WIFSY Thursday-28th April 2016- Every Exquisite Thing

Hi guys! We’re back again for WIFSY! When I First Saw You is a weekly meme hosted on Sailing Through Books. Each week they post a new book cover of a YA book that we probably won’t have heard of, and we have to write what we think the blurb will be like, and then compare our one to the real one. It’s a lot of fun, and this is now our third time doing it! You can check out our first and second ones by clicking on those links. Enjoy!

This week’s cover is a hard one, but it looks quite cool. It’s of Every Exquisite Thing by Matthew Quick.

Mia’s Blurb: Max has alway been different. It’s hard to blend in when you have learning difficulties (A/N. I’m not really sure of the name of the sort of learning difficulty I’m thinking of so you’ll just have to imagine it). His mum says he sees the world in different way. His learning specialist teacher says his brain is wired differently.  His classmates say he’s just stupid. 

Max might be stupid at maths, but that doesn’t mean his brain is small. Because Max notices things that other people miss. With no friends at school, and his home life falling apart, Max seeks comfort in the simple things in life: mainly, nature. He sits for hours in his own world, quietly drawing beautfiul landscapes in his school books. 

But this kind of peace can’t last long. Max must come out of his shell and embrace his differences, if he ever wants to move forward in life.

A beautiful story about fitting in, Every Exquisite Thing is a must read for everyone.

Vibha’s blurb: With a pen in his hand and some paper in front of him, Cal can get lost in a world of his own creation. When he is in his world, everything around him halts to a stop, everybody near him fades away and the voices are merely unimportant whispers. Because when Cal is in his world, he doesn’t realise what’s happening to the people around him, he doesn’t realise that the world he lives in, the world he has been in ever since he can remember, comes crashing down.

Because for Cal, dreams are dangerous, dreams are unpredictable, dreams can merge with reality in the blink of an eye. Cal’s art is blurring the sharp lines between two completely different worlds, merging them together in one dangerous combination.

One dream is all it takes for the world as Cal knows it to fall apart.

By the author of The Silver Linings Playbook, Every Exquisite Thing is a novel for everyone.

Lynette’s blurb:  Nate isn’t the smartest boy in the world, and he knows it. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t add simple numbers together, or even spell the easiest of words. His classmates and teachers find him stupid. But his parents think he isn’t trying. They think that Nate simply has a bad attitude and is trying to be useless for fun.

Nate wants to be clever. Nate wants to be the top of his class. But without anyone ever believing in him, he finds that he is slowly losing that drive, and changing into a complete different person. 

This story about self-confidence and pursuing your dreams is a book that everyone must read. 

The actual blurb:

From the bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook comes a heartfelt and unexpected novel in the vein of The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

Nanette O’Hare is an unassuming teen who has played the role of dutiful daughter, hard-working student, and star athlete for as long as she can remember. But when a beloved teacher gives her his worn copy of The Bubblegum Reaper—the mysterious, out-of-print cult-classic—the rebel within Nanette awakens.

As she befriends the reclusive author, falls in love with a young troubled poet, and attempts to insert her true self into the world with wild abandon, Nanette learns the hard way that sometimes rebellion comes at a high price.

A celebration of the self and the formidable power of story, Every Exquisite Thing is Matthew Quick at his finest.

Our Verdicts:

Mia: Wow. That was not what I expected. I don’t really think it has much to do with the cover- I could never have got that plot from the cover. Also I don’t really see how to title fits… I guess it becomes clear during the story. But anyway, mine had nothing to do with the real one. This one was really hard- the cover doesn’t give much away. However, it was fun, and I can’t wait for next week! Fingers crossed I’ll do better.

Vibha: Wow, I was really off the original blurb. I knew from the start that the blurb would probably be some sort of contemporary novel, and my synopsis started off like that too, but then I kinda got carried away, and my contemporary morphed into this weird fantasy-type synosis which has literally nothing to do with the covers…oops! The original blurb sounds really cool though, I’m not sure if it’s my kind of book, but it looks pretty awesome.

