Goodreads Monday – 02 December

We’re back with another Goodreads Monday, a weekly meme started by @Lauren’s Page Turners. This meme invites you to pick a book from your TBR and explain why you want to read it. Easy enough, right? Feel free to join in if you want to! I’ll be using a random number generator to pick my books from my insanely long GR Want-to-read list.

This week’s book is Hunted by Meagan Spooner. I had absolutely no idea that this was even on my list but I did add it in 2017 so… That’s a long enough time for my very spotty memory to completely forget! 😆This is a YA fantasy retelling of Beauty and the Beast and it’s got 3.92 stars with 21,269 ratings and 4,101 reviews.

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Sundays in Bed With… #MyWeeklyWrapUp [32]

We’re back with another Sundays in Bed With… meme! This meme dares to ask you what book has been in your bed this morning and is hosted by Midnight Book Girl. Come share what book you’ve been you’ve spent time curled up reading in bed with, or which book you wish you had time to read today!

I’ve spent this Sunday thinking that I should probably be in bed with the book that I’m “currently reading”: The Curious Heart of Ailsa Rae by Stephanie Butland. I’ve finally picked up another e-ARC that’s *cough* a little *cough* overdue…

Ailsa Rae is learning how to live.
She’s only a few months past the heart transplant that – just in time – saved her life. Life should be a joyful adventure. But…

Her relationship with her mother is at breaking point.
She knows she needs to find her father.
She’s missed so much that her friends have left her behind.
She’s felt so helpless for so long that she’s let polls on her blog make her decisions for her. And now she barely knows where to start on her own.

And then there’s Lennox. Her best friend and one time lover. He was sick too. He didn’t make it. And now she’s supposed to face all of this without him.

But her new heart is a bold heart.
She just needs to learn to listen to it

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Bury the Lede by Gaby Dunn, Claire Roe – #eARC #BookReview

Goodreads: Bury the Lede
Publish date: 08 October 2019
Publisher: BOOM! Studios
Genre: Crime Thriller, Mystery, Graphic Novel, LGBTQ+
Panda Rating:

Twenty-one-year-old Madison T. Jackson is already the star of the Emerson College student newspaper when she nabs a coveted night internship at Boston’s premiere newspaper, The Boston Lede. The job’s simple: do whatever the senior reporters tell you to do, from fetching coffee to getting a quote from a grieving parent. It’s gruelling work, so when the murder of a prominent Boston businessman comes up on the police scanner, Madison races to the scene of the grisly crime. There, Madison meets the woman who will change her life forever: prominent socialite Dahlia Kennedy, who is covered in gore and being arrested for the murder of her family. The newspapers put everyone they can in front of her with no results until, with nothing to lose, Madison gets a chance – and unexpectedly barrels headfirst into danger she never anticipated.

I love discovering new graphic novels and I requested this because the cover hooked my interest, plus I don’t think never read a crime noir graphic novel/comic before! Bury the Lede was mostly what I anticipated it to be, although there were some elements that really grated on my nerves and that’s what made me only give it three stars.

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Top 5 Saturday: Series I Want to Finish Before 2019 Ends…

Yes, I’m aware it’s now Sunday but yesterday was a weird day for me combined with work + bingeing The Good Place. I didn’t realize I hadn’t posted anything until it was 1AM and I was still binge watching the series. So I’m posting this a little late… But one day late is better than never!

It’s time for another Top 5 SaturdaySunday, a weekly meme created by Mandy @ Devouring Books and this week’s topic is: books to be read by the end of the year. I actually answered a similar prompt for last week’s Thursday Discussion post, which you can read here. For this prompt I decided to look at the final books in series that I wanted to read this year and still haven’t got to. Is it highly ambitious to want to finish these series seeing as December is already here and I’ve got so many freaking books that I hope to finish before 2019 ends? It definitely is. But who knows what’ll happen, right?! Maybe December will be my miracle month of reading and I’ll be able to fly through whatever I pick up, even if I’m unsure that I’m really in the mood for it 😃It could be my tropical Christmas miracle! 😂

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First Lines Friday – 29 November

Yayaya, HAPPY FRIYAY, book lovers and friends 😍We’re back with another First Lines Friday! This is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines? Here are THE RULES:

  • Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
  • Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
  • Finally… reveal the book!

