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 Bridge Kingdom by Danielle L. Jensen. It’s a YA** romantasy that came out in 2020 and has an average rating of 4.11 with several thousand reviews/ratings on Goodreads. It’s the first book in The Bridge Kingdom series (1 of 5).
I just had a look for when I did my last Top 5 Saturday and it was back in April! It’s been a long time but earlier this week Mandy announced that they’re bringing back the weekly meme and I’m happy to be taking part in it again! As usual, I’ll be listing the new topics at the end of the post.
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: People on the cover.
This week I’ll be listing five books from my Goodreads TBR! I’m not always a fan of people on covers, especially when they’re “real” people but I am a huge fan of illustrated characters on covers. I don’t know if I can say that this trend is illustrated people on covers trend is quite new but I have noticed it more and more in contemporary romances over the years, and now in a lot of other genres, too. I hope that these covers will continue being made (especially in romances!) because they’re absolutely some of my favourites 😍 On that note, here are some of my most recent adds to the TBR with people on the cover!
The first openly nonbinary contestant on America’s favorite cooking show falls for their clumsy competitor in this delicious romantic comedy debut “that is both fantastically fun and crack your heart wide open vulnerable.” (Rosie Danan, author of The Roommate)
Recently divorced and on the verge of bankruptcy, Dahlia Woodson is ready to reinvent herself on the popular reality competition show Chef’s Special. Too bad the first memorable move she makes is falling flat on her face, sending fish tacos flying—not quite the fresh start she was hoping for. Still, she’s focused on winning, until she meets someone she might want a future with more than she needs the prize money.
After announcing their pronouns on national television, London Parker has enough on their mind without worrying about the klutzy competitor stationed in front of them. They’re there to prove the trolls—including a fellow contestant and their dad—wrong, and falling in love was never part of the plan.
As London and Dahlia get closer, reality starts to fall away. Goodbye, guilt about divorce, anxiety about uncertain futures, and stress from transphobia. Hello, hilarious shenanigans on set, wedding crashing, and spontaneous dips into the Pacific. But as the finale draws near, Dahlia and London’s steamy relationship starts to feel the heat both in and outside the kitchen—and they must figure out if they have the right ingredients for a happily ever after.
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 week, I’ve managed to finish five books and I’m happy to say that all of them were ARCs—yay! 😍
Taken to Lemora (Xiveri Mates #6) by Elizabeth Stephens ★★★☆☆ This was another entertaining and fast addition to the Xivery Mates series. Lemora might be my favourite alien planet so far because the city was a giant melting pot of alien races and cultures, and it felt so vibrant and alive! Everyone was extremely friendly, helpful and accepting of others and it just served pleasant and happy vibes that I was totally here for. Raingar and Essmira were great but I especially loved Essmira because Stephens does a great job writing smart and headstrong heroines! Check out my full review.
My Dirty Duke: A Victorian Novella by Joanna Shupe ★★★☆☆ I’m gonna be honest, I read this for the smut and it definitely delivered! This is an age-gap romance, which is not something that I normally ever read but I wasn’t bothered by it in this story. There’s not much in the way of character development or a strong plot, and their relationship to each other is already an established thing, but I liked both the Duke and Victoria. I thought they were both interesting characters and that the author handled the emotional and moral struggle (especially on his part) well! Obviously, I liked the steamy bits and it did get quite steamy pretty quickly. The Duke ticked that dirty-talking hero box and so if that (and historical romance) is your thing, I would recommend checking this out (especially if you have KU)!
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 week, I’ve managed to finish four books and I’m happy to say that all of them were ARCs—yay! 😍
(ARC) Shadow Frost (Shadow Frost #1) by Coco Ma ★★☆☆☆ I’m honestly quite proud for having finished this book because it was a bit of a… slog at times. I’m still very impressed Coco Ma wrote this when was 15?! Mind blown! 🤯 Sadly, I think younger me would’ve loved this much more than adult me did. It’s chock full of YA fantasy tropes (which isn’t bad if you like them!) but it was the characters that were more of a miss for me than anything else. Check out my full review.
