First Lines Friday – 22 January

January 22, 2021June 23, 2021 Dini @ dinipandareads10 Comments

It’s been a hot minute since I did my last FLF but I’m back with it today!

Happy Friday book lovers! We’re back with another First Lines Friday, 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:

“I never meant to kill my brother. I never set out to hate my father. I never dreamed I would bury my own son. Nor could I have imagined that I would betray the childhood friend who saved my life, or win a Pulitzer Prize for telling a lie.”

Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?

#WWWWednesday: 20 January

January 21, 2021June 23, 2021 Dini @ dinipandareads11 Comments

I know technically it’s 21 January and I’m a bit late but we’re rolling with it!

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’ve read 7 books but I’m not counting three of them because I didn’t count them on my Goodreads. As I mentioned in my weekly wrap up I picked up a reverse harem bully romance and it was one of those experiences where I was horrified and confused but also still curious so I kept “reading”. In reality I was just skimming as fast as possible to see what happens but it was honestly one helluva journey and I don’t even know what to think 😂

Girl on the Ferris Wheel by Julie Halpern & Len Vlahos ★★★☆☆
The Girl on the Ferris Wheel was a realistic YA contemporary about high school life, first love, culture and family. It also has good representation for anxiety and depression through the lens of a young adult. I felt the story was written for the younger end of the YA range though and I found it difficult to really connect to the characters. Check out my blog tour review!

Blog Tour Review + Book Look: Cast in Firelight by Dana Swift

January 20, 2021June 23, 2021 Dini @ dinipandareads15 Comments

Today is my stop on the TBR & Beyond Tours for Cast in Firelight by Dana Swift.
Special thanks to Delacorte Press for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Be sure to click on the banner above to check out the rest of the amazing bloggers on tour!

Goodreads: Cast in Firelight (Wickery #1)
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Publication Date: 19 January 2021
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy

Panda Rating:

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Adraa is the royal heir of Belwar, a talented witch on the cusp of taking her royal ceremony test, and a girl who just wants to prove her worth to her people.

Jatin is the royal heir to Naupure, a competitive wizard who’s mastered all nine colors of magic, and a boy anxious to return home for the first time since he was a child.

Together, their arranged marriage will unite two of Wickery’s most powerful kingdoms. But after years of rivalry from afar, Adraa and Jatin only agree on one thing: their reunion will be anything but sweet. Only, destiny has other plans and with the criminal underbelly of Belwar suddenly making a move for control, their paths cross…and neither realizes who the other is, adopting separate secret identities instead.

Between dodging deathly spells and keeping their true selves hidden, the pair must learn to put their trust in the other if either is to uncover the real threat. Now Wickery’s fate is in the hands of rivals..? Fiancées..? Partners..? Whatever they are, it’s complicated and bound for greatness or destruction

BUY NOW: Amazon (US) | Book Depository | Barnes & Noble | Indigo | Indiebound

#TopTenTuesday: 10 Books I Didn’t Read in 2020… But Will Read in 2021!

January 19, 2021August 12, 2022 Dini @ dinipandareads56 Comments

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 I Meant to Read In 2020 but Didn’t Get To (You could take this opportunity to tell us what’s left on your seasonal TBRs from last year. Or books you were super excited about and then you didn’t get to them.)

At the tail end of December, I made a list for the weekly meme, #5OnMyTBR, about five books I planned to read in 2020 but never got around to before the year ended. There are obviously a lot more than five, so I’m glad to highlight even more books this week, but on top of that, these are the backlist books (including 2020 releases) that I want to prioritise this year. I’ve heard pretty much all good things about so many of these titles and I know they made it onto a lot of peoples’ favourites lists, so that makes me even more excited to read them!

While the books I listed in the #5OnMyTBR post are also top priority, I won’t be repeating them here today! On that note, here are ten of the books I didn’t get to read last year but will be prioritised (and for sure READ!) in 2021! 😉🤞🏽

#5OnMyTBR: White Covers

January 19, 2021June 23, 2021 Dini @ dinipandareads11 Comments

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!

This week’s prompt is: White Covers.

Goodreads Monday – The Shape of Thunder by Jasmine Warga

January 18, 2021June 23, 2021 Dini @ dinipandareads10 Comments

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 Shape of Thunder by Jasmine Warga. This is a middle grade contemporary that is set to be published May 2021.

Sundays in Bed With… #MyWeeklyWrapUp

January 17, 2021June 23, 2021 Dini @ dinipandareads23 Comments

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!

