Camp NaNoWriMo

 

JC: Hello, you beautiful human beings :) Soo, this isn’t a review or anything, it’s more like . . . an advertisement? A suggestion? A plea for help? Something like that.

Kalee: JC and I have decided to check out Camp NaNoWriMo even though we have no idea what it is, but it sounded fun. Fun is good. Writing is good. Fun and writing together is great.

JC: Okay, to start off, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. It’s held every November, and if I understand correctly,  writers can participate in it and try to reach the 50,000 word count goal by the end of the month. So they had that, and then they started this thing called Camp NaNoWriMo, which is available year-round (if I’m not totally confused), though they have the word count goal writing competition things (almost like NaNoWriMo) during the months of April and July? I don’t fully understand it, but I think you can make your own word count goals for any writing project you want to do and monitor your progress. And then there are cabins, which are the main reason for our post.

Kalee: You make me look lazy with all of your long paragraphs. Anyway, cabins are basically group chats, where writers can socialize and motivate one another. JC and I have a cabin, but we are basically just having an extended group chat there, haha.

JC: Not even a group chat, honestly. Because Kalee and I are the only ones in there. So. Onto the plea for help part. We pretty much joined Camp NaNoWriMo so that we could interact with other writers, talk about problems that arise while writing, inspiration, story stuff, etc.

Kalee: And books. And books. And books, JC.

JC: Right, okay. Except . . . we’re the only ones on our cabin, so it’s kind of hard to talk to other people. And we’re kind of getting sick of each other. Just kidding. Ish.

Kalee: I'm offended, JC. Tsk tsk.

JC: Yep, yep, sorry. Aaaaaanyway, basically, the purpose of this post is to a) inform you guys about Camp NaNoWriMo (if you didn’t already know about it), b) recommend it to you--right, well, we forgot to recommend it to you. Basically you should join because it’s a really great writing exercise (or so I’ve read). It helps to get your creative juices flowing, so to speak, because the word count goal (whether you stick with the 50,000 word count goal or not) kind of motivates you to just get your ideas down onto the paper, worrying less about grammar and eloquence and more about just writing. Also, you can have the opportunity to talk to other writers who have similar problems and maybe some answers to questions you may have. Finally, we wanted to c) ask you guys (and gals) if you wanted to be in our cabin. We think it would be really fun to be able to talk to you guys about writing, books, all that good stuff.

Kalee: In general, JC likes reading and writing contemporary and romance. And fantasy related  stuff, too. I like fantasy and science fiction mostly. We are both teenagers of the teenage age.

JC: We also like dystopia.

Kalee: That, too. My username is @Kay T.

JC: Aaaand my username is @ohmybears. If you decide to join (you really, really should) and want to be in a cabin with us (which would be fun) and will ACTIVELY PARTICIPATE in the discussions (just to make it even funner), comment your username below or email it to theeggheadreviews@gmail.com. We were thinking that it would be fun if teens join our cabin, but adults are cool, too. And if there are any infants out there, just surfing the World Wide Web, their tiny fingers poking at the keys--babies are cool, too.

Kalee: Thank you and we hope you'll join us.

JC: (Please join us) Okay, byeeeee! Ta-ta for now :) <3

Link: www.campnanowrimo.org

Update: We have cabin mates now! Yay! So we're not quite as desperate as we were, though we have some spots left and would still welcome you guys into our cabin :) Either way, we still think that Camp NaNoWriMo would be a great exercise/experience for aspiring writers, and it's a great place to meet others who have similar struggles/obstacles to your own. Okay, thanks! Bye again! :) <3

Allegiant (Movie) Review

Synopsis:

After the earth-shattering revelations of Insurgent, Tris must escape with Four beyond the wall that encircles Chicago, to finally discover the shocking truth of the world around them.

Credit to imdb.com

Gooooooood day, you worldly humans! It's that time again . . . group review time! Yay! Yay! We're getting the band back together again! Yay!

Overall Review (because we're too lazy to do the review in sections):

Kalee: I think Allegiant was better than Insurgent, but not as good as Divergent. (Slight spoiler but) Although the plot was confusing, I liked the part when the Pures went out to the Fringe to steal the children. I found the scene to be pretty powerful yet intriguing. What did you think?

JC: I thought (some of) the action scenes were better in this movie than the others--Four is amazingamazingamazing--but the storyline was kind of . . . super weird. The technology was really . . . super weird. It was just super weird. And, yes, I do agree that Divergent was the best movie of the series. 

Kalee: It was hard to keep up with the plot of the movie, because people kept on betraying other people. I can't sum up the movie in my head without becoming really confused. It didn't really feel like there was a lot of direction in the movie.

JC: Everything was happening really quickly, too. Tris and Four are supposed to have this big fight because of a difference in opinion over this thing (sorry, I'm trying not to spoil) but it seems like it took all of two seconds for them to form said opinions over said thing. And it also seems like as soon as any conflict was brought up, it was solved almost immediately.

Kalee: I liked that they did fight though, because it added tension and drama. I also liked Peter. He was funny, but he only cared for himself which kind of made him more funny. The movie did a good job of fleshing out the world of the Pures and the society seemed interesting.

