Tag: eARC

#WWWWednesday: 26 August 2020

Dini @ dinipandareads14 Comments

Can someone please tell me where August went because… Is it really already the final full week of August?

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 my last WWW check in I’ve managed to read these five books. I feel like I’m missing books that I’ve read and just didn’t mark on Goodreads but if that’s the case then… we might just never know LOL My brain has been shrouded in a fog of lethargy lately and it can get really frustrating when this happens!

Ignite the Sun by Hanna Howard ★★★☆☆
This was an enjoyable, fast-paced and adventure filled story with lots of our favourite magical creatures. It’s the perfect read for fantasy newbies or fantasy lovers who aren’t looking for anything complicated or for anything “new”. Read my review!

Starcross Manor by Christie Barlow ★★★☆☆
This was a fun and easy read about mistaken first impressions, community and good friendships that left me feeling hopeful and warm. Our protagonists are older in this romance and I liked that focus as it’s rare to read about people above the age of 30/35 finding love! Read my review!

The Heart of a Peach by Jess B. Moore ★★★½
With such an adorable cover, I was surprised by the darker themes in this book. CW: abuse (emotional/mental), gaslighting. There’s also insta-love (a trope I hate), but I was able to look past that and rooted for the characters and their HEA. This was a surprising and enjoyable romance. Read my review!

The Little Wedding Shop by the Sea by Jane Linfoot ★★★☆☆
I’ve mixed feelings about this one. I liked the story, most characters and even the slow burn enemies-to-lovers romance, but as the story went on (and it really rolled on for quite a while) I found myself getting too irritated with our MC, Poppy. Still, it’s a sweet story set in a cute town and I wouldn’t mind coming back to read more around the wedding shop. Review coming soon!

Accidentally in Love by Belinda Missen ★★★★☆
This was the romance I didn’t know I needed this weekend. I love me a strong heroine who knows what she’s worth and what she wants out of life and goes for it 100%. Katharine was a great heroine and Kit is a hero that will steal your heart (although he could be immature at times). Loved the family relationships, especially the bond between Katharine and her brother, and the banter had me laughing out loud multiple times! Would definitely recommend it. Review coming soon!

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eARC Graphic Novel Review: Fangs by Sarah Andersen

Dini @ dinipandareads11 Comments

Goodreads: Fangs
Publish date: 01 September 2020
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Genre: Graphic Novel
Panda Rating:

A love story between a vampire and a werewolf by the creator of the enormously popular Sarah’s Scribbles comics.

Vamp is three hundred years old but in all that time, she has never met her match. This all changes one night in a bar when she meets a charming werewolf. FANGS chronicles the humor, sweetness, and awkwardness of meeting someone perfectly suited to you but also vastly different

I’m a big fan of the many Sarah’s Scribbles comics that I’ve seen online although I’ve never actually read through or purchased one of her books, and after reading Fangs I’m really questioning why! This was such a cute/weird/sweet love story between a vampire and a werewolf that had me laughing out loud and ‘awwing’ constantly. Talk about them feel good feels!

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Sundays in Bed With… #MyWeeklyWrapUp

Dini @ dinipandareads19 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 have spent very little of this Sunday in bed with a book because I can’t decide what to read! I finished a romance novel last night and while I usually keep rolling with romance reads until my mood tells me otherwise, this time my mood has been all over the place and so I’ve now got three books “going” (that I’ve started last night, this morning and this afternoon). They’re not bad books and I’m enjoying each read but my mood is really playing havoc 🤣 Anyone read any of these?

What are you currently reading?

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First Lines Friday – 21 August

Dini @ dinipandareads18 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:

“Elikem married me in absentia; he did not come to our wedding.”

Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?

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Sundays in Bed With… #MyWeeklyWrapUp

Dini @ dinipandareads5 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’ll be spending the rest of my Sunday in bed with Starcross Manor. This is for the next blog tour that I have coming up next week and not only do I love the cover but it sounds like a cute read as well! As a mood reader I’ve definitely been leaning towards “lighter” reads and this romance sounds exactly like what I want. I’m looking forward to snuggling under the covers and reading the night away 😊

Once upon a time, there was something called the sun… In a kingdom ruled by an evil witch, the sun is just part of a legend about light-filled days of old. Luckily for everybody in the kingdom, Siria Nightingale is headed to the heart of the darkness to try and restore the light–or she will lose everything trying.

Sixteen year-old Siria Nightingale has never seen the sun. The light is dangerous, according to Queen Iyzabel, an evil witch who has shrouded the kingdom in shadow. Siria has always hated the darkness and revels in the stories of the light-filled old days that she hears from her best friend and his grandfather. Besides them, nobody else understands her fascination with the sun, especially not her strict and demanding parents. Siria’s need to please them is greater even than her fear of the dark. So she heads to the royal city–the very center of the darkness–for a chance at a place in Queen Iyzabel’s court.

But what Siria discovers at the Choosing Ball sends her on a quest toward the last vestiges of the sun with a ragtag group of rebels who could help her bring back the Light … or doom the kingdom to shadow forever.

What are you currently reading?

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First Lines Friday – 14 August

Dini @ dinipandareads13 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:

“The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation. He’d been dead for ten days before they found him, you know.”

Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?

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#WWWWednesday: 12 August

Dini @ dinipandareads23 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:

  1. What did you read last?
  2. What are you currently reading?
  3. What will you read next?

Since last Wednesday I managed to finish 3.5 books (the .5 because I DNF’d one and so I won’t include that here). One of my goals for a while now is to allow myself to DNF and not feel guilty about it and although it’s really slow going, I think I’m doing a pretty good job this year since I’ve already allowed myself to DNF three books. Slow and steady, right?

