It’s Monday! What are you Reading? is hosted by Sheila at Book Journeys and invites bloggers to recap what they’ve read this week while planning ahead on what to read next! Jen at Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee at Unleashing Readers added their own twist by focusing on kidlit, from picture books up to YA.

Two snow days at the start of the week helped me get through some great titles!!

Here’s what I read:

(Click on the book covers to add these titles to your Goodreads TBR piles)

The Mortal Instruments Series, Book #1: City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
2007
YA  Fantasy
My Goodreads Rating: 5/5 Stars
I really, really liked this storyline and couldn’t put it down. I am definitely going to make an effort and read more of the series.

The Grisha Trilogy, Book #2: Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo
2013
YA Fantasy
My Goodreads Rating: 5/5
The first two books in the Grisha Trilogy are my favorite fantasy books that I think I have ever read. I love the Russian inspired setting, all of the maps and unique places and elements of magic throughout. Bardugo is a master at writing characters. Sturmhond is one of the best out there, while the Darkling makes for one fantastic villain. Book three, Ruin and Rising, is scheduled to be released on June 3rd, and I cannot wait to see how this story ends.

Heist Society, Book #3: Perfect Scoundrels by Ally Carter
2013
YA Contemporary Fiction
My Goodreads Rating: 5/5 Stars
My third perfect rating of the week! I’ve always loved the Heist Society series and still think it would make a great TV show. This one is really centered around the meaning of family, and while I didn’t think it was as fun as Uncommon Criminals, I loved seeing what all of the characters got themselves into this go around. I hope there are more of these books.

Losing It  Series #1, Losing It
2012
New Adult Romance
My Goodreads Rating: 3/5 Stars
I’ve ventured into the genre of New Adult, readers. For those unsure what New Adult books are, I like to think of them as books with main characters that are college age or right out of college and are facing more mature life decisions than Young Adult characters. Or something like that. It’s still pretty blurry to me, honestly. Anyway, I got some NA recs from a fellow reader on Twitter and a blog that I follow and Losing It ended up being my first pick, based on Amazon reviews and price. A lot of NA ebooks are pretty reasonable which makes me feel a tiny bit less guilty about purchasing them. The storyline is about exactly what you think it’s about based on that cover and while it was pretty predictable, I thought it was an ok read. I read it in two sittings and would read another by this author.

City of Ember: The Graphic Novel by Jeanne D. Prau
2012
MG Science Fiction
My Goodreads Rating: 4/5 Stars
When I first read the original City of Ember way back when, I really enjoyed it. I thought it was different from other MG books and read the entire series. While I think this graphic novel version is pretty good overall, it does not go into nearly as much detail and background into the city and story as the original. But, I think it would be a great intro to science fiction for students that have never read any. I am going to read this version with my students next semester and have them compare it with the movie version and do all sorts of things with it. I do have the original book on CD too, so we can compare parts of that version as well.

Here’s what I plan to read next: (Click on the cover for more info from Goodreads)

All of these books come very highly rated on Goodreads and Amazon. Life is So Good is my first Random Read for January (You can read more about Random Reads here), and the others are books I’ve been meaning to get to for some time. Bomb is a free copy I received in a Scholastic order, and the others are all library books. I’m on a major book buying freeze right now (Well…minus the PD book I bought last night) and have been requesting titles from my local library left and right! See you next week!

Happy Reading!