JC: But I don't like it when they fight :(

Kalee: It added more development to their relationship.

JC: Sad Four and Tris a happy me does not make. But anyway--moving on, I thought that the characters kind of lost some of their seriousness and overall unhappiness in this movie. They seemed a lot less depressed, which is good, but it felt like an entirely different series. But that might've just been me.

Kalee: Tris was unproductive during the middle of the movie. She didn't do much to get plot moving until the end.

JC: I will say that there were some surprising moments. You can ask that lady that we were in the movie theater with. She gasped really, really loudly towards the end, so it must've been quite upsetting.

Kalee: There were a lot of "twists" that made it hard for my brain to comprehend. JC is talking about Christina so I thought I might mention her. She didn't do anything really BIG. She was just THERE.

JC: True, true. But she's still cool because she was cool in the books. Who cares about the movies, amiright? *goes for a high five*

Kalee: *emoji high five*

JC: I'm done here *drops mic*--all yours, Kalee.

Kalee: I can't really tell where the next movie is going, but I hope the ending stays true to the book. *lifts eye brows* This is completely unrelated, but I wanted to mention something about popcorn at the movies. A small bag of popcorn costed $6.50, but a kid's combo, which included (a lot of) popcorn, a small drink and a snack of your choice, only costed $6.00. The pricing seemed odd, but kid's combos are coolio.

JC: (she's just mad because she wanted the small popcorn) Alright, folks, that's it! My rating: 7.5 out of 10 (being generous here).

Kalee: I would give it 8 out of 10. It wasn't that bad.

JC: 'Kay, bye, thanks for reading! Farewell, my (our) friends!

Royally Lost by Angie Stanton

 

Synopsis:
Dragged on a family trip to Europe’s ancient cities, Becca wants nothing more than to go home. Trapped with her emotionally distant father, over-eager stepmother, and a brother who only wants to hook up with European hotties, Becca is miserable. That is until she meets Nikolai, a guy as mysterious as he is handsome. And she unknowingly finds herself with a runaway prince.

Nikolai has everything a guy could ask for-he's crown prince, heir to the throne, and girls adore him. But the one thing he doesn't have...is freedom. Staging a coup, he flees his kingdom and goes undercover on his own European tour.

When Nikolai and Becca meet, it’s their differences that draw them together. Sparks fly as they share a whirlwind of adventures, all the while dodging his royal guard. But Becca's family vacation ends in a matter of days. Will Nikolai and Becca be forced to say goodbye forever, will his destiny catch up to him, or will they change history forever?


Review:
To start off, I would like to thank JC for all of her blogging, while I was being lazy in the corner. Now onto the review!

I read this book on recommendation from a post-it note at the library. There was this wall filled with post it notes and book reviews. This is not the kind of book I would usually read, but maybe JC would. I read a couple of reviews and decided to pick up Royally Lost thinking it was going to be a cutesy novel where a prince falls in love with commoner girl. And that's what I got.

Royally Lost ended up being very predictable with characters that seemed just a little too perfect. A lot of the book was comprised of complaining about parents and insulting history. But this book wasn't bad and was an enjoyable, light read. Here's what bugged me throughout the book:

Perfect love interest
Nikolai was very very perfect. He just didn't have a perfect life. Although he was nice and charming, he didn't really do a lot wrong other than the running away from home thing.
 * spoiler warning *
However, Nikolai's parents eventually change their ways because they were wrong not Nikolai. There wasn't a lot of depth in the characters.

Insta-love
I don't like insta-love because it's usually a relationship first established because of a physical attraction rather than personality. Even though people do actually fall in love at first sight, it doesn't make for much of a compelling story. It's usually engaging to read about a couple of people who have problems and maybe don't connect at first. Perfect couples are nice, but not fun to read about.

Becca insulting history
The author clearly did research about European history, which I appreciate and respect. But Becca though. She had no respect towards history and just complained about how old everything was. It just made her seem rather ignorant and disrespectful. I was really hoping she would develop a little bit and learn to respect those who helped establish the foundations for the country she was in.

I was going to write something about how I liked the way the author researched about Mondovia, but it's not a real place.

Cliche stepmom situation
Father marries other woman, children mad because stepmom is not not real mom. I'm fine with reading about this trope if it's changed a little, unfortunately it was very predictable.

Becca's hostile treatment of Vicky made me not really like her character. All Vicky wanted to do was bring their family closer together, but Becca seemed unwilling to give Vicky a chance. (Admittedly, Becca's attitude was understandable, but still)

*spoiler warning*

 The ending was very picture perfect, and there was no moral to the story.
 Run away and lie to your parents, because you'll end up with the love of your life and your parents will change tradition for you and everything will be happy.
 I like picture perfect endings when the characters really deserve it, but most events in this book seemed too convenient and their problem were rich people problems.

 Overall, I would give the book 6 out of 10 stars. If you're looking for a cutesy romance that you may be able to read in one sitting.

Thank you for reading,
Kalee