So, we’re back with another Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s prompt is:Valentine’s Day/Love Freebie
I’ve seen people posting some really fun and creative content for today’s valentine/love freebie and I wanted to do something fun too, but seeing as I have zero ability to plan posts ahead of time, I’ve decided to just share the adult romances by authors of colour that I can’t wait to get my hands on this year. Tied with my love for fantasy, romance is my favourite genre and they make up more than half of the books I read every year. I just love love, y’know? Give me those HEA, the swoony moments, the favourite tropes like friends-to-lovers, the marshmallow soft-on-the-inside heroes, the feisty kick-ass heroines, the delightful banter, explosive chemistry and YES, the *fans self* steaminess!
One goal I have this year is to focus more on romances by authors of colour. I want to be more intentional in picking up diverse romances and I’m glad to see more and more romance by AOC popping up on my radar! This list is a mix of backlist and upcoming releases and I’m so excited to try all of them. Let me know if you have any recommendations–gimme all that good love, please! 😍
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. You can find the full list of prompts (past and future) at the end of this post!
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 Again Again by E. Lockhart. This is a YA contemporary/coming-of-age story that was published in 2020.
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: Royalty in the Title (King, Queen, Princess, Prince, etc.)
This was only easy because of the search function on Goodreads but otherwise I had a surprisingly difficult time calling to mind the “royal titles” I have on my TBR. Memory, she eludes me often! 😂 On the whole, while it does seem that there are a lot of titles with royalty in them, I don’t seem to find myself gravitating towards them more than other kinds of titles/books. I do read quite a few stories about royals as they’re found in abundance in fantasies, especially YA, but perhaps I think that because I read mostly YA. With that said, here are five titles that are on my TBR that I’m looking forward to reading! Unsurprisingly, most are fantasy but there’s a romance and poetry collection in the mix too! 😉
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?
Since last Wednesday I’ve finished five books and had my first DNF of 2021 (not included here). My goal this year is to continue DNFing books that aren’t doing it for me instead of letting my guilt push me to keep reading something that I’m really not enjoying, so I’m proud that I managed to put this goal into action so early on in the year! 😂
Deadly Dreams (Fortuna Sworn #4) by K.J. Sutton ★★★☆☆ After ending book two feeling mad let down, I didn’t have big hopes for this book but it was better. I really enjoyed certain aspects of it, such as how Fortuna’s trauma was dealt with (for the most part) but I’m kinda tired of the story cos it keeps going around in circles and I feel like we still get no answers. There were more “political fae games” in this story, which also meant a lot more brutality and murders, which did keep it ‘interesting’ (lol) but I’m truly over the love-triangle/square/whatever vibes. I will say that the ending surprised me and for that alone I will be continuing on with the series because my curiosity has been piqued! Will share a series review soon.
Well, I can’t say that I’ve ever done a prompt like this one before! Prior to starting this book blog I never really paid attention to when books were published. To be honest, even with this book blog, I’m only mostly aware of pub dates for books that I’m reading for blog tours or for ARCs, but otherwise I still don’t pay dates that much attention. So I wasn’t even sure how to go about doing this list but thanks to Goodreads’ compiled lists for books going back to 1980, my decision was made easy! Since I was born in 1988 (I’m old?!) I thought I would share two books from my born year and share one each year going back to 1980. I’m quite surprised to find that I actually do have at least one book for each year! All of these are on my TBR (but like, long, long list TBR with the only exception being Midnight’s Children which is almost immediate TBR lol) and I’ll read them one day… One day! 😂
Please someone tell me how the first month of this new year has already come to an end. How did that happen so quickly?
2021 kicked off pretty quietly (on this side of the world) although globally, it seemed that chaos still reigned in many places causing tensions to remain high and people to feel pretty low, not to mention the pandemic. I took a one-week holiday at the start of the month to “decompress” between work contracts, although not much of that happened before it was time to start work again but this time on a part-time contract! I have to admit that since I started working three days a week, my days have begun to blur into one giant blob of working, reading, blogging and not much else. 😂
Half the time I feel like I don’t even know what day it is anymore and that definitely didn’t help by the brain fog that came creeping in around mid-month. Although I still struggle with my mental health and this month got a bit rough towards the end, the three day work week has really helped to keep extra pressure at bay and that’s exactly why I agreed to it in the first place!
In bookish mail news, I was surprised to actually receive the Cemetery Boys pre-order goodies from Aiden Thomas (even if it’s quite late)! I never usually receive these goodies and I blame that entirely on the mail system in my country so colour me very shook when I saw the beautiful character cards (and sign plate) arrive the other week. My photos don’t do the cards justice but trust, they’re gorgeous and I love to see them! 😍 If I’m not mistaken, the art is by: @mmarsloud.
January ended up being a pretty great reading month thanks to having more time in general. I ended up reading 22 books (that I’m counting with three books that I read and won’t be counting towards my GR goal). This month was unsurprisingly heavy on fantasy and romance with a sprinkle of middle-grade and literary fiction. A couple books took me a few steps out of my comfort zone but I ended up really loving them and they were strong contenders for favourites this month! The majority of the books I read were also by new-to-me-authors with some potential favourite new ones on the list!
