Beautibooks: 2015

Christmas book and bookish-goods haul!

6:53:00 PM
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A week of FREEDOM!!

Hey guysssss!! As u can tell from the title, I currently am having a break. To be precise... A school field trip that lasts for a whole week!! (that I apparently don't attend) So yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!

Book haul needed?? Ow Yeah!!

Since I need to do a book haul (not a large one though, cuz cash is flowing right outta my pocket very quickly)!! And for a book haul to take place, we need to go to some sort of bookstore!! In this blogpost, I'm gonna show u guys the bookstores that I visit, both here in Indonesia and when I was in the US!! Sooooooooo let's get started!!

The bookstores in Indonesia:
Kinokuniya
This bookstore is the best bookstore evahhhh! *cough* Barnes and Noble is slightly better *cough*. This bookstore is such a good place, because "newly-released" books are directly shipped there. Andddddd it's somehow a japanese bookstore, and that's one of the many reasons why my father love going there in the weekends, enabling me to buy tons of books on some weekends (when I'm not broke).

Periplus
I love this bookstore, mainly because it supplies books of a lower price!! Like it's legitimately the best-priced (new) books.

Gramedia

Somehow, this bookstore is a great one just because it contains rare books, and most of the books that are sold in Gramedia is cheap, yet very rare. If I had to rate this bookstore, I might give it a 3/5 stars, just because of the fact that they mainly sell Indonesian books, which I basically can't read. Not to say that I absolutely can't read Indonesian books, but I read them at a very slow pace.

On the other hand, I also buy lots of books in the US , soooooo
The bookstores in the US:
Barnes and Noble
Who am I kidding?! This bookstore is da BESTTTTTTTT!! It's the best place that you can ever go to. It literally is like my second home. Not to mention the fact that I went to that place every now and then. But the downside of Barnes and Noble is their pricing!! They sell books at an extremely high price, I don't really mind this fact, but it's kinda bugging me that I have to pay a bit more.

HPB (Half-priced books)
This place is a very good place if you want to buy used books at a very low price, and you may even get a book that costs u about 2 bucks which is totally INSANE!!

Well, that's it for today's blogpost!! See you guys later! Byeeeeeeeeeee

9:59:00 PM
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Red Queen summary!! SPOILER ALERT!!

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Hey guysssss! Welcome back to my book blog!! I'm going to tell you guys about this so darn confusing book AKA Red Queen, where there's about 5 plot turns in the first few chapters, imagine what's gonna happen in the coming chapters... what?? 5000000 plot turns?? jkjk, but you guys get me right?? This book sure have a ton of plot turns.

So.... this book is mainly about a girl, who's a red, meaning to say that she is a low-standard person sorta thing, and serves the silvers who are technically the super-power kind, and think very highly of themselves. She herself doesn't have a job, and technically earns money by stealing!! Yep, she lovessss to steal, unlike her sister- Gisa, who works for a living.

Photo by: @stylereads_ (Instagram)

SPOILER ALERT!! (If u haven't read the book, close it right now, or else you'll regret it for ur whole entire life!! Seriously! Close it, or else bad things shall be upon u! HAHAHAHAH jkjk, but just close it, unless u want the book ruined)

Anywayssssssss this book is somehow like THE SELECTION series AKA my baeeeeeeee, where there's a competition to get the heart of the prince charming!! So.... I'm gonna be biased here, but I'm gonna rate this book a 4.9/5 stars just because it has a "Selection" related thing, AKA Queenstrial. ILY Victoria Aveyard for doing thissssss!

Okay, so back to the summary of this book!!

It begins with an intro of the division of the world into 2 parts- the reds and the silvers. As you all have probably known, the reds are the poor peeps and the silvers are the rich, and they also have super powers like "nymphs", "greenys", "telkies" and many more.

After that, Mare comes along (she's the main character of this book). She is a red, and lives in a village called the "Stilt". Reds become apprenticed to gain money. Her little sister-Gisa is apprenticed to be a silk maker, her friend- Kilorn is also apprenticed as a fisherman, but Mare isn't apprenticed at all, because she's unskilled at everything except for this one thing- stealing!! Yes! She steals to get money. By the age of 18, people who aren't apprenticed will go to a process called "conscription" where they will be sent to war.

Mare is already prepared for it, but she isn't prepared to loose her friend- Kilorn (will be conscripted because his master died in an accident). So, she went to this black market to meet her other friend-Will to hide Kilorn somewhere outta the city. Will agrees, but wants a lot of money for it, that Mare doesn't even have, so she immediately plans to steal lots of money from the silvers and ask for her little sister's help.

The only problem with Mare's plan is that there's no one to steal things from, so her little sis tried to help her, but get caught by one of the policemen over there, and her hand is crushed- disabling her from being an apprentice as a silk maker (taylor).

Mare doesn't give up, and goes to the tavern to pickpocket people, and Cal catches her pickpocketing him. He asks her of the reason why she was pickpocketing him, and then she spilled all the beans (not literally) while Cal walks her home, then gives her all of the money that he currently owns to her.

The next day, one of the royal guards knocks on her door, to call her to the castle and it's all under the will of Cal, to stay there and be a servant.

There's a Queenstrial going on in the moment, where young "Silver" ladies are competing to marry the princes (Cal and Maven). 2 marriages will be set after the "Queenstrial" takes place.

When Mare is serving at the Queenstrial, she falls down to the arena where the silvers are showing their skills and lands on the electrical shield. She didn't die from the fall, but she absorbs the electricity into her body. Evangeline who is currently in the arena wants to kill Mare for disturbing, so Mare throw her arms up and shoots lightning from her fingertips. She is scared that she might be killed, so she runs away from the palace but still get captured.

