Tag: Book Blogger

Notes On A Nervous Planet by Matt Haig – #MiniBookReview

Dini @ dinipandareads12 Comments

Goodreads: Notes On A Nervous Planet
Genre: Non Fiction, Self-Help, Mental Health
Panda Rating:

Rates of stress and anxiety are rising. A fast, nervous planet is creating fast and nervous lives. We are more connected, yet feel more alone. And we are encouraged to worry about everything from world politics to our body mass index.

– How can we stay sane on a planet that makes us mad?
– How do we stay human in a technological world?
– How do we feel happy when we are encouraged to be anxious?

After experiencing years of anxiety and panic attacks, these questions became urgent matters of life and death for Matt Haig. And he began to look for the link between what he felt and the world around him.

Notes on a Nervous Planet is a personal and vital look at how to feel happy, human and whole in the 21st century. 

This was my first book by Matt Haig and it certainly won’t be my last! I’m not much of a nonfiction reader but I’m so glad that I decided to read this book because Haig touches upon incredibly relevant issues that we face today living on this increasingly overloaded and sensitive nervous planet.

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Kiss Me Not (Kiss Me #1) by Emma Hart – #BookReview

Dini @ dinipandareads8 Comments

Goodreads: Kiss Me Not (Kiss Me #1)
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Panda Rating:

What do you do when you’re the reigning kissing booth champion but the only person you want to kiss is your best friend’s brother?

Let me make this clear right here, right now: I, Halley Dawson, do not care that Preston Wright is kissing other women. Not a lick. Not at all. Nuh-uh-freakin’-uh.
I do care that he’s doing it six feet away from me behind a gaudy velvet curtain—making him my competition in this year’s kissing contest.

Why do I care, you ask? Because I’ve had an unfortunate crush on the insufferable idiot since I was sixteen years old, but I also know it’s never going to happen. He’s the Creek Falls bachelor to die for, and I’m the Creek Falls racoon lady who puts peanut butter sandwiches out for them every night. I’m not going to let him break my four-year-long reign—no matter how many times he breaks the rules and slides the curtain across to do the one thing he’s not allowed to: Kiss me.

Kiss Me Not is a short and fluffy romantic comedy that certainly had me giggling at times but overall, I thought was just alright. The enemies-to-lovers story focuses on our MCs Halley and Preston. Halley is the all-around golden girl and notorious Raccoon lady, and Preston is her best friend’s older brother and the most eligible bachelor of Creek Falls. Halley has been the reigning champion of the town’s Kissing Booth for the last four years, but this year Preston is her competition and soon bets are made and truths come out.

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TH1RT3EN (Eddie Flynn #4) by Steve Cavanagh – #eARC #BookReview

Dini @ dinipandareads14 Comments

Goodreads: TH1RT3EN (Eddie Flynn #4)
Publish date: 13 August 2019
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Genre: Crime Thriller, Mystery
Panda Rating:

The serial killer isn’t on trial.
He’s on the jury…

They were Hollywood’s hottest power couple. They had the world at their feet. Now one of them is dead and Hollywood star Robert Solomon is charged with the brutal murder of his beautiful wife.

This is the celebrity murder trial of the century and the defence want one man on their team: con artist turned lawyer Eddie Flynn.

All the evidence points to Robert’s guilt, but as the trial begins a series of sinister incidents in the courtroom start to raise doubts in Eddie’s mind.

What if there’s more than one actor in the courtroom?
What if the killer isn’t on trial? What if the killer is on the jury?

Wow, what an incredible ride! Again, I’m facepalming myself for not reading this as soon as I got it on NetGalley because I loved every minute of this fast-paced courtroom drama and crime thriller. This book was like reading an episode of Criminal Minds and I could so clearly picture everything unfolding before me as if I watching it on TV. I knew I had to read this one as soon as I read the synopsis and saw that “the killer isn’t on trial, he’s on the jury”! I mean, is there a cleverer way of catching the reader’s attention with a blurb like that? It definitely worked it’s magic on me.

