The book I just finished yesterday was called Nothing to Lose by Alex Flinn (Yes, the Alex Flinn that wrote Beastly). Usually I don't go for stories that have abusive father figures, but it was also about a traveling carnival. "Traveling" and "carnival" are two words that just make anything awesome, so I knew I had to check this out. I gotta say, despite my reservations in reading this, I really enjoyed it. Nothing to Lose is about Micheal Daye, who has spent the last year working as a carnie with a traveling carnival. He joined the carnival's ranks in order to escape from home, where he had a stepfather who beat his weak mother. When the carnival returns to Micheal's home in Miami, Micheal finds out that his mom is on trial for murdering his stepfather. The book is about the question facing Micheal now: does he keep running with the carnival, or does he stay to stand up for his mother? Again, not the kind of thing I usually go for, but once I started reading, this book quickly became more than worth my time.
Recommended.

Okay, so I obviously have failed with my mission of chronicling every book I read. But not anymore. I just finished reading Across the Universe by Beth Revis, and it was so good that I shook off my laziness to blog about it here. Though the cover features two silhouettes about to kiss, I didn't particularly feel that romance was the key theme at work here. The main characters' names are Elder and Amy (which is my name, so of course I had to read this book ;). Amy gets cryogenically frozen along with her family in order to travel to a new planet 300 years away. Once there, they will terraform the new planet in order to live there. Only Amy is unfrozen fifty years before schedule. Now she is stuck on a ship she hates that seems to be powered by dangerous lies. This book is about her and Elder's (a resident of the spaceship) search for truth despite the people that would try to stop them. There is a good mix of action and suspense here, along with just enough romance to keep the hard core romantics (like me) happy. Once I got started, I had trouble putting this book down. The beautiful cover matches the beautiful story inside, and this book is definitely Recommended.