Birthstone Book Covers: August Peridot 2025 Edition! 💚

Hello friends, it’s been a hot minute since I’ve done The Birthstone Book Covers series created by Leslie @ Books Are the New the Black. I keep meaning to make a post every month, but then I blink and suddenly the month is over and I still haven’t done it! 🤦🏻‍♀️ But I digress. The last time I did this was in 2022, and so I made sure to pick different books from the ones that I picked then.

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Sundays in Bed With… #MyWeeklyWrapUp [295]

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 Eye of the Bedlam Bride by Matt Dinniman. This is book 6 in the DCC series that I’ve been lowkey obsessed with! Leslie and I are continuing with our buddy read and we’re really gearing ourselves up for a world of heartache, lol. Help 🥲

What book are you spending your Sunday in bed with?

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Let’s Talk Bookish: A Change in Bookish Opinions

✨ 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: Have your bookish opinions changed over the years, and if so, in what ways have they changed? Do you think your bookish opinions have changed because of being part of the bookish community (including on social media), reading more books, or book blogging? Have your bookish opinions changed in ways you didn’t expect?

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Mini Book Review: Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis

Full Speed to a Crash Landing (Chaotic Orbits #1)
Publisher: DAW
Pub Date: 6 August 2024
Genre: Science Fiction/Space Opera Novella

Panda Rating:

(4 pandas)

📖 SYNOPSIS

A high octane sexy space heist from New York Times-bestselling author Beth Revis, the first in a novella trilogy.

Ada Lamarr may have gotten to the spaceship wreck first, but looter’s rights won’t get her far when she’s got a hole in the side of her ship and her spacesuit is almost out of air. Fortunately for her, help arrives in the form of a government salvage crew—and while they reluctantly rescue her from certain death, they are not pleased to have an unexpected passenger along on their classified mission.

But Ada doesn’t care—all that matters to her is enjoying their fine food and sweet, sweet oxygen—until Rian White, the government agent in charge, starts to suspect that there’s more to Ada than meets the eye. He’s not wrong—but he’s so pretty that Ada is perfectly happy to keep him paying attention to her—at least until she can complete the job she was sent to pull off. But as quick as Ada is, Rian might be quicker—and she may not be entirely sure who’s manipulating who until it’s too late…

A phenomenally fun novella that kicks off a trilogy of sexy space heists and romantic tension, Full Speed to a Crash Landing is packed with great characters and full of twists and turns that will keep you guessing until the end.

I read this as a book recommendation to fulfill one of my reading challenge prompts and after hearing so many good thing about it, I’m glad to say that I get it! I have to be honest and say that I was initially worried when I first picked it up and wasn’t vibing with our FMC. Ada was… A lot to begin with and she kind of rubbed me the wrong way with her attitude. It was overenthusiastic manic pixie but then almost immediately after, we’d get a different side to her that got me thinking: what exactly is going on here?!

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#WWWWednesday: 13 August 2025

Leslie and I are planning three group reads in the coming months! Find more details on Leslie’s page or at the end of this post!

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:

  1. What did you read last?
  2. What are you currently reading?
  3. What will you read next?
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#TopTenTuesday: Bye-bye Book Slump!

We’re back with another Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl.

This week’s topic is: Books Guaranteed to Put an End to Your Book Slump (Which books would you recommend to someone (it’s me, I’m someone) dealing with the dreaded book slump? No book is grabbing their attention or making them excited to sit down and read and they are suffering for it.)

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Book Review: The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri

The Jasmine Throne (The Burning Kingdoms #1)
Publisher: Orbit
Pub Date: 8 June 2021
Genre: Adult Fantasy

Panda Rating:

(actual = 3.75 pandas)

📖 SYNOPSIS

Author of Empire of Sand and Realm of Ash Tasha Suri’s The Jasmine Throne, beginning a new trilogy set in a world inspired by the history and epics of India, in which a captive princess and a maidservant in possession of forbidden magic become unlikely allies on a dark journey to save their empire from the princess’s traitor brother.

Imprisoned by her dictator brother, Malini spends her days in isolation in the Hirana: an ancient temple that was once the source of the powerful, magical deathless waters — but is now little more than a decaying ruin.

Priya is a maidservant, one among several who make the treacherous journey to the top of the Hirana every night to clean Malini’s chambers. She is happy to be an anonymous drudge, so long as it keeps anyone from guessing the dangerous secret she hides.

But when Malini accidentally bears witness to Priya’s true nature, their destinies become irrevocably tangled. One is a vengeful princess seeking to depose her brother from his throne. The other is a priestess seeking to find her family. Together, they will change the fate of an empire.

⚠️ CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNINGS

Homomisia & internalised homomisia, self-immolation & self-mutilation, suicidal ideation, forced drug use, addiction & withdrawl, blood & gore depiction, body horror, death of children, murder, execution by immolation, torture

Argh, I’m not entirely sure why I always struggle to put my thoughts about this book into words, but it happened the first time I read it and on re-read, it’s the same, so I’m sorry if this review is all over the place!

Note: I first read The Jasmine Throne back in 2022 but I almost completely forgot everything that happened in the book not long after. Jess and I decided to re-read it this year to finally complete the trilogy, and so far it’s been an interesting, albeit different, experience than we expected. When I first read this, I gave it 4.5 stars, but as you can see with my current rating, that upon re-read, my rating has dropped a bit. I find it difficult to pinpoint what exactly didn’t work so well for me, but I think in large part it’s down to me not feeling as invested in the larger main chunk of the story. That said, I know this is a vastly unpopular opinion since most people who’ve read this have loved it immensely—and to be honest, I would still highly recommend this because Suri’s writing is fantastic, the characters she’s breathed to life are intriguing, and the Indian-inspired fantasy world she’s created is exquisite.

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Sundays in Bed With… #MyWeeklyWrapUp [294]

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’ve spent most of my Sunday in bed reading Enchantra by Kaylie Smith. I started this book over a month ago, but it got shoved to the side for other reads. However, after finishing my last book and feeling a looming ‘book hangover’, I dove straight into this, and I’m so glad that I did. I’m enjoying it so much more than the first book, and I wish that this was the experience I had reading Phantasma!

What book are you spending your Sunday in bed with?

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Let’s Talk Bookish: Reading Slump vs. Bookish Hangover

✨ 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: What’s the difference between a reading slump and bookish hangover? How do you get out of both situations? What are examples of books that put you in a reading slump and books that caused you to have a book hangover? For more information, Book Riot has some really interesting articles about using neuroscience to understand reading slumps and the psychology of a book hangover.

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