Best of 2010!

Hello dolls! With the year coming to an end, I want to work on my Best of 2010! From books that I've read, to films that's I've watched, to my favorite music of the year! Let me start out with my favorite subject, BOOKS!!!

Best series I read: The Hunger Games series

This great series ended this year, but the ride was so much fun. I had a few issues with the last book, but I've discussed it at length with a ton of my friends, so I'll just let it go.

Best Hot Scene in a book: Shiver

I can't pick a particular scene, that's too hard. This entire book is HOT! Can't wait for the last book in this series! (Out July 12, 2011)

Favorite book of 2010: Beautiful Creatures

I started 2010 reading Beautiful Creatures and it still stands as my favorite book overall, and it gets crowned as the book of the year! Going to start 2011 by reading the sequel, Beautiful Darkness!

Best Film of 2010: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 1

This film is pretty much the most awaited film of the decade! If you missed it then you better get your self to a theater to watch it!

Best of Animated film: Tangled

Disney has recreated one of the most beloved films in a heart felt way. Tangled is Walt Disney Animated Studio's 50th animated film. It all started with Snow White and it leaded up to this great film! Totally recommend it!

Best Soundtrack: Almost Alice

An entire album where the songs are just dedicated to our favorite Alice is just genius. Using today's great music artists with just one theme brought together a great collection.

Best Music Album of the year: Tell Your Mama

I've mentioned The Vespers several times this year, on my blog, on twitter, on faceobok, and I can not get enough of them! Their first album, Tell Your Mama, became my favorite of the year. I hope they release another album soon because 13 songs are not enough to explore their greatness!

Stand by for my list of most awaited books, films and music of 2011! I just need to figure out when I want to post it (tomorrow, or have it post itself on January 1, 2011).

Thanks for reading!

Love and Sugar from me, Jess

Waiting on Wednesday!

For this weeks "Waiting on Wednesday" we have Rachel Vincent's fourth book in the Soul Screamers series, My Soul to Steal.

Here's the blurb!

YOU WANT MY SOUL AND MY BOYFRIEND?

Trying to work things out with
Nash—her maybe boyfriend—is hard enough for Kaylee Cavanaugh. She can’t just
pretend nothing happened. But “complicated” doesn’t even begin to describe their
relationship when his ex-girlfriend transfers to their school, determined to
take Nash back.

See, Sabine isn’t just an ordinary girl. She’s a mara,
the living personification of a nightmare. She can read people’s fears—and craft
them into nightmares while her victims sleep. Feeding from human fear is how she
survives.

And Sabine isn’t above scaring Kaylee and the entire school to
death to get whatever—and whoever—she wants.

I DON'T THINK SO.

Here's the heart wrenching book trailer for My Soul to Steal!!!



Make sure to pick of your own copy on January 1, 2011! Click on the widget bellow to purchase it, or here to purchase it from Amazon!

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Thank you for joining me in this week's "Waiting on Wednesday!"

Lots of Love and Sugar from me, Jess

And She Has Risen from Death...

Oh gosh I've been totally MIA! School has been my prison for the past 3 months. I did, however, survive with nothing bellow a B, so I'm pretty jolly right now.

Christmas came and went, and I must have been a really good girl because Santa brought me a ton of STUFF!!! I'll post more on that later, but first I need mention a new "marathon" I signed up for.

In the month of January Lori from Pure Imagination is hosting...


I have a month to read at least one book from the Harry Potter series, but I plan to read all 7 before I enter school on January 25. I'm sure I won't have time to read the minute I enter school. I plan to read each book in 3 days and watch the corresponding film after I read the book. I will post about my progress as I move along. I hope this works! I will still have a few days left over if I fall a bit behind. Wish me luck because I didn't do too well in the Jane Austen reading challenge (I had a year to fulfill it... it didn't work out...).

I'm going out of town for the New Year and I'll be starting the read-a-thon there. I'll be wi-fi less while there, so I won't be able to post anything until I get back on the 2nd.

Love you dolls!

Love and Sugar from me, Jess

Waiting on Wednesday!

For this week's Waiting on Wednesday I wanted to mainly show the great trailer for this book and explain a little bit about it.


Here's the synopses for Crescendo:

Nora should have know her life was far from perfect. Despite starting a relationship with her guardian angel, Patch (who, title aside, can be described anything but angelic), and surviving an attempt on her life, things are not looking up. Patch is starting to pull away and Nora can't figure out if it's for her best interest or if his interest has shifted to her arch-enemy Marcie Millar. Not to mention that Nora is haunted by images of her father and she becomes obsessed with finding out what really happened to him that night he left for Portland and never came home.

