First Lines Friday – 22 May

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:

“My parents didn’t seem the sort of people who would end up killing someone. Everyone would say that – except the boy who died, who isn’t saying anything. He carried his story with him off the edges of the earth, like the others who died along the way. This story, my story, belongs to them too.”

Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?

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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 been you’ve spent time curled up reading in bed with, or which book you wish you had time to read today!

This Sunday I spent part of the day in bed with The Die of Death which is book II of The Great Devil War by Kenneth B. Andersen. It’s nice to be back with Philip after book one — I feel in ways that he has grown a lot although time didn’t pass in the real world when he was in hell. I’m looking forward to learning more about Mortimer (Death) and seeing what happens next!

Philip’s adventures as the Devil’s apprentice have changed him—in a good way. Although he misses his friends in Hell, he has made new friends in life.
But when the future of the underworld is threatened once again, Philip’s help is needed. Death’s Die has been stolen and immortality is spreading across the globe.
Philip throws himself into the search—and discovers a horrible truth about his own life along the way.

The Die of Death is volume 2 in The Great Devil War-series and winner of the ORLA-Award.

The Great Devil War-series is a humorous and gripping tale about good and evil, filled with biblical and historical characters, such as Judas, Goliath, and Pontius Pilate, as well as modern figures such as Elvis Presley, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, and many more.

The Great Devil War-series is a Danish bestseller, topping library and school reading lists among teens and young adults. The books have been published in more than ten countries and have won numerous awards. 

What are you currently reading?

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Top 5 Saturday: Books by Debut Authors

We’re back with 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: books by debut authors!

I’m always surprised by how many debut authors I have on my TBR because I don’t usually pay a lot of attention to that especially if it’s from a different genre than I normally read. For this list though I decided to keep it simple for myself and focus on the books being released by debut authors in 2020. I’m pretty sure that all of these are by debut authors but sorry if I get anything wrong!

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First Lines Friday – 15 May

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:

“You can’t put a price on finding love. If you could, it wouldn’t be £10. I’ve been playing the dating game for a while now but I just can’t seem to complete it — and I’m usually so good at games. No matter which level I try, there’s always a hole to fall down or a monster to eat me — metaphorically speaking, of course, although with dating apps you only ever feel a few bad decisions away from ending up in someone’s freezer.”

Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?

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#TopTenTuesday: Books I Should’ve Abandoned…

Side note to the actual post: Thanks so much to everyone who was so supportive and understanding of my much needed mini-break last week. I’m back, feeling much better and less drowning-in-my-emotions, and it feels good! I’ll be taking it a bit slow but I’ve missed everyone (and blogging) so much (I know it was only one week LOL)!

So, we’re back with another Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s prompt is: The Last Ten Books I Abandoned (this could be books you DNFed, books you decided you were no longer interested in, etc.) (submitted by Claire @ Book Lovers Pizza).

I think we all know by now that I don’t really DNF books and it’s something that I’m (very) slowly working towards. I know, I know—”why read a book if you’re not enjoying it?” It’s a good question and honestly, I’m not going to say anything different to what other non-DNFer’s would say. I feel guilty when I think of DNF’ing and that guilt means that if I abandon the book, it’ll linger in my head for longer than if I push through it. That FOMO feeling in me also always thinks: “but what if it gets better?!” Yeah, it usually never does but 🤷🏻‍♀️ So instead of listing books that I abandoned, I’ll be looking at ten books that I should’ve abandoned!*

*Possible unpopular opinions ahead! I don’t intend to offend anybody but I’m sorry if anything I say offends you, but please don’t attack me! LOL

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ARC Review: To Kill A Mocking Girl (A Bookbinding Mystery #1) by Harper Kincaid

Thanks to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review

Goodreads: To Kill A Mocking Girl (A Bookbinding Mystery #1)
Publish date: 12 May 2020
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
Genre: Cosy Mystery

Panda Rating:

Bookbinder Quinn finds herself in trouble when her ex’s fiance turns up dead and if she’s not careful, her days might be numbered in this debut perfect for fans of Kate Carlisle and Eva Gates.

Quinn Victoria Caine is back in her quirky town of Vienna, Virginia, starting her new life as a bookbinder in her family-owned, charm-for-days bookshop, Prose & Scones. With her trusty German Shephard RBG-‘Ruff Barker’ Ginsburg by her side, what can go wrong? Okay, sure, bumping into her ex, Scott, or her former high school nemesis, Tricia, is a drag. It certainly doesn’t help they have acquired the new hobby of shoving their recent engagement in her face every chance they get. But that doesn’t mean Quinn wanted to find Tricia dead in the road. So why does half the town think she may have done it?

Quinn is determined to find Tricia’s killer, even if it means partnering with her cousin-turned-nun, Sister Daria, and Detective Aiden Harrington, her older brother’s too-movie-star-handsome-for-his-own good, best friend. They believe she’s innocent, but of course that doesn’t influence the police, who peg her as their prime suspect. Or, at least until she’s poisoned.

