Did you know that a bookworm in distress is in fact worse than a furious bookworm? Well, now you do. But what's even worse is a bookworm in distress who just finished a book and is feeling like their world has been turned inside out in the most unpleasant of ways. It happens to the best of us.

I think I stand correct when I say that the most common causes of a bookworm's distress are character deaths, sinking ships, and second book syndromes. For the time being, let's just go through the phases bookworms in distress (aka you and me all the time) go through.

Genres: YA | "Dystopia" | Romance
Published: November 4th 2014
Publisher:  Little, Brown
My rating: 

730. That's how many days I've been trapped.
18. That's how many days I have left to find a way out.

DAI, trying to escape a haunting past, traffics drugs for the most ruthless kingpin in the Walled City. But in order to find the key to his freedom, he needs help from someone with the power to be invisible....

JIN hides under the radar, afraid the wild street gangs will discover her biggest secret: Jin passes as a boy to stay safe. Still, every chance she gets, she searches for her lost sister....

MEI YEE has been trapped in a brothel for the past two years, dreaming of getting out while watching the girls who try fail one by one. She's about to give up, when one day she sees an unexpected face at her window.....

In this innovative and adrenaline-fueled novel, they all come together in a desperate attempt to escape a lawless labyrinth before the clock runs out.

This is a feature that has been going around in my mind for months now, but I never really knew how to approach it. But here I am, introducing Bookish Hogwash, a feature that will focus on the somewhat nonsensical and random thoughts that go on in my mind.

  But, Naban, why does that sound similar to your discussion posts? - I just felt you asking. Well, mainly because it's basically the same thing. Just with a fancier name and with a lot more of rambling.

 I'm creative like that. 

Genres: YA | Contemporary
Published: September 1st 2014
Publisher:  Bloomsbury
My rating: 

When Apple’s mother returns after eleven years of absence, Apple feels whole again. She will have an answer to her burning question – why did you go? And she will have someone who understands what it means to be a teenager – unlike Nana. But just like the stormy Christmas Eve when she left, her mother’s homecoming is bitter sweet, and Apple wonders who is really looking after whom. It’s only when Apple meets someone more lost than she is, that she begins to see things as they really are.

Like a brilliant hybrid of Cathy Cassidy and Jacqueline Wilson, Sarah Crossan entices you into her world, then tells a moving, perceptive and beautifully crafted story which has the power to make you laugh and cry.

A Thousand Pieces of You explores a reality where we witness the countless other lives we might lead in  an amazingly intricate multiverse, and ask whether, amid infinite possibilities, one love can endure. 

There was a time when I feared the contemporary genre. I'm not sure whether I expected it to kill me or eat my soul, but I guess I just preferred a less realistic take when it came to my books. I'm also sure most of you can relate.

 I'm glad I started indulging in the genre. Contemporary is now like my dessert, perfect to top off with more complex genres, as one might say.

So I've picked out 10 of my favorite contemporary novels, because hey, lists.

Series: Firebird #1
Genres: YA | Sci-fi | Fantasy
Published: November 4th 2014
Publisher:  Harper Teen
My rating: 

Every Day meets Cloud Atlas in this heart-racing, space- and time-bending, epic new trilogy from New York Times bestselling author Claudia Gray.

Marguerite Caine’s physicist parents are known for their radical scientific achievements. Their most astonishing invention: the Firebird, which allows users to jump into parallel universes, some vastly altered from our own. But when Marguerite’s father is murdered, the killer—her parent’s handsome and enigmatic assistant Paul—escapes into another dimension before the law can touch him.

Marguerite can’t let the man who destroyed her family go free, and she races after Paul through different  universes, where their lives entangle in increasingly familiar ways. With each encounter she begins to  question Paul’s guilt—and her own heart. Soon she discovers the truth behind her father’s death is more  sinister than she ever could have imagined.

A Thousand Pieces of You explores a reality where we witness the countless other lives we might lead in  an amazingly intricate multiverse, and ask whether, amid infinite possibilities, one love can endure.