Tag: 2022 Releases

Book Review: King of Wrath by Ana Huang

Dini @ dinipandareads8 Comments

King of Wrath (Kings of Sin #1)
Publisher: Piatkus
Pub Date: 20 October 2022
Genre: Contemporary Romance

Panda Rating:

(3.5 pandas)

📖 SYNOPSIS

She’s the wife he never wanted…and the weakness he never saw coming.

Ruthless. Meticulous. Arrogant.

Dante Russo thrives on control, both personally and professionally.
The billionaire CEO never planned to marry— until the threat of blackmail forces him into an engagement with a woman he barely knows.

Vivian Lau, jewelry heiress and daughter of his newest enemy.
It doesn’t matter how beautiful or charming she is. He’ll do everything in his power to destroy the evidence and their betrothal.
There’s only one problem: now that he has her…he can’t bring himself to let her go.

***

Elegant. Ambitious. Well-mannered.

Vivian Lau is the perfect daughter and her family’s ticket into the highest echelons of high society.Marrying a blue-blooded Russo means opening doors that would otherwise remain closed to her new-money family.

While the rude, elusive Dante isn’t her idea of a dream partner, she agrees to their arranged marriage out of duty.
Craving his touch was never part of the plan.
Neither was the worst thing she could possibly do: fall in love with her future husband.

⚠️ CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNINGS

King of Wrath is a steamy billionaire/arranged marriage romance. It contains explicit sexual content, profanity, and mild violence. Recommended for mature readers only.

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Mini Book Review: The Six Deaths of the Saint by Alix E. Harrow

Dini @ dinipandareads17 Comments

The Six Deaths of the Saint (Into Shadow #3)
Publisher: Amazon Original Stories
Pub Date: 15 November 2022
Genre: Adult Fantasy

Panda Rating:

(5 pandas)

📖 SYNOPSIS

The Saint of War spares the life of a servant girl so she can fulfill her destiny as the kingdom’s greatest warrior in this short story of love and loyalty by New York Times bestselling author Alix E. Harrow.

Always mindful of the debt she owes, the girl finds her worth as a weapon in the hand of the Prince. Her victories make him a king, then an emperor. The bards sing her name and her enemies fear it. But the war never ends and the cost keeps rising—how many times will she repeat her own story?

⚠️ CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNINGS

War and everything that comes with it (blood, brutality), death of a child (briefly recounted)

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Book Reviews: Halifax Hellions Series by Alexandra Vasti

Dini @ dinipandareads6 Comments

Halifax Hellions #1

In Which Margo Halifax Earns Her Shocking Reputation
Pub Date: 19 September 2022
Genre: Historical Romance

Panda Rating:

(4.5 pandas)

📖 SYNOPSIS

The Halifax Hellions are the most scandalous, outrageous, ungovernable ladies in London. From the day of their debut—in which Matilda smoked a cheroot and Margo tied a cherry stem in a knot with her tongue—they’ve turned the ton upside down. But when Matilda elopes with a dangerous aristocrat, Margo must stop her twin before this new misadventure becomes a permanent marriage. For help, Margo turns to her brother’s best friend—because if anyone can get them to Scotland in time, it’s starchy solicitor Henry Mortimer.

Henry Mortimer has precisely one secret in his otherwise buttoned-up life: he’s been in love with Margo for seven wonderful, agonizing years. When she turns up at his doorstep, soaked to the skin and desperate for his help, he cannot turn her down. A week alone in a carriage with the object of his desires an arm’s length away? Surely he can survive that. He hopes.

But the road to Scotland is paved with disasters—caves and crashes and the bloody rain that keeps forcing Henry to hold a damp, shivering, sinfully tempting Margo in his arms. Only an unstoppable force could drag the truth of Henry’s affection from his lips. Unfortunately for him, Margo Halifax has yet to be stopped.

⚠️ CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNINGS

On-page sex, road accident

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Book Review: In the Weeds by B.K. Borison

Dini @ dinipandareads10 Comments

In the Weeds (Lovelight Farms #2)
Pub Date: 18 April 2022
Genre: Contemporary Romance

Panda Rating:

(4 pandas)

📖 SYNOPSIS

Evelyn St. James isn’t the kind of woman you forget.

Beckett Porter certainly hasn’t. One incredible weekend in Maine, and he’s officially a man distracted. He’s not unfamiliar with hot and heavy flings. He knows how it goes. But Evie wove some sort of magic over him during their tumble in the sheets. He can’t stop thinking about her laugh. Her hand pressed flat against his chest. Her smiling mouth at his neck.

Also, her eyes. And her legs.

So when she suddenly appears on his farm as part of a social media contest, he is… confused. He had no idea that the sweet and sexy woman he met at a bar is actually a global phenomenon: social media influencer Evelyn St. James. When she disappears again, Beckett resolves to finally forget her and move on.

But Evelyn St. James has a problem.

Feeling disconnected from her work and increasingly unhappy, she’s trying to find her way back to something real. She returns to the last place she was happy, Lovelight Farms and the tiny town of Inglewild.

It has absolutely nothing to do with the hot farmer she spent two incredible nights with.

