#TopTenTuesday: Adult Romances by Authors of Colour

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

I’ve seen people posting some really fun and creative content for today’s valentine/love freebie and I wanted to do something fun too, but seeing as I have zero ability to plan posts ahead of time, I’ve decided to just share the adult romances by authors of colour that I can’t wait to get my hands on this year. Tied with my love for fantasy, romance is my favourite genre and they make up more than half of the books I read every year. I just love love, y’know? Give me those HEA, the swoony moments, the favourite tropes like friends-to-lovers, the marshmallow soft-on-the-inside heroes, the feisty kick-ass heroines, the delightful banter, explosive chemistry and YES, the *fans self* steaminess!

One goal I have this year is to focus more on romances by authors of colour. I want to be more intentional in picking up diverse romances and I’m glad to see more and more romance by AOC popping up on my radar! This list is a mix of backlist and upcoming releases and I’m so excited to try all of them. Let me know if you have any recommendations–gimme all that good love, please! 😍

Read More »

#5OnMyTBR: L-O-V-E!

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. You can find the full list of prompts (past and future) at the end of this post!

This week’s prompt is: Love.

Read More »

Goodreads Monday – Again Again by E. Lockhart

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 Again Again by E. Lockhart. This is a YA contemporary/coming-of-age story that was published in 2020.

Read More »

Sundays in Bed With… #MyWeeklyWrapUp

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’ve spent very little of this Sunday with a book but I plan to finish the day off finishing Bad Habits. This is for a blog tour next week and I picked it up in between my romance binges last week, so I’m taking my time with it but I’m really enjoying it so far. While our MC, Alex, can be a bit much at times, I’ve laughed several times cos of her snarky and sassy voice and it’s honesty such a good time. The story is definitely as loud (and fun) as this cover makes it out to be! 😉

Hilarious, bold, sparky and surprising, this is the funniest feminist book you’ll read all year.

Alex is a rebel from the tip of her purple fauxhawk to the toes of her biker boots. She’s tried everything she can think of to get expelled from her strict Catholic boarding school. Nothing has worked so far – but now, Alex has a new plan.
Tired of the sexism she sees in every corner of St Mary’s, Alex decides to stage the school’s first ever production of The Vagina Monologues. Which is going to be a challenge, as no one else at St Mary’s can even bear to say the word ‘vagina’ out loud . . .

What are you currently reading?

Read More »

Top 5 Saturday: Royalty in the Title

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: Royalty in the Title (King, Queen, Princess, Prince, etc.)

This was only easy because of the search function on Goodreads but otherwise I had a surprisingly difficult time calling to mind the “royal titles” I have on my TBR. Memory, she eludes me often! 😂 On the whole, while it does seem that there are a lot of titles with royalty in them, I don’t seem to find myself gravitating towards them more than other kinds of titles/books. I do read quite a few stories about royals as they’re found in abundance in fantasies, especially YA, but perhaps I think that because I read mostly YA. With that said, here are five titles that are on my TBR that I’m looking forward to reading! Unsurprisingly, most are fantasy but there’s a romance and poetry collection in the mix too! 😉

KING OF SCARS

Book cover: King of Scars
Read More »

Book Spotlight + Excerpt + Giveaway:Beautiful Facade by Kathryn S Rose

Hi, friends! I’m delighted to share a book spotlight + excerpt today as part of the Xpresso Tours tour for Beautiful Facade by Kathryn S Rose! There’s also a tour-wide giveaway (INT) so don’t forget to enter–details at the end of my post!

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

Goodreads: Beautiful Facade
Publish Date: 02 February 2021
Genre: Contemporary Romance, New Adult

On the day that 16-year-old Winter Starling had her life and dreams shattered by a sexual assault, she meets Kai, a boy from her high school obsessed with music. They develop a deep friendship, which comes to an abrupt end when Kai unexpectedly has to leave. Winter has no idea why he went or any way to contact him.

Ten years pass, and Winter has constructed a new reality for herself. Now living in Melbourne, she has a successful career in advertising and is engaged to Liam King, a star player in Australian Rules Football. Winter has a perfect life.

During a night out, Winter runs into Kai, now the lead singer of ‘The Stonevilles.’ Winter and Kai rekindle their friendship, and to everyone around them, their attraction is evident. With Kai back in her life, Winter’s past threatens to ruin her relationship with Liam and everything she has worked to achieve. But can she risk losing Kai a second time?

Emotional and edgy, Beautiful Facade is about love, loss, healing, self-discovery, and the messy battle between one’s head and one’s heart.

BUY NOW: Amazon

Read More »

Blog Tour Review: The Death of Honor by Lyra Thorsson

I’m back with another blog tour today and this time it’s for The Death of Honor by Lyra Thorsson. Special thanks to Heather Fitt from Overview Media for asking me to be part of this blog tour and to the author for providing a copy in exchange for an honest review!

Goodreads: The Death of Honor (Honor Trilogy #1)
Published: 12 January 2021
Genre: Science Fiction, Space Opera

Panda Rating:

(3 pandas)

All Rebecca wants in life is to sail through space in her ship—is that too much to ask? The moment she lays eyes on her old military buddy Jonathan, Rebecca knew there was no running away from her duties. With her best friend, sometimes with benefits, Nik, she desired to return home to the Nreff Nation, one of the four government powers of the systems, to serve on one last mission.

