Snippets on a Sunday

Sunday has arrived and with it lots of little things I have been meaning to blog about but somehow never got the chance. ABC Family has finally given us a glimpse of our cast and start date for The Pretty Little Liars series. It will premiere on June 8th.  I can’t say that having read them from the very beginning I would have picked this series for TV but it should be interesting to see what they do and how faithful they are to the series written by Sara Shepard. She absolutely has enough twists and turns to keep things moving for quite awhile. Don’t forget the next in the series, Wanted will  be out June 8th as well. The original publication date was June 29th but it seems they have moved it up to correspond with the debut of the TV series.  The poster for the show is quite intriguing especially if you know the series….I will watch and see if it’s worth it..will you?I have been disappointed in the past with book to TV but I always hope for the best!

Also coming up soon is BLOGMANIA in which I will be participating. I am very excited about the opportunity to visit so many new blogs and also to have new visitors here at Stiletto Storytime and of course how can you forget all the goodies up for grabs! I hope you will swing by Stiletto Storytime for a chance to win a few goodies.  Also here are you Early Bird Reminders for BLOGMANIA to get you all set to go! I will have a post up on the 30th with instructions for my giveaway as well as a review of the book I am giving away! Drum Roll Please….

STILETTO STORYTIME  PRIZE

Stiletto Storytime will be giving away a copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls by Steve Hockensmith, a custom book plate for your new tome and  a cool set of magnetic book marks. Also if I can get it done in time, they will also receive a one of a kind Stiletto Storytime bookmark. That’s right…stand back I am getting a little crafty around here! So make sure you visit on April 30th and follow the instructions on how to enter in the contest for the BLOGMANIA giveaway here at Stiletto Storytime!

And last but not least I would like to thank Cate Masters for my very first blog award. She has gifted me with the Happy 101 Award! Cate is a wonderful writer of fantasy/dark fantasy, historical, contemporary and speculative fiction. You should check her and her work out! She’s also got a pretty cool blog as well. I am so very honored to receive this award from her. Tradition holds that I list ten of my favorite things and pass the award on to ten bloggers. So here goes…

Ten Favorite Things

1.) Freshly Mowed Grass Smell

2.) Clean Sheets

3.) Granny Smith Apples and Extra Sharp Cheddar Cheese

4.) Lavender

5.) My worn old copy of Jane Eyre

6.) White roses and White Lilies

7.) My Family

8.) Cupcakes

9.) Bubble Baths

10.) My Great Grandmother’s copy of Pride and Prejudice in which she wrote her name and the year she read it

And now I get to pass this wonderful award onto 10 of my favorite bloggers! This is so hard to choose but here goes! I have chosen blogs from a little bit of everything. Blogs I read daily, one holds spectacular contests, one is international, another is a great friend and they are all blogs that I watch and enjoy but each different and unique in their own way! So now I hope that you will check them out too.

1.) Joelle Anthony’s Blog (Author)

2.) Parajunkee’s View

3.) Austenesque Reviews

4.) There’s A Book

5.) Austenprose

6.) Me, My Book and the Couch

7.) Stainless Steel Droppings

8.) The Neverending Shelf

9.) Bronte Blog

10.) Sasha and The Silverfish

Heartless: A Pretty Little Liars Novel

Heartless is the seventh installment of the Pretty Little Liars series that is still being rumored to be being made into a TV series…this rumor has been going around for quite awhile but I have yet to hear certain proof. Let me know if you have! Supposedly ABC Family picked the series up in late January and it will be aired in 2010. We shall see…I think a series of this book might be interesting and there are certainly enough plot twists for endless material.  I must say Sara Shepard has woven a pretty solids series that is constantly twisting and turning so much so that I feel like I need to re-read all the books every time a new one comes out. I have not quite figured out if that is a good or bad thing…I may just read so much that my brain is addled…do others have this problem? Who is A? Have we finally figured it out in Heartless, each time I think we know…another book comes out and I am proven wrong. However I am still excited each time a new installment is released and I thoroughly enjoyed Shepard’s adult fiction novel The Visibles. Follow the link to read my review.

