Blog Tour Review: The Bitterwine Oath by Hannah West

December 6, 2020December 7, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads8 Comments

Today is my stop on the TBR & Beyond Tours for The Bitterwine Oath by Hannah West. Special thanks to Holiday House and the author for providing the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

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

Goodreads: The Bitterwine Oath
Publication Date: 01 December 2020
Genre: Young Adult Mystery
Panda Rating:

Every fifty years, a cult claims twelve men to murder in a small Texas town. Can one girl end the cycle of violence – and save the boy who broke her heart?

San Solano, Texas is a quaint town known for its charm, hospitality, and history of murder. Twice now, twelve men have been brutally killed, and no one knows who did it. A shadowy witch? A copy-cat killer? Or a man-hating murderess? Eighteen-year-old Natalie Colter is sure that the rumors about her great-great-grandmother’s cult of wronged women are just gossip, but that doesn’t stop the true crime writers and dark tourism bloggers from capitalizing on the town’s reputation. It’s an urban legend that’s hard to ignore, and it gets harder when Nat learns that the sisterhood is real, and magical. And they want her to join.

The more Nat learns of the Wardens’ supernatural history, the more she wonders about the real culprits behind the town’s ritualistic murders. Are the Wardens protecting San Solano from even darker forces? As the anniversary of the murders draws near, the town grows restless. Residents start getting “claimed” as this year’s planned victims, including Levi Langford, the boy whose kiss haunted Nat for a year.

Nat knows that no one is safe. Can she and the sisterhood stop the true evil from claiming their town?

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

Top 5 Saturday: Apocalyptic Books

December 5, 2020December 7, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads16 Comments

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: apocalyptic books.

Well, I guess it’s about time I did a prompt for (post-)apocalyptic books this year, huh? I’m actually surprised I haven’t done one yet 🤔 Though in all honesty I can’t recall for sure right now because I’m operating on like 10% battery 😅 But I digress! All save one of these titles have been on my TBR for a while now and I did have plans to read either one or two of them this year but I haven’t been in the right mood for them (unsurprisingly). I do usually really enjoy post-apocalytpic stories though, so I’m hoping to get to these at some point in the hopefully not too distant future! So, on that note, here are the books I’m keen to read:

(book covers are linked to the Goodreads pages!)

First Lines Friday – 04 December

December 4, 2020December 4, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads17 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!

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?

November 2020 Monthly Wrap Up!

December 4, 2020January 2, 2022 Dini @ dinipandareads15 Comments

Can you believe it’s already December? I’m a little shook at how quickly November seemed to zoom right by me and that I can’t recall reading much of anything at all last month!

Work in November was been overwhelmingly busy with projects ending, people leaving, and new things to start sorting for next year as my organisation goes through a merger. Having to prepare communications for the region and projects, as well as representing Southeast Asia in our global works council (similar to a union), on top of finding time to blog and read, really stretched me quite thin! To say that everything seemed to be overflowing might be a bit of an understatement and part of me is even glad to see that we’re in the last month of 2020 now because I’m truly running low on steam 😂

But it hasn’t been all bad! It has been an incredible month for book mail and I’ve received many of the special editions that I ordered earlier in the year. I haven’t spent much on regular book buying in 2020, but I’m 100% positive I made up for all that with the many special editions that I purchased. I really kissed that money goodbye, friends 😂

1) Stack of random new books; 2) SE A Deadly Education; 3) SE The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

Illumicrate Archives: The Poppy War, naked cover art + mind-blowing jacket art!

Now… ON TO THE “FUN” STUFF!

In November, I read 15 books! **Okay, I just totally surprised myself with that count because I expected to see that I only managed to read five books or something because that’s really what this month has felt like 😂 LOL I didn’t have any five star reads or DNFs and the majority this month were 4 stars. If you can’t tell I went on a bit of a historical romance binge and the light reads were exactly what I needed! The books were a good mix of blog tour reads, ARCs and new books on my TBR.

Being the only book I rated 4.5 stars this month, The Cousins was my favourite read but I think the Moose Springs series are close contenders because they really brought me a lot of joy and I can’t wait to continue on with the series in December as I was lucky enough to get the ARC!

First Impressions Spotlight: Big Girl, Small Town by Michelle Gallen

December 3, 2020October 11, 2021 Dini @ dinipandareads10 Comments

So it turns out that I noted my date incorrectly for this Algonquin tour and I didn’t bother to recheck it like I usually do because it’s been so busy… and I feel terrible about it! 😰 I have read 30% of the book though so this will be a “First Impressions” review but I will follow it up with a full review ASAP!