But there is no way Quinn is going to stop now. Vienna is her town and-for better or worse-Tricia was one of their own. Someone may have killed the mocking girl, but no one’s going to stop the notorious QVC.

This is my first cozy mystery and I’m wondering why I’ve never read one of these before because what didn’t I like about it?! Right now I’m coming up blank because I enjoyed every single moment of this fast-paced murder mystery set in the small close-knit community of Vienna, Virginia. I can’t believe this is Kincaid’s first cosy mystery because she had me reeled in from the first page! Is it too early to be chanting for more when this book hasn’t even been published yet?

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Mini blogging break…because times are not good

Hello, my lovelies! How are we all doing?

I feel like this week only just kicked off but it’s already mid-week tomorrow (what how) and at this rate, May might just end up speeding by as quickly as April did! I’m honestly not even mad at that thought because right now I wish that May was already over. In fact, I think 2020 just needs to be over! 😂 But I digress…

I’m just here to make a quick announcement to let you know that I’ll be taking a mini blogging break this week. I have two blog tour posts to make but other than that I won’t be making my weekly barrage of posts. I know it’s silly but it actually makes me sad that I have to take a break because of how much I love blogging and how much joy it brings me. That said, the situation at home right now is so bad and it’s severely affecting my mental health. Being in this weird situation where I can’t leave home to escape the person who is making my life miserable AF is just awful. I know running away from problems isn’t healthy (etc. etc.) but sometimes it really helps to get a breather. What with work also being mental, it seems like all the space in my head has been taken up by these two things and I feel completely overwhelmed and so drained just thinking about trying to make room for anything else.

Sadly that means pulling the breaks on blogging. I’m still hoping to engage and blog hop as much as possible, but I don’t think I’ll be creating content until… Well, hopefully just the end of this week (or otherwise until further notice). I’ve really come to appreciate this community so much and the constant stream of support you all have to give, so I hope you’ll stick around until I get back but I totally understand if you don’t 💞

Until next time, I hope you all stay safe, healthy and happy 🐼

April Monthly Wrap Up!

To say that April was a bit of a wretched month for reading would be a bit of an understatement. Echoing the sentiment that many fellow bloggers have been saying in their wrap ups, while March felt like it crawled by, April was pretty much gone in a blink. I’m honestly not mad about it though. I’d ideally like to have a do-over of this shite month, but it is what it is. By now we all know that my reading took a huge nosedive this month is mainly because of Animal Crossing New Horizons… I had no idea how dangerous this game would be for me as I let my sister convince me to finally buy it–not that it was very difficult, mind you.

So here we are today… With the first exams I’ve ever failed in my life (O.W.L.s), a seemingly unscalable (e)ARC Mountain still to climb, and a total of seven books read this month. At least I have a nice (in game) island though, right? 😅

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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 been you’ve spent time curled up reading in bed with, or which book you wish you had time to read today!

This Sunday I probably should’ve spent the day in bed reading Auxiliary: London 2039. This is my next blog tour read for next week and I started it last night. I haven’t gotten far into it yet but it’s giving me Warcross, Ready Player One and Scythe vibes, so it has been interesting so far. There are some scenes that have me scratching my head (a little bit in discomfort) because I don’t know if they’re necessary but let’s see what happens. It’s definitely an interesting world — not so far-fetched and futuristic that it’s impossible to believe which is honestly just a little bit scary!

The silicon revolution left Dremmler behind, but a good detective is never obsolete.

London is quiet in 2039—thanks to the machines. People stay indoors, communicating through high-tech glasses and gorging on simulated reality while 3D printers and scuttling robots cater to their every whim. Mammoth corporations wage war for dominance in a world where human augmentation blurs the line between flesh and steel.

And at the center of it all lurks The Imagination Machine: the hyper-advanced, omnipresent AI that drives our cars, flies our planes, cooks our food, and plans our lives. Servile, patient, tireless … TIM has everything humanity requires. Everything except a soul.

Through this silicon jungle prowls Carl Dremmler, police detective—one of the few professions better suited to meat than machine. His latest case: a grisly murder seemingly perpetrated by the victim’s boyfriend. Dremmler’s boss wants a quick end to the case, but the tech-wary detective can’t help but believe the accused’s bizarre story: that his robotic arm committed the heinous crime, not him. An advanced prosthetic, controlled by a chip in his skull.

A chip controlled by TIM.

Dremmler smells blood: the seeds of a conspiracy that could burn London to ash unless he exposes the truth. His investigation pits him against desperate criminals, scheming businesswomen, deadly automatons—and the nightmares of his own past. And when Dremmler finds himself questioning even TIM’s inscrutable motives, he’s forced to stare into the blank soul of the machine.

What are you currently reading?

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First Lines Friday -01 May

Happy Friday book lovers and happy May Day!! 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:

“It was raining the day Suki came to the Palace of the Sun, and it was raining the night that she died.”

Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?

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