SWEET EVIL Read Along Week Four: Halloween

This is the fourth and final week of Sweet Evil read along hosted by Mindy of Magical Urban Fantasy Reads together with her other co-host bloggers, Rachel of Fiktshun, Jaime of Two Chicks On Books, Tara of Tater’s Tall Tails and Nancy of Ravenous Reader. This week topic discussion is Halloween and we are required to read chapters 26 through 31 (pages 341-447). From these chapters we encounter Kaidan and Anna attending a Halloween Party which is where this week’s theme is based.

As for my Halloween…

Well, truth to be told, my Halloween experiences were as boring as they can be! I never experience attending Halloween party as a kid. Trick or treat doesn’t exists in my location until much recent years when I am too old to participate. My younger memories of Halloween is spending it with my family and relatives visiting the graves of our death relatives, bringing flowers, food and praying for them. On the night of Halloween, my Mom always light candles on our altar and even in our door steps. I don’t understand much what are those candles for, other than each candles represents each of our death relatives. Maybe it’s part of remembering them during this season and sending prayers as well.

Other than those usual ceremony, I also spend Halloween watching scary movies with my cousins, or simply chatting in dark with ghost stories scaring each others. Stories I never discover the authenticity which makes it harder to believe as I get older. I never really get scared by their stories anyway, no matter how interesting and convincing they delivered it. I like watching scary movies especially Japanese horror films, but I haven’t found one that really scared the hell out of me.

I never experienced attending costume parties for Halloween until when I was much older to organized one for others. My parents, especially my Mom doesn’t really approved of partying during Halloween, unless you are a kid. That she can tolerate more. She think Halloween should be spend more for the dead people, than attending party. Kids now a days are way luckier than me. They got the chance to do trick or treat with their friends, get candies or sweets and attend Halloween costumes parties.

Back to the book…

I already finished reading Sweet Evil during the second week of the read along. But I still do a re-read once in awhile as I love re-reading Kaidan’s scenes. Some of the quotes I like from this week required chapters read are:

“I’ve got a joke for you,” Kaidan told him. Jay nodded his head, ready.
“What’s the difference between a drummer and a savings bond?”
“I don’t know. What?” Jay beamed bright yellow.
“A savings bond matures and eventually makes money.”

“What do you want from me, Kai?”
“For starters?” His voice lowered to sexy, dangerous depths. “I want to introduce myself to every freckle on your body.”

For those who haven’t read the book yet, I hope those two quotes above will be intriguing enough to finally push you to start reading. You don’t want to miss Kaidan and Anna’s story. And since this is the final post for the read along, let me thank you once again the organizer/host and co-hosts of this event. Without their effort I wouldn’t discover Kaidan and Anna’s world or simply met Kaidan.

SWEET EVIL Read Along Week Three: Truth or Dare

This is the third week of Sweet Evil Read Along hosted by Mindy of Magical Urban Fantasy Reads. For this week we are required to read Chapters seventeen through twenty five (pages 232- 340). From these chapters we’ve known more about the other Nephilim and their world. We also get to know Anna’s Dad and his interesting story with Anna’s mother.

For this week read along the theme is “Truth or Dare” inspired by the truth or dare game played by Anna, Kaidan and his Nephilim friends.

“How about a game of Truth or Dare?” Marna offered.

I was immediately apprehensive. Just as I was about to suggest something else, Kaidan spoke and my heart faltered.

“I’ll go first,” he said. “I dare Kope to kiss Anna.”

Everything inside me flooded with fury and embarrassment. Kaidan leaned far back with his arms crossed, cocky. I stood up without thinking and hooked my foot under his chair, swiftly kicking upward and causing him to topple backward. He looked up at me from the ground with a stunned expression that morphed into a grin.

Truth or Dare

To be honest I’m not a fan of Truth or Dare game. I don’t enjoy this as much when I was younger. I’m not sure how can I choose dare without someone giving me an actual dare, so I’ll just go with the truth and since there no questions for me to answer I will just list some little facts about me. I will limit these facts to something book related but not purely Sweet Evil, though. Here they are:

• I haven’t read Sweet Evil earlier because of its angelic theme. I’m limiting my paranormal reads for this year because angel books are mostly missed than hit for me. Sweet Evil isn’t part of my priority read until this read along came.

• I’ve only read the whole Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling last July. I’ve had those books in my TBR for the longest time. But only after watching the eight movies in DVD for the third time, I finally dive in with the books.

• I don’t take notes while I’m reading so when the time comes that I need to review a book and I need a line or two to quote something, I have to scan the book all over again to find what I need to use. 

• I’m not good in remembering authors name especially when I only read one book from him/her. I can remember the story, characters and major events from the book but not the author unless he/she is really well known.

• I give copies of my favorite books to my friends not only because I want them to read it but also to avoid lending them my own copies and end up getting my books back battered.

• I usually buy children books so I have something to discard every end of the year for public schools/library or street children.

• When I was 18 I received tons of gifts but only one makes me cried so much, an inspirational book given by my brother’s girlfriend with a letter inside.

• When that said book above was doodled inside by a child, I got the urge to hit the child the moment I found out what happened but I didn’t do it, instead I end up crying & devastated for days.

That’s all I can think of for now. I know they are not entertaining nor interesting facts but I hope I’ve shared something new about me to all of you. Enjoy reading Sweet Evil!

SWEET EVIL Read Along Week Two: Citrus Recipe

We are on our second week of Sweet Evil Read Along. And this week we are required to read chapters ten to sixteen (pages 122-231) of Sweet Evil by Wendy Higgins.