Nothing at all.

In The Weeds is a sweet and steamy second-chance romance about finding your happiness. It features a grumpy farmer, a no-nonsense social media influencer, a small town of busybodies, and four very cute kittens. In The Weeds is a standalone romance and is part of the Lovelight series.

⚠️ CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNINGS

Social anxiety

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Cover Reveal: A Long Time Coming by Meghan Quinn

Dini @ dinipandareads9 Comments

Hi, friends! I’m back with another cover reveal today for A LONG TIME COMING by Meghan Quinn! This is a brand new, standalone romance will be released on January 10th in all formats!

Don’t miss the fantastic cover below and get ready to fall in love with this sexy romance with a witty take on a romantic comedy classic, My Best Friend’s Wedding. Steamy, laugh-out-loud, and full of charm, these two best friends heat up the pages while proving true love might be right in front of you.

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#FirstLinesFriday: 16 December 2022

Dini @ dinipandareads4 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!
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Book Review: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Dini @ dinipandareads22 Comments

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Pub Date: 5 July 2022
Genre: Contemporary Literary Fiction

Panda Rating:

(5 pandas)

📖 SYNOPSIS

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won’t protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

In this exhilarating novel two friends—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

⚠️ CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNINGS

Childhood cancer, suicide (graphic, on-page), student-teacher relationship, abuse, sexism, racism, parental death, car accident, workplace shooting

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Release Blitz Review: The Holly Dates by Brittainy Cherry

Dini @ dinipandareads9 Comments

Special thanks to the author for providing a digital ARC via Valentine PR in exchange for an honest review!

The Holly Dates
Pub Date: 07 December 2022
Genre: Contemporary (Holiday) Romance

Panda Rating:

(3.5 pandas)

📖 SYNOPSIS

All she wanted for Christmas was a boyfriend for the holidays…
All he wanted was for her to take her crappy first dates elsewhere…

Quirky Holly Jackson was unlucky in love, yet her romantic heart refused to give up her search for companionship—even after her fiancé left her at the altar on Christmas Eve.

Grumpy restaurant owner Kai Kane wanted nothing to do with love after his last relationship crashed and burned. Romance was the last thing on his mind. Unfortunately for him, when an eccentric Holly kept entering his restaurant nightly with a different first date, his annoyance grew.

When Kai volunteered to help Holly find a suitor it was for one reason only: to get her out of his restaurant and on to a second date with someone at a different location.

Once Kai became Holly’s dating coach, her confidence grew.

It was all going great until Kai became increasingly jealous of the connection Holly developed with another man. The more Holly fell for Kai’s pick for her, the more overprotective he became.

Kai quickly realized that all wasn’t fair when it came to love and the holidays.

He was going to have to step up his game if he wanted a shot at the ultimate prize—being Holly’s favorite date.

*The Holly Dates is a steamy, full-length romantic comedy that will put you right in the holiday spirit.*

⚠️ CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNINGS

Childhood abandonment and abusive parents (recounted), infidelity (on-page and recounted), manipulative gaslighting partner, body shaming (one incident on-page), cancer (former partner of one of the main characters)

📚 BUY A COPY
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The End of Year Book Tag – 2022 Edition

Dini @ dinipandareads26 Comments

Hello, friends! We’ve reached the final month of another year so that means it’s time to share another End of Year Book Tag – 2022 Edition! I’ve done this tag in 2019 and 2020 (not sure what happened in 2021!) but it’s always fun to do. This time I got tagged by the lovely Becky @Becky’s Book Blog, who is a fantastic blogger especially if you love fantasy because she comes with all the recs, so be sure to check out her blog. Thanks for the tag, Becky! 💜

This tag was originally created by booktuber Ariel Bissett!

Are there any books you started this year that you need to finish?

There are actually two books sitting on my “Currently Reading” list on Goodreads. I started both in June/July but wasn’t in the right mood to keep reading them although I do want to finish both.

Do you have an autumnal book to transition into the end of the year?

As a non-seasonal reader, I’m kind of surprised to admit that this year I found an excellent series of books to transition into the end of the year. The Stay a Spell paranormal romance series has featured a lot on my blog lately but I just love it so much, plus it has a lovely holiday themed collection of short stories from these characters to complete the transition to the holiday season!

Is there a new release that you’re still waiting for?

I was gonna say no until I checked my 2022 releases list and saw that there are four books still releasing in December that I’m looking forward to reading! I’m sure there are others that I just haven’t marked yet, lol.

What are three books you want to read before the year ends?

Is there a book that you think could still shock you and become your favourite of the year?

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

If the hype is right—and ngl, I sure hope it is—then I think this book has potential to become a favourite this year but I’m unsure if it’ll become the favourite of the year. Let’s see! 😉

Have you already started to make reading plans for 2023?

I do have two blog tours already planned but I actually just got two emails with very exciting invitations to read upcoming YA contemporaries and fantasies and I’m debating accepting a few of those soon!

I’m tagging:

**No pressure if you don’t feel like doing it though!

That’s it for the 2022 End of Year Book Tag! I hope you all have a fantastic last month of the year!