We’re back with another Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl.
This week’s topic is Covers/Titles with Things Found in Nature (covers/titles with things like trees, flowers, animals, forests, bodies of water, etc. on/in them) (Submitted by Jessica @ a GREAT read)
Special thanks to HarperCollins and Riley at SparkPointStudio for providing a digital ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Kindling
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication Date: 27 February 2023
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Panda Rating:
(4.5 pandas)
From bestselling and award-winning author Traci Chee comes a standalone fantasy set against a war-ravaged world where kindling warfare—the use of elite, magic-wielding teenage soldiers—has been outlawed. In this rich and evocative novel, seven kindlings search for purpose and identity as they prepare for one final battle. For fans of the classic films Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven.
Once, the war was fought with kindlings—elite, magic-wielding warriors whose devastating power comes at the cost of their own young lives.
Now the war is over, and kindlings have been cast adrift—their magic outlawed, their skills outdated, their formidable balar weapons prized only as relics and souvenirs.
Violence still plagues the countryside, and memories haunt those who remain. When a village comes under threat of siege, it offers an opportunity for seven kindlings to fight one last time. But war changed these warriors. And to reclaim who they once were, they will have to battle their pasts, their trauma, and their grim fates to come together again—or none of them will make it out alive.
From bestselling and award-winning author Traci Chee comes a gut-wrenching, introspective fantasy about seven lost soldiers searching for the peace they once fought for and the future in which they’re finally daring to believe.
War, violence, blood, multiple deaths
TL;DR: This book took me on quite an emotional and mental journey! I went from being unsure whether I could get into this due to the narrative being told in the second person to desperately trying not to cry in public when I got to the last 30% to sobbing at home while reading the last 10% of it. This story is tragic and heartbreaking but beautifully written and somehow also hopeful. I loved going on this journey with these seven brave, powerful yet haunted teenage warriors and I have a feeling I’ll think of them and their experiences for a while to come.
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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 spend my Sunday night at the airport with Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands. Tbh, I have been the worst buddy reader because I haven’t been reading at all cos I’ve been procrastinating packing since yesterday morning!
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:
First lines:
“The foot would not fit in my briefcase, so I wrapped it in cloth and wrestled it into an old knapsack I sometimes carry with me on expeditions. Surprisingly—or perhaps unsurprisingly, as it is a faerie foot—it is neither dirty nor foul-smelling.”
Back in 2021, I was tagged by the wonderful Kerri @Kerri McBookNerd to do The Greek Gods Book Tag. Now, three years later, I’m finally getting around to doing it! How quickly time flies because I honestly thought this was a tag from last year… Oops! 🤭
Let’s jump straight to the tag!
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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:
We’re back with another Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl.
This week’s topic is Bookish Superpowers I Wish I Had (e.g. never accidentally buying the same book twice, every book I buy would be automatically signed/personally dedicated by the author, the ability to read faster, etc.) (Submitted by Cathy @WhatCathyReadNext)
Act Your Age, Eve Brown (Brown Sisters #3)
Publisher: Avon
Pub Date: 9 March 2021
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Panda Rating:
(5 pandas)
Eve Brown is a certified hot mess. No matter how hard she strives to do right, her life always goes horribly wrong—so she’s given up trying. But when her personal brand of chaos ruins an expensive wedding (someone had to liberate those poor doves), her parents draw the line. It’s time for Eve to grow up and prove herself—even though she’s not entirely sure how…
Jacob Wayne is in control. Always. The bed and breakfast owner’s on a mission to dominate the hospitality industry—and he expects nothing less than perfection. So when a purple-haired tornado of a woman turns up out of the blue to interview for his open chef position, he tells her the brutal truth: not a chance in hell. Then she hits him with her car—supposedly by accident. Yeah, right.
Now his arm is broken, his B&B is understaffed, and the dangerously unpredictable Eve is fluttering around, trying to help. Before long, she’s infiltrated his work, his kitchen—and his spare bedroom. Jacob hates everything about it. Or rather, he should. Sunny, chaotic Eve is his natural-born nemesis, but the longer these two enemies spend in close quarters, the more their animosity turns into something else. Like Eve, the heat between them is impossible to ignore—and it’s melting Jacob’s frosty exterior.
Ableism, childhood abandoment recounted, car accident
TL;DR: It took me forever to finally read this book and finish The Brown Sisters series but this solidifies it as one of my all-time favourite romance series and I highly recommend it! Eve and Jacob were so easy to root for and I loved their character arcs. I delighted in their connection and despite a rocky start to their relationship, they had fantastic chemistry and an emotional romance that’s written with so much heart! These two deserved all the happiness and I loved seeing them find it together. 🥰 My heart is so full!
Read More » 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 rounding off my night with Indigo by Beverly Jenkins. I wanted to spend the day bingeing this and almost did until the afternoon when things got busy. It’s shaping up to be another 5-star read though and it might even be my fave Jenkins so far? Let’s see!
Also, I was looking up the original mass-market clinch cover for this and it’s freaking gorgeous but it is also £400+?! Weeping. 😭
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries (Emily Wilde #1)
Publisher: Orbit
Pub Date: 19 January 2023
Genre: Adult Fantasy
Panda Rating:
(5 pandas)
A curmudgeonly professor journeys to a small town in the far north to study faerie folklore and discovers dark fae magic, friendship, and love in the start of a heartwarming and enchanting new fantasy series.
Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world’s first encyclopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party–or even get invited to one. And she prefers the company of her books, her dog, Shadow, and the Fair Folk to other people.
So when she arrives in the hardscrabble village of Hrafnsvik, Emily has no intention of befriending the gruff townsfolk. Nor does she care to spend time with another new arrival: her dashing and insufferably handsome academic rival Wendell Bambleby, who manages to charm the townsfolk, get in the middle of Emily’s research, and utterly confound and frustrate her.
But as Emily gets closer and closer to uncovering the secrets of the Hidden Ones–the most elusive of all faeries–lurking in the shadowy forest outside the town, she also finds herself on the trail of another mystery: Who is Wendell Bambleby, and what does he really want? To find the answer, she’ll have to unlock the greatest mystery of all–her own heart.
Ableism mentioned, death during childbirth mentioned, blood & injury depiction, emesis, self-amputation of finger, decapitation, death of a sibling recounted, murder, violence, kidnapping, animal abuse recounted
TL;DR: If you are a fan of cosy fantasies with a heaping of slow adventure and a soft romance, then you’ll probably enjoy Emily Wilde! This was just as heartwarming and cosy and wonderful as everyone said it would be and I loved it even more on re-read. 💜 Emily and Wendell are both such amazing characters and I absolutely loved the way this story was told! I surprisingly haven’t read *that* many books about the fae/faeries but this is undoubtedly a new favourite story about them.
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