With or Without You by Caroline Leavitt ★★★★½
I was pleasantly surprised by With or Without You especially because it’s the kind of book that I’d normally find myself disliking–not because it’s poorly written but because the characters are so flawed and I find it hard to connect to stories when I dislike characters. That (obviously) didn’t happen here though. This was a very bittersweet and deeply emotional book about love, loyalty, the choices we make in life and ultimately, about growth, change and finding yourself. Read my review!

A House is A Body by Shruti Swamy ★★★☆☆
I struggle with the way short stories are usually written but I continue to read them in the hopes I’ll find my “one” collection. While I enjoyed some of these stories, most of them mainly confused me and that impacted by overall view. Swamy’s writing is wonderful and she does an amazing job writing stories rooted in both fantasy and reality! I recommend it if you like diverse and fantastical short stories. Read my review!

The Black Kids by Christina Hammonds Reed ★★★★★
Although I initially struggled to connect with Ashley, I was able to empathise with her as I read on. She’s still a very unlikeable character but her growth in this book was so well done and I felt so proud of her in the end! This was a heavy book. It angered me, frustrated me, made me despair but I commend Hammonds Reed for ending this book in such a hopeful way. Although everything wasn’t okay, you felt like eventually, we’re going to get there. Read my review!

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Blog Tour Review: The Black Kids by Christina Hammonds Reed

Dini @ dinipandareads9 Comments

I’m so honoured and excited to share my review today as part of the book blog tour for The Black Kids by Christina Hammonds Reed. Special thanks to Shivani at Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing for reaching out and asking if I’d like to be part of their tour for this incredible book. Thanks to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.

Goodreads: The Black Kids
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Release Date: 04 August 2020
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary, Historical Fiction, Coming-of-Age
Panda Rating:

Perfect for fans of The Hate U Give, this unforgettable coming-of-age debut novel explores issues of race, class, and violence through the eyes of a wealthy black teenager whose family gets caught in the vortex of the 1992 Rodney King Riots.

Los Angeles, 1992
Ashley Bennett and her friends are living the charmed life. It’s the end of senior year and they’re spending more time at the beach than in the classroom. They can already feel the sunny days and endless possibilities of summer.

Everything changes one afternoon in April, when four LAPD officers are acquitted after beating a black man named Rodney King half to death. Suddenly, Ashley’s not just one of the girls. She’s one of the black kids.

As violent protests engulf LA and the city burns, Ashley tries to continue on as if life were normal. Even as her self-destructive sister gets dangerously involved in the riots. Even as the model black family façade her wealthy and prominent parents have built starts to crumble. Even as her best friends help spread a rumor that could completely derail the future of her classmate and fellow black kid, LaShawn Johnson.

With her world splintering around her, Ashley, along with the rest of LA, is left to question who is the us? And who is the them?

Buy: Publisher | Amazon (US) | Amazon (UK) | Book Depository

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Sundays in Bed With… #MyWeeklyWrapUp

Dini @ dinipandareads7 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!

It’s now going on 9PM on a Sunday and I’m wondering where my day went! Once I’m done writing this post I plan to get cozy in bed with Ignite the Sun. I’m reading this for my second TBR and Beyond Tours and I’ve got my tour date coming up at the end of next week, so be on the look out for my review then! I started reading this a bit the day before and what I’ve read so far isn’t anything ‘new’ exactly but it was entertaining enough to reel me in, so I’m excited to dive back into it!

Once upon a time, there was something called the sun… In a kingdom ruled by an evil witch, the sun is just part of a legend about light-filled days of old. Luckily for everybody in the kingdom, Siria Nightingale is headed to the heart of the darkness to try and restore the light–or she will lose everything trying.

Sixteen year-old Siria Nightingale has never seen the sun. The light is dangerous, according to Queen Iyzabel, an evil witch who has shrouded the kingdom in shadow. Siria has always hated the darkness and revels in the stories of the light-filled old days that she hears from her best friend and his grandfather. Besides them, nobody else understands her fascination with the sun, especially not her strict and demanding parents. Siria’s need to please them is greater even than her fear of the dark. So she heads to the royal city–the very center of the darkness–for a chance at a place in Queen Iyzabel’s court.

But what Siria discovers at the Choosing Ball sends her on a quest toward the last vestiges of the sun with a ragtag group of rebels who could help her bring back the Light … or doom the kingdom to shadow forever.

What are you currently reading?

Read More »

Blog Tour Review: A House is a Body by Shruti Swamy

Dini @ dinipandareads3 Comments

Today I’m back with another Algonquin book tour for A House is A Body by Shruti Swamy. Thanks to NetGalley and Algonquin Books for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest and unbiased review. This book is out 11 August 2020!

Goodreads: A House is a Body
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Release Date: 11 August 2020
Genre: Literary Fiction, Short Stories
Panda Rating:

In two-time O. Henry-prize winner Swamy’s debut collection of stories, dreams collide with reality, modernity collides with antiquity, myth with true identity, and women grapple with desire, with ego, with motherhood and mortality. In “Earthly Pleasures,” Radika, a young painter living alone in San Francisco, begins a secret romance with one of India’s biggest celebrities. In “A Simple Composition,” a husband’s moment of crisis leads to his wife’s discovery of a dark, ecstatic joy and the sense of a new beginning. In the title story, an exhausted mother watches, distracted and paralyzed, as a California wildfire approaches her home. With a knife blade’s edge and precision, the stories of A House Is a Body travel from India to America and back again to reveal the small moments of beauty, pain, and power that contain the world.

Buy: Amazon (US)

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