LOOKING FOR GROUP by Rory Harrison | Review

LOOKING FOR GROUP

Publisher: HarperTeen

Publish Date: April 25th 2017

Page Amount: 368 Pages

Price: $17.99 Hardback

ISBN: 0062453076 (ISBN13: 9780062453075) 

Learn more about Rory Harrison Here! 

Read more about LOOKING FOR GROUP on Goodreads!

Order LOOKING FOR GROUP!

Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Book Depository

Cover and Summary of the book are from Goodreads.

Looking for group for the quest of a lifetime.

Dylan doesn’t have a lot of experience with comfort. His room in the falling-down Village Estates can generously be categorized as “squalid,” and he sure as hell isn’t getting any love from his mother, who seemed to—no, definitely did—enjoy the perks that went along with being the parent of a “cancer kid.”

Now that Dylan’s suddenly in remission, all he’s left with is a lingering OxyContin addiction and a hunger for something—anything—but the life he’s known.

His only escape has been in the form of his favorite video game—World of Warcraft—and the one true friend who makes him feel understood, even if it’s just online. Dylan met Arden playing Warcraft, and now he wants to take her on a real mission, one he never thought he’d live to set out on: a journey to a mysterious ship in the middle of the Salton Sea.

But Arden is fighting her own battles, ones that Dylan can’t always help her win. As they navigate their way west, they grapple with Arden’s father (who refuses to recognize his daughter’s true gender), Dylan’s addiction, and the messy, complicated romance fighting so hard to blossom through the cracks of their battle-hardened hearts.

How to Make a Mood Board | Mood Board Monday Instructions

If you haven't already, you should read my introduction to Mood Board Monday. Otherwise, you might be kind of lost as to why I'm providing this tiny tutorial.

If you read this post first, hello! This is going to be a fairly short post, because all I'm doing is introducing you to the website that I use to make my mood boards & a tiny bit of my process.

Of course, before you put a mood board together, you have to find images to use. You can pick as many images as you want, but I suggest anywhere between 4-8 for a mood board that is still easy to make. (Some "Mood Board Makers" have limits on how many pictures you can upload, hence the suggestion).

After you find your images and save them somewhere you can access them, you'll want to go to the website https://www.befunky.com/features/collage-maker/. Of course, if you want to find your own website for making these, you can always Google "photo collage maker" or "mood board maker" and then shift through the results until something suits you.

This should be the first screen that you see. Click on "Get Started" to enter into the collage maker!

Select your language, and then the following screen should be what you see. 

My photo maker is automatically set for 6 pictures (as you can see by the default pictures to the left) but you can easily change the amount of pictures/layout of the collage that you want to include by clicking the layouts button (the button with the four squares). You can even mess around with other settings such as spacing, corner rounding, and background color too!

Below, I've included a list of all of the sidebar buttons and the menus that they can take you to.

From Top to Bottom:

Image Manager (the default screen)

Settings

Layouts

Patterns

Graphics

Text

Greeting Cards (just ignore this one!)

Each one of these tabs offer different features and styles for your Mood Board. It is incredibly easy to use and extremely straight forward so I'll let you do the exploring on your own. :)

You can play around with all of these tabs and add new pictures/etc. to your mood board until you are completely satisfied with how it looks. It only took me about 30 minutes to make my first mood board, and that includes the time I spent searching for pictures!

The reason I love this photo collage maker is because it isn't only easy to use, but because they have premade graphics and text that you can layer on top of your photo collage. On top of that, it doesn't cost a penny. 

When you are done, just click the save button to download it to your computer, or the share button to post it across all of your social media accounts. For Mood Board Monday, I recommend downloading it to your computer and then uploading it to your blog post.

That is it! 

Now, go out and make your Mood Boards for the great new feature!

For Mood Board Veterans: Are there any other sites you recommend or tips you have for us? Let us know in the comments! :)

For Mood Board Newbies: Was this tutorial helpful? Is there anything else that you need to know? Most importantly, are you excited for the new feature?

Introducing Mood Board Monday | Weekly Blog Feature

Lately, I've been seeing a lot of book bloggers create "mini pinterest boards" based on the books that they read. Most of the time, I've seen these photo collages as an extra to their reviews, without any real emphasis on the photo collage, or mood board, itself.

Some of my favorites come from the blog What Sarah Read. She, like many others, makes amazing photo collages and I am blown away by the creativity in her posts. I thought I would enclose an example of one of her mood boards to show you all exactly what a moodboard is and how you go about creating one. 

A moodboard is basically a photo collage, a mishmosh of different photos with different subjects and "feels" to them that come together to create an overall piece. They are really quite simple to make and it's really fun too!

What does this have to do with the new weekly blog feature? It turns out, just about everything. 

Introducing.......Mood Board Monday!

Here's how the feature would work. 

The blogger (you) would pick a book that you have read or are anticipating to feature on your blog. Then, you would essentially create a mood board for that book (if you don't know how to do that yet, it's okay. I have a post explaining how to make a moodboard and what I use). After creating your moodboard, there are a few questions that you would answer about the book and the moodboard that you made. 

These questions are not a definitive list, I'll be adding and changing questions based on your suggestions, but if you think of a question that you want to answer, go ahead and add that in. You don't have to answer any of these questions if you don't want to, but I just thought that they would be a nice companion with the moodboard.

