Tag: Dystopia

Goodreads Monday – To Best the Boys by Mary Weber

Dini @ dinipandareads8 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 To Best the Boys by Mary Weber. It’s a YA fantasy/dystopia that came out in 2019 and has an average rating of 3.71 on Goodreads.

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Blog Tour Review: The Other Side of Perfect by Mariko Turk

Dini @ dinipandareads10 Comments

Today is my stop on the TBR & Beyond Tours for The Other Side of Perfect by Mariko Turk.
Special thanks to Netgalley and Little Brown Books for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

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

Goodreads: The Other Side of Perfect
Publisher: Little Brown Books
Publication Date: 11 May 2021
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary
Panda Rating:

(actual 4.5 pandas)

Alina Keeler was destined to dance, but one terrifying fall shatters her leg–and her dreams of a professional ballet career along with it. 

After a summer healing (translation: eating vast amounts of Cool Ranch Doritos and binging ballet videos on YouTube), she is forced to trade her pre-professional dance classes for normal high school, where she reluctantly joins the school musical. However, rehearsals offer more than she expected–namely Jude, her annoyingly attractive cast mate she just might be falling for. 

But to move forward, Alina must make peace with her past and face the racism she had grown to accept in the dance industry. She wonders what it means to yearn for ballet–something so beautiful, yet so broken. And as broken as she feels, can she ever open her heart to someone else? 

Touching, romantic, and peppered with humor, this debut novel explores the tenuousness of perfectionism, the possibilities of change, and the importance of raising your voice. 

CW/TW: the protagonist is dealing with a lot of anger and some depression, various experiences of racism, bullying

BUY A COPY:

AMAZON
B&N
BOOK DEPOSITORY
INDIEBOUND
INDIGO
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Blog Tour Review: The Ones We’re Meant to Find by Joan He

Dini @ dinipandareads18 Comments

Today is my stop on the TBR & Beyond Tours for The Ones We’re Meant to Find by Joan He.
Special thanks to Netgalley and Roaring Brook Press for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

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

Goodreads: The Ones We’re Meant to Find
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Publication Date: 04 May 2021
Genre: Young Adult Science Fiction/Climate Fiction
Panda Rating:

(5 pandas)

One of the most twisty, surprising, engaging page-turner YAs you’ll read this year—We Were Liars with sci-fi scope, Lost with a satisfying resolution.

Cee awoke on an abandoned island three years ago. With no idea of how she was marooned, she only has a rickety house, an old android, and a single memory: she has a sister, and Cee needs to find her.

STEM prodigy Kasey wants escape from the science and home she once trusted. The eco-city—Earth’s last unpolluted place—is meant to be sanctuary for those commited to planetary protection, but it’s populated by people willing to do anything for refuge, even lie. Now, she’ll have to decide if she’s ready to use science to help humanity, even though it failed the people who mattered most.

BUY NOW:

AMAZON
B&N
BOOK DEPOSITORY
INDIEBOUND
INDIGO
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Goodreads Monday – The Book of M by Peng Shepherd

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.

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Top 5 Saturday: Trilogies

Dini @ dinipandareads27 Comments

We’re back with another Top 5 Saturday! I might’ve missed last week’s topic but I will come back to it at some point 🙂 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: trilogies!

I’m surprised to learn that a lot of the series on my TBR and ‘need-to-finish’ lists are trilogies! I like trilogies. I think three books is a good number because it’s just long enough for those who like reading series but it’s also “short” enough for those who don’t like long series. Or simply for those who don’t have the patience to wait even longer for the next book to come out 😅 Lucky for me, almost all the series mentioned below are complete so there’s no waiting time between books and that’s really the most perfect scenario! I’m really looking forward to starting/finishing these series!

First up is the Chaos Walking Series by Patrick Ness. I still haven’t read anything by Ness although I have five of his books (including this full series) sitting on my physical shelf. I got really cool copies too!

I’ve been wanting to read more by Amie Kaufman and when I saw the covers for the Starbound Series I knew there was no way I would be passing these up. Totally cover judging here–they’re STUNNING!

Ah, The Kingkiller Chronicles. I don’t know whether I’m dreaming but THERE IS A COVER FOR BOOK THREE. Is it the actual? I don’t know. There’s still no official release date but there are 2020 whispers and if it happens I’ll be deceased (kidding… But I might actually pass out from shock LOL)!

