Gabriella M Reads

Where I've Been If you follow me on Twitter then this information is not new to you but.... I GOT A JOB! In the middle of October I began work as a special needs paraprofessional at a preschool. I have been pretty absent from blogging and a little absent from social media ever since. I promise I still love blogging and books are a HUGE part of my life. The thing is that I am still trying to find my balance. Right now my life looks like this: wake up, get ready, go to work, come home, eat, do laundry, and sleep. I try to fit some reading in where I can and if I'm honest I usually can't. The days go by so fast. Keeping up with toddlers is hard work. I wouldn't change it though. I love my job and even on days when I don't want to go to work those kiddos put a smile on my face the second I get there. I have never felt more needed and loved outside of my close circle and it feels amazing. I'm hoping to find my groove soon and post at least two reviews a month,...

The Nowhere Girls by Amy Reed 4.5 Stars I want to start by saying that I fought hard for this book. I requested it on NetGalley, straight from the publisher, lurked on books for trade and I just could not get my hands on it. So when I saw it pop up in the ARC Adoption program run by Emma at Miss Print I practically begged her for it. I got lucky. It may have taken me a while, but here is my review. From the minute I heard about The Nowhere Girls I wanted to get my hands on it. If you've been around for a while then you know I feel a connection to certain books about the hard stuff. Some being mental illnesses, some on assault, bullying, and so many more. The Nowhere Girls centers on rape, consent, breaking the silence and the sad norms surrounding such things. For this exact reason I needed it in my life. To me this book is pretty slow, but very important. The chapters alternate perspectives as a group of girls try to get justice for a fellow teenage girl previo...

Welcome to my second post for the 2017 Debut Author Bash! Today we will be focusing on Stephanie Elliot and her debut novel, Sad Perfect. You can also find information about a giveaway at the end. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! An Essay from Stephanie Elliot This year, my novel  Sad Perfect  debuted in the world. It was a thing that started from a little idea, and then it became two words, and then more words, and then there was a book. I got an agent, I got a publisher, I did edits for about two years, and then, my dream came true. I have a book out there in the world, and yes, it was a dream of mine. It was a dream that I went after, and something I had thought about, wanted to do for a very long time. My dream was accomplished through hard work and determination. I made it happen because I wanted it to happen. You can make your dreams happen too. You want to be a singer? Practice. Take singing lessons. Learn from other singers. You want to dance ...

Hello and welcome to day one of the 2017 Debut Author Bash! This year I'll be doing a couple of days and today is all about Kate Hart! I hope you enjoy! About the Book A YA debut about a teen girl who wrestles with rumors, reputation, and her relationships with two brothers. Seventeen-year-old Raychel is sleeping with two boys: her overachieving best friend Matt…and his slacker brother, Andrew. Raychel sneaks into Matt’s bed after nightmares, but nothing ever happens. He doesn’t even seem to realize she’s a girl, except when he decides she needs rescuing. But Raychel doesn't want to be his girl anyway. She just needs his support as she deals with the classmate who assaulted her, the constant threat of her family’s eviction, and the dream of college slipping quickly out of reach. Matt tries to help, but he doesn’t really get it… and he’d never understand why she’s fallen into a secret relationship with his brother. The friendships are a precarious balance, and when t...

These Things I've Done by Rebecca Phillips 5 Stars Thank you so much to the lovely Eric Smith for sending me one of his agent copies of These Things I've Done for review. I don't know how many of y'all have read the synopsis for this book, but the one line that made me absolutely NEED it was this: "It’s been fifteen months since the accident that killed Aubrey, and not a day goes by that Dara isn’t racked with guilt over her role in her best friend’s death." Specifically the part about her role. It had me intrigued. What was her role? What happened? Why did she leave? Why did she come back? I was full of questions just from the simple summary of the book and I had to have answers. These Things I've Done follows Dara in chapters alternating between her Sophomore year and her senior year in high school. Essentially showing her life before and after the incident that ended up leaving her best friend Aubrey dead. It feels only right to split t...

This Is Not the End by Chandler Baker 5 Stars I want to thank Cassie McGinty from Disney Publishing Worldwide for sending me a finished copy for review. I am so incredibly grateful for this opportunity. I initially showed interest in This Is Not the End because of the idea that you can bring someone back from the dead. It got me to thinking about if I would use that opportunity if it were given to me. It's really interesting to look inside yourself and question such things. In This Is Not the End our main character, Lake, will get to resurrect one person on her eighteenth birthday like everyone else as stated by the law. Her birthday is looming and she has already promised her resurrection to someone when an accident takes away two of the most important people in her life. Now she's faced with possibly breaking her promise and the pressure added by others. When I went in and first learned about the very person she promised to resurrect I was internally shoutin...