However, the problem with returning is that they all are wanted for treason. It wasn’t their fault, however, as they had been framed by their old admiral, Sebastien Wilde. Fortunately, succeeding in this mission might give them a clean slate, as they are to find evidence of Wilde’s involvement in the illegal human experimentation ring that goes against the Treaty Of World Equality and Rights (T.O.W.E.R.).

Rebecca and Nik agree to the mission, hoping to earn a more peaceful life, however Rebecca hides a dark secret: she was once closer to Sebastien than any of them ever realized, and the evidence incriminating him might also implicate her.

Now Rebecca has a choice: turn her back on her comrades and run for her life, or face her sins in order to prevent an all-out war.

CW/TW: This book contains sexual content, violence, drug abuse, and physical, sexual, and mental abuse.

BUY NOW: Amazon US | Amazon UK | IndieBound | Barnes & Noble

Read More »

#WWWWednesday: 03 February

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 last Wednesday I’ve finished five books and had my first DNF of 2021 (not included here). My goal this year is to continue DNFing books that aren’t doing it for me instead of letting my guilt push me to keep reading something that I’m really not enjoying, so I’m proud that I managed to put this goal into action so early on in the year! 😂

Deadly Dreams (Fortuna Sworn #4) by K.J. Sutton ★★★☆☆
After ending book two feeling mad let down, I didn’t have big hopes for this book but it was better. I really enjoyed certain aspects of it, such as how Fortuna’s trauma was dealt with (for the most part) but I’m kinda tired of the story cos it keeps going around in circles and I feel like we still get no answers. There were more “political fae games” in this story, which also meant a lot more brutality and murders, which did keep it ‘interesting’ (lol) but I’m truly over the love-triangle/square/whatever vibes. I will say that the ending surprised me and for that alone I will be continuing on with the series because my curiosity has been piqued! Will share a series review soon.

Read More »

#TopTenTuesday: 10 Books from the 1980s

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 Written Before I Was Born (These can be books you’ve read or want to read!) (submitted by Davida Chazan @ The Chocolate Lady’s Book Review Blog)

Well, I can’t say that I’ve ever done a prompt like this one before! Prior to starting this book blog I never really paid attention to when books were published. To be honest, even with this book blog, I’m only mostly aware of pub dates for books that I’m reading for blog tours or for ARCs, but otherwise I still don’t pay dates that much attention. So I wasn’t even sure how to go about doing this list but thanks to Goodreads’ compiled lists for books going back to 1980, my decision was made easy! Since I was born in 1988 (I’m old?!) I thought I would share two books from my born year and share one each year going back to 1980. I’m quite surprised to find that I actually do have at least one book for each year! All of these are on my TBR (but like, long, long list TBR with the only exception being Midnight’s Children which is almost immediate TBR lol) and I’ll read them one day… One day! 😂

Read More »

January 2021 Monthly Wrap Up!

Please someone tell me how the first month of this new year has already come to an end. How did that happen so quickly?

2021 kicked off pretty quietly (on this side of the world) although globally, it seemed that chaos still reigned in many places causing tensions to remain high and people to feel pretty low, not to mention the pandemic. I took a one-week holiday at the start of the month to “decompress” between work contracts, although not much of that happened before it was time to start work again but this time on a part-time contract! I have to admit that since I started working three days a week, my days have begun to blur into one giant blob of working, reading, blogging and not much else. 😂

Half the time I feel like I don’t even know what day it is anymore and that definitely didn’t help by the brain fog that came creeping in around mid-month. Although I still struggle with my mental health and this month got a bit rough towards the end, the three day work week has really helped to keep extra pressure at bay and that’s exactly why I agreed to it in the first place!

In bookish mail news, I was surprised to actually receive the Cemetery Boys pre-order goodies from Aiden Thomas (even if it’s quite late)! I never usually receive these goodies and I blame that entirely on the mail system in my country so colour me very shook when I saw the beautiful character cards (and sign plate) arrive the other week. My photos don’t do the cards justice but trust, they’re gorgeous and I love to see them! 😍 If I’m not mistaken, the art is by: @mmarsloud.

January ended up being a pretty great reading month thanks to having more time in general. I ended up reading 22 books (that I’m counting with three books that I read and won’t be counting towards my GR goal). This month was unsurprisingly heavy on fantasy and romance with a sprinkle of middle-grade and literary fiction. A couple books took me a few steps out of my comfort zone but I ended up really loving them and they were strong contenders for favourites this month! The majority of the books I read were also by new-to-me-authors with some potential favourite new ones on the list!

I’m still a bit behind on my reviews and part of me just wants to start writing mini-reviews for all of them but is that a cop out? 😂 I loved most of my reads this month but I also had quite a few ratings below three-stars and I don’t tend to give those out a lot, so that was pretty surprising! With only one five-star read this month Ever After Always was the winning favourite and I’ve linked my review below if you want to check it out. 😊

Read More »