First lines:

“Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet. 1977, May 3, six thirty in the morning, no one knows anything but this innocuous fact: Lydia is late for breakfast.”

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Friday Favorites: Books That Make Me Thankful to be A Reader

It’s time for another Friday Favorites hosted by Kibby @ Something of the Book! This weekly meme is where you get to share a list of all your favourites based on the list of prompts on Kibby’s page. Sounds fun, right? This week’s prompt is: favorite books that make me thankful to be a reader. So… This is a really tough prompt to answer! I find the idea of narrowing it down to a small list so daunting because obviously there are gonna be loads of amazing favorites that don’t show up below. I think almost every book I’ve read has left a part of itself with me that makes me thankful to be a reader. There are just too many books to name one-by-one but I’m only going to name five below. I’ve learned and experienced so many different thoughts and emotions while reading all of these books. Forever thankful!

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Notes On A Nervous Planet by Matt Haig – #MiniBookReview

Goodreads: Notes On A Nervous Planet
Genre: Non Fiction, Self-Help, Mental Health
Panda Rating:

Rates of stress and anxiety are rising. A fast, nervous planet is creating fast and nervous lives. We are more connected, yet feel more alone. And we are encouraged to worry about everything from world politics to our body mass index.

– How can we stay sane on a planet that makes us mad?
– How do we stay human in a technological world?
– How do we feel happy when we are encouraged to be anxious?

After experiencing years of anxiety and panic attacks, these questions became urgent matters of life and death for Matt Haig. And he began to look for the link between what he felt and the world around him.

Notes on a Nervous Planet is a personal and vital look at how to feel happy, human and whole in the 21st century. 

This was my first book by Matt Haig and it certainly won’t be my last! I’m not much of a nonfiction reader but I’m so glad that I decided to read this book because Haig touches upon incredibly relevant issues that we face today living on this increasingly overloaded and sensitive nervous planet.

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Kiss Me Not (Kiss Me #1) by Emma Hart – #BookReview

Goodreads: Kiss Me Not (Kiss Me #1)
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Panda Rating:

What do you do when you’re the reigning kissing booth champion but the only person you want to kiss is your best friend’s brother?

Let me make this clear right here, right now: I, Halley Dawson, do not care that Preston Wright is kissing other women. Not a lick. Not at all. Nuh-uh-freakin’-uh.
I do care that he’s doing it six feet away from me behind a gaudy velvet curtain—making him my competition in this year’s kissing contest.

Why do I care, you ask? Because I’ve had an unfortunate crush on the insufferable idiot since I was sixteen years old, but I also know it’s never going to happen. He’s the Creek Falls bachelor to die for, and I’m the Creek Falls racoon lady who puts peanut butter sandwiches out for them every night. I’m not going to let him break my four-year-long reign—no matter how many times he breaks the rules and slides the curtain across to do the one thing he’s not allowed to: Kiss me.

Kiss Me Not is a short and fluffy romantic comedy that certainly had me giggling at times but overall, I thought was just alright. The enemies-to-lovers story focuses on our MCs Halley and Preston. Halley is the all-around golden girl and notorious Raccoon lady, and Preston is her best friend’s older brother and the most eligible bachelor of Creek Falls. Halley has been the reigning champion of the town’s Kissing Booth for the last four years, but this year Preston is her competition and soon bets are made and truths come out.

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#TopTenTuesday: Bookish and Non-Bookish Things I’m Thankful For (Thankful Freebie)

It’s that time of the week again, friends! We’re back with another Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s prompt is: thankful freebie. I don’t celebrate Thanksgiving but I can’t help getting caught up in the thankful spirit that’s been going around in the book community lately. 2019 has been a year of… a lot. A lot of everything. In many ways I feel like this year has been one of extremes with either many high-highs and many low-lows, which has been incredibly trying. This basically means that I’ve been a hot-emotional-mess for 90% of the year, including right now! But before I become even more emotional, let’s get to what I’m thankful for this year. As this is a freebie, I’ve decided to keep it simple and write a list of all the bookish and non-bookish things I’m thankful for. Of course, I’ll try to keep it as bookish as possible 😉 Here we go:

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