Sometimes You Gotta Refocus…

Rethink.

Refocus.

Move Forward.

So I have some more guest posts coming in the next week or two but I thought I should pop in and share some thoughts with you as well as a verse of encouragment. As I’ve mentioned a little bit here and there, this year I really focused on upgrading some high school courses so I could attend college this fall and I have arrived! But with that, I want to talk about focus and priorities.

Reaching your goals takes a lot of doing what you don’t feel like doing and also hard times. And when that happens, sometimes you’ve gotta refocus. I really learned that over the last year as I had to buckle down and do work I didn’t want to do and meet deadlines that feel almost impossible to meet. As I sit here at college having survived the first week of classes I’m realizing that it’s all the same as before. Slightly harder work and lots of it but still the same. And in those moments of stress and frustration when I feel like I’m drowning in all I have to do I’ve had to learn to stop, take a minute or two to just breathe and then reflect about why I’m doing this all and what it’s for. – What the point is behind all this paperwork and daily readings for classes the next day.

Refocus on my goals then move forward knowing that this is not pointless. That there is a plan and final goal in mind.

A long-term plan.

So just remember that if you feel exhausted, or swamped with homework, studies, work or even just life to stop and take a minute to breathe and reflect on what will come from what you are doing right now.

^{11 “}For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.¹² Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. ¹³ You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” – Jeremiah 29:11-13

 

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2017

Hello lovelies!

Sorry I haven’t posted at all this month life has been crazy and all over the place but I’m hoping to explain some of that here and my post plans for the new year!

 

So the new year has come and gone and its almost February! Like what?! My apologies on the lack of posting. I’ll explain why, but hopefully there wont be so many apology posts this year due to lack of posting. Part of the reasons is I don’t feel like apologizing anymore.

Not that I don’t love you lovely readers or that I don’t care but in the past I’ve missed posting and torn myself down for it. I don’t want to be doing that anymore so my blogging is going to be a little more relaxed this year.

I have a goal to try and write one blog post a week on top of my busy schedule but at the same time I don’t want to beat myself up every time I don’t post! The reason being because I started blogging because I had (and have) things to say and it was fun to express it in that way. My passion and love for my blog hasn’t changed but with my more busy schedule this year, posting will be less frequent for sure as I have other things that (sadly) hold a higher priority over blogging.

WITH THAT SAID! I still have some exciting things for this blog. So lets talk about exciting things because I’m not stopping posting entirely! Just gotta adapt my blog schedule to my busy life.

On the blog this year I want to turn this around from a book review blog (as I started to do when I changed the name) to more of a personal, thought sharing, encouragement blog. There will still be book reviews or discussions on my writing and music and stuff every once in a while for sure but not as often.

I want to focus on not only encouraging and building up you guys but also growing myself in the process. I would argue that self-love and self-care for women is especially hard and I’m seeing that more and more each day. I personally am tired of looking in the mirror and calling myself ‘good enough’ or not liking what I see at all and I want to change that. This year I want to go on a journey to change how I feel about myself and my body and take time to grow closer to God.

Spend more time doing life. And I want to encourage others through this process.

To help me kick this off I have asked some wonderful people (girls and guys alike) on my Facebook page and twitter to help me out and guest post for me. (if you wanna join in too, contact me!) Speak whats on their hearts. Tell me about their struggles and what they are doing to turn those into positivity, self-love, and growth!

On top of that I already have a lot of exciting things in my life in 2017 that I can’t wait to share as they happen!

 

Hope to see you around and that you benefit from this journey as much as I.

 

 

Time To Share The Love || Paradox by A.J Paquette

Hello Readers and Happy Monday!

I am SO excited to bring you today’s book review. Today I am reviewing (as the title of the post says) Paradox by A.J Paquette. I have been meaning to read this book for a while and I FINALLY had the chance to sit down and read for the first time in a couple weeks…So it was obvious I was gonna pick this baby up 🙂 Oh! and fun fact quickly before I start!

Fun Fact: The author of this book is my mum’s cousin which I think is SUPER cool and I am very proud of. (I love my family heehee 🙂 )

Now! On with the review!

 

The Maze Runner meets Hatchet in this sci-fi adventure with a surprise twist ending that no one will see coming.

Survive one world. Save another.

Ana wakes on a barren alien world. The instructions in her pocket tell her that she must survive a trek across Paradox in less than 28 hours.

