First Lines Friday – 04 December

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:

Let me be clear: I never intended to raise my brother from his grave, though he may claim otherwise. If there’s anything I’ve learned from him in the years since, it’s that the dead hide truths as well as the living.

Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?

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Goodreads Monday – The Friend Zone by Abby Jimenez

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.

This week’s featured book is The Friend Zone by Abby Jimenez. This is a contemporary romance that while fun and flirty, also covers the more serious topic of infertility. It has a 3.89 star rating on Goodreads with several thousand ratings and reviews.

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Goodreads Monday – Human Acts by Han Kang

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.

This week’s featured book is Human Acts by Han Kang. This is a historical fiction set in South Korea that was published in 2017 and has a 4.17 star rating on Goodreads with several thousand ratings and reviews.

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#TopTenTuesday: Favourite 2020 Quotes

So, we’re back with another Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s prompt is: Favourite Book Quotes (these could be quotes from books you love, or bookish quotes in general)

I wasn’t really feeling this week’s prompt because I’m so bad at keeping track of my favourite quotes and don’t usually stock them up anywhere (although I’ve been wanting to upload a collection of faves somewhere for years now, I just haven’t got around to doing it *cough*). I remember previously doing some favourite quotes posts, which you can check out here and here.

I was almost going to skip and then I decided that I would share my favourite quotes from some of the books I’ve read and loved in 2020! Maybe they’ll ring a bell for for you, if you’ve already read the book, or maybe they’ll entice you to pick the book up if it’s been sitting on your TBR. Or maybe the quote will pique your interest and you’ll add the book to your already teetering mountain of a TBR (you’re welcome)! So without further ado, here we go…

“Where we come from leaves its fingerprints all over us, and if you know how to read the signs of a place, you know a little bit more who someone is.”

With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo

“There should be a disconnect button you can push when someone leaves: you’ve fucked me over; therefore I no longer love you. I’m not asking for the button to be connected to an ejector seat that removes them from the universe, just one small button that removes them from your heart.”

Words in Deep Blue by Cath Crowley

“She hit him in the best way, like a rainstorm after five years of drought, healing the parched earth with a gentle touch; and in the worst way, like an unexpected earthquake, leaving dust and debris in her wake. She was, in equal parts, a gift and a natural disaster. Her name was Juniper Jones.”

The Invincible Summer of Juniper Jones by Daven McQueen

“I want you to know there are no right answers. I want you to know that we’re all on loan to one another, and whatever we get, we should be grateful for, because at any minute we can lose another person. We should try to remember every experience.”

With or Without You by Caroline Leavitt

“The point is . . . sometimes fighting isn’t about leaving, it’s about staying. It takes practice to get it right, and it’s painful, but if you want to stay with people, you do it.”

Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn

“A home isn’t always the house we live in. It’s also the people we choose to surround ourselves with.”

“Hate is loud, but I think you’ll learn it’s because it’s only a few people shouting, desperate to be heard. You might not ever be able to change their minds, but so long as you remember you’re not alone, you will overcome.”

The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune

“I have become something wonderful, she thought. I have become something terrible. Was she now a goddess or a monster? Perhaps neither. Perhaps both.”

The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang

“Even though you finally enact a Civil Rights Act not even thirty years ago, it doesn’t erase centuries of unequal access, unequal schooling, unequal living conditions, unequal policing. You can’t tell people to pull up on bootstraps when half of them never had any boots to begin with, never even had the chance to get them. Or when you let people burn whole, thriving black communities to the ground and conveniently forget about it. Because maybe the problem isn’t with ‘bad’ people; maybe the problem is with the whole system.”

The Black Kids by Christina Hammonds Reed

“You can change the law but you can’t change people and how they treat each other.”

“Perhaps his life might have veered elsewhere if the US government had opened the country to colored advancement like they opened the army. But it was one thing to allow someone to kill for you and another to let him live next door.”

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

“Like Wendy, John, and Michael Darling on the night Peter Pan taught them how to fly – I think one happy thought.
In my pocket, I have a knife.

The Kingdom by Jess Rothenberg
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#TopTenTuesday: The Current Possibility Pile

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 On My Fall 2020 TBR (or spring if you live in the southern hemisphere)

I’m calling it The Current Possibility Pile because I live in the tropics and get neither autumn or spring. My seasons consist of hot/humid and hot/humid/rainy, right now it’s the latter, but the sun continues to shine bright every day! I’m also a mood reader so set TBRs are not a thing for me. Lately my moods have been all over the place and the reality is that the possibilities in this pile are more than likely to change the minute I pick one or several of these books up 😂 That’s just really how it be for me!

On that note, I do have a lot of blog tour reads that I need to get through in the coming months (so I guess that really is a TBR lol) but I’ve decided I’m going to focus this list on all the books I want to read outside of the tours I’m joining and outside of the ARCs I have to read!

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Book Blitz: Maya and the Rising Dark by Rena Barron

🥳 Happy Book Birthday to Maya and the Rising Dark! 🥳

I’m delighted to be taking part in a book blitz with TBR & Beyond Tours for Maya and the Rising Dark by Rena Barron. This middle grade fantasy was pitched as Stranger Things meets Percy Jackson and seriously, how good does that sound?! Plus, this cover is just love!

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

Goodreads: Maya and the Rising Dark
Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers
Publish Date: 22 September 2020
Genre: Middle Grade Fantasy

In this highly anticipated contemporary fantasy, twelve-year-old Maya’s search for her missing father puts her at the center of a battle between our world, the Orishas, and the mysterious and sinister Dark world. Perfect for fans of Aru Shah and the End of Time and The Serpent’s Secret.