•  Who was your favorite character in the book? 
• Did you pick any specific characters or scenes to be represented in your Moodboard? 
• Did your Mood Board take a specific color scheme? If you actively chose one, why did you chose that specific color? 
• Was there a picture that you just couldn't find to incorporate into your mood board? If you can answer it with little to no spoilers, tell us how it related to the book!
• If you read the book, what was your rating for it? Link us to your review if you have one! :)

After answering these questions, I also request that you include a summary of the book, just in case your readers are interested in learning more. A link to Goodreads would be helpful as well!

And, that's it! If you are interested in participating in this new feature, let me know in the comments and link me to your mood board! I'm working on putting together a page for Mood Board Monday on my blog in the future, so that we can see all of the amazing posts that you have put together! I'll update this post when that page is live. 

RoseBlood by A.G. Howard | Waiting on Wednesday

Publisher: Amulet Books

Publish Date: January 10th 2017 

Page Amount: 464 pages

Price: $18.95 Hardback
ISBN: 1419719092 (ISBN13: 9781419719097)

PreOrder RoseBlood Here!

Learn More About A.G. Howard Here!

Learn more about the book on Goodreads here!

In this modern day spinoff of Leroux’s gothic tale of unrequited love turned to madness, seventeen-year-old Rune Germain has a mysterious affliction linked to her operatic talent, and a horrifying mistake she’s trying to hide. Hoping creative direction will help her, Rune’s mother sends her to a French arts conservatory for her senior year, located in an opera house rumored to have ties to The Phantom of the Opera.

At RoseBlood, Rune secretly befriends the masked Thorn—an elusive violinist who not only guides her musical transformation through dreams that seem more real than reality itself, but somehow knows who she is behind her own masks. As the two discover an otherworldly connection and a soul-deep romance blossoms, Thorn’s dark agenda comes to light and he’s forced to make a deadly choice: lead Rune to her destruction, or face the wrath of the phantom who has haunted the opera house for a century, and is the only father he’s ever known.

A. G. Howard brings the romantic storytelling that Splintered fans adore to France—and an entirely new world filled with lavish romance and intrigue—in a retelling inspired by a story that has captivated generations. Fans of both the Phantom of the Opera musical and novel, as well as YA retellings such as Marissa Meyer’s Cinder, will devour RoseBlood.

Is there anything special about this book that you are looking forward to?

Of course!

I absolutely love re-tellings. Marissa Meyer's The Lunar Chronicles Series (which features several retellings of Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel to name a few) is one of my favorite series. I love how authors are able to take well-known stories and put their own twist on them. Even if two authors wrote two re-tellings of the same story, both books would end up drastically different. I'm excited for this book because I really want to see A.G. Howard's interpretation of The Phantom of the Opera and see how The Phantom of the Opera plays into the story.

Another reason why I am super excited for this book is that RoseBlood is a spin-off/modern retelling of The Phantom of the Opera! I used to think that authors only wrote re-tellings of fairytales, Imagine my surprise and delight when I stumbled across RoseBlood! 

I used to watch The Phantom of the Opera all of the time when I was younger. One of my friends had a gigantic celebrity crush on Gerard Butler, so I would watch it with her almost every time I was over at her house. Not to mention, we were (and still are) giant musical theater lovers, so this movie quickly became one of our favorites. I think that we eventually could recite the entire production by heart. (Okay, maybe I wasn't at that level, but my friend definitely was!).

I honestly was shocked when I discovered RoseBlood, but I guarantee that this was in a good way! Reading the synopsis brought back a flood of childhood memories for me, and made my need for this book so much stronger!

I also love the synopsis, as always. It's a rarity to find a re-telling that isn't inspired by a fairy-tale, let alone a book that features a seventeen-year old musical prodigy. I have a strong love for music and I'm excited that I finally found a character that feels the same way about music.

 I also know that RoseBlood has been compared to Marissa Meyer's works, so I'm very excited to read this book, since I loved Marissa Meyer's The Lunar Chronicles!

How did you hear of this book? From a Goodreads Search, Blogger Buddies, Twitter, etc.?

I actually found this book through Twitter. I can't remember which user sent out a tweet about it, but it linked to the synopsis. I was immediately hooked on this book and I determined that I need to have this book in my life. 

Have you read any of the author's works before?

Nope! I know that A.G. Howard has other books, but I haven't read them yet! I'm so excited that I discovered her though. I will definitely have to get my hands on her other books. 

What do you think about the cover? What about the title?

If there was a perfect example of insta-love, this would be it. The cover is not only beautiful and mysterious in it's own right, but it also ties in The Phantom of the Opera beautifully. I love the blue in the cover and how it contrasts with the red of the roses. Also, I think it's extremely clever to feature roses and their thorns.

Of course, the cover and the title go beautifully together. I just love that your eye is drawn to the roses in the cover and the title has "Rose" in it! I absolutely adore the title! 

When is the release date for this book? Do you think you can wait that long to read it?
This book comes out in January of 2017, according to Goodreads! That release date is so far away! I would love to read this book earlier if I had the opportunity! 

What do you think of this week's pick? What are you waiting on? Let me know in the comments below!