Lynette: That was a surprise. I didn’t expect the actual blurb to be like that, and I also wasn’t expecting a girl as the main character. I’m also surprised with myself at how the name Nate is quite similar to Nanette, but as a male version. The only thing that I got sort of close to was that the main character changes at one point, but other than that I was really off. I wasn’t too fond of the cover, but the blurb sounds okay, although I don’t think I’m going to read it. 

– M, L, V

WIFSY Thursday- 21st April 2016- Essential Maps For The Lost

Hi everyone! It’s WIFSY day again, and so we’re back to see if we can come any closer to the real blurb. WIFSY – When I First Saw You – is a weekly meme hosted by Sailing Through Books, where using just a cover, all three of us have to think of a blurb for the book. You can read our first post here.

The book for this week is Essential Maps For The Lost by Deb Caletti. Here are our synopsises! Hope you enjoy them!

Mia’s Blurb:

Sinking. Down. Down. Down.

Lauren is a normal girl, living in the Scilly Isles. But one day, while on a family boating trip with her and her parents, their family boat capsizes and sinks. Lauren is sure she’s going to drown.

But by some miracle that no one quite understands, Lauren survives. Now an orphan, Lauren is no longer sure about her life and who she’s supposed to be. With a new fear of the ocean, yet inesplicably drawn to it, Lauren must journey to discover her past, and shape her future.

A heartwarming YA book about discovering ones inner self, Essential Maps for the Lost is a must-read for all.

Vibha’s blurb:

Emma has always loved the ocean. The smell of the salty air, the cool touch of the water, the beautiful colours. The amazing wildlife below, the coral, the sand…and the darkness. The darkness intrigued Emma. It always had. She’d never understood why nobody swam down to the bottom of the sea. But nearly her whole life’s worth of research on the darkness down below meant that Emma had noticed something no other person had ever spotted before. Emma had noticed something shocking, something strange…something fishy (I’m sorry I had to do that, ok! Don’t kill me 😂).

On her 18th birthday Emma forges a fake suicide note to her friends and family, and driving to the beach, Emma does something nobody has EVER done before.

A gripping story of love, loss and fantasy, Essential Maps For The Lost is a must-read for everyone.

Lynette’s blurb:

Carrie’s elder brother went missing a whole year ago and everyone assumed he was dead. But Carrie is certain that he has gone out to travel the oceans, as that had always been his secret dream. So when an adventurous sailor comes by for a stop and befriends Carrie, she knows she must join him when he sets off again. She wants to see the real oceans for herself, and perhaps find her brother. 

After she sets off without her parents’ permission and ventures into the ocean, she realises that the sea is far more dangerous than she could have ever predicted, and she also realises that she is far more lost than her brother had ever been.
This is a touching adventure book which also includes the love between siblings, and that some dreams may not be what they first seem to be like. Essential Maps for the Lost is definitely recommended for anyone to read.

The real blurb:

Sometimes people want to be lost. Madison—Mads to everyone who knows her—is trying her best to escape herself during one last summer away from a mother who needs more from her than she can give, and from a future that has been decided by everyone but her.

Sometimes the lost do the unimaginable, like the woman, the body, Mads collides with in the middle of the water on a traumatic morning that changes everything.

And sometimes the lost are the ones left behind, like the son of the woman in the water, Billy Youngwolf Floyd. Billy is struggling to find his way through each day in the shadow of grief. His one comfort is the map he carries in his pocket, out of his favorite book, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

When three lives (and one special, shared book) collide, strange things happen. Things like questions and coincidences and secrets—lots of secrets. Things like falling in love. But can two lost people telling so many lies find their way through tragedy to each other…and to solid ground?

Our verdicts:

Mia: Well, that’s a bit of a disappointment. I didn’t really get anything right, except the idea of being lost in life and the water, but they were kinda obvious. I was thinking about Listen to the Moon by Michael Morpurgo when I wrote mine, and I thought it would be something a bit like that. To be honest, I much prefer my blurb. This cover is so pretty and cool, but the book doesn’t actually sound that good. However, I really enjoyed my first WIFSY, and can’t wait for next week!