Collective Wrap-Up Arc August: As y'all know I signed up to do ARC August, an event where all of us try our hardest to read all of our backlogged review copies (advanced reader copies or ARCs specifically). I'm very bad at sticking to TBRs and forcing myself to read when I don't really feel like it so I set a very realistic goal for myself. In August I set out to read one ARC. Yes you read that correctly, ONE. I'm happy to announce that I at the very least reached my goal. In August I was only able to read one ARC. I was in a major slump and really didn't want to read anything that I felt like I HAD to read. The ARC I chose was to my surprise, one from my TBR. I read and actually enjoyed A Season for Fireflies by Rebecca Maizel. This was a book about a girl who was struck by lightning and lost some of her more recent memories and her struggles to try and remember all the changes she had made in those missing periods. I enjoyed it enough. I did get a littl...

Forsaken by Connie Ann Michael  Release Date: May 23, 2017 ISBN: 9780997727890 Eighteen-year-old Oli cannot remember life outside the barrier, a life before the oil spill that poisoned human kind, killing half the population and infecting the other half until they deteriorated from the inside out, forced to walk the earth as Screamers. It’s a dangerous new world in which barely anyone makes it past the age of twenty, and Oli’s time is running out.   Studying the Bible, Oli searches for words to help restore faith in a lost world, and when she receives a message from God telling her to leave the barrier, she knows what she must do. There’s only one problem: Her best friend, Coi, doesn’t believe her, and he’s showing the first signs of infection. But before she can convince him to leave with her, the Governor quarantines Coi and orders his execution. ​ Oli risks it all to rescue Coi, and they set out to find sanctuary away from the safety of the compound, not knowin...

You Don't Know Me but I Know You by Rebecca Barrow 5 Stars First off, I want to thank the kind, Rebecca Barrow for sending me a copy of this book after I won a giveaway. I think I entered quite a few for this book because of how badly I wanted to read it and I am so incredibly thankful that I was able to. For those of you who don't know, the main themes of this book are teenage pregnancy and adoption. Our main character, Audrey, was adopted and while it's not made to be some big deal, it is something she talks about/thinks about quite often in relation to her own current situation. That situation being a pregnancy. I swear that's not a spoiler by the way, it's in the synopsis. We also get the chance to see a decently healthy relationship between Audrey and her boyfriend, Julian , which I really appreciate. The thing that made me want to read this book so bad was in fact the pregnancy. I don't know about you, but I don't see a lot of YA book...

Bookish Facts About Me! Hello and welcome back! Today is my 23rd birthday and so I thought it would be fun to share 23 book related facts about myself rather than the standard 25. I hope you enjoy getting to know me a little bit better! One: My love for reading was sparked by my love for Beauty and the Beast. I wanted to be just like Belle and she loved books! Two: My first notable read was Charlotte's Web by E.B. White and my grandma is the one who bought it for me. Three: My favorite part of second grade was weekly library trips with my grandma.  Four: I never did the required reading for school. There's just something about having to read that makes me not want to. Five: My favorite childhood series was Magic Tree House and to this day I still plan to repurchase them all so that my future children can have them. Six: I started Harry Potter when I was around 18 and I still have not finished. I need to read Deathly Hallows. Seven: The Twilight series by Steph...

Star Wars Book Tag I am so late on this tag, but I was also late in my becoming a Star Wars fan so I guess it just fits. I stumbling across this one about a week ago, a few different ones actually. I liked this one the best so I just had to do it. Let's get started! Oh man, a book that made me laugh? I think I would have to say Dirty Rush by Taylor Bell. I didn't laugh throughout the whole thing, but man did it have its moments. It's about rushing for a sorority and all that comes with it. The good, the bad, and the dirty. A kickass female character would be Charlotte from Aftermath by Clara Kensie. Some of you may be confused by that choice while others may not be. This girl did what she had to do to survive and after that she did what she could to stay strong, find her new normal, and find the girl who came before her. She did it double and she's amazing for that. TWILIGHT. We all knew it was Bella and Edward until the end and we had to sit and ...

ARC August 2017 As I'm sure you know by now, I'll be talking about ARC August. This is an event hosted by Read Sleep Repeat where we all get together and read our ARCs or Advanced Reader Copies. These can be new ones or old ones. As long as it's an ARC it doesn't matter. Now this is only my second ARC August and to avoid a slump, I'm giving myself a ton of options. My overall goal is to finish at least two. Which may not seem like a lot, but I also want to read some published books as well throughout the month. Being as July isn't over, I could still get to some of these before August but I'm making my TBR anyway. Wish me luck! Tentative TBR: - Submerge by Tobie Easton - The Nowhere Girls by Amy Reed - As You Wish by Chelsea Sedoti (I want to read this one around my birthday) - Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer - Change Places With Me by Lois Metzger - A Season for Fireflies by Rebecca Maizel - How It Feels to Fly by Kathryn Holmes - Race t...