The farther Nora delves into the mystery of her father's death, the more she comes to question if her Nephilim blood line has something to do with it as well as why she seems to be in danger more than the average girl. Since Patch isn't answering her questions and seems to be standing in her way, she has to start finding the answers on her own. Relying too heavily on the fact that she has a guardian angel puts Nora at risk again and again. But can she really count on Patch or is he hiding secrets darker than she can even imagine?

I actually got a chance to participate in Barnes & Nobles Sneak Peak of this novel, so I got an Advance Reader Copy. I'm still reading it and it's getting really good! If I finish in time, I'll be able to participate in the discussion that we are going to have with the author herself, Becca Fitzpatrick.

I also got a chance to meet Becca in February:

I also wanted to share the hot trailer for Crescendo!

What did I say? HOT! Angels are sooooooooooo the new vampires!

We have these many days left until Crescendo is released into the wild!

Thanks for reading!

Love and sugar from me, Jess

Look What I Got in the Mail from Shay Doran!

Yes! The day has come! We can now get mail from fictional characters. Yaaaaaaaahoooooooo!!!

Hahaha! Gosh, the people that are publishing Andrea Cremer's book, Nightshade, really know how to spread the word! Let me explain.

Shay Doran is a fictional character in the novel Nightshade. The author seems to be working on a prequel novel based on Shay's adventures in his uncles mansion, in which he is now living in. Apparently, he's creeped out and keeps finding stranger and stranger things. The latest strange thing he found was in his uncle's library. There are old books with strange drawings/marks on them and they help decipher a clue/phrase. I sent an email to nightshade@campfirenyc.com and I got a chance to receive a clue from Shay. You can learn more about the chance to receive a special package from Shay in Andrea Cremer's blog. Here is what I got:

There were two pages that were bookmarked and they had this:

If you look at where the "spirals" are you can see that they surround certain words or letters. Here is what the clues say:

Clue #1: "a part of the memory of her fearless incident was found in the mountain of Colorado"

Clue #2: "a young and beautiful girl called ROWAN join in America, a handsome fellow with a curious sense of strangeness, of discovery." I'm supposing "join" should be "joined.

I haven't been able to figure out what it means yet, but like Shay said in the letter he sent with the book, he asked that I post it on his Facebook page to others can help solve "puzzle." If you help him out, you get a chance to be named in the prequel book. Hope there's more I can do to help! You can also follow Shay's blog to read posts from him and video blogs, which you can see on his blog or YouTube page.

I'm going to also post the YouTube video where he talks about the strange books in his uncle's library.



Thank you for reading! Let me know if you get a clue, so that maybe we can solve this together!

Love and Sugar from me, Jess

Smart Chicks Hit Pasadena!

I have never felt so much pleasure overload as I felt this past Monday. On Monday the Smart Chicks Kick It tour stopped in Vroman's in Pasadena! What is the Smart Chicks Kick It tour, you ask? It's a multi city book tour with not just one author, but several in each one. The Pasadena stop had 9 authors! Melissa Marr, Kelley Armstrong, and Alyson Noel toured in all of the stops and for this particular stop we also had Rachel Vincent, Melissa de la Cruz, Rachel Caine, Mary Pearson and by my 2 favorite dolls right now: Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl!!!

I wasn't thinking of going. I had considered it at some point during the summer, but I never went through thinking about it until last week when I started seeing the tour pictures and video. I became very jealous and decided I should be there having fun too!

Let me give you a run through of this great evening. I got to Pasadena fairly early to grab a place line ticket. The place line ticket was meant to save a place in line for when it came down to meet the authors to sign your books. A bit before the event started I made sure I situated myself somewhere close. I was right in front of the area where they held their Q & A! I also got the chance to meet the people around. I met this nice lady who had books from a few friends that shipped her their books. I also met these sweet dolls that got a chance to win Rachel Vincent's next book, My Soul to Steal, during the beginning of their presentation. Lucky ducks! Anyways, the dolls that I sat around with were very sweet, and it made the pre-signing presentation enjoyable.

On to the presentation! Like I mentioned before, the authors had great giveaways. Melissa Marr gave away an ARC of Darkest Mercy, the last book in her Wicked Lovely series, Rachel Caine gave a copy of Ghost Town, her latest book, which comes out next month, and like I mentioned before Rachel Vincent gave away an ARC of My Soul to Steal, out on January 1, 2011. They then gave away a ton of swag! Since I was right in front, they didn't shoot anything to me, but my mom was able to grab 5 Beautiful Darkness necklaces. Love you mom!!! They also raffled off this great gift basket with books from every author on tour and this one doll won the basket.There was also one more raffle to have someones name in the audience in the anthology that they all plan to write called Highway to Hell. It will be released sometime next fall.

They also went on ahead to reveal secrets of their book series and my favorite one was that Kelley Armstrong's Darkest Powers series is going to have 9 books!!!! Aaaah!!!!! Also Melissa Marr said that her book, Wicked Lovely, in is the process of being made into a film. Mary Pearson is also having her book, The Adoration of Jenna Fox, being made into a film.


