New Blog! Dedicated to Toronto Cafes!

Hello my lovelies. I would like to announce that I have created a new review blog! I created The Toronto Cafe Blog just a couple of days ago and is most excited to get it fully running! 

I know a majority of my readers are U.S. based and won't be familiar with the Toronto area, but for the few out there that does live somewhere in or near Toronto, this blog would be great for those who would like to try out some cafes in the city.

I am very eager to get my cafe blog up-to-date (with over 30 reviews pending because I have visited so many cafes this past year and only decided on making the blog now!). I honestly haven't been this eager since I first started Stop, Drop, and Read! This will be a new journey for me, especially since I will be reviewing in a different perspective and be trying something new. I want to try to integrate the Toronto community and learn more about this amazing city as much as I can. I hope you will follow me through my cafe adventures and maybe be able to go to one of these cafes yourself!

Of course, I won't stop with Stop, Drop, and Read! because I do intend to post whenever I get the chance. Upcoming review is Speechless by Hannah Harrington and I will post it on Twitter once it's up!

So please check out and follow/like/share/etc The Toronto Cafe Blog! :D You guys are amazing!

http://torontocafes.blogspot.ca/
https://www.facebook.com/TheTorontoCafeBlog
https://twitter.com/TorontoCafeBlog

Hottie by Jonathan Bernstein

Title: Hottie
Author: Jonathan Bernstein
Age Group: Teens
# of Pages: 312
My Rating: 2.5/5

Alison is the perfect student. She is friends with everyone, comes from a rich background, and has the coolest boyfriend ever. Oh, and of course, the most beautiful girl in her grade. Her reputation as the new class president is flawless.

Except when she went into surgery to get the perfect face symmetry, something goes drastically wrong. Luckily, her face is fine, but she ends up with the ability to shoot flames from her fingers! What in the world?? With her newfound powers, it should be all cool but everything else in her life starts falling apart! Her so-called best friends abandon her, her boyfriend turns out to be a cheater and her stepmother doesn't make her life any much easier. When she unexpectedly becomes friends with a geeky classmate she wouldn't have ever thought of twice, life becomes a little more exciting when he makes her realizes her potential. How will she handle her newly obtained skill and fix all the other things that went wrong in her life?

I had very mixed feelings with this novel, with Alison especially. Her character throughout the novel was very incoherent. She was first introduced to as the perfect all-around character who was just been elected class president and everyone seemed to be in love with her. Then right after she became a very materialistic girl who worried about her beauty (despite already being the "most beautiful" girl in class) with her friends; which then led her to beg from her rich father to pay for face surgery! I thought that part alone was a little bit ridiculous because she was like, what, 15? Another character change, but maybe it went hand-in-hand with her materialistic, shopping addiction and everything-about-me personality was when you got to see how she was with her step-mother. If you read the beginning how perfect she was, you would expect her to have that goody-goody two shoes persona who would be doting to everyone, especially her family. But instead, she acted childish and tried to annoy the hell out of her step-mother every chance she got. Her character got annoying pretty quick. 

However, she did learn some lessons as time went on as different things happened. Despite being an annoying girl, I gave her some pity for the fact that her friends backstabbed her because they were envious and pretended to like her (which I honestly didn't really see why). Her character became more tolerable towards the end. 

As for the plot itself, I was actually thinking of giving up on the novel before half-way because the plot wasn't going anywhere for awhile. Yes, she got her power, and yes, she used it here and there. There was some drama but it was a lot of self-absorption I felt on her part. There wasn't anything that made me want to read into it anymore. But, I did stuck with it til the end to see how it would go. I did like the plot twist that finally occurred in the end when the novel picked up (which was a little late into book imo). But because of it, I did enjoy it for a slight period of time.

What Hottie needed was more consistency and an early start of the main problem. If these two areas had some  improvements, the novel would have been an easier read. 

Won copy by Books By Their Cover.

Kamisama Kazoku by Tapari & Yoshikazu Kuwashima

Title: Kamisama Kazoku
Mangaka: Tapari & Yoshikazu Kuwashima
Age Group: Older Teens
Series is: 5 volumes and ongoing
Volume(s) Reviewing: 1
My Rating: 2.5/5

Samataro Kamiyama is the son of God and is pretending to be human in order to learn more about humans because he is next in line. Tenko is his childhood friend and also his guardian angel, making sure that he stays on the right path. However, how is Samataro to learn anything if his magical family keeps meddling with his life??

If I was to sum up the first volume very briefly in words: comedy, angels, and cleavage. It's one of those really light-hearted series that you cannot take for seriously. I assume not until later on when there will be a life-changing moment for the protagonist. Samataro is a carefree person who's not too serious with his role, neither do his parents (his parents being more childish than him!). But there isn't much to his character nor to the surrounding ones. 

With no driven plot, it made it hard for me to enjoy the manga because I found the style of the story to be lacklustre. Despite the attempts of trying to make it funny by having sexy slip-ups here and there, the comedy didn't do much for me. It's readable and the art isn't bad. It's just one of those series that you will forget the plot and characters of almost immediately. I don't recommend buying but if there's nothing else on the library shelf, it doesn't hurt to pick up for a brief read.