I have been meaning to finish His Dark Materials for a while now. I enjoyed the first book but didn’t continue with the rest of the series because I wanted to find matching books. Anyone else do that? 😂

I loved The Bear and the Nightingale when I read it last year but I was waiting for the rest of the Winternight Trilogy to deliver (which obvi took forever). Planning to re-read and finish this year!

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Down the TBR Hole – 15

Dini @ dinipandareads20 Comments

My guilt has kicked in and told me that I can’t keep avoiding another culling of my ridiculous TBR forever, so here I am. Back again with a list of books from my Goodreads TBR that is now a whopping 1,088 books (don’t judge me, I added a lot more books to my TBR since last week)! I thought I’d make it clear again that just because it’s on my Goodreads TBR doesn’t actually mean I own copies of the book (that’d be way ridiculous even for me)! Let’s see what we can get rid of today, eh?

Down the TBR Hole is a weekly book meme created by the wonderful Lia @ Lost in a Story that attempts to organize our ridiculously long Goodreads TBR list by choosing either to keep or eliminate the books we’ve saved on there. Here’s how it works:

  • Go to your goodreads to-read shelf.
  • Order on ascending date added.
  • Take the first 5 (or 10 (or even more!) if you’re feeling adventurous) books. Of course, if you do this weekly, you start where you left off the last time.
  • Read the synopses of the books
  • Decide: keep it or should it go

Verdict: Keep

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#TopTenTuesday: One Word Titles

Dini @ dinipandareads56 Comments

It’s that time of the week again, friends! We’re back with another Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s prompt is: books with single-word titles! This prompt was submitted by Kitty @ Kitty Marie’s Reading Corner (who you should definitely go follow right now)!

What would I ever do without Goodreads? I would fail, that’s what. I would never be able to do these posts because my memory fails so hard. I really couldn’t come up with one title until I looked at several lists on GR and realised that I have read a few books with single-word titles! Plus, plenty of them are actually books from series that I love, so I can’t believe that I couldn’t think of any titles to start 😂

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Mini-Reviews: The Rain Trilogy by B.B. Easton

Dini @ dinipandareads13 Comments

The Rain Trilogy is one of those series that had me heckin’ confused because I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone but I still couldn’t stop reading it, and ended up finishing the whole trilogy in one day. Yep, it was a thing. The books are short though and a lot but not a lot really happens. But without further ado, you can check out my thoughts for each book below. I’d give the series an average score of ★★★☆☆.

Goodreads: Praying for Rain (The Rain Trilogy #1)
Genre: Dystopia, Romance
Panda Rating:

“None of this matters, and we’re all going to die.”
With only three days left until the predicted apocalypse, the small town of Franklin Springs, Georgia, has become a wasteland of abandoned cars, abandoned homes, abandoned businesses, and abandoned people. People like Rainbow Williams. Rain isn’t afraid of dying. In fact, she’s looking forward to it. If she can just outrun her pain until April 23, she’ll never have to feel it at all.

“Supplies. Shelter. Self-defense.”
Wes Parker has survived every horrible thing this life has thrown at him with nothing more than his resourcefulness and disarming good looks. Why should the end of the world be any different? All he needs are some basic supplies, shelter, and a sucker willing to help him out, which is exactly what he finds when he returns to his hometown of Franklin Springs.

As society crumbles, dangers mount, and secrets refuse to stay buried, two lost souls are thrust together in a twist of fate—one who will do anything to survive and one who can’t wait to die.
Perhaps, together, they can learn how to live.
Before their time runs out.

I’m 90% sure that this book isn’t my jam for a lot of reasons, but seeing as I’m writing this after I’ve finished the series, I’ll admit to being helpless to stop. I’m at a total loss to explain why but I guess I just really needed to know what happens? Lol I don’t know. Can you tell I’m confused rn? SO CONFLICTED.

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First Lines Friday – 07 February

Dini @ dinipandareads13 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:

“Benny Imura couldn’t hold a job, so he took to killing.”

Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?

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Goodreads Monday – Renegades by Marissa Meyer

Dini @ dinipandareads8 Comments

It’s the first Goodreads Monday of 2020, friends! 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 book is Renegades (Renegades #1) by Marissa Meyer. First of all, can we take a look at this awesome cover? I love it! This YA fantasy/sci-fi was added to my Goodreads TBR in 2017! It has a pretty good 4.16 average with 46k+ ratings and 8k+ reviews.

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