This week theme is all about Citrus or Pear Recipe. For those who haven’t read the book or the required chapters for this week read along, you may be wondering how’s this week theme related to the story? Well, as much as I want to discuss the details about their fruity smells and how they actually come to it, I don’t want to spoil you with the sweet and romantic interactions between Anna and Kaidan. So the best way I think is to just leave you with some lines from the book that actually reference the fruits. But you need to read the book, so you’ll understand better and know how all this conversation between Anna And Kaidan started.

“How’s your orange juice, Ann? Does it have a touch of lime?

The glass paused at my lips as I processed his innuendo, and I took a second to make sure my embarrassment stayed hidden inside. I let the drink swish over my tongue a moment before swallowing and answering.

“Actually, it’s a little sour,” I said, and he laughed.

“That’s a shame.” He picked up a green pear from his plate and bit into it, licking juice that dripped down his thumb….

Citrus Recipe: Calamansi Bars

* Calamansi is Filipino native citrus fruit that is smaller than lemon. For those who don’t have calamansi you can use lemon or any citrus fruit you have.

Ingredients:

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup cornstarch
2/3 cup confectioners’ sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup butter, cubed
4 eggs (medium size)
1 1/3 cups sugar
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons calamansi zest
1/2 cup calamansi juice
1/3 cup milk
confectioners’ sugar for dusting

Combine all-purpose flour, confectioners’ sugar, cornstarch, and salt in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade. Add butter and process for 15 seconds or until mixture resembles coarse meal. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Press onto a greased and lined baking pan. Bake for 20 minutes at 350ºF.

Whisk together eggs, sugar, flour, calamansi zest, calamansi juice, and milk. Pour mixture onto warm crust.

Bake at 325ºF for 20 minutes or until firm to the touch. 

Dust with extra confectioners’ sugar on top.

Cool and slice evenly.

That’s the recipe! It’s actually just like a lemon bar but instead of using lemon we used calamansi, since it is a lot cheaper than lemons and much easier to get from local supermarket where I am located.

If you want to join us with the Read Along, just visit Mindy’s page, Magical Urban Fantasy Reads and sign up. It is still open for participants so join the fun!

SWEET EVIL Read Along Week One: Road Trips

This is officially my first read along participation online. When I found out form Rachel of Fiktshun that she’s co-hosting a read along for one of the most highly recommended books in my TBR pile, Sweet Evil by Wendy Higgins, I finally give in with the challenge. Rachel has been pushing me before to read the book even before it comes out, but since I don’t have a copy yet at that time I have to set it aside in my to-buy list. After few days and weeks of its international released I tried to find a copy of the book locally but in my appointment the book is still not available in my location. With so many books in my TBR I totally forgot getting a copy of this book until I found out about the read along. So here I am finally reading Sweet Evil while writing this post.

In this first week of the read along we are required to read pages 1 to 121 or for those who are reading from a e-Reader like me it’s chapters one through nine. The theme of this week post is ROAD TRIP which is really timing because I just came from travels this past few weeks. As you all know, my travel escapades were one of the usual reasons when I am missing in action in this blog.

Just last month, I visited two different destinations, The City of Pines (Baguio) and the City of Culture (Cebu). For those who aren’t familiar these two are provinces here in the Philippines are located in different islands. I travel the first one by land and the other one by air. Baguio is what we call here the summer capital of the Philippines because of its cool weather. Every year I got the chance to visit Baguio, but the last road trip happened when I am with my parents & sister. We hit the road at the night from Manila using my brother’s car and spend the day touring the mountain ranges. Our driver that time is a first timer in the city which makes our trip a bit of disaster. He isn’t familiar with all the locations and traffic rules of the City. Baguio is not a big place to tour but the road is usually crowded and most of the lanes are one way. So we went to a lot of tourist places like cave, mountain peak, farms, temple, even churches and military school. We do a lot of site seeing, picture taking and of course shopping.

As for my Cebu trip, it is not actually a road trip since we can’t bring a car with us. My friend and I have to take a plane in order to get there. But when we arrived on Mactan Island we have to travel by land in order to get to the City proper where we mostly tour. We have to take cab, jeepneys, motor or what they call ‘habal-habal’. It is a fun and full of adventure travel for us. My friend and I are both first time tourist on that place. The experience is worth treasuring and really memorable. At first I was shocked that most of the local doesn’t speak Tagalog (FIlipino’s local language) nor English, which I actually expected as common language in there other than their native language Bisaya/Cebuano. I don’t know any Cebuano words and I am surprise that we survived touring the island. WiFi and online maps were really helpful.

I haven’t thought about my dream road trip yet, but my dream travel vacation would be in Europe. Maybe I’ll combine both travels if given a chance. I love to tour Europe ever since I can remember and a road trip will be a great experience for sure. Crossing different countries, cities and towns via land is surely fun and exciting. There so many things to learn and experience first hand. More than seeing the places and tourist spots, I always love experiencing cultures, exploring life styles and meeting new & different people.

As for the Sweet Evil, I’ve only read the required chapters for this week, which end before Anna and Kaidan’s road trip. So far the premise of the story seems good. I haven’t read much angel books lately except for the last installment of Fallen series by Lauren Kate. I’m enjoying what I’ve read from Sweet Evil so far. Kaidan is an intriguing character and Anna’s angelic background is interesting. I’m actually in hurry writing this post so I can get back again in reading and finish the whole book.