I’ll be spending the rest of my Sunday in Bed with Cast in Firelight. I’m reading this as part of the blog tour for next week. I’m definitely curious to know what #OwnVoices readers will think of it because the author states it’s not OV but she wrote it so her children can identify with characters who look like them. It’s still ‘early days’ in the book but I am enjoying it so far and can’t wait to keep it reading it in bed tonight.

Also, I know a lot of people have commented about how Bowater’s art is basically the same everywhere and yeah, I do agree (especially when looking at this cover), but that doesn’t make this cover any less beautiful! I absolutely LOVE it and it makes me even more excited to dive back into this story! Have you read it?

What are you currently reading?

Blog Tour Review: Kept from Cages by Phil Williams

January 17, 2021June 23, 2021 Dini @ dinipandareads10 Comments

I’m back with another blog tour with The Storytellers on Tour for Kept from Cages by Phil Williams. Thanks to the author for providing a copy in exchange for an honest review!

Be sure to click on the banner below to check out the rest of the bloggers on tour!

Goodreads: Kept from Cages (Ikiri Book 1)
Publication Date: 21 September 2020
Genre: Supernatural Action Thriller

Panda Rating:

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No one returns from Ikiri.
Reece’s gang of criminal jazz musicians have taken shelter in the wrong house. There’s a girl with red eyes bound to a chair. The locals call her a devil – but Reece sees a kid that needs protecting. He’s more right than he knows.
Chased by a shadowy swordsman and an unnatural beast, the gang flee across the Deep South with the kid in tow. She won’t say where she’s from or who exactly her scary father is, but she’s got powers they can’t understand. How much will Reece risk to save her?
On the other side of the world, Agent Sean Tasker’s asking similar questions. With an entire village massacred and no trace of the killers, he’s convinced Duvcorp’s esoteric experiments are responsible. His only ally is an unstable female assassin, and their only lead is Ikiri – a black-site in the Congo, which no one leaves alive. How far is Tasker prepared to go for answers?
Kept From Cages is the first part in an action-packed supernatural thriller duology, filled with eccentric characters and intricately woven mysteries. Start your journey to Ikiri today.

BUY NOW: Amazon (US) | Amazon (UK)

BOOK PROMO: The Kept From Cages ebook will be available for 99p/99c in UK/US Kindle from January 13th–19th.

Top 5 Saturday: Metals in the Title

January 16, 2021June 23, 2021 Dini @ dinipandareads14 Comments

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: Metal in the Title (Gold, Silver, Brass, Steel, etc.).

I surprisingly don’t have a lot of books with metals in the titles and neither have I read that many apparently, but I did mange to *just* come up with a list of five that I’m looking forward to reading (mostly). One of them, The Goldfinch has been sat unfinished on my TBR since I started reading it during my worst ever reading slump and that was a bad decision as now I associate that book to that horrible time? I got about 70% through the book and I’m sad I didn’t push myself to keep reading it. The others are ones that I’ve heard mostly good things about while some, like Silver Sparrow, I’ve seen mostly mixed reviews for. Still, I’m eager to check all of these out at some point, especially The City of Brass as so many people have raved about how good that series is!

THE GOLDFINCH BY DONNA TARTT

Book Review: Among the Beasts & Briars by Ashley Poston

January 15, 2021June 23, 2021 Dini @ dinipandareads13 Comments

Note: Review originally posted on Goodreads 07 January 2021

Among the Beasts & Briars
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Published: 20 October 2020
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy

Panda Rating:

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Cerys is safe in the kingdom of Aloriya.

Here there are no droughts, disease, or famine, and peace is everlasting. It has been this way for hundreds of years, since the first king made a bargain with the Lady who ruled the forest that borders the kingdom. But as Aloriya prospered, the woods grew dark, cursed, and forbidden. Cerys knows this all too well: when she was young, she barely escaped as the woods killed her friends and her mother. Now Cerys carries a small bit of the curse—the magic—in her blood, a reminder of the day she lost everything. The most danger she faces now, as a gardener’s daughter, is the annoying fox who stalks the royal gardens and won’t leave her alone.

As a new queen is crowned, however, things long hidden in the woods descend on the kingdom itself. Cerys is forced on the run, her only companions the small fox from the garden, a strange and powerful bear, and the magic in her veins. It’s up to her to find the legendary Lady of the Wilds and beg for a way to save her home. But the road is darker and more dangerous than she knows, and as secrets from the past are uncovered amid the teeth and roots of the forest, it’s going to take everything she has just to survive.

TL;DR: Mine is an unpopular opinion but I didn’t end up loving this as much as I hoped I would and I was sad about not enjoying it more. If you’re looking for a YA fantasy that’s light on the world building and character development, but has a nice fairytale vibe with “far-off places, magical spells, and a prince in disguise” then I would recommend it!