Twelve-year-old Maya is the only one in her South Side Chicago neighborhood who witnesses weird occurrences like werehyenas stalking the streets at night and a scary man made of shadows plaguing her dreams.

When Papa goes missing, Maya is thrust into a world both strange and familiar as she uncovers the truth. Her father is the guardian of the veil between our world and the Dark—where an army led by the Lord of Shadows, the man from Maya’s nightmares, awaits. Now that the veil is failing, the Lord of Shadows is determined to destroy the human world and it’s up to Maya to stop him. She just hopes she can do it in time to attend Comic-Con before summer’s over.

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

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#TopTenTuesday: Favourite 2020 Romance Covers

So, we’re back with another Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s prompt is: Cover Freebie

I’m a little sad that this week is a cover freebie because I. Am. Tired and fresh out of ideas right now. 😂 I thought I’d do illustrated covers but then realised that I had already done an illustrated cover post for the last TTT cover freebie… So then I thought about what covers I’ve been loving lately and thought I’d share some of my favourite contemporary romance covers from 2020. Looking at the covers below, it’s really easy to see what kind really catch my eye: they’re (mostly) illustrated, bright and colourful, and just gives an all around fun-loving impression!

Okay, so basically I did another illustrated covers post but for romances HAH…

And I know this is a cover trend I’ve heard people say is “overdone” and that they’re completely over it, but I’m still 100% living for it! LOL if physical copies of contemporary romances weren’t so pricey I would love to add all of these to my physical shelves, but *wistful sigh* as it is, I’ll have to be satisfied with having them in my digital library (for now!) 😉

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#TopTenTuesday: Middle Grade Reads for a Younger Me!

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 for My Younger Self (these could be books you wish you had read as a child, books younger you could have really learned something from, books that meshed with your hobbies/interests, books that could have helped you go through events/changes in your life, etc.)

Over the last couple of days I’ve been thinking a lot about the middle grade fantasies that I’ve read and that I still really want to read, and these thoughts fit so well with this week’s prompt, so I was quite excited to dive right in. Then I realised that I actually have more MG reads on my TBR than ones I’ve read so this week I’ve split the post into read and unread books, but they’re all books that I think my younger middle-school self would’ve very much enjoyed reading!

READ

Nevermoor Series
The Ship of Shadows
Malamander
Wonder
The Tea Dragon Society


UNREAD

Other Words for Home
Race to the Sun
The Unadoptables
Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky
Wonderscape

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Review: Get A Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert

Get A Life, Chloe Brown (The Brown Sisters #1)
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Panda Rating:


Chloe Brown is a chronically ill computer geek with a goal, a plan, and a list. After almost—but not quite—dying, she’s come up with seven directives to help her “Get a Life”, and she’s already completed the first: finally moving out of her glamorous family’s mansion. The next items?

• Enjoy a drunken night out.
• Ride a motorbike.
• Go camping.
• Have meaningless but thoroughly enjoyable sex.
• Travel the world with nothing but hand luggage.
• And… do something bad.

But it’s not easy being bad, even when you’ve written out step-by-step guidelines. What Chloe needs is a teacher, and she knows just the man for the job: Redford ‘Red’ Morgan. With tattoos and a motorbike, Red is the perfect helper in her mission to rebel, but as they spend more time together, Chloe realises there’s much more to him than his tough exterior implies. Soon she’s left wanting more from him than she ever expected . . . maybe there’s more to life than her list ever imagined?

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#WWWWednesday: 26 August 2020

Can someone please tell me where August went because… Is it really already the final full week of August?

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?

Since my last WWW check in I’ve managed to read these five books. I feel like I’m missing books that I’ve read and just didn’t mark on Goodreads but if that’s the case then… we might just never know LOL My brain has been shrouded in a fog of lethargy lately and it can get really frustrating when this happens!

Ignite the Sun by Hanna Howard ★★★☆☆
This was an enjoyable, fast-paced and adventure filled story with lots of our favourite magical creatures. It’s the perfect read for fantasy newbies or fantasy lovers who aren’t looking for anything complicated or for anything “new”. Read my review!

Starcross Manor by Christie Barlow ★★★☆☆
This was a fun and easy read about mistaken first impressions, community and good friendships that left me feeling hopeful and warm. Our protagonists are older in this romance and I liked that focus as it’s rare to read about people above the age of 30/35 finding love! Read my review!

The Heart of a Peach by Jess B. Moore ★★★½
With such an adorable cover, I was surprised by the darker themes in this book. CW: abuse (emotional/mental), gaslighting. There’s also insta-love (a trope I hate), but I was able to look past that and rooted for the characters and their HEA. This was a surprising and enjoyable romance. Read my review!

The Little Wedding Shop by the Sea by Jane Linfoot ★★★☆☆
I’ve mixed feelings about this one. I liked the story, most characters and even the slow burn enemies-to-lovers romance, but as the story went on (and it really rolled on for quite a while) I found myself getting too irritated with our MC, Poppy. Still, it’s a sweet story set in a cute town and I wouldn’t mind coming back to read more around the wedding shop. Review coming soon!

Accidentally in Love by Belinda Missen ★★★★☆
This was the romance I didn’t know I needed this weekend. I love me a strong heroine who knows what she’s worth and what she wants out of life and goes for it 100%. Katharine was a great heroine and Kit is a hero that will steal your heart (although he could be immature at times). Loved the family relationships, especially the bond between Katharine and her brother, and the banter had me laughing out loud multiple times! Would definitely recommend it. Review coming soon!

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