I’m back with another blog tour today with Rachel’s Random Resources for In Pursuit of Happiness by Freya Kennedy. Thanks to NetGalley and Boldwood Books for providing the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Be sure to click on the banner below to check out the other bloggers on tour!
Goodreads: In Pursuit of Happiness Publisher: Boldwood Books Release Date: 15 December 2020 Genre: Women’s Fiction / Chick Lit Panda Rating:
The world is waiting…but just outside of your comfort zone.
Jo Campbell is perfectly content in a perfectly structured life. Nothing ever changes in Jo’s life, and she likes it that way. Or at least, she tells herself she does.
Most of the time, she manages to push down the tiny voice that tells her to chase her dream and maybe, just maybe, open her battered and bruised heart up to love. But to chase her dreams she needs to take chances that are way out of her comfort zone and learn to not put other people’s happiness above her own.
Most of all she has to learn to trust her heart, which may just be the biggest challenge of all.
Two sisters.
One brutal murder.
A quest for vengeance that will unleash Hell itself…
And an intoxicating romance.
Emilia and her twin sister Vittoria are streghe – witches who live secretly among humans, avoiding notice and persecution. One night, Vittoria misses dinner service at the family’s renowned Sicilian restaurant. Emilia soon finds the body of her beloved twin…desecrated beyond belief. Devastated, Emilia sets out to find her sister’s killer and to seek vengeance at any cost-even if it means using dark magic that’s been long forbidden.
Then Emilia meets Wrath, one of the Wicked-princes of Hell she has been warned against in tales since she was a child. Wrath claims to be on Emilia’s side, tasked by his master with solving the series of women’s murders on the island. But when it comes to the Wicked, nothing is as it seems…
⚠️CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNINGS
Slavery, hate crime, self harm, blood & gore depiction, body horror, emesis, grief & loss depiction, death of a sister, murder, torture, stalking
Let me start off by saying that this is an unpopular opinion about this book 😂
Um… How is it already mid-December? Every day this week so far has felt like a Friday and I have a feeling that’ll continue to be the case until the new year 😂 Where is time going?!
Hello, hello and welcome back to another episode of WWW Wednesday, a weekly meme hosted by Sam @ Taking On A World of Words, which means I’ll be answering these questions:
What did you read last?
What are you currently reading?
What will you read next?
Since last week I managed to finish five books:
Steel & Stone (The War of the North Saga #1) by Kate Haley ★★★☆☆ I really loved the concept of this story but I felt that the writing was a bit clunky, especially with changing POVs in chapters, and sadly, I found the main characters and their love-triangle angst a little too frustrating. Our characters were around the 18-21 age but really came across as much younger. That said, I’m curious to see what will happen next! Check out my full review.
Spellbreaker (Spellbreaker Duology #1) by Charlie Holmberg ★★★★☆ It took me a little while to actually get into this story but once I did I ended up really liking it! The first half was a bit slow in pace, but once the action really kicked in, I sped through in less than a day. I enjoyed the historical setting, the magic, and of course, I was a fan of Elsie and Bacchus, and their slow burn romance. There were some twists and turns that I didn’t expect and I’m so curious to see what happens next! Review coming soon.
So, we’re back with another Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s prompt is:Books On My Winter 2020-2021 TBR (or summer if you live in the southern hemisphere)!
I’m generally terrible with TBRs and tend to half-stick to possibility piles but 2020 has seen my moods become even wilder and whackier than normal, which has resulted in me straying from all the books that I think I possibly want to read over a given period. As much as I have been reading, its still been a tough year for the books 😂 I can’t believe the year is already coming to an end and well, a lot of my bookish reading plans this year kind of got thrown to the wayside! While this prompt does include 2021, I’m focusing on December specifically as I have a few titles that I think Iwantto read before the year ends… But (again) it’ll depend on my mood when it comes time to pick them up! So here are some possible possibilities for the pile and yes, I’m probably being more than a little ambitious! 😜
Hello Mondays, welcome back to #5OnMyTBR, a meme created by the wonderful E @ The Local Bee Hunter’s Nook. This bookish meme gets us to dig even further into our TBRs by simply posting about five books on our TBR! You can learn more about it here or in the post announcing it. You can find the full list of prompts (past and future) at the end of this post!
Welcome back to Goodreads Monday! It’s been a very hot minute since I did one but I figured I might as well get back into it! This weekly meme was started by @Lauren’s Page Turners and it 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.*
*Sorry if a book has been featured twice! I need to make better note of which ones I’ve done already!
This week’s featured book is The Waking Forest by Alyssa Wees. This is a YA paranormal fantasy that was published in 2019 and has a 3.35 rating on Goodreads with 300+ reviews. Hmm… Not that great?
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 spent time curled up reading in bed with, or which book you wish you had time to read today!