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Goodreads Monday – 25 November

Dini @ dinipandareads4 Comments

We’re back with another Goodreads Monday, a weekly meme started by @Lauren’s Page Turners. This meme 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 Of Blood and Bone (Chronicles of The One #2) by Nora Roberts. Ooh, this is a good pick and it reminds me that I still have to read it! It has some pretty impressive stats on Goodreads too: 4.30 stars with 18,127 ratings and 1,855 reviews.

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Sundays in Bed With… #MyWeeklyWrapUp [31]

Dini @ dinipandareads6 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 in and out of bed with TH1RT3EN (Eddie Flynn #4) by Steve Cavanagh. I received the e-ARC of this thriller earlier this year and for some reason I kept putting it off until last night. Since I started reading it last night, I’ve kind of sped through it. It’s pretty twisted and the POV of the serial killer (yes, we know who the serial killer is from the start) can get pretty graphic, but as always when reading thrillers, it’s hooked me in and I’m impatiently waiting to see how it all unfolds! I’ve gotta feeling it’s gonna be a pretty wild ride 😅

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The Death of Baseball by Orlando Ortega-Medina – #eARC #BookReview

Dini @ dinipandareads10 Comments

Goodreads: The Death of Baseball
Publish date: 19 November 2019
Publisher: Cloud Lodge Books
Genre: Literary Fiction, LGBTQ+
Panda Rating:

Former Little League champion Kimitake “Clyde” Koba finds strength in the belief that he is the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe as he struggles to escape the ghost of his brother and his alcoholic father.

Born on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, teen prodigy Raphael Dweck has been told his whole life that he has a special purpose in God’s plan. The only problem is, he can’t shake off his doubts, his urges, or the trail of trouble and ruin that follow in his wake.

A decade later, Raphael and ‘Marilyn’ find each other wandering the plastic-bright streets of Hollywood and set out to make a documentary about the transmigration of souls. But when the roleplaying goes too far, they find themselves past the point of no return in their quest to prove who and what they are to their families, God, the world, and themselves.

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Top 5 Saturday: Books with Fake Relationships!

Dini @ dinipandareads14 Comments

It’s time for another Top 5 Saturday, a weekly meme created by Mandy @ Devouring Books and this week’s topic is: books with fake love couples. So… I’m assuming this means the fake relationship trope and I’m here for it! By now you know how much I love romance because who doesn’t love the good feels? Romance can be pretty full of tropes and sometimes those tropes get old quick, especially if what you get is the same story over and over again. That said, if I had to pick some of my favorite tropes, fake relationships/dating would definitely be near the top of that list! I mean, yeah it gets pretty predictable but still. THE GOOD FEELS!!! There are plenty of books with this trope on my TBR and here are five of them that I’m hoping to read soon.

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Friday Favorites: Character Team Ups

Dini @ dinipandareads14 Comments

It’s time for another Friday Favorites hosted by Kibby @ Something of the Book! This weekly meme is where you get to share a list of all your favourites based on the list of prompts on Kibby’s page. Sounds fun, right? This week’s prompt is: favorite character team ups! This prompt was a little confusing for me — I wasn’t sure what exactly was meant by it when I first read it and I don’t know if I’m interpreting it correctly in my post, so this might be pretty short! For this prompt, I’ve decided to keep it simple and look at the books that have some of my favorite squads and are total goals 😍

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First Lines Friday – 22 November

Dini @ dinipandareads8 Comments

Yayaya, HAPPY FRIYAY, book lovers and friends 😍We’re back with another First Lines Friday! This is 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:

“The morning sun caught the palace’s golden dome, flooding the Concord with light. While everyone halted their business and glanced up–as though it were a sign from the four queens themselves–we perched overhead like sea vultures, ready to swoop in and pick them apart.”

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