Hearing voices in my head.

"My current verdict would be: crazy eyes. Nice ass.""I think I want that on my tombstone," Kami said. "Remember my last wishes, if I get involved in a tragic accident with a fruit cart before I can put it in writing. So, what happened?"

I'll tell you what happened, Kami. Unspoken happened.

And it might have been the best thing that ever happened to me.

Sarah Rees Brennan had showed up on my recommendations numerous times. She was literally stalking them. And I kept telling myself, "eventually." Eventually I will check her out. Eventually I will see what all the fuss about. Eventually I will panic and give in to her list stalking. The problem was, her Demon's Lexicon books just didn't appeal to me. There was nothing about the blurb that screamed, "IF YOU DON'T READ ME YOU WILL LITERALLY DIE A THOUSAND DEATHS." Maybe it was the good little preacher's kid in me that cringed away from demons. Maybe it was the rebellious preacher's kid in me that had read too many books about demons. Whatever it was, I wasn't interested.

Then Unspoken showed up on my lists. And I thought, "Okay, Brennan. I get it. I should read you. We're a perfect match. Calm it down a little bit" and I read the blurb and came over all, "OKAY, BRENNAN. WHERE IS THIS BOOK? I MUST HAVE IT."

The Guilty WTF Pleasure of Black Dagger Brotherhood: Books Wrath-Thor.

Okay. It's a timely moment to talk about one of my deepest, darkest guiltiest of pleasures. This is not something I can bring up in polite society. I mean...how do I even bring it up? What descriptions do I use? What sort of picture am I going to paint for the uninitiated?
Deep breath.
I'm a fan of leather pants wearing vampires who drive Escalades and fight bad guys that smell like baby powder.
Oh, God.
There's just no coming back from that is there?

With the long-awaited release of Lover At Last, it's hard not to get all caught up in the BDB talk. The Black Dagger Brotherhood is a funny sort of obsession, but it's one I can't shake. Some series you dive into with the gusto of a fangirl, but you find yourself looking around after awhile and trying to walk out of the room without anyone noticing you were even there.

But with BDB, I'm still in there, still reading the next books, still skimming the parts about the Lessers. Still hanging out with vampires who use unnecessary H's in their names and wear boots they obsessively refer to as shit kickers, and always seem to end their sentences with either yup or true.

Listen, I don't have explanations or a diagnosis for why I'm still waving my BDB flag. What I do have is a run through for where we've been with this brotherhood of vampires with poor grammar, kinky bedroom secrets and sometimes dragon tattoos.

She Blinded Me with Science.

Little known fact about me: I love science. I love science the same way Movie Harry Potter loves Magic.

like that.

The way another good pop culture reference loves something else. Science, man. It's glorious.

I wanted to marry Bill Nye as a kid. I watch surgery videos on YouTube as an adult. I was that girl in middle school cutting into my frog with fascination while they other double X chromosomes squealed and cringed away from theirs. Lab days were my favorite in high school and I took 4 years of science when only 2 were required. Everything from earth to meteorology to chemistry, I took it and loved it. As a kid, I loved magic and as I grew up, I realized that's what science was: Magic.

So when The Madman's Daughter popped up on my recs, I squealed in fangirly, nerdy excitement. When I saw that it was inspired by H.G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau*, I officially started biting my nails in anticipation for its release. We're getting science-y up in hurr, yo! Let's do this.

2012 Slut Awards - Willow's picks.

2012 came and now it's headed out. The year is glancing back over its shoulder at us and giving a wave, and I imagine a smirk, because it didn't end the world. No zombies or angels, and not one vampire. 2012 was trying and exhausting, but like any book worthy of my shelf, it tested and its characters, who maybe had never even considered themselves all that tough, stood up as best they could and best of all? They fell into epic loves.

Here's to the year that didn't break us and to the books that are overcrowding both my here on the ground made of wood and nails shelves and the cloud ones. Because it's about to be 2013, you guys, and while we may not have those hoverboards McFly promised us yet, we do have shelves in clouds and that's pretty magical.

Here is my list of the new discoveries, the ones I finally read, the recommendations that turned into obsessions and the book that carved its' name onto my soul.

(I'll show you the scars.)

I fell in love with a Cajun.

Poison Princess by Kresley Cole
Rating: 4 of 5 stars.






Right now, Nina and I are reading The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, something we've talked about doing since before we even started Paper Boyfriends. In fact, The Night Circus was going to be our first collaborated review, most likely on our personal blogs and Goodreads and then Paper Boyfriends was born and now we're finally getting around to the book that sparked it all. In an effort to not get too far ahead of Nina while we read, I stopped myself halfway through and decided to start reading another book on my to-read list while I waited for her to catch up. (I'm a ridiculously fast reader who survives on little sleep. We joke that Nina is the old woman in this relationship, who goes to bed at 9pm and is up with the chickens, while I'm the frat boy, up all night partying and still awake the next morning. I digress.)

