YA Epidemics #11 - Insta-Love

Ah, yes.  Insta-love, the bane of romance lovers everywhere.  Girl meets boy, boy is gorgeous and has a tendency to go around shirtless, girl falls madly in love within a chapter or two.  Strip a romance bare of all the romantic build-up and commence with the kissing!

The thing about this one is that writing a believable, slow-burn love story is hard.  It's so difficult for an author to create the kind of chemistry I love to read about, I won't deny that for a second.  But come on.  Writing a slow-building romance that doesn't sizzle is understandable, but to make your two characters fall in love with next to no build-up, sometimes in as few as one or two days?

Book Review - The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Pages: 550
Publisher: Knopf Books
Genre: YA/Historical Fiction
Rating: 5 Stars


"It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still.

Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement."

I have been seriously slacking on my review writing (seriously slacking; it's unforgivable, and I apologize), choosing instead to write a one -or -two-line summary on GoodReads with the promise of a review to come that never does, but this one...this one needs a review. It may not be as in-depth as you're used to from me, nor as long, but I'm going to do my best to capture what my reading experience was.