Mini-Reviews: The Rain Trilogy by B.B. Easton

February 29, 2020March 2, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads13 Comments

The Rain Trilogy is one of those series that had me heckin’ confused because I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone but I still couldn’t stop reading it, and ended up finishing the whole trilogy in one day. Yep, it was a thing. The books are short though and a lot but not a lot really happens. But without further ado, you can check out my thoughts for each book below. I’d give the series an average score of ★★★☆☆.

Goodreads: Praying for Rain (The Rain Trilogy #1)
Genre: Dystopia, Romance
Panda Rating:

“None of this matters, and we’re all going to die.”
With only three days left until the predicted apocalypse, the small town of Franklin Springs, Georgia, has become a wasteland of abandoned cars, abandoned homes, abandoned businesses, and abandoned people. People like Rainbow Williams. Rain isn’t afraid of dying. In fact, she’s looking forward to it. If she can just outrun her pain until April 23, she’ll never have to feel it at all.

“Supplies. Shelter. Self-defense.”
Wes Parker has survived every horrible thing this life has thrown at him with nothing more than his resourcefulness and disarming good looks. Why should the end of the world be any different? All he needs are some basic supplies, shelter, and a sucker willing to help him out, which is exactly what he finds when he returns to his hometown of Franklin Springs.

As society crumbles, dangers mount, and secrets refuse to stay buried, two lost souls are thrust together in a twist of fate—one who will do anything to survive and one who can’t wait to die.
Perhaps, together, they can learn how to live.
Before their time runs out.

I’m 90% sure that this book isn’t my jam for a lot of reasons, but seeing as I’m writing this after I’ve finished the series, I’ll admit to being helpless to stop. I’m at a total loss to explain why but I guess I just really needed to know what happens? Lol I don’t know. Can you tell I’m confused rn? SO CONFLICTED.

First Lines Friday – 28 February

February 28, 2020February 28, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads15 Comments

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:

“Raithe’s first impulse was to pray. Curse, cry, scream, pray–people did such things in their last minutes of life. But praying struck Raithe as absurd given that his problem was the angry god twenty feet away.”

Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?

Review & Favourite Quotes: Wicked As You Wish

February 27, 2020September 23, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads19 Comments

Thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Wicked As You Wish (A Hundred Names for Magic #1)
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Release date: 03 March 2020
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy

An unforgettable alternative history fairytale series from the author of The Bone Witch trilogy about found family, modern day magic, and finding the place you belong.

Many years ago, the magical Kingdom of Avalon was left desolate and encased in ice when the evil Snow Queen waged war on the powerful country. Its former citizens are now refugees in a world mostly devoid of magic. Which is why the crown prince and his protectors are stuck in…Arizona.

Prince Alexei, the sole survivor of the Avalon royal family, is in hiding in a town so boring, magic doesn’t even work there. Few know his secret identity, but his friend Tala is one of them. Tala doesn’t mind—she has secrets of her own. Namely, that she’s a spellbreaker, someone who negates magic.

Then hope for their abandoned homeland reignites when a famous creature of legend, and Avalon’s most powerful weapon, the Firebird, appears for the first time in decades. Alex and Tala unite with a ragtag group of new friends to journey back to Avalon for a showdown that will change the world as they know it.

Amazon (US) | Barnes & Noble | iTunes | Book Depository | Google Books

#WWWWednesday: 26 February

February 26, 2020February 26, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads15 Comments

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?

Unlike last week when I set a new personal reading record, I haven’t read much since last Wednesday and only managed to finish two books. The past week has been pretty stressful with my move and I’ve had some busy evenings this week.

Vengeful (Villains #2) by V.E. Schwab ★★★★★
Didn’t think I’d love Vengeful more than Vicious but there we have it! This series is amazing and it’s everything I never knew I wanted in a sci-fi fantasy book. I love the concept of ExtraOrdinaries and some of their abilities are so killer (maybe literally). Check out my full review.

Wicked As You Wish (A Hundred Names for Magic #1) by Rin Chupeco ★★★★☆
Although I had some issues with the writing and world building (in that there was a lot to take in) I ended up really enjoying this read! I loved the concept and the alternate history modern world where fairytales and Carly Rae Jepsen all exist in the same reality. I also loved the found family vibes of the Bandersnatches and after a twisty ending, I’m keen to see what happens next! My FFBC blog tour review post will be up TOMORROW!

#TopTenTuesday: Characters I’d Follow on Social Media!

February 25, 2020July 18, 2022 Dini @ dinipandareads49 Comments

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: characters I’d follow on social media! This fun and creative prompt was submitted by Tilly @thebiblioshelf

Wow, this is such a great prompt–following my favourites on social media is something that I would’ve have even thought of but that doesn’t mean that a few names didn’t immediately pop into my head! I loved a lot of these characters because they had me laughing endlessly with their witty banter and cheeky humour. I think following any of them on social media would be so much fun!

Down the TBR Hole – 14

February 24, 2020February 25, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads20 Comments

My guilt has kicked in and told me that I can’t keep avoiding another culling of my ridiculous TBR forever, so here I am. Back again with a list of books from my Goodreads TBR that is now a whopping 1,072 books (don’t judge me, I added more books to my TBR since last week)! I thought I’d make it clear again that just because it’s on my Goodreads TBR doesn’t actually mean I own copies of the book (that’d be way ridiculous even for me)! Let’s see what we can get rid of today, eh?

