What Makes You The Biggest Fangirl/Fanboy?

We're giving you the chance to win a copy of 'Landline', the new book by Rainbow Rowell, 2 weeks before its publication! Two runners up will win a goody bag from us with YA related awesomeness and Fangirl notebooks.

All you need to do to enter is write a paragraph about what makes you the biggest book fangirl/fanboy. You can include pictures of your book collections, the weird things you've had signed, the people you've met or the craziest thing you've done to meet your idols.

For example, my colleague Jane and I went to a talk with the author Deborah Harkness. I was so cool about it. I even wore my exclusive bookseller 'A Discovery of Witches' tshirt and sat on the front row. Jane and I asked loads of questions and then I got ALL my books signed (I have about every edition you can get in them including advance proofs). We've now been invited to the book launch of the final book in the trilogy so we're geeking all the way to London to meet her all over again! Oh, and we got to go out for a meal with Laini Taylor...

I'm sure you've all gone to much further lengths than meet to meet your idols. And if you haven't met anyone yet, don't worry, you can still enter. Tell us why you loved the book 'Fangirl' and Rainbow Rowell and we will post your entries too.

Send your entries to: yabirmingham@gmail.com. Competition ends on 20th June, and Landline is released on 3rd July.

Winners will be chosen at random and all entries will be available to read on the blog after the closing day, so make sure they're funny!

 

Don't forget our branch (Birmingham High Street) is also running an offer that you will get Landline for £10.99 (instead of £12.99) if you pre-order. You can do this any time up until the day before it is released. It is also the best way to make sure you can get it on the day.

 

You can read my review of Landline here, and Sofi's review of Fangirl here.

GIVEAWAY: Just Like Fate - Suzanne Young and Cat Patrick

We've got 1 copy of Just Like Fate to give away to a UK resident. To enter follow the instructions below in the box below - you need to make sure you've liked our Facebook page and pressed the button to Tweet your entry.

SUMMARY

Romantic drama with a twist, perfect for fans of Lauren Oliver, Dawn O'Porter, Jay Asher and Maureen Johnson. Caroline is at a crossroads. Her whole family is on her back, and her grandmother, the only person who really understands her, is sick, maybe dying. All she wants to do is escape. So when her best friend suggests a night out to forget her troubles, Caroline must choose: stay by her grandmother's side, or go to the party and live her life ...and maybe meet the boy of her dreams. This decision will split Caroline's fate into two separate paths - and she's about to live them both. But there can only be one happy ending...

ENTER HERE

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Many thanks to Egmont/Electric Monkey for the prize. Read more about the book here on Cat Patrick's website.

*GIVEAWAY* - Raging Star by Moira Young

This giveaway has ended.

We're giving away one copy of RAGING STAR, the final book in the Dust Land trilogy by Moira Young! If you've loved the series we're guessing you're really going to want to get involved with this.

A little bit about our giveaways:

We're offering this as a 'Read and Review' giveaway, and whilst we won't pester you to write us a review or give you any deadlines, we do expect you to at least give us some feedback once you've read it. The more we give back to publishers, the more cool things like this we'll be able to give away!

We haven't posted the blurb in case it gives spoilers of the first two, but you can read the synopsis for it here.

Please Note: You will need to be able to collect the book from our store, which is Waterstones Birmingham High St.

The competition is running from Saturday 26th April to Saturday, 10th May.

ENTER HERE

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Massive thanks to Scholastic for the book. Keep checking back to the blog for more giveaways!

REVIEW: The Selection - Keira Cass

GENRE: YA

PAGES: 272

PUBLISHER: HarperCollins Kids

FORMAT: Paperback

BUY IT: Waterstones

RATING: 3 Stars

SUMMARY

Thirty-five beautiful girls. Thirty-five beautiful rivals...It's the chance of a lifetime and 17-year-old America Singer should feel lucky. She has been chosen for The Selection, a reality TV lottery in which the special few compete for gorgeous Prince Maxon's love. Swept up in a world of elaborate gowns, glittering jewels and decadent feasts, America is living a new and glamorous life. And the prince takes a special interest in her, much to the outrage of the others. Rivalry within The Selection is fierce and not all of the girls are prepared to play by the rules. But what they don't know is that America has a secret - one which could throw the whole competition...and change her life forever.

REVIEW

I must stop judging books by their covers. I must stop judging books by their covers. If I keep telling myself that maybe one day I'll listen. 

The gist of the story is America Singer, narrator and generally stubborn lead character is picked in a lottery to become a contestant in 'The Selection': a country-wide competition to find a girl to marry the crown price Maxon. There are a lot of dystopian similarities between this and The Hunger Games but obviously with none of the gravity. 

I have to say that I quite surprised myself by enjoying this book. I expected it to be rather shallow and although it almost is, America's character really brought it forward to me. She is funny and strong and doesn't cower in a corner like the rest of the girls. She has the best of both worlds and I really enjoyed the growing triangle between Prince Maxon and her former boyfriend Aspen. It's got a fun, glitzy edge to it with the rivalry between the girls and the television interviews. I really enjoyed the banter, it was witty and funny. 

I tried to grasp why she is called America and decided she is supposed to represent those traditional American values of being yourself and fighting for what you believe in. She certainly has freedom of speech. I'm still not completely convinced that this is what it means because I imagine that her name would be a comment on the society that she is currently living in, but you only get to touch on its politics and backstory.

I concluded that this book isn't really for that kind of analysis. It does try with the introduction of the rebels that try time and time again to attack the palace and the intriguing notion that history should be oral and records of it shouldn't exist, but I don't think it needs that. It's Gossip Girl meets The Bachelor and even though I never watch those types of shows I loved this.

The most disappointing part for me was the ending. There was no cliffhanger and even though I was left wanting more it wasn't in the way it should been. It was a cheap ending. There's no way you can read this book without the rest of the series and feel any kind of resolution, and at the same time there was also no 'oh my gosh' moment to make you run out for the next one.

Having said that I'm quite happy to read the rest of the series; this is light, fun reading that is a change for me.

- Bex.