Crazy crazy news alert!

This is Rapunzel from the Disney movie Tangled. Her hair glows. FYI.

Usually, I don't do book news posts since my good buds Steph and Kat over at Cuddlebuggery already round up all the info you need to know so fantastically well. But there were a few things that popped up this afternoon that I am SO excited about that I just had to share it with y'all if you didn't hear about it yet!

1) ALLY CARTER HAS A NOVELLA CROSSOVER OF HEIST SOCIETY AND GALLAGHER GIRLS COMING OUT! See more (and the cover--it's exclusive to MTV Crush for the day so I can't post it on my blog) here! It's SO EXCITING. Basically, Ally has a novella called Double Crossed that's about Macey, Hale, Kat, Aunt Abby, and ALL THE AWESOMENESS, releasing January 22nd FOR FREE as an e-book. Ally said on Twitter that Cammie and Zach won't be in the novella since it takes place between GG5 & GG6, but hey, it's way better than I could've hoped for! :D

2) CASSANDRA CLARE, MAUREEN JOHNSON, and SARAH REES BRENNAN ARE COLLABORATING TO CREATE The Bane Chronicles! Do you love Magnus Bane? Do you want to know all the secret stories he's stashed beneath his ridiculously glamorous self? Well well well, looks like my personal favorite, Sarah Rees Brennan (SQUEE!) and the fabulous Maureen Johnson, as well as of course, Ms. Clare herself, will be working together to create an e-series of these chronicles, ten of them, starting February 2013 and all the way up until the City of Bones theatrical release! Read more on Sarah's Tumblr here!

3) CARRIE RYAN AND HER HUSBAND JUST SOLD A FOUR-BOOK MIDDLE GRADE SERIES! The news isn't bombarding the web yet, but Carrie announced it on Twitter, and can you just say EXCITED?!? I can't wait to read The Map to Everywhere, even if that means I have to wait until Fall of 2014! *cries* Arghhh the wait! I can't stand it! It's going to kill me someday, just you watch.


And that's all for now! Go check out Cuddlebuggery's post for last week's shenanigans here, and leave a comment below letting me know whether you are excited or excited about all this shiny new stuff in the works!


P.S. If you're looking for some kick-butt YA books as a holiday gift or just for your own reading pleasure, I created this graphic to help you out! I was humbly selected as one of Paper Lantern Lit's Trendsetters, so if you'd like, you can check up on my own book shenanigans by following PLL's Tumblr!

Out of Truths, Out of Lies

Out of Sight, Out of Time
By: Ally Carter
Reported by: Julianna Helms

The last thing Cammie Morgan remembers is leaving the Gallagher Academy to protect her friends and family from the Circle of Cavan--an ancient terrorist organization that has been hunting her for over a year. But when Cammie wakes up in an alpine convent and discovers months have passed, she must face the fact that her memory is now a black hole. The only traces left of Cammie’s summer vacation are the bruises on her body and the dirt under her nails, and all she wants is to go home.

Once she returns to school, however, Cammie realizes that even the Gallagher Academy now holds more questions than answers. Cammie, her friends, and mysterious spy-guy Zach must face their most difficult challenge yet as they travel to the other side of the world, hoping to piece together the clues that Cammie left behind. It’s a race against time. The Circle is hot on their trail and willing stop at nothing to prevent Cammie from remembering what she did last summer.

-Summary from Goodreads
Mrs. Nelson's||Barnes&Noble||Amazon||Book Depository

I needed something fun, and Out of Sight, Out of Time didn't offer me that. It offered me something more: melancholy and honesty.

Top 10 Book Boyfriends in 2011

After much hair-pulling and no actual cursing, here are my top 10 book boyfriends of 2011 (in no particular order):

An uncommonly criminal-like book

Uncommon Criminals
By: Ally Carter
Reported by: Juli Helms

Katarina Bishop has worn a lot of labels in her short life: Friend. Niece. Daughter. Thief. But for the last two months she’s simply been known as the girl who ran the crew that robbed the greatest museum in the world. That’s why Kat isn’t surprised when she’s asked to steal the infamous Cleopatra Emerald so it can be returned to its rightful owners.

      There are only three problems. First, the gem hasn’t been seen in public in thirty years. Second, since the fall of the Egyptian empire and the suicide of Cleopatra, no one who holds the emerald keeps it for long — and in Kat’s world, history almost always repeats itself. But it’s the third problem that makes Kat’s crew the most nervous, and that is . . . the emerald is cursed.

     Kat might be in way over her head, but she’s not going down without a fight. After all, she has her best friend — the gorgeous Hale — and the rest of her crew with her as they chase the Cleopatra around the globe, dodging curses and realizing that the same tricks and cons her family has used for centuries are useless this time.

     Which means, this time, Katarina Bishop is making up her own rules.

-Summary from Goodreads


There comes a time when you will stumble across an author whose tale is so interwoven with action and suspense that by the end of the book, you're breathless, on your feet, and mind buzzing like a swarm of bees at how unbelievable that book was.
     It is safe to say that Ally Carter fits well into that rare, unexpectedly short list of authors. Carter's style is unique, straightforward, yet not so blunt as to making the book predictable.
     In fact, it was anything but. I found myself so caught up between one ingenious twist to the next that when the ending finally came, I sat there, dumbfounded, not believing I could have missed such an obvious solution.
     In the first book of the series, Heist Society, Kat and her crew breaks into the world's most secure (or so they thought) museum in the world to steal paintings (that did not, mind you, belong to the Henley) and return them back to their rightful owners. It was exciting, but I had felt like there were some fleshing out on the characters that could've been done--like icing on a cake.
     That's exactly what happened in Uncommon Criminals. I loved watching all of the characters develop, the stakes higher, the romance heated, etc. In fact, I loved so many things about this book that it would be impossible to list them all without boring you to death.
     So I'll just say this: Carter's narrative voice is smooth, fluid, and twisted--in a good way. The plot will surprise you tremendously and on more than one occasion. I loved how the crew found themselves back together, and the angle this book went on to further deepen the characters' bonds. 
     All in all, Uncommon Criminals is an uncommon criminal itself--a book that will steal your breath (and time) away and somehow, at the end of the day, you'll still enjoy it and wish furiously for the next heist.