(ARC) Fireborn by Aisling Fowler ★★★★½ Revenge of the Sluts was an interesting YA contemporary that had a bit of a mystery to it. It’s not a fast-paced book but it was engaging enough and the writing simple enough for me to quickly work through the pages. While I didn’t think any of the characters stood out, and neither did I like the representation of the MC, I think it’s a book that can generate discussions about privacy, cyberbullying, revenge porn, slut-shaming, toxic masculinity and society’s double standards, especially amongst the targeted young readers! Check out my full review.
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.
I know we’ve already gone well over the mid-year mark by now but as I’ve been away for the last few months I decided that it’d be a good way to catch up on some of the things I’ve read this year!
I started the year off pretty strong in terms of marking what I’ve read and crossing off prompts for one of the challenges for the POPSUGAR Reading Challenge, but as the months rolled on, the more I read, the less I reviewed and the less I updated my books and challenges. When that started happening is when I decided to take my break and while I’ve been trying to catch up on updating things, I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I’ve forgotten a lot of what I’ve read! Oops… I know that a lot of the books I sped through were romances but I read through them so quickly I honestly can’t remember what I thought of them anymore. So I’ve just decided to leave off marking those off for now and I might come back to them later on.
Clearly, we’re off to a good start, right? 😂 All that being said, I don’t have fancy stats, charts and graphs and what’s marked on my Goodreads Reading Challenge isn’t the most accurate record of what I’ve read cos plenty of books are missing but… We’re rolling with it! (I feel like I’ve said that a lot these last few posts, haha!)
Best book you’ve read so far in 2021?
I thought it’d be a lot harder to choose but I am tied between Jade City and The Ones We’re Meant to Find. They’re both SFF though one is adult and the other is YA, and their stories couldn’t be more different either. But aside from fantastic writing, the characters were just *chefs kiss* — I love them so much!
Best sequel so far of 2020?
I haven’t read a lot of sequels this year but even so, I think Jade War would steal the show. THIS BOOK!!! 🥺😭
new release you haven’t read yet, but want to?
What haven’t I not read yet? 🤣 So much… So much… But one release I want to read very soon, as in this weekend soon, is She Who Became the Sun. I read these two amazing reviews by Lia and Jess and I’m sold!
Most anticipated release for the second half of 2020?
There are so many I don’t even know where to start! I don’t think I have one especially anticipated release but these are some I’m super excited for…
I know my choice for this is quite an unpopular opinion because everyone seems to have loved the book but… I was really disappointed with A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire(please don’t come for me)! I was bored for the majority of it and the haphazard world building + info dumps combined with Poppy’s incessant questioning monologue just really got under my skin in the worst way 🙈 It didn’t stop me from reading the third book though and I’m glad I did cos we finally get the strong Poppy we’ve been waiting for and I really enjoyed it!
biggest surprise?
I’m gonna go with the Murderbot Diaries. So many people love this series and I was (often) told that I’d love it too and they weren’t wrong, but I was surprised by just how much I love this whole series! Murderbot is such a well-written character and they have quickly become one of my all-time favourites! I’ve read all six books as a buddy read with Leslie @ Books are the New Black and it was so much fun!
Favourite new author (Debut or new to you)?
I think this cherry goes to Fonda Lee, author of The Green Bone Saga and two of my top favourite reads so far this year. I was so intimidated by the hype around these books but I’m so glad that I finally read them this year because they were mind blowing! I cannot put into words how much I loved them. I think this series is outside my comfort zone in many ways so I was not expecting to fall hard and fast. Fonda Lee’s world building, characters, and plot are just… The ultimate *chefs kiss*! 🤣
newest fictional crush?
This is easy but I’m kind of cheating a bit because it’s a book that I just read last week and obviously, it’s well past the mid-year point! But I honestly can’t think of anyone else right now because I loved Axel Bergman, our hero from With You Forever by Chloe Liese. If you love inclusive, heartwarming, steamy romances with great H/H, and meddling, boisterous and loveable families, you won’t want to miss this series!