The Silvers are so mad that a red have super powers just like them, so the king has to protect it that info from the others, and to do that, he has to get Mare to marry Maven, with a backstory, where Mare always believed that she is raised as a Red, but turns out to be one of the Silver's daughter.

The king wanted to do such a thing, just because he thinks that it will make the Reds think that the Silvers are good to them, and would stop the war that is created by the "Scarlet Guards".

Mare begins to train with the others (including Cal and Maven) to increase her "super-power" skills. The 3 of them became very close to each other. Cal helped her sneak out of the castle so that she could say "hi" to her family, her family is okay with it, but tells her that Kilorn has joined the Scarlet Guard to stop the alliance. Her brother-Shade Barrow had been killed in the war.

PLOT TURN MATESS!! Mare and Maven both join the Scarlet Guard. They help Farley-leader of Scarlet Guard to plan an attack on the "Silvers" during the ball. During the attack the bomb killed many peeps.

After the attack, Farley and Kilorn are captured to get them to spill the beans, while both Mare and Maven pretend that they have absolutely no idea of the attack. Both Mare and Maven weren't suspected a single bit, because Julian- Mare's trainer helped her to mess with peeps brain.

Julian runs away because the Elara- the queen, might find out that she helped to mess with their brains, and told Mare that she is stronger than Reds or Silvers, because she has been analyzing her DNA, and there are some people who are just like her- Shade- her brother, and this is the reason of his death.

Mare wants to help her to escape, but before that, she asks Farley about the bomb, and it turns out that it isn't a bomb at all, but a gas leak and is ignited by Cal, who was trying to capture prisoners with his fire powers.

After the Scarlet Guard attack, Farley manages to meet Mare and Maven, and go to the Undertrain (underground train) to a part of the country with no radiation. It's the part of city that the Scarlet Guards build, and it has a tech that make it seem that it has radiation to the Silver's radiation detection machine.

They have a meeting with Farley about the war. Mare give the list of names that Julian thought would help win the war. Farley thinks that there isn't much time for it to happen, because the Silvers are reacting harshly over the attack, and they are keeping people indoors, killing the Reds and offering them the freedom from conscription in exchange for information about the Scarlet Guard would lead to mayhem, because many would turn their kids for it.

Maven says that he could hit the Silvers by the heart, by sneaking into the castle and force the King to surrender, since he is the heart of this war. Farley and Mare didn't think that it could possibly happen. But Maven knows that it will work, because he knows that Cal is in love with Mare and would trade anything for her, so he will be able to convince the army to step back and not attack.

Action begins right after this meeting. They all sneak up through the tunnels under the city and blow the bridge that leads to the castle. Many of the Silver guards come rushing along with Cal. Mare tells Cal that he should make a better world, and stop the war and choose Mare. She acts like she's in love with him, but in reality she doesn't due to the fact that Cal believes that the war shall continue to have peace, then a flash of memory came to her reminding how kind he is to her, and realizes that it wasn't so much of a lie.

The plan went wrong when he didn't listen to Mare. Cal realizes that Mare is with the Scarlet Guard and is responsible for the deaths of the people in the ball. Maven, the guard and Mare run to escape, but got caught and taken before the queen.

BIGGEST PLOT TURN EVAHHH!!! Elara wants to save her son, so she uses her mind-control power to disable the king and Cal. Cal is used to kill the king. Mare and Maven are allowed to watch. Mare realizes that Maven was smirking on his seat. It immediately tells her that Maven and Elara had planned this from before to kill the king so that Elara could be queen, and Maven to be king, with Cal in prison for being a "king killer" while Mare being in prison for treason. Maven also killed Julian.

The "Circle of Bones" is where the Silvers are executed for treason, and it's where they will meet the end of their existence. In there, they meet Lucas, who is executed there in front of them.

Then, they were sent to the "Circle of Bones" to fight some of the best armed peeps, with Arven- Mare's trainer who secretly is Elara's worker, watching them. Arven takes away Mare's super-power so that she can't use electricity against those peeps.

During the fight, Mare has absolutely no powers at all, so Cal protects her and fights alone, while Mare has a brilliant plan to trick one of the armed troops to shoot her with a spear while she stands in front of Arven, and steps out at the last second, allowing the spear to hit Arven and gaining her powers back.

Once her powers are back, she begin to fight with Cal. While they do this, Maven is evacuating people out of the arena for their own safety, but in reality, they're evacuated because Mare's super power is still a secret.

They defeated all the warriors and Evangeline- Cal's betrothed ran towards them when she saw that they were losing. Maven sends the guards to kill them when there's a storm coming up. Then, Mare uses her powers to control the lightning and destroy the arena. Then they escape. Maven then tells the guards to shoot them, and the shoot is coming from the chasm in the arena that is used to keep the waters for the nymphs to fight with since they have the power to control water. The guards fall, grabbing Mare and Cal's hand along with them into the chasm and the water below it.

Mare falls unconscious and wakes up in the train that is heading for the Scarlet Guard's city. Shade is in the train, and reveals his secret that he has a teleportation skill, and that is the main reason why the Silvers can't kill her. Mare's family is also waiting for her in the Scarlet Guard city.

Cal is tied up, even though Mare explained that he's a good guy towards Farley. But, Farley doesn't want to trust any Silvers anymore, so he won't untie Cal. He could do it on his own using his powers, but he didn't do it, because he wants to take Maven down by finding others like Mare.

Soooooo that's probably it for today's post!! Hope you guys enjoyed this!!

See u guys next time!! Byeeeeeeeeeeee