I’m still a bit behind on my reviews and part of me just wants to start writing mini-reviews for all of them but is that a cop out? 😂 I loved most of my reads this month but I also had quite a few ratings below three-stars and I don’t tend to give those out a lot, so that was pretty surprising! With only one five-star read this month Ever After Always was the winning favourite and I’ve linked my review below if you want to check it out. 😊
Today’s my stop on the blog tour hosted by Rachel’s Random Resources for The Viscount’s Unconventional Lady by Virginia Heath. Thanks to the author for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Goodreads: The Viscount’s Unconventional Lady Publisher: Mills & Boon Historical Release Date: 21 January 2021 Genre: Historical Romance
Panda Rating: (4 pandas)
The notorious viscount And the most gossiped-about lady… After years as a diplomat in the Napoleonic Wars, Lord Eastwood is reluctant to return to London society. His scandalous divorce has made him infamous, not to mention cantankerous! To halt the rumor mill, he should marry a quiet noblewoman—instead it’s bold, vibrant artist Faith Brookes who’s caught his attention. They are the least suitable match, so why is he like a moth to a flame?
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: Weapons on the Cover
I didn’t think I would struggle so hard to think of covers with weapons on them but I ended up spending a good chunk of time scrolling through my Goodreads TBR to find books for today’s prompt. I’m probably going to be smacking myself in the face when I see other peoples Top 5 Saturday lists because I’ll probably realise I have plenty more books with these covers on my TBR and I just totally forgot about them! 😂
Do I search out these kinds of covers? Not particularly. Do I also find myself more intrigued by a book if it has a weapon on the cover? I think it depends on what else is on there. I know none of these pulled me in because of the weapons–well, okay maybe a bit for These Violent Delights, but all the elements of the cover merge together so nicely and I love how the weapon is kind of obscured but also stands out the more you look at it! Anyway, before I go waffling on any further, here’s what I got on my list:
(SUGGESTED BY RIAN @ DOGS AND BOOKS) Examples: What are some books that had “good” endings for you? What are some books that had “bad” endings? What do you think makes an ending of a story satisfying? Is there anything you always hate in an ending?
WHAT MAKES A SATISFYING ENDING?
This is a great question and one that I honestly haven’t given very much thought to before and the more I think about it now, the more factors come up for me to consider. Are we talking series enders or are standalone endings or first-book-in-a-series endings? I mean, endings are endings (lol) but what I’m “okay with” when it comes to a first-book ending is obviously going to be different compared to what I expect from a series ender! I also think that some genres come with certain ending expectations, the most obvious being romance. I pick up romances for the HEA otherwise what am I reading the genre for? (It’s definitely not the angsty drama! 😂 ).
Since I joined the book community and started to really think about what works for me, I’ve come to realise that I’m one of those readers who like endings that give me an obvious sense of resolution. It doesn’t have to be “perfectly packaged” where everything is hunky-dory and 100% but at least the main issues are resolved, no lingering questions exist, the characters find some kind of peace, but most of all it just fits the story we’ve experienced. This “need” of mine to have a neat ending has changed a bit over the last year as I’ve started to feel less unsatisfied with open-endings as long as they fit the story.
One thing that I tend to hate is when endings are super abrupt AND open-ended. While I don’t think open endings will ever be a favourite, I’ve started to make peace with them. Then there are other times when the author ends the story so abruptly, usually mid-scene or at a half-formed thought, and it just feels sounsatisfying. Just thinking about it has me clenching my fist in frustration because WHY 😂
Another factor that determines what a good ending is for me also depends on where the author takes the final book in a series or the final parts of a standalone. I really dislike it when plots and character ARCs suddenly take completely different and unexpected directions that totally change the vibe of the story and results in a lacklustre or underwhelming ending. I also really dislike it when dramatic and traumatic events are used for shock factor in an ending especially when it’s (imho) unnecessary but will keep the dramatic plot going in a sequel.
BOOKS WITH ENDINGS I ENJOYED
If you’re not new to this blog, you’ll know by now my memory is like a sieve and I can hardly remember what I did last week let alone the endings of the many books I’ve read. Also, thankfully, most of the books I read do have satisfying endings (at least for me), so these are just going to be a few of the ones I enjoyed from books I read from the last couple years. I’ve also linked them to my reviews if available otherwise they’re linked to Goodreads.
Some of these (or maybe even all of these) are unpopular opinions of well-loved books. A few of these had the abrupt open-ended endings that are so not my jam:
The Toll: I was so saddened by this finale because we spent so little time with the characters that made me love this series in the first place. We follow new perspectives and characters that I never felt attached to and ultimately, this finale ended up being so disappointing.
Normal People: I loved this book but I hated this abrupt open-ending. Why Rooney do this to me? 😭
Restless Slumber: This was the second book in the Forutna Sworn series and I was enjoying myself until the ending of this book tanked it for me. Just… Why? I was so angry! Lol 🙈
What do you think makes a good or bad ending? What is something you hate to see in an ending? What are some endings you loved and hated? I’m curious to know what you think about this topic!
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