Bonus crush: I also have to give a special shoutout to Rafe, our favourite very buff, very tall, and very tattooed male nanny.
newest favourite character?
I can’t choose one! I’ve read so many amazing characters this year but some favourites that come to mind:
As an emotional reader, books make me cry fairly often! 😂 Though perhaps out of all the books that did make me cry, the one that made me cry the longest/hardest was The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi. This one crushed me!
Book that made you happy?
Just as easily as I cry in books, it also doesn’t take much to make me laugh but I’ll go with Take A Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert. I adored Dani and Zafir—their banter was bang on and their chemistry was so fire! 😍 I had so much fun reading this book and it gave my heart all the happy feels 💜
favourite book to movie/tv adaptation that you saw this year?
So… I haven’t really watched many things this year? I still haven’t watched the popular adaptations like Shadow & Bone yet. I guess the only thing that comes to mind would be Fruits Basket—does that count? 😂 I think it was a manga first, right? I binged the first and second seasons on Netflix super fast!
favourite review you’ve written this year?
I’m really bad at talking up any of my posts on this blog so this was a bit of a struggle to pick… I’m sharing my review for The Ones We’re Meant to Find by Joan He. This was a blog tour review but it was also the first review where I made a journal spread and I had so much fun with it 😍
most beautiful book you’ve bought so far this year (or received)?
This has to be the Strange the Dreamer Box Set. Sadly though, the quality of the books aren’t half as good as I expected and considering what I paid to buy them, I was pretty disappointed. Still, the artwork is gorgeous and they’re a beautiful addition to my shelves!
Note: this picture is not mine—I found it on Google!
what books do you need to read by the end of the year?
I wouldn’t say I need to read any of these, except for the ARCs of course, but I do really want to read most of this smol sample of my TBR by the end of the year!
Well, that’s done! *phew* This post always takes me longer than I anticipate but I’m glad I did it! It’s made me realise that I haven’t read half as much as I thought I have, even with the “missing” books from my list! 🤣 Oh well… How are your reads going this year? What’ve been some of your favourites? Have you read any of the books I mentioned here?
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 week, I’ve managed to finish four books and all but one were ARCs—yay!
Tempt Thy Neighbor (Roommate Romps #4) by Teagan Hunter ★★★★☆ This was another fun, fast and super-steamy second-chance/enemies-to-lovers romance by Teagan Hunter! It was a little hard to buy into the romance at the very beginning with how vehemently Holland hated on Sutton and with how he came across as pretty douchey, but they did grow on me in the end. Hunter really built up the sexual tension in this book and it was explosive! RTC.
(ARC) Revenge of the Sluts by Natalie Walton ★★★★½ Revenge of the Sluts was an interesting YA contemporary that had a bit of a mystery to it. It’s not a fast-paced book but it was engaging enough and the writing simple enough for me to quickly work through the pages. While I didn’t think any of the characters stood out, and neither did I like the representation of the MC, I think it’s a book that can generate discussions about privacy, cyberbullying, revenge porn, slut-shaming, toxic masculinity and society’s double standards, especially amongst the targeted young readers! Check out my full review.
I was inspired to do this post after watching one of my fave booktubers, Jack Edwards, post a video reading the highest and lowest rated books on his bookshelf. It looked like a lot of fun and I thought, why not give it a go cos it seems like a great way to continue slashing down the TBR!
I initially thought about cataloguing all the unread books on my bookshelf like he did, but I admittedly have a lot more and I was feeling a little lazy! 😬 So instead I decided to take a look at my Goodreads “to-read” shelf, which definitely changes up the dynamic because the list includes books that I don’t own and also books that aren’t published yet. I also realised that would affect the average rating more as I noticed many of the books have a lower number of ratings/reviews, which obviously skews the results that come up top and bottom. So, it was already a little more complicated but instead of abandoning the idea I thought I’d still go through with it and I’m glad I did!
