Let’s Talk Bookish: Following the Reader

✨ Welcome back to another week of LTB! ✨

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme created by Rukky @Eternity Books and co-hosted by Aria @Book Nook Bits and myself! In this discussion meme, participants get to talk about certain topics, share opinions, and spread the love by visiting each other’s posts! Learn more about LTB, past topics and future topics HERE.

This week’s topic is:

Prompts: What makes you want to follow a bookish account on social media? What makes you want to follow a book blog? Are you very discerning, or do you follow back whoever follows you? Do you prefer or find it easier to engage with other readers on one platform over the other (i.e. blogs vs. bookstagram or booktok)?

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Blog Tour Review: The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire by Anna Fiteni

Hi friends, I’m back for another blog tour today! I’m excited to share my thoughts as part of the blog tour hosted by Toppling Stacks Tours for The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire by Anna Fiteni.

Thanks to Little, Brown Books for Young Readers for providing a digital ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review!

The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire
Publisher
: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: 9 September 2025
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Rep: LGBTQIA+, disability

Rating:

(4 pandas)

📖 SYNOPSIS

An irresistible dark fae romantasy, inspired by Welsh mythology and perfect for fans of Sarah J. Maas, Faebound, Leigh Bardugo and Holly Black’s The Cruel Prince.

Ceridwen Parry has run away with the fairies.

But this is not her story.

For Sabrina Parry, the world is tough, cruel and practical. With her father in prison, her aims in life are 1. hold onto her job, 2. hold her tongue and 3. set up her sister Ceridwen with a man rich enough to look after her. Ceridwen is lovely, romantic, timid – everything that Sabrina isn’t. But then Ceridwen vanishes into the eerie woods leaving only an iron ring behind and Sabrina is drawn into a beautiful but decaying world of fairies and monsters of old. And when an annoyingly handsome fairy prince offers her a dangerous deal, Sabrina is forced to put her own freedom at risk to save her sister.

📚 BUY A COPY
⚠️ CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNINGS

Imprisonment, blood, gore, dismemberment, violence, death

TL;DR: This is for those who enjoy complex, morally grey, and somewhat unlikeable MCs that will make you work to appreciate them. It’s for those who enjoy the intertwining of real history with mythological faerie tales and folklore and magic. And it’s for those who enjoy reading about sibling bonds, a taste of a hate-to-love romance, and a coming-of-age story about a bitter, tired, and scared young woman who longs to live as big a life as she possibly can. I feel like Habren has become one of my favourite YA FMCs and I think she’s going to stick around in my head for a while! Overall, I found The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire a surprisingly touching and heartwarming story, even if at first, I was a bit uncertain about it. I would recommend this to those who enjoyed stories like The Cruel Prince, and darkly whimsical faerie tales centering family and friendship, such as those by Emily Lloyd-Jones (The Bone Houses, The Drowned Woods).

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August 2025 Community Posts!

Happy Monday, book lovers! I hope you have a great start to the week!

Time is flying so quickly and yet another month has now come and gone, so it’s time to share one of my favourite posts: the community posts! This is a collection of posts I read from bloggers across the book community over the past month. I hope you’ll take the time to visit some of these creators and show them the love they deserve! ✨📖 Happy reading! 📖✨

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Sundays in Bed With… #MyWeeklyWrapUp [296]

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 your time reading in bed or wish you had time to read today.

I’ll be spending the rest of my Sunday night in bed reading The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire by Anna Fiteni. I’m honestly struggling to really get into it and I’m not 100% sure why. I feel like there’s something about the writing that keeps losing me. I often find myself zoning out which means I’ve read multiple sections multiple times, and I’m making very slow progress. I hope that changes soon!

What book are you spending your Sunday in bed with?

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Let’s Talk Bookish: In which season do you do your best reading?

✨ Welcome back to another week of LTB! ✨

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme created by Rukky @Eternity Books and co-hosted by Aria @Book Nook Bits and myself! In this discussion meme, participants get to talk about certain topics, share opinions, and spread the love by visiting each other’s posts! Learn more about LTB, past topics and future topics HERE.

This week’s topic is:

Suggested by: Jillian @ Jillian the Bookish Butterfly
Prompts: Is there a month, quarter or other specific time of year when you do your most reading and why do you think that is? Does this tend to fluctuate every year or is your reading pretty ‘steady’?

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Book Review: The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett

The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan #1)
Publisher: Hodderscape
Pub Date: 6 February 2024
Genre: Fantasy Mystery

Panda Rating:

(5 pandas)

📖 SYNOPSIS

In Daretana’s greatest mansion, a high imperial officer lies dead—killed, to all appearances, when a tree erupted from his body. Even here at the Empire’s borders, where contagions abound and the blood of the leviathans works strange magical changes, it’s a death both terrifying and impossible.

Assigned to investigate is Ana Dolabra, a detective whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities. Rumor has it that she wears a blindfold at all times, and that she can solve impossible cases without even stepping outside the walls of her home.

At her side is her new assistant, Dinios Kol, magically altered in ways that make him the perfect aide to Ana’s brilliance. Din is at turns scandalized, perplexed, and utterly infuriated by his new superior—but as the case unfolds and he watches Ana’s mind leap from one startling deduction to the next, he must admit that she is, indeed, the Empire’s greatest detective.

As the two close in on a mastermind and uncover a scheme that threatens the Empire itself, Din realizes he’s barely begun to assemble the puzzle that is Ana Dolabra—and wonders how long he’ll be able to keep his own secrets safe from her piercing intellect.

⚠️ CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNINGS

Body horror, blood depiction & emesis, murder, smoking, animal & human medical experimentation, classism

TL;DR: I haven’t been able to stop thinking about The Tainted Cup since I finished reading it and that was almost 2 weeks ago now. If you enjoy a richly developed fantasy world, quirky, entertaining, and sharp characters, a layered murder mystery, plus a bit of politicking, then there’s a very good chance you’ll enjoy this book. I loved Ana, Din, and their Holmes/Watson dynamic that had me grinning with delight, especially because the witty sharp banter was so much fun to read! The world-building was immersive and complex, the mystery was intriguing and I was so curious to learn more about this world (not because it wasn’t well-developed but because it is and there’s so much more to explore)! Overall, this was a fantastic read and every bit as incredible as everyone says it is.

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