Passenger

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Passenger was a pretty exciting release for me. I found the synopsis really intriguing and loved the line "A scavenger hunt through time." It was Lit Up Review's February spotlight book club read and I was pretty happy to be able to read it with the ladies from Lit Up Review. It wasn't as good as I had hoped and expected it to be. I spent about three weeks on this book before finally finishing it. (I read books in between these three weeks but it took me so long to work through it I had to stop to read other books.) I liked it but the main issues I had with it was how slow the plot was, how rushed some situations were, and mostly how lacking the adventure it was for me. But if you enjoy fun and captivating reads with time travel definitely try Passenger, because you may enjoy it more than I did.

I enjoyed reading from Etta and Nicholas as they were both interesting characters with very interesting backgrounds and pasts. Etta is from 2016 but Nicholas is from the 1800's I believe? Somewhere around that time. They both are somehow tied into this whole situation and go looking for clues to find this stolen object. Both Etta and Nicholas were very different characters but similar at the same time. They both were very smart about situations, each knowing different things that helped them on this journey. I especially liked reading about the character development that Etta goes through. She is thrown into the whole time traveling thing and she has to adjust and learn as she goes through the whole life scavenger hunt. By the end, she is a lot more informed on time travel and also has gained from knowledge from the situations she was put in. I am really looking forward to the next book when we get to see Etta in a situation I definitely didn't expect her to be in.

The plot is probably the reason why I write "I am excited for the next book." I have never read an Alexandra Bracken book before Passenger but if this is what her plots are like then sign me up because the whole time travel aspect and scavenger hunt is genius. I just want to establish my love for the plot and the whole direction the book is series is headed, especially that ending (More on that will be in the spoilers section). Okay, not what brought my rating down? It is what makes the plot better than it already is. Perfect pacing, making sure the book doesn't drag out for too long, ect ect. The problem I had with Passenger was that I was bored out of my mind for the first 150-200 pages. I get that there were things that needed to be introduced and stuff but I came here for that "scavenger hunt through time" and going through 200 pages for that is a bit much for me. And once it did get to the actual scavenger hunt, the pacing was a bit too slow for me and I felt like the entire hunt through time lasted about two minutes long. Hopefully, this doesn't happen too much in Wayfarer (the next book!) because it pains me that this plot could have had so much potential but it was held back by the pacing and just how long it took to finally get into the plot.

Also, just wanted to mention real quick that I really love the time travel world that Alex has created and I can't wait to read more from it.

The one last thing that brought down my rating was how rushed things got with Etta and Nicholas. I just feel like their feelings for each other just popped up out of nowhere. Like it was one chapter where they were just talking about what was happening then the next Etta is maybe liking Nicholas? Yeah, no thank you rushed feelings. They're cute together but I really wish the relationship could have been handled a bit more realistically...

I gave this book 3 stars because I enjoyed the plot and characters but there were too many things that bugged and prevented me from being able to fully enjoy it.

As someone who has a blog and a blog design, I often get complimented for my beautiful blog design, which I made myself. I am that kind of person that really cares about her blog design and it's appearance, it's one of the main reasons why I moved to Blogger. Today, I have 5 simple and easy tweaks for people with Blogger that can help clean up your blog just a bit. I these should be pretty easy but if you have any problems or questions, tweet or email me! I hope you find these useful.

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1. Transition

This is probably my favorite and in my opinion, most simple way to make a hover better and smoother. So, with a normal hover without the transition tag, you have this:
but with a slowed transition, you get this:
So, to achieve this effect you would insert this code into your CSS for any item that you want and this would be within the tag that doesn't have the :hover. (More on that below)


You can also always change how slow or fast the transition is by changing the "0.7s" to any fraction of a second you want. The higher the number the slower it will take for the item to fully achieve the hover affect.

So for those who don't understand, in order to achieve a hover reaction (ie: background color change, making something smaller) you need two pieces of code in your CSS. One normal (let's say I want to change something in my sidebar, I would use the .sidebar tag in my CSS) and one telling you what the hover reaction is ( that would be .sidebar:hover in my CSS). When using the transition code, you want to make sure you put it in the set of code that does not have the :hover in it.

2. Links

Ah links! As a book blogger, I like tons of things within my posts and a way to make links look better is by changing the effects of their hover. Now with Blogger, a link automatically has an underline to it, which in my opinion is kind of annoying. To get rid of that, you would insert the following code into your CSS:


If you want to add a transition so that the hover of the link is smoother, you would add this into your CSS:


Like I mentioned, the transition will make the hover smoother and you may like getting rid of the underline when you hover over a link...

3. Sidebar and Footer Background and Border

Sidebars and footers can easily get boring. Adding a colored background or border around them will add a bit of color and pizzaz. Let's say I want my sidebar widgets to each have a blue background with a red solid border, I would then add this code into my CSS:


But then the sidebar would be all pressed against the border! So I would then add some padding around the widget and border, just to give it a little breathing space. My code would then look like this:


There are so many other tweaks you can make to your sidebar as well. Changing the text color, font size, and more and more. Now if you want these tweaks to go to your footer, all you do is change the .sidebar tag with .footer. So now your CSS code would look like this:


Okay, so no one really wants a blue background and red border right? We must change the colors! To do that, all you have to do is find the color you want here or here, take the HTML code for that color, and replace it in the code. If you want your border color to be #81DAF5, I would change my "red" to that #81DAF5. If I want my background to be #DF01D7, I would change my "blue" to that #DF01D7.

There is also the matter of border styles because there are many different types of borders. You have your typical solid border but you can also have dotted, double, and dashed.


If you want your border thicker or thinner, change the number in "1px" to whatever your heart desires.

4. Center Navigation

The nav bar! Menu bar! Whatever you want to call it I honestly think it looks better when it is centered. In order to do that, all you need to do is paste this code into your CSS and boom! Centered pages.


Now if you want to get a little complicated...

5. Custom Read More!

For this part, I am going to guide you to Dana's tutorial for a custom read more but I want to share with you the CSS code I used for my new Read More button. You can definitely do whatever you want with your read more but if you want to use mine, feel free to use the code below!

Thank you everyone for reading! Let me know what your thoughts on this post are and whether or not you tried any of these codes. Also, if you want more of these post, let me know that as well.

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Where You'll Find Me

Starflight