Thanks to Algonquin Books and NetGalley for providing the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Goodreads: Big Girl, Small Town
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Release Date: 01 December 2020
Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Irish Literature

Majella is happiest out of the spotlight, away from her neighbors’ stares and the gossips of the small town in Northern Ireland where she grew up during the Troubles. She lives a quiet life caring for her alcoholic mother, working in the local chip shop, and watching the regular customers come and go. She wears the same clothes each day (overalls, too small), has the same dinner each night (fish and chips, microwaved at home after her shift ends), and binge-watches old DVDs of the same show (Dallas, best show on TV) from the comfort of her bed. But underneath Majella’s seemingly ordinary life are the facts that she doesn’t know where her father is and that every person in her town has been changed by the lingering divide between Protestants and Catholics. When Majella’s seemingly mundane existence is upended by the death of her granny, she comes to realize there may be more to life than the gossips of Aghybogey, the pub, and the chip shop. In fact, there just may be a whole big world outside her small town.

#WWWWednesday: 02 December

December 3, 2020December 7, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads6 Comments

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:

What did you read last?
What are you currently reading?
What will you read next?

I don’t know y’all… Reading has been hard lately 😂 and since last week I managed to finish these two books:

The Price of Temptation by Harmony Williams ★★★☆☆
I was really looking forward to this one so I was disappointed that I didn’t love it more. I had trouble connecting with the characters and empathising with their situations. There were inconsistencies in character and plot that took me out of the story, and while the con-artist aspect was intriguing, I found the overall execution fell short. Review to come.

Gargantis (The Legends of Eerie-on-Sea) by Thomas Taylor ★★★★☆
I loved coming back to the aptly named Eerie-on-Sea for another mystery with Herbie and Violet. We reunited with many familiar faces but are introduced to a host of new characters, including a wickedly creepy nemesis, Deep Hood. It was great to learn more about the legends and old fishermen’s tales in this action-packed and extremely fast-paced adventure! Check out my review.

ARC Review: Gargantis by Thomas Taylor

December 2, 2020August 18, 2021 Dini @ dinipandareads9 Comments

Thanks to NetGalley and Candlewick Press for providing the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Gargantis (The Legends of Eerie-On-Sea #2)
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Publication Date: 26 May 2020
Genre: Middle Grade Fiction, Fantasy

Panda Rating:

In the second fantasy set in Eerie-on-Sea, Herbert and Violet team up to solve the mystery of the Gargantis — an ancient creature of the deep with the power to create life-threatening storms.

There’s a storm brewing over Eerie-on-Sea, and the fisherfolk say a monster is the cause. Someone has woken the ancient Gargantis, who sleeps in the watery caves beneath this spooky seaside town where legends have a habit of coming to life. It seems the Gargantis is looking for something: a treasure stolen from her underwater lair. And it just might be in the Lost-and-Foundery at the Grand Nautilus Hotel, in the care of one Herbert Lemon, Lost-and-Founder. With the help of the daring Violet Parma, ever-reliable Herbie will do his best to figure out what the Gargantis wants and who stole her treasure in the first place. In a town full of suspicious, secretive characters, it could be anyone!

#TopTenTuesday: Books I Want to Read Again

December 1, 2020December 7, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads43 Comments

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 I want to read again.

Well, I thought that this was a pretty fitting topic as just last Friday, I shared my thoughts on rereading and I said that while I’m not much of a rereader, I would like to do it more–if only it weren’t for all the books sitting on my ever growing TBR! I didn’t mention in my post what books I’d like to reread again so what a perfect time do it with this TTT!

Almost all of these are part of a series and they’ve made it onto this list because my memory is the worst thing to exist™️ and I need to refresh it before I move onto the final book in the series. The standalones are because I remember loving them so much when I did read them (some as far back as middle school!) but I don’t recall (m)any details now so it might even be like reading a brand new book again, which is always super exciting! Yay for having terrible memory! 😂

#5OnMyTBR: Shorties (Under 150)

December 1, 2020November 30, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads14 Comments

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

This week’s prompt is: Shorties (under 150 pages).

Goodreads Monday – The Book of M by Peng Shepherd

November 30, 2020November 30, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads5 Comments

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 The Book of M by Peng Shepherd. This is a post-apocalyptic/dystopian novel that was published in 2018 and has a 3.69 rating on Goodreads with 2k+ reviews.