They had a small Q & A session and then they had a lightning round. Margie was the host of the lightning round. Let me explain what the means. They had random questions from the audience such as what is your favorite color, or if you could be any animal which one would it be, and then the authors had to quickly answer. I can't remember their answers, but I remember Kami saying Black Sabbath twice, one where "what is your favorite band or musician" was asked and again when they were asked what character from Twilight was their favorite. Haha! They then had a round of "Marry, Shag or Throw Off a Cliff" where audeince memebers were allowed to come up, pick an author and say who in their series would they marry, shag or throw off a cliff. My favorite was for Alyson Noel's Immortals Series. This girl said she would marry Damien, shag Roman, and throw Haven off a cliff. Totally agree!

Then it was time to get my books signed!!! Yay! I also got a chance to get take pictures with almost everyone there! I didn't take a picture with Mary Pearson because my mind was working on over drive. I also forgot to get my Lena Necklace signed by Kami and Magie (I was so excited that they liked it and took of a picture of it that I forgot to ask). I also forgot to ask Kami and Margie for a signed Beautiful Darkness poster, but Margie did me the favor of giving it to me anyways! She's soooo sweet!

Kelley Armstrong and Rachel Vincent

Melissa de la Cruz and Melissa Marr

Margaret Stohl and Kami Garcia

Alyson Noel

Rachel Caine

Gosh! What a evening! I loved every minute of it and I hope to be able to go to it next year. Soooooo... Wait, what's that you say...? Oh what did I get signed? Well let me show you!

Look at my pretties... **drool** I got 13 books signed!!!

Here's all the swag that I got!

Two Smart Chicks Kick It posters signed by all of the authors that attended (one for a friend and one for me) and 3 Smart Chicks Kick It tour (one signed by all of the authors).

A ton of Alyson Noel book marks!

Swag from the other lovely authors that were there and...

All of the Beautiful Darkness swag that I got! I practically stare and drool over my Beautiful Darkness swag everyday.

If you want to see all of the pictures that I took from the Smart Chicks Kick It tour make sure to check out my facebook album.

Thank you so much for reading. You will notice that I will post very little for the next few months until December. I started school a few weeks ago and I've been having a lot of homework and readings to do. I will post when I can!

Love and Sugar from me, Jess

Enter the Darkness: Week 3

Here's this week's teaser trailer Beautiful Darkness:



Gosh I hope I figure out what all of this means by the time I at least finish the book. Haha! Make sure to check out the contest that does with these teasers on the Beautiful Creatures Blog. Make sure to also check out the Enter the Darkness page for all of the teasers up to now and to keep up on all of them.

We have these many days left until October 12th!



Thanks for reading!

Love and Sugar from me, Jess

We Have 3 Winners!

Yes I know, I was suppose to have 5 winners, but only 3 people entered. Let me list the winners of the signed Maggie Stiefvater bookmark!


Ari Noth from Teens Actually Read

Courtney Rae from Courtney Reads

Colleen McKie from Lavender Lines


Congrats dolls! I got your addresses from Twitter on Sunday night, so that I can ship the bookmarks later today. I'm going off to Youth Conference (Camp) with my dolls on Wednesday, so I wanted to make sure I sent out the bookmarks before then.

I'm very happy with how this turned out. I had started this contest with 19 readers. I now have 30 readers. Don't know how that happened, but I'm extremely grateful!

I do have 2 bookmarks left. I plan to give them away when Forever comes out next year. I'll see of I can purchase an extra copy of Forever and give it away with a bookmark!

Again thank you for reading, and thank you to all of my new readers. I adore you all!

Love and Sugar from me, Sweet Lady Jess

Waiting on Wednesday!

Yay! This week I bring you a book that I've mentioned before.


Here's the book description:

Hell on earth.

That’s what it’s like for Luce to be apart from her fallen angel boyfriend, Daniel.
It took them an eternity to find one another, but now he has told her he must go away. Just long enough to hunt down the Outcasts—immortals who want to kill Luce. Daniel hides Luce at Shoreline, a school on the rocky California coast with unusually gifted students: Nephilim, the offspring of fallen angels and humans.

At Shoreline, Luce learns what the Shadows are, and how she can use them as windows to her previous lives. Yet the more Luce learns, the more she suspects that Daniel hasn’t told her everything. He’s hiding something—something dangerous.
What if Daniel’s version of the past isn’t actually true? What if Luce is really meant to be with someone else?

The second novel in the addictive FALLEN series . . . where love never dies.

I read Fallen this past January and I loved it! Torment is the sequel to Fallen. I've said it once and I'll say it again: Angels are the new Vampires! Hotness!

I'm going to post the trailer for the book again, so that your heart can skip a beat...



We have 41 days left until the novel comes out! Mark September 28 on your calendars!