Down the TBR Hole is a weekly book meme created by the wonderful Lia @ Lost in a Story that attempts to organize our ridiculously long Goodreads TBR list by choosing either to keep or eliminate the books we’ve saved on there. Here’s how it works:

Go to your goodreads to-read shelf.
Order on ascending date added.
Take the first 5 (or 10 (or even more!) if you’re feeling adventurous) books. Of course, if you do this weekly, you start where you left off the last time.
Read the synopses of the books
Decide: keep it or should it go

Verdict: Keep

Goodreads Monday – A People’s History of Heaven by Mathangi Subramanian

February 24, 2020March 22, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads7 Comments

It’s the first Goodreads Monday of 2020, friends! 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.

This week’s book is A People’s History of Heaven by Mathangi Subramanian. I haven’t heard much about this book on the blogosphere/book community but Algonquin approached me to read/review it and it sounds so good, I immediately said yes! This contemporary fiction has a 4.04 star average with 518 ratings and 161 reviews.

Sundays in Bed With… #MyWeeklyWrapUp [44]

February 23, 2020December 4, 2022 Dini @ dinipandareads21 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 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 wishing I were in bed reading Wicked As You Wish! I’m at about 35% and things have escalated very quickly. I had a prediction about one of the characters and the reveal just happened in the part I’m at. Although I “called it” I still found myself a little shocked but I also felt sorry for our MC. It already wasn’t the best way to learn about it and it’s a pretty big your-life-will-never-be-the-same kind of revelation! Looking forward to what happens next…

Tala Warnock has little use for magic – as a descendant of Maria Makiling, the legendary Filipina heroine, she negates spells, often by accident. But her family’s old ties to the country of Avalon (frozen, bespelled, and unreachable for almost 12 years) soon finds them guarding its last prince from those who would use his kingdom’s magic for insidious ends. And with the rise of dangerous spelltech in the Royal States of America; the appearance of the firebird, Avalon’s deadliest weapon, at her doorstep; and the re-emergence of the Snow Queen, powerful but long thought dead, who wants nothing more than to take the firebird’s magic for her own – Tala’s life is about to get even more complicated….

What are you currently reading?

Review: Vengeful (Villains #2) by V.E. Schwab

February 23, 2020August 18, 2021 Dini @ dinipandareads6 Comments

Goodreads: Vengeful (Villains #2)
Publisher: Titan Books
Genre: Contemporary Romance

Panda Rating:

Magneto and Professor X. Superman and Lex Luthor. Victor Vale and Eli Ever. Sydney and Serena Clarke. Great partnerships, now soured on the vine.

But Marcella Riggins needs no one. Flush from her brush with death, she’s finally gained the control she’s always sought—and will use her new-found power to bring the city of Merit to its knees. She’ll do whatever it takes, collecting her own sidekicks, and leveraging the two most infamous EOs, Victor Vale and Eli Ever, against each other.

With Marcella’s rise, new enmities create opportunity–and the stage of Merit City will once again be set for a final, terrible reckoning.

Holy heck. What can I even say?! I loved Vicious but I’m surprised to say that I might love Vengeful even more?! I just finished reading it earlier today (when I wrote this on Saturday) so my thoughts are still a jumbled mess but I’m going to at least try writing something semi-coherent. Also, sorry but there will be spoilers for Vicious as this picks up after that!

Top 5 Saturday: Books about Spies

February 22, 2020February 21, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads21 Comments

We’re back with another Top 5 Saturday! I might’ve missed last week’s topic but I will come back to it at some point 🙂 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: books about spies!

Well, I definitely came up blank when I saw this prompt because books about spies aren’t necessarily the highest on my list? I mean, I like the idea of spy books but I just don’t normally read them. Though thanks to Goodreads I’ve discovered that I have a few spy books waiting to be read!

I’ve had The Alice Network sitting on my TBR cart for a really long time. I love historical fiction and I’ve heard some really great things about this book. I feel like I have to gear myself up to read it though so I can be emotionally prepared 😂

I haven’t read much YA historical fiction but I’ve heard a lot about how great Code Name Verity is! Just reading the synopsis has me so very intrigued and I’m looking forward to picking it up eventually.

I feel like Ken Follett is so underrated lol I’ve only read one of his series in full (The Century Trilogy) but I could not put them down. All three were almost 1,000 pages long and I sped through them like I’ve never done before. I think it took me just a little over one week to finish the series! So I’m excited to try Eye of the Needle to see if all of Follett’s books are as good!

I actually forgot about this book but I remember it first coming on my radar because it got made into a movie Jennifer Lawrence and the trailer looked interesting but I never did end up watching the movie. When I realised it Red Sparrow was a book first I added it to my TBR. It sounds intense!

John Le Carré’s books kind of intimidate me because I always feel like it’ll go flying over my head 😂 But I was intrigued when I found out The Tailor of Panama was based on a book bbecause I knew it was made into a movie with Pierce Brosnan, Jamie Lee Curtis and Geoffrey Rush forever ago. Heavily political books aren’t really my jam at all… but I’d read this one! It sounds really good.