Mission? Check.
Weapons? Check.
Memory? Missing. . . .

Meeting up with three other teens—including one boy who seems strangely familiar—Ana treks across the inhospitable landscape, occasionally encountering odd twists of light that carry glimpses of people back on Earth. They’re fighting some sort of disease, and the situation is critical. What’s the connection between Ana’s mission and the crisis back on Earth, and how is she supposed to figure it out when she can’t remember anything?

I LOVED this book! It was probably one of the best novels Sci-Fi novels I have read in a while! Absolutely fantastic. Within a couple hours I had finished this book and was left in complete shock and was brutally attacked by feels.

I don’t really know what I was expecting from the book but it certainly wasn’t what I was expecting at all! It was more and better than I had expected. (Not that I hadn’t expected it to be great…I just didn’t know what kind of greatness to expect)

and the ending….oh my…Don’t even get me started on the ending. I had a ‘stare at the last page and hope this is a joke and there is one more chapter’ moment….Sadly there was not another chapter…but OH THE FEELS!

I was very intrigued by the characters and I really loved seeing things from the POV of an amnesiac character. How she saw things and even portrayed the characters made a huge difference and had a unique spin to it which I loved!

The whole planet Paradox thing was a cool spin too. The setting was so well done that I felt like I was there, felt like I was on that planet Paradox racing against a count down (and running from a giant, human eating worm) with these characters. It was absolutely amazing!

I’m hoping that there is or will be a book two in the making. The way the book ended really had me wondering if there is or COULD be a possible sequel for Paradox.

One last note…If you liked The Maze Runner (mainly The Death Cure) then you will LOVE this book and you should definitely read this 😀

My Rating:

So, thats my review! What did you think? Have you read ‘Paradox’? Do you plan to? Is it on your TBR list? If you have read it, what did you think of it? I hope you love(d) it!

Until Next Time!

Adriana Gabrielle

Descending by Holly Kelly

Hello Readers!

I am FINALLY back on track here and got a book review for you…It was supposed to be a review by the Maze Runner….but this book was sitting there in my Kindle too and I wanted to read it again so yeah…that happened. Forget Harry Potter and the Maze runner haha. Sorry, but in my book ANYTHING to do with mermaids or the like I’m sold and that may or may not take higher priority so…yeah. Let’s get this review started. Though I will say that I finished this book on the 5 hours car trip this weekend to my final destination but I did start Maze Runner on the trip home…but This one is still higher priority…Juuuuuuust sayin!

 

So a while ago, I did a review of the fist book in this series called ‘Rising’ (Which you can get on Kindle for FREE) and you can check out my review of the first book HERE. So, with that said lets get started on this review. *bounces up and down in excitement*

 

Isn’t the cover so pretty?!

 

 

When Xanthus cashes in a long-standing favor, Kyros is faced with doing two things he thought he’d never do—protect a mermaid and live on land. Dagonians loathe mermaids and Sara, Xanthus’s wife, is no exception. Also, a Dagonian standing on human legs? It’s just not natural!

As if being around the vile creatures responsible for polluting his home and killing his sister wasn’t horrible enough, Kyros has to deal with Sara’s troublesome human friend, Gretchen. This spunky human tries his patience and makes him feel things he shouldn’t be feeling—least of all for a land-walker! When Gretchen’s life is threatened, he is forced to become her protector. But there are two problems. First, how can he fight his attraction to her when he must keep her close? And second, when a mermaid wants you dead, no one can be trusted. Not even the ones you love.

 

Plot: So, this is my second time reading this book. (I read it right after I read the first one but I just didn’t review it when it was fresh in my mind..) You all know the reason why I read it again over the other two I planned to read this weekend but I really didn’t care. This book is beautiful. Anyways. Plot. Loved it! With both books the plot has been very unique, engaging and absolutely amazing! Holly Kelly did I great job with it and avoiding cliches (which can easily happen in books including mermaids or more common fantasy creatures.) But this was brilliantly done and unique! Absolutely loved it!