Thank you for reading!

Lots of Love and Sugar from me, Jess

P.S. My contest for a signed bookmark by Maggie Stiefvater is over on Monday. Make sure to enter for a chance to win one. I have one entrant as of the time of this post. Your chances are pretty high if you enter now! There will be 5 winners.

Enter the Darkness: Week 2

Here's this weeks teaser trailer for Beautiful Darkness:



Ridley equals pure trouble! Keep in mind that these teasers are clues into the new book. I have no idea, of course, what these might mean. I'll figure this out when I my hands on this book. Haha! Maybe after the other teasers come out, I'll put them together and make a few hypothesis'...

There are these many days left!



Make sure to also check out the Enter the Darkness page to look at last week's teaser, this week's teaser and the many more that are to come. Make sure to also read up on the contest that going on right now by the great authors themselves on their blog for this week's teaser.

Thanks for reading!

Love and Sugar from me, Jess

Things I Love Thursday!

Here's another week's "Things I Love Thursday!"


The minute I saw this on Juju's Blog, Tales of Whimsy... I knew I must have one. Do you have that one special book that you have to display in all it's glory? Well there's a creative way to do so. Frame your book! Or change it a little and it becomes a vase, or change it one more time and it becomes a wall hook. You get just one frame and 3 different ways to make it beautiful! Go on over to The Framed Objects and get one today! On my wish list!
Make sure to check out Juju's original post!

I really love this creative idea with bottles and great faerie art! Check out Faerie Lites! My favorite art being from the great Jessica Galbreth. Check out her page to see other pieces of art in different forms.
Sometimes books are meant to be immortalized and what better way to do it than on a t-shirt! Out of Print Clothing offers a great range of books that must be on your "To-Be Read" list. They also have a women's tee range. Totally digging them all. Wished they had To Kill a Mockingbird though...
For those of us that can't have a garden, why not have a dancing, solar powered garden?! These sweet flowers dance and are powered by the sun. Perfect for the early morning pick-me-up. It's available in a pink pot or a blue pot.

This Alice in Wonderland underwater photo shoot by Elena Kalis is absolutely gorgeous! You can check out the rest of the shots on yatzer!


I'm sooooooooo a California Gurl and this necklace shows my love for this great state! The shop on etsy also features other great states! Look for your state in the shop!


A little while ago I went to my doll Adrien's house to watch Up and I loved it! Pixar's masterpiece! I found this cute Grape Soda Bottle Cap Badge. I must have if you love the film!

That's it for this week's, "Things I Love Thursday!" Thank you for reading!

Love and Sugar from me, Sweet Lady Jess

In My Shopping Bag!

I got quite a few things week! This summer keeps getting better and better!

At Costco I got The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. I've been wanting to read this book and watch the 8-Episode series based off the book, but I don't want to watch it until I've read the book.

My brother also got a job this summer. He bought himself a bunch of stuff and he bought me Season 4 and Season 5 of House. I'm almost done with Season 4. Love my little bro!!!


This fall, Bath & Body Works is launching it's new scent, Dark Kiss. Let's just say that I loved the scent! Right now, the scent is in it's preview stage. The lotion is $1, the body spray is $2 and the candle is $5. Not that bad considering the original price for each.

I saw this tee online and I just had to have it! I absolutely love The Hunger Games series! Hot Topic released a few t-shirts based off the book series. I got the "Down With The Capital" tee.

I also went to Michaels this week and I found this on clearance. I started making one and man it took me forever to place the beads on the peg board. It looks pretty good!

My mamma also got me this piggy bank. She figured if I wanted the nook, I might as well start saving it for it now! Haha! Man I hope I make it. The piggy itself is pink and very cute. Mamma got herself a purple one, even though she wants to take my pink one. Hahaha!

Thanks for reading! Loves you all!

Love and Sugar from me, Jess

In My Mailbox 7 and From the Stacks!

For this week's "In My Mailbox" and "From the Stacks," I have a few things to share. As you can tell I combined the both since I only got one item in my mailbox.


I won a copy of Linger! Hahaha! Lol I know, I have my own copy and it's personalized and signed. I'm still grateful to The Well-Read Wife for giving me this copy. I also won a wolf bookmark. I plan to keep the bookmark and I plan to give Linger away, I'm just not sure to who yet. I just have to tell this person that this is the second book of the series.
I also got three books and two films from the library. I picked up Eat, Pray, Love, We Hear the Dead, and Alice in the Country of Hearts Volume 1. I hope I finish Eat, Pray, Love before the film is released in theaters on August 13.


I then went browsing a little and found The Curse of the Golden Flower and The Fountain. I've been wanting to watch both of those films for a while.

That's it for this weeks "In My Mailbox" and "From the Stacks!" Thanks for reading!

Love and Sugar from me, Jess