ENTER: POISON PRINCESS.

Have I ever talked about my deep and burning love for Post-Apocalyptic novels? Because it's there and it's A Thing. I love watching the world fall apart. I love when things get a little Lord of the Flies and when unlikely couples, people who would have never looked twice at each other before, end up together. I like seeing communities form and bands of people coming together to fight or to live or just to have human companionship. I love learning to navigate broken worlds and establishing new normals and I love watching characters rise up to become survivors.

I love guys like Jackson Deveaux. 

Nerd Girl Chats: Angelfall Edition.

Have you heard of Angelfall by Susan Ee?
Please. Stop everything.
Hold the phone and pump the brakes, because everything everyone is saying about this book IS ABSOLUTELY TRUE AND REAL AND MY EMOTIONS ARE EVERYWHERE RIGHT NOW.

So. Talking it out between Pen-rye-n & me was obviously necessary. We go through the whole book, with appropriate fangirling and end of the world worrying over body hair, so be warned of spoilers for those of you who don't know the pure AWESOME happening here, and if you do? Jump in, get your downy wings dirty because the world has ended and things are gonna get bananas BUT THERE IS A QUEST.

And smokin' hot shirtless angels. And girls who pack knives in their boots. And moms who are off the rails.
Yeah, I know. It's sooo good.

Willow: Also, ANGELFALL. How is this happening?

Pen-rye-n: RIGHT. OMG. How bloody amazing was it? Scale of 1 to ALL THE FANGIRLING?

Willow: ALL OF THE FANGIRLING. PUT THEM IN A JAR, SHAKE THEM, THEN SPREAD THEM OVER MY BODY.
  ....okay, wait.

Roads made of blood and lands of dust.

Blood Red Road by Moira Young
Rating: 4.5 of 5 stars.





I am a total dystopian, post-apocalyptic, apocalyptic, everything going to shit, junkie. I don't know what it is about this genre that I'm so crazy about, but it's there and it's a thing and I'm damn near obsessed with it.

Blood Red Road is getting a ton of crazy good reviews and, from what I understand, it's already been picked up by Ridley Scott to be made into a movie. And you know what? I completely understand why. 

Oh, Augustus. I do too.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green.
Rating: 5 of 5 stars.

"Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you."

DISCLAIMER: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS AFTER THE CUT.

It's been months now since I finished this book and I am still absolutely gutted every time I think about it. My thoughts are stars I still can't fathom into constellations. (DID U C WUT I DID THAR...AGAIN?)  GREEN, YOU MADE ME FEEL SO MANY FEELINGS.  

And I guess you could argue this is an annoying way to review, but dammit, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it because visuals are so very needed. Yes. This is going down in .gif form.

Crazy feminists & the boys who love them.

Graceling by Kristin Cashore
Rating: 4.5 of 5 stars.




I liked Graceling. Let's get that out of the way right now, before I start talking ethics and agendas and propaganda. I liked Graceling and I think Cashore is a pretty awesome writer and I plan on continuing with this series because it's original and exciting and things happen and I like when things happen. Katsa is the kinda heroine I adore, a girl who isn't motivated by a man or her love for that man and is not a damsel in distress, but instead will take a bitch out by herself. There's quests. I love quests. The only thing that would have made this story more epically amazing is if Katsa found a dragon and trained it and together, she and her dragon steed, flew around the kingdoms, striking wrong-doers down and chomping them. Perhaps breathing a little fire for kicks. Po was just there, and I liked that he was just there, that this male character was suddenly the Love Interest that is just hanging around and does some things, sure, but not like The Hero. I liked seeing those roles reversed. 

And I liked that Katsa was anti-marriage, anti-baby and pro-sex. Okay, perhaps pro-sex isn't the best word, but, she had a sexual relationship with Po, with no plans for marriage. You know what they say, "it's not premarital sex if you have no plans on getting married." Or maybe that was just me who said that. To my dad. Who is a preacher.  ....awkward.

ANYWAY!

My soul for a dragon.

Defiance by C.J. Redwine
Rating: 4 of 5 stars.



Wait. Stop right there. Stop giving me the side eye for my 4 stars. Let me explain.

There are dragons.

Okay. They're kinda like dragons. Like, practically dragons, but they don't fly so they're basically dragon mutants or something but they have scales and wicked tails and they breathe fire. DRAGONS, OKAY. NOT-DRAGONS. KINDA-DRAGONS. DRAGONS ARE AWESOME.

There was some crazy stuff going on in the Defiance world. There was tyrannical leaders, and oppression and widely accepted misogynistic attitudes and highway robbers and fucking Tree People and sweet bread baking old men and secrets and spies and sword fights and crazy tech inventions and DEFIANCE (I C WUT U DID THAR) and it was a lot of awesomeness topped with a lukewarm romance. If you ignore the romance aspect of it (and good Lord, that was hard, especially towards the end,) it was glorious.