to school, spend time with friends, etc. So the main problem in their relationship is the distance and the little time they can be together.

But meanwhile Bennett has other problems, because he decides to break one of his golden rules, that one about not intervene and change events or the future of any person, but he does it and by doing those changes they start to have an impact on him physically, it felt like he was paying for the balance that the world or time must have.

Overall, Time After Time is a light read, fast-paced with a beautifully written, captivating, refreshing story and a very cute romance. I really liked this book! even more than its predecessor, it has its sad moment that broke my heart for a moment, but perhaps the only detail that I found was the ending, it felt a bit open to interpretation and I wish it were a little bit more closed, but despite that little detail I just LOVE IT!. This duology definitely worth reading.

I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange of an honest review.

Review: Time Between Us by Tamara Ireland Stone

Title: Time Between Us (Time Between Us #1)
Author: Tamara Ireland Stone
Publisher: Hyperion
Release date: October 9th 2012

Rating: 4/5

Buy on: Amazon | B&N | BookDepository

Anna and Bennett were never supposed to meet: she lives in 1995 Chicago and he lives in 2012 San Francisco. But Bennett has the unique ability to travel through time and space, which brings him into Anna’s life, and with him a new world of adventure and possibility.

As their relationship deepens, the two face the reality that time may knock Bennett back to where he belongs, even as a devastating crisis throws everything they believe into question. Against a ticking clock, Anna and Bennett are forced to ask themselves how far they can push the bounds of fate, what consequences they can bear in order to stay together, and whether their love can stand the test of time.

Fresh, exciting, and deeply romantic, Time Between Us is a stunning, spellbinding debut from an extraordinary new voice in YA fiction.

After seeing several good reviews of this book, I finally decided to buy it and let me tell you I don´t regret it.
, I love it!. I love this kind of book about impossible love and all they have to do to be together. And the plus is that the male protagonist is a time traveler.

Anna is a 16 year old girl, she lives in 1995 Chicago and she runs every morning, since she's a cross country runner and one day she sees a cute guy that´s smiling to her, but when she turned to check again, the guy is no longer there and when she go to check where he was sitting she can´t find his footprints in the snow indicating where he was. That same day a new kid comes to school and she gets surprise to know that is the same guy she saw in the morning but he doesn´t seem to recognize her, his name is Bennett Cooper and she gets intrigued by him. From there their life begins to cross at different times. Meanwhile Bennett is not a normal guy because he´s a time traveler that comes from 2012 San Francisco and he´s in 1995 looking for someone.

The book is told from the point of view of Anna and she 's a runner with plans to travel around the world once she graduates from high school, she´s an average normal girl. But the character that is the more interesting (at least to me) was Bennett, he´s a time traveler, that can only time travel within his life timeline from his birth in 1995 to his present in 2012, and as long the place or time is between that timeline he can travel anywhere he desires and he can travel with another person or objects as long as he´s touching them. He primarily uses his ability to travel sightseeing around the world and to go to concerts that took place in his timeline, but he has a rule, to not disturb any event in time or the destiny of the people. Bennett was my favorite character of the book.

Overall, I really enjoyed it! it is a romantic book with the element of time travel which I loved! the book really grabbed me once I started it, it´s a very entertaining read. Time Between Us is a very cute and sweet story that highly recommended.