Harper Collins also has lots of fun stuff to do on their Pretty Little Liars Page…of course I had to “doll” myself! As should you!  So if your new to the series, I recommend you give it a try but you must start at the beginning…this is not a series you can skip around in. Read the summary and see if it sounds right for you. If you have been following the series, then Heartless is a must read! Below is a summary for Heartless:

In picturesque Rosewood, Pennsylvania, neighbors gossip over picket fences, and gleaming SUVs sit in every crushed-granite driveway. But recently, friendly smiles have been replaced with suspicious glares and accusatory whispers—and it’s all because Hanna, Aria, Emily, and Spencer just can’t keep their mouths shut. . . .First they claimed they found a dead body in the woods behind Spencer’s house, only to have it vanish without a trace. Then when the same woods went up in flames, they swore they saw someone who’s supposed to be dead rise from the ashes. And even after all that, the pretty little liars are still playing with fire.Hanna’s trading in her Dior trench for a straitjacket. Aria’s trying to contact the dead. Emily’s dumped her boyfriend and is skipping town . . . again. And Spencer thinks someone in her family has gotten away with murder.The friends insist they’re telling the truth about what they saw, but all of Rosewood thinks they’re simply out for attention—and nobody likes a girl who cries wolf. So when the big bad killer comes after the girls, will anyone believe them . . . or will they be the next to disappear?

Wicked- A Pretty Little Liars Novel

“In idyllic Rosewood, Pennsylvania, four very pretty girls just can’t help but be bad. . . .Hanna will do anything to be Rosewood’s queen bee. Spencer’s digging up her family’s secrets. Emily can’t stop thinking about her new boyfriend. And Aria approves a little too strongly of her mom’s taste in men.  Now that Ali’s killer is finally behind bars, the girls think they’re safe. But those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. And they should know by now that I’m always watching. . . .  ”

Wicked is the fifth book in the Pretty Little Liars series and I have to say I thought it was one of the best. The mystery continues as a new “A” surfaces and all might not be as it seems as Ian goes to trial for Ali’s murder. For those who have followed the series, Sara Shepard has once again delighted us and left us wondering just who is “A” and most importantly who killed Ali all those years ago? One thing is for sure….nothing can be counted on.  All bets are off and the truth is harder to find than ever. Look out for the next book in series Killer which is out now!

The Visibles-Review

The Visibles by Sara Shepard

I simply cannot say how excited I was to start to read The Visibles and how much more excited I was when I finished. Sara Shepard is a shining example of how far young adult fiction has come in the last few years. Like Stephenie Meyer both have bestselling young adult series (Pretty Little Liars and Twilight respectively) and out of this world adult premieres (The Visibles and The Host)! It truly shows the talent that exists in the young adult literary pool! I myself have been following Pretty Little Liars for awhile and was very excited to see that Shepard had struck 0ut into adult fiction. I am about to read Wicked and am eagerly awaiting Killer which is released June 30th. As far as Shepard’s new adult endeavor…. this is a must read! A captivating story full of twists and turns that you think you know but find you have no idea.  The story of Summer, a girl abandoned by some, living for others and searching for herself. My favorite part of the book is below. It alludes to the title but if you think about it from a psychological point of view, it revels so much more and really made me stop and think. Mental illness is a large subject in the work and I think this quote says a lot about that. About what people with more emotional or psychological problems feel like and sometimes how they are viewed and treated by others. So much about this novel leaves you thinking…afterwards. And that in my opinion is what makes a great book!

“It made me think of a recurring dream I sometimes had, the one in which I had no outer covering. Everyone was able to see right through my to my organs and inside my brain, aware of what I was thinking and feeling at all times. I was called a Visible, and I had to go to a special school with the rest of the Visibles. My mother  disappointed, showed me her high school yearbook and told me she wasn’t a Visible when she was my age.”