Twenty-Four Hour Checkup

A little over twenty-four hours have gone by, and I'm still doing this.  For those of you that don't know me, this is a major accomplishment!  My attention span (or lack there of) is a thing of wonder and I take up all these different projects and then abandon them shortly after. 

Now on to books, as this is where I said I would talk about this stuff since my family has grown tired of my one-sided arguments about books they haven't read. 
Let's just start by saying that I am  major Kelley Armstrong fan-girl.  I love absolutely anything that she writes.  If you haven't read her stuff, do it now.  Seriously.  In my mind, she can do no wrong, although she came close when she sent Chloe on a date with Simon in The Reckoning, but I digress.  Right now I'm in the middle of one of her Otherworld books, Broken.  I love Elena because as the only female werewolf, she has a slightly awkward life, but she handles it with practicality and just a bit of ass-kicking.  It's the fact that Clay seems to have mellowed in this one that I'm having a bit of trouble with.  I don't know if it's impending fatherhood, or the fact that he finally has Elena to himself, but I'm finding his edge is gone.  Now this is speculation on my part, as I'm barely halfway in.  All I know is that no matter what Kelley does to Clay, Elena or Jeremy, it's bound to be a fairly good read.
Now on to a completely different book, Mockingjay!  Wow.  That pretty much sums up this book for me.  I know a lot of people on different blogs didn't like the ending because it was just kind of... blah, but I think that was on purpose.  The Hunger Games and Catching Fire both had potential for happily-ever-after endings,but it would have only been on the surface.  Panem would have still been a terrible place to live, the Hunger Games would still have happened every year and no one would ever be truly happy living there.  But, Mockingjay was more of a war novel in my mind.  Yes, there was a little romance thrown in for flair, but it was all about the uprising and over-throwing of the government in the Capitol.  Now, I can't say for sure, but I would think that anyone who lived through two Hunger Games and then  pretty intense war, that you were, not just a part of, but a major player in, well you would always be haunted by that. I personally loved the ending because it seemed to fit with the new Katniss.  She is no longer the spunky rebel girl, but instead a scared, fragile survivor.  Anything that could possibly remind her of the time she spent fighting for her life would be immensely terrifying, so instead she holds it all inside and lets no one in.  Now on to the Peeta/Katniss thing.  I LOVE it!  My gut always told me that they would be together, but almost the whole of Mockingjay was all her Gale.  I was actually getting a teensy bit scared for a while there.  But whew!  Crisis averted.  It might not be the happy ending that we all were hoping for, but, to me, it all worked out quite satisfactorily.