So much action, adventure and romance *giggles like a little school girl*

 

Genre: Most definitely Fantasy and Romance…Even better the best part about it is that the romance is clean too! *resists urge to happy dance* It is so hard to find things that are clean in fiction over all but especially when it comes to romance 😛 So yeah…

 

Characters: Wooh! This is my favourite part of the review! We once again see Sara and Xanthus in this novel but on top of those two characters (who I LOVE) We have a cast of new, main characters, who are absolutely amazing…and can we talk about these amazingly awesome guys in this book….First I loved Xanthus and now Kyros? Oh my goodness… *dies* why are they so amazing? How can one fall so hard for book characters? Like what…? (I still don’t understand the fangirl life I live sometimes…) Anyways, Besides that, I was also so glad to see Gretchen playing a more main role in this novel too!

 

Gretchen: So, as I just said, I was so excited to have her in more of a main role in this novel 🙂 I loved her character in Rising so seeing her take a main role in this one. Super exciting! I love Gretchen. She’s got quite a temper, she’s sassy, sarcastic, driven and rather stubborn. Her stubborness makes things a little difficult at points but that, my friends, is the fun of it! Gretchen is definitely awesome and one of my favourites thats for sure 🙂

 

Aella: Meet the mermaid baddie of the novel. (and unlike with Rising I actually remembered the antagonists name…) She’s cruel, violent, a murderer and just all around evil…Oh! Did I mention she’s got a few thousand years of killing people under her belt.. So yeah, all around evil and a psychopath, y’all. A psychopath who is out to kill Gretchen *dramatic music*

 

Kyros: Kyros is Xanthus’s Dagonian friend who, along with 3 others, is assigned with the task of protecting Gretchen…On land. Kyros started out as very cold, standoffish and just plain old grumpy to be honest. I loved his character (and the relationship between he and Gretchen *squeals* ) and even though he started off really grumpy and a little harsh, his grouchy protectiveness kinda grows on ya. Like a lot…Don’t say I didn’t warn you that you may (its very likely) get a fictional crush on this guy!

 

Okay. Pausing the Character section of the review for a moment…well kind of. Before I move on to the last couple characters, I wanna point out something I found amusing. There were multiple times Gretchen and/or Sara would go out, escorted by multiple Dagonians and the author showed how basically everyone kind of just stared at these girls beings escorted by these giant men…and while reading this, in my head I’m just going: #mylife (okay maybe take away the hashtag but you get what I mean) *cough cough* My Dad is 6’4″, My Uncle is 6’8″ and my two cousins are both really tall dudes…(about 6’4″ to 6’5″ ish..) and my other uncle is like 6’5″ ish so you get my point… Some of my friends are even scared/intimidated by my Dad and Uncle (The one who is 6’8″) and I’m totally cool with it. But yeah…reading those scenes made me giggle just a bit 😛 (I mean the author never specified how tall these guys were in the novel so they could be taller than Six foot something but yeah… anyways. Back to the review of the characters!

 

Okay so, these last two characters we don’t see much of. (one of them is just a little child) but I am hoping that in the next novel (which I am almost dying waiting for) they will make a return and maybe be mentioned more.

First is Thane: Son of Thanatos (who is Death himself)** and a very important character of significance to this story! What is said significance? Well….

I tried to resist the urge of using a GIF but I couldn’t!

If you want to find out this characters significance, go read this book 😉 All I’m saying is that I hope to see more of this character later!

 

Donovan: Now this is the character who is just a baby…I mean it literally. But I feel like SOOOOOO many things could happen here with this little character thrown into the cast here. You hardly see any of this character except in the last couple chapters but I’m guessing here that this character could be significant later! (If not, whatever.. but still! I’m just so excited and making assumptions and guesses all over the place here!)

 

Now that that is done its time for my overall thoughts and rating of this book!

*drumroll*

…….

 

…….

 

…….

 

 

And 5 stars for me! I absolutely loved this novel to itty bitty little pieces! Such a well done book and an amazing read! Absolutely love it and cannot wait for the next book! ( I also REALLY want a movie series made of this book series. Like, you have NO idea how badly I want it!)

 

And that is it for my review of this wonderful book! Have you read this novel before? or Rising? Do you plan on reading them? (if you don’t I suggest you change your mind 😉 ) Is there any other novels you find amazing that have to do with mermaids and/or other fantasy creatures? 

Talk to me below my lovely readers! I love hearing from you! (and I reply to all comment 😉 )

Until Next Time!

Adriana Gabrielle

** like mentioned above these novels are linked with Greek Gods and many others hence Thane being the son of Death so…yeah 😛