Vibha : Well, my synopsis had virtually no similarities with the real synopsis. I’m kinda disappointed with the original blurb, it doesn’t really sound particularly exciting, but I guess that’s my opinion, and perhaps this book is just not my kinda genre. However, I really enjoyed writing my second WIFSY, and I’m really looking forward to doing another one next week.

Lynette: The cover included a girl reaching her hand into the water, so that is where I got my idea of the sea from. I got the idea of her brother getting lost from the fact that the title had the word ‘lost’ in it. But in the end, my one was pretty different from the actual thing. As for the book, I don’t think I will read it. Its not really the sort of book I would find very interesting. 

Hope you enjoyed that!

– L, M & V

WIFSY Thursday – 14th April 2016 – Gemini

Hi everybody! We’re posting this a little bit late…but oh well. So this is one of our other weekly memes that we’ve started – When I First Saw You. When I First Saw You (WIFSY) is a meme hosted by Sailing Through Books. This is one of the memes we’ll be doing altogether, rather than on our own, on rotation. Today’s meme however is just Vibha and Lynette (Mia was busy).

Every week, Sailing Through Books picks a new cover from a YA book, a book which we’re unlikely to have probably heard of before. Going from just the cover, we need to write a synopsis or a blurb for the book, without cheating and looking at the ACTUAL blurb. Once we’ve finished, we can look at the real synopsis, compare the two and prepare our verdict. It was really fun to write, we absolutely enjoyed it! If you want to do it, too, all you need to do is link back to Sailing Through Books, and write a blurb!

This week’s cover was Gemini by Sonya Mukherjee. Don’t you think it’s a beautiful cover?

Lynette’s synopsis: 

Gemini is a book about two girls, Chloe and Lucy, who are twins. They have always been the best of friends, doing everything together, until one day they are pulled apart from each other. This story is about how the two girls learn to cope on their own without each other.

Vibha’s synopsis:

Twins Cassie and Poe were never close. Different schools, hobbies, friends, they rarely did anything together. The only time they were with each other, was on Saturday nights, when they’d go up on a hill with their father, stargazing. Poe would paint watercolours of the sky and the stars, and Cassie would find all the constellations. On those nights, everything else would seem like a dream.

But on the twins’ 17th birthday, their father has a terrible accident. With their mother abroad, unable to make it back, and their father’s life fragile, Cassie and Poe must really come together.

A tale of love, family and fantasy, Gemini is a must-read for all YA-lovers. 

Okkkk and this is the actual blurb (From Goodreads):

In a powerful and daring debut novel, Sonya Mukherjee shares the story of sisters Clara and Hailey, conjoined twins who are learning what it means to be truly extraordinary.

Seventeen-year-old conjoined twins, Clara and Hailey, have lived in the same small town their entire lives—no one stares at them anymore. But there are cracks in their quiet existence and they’re slowing becoming more apparent. Clara and Hailey are at a crossroads. Clara wants to stay close to home, avoid all attention, and study the night sky. Hailey wants to travel the world, learn from great artists, and dance with mysterious boys. As high school graduation approaches, each twin must untangle her dreams from her sister’s, and figure out what it means to be her own person.

Told in alternating perspectives, this unconventional coming-of-age tale shows how dreams can break your heart—but the love between sisters can mend it.

Our Verdict:

Lynette: I thought it would be something like this, as the name of this book is Gemini, which is the twin star sign. The cover is also quite simple but sweet and pretty, similar to a friendship. The actual book is somewhat similar to my idea, as it is about twins who learn how to be without the other twin and be independent, but I did not think it was going to be about conjoined twins. It sounds like it may be quite a deep but heartwarming book about sisterly love, dreams and hope. I may read it, but I will most likely not go out of my way to find the book.

Vibha: Ok…well at least I got the bit about the twins right! Otherwise there’s pretty much no other similarity between my synopsis and the real one. However, I really like the sound of this book, and will definitely by adding it to my TBR. I’ve always found conjoined twins interesting. In fact there is another book on my TBR about conjoined twins which I hope I’ll read soon. And I loved the cover too, it was beautiful. I loved the watercolours, and it was so simple, yet so…not-simple! What did you think about my synopsis?

– L & V