About

Why, hello there! I’m Genevieve, a very young twenty-something who swears she’s still a teenager and is also shocked when my parents refer to me as an adult (I’m not, trust me). I’m currently in college majoring in early childhood education, but writing is my true love, and that love of writing definitely lends itself to a love of reading as well.

I’ve been a huge reader as long as I can remember – I never had an unfortunate slump where I thought books were uncool, although I unfortunately can’t say the same thing for books I’m forced to read sometimes (ie school – which means being a teacher will be great, right?). I probably graduated to reading YA a bit too young, and gladly brought my younger sister along with me. She still loves to read when she can, but I’m the one who always tries to make time to read, whether I actually have the time or not – after all, why should I do boring homework when I could be reading an awesome book? I’ve slowly begun graduating to adult books as well since 2014, but my heart remains with YA, and that’s what you’ll find a lot of here.

I’m a very quiet person in real life – I’m the definition of an introvert who definitely needs to recharge after being around other people. As a result, I can often make a lot of time in my life to read and then blog about said reading. My shyness can definitely extend to my online persona, but I’m trying to branch out a bit more on Twitter and such. Feel free to reach out to me there or on another social media account! All my links can be found in the sidebar in an array of beautiful colors (if you can’t tell, green and blue are my favorite colors, and purple comes in at a pretty close second)!

Welcome to The Reading Shelf, a YA book review blog. I originally started this blog in June of 2010 on Livejournal, but various changes to the site led me to move to WordPress. I mainly read young adult books and only review young adult books, but I read a large variety of genres, from contemporary to paranormal to historical. I go through fits of updating every day and always having plenty of content and then going a few weeks or months before I post anything again, so I apologize in advance. I review books that I buy and check out from the library; it’s merely a hobby, not something I’m paid for or something I try to get attention for. You’re welcome to suggest books for me to review but I’m too busy with school and life in general to receive books for reviews – there are plenty of more professional reviewers who deserve them. All of my reviews are my own opinion, so you are welcome to disagree, but if you do, please don’t leave rude comments or anything of the like. If you disagree just don’t comment or at least be civil. Thank you, and feel free to leave comments telling me what you think.

About the Ratings System

Originally I used the five star rating system, including half stars, but I want to do something a little different. Sometimes books might get a higher number rating based on certain elements, so I want to focus on rating books based on how I felt about them, rather than just what I rated them on Goodreads. I’ll list the Goodreads ratings, but the word ratings will be the prominent rating from now on. Here’s a basic comparison for the new ratings; for more information, see the post I made about it.

approximately 5 stars

approximately 4.5 stars

approximately 4 stars

approximately 3.5 stars

approximately 3 stars

approximately 2.5 stars and lower

About Genevieve

My name is Genevieve, but you might also know me as Lia – that’s the name I used up until recently online because I am very paranoid and was worried about using my real name; now, however, I want to blog under my real name, so I’m using “Genevieve.” Hopefully that doesn’t confuse too many people!

I’m a student who never seems to have enough free time, and when I actually do have some free time I spend way too much of it on the internet rather than reading or writing. Like many readers and reviewers, I’m an aspiring writer, but I’m no where near to a full-fledge author, although I hope to be one someday. In the meantime, I’m just a reader who tries to write the kind of stories I would want to read.