This Sunday I’ll be rounding off my day in bed with In Pursuit of Happiness. I read my first book by Kennedy earlier this year and really enjoyed the sweet romance, so I’m looking forward to coming back and experiencing this quaint little Irish village again! We’re following another bookish character again which is also another bonus! 😉
Jo Campbell is perfectly content in a perfectly structured life. Nothing ever changes in Jo’s life, and she likes it that way. Or at least, she tells herself she does. Most of the time, she manages to push down the tiny voice that tells her to chase her dream and maybe, just maybe, open her battered and bruised heart up to love. But to chase her dreams she needs to take chances that are way out of her comfort zone and learn to not put other people’s happiness above her own. Most of all she has to learn to trust her heart, which may just be the biggest challenge of all.
Welcome back to another Top 5 Saturday! Just in case you don’t know Top 5 Saturday is a weekly meme created by Mandy @ Devouring Books and it’s where we list the top five books (they can be books on your TBR, favourite books, books you loved/hated) based on the week’s topic. You can see the upcoming schedule at the end of my post 🙂 This week’s topic is actually: water on the cover.
I don’t think I’ve ever done a prompt about books with water on the cover. I love the many ways water can be presented on an eye-catching cover. It can represent dark and tumultuous emotions but it can also present a calm or meditative state. Although all of these titles are still on my TBR, and perhaps I’m reading too much into it anyway, but I feel like the covers represent the stories (and genres) well! I guess only time will tell, when I finally read the books, whether that’s true or not 😂
It’s Friday and I usually do a “Lets Talk Bookish” post but my brain has been feeling pretty foggy lately and I haven’t the capacity to write good posts, so I decided to do a fun tag! I have a million that I still need to do but, of course, I decided to do one that I wasn’t actually tagged in! It seemed perfect for the upcoming holiday season though. Can you believe it’s practically already mid-December? 🙃 WOT.
I saw this on Stephen’s blog and if you haven’t already, I’d recommend checking it out because Stephen writes great posts and reviews, and is all around awesome! 😉 Now without further ado, let’s get to the tag!
🎄“All I Want For Christmas Is You…” 🎄 What book do you want to see under the Christmas Tree?
Is it really possible to choose one book? If you can, you definitely have a lot more restraint than me! But if I had to choose only onetwo, the books that come to mind are: A Song of Wraiths and Ruin and Felix Ever After. I still haven’t bought the ebooks cos I really want physical copies of these beauts 😂
🎄“Simply Having A Wonderful Christmas Time…” 🎄 WHAT book that you have read this year have you enjoyed the most?
Surprising absolutely nobody: The House in the Cerulean Sea. I mean… Is this answer getting old? I really don’t care because this book was all kinds of heartwarming and wonderful. My heart fills up with all the fuzzy feelings when I think about it and if you haven’t already, please read it! 🤣
🎄“It’s Beginning to look a lot like Christmas…” 🎄 Which book has THE most festive look to it?
Ooh, this is a toughie because there are so many festive covers that I absolutely adore. I just recently did a post with Christmas romance covers that I think really scream ‘festive’ vibes. Some more examples:
🎄“ELF” 🎄 What book unleashes your inner child?
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. This book is one of my top favourite childhood reads and every time I read it or hear mention of it I get thrown back to the giddy feeling I got when I read this book for the first time. The joy that the chocolate factory and all its wonderful oddities gives me is really like no other and when I was a kid I absolutely lived for the magic of this story! 🥰
🎄“The gRINCH” 🎄 your favourite villain…
I think this is gonna be a toss up between Eli and Holland but both are villains in Schwab’s books (Villains and Shades of Magic, respectively). I really love to hate these two 😂
🎄“The HOLIDAY” 🎄 Name your favourite TWO couples…
Oh this is so tough because I read a lot of romances and whenever I love a romance I ship those ships in a big way 😂 The first two couples that popped into my mind were: Calla & Jonah from The Simple Wild (*swoon*) and Maia & Edan from Spin the Dawn (*still swooning*)
🎄What book would you like to give as a present to your followers? 🎄
Hmm… I guess I should go for something other than Cerulean Sea? 😂 I’m also gonna pick a few because I can! These books are from (mostly) different (sub-)genres and ones that I feel deserve more love (well, TPW gets a lot of love but I can’t not mention it because this book!!!). This is kind of inspiring me to do an end of year giveaway, so maybe stay tuned for that? 😉
And that’s a wrap, folks! This was fun and exactly what I needed because I didn’t have to think too hard at the end of a long working day/week.On that note, I’m not tagging anyone specifically but feel free to link back if you wanna do the tag so I can check out your answers too! 🥰
Happy Friday book lovers! We’re back with another First Lines Friday, a weekly featurefor 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:
“There was nothing cute about the first time Kerry Fuller met Jesse Strong. He broke her glasses; she bloodied his nose and they both ended up in a tangle of yarn on the floor in the loft space of Strong Knits being scolded by Mama Joy.”
Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?
dinipandareads 