Abducted by Dash and Lily and the Blog Hop!

Wow, today is going to be a really busy day for me and my blog! We have my #3 post in my week long marathon of posting which will be on Dash and Lily, then we have the Friday blog hop hosted by Crazy For Books, but also today is the start of my first giveaway!

To celebrate my one year anniversary I'm hosting a giveaway that begins today and runs through April 12th! All you have to do is enter the form on the link below and you will be entered to win a $15 gift certificate for Amazon! In order to enter you just have to follow either my blog, or my friend Kate's blog MIDNIGHTBOOKGIRL, or both. And if you add yourself as a new follower be sure to leave a comment so that I can return the favor and follow you as well.

In order to be abducted by my giveaway just click on the abduction below...









and for my answer to the blog hop and my review on Dash and Lily just keep reading!






The question for this week was;



"Do you read only one book at a time, or do you have several going at once?"



My answer: I usually have several going at once. Anywhere from 2 to 4. But there is always one of the books that tends to be more of a priority. Also, they aren't all the same media.

Like right now, I have 4 books I'm reading but 2 are audio books.

I have one that I listen to in my car (A Horse And His Boy by C.S. Lewis), then a book I read that I keep at work (The Return Journey by Maeve Binchy), then I have a book I read at home (Anna And The French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins), and then another audio book that I listen to as I'm getting ready for bed (The Pilgrim's Regress by C.S. Lewis).



Now for my review of Dash and Lily's Book of Dares by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn...





I LOVED this book! I mean there were moments where I might have wavered slightly but all in all I LOVED it!!! It was one of my audio books but I promise you that in December I'm going to buy the actual book and reread it just in time for Christmas!

I know some of you might have some reservations about this one so here is my disclaimer: are you the type of person who when you watch one of those Hallmark Channel type movies on tv you find yourself thinking at times how full of holes the plot is and how terrible the acting is and how horrifyingly bad the dialogue is AND YET, at the end you find yourself filled with that warm fuzzy feeling in spite of it all?

If your answer is no, okay fine, truth be told you may not like this one.

If your answer is yes, What are you waiting for? Go read it now!

First of all, speaking as someone who LOVES books, I loved how much Dash and Lily LOVED books. The story spends a lot of time in The Strand bookstore in NYC so the authors had plenty of opportunities to make various references to books that I love, like the Godfather!

Also they made tons of references to Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger which is a book I have wanted to read for FOREVER! And Rachel and David included references to another book they wrote together; Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. For example there is a scene where Lily is looking at the writing on the bathroom stall in some club and she reads the words that Norah had written. I thought that was pretty cool.

It is kind of funny though that these characters love books, and make lots of references to all kinds of books, and yet there was one failed reference to Hermonie Potter! At first it really annoyed me but then by the end of the book I had kind of forgotten about it so I guess it wasn't such a big deal.

I loved Dash, although he could be pretty pretentious at times. I also really loved his friend Boomer! At first I thought Dash's friendship with Boomer was odd but after a while Boomer really grew on me and by the end of the book he was one of my favorite characters.

Lily was a little too goody-two-shoes for my taste. At first she didn't really bother me and I thought it was funny to have her love Christmas so much in contrast towards Dash's perspective. But after awhile it really started to bother me that she was soooooooo naive. I mean she was supposed to be 16? and her family treated her like she was 10 and she acted like she was 5! And speaking of her family...OH MY GOD her brother was obnoxious!!!! When he got sick and was whining for Lily to come read to him, I rolled my eyes so hard I had a headache the rest of the night!

But all I want to say in conclusion is that, I think those of us out there in the book blogging community get so used to dissecting books that sometimes we forget to look at the book as a whole. Yes, if you take Dash and Lily apart you will find plenty of flaws, but there is an essence about this book that was intoxicating. A tone or vibe that had me smiling the whole time I was reading it (expect in the scenes with Lily's brother and then I was rolling my eyes to hard to smile). Yes, the dialogue was lacking in some spots and the characters weren't always relateable, but I wont deny the warm fuzzy feelings that pour out of this book!


Thanks for reading my post, be sure to enter for the giveaway! Have a great weekend and I will see you all tomorrow!