Happy 4th of July!

Hope you're enjoying your holiday and long weekend. And if you have to work today, I hope it goes smoothly and you have free time to read your favorite book!

(pic by me)

Top Ten Tuesday: 10 Books I Will Be Reading This Winter

Oh, this week's The Broke & The Bookish Top10 should be easy-peasy! I already have a stack of books waiting for me on December 1st. :) I am very much in the holiday spirit this year, so I really want to read lots of Christmas/holiday/wintery books. And I am off work 2 glorious weeks Christmas thru New Year's, so I see lots and lots of reading time in my future!

1. My True Love Gave to Me (various awesome authors!) -I am sooooo excited about this one, I've barely been able to stop myself from reading it yet! I think I might read one story a night the twelve days leading up to Christmas. :)

2. The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Anderson -this is my classic pick for December, the story that Frozen is based on. Since I am still addicted to all things Frozen, I thought this was perfect.

3. Snowed In by Rachel Hawthorne -a cute contemporary romance? Yes, please!

4. The Santa Society by Kristine McCord -"a clandestine world of the Santa Society, a centuries old secret organization that protects the truth behind Christmas." Bonus: it's free on Kindle right now!

5. Mistletoe Magic by Melissa McClone -another freebie I picked up solely because of the cute kitty on the cover lol. Oh and the cowboys!

6. Let it Snow by John Green & others -3 more great authors! I can't wait!!

7. Confessions of a Secret Santa by Lara Bergen -I don't know why I like this little book so much, but I do! I've read it at least 4 times!

8. The Thing About Jane Spring by Sharon Krum -another reread, of my absolute favorite winter book! It's not very well known, but I highly recommend it! "One snowy night while watching a Doris Day marathon on cable it hits Jane: Doris Day always got her man."

9. Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery -I've been reading the later books (5-6) recently and they're not bad, but they don't have the magic of the first book, so it's really making me want to go back and read that one. And while it is not a Christmas or winter book, I read it the first time around then, so it's etched in my brain as one now.

10. The Ex-Games by Jennifer Echols -this is a slight cheat, because I just read this one last weekend! It was a cute, quick read and if you like the author, then you'll like this one!

11.Bonus: I took a bunch of Christmas romance anthologies from my mom last year when we were helping her move and I might get to some of those too. Lots of cowboys and heaving bosoms and such lol.

12.Another Bonus: I have several Christmas children's (picture) books that I would love to read and review for My Favorite Children's Books feature. I should definitely get started on that soon!

Review: "Dash & Lily's Book of Dares"

Dash & Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan
3 out of 5 stars

Being more specific in my rating, I'd give this probably a 3.75 out of 5 stars. I enjoyed it quite a lot, but there seemed to be something off about it. Maybe it's the fact that it is a Christmas story and I read it in the middle of June lol. I think I'd like to buy this still though (I read it as an eBook from the library) and I can see myself enjoying it around the holidays more as a light, fluffy read. One of the main problems that I had (like most of the reviews I've read) is that Dash & Lily, who are supposed to be 16 years old, come across as overly sophisticated and at times, unrealistic.

This book was written by two authors, obviously, but their approach was to not write it together, but to write a chapter at a time, Levithan writing Dash's part and Cohn Lily's, with no communication otherwise. It's intriguing but at times it doesn't work, the story doesn't mesh well, and towards the end it just kind of unravels. In one chapter, we have Dash cursing up a storm as he is forced to sit on Santa's lap at Macy's and basically feel him up. Then in the next chapter, we have Lily saying she can't go to a movie alone and practicing "mean faces" in the mirror. But even with that, I still enjoyed the book!

Dash (this must be the week for weirdly-named teenagers lol) is a sixteen year old boy who has managed to trick his divorced parents into letting him stay home alone for Christmas break. He detests Christmas and all its familial obligations, forced cheer, and over-crowded stores. He spends most of his time in bookstores, browsing in odd and peculiar fashions that intrigue me: "...the afternoon was sponsored by a particular letter, and would visit each and every section to check out the authors whose last names began with that letter. Other days, I would decide to tackle a single section, or would investigate the recently unloaded tomes, thrown in bins that never really conformed to alphabetization." It is on one of these bookish journeys that he comes across a red Moleskine journal that does not belong among the Salinger classics. Curious, he opens it and begins a journey across the bookstore and with an unknown girl (he hopes).

Enter the unknown girl, Lily, who adores Christmas and everything about it, but is "abandoned" by her parents, who have decided to take a trip to Fiji and her grandpa, who is proposing to some hussy down in Florida. She is stuck with her older brother and as he is completely enamored with his new boyfriend, she is essentially just as alone as Dash. She agrees to go along with the Book of Dares that her brother has come up with and is completely surprised when A. someone actually goes along with it and B. they up the ante and she is swept along in the adventure. My favorite part about Lily? She has fashion sense that rivals Claudia Kishi and I just had to do a Polyvore for her. :)

I think my outfit is very festive for the day before the day before Christmas...Oxford uniform school shirt tucked into a knee-length lime-green felt material skirt with a reindeer embroidered on it, candy-cane-colored swirled stockings, and...Great-aunt Ida's retired tasseled majorette boots, with taps still on the toes and heels.

Seriously, awesome right? In between the dares and the running around New York and the just being kids, there are some surprisingly deep moments to enjoy. Well, maybe not surprising, since they talk like they're 30 (and even I don't talk like that half the time). Quotes like this remind you that this is, indeed, a romance: I want to believe there is a somebody out there just for me. I want to believe that I exist to be there for that somebody. And I think it does a decent job of representing that.