I chose the books based on 1) whether it was out or not and 2) whether I had a copy (physical/digital/ARC)—it’s not a perfect solution but it did end up working for me! In the end, the two books I had to read were: With You Forever by Chloe Liese and The Perfect Date by Evelyn Lozada. Both were ARCs that I had on hand so that was a good start and again, I know it’s not the most perfect system, but I just rolled with it! Here are some stats for the books:
Lowest rating: The Perfect Date Genre: Contemporary Romance Series: No Publication: June 2019 GR Rating: 2.61 (1,232 ratings)
Although I’ve been in a romance mood for a while, as a mood reader whose moods can flip very quickly, I was a bit hesitant to start the books, though I was also pretty excited about starting this small ‘project’ that I knew could help me get back into reviewing and blogging. Plus, I’d be knocking out two books from my TBR and my ARC list and what’s not to love about that, right?
Thankfully, things went pretty smoothly overall. I read the lowest rated book first which I thought might’ve been a mistake but it ended up working out well in the end. Both are also contemporary romances so I felt that put them on an ‘even’ level to start and I managed to read both pretty quickly, finishing one for each day of the weekend. That said, my reading experience for both books were very different. 🤣
THE NOT SO PERFECT DATE
To say that I didn’t enjoy The Perfect Date would be an understatement and after putting myself through the torture that was reading it, I can understand why this title has the rating that it does. Before I started I thought that it surely couldn’t be that bad—it’s got a cute cover, it’s a single-parent fake-dating trope romance that promises a sweet love story—what could possibly go wrong? The answer is a lot. I mean, a lot can go wrong and if there’s anyone who truly thinks this book had the “perfect date” I would ask them if they were okay. I know that sounds harsh but… this hero is the worst I’ve ever read in a romance to date. He was a condescending, egotistical, misogynistic asshole that did not change and I could not fathom how anyone would consider him perfect in any way. Long story short, it took me until the 10% mark to realise why I never finished this (very overdue) ARC in the first place but I truly wish that I had DNF’d it. It was a slog and I gave it 1 star—my first of 2021. 🥺
STAY WITH ME FOREVER
After finishing that perfectly hot mess, I was honestly unsure whether I wanted to keep reading romance but I thought: this is Chloe Liese, there’s no way I’m not gonna love it. As much as I jinxed myself when I said the first book couldn’t be that bad, I’m so happy to say that I wasn’t wrong about this one. With You Forever is a wonderful addition to the Bergman Brothers series and if you’ve been around my blog for a while, you’ll know this series is one of my all-time faves (shameless plug: check out my reviews for the first three in the series: Only When It’s Us, Always Only You, Ever After Always)! There was so much heart and tender emotion in this book and I only swooned about a thousand times because the slow-burn romance between Axel and Rooney was so not only super steamy but it was beautifully heartwarming as well. I cannot recommend this book (and this series) enough and you just might hear me gushing about it a bit more until release date. I gave it 4.5 swoontastic stars (rounded up)! 😍
DO I AGREE WITH THE RATINGS?
By the time I finished reading both books I couldn’t disagree with their respective ratings on Goodreads. Obviously, Liese’ book has a higher rating with a lower number of reviews, but I do feel that once the book is published and more people read it, its rating will remain high. I was also wondering whether my feelings for The Perfect Date were swayed at all by my knowledge of its low rating, and while I might’ve briefly toyed with the thought, I really don’t think that was the case. The totality of that book (characters, plot and writing) was just not good and I’m honestly a little shocked it was actually published by a major publishing house!
Overall, I had a lot of fun doing this little reading project. I thought it was a great way to bring some different content to my blog (although nothing ground breaking or anything) and it helped me get back into the swing of writing and reviewing! I’m quite tempted to keep doing this for books on my various TBRs: physical, digital, andARCs, and seeing whether those turn out as well as this one did!
If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading! Have you read either of these books or are they on your TBR? Do you have any fun ‘reading project’ ideas that you’ve seen or done yourself? I’d defo love to hear about them!
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 week I’ve managed to finish five books(and I’m still behind on my blog tour reads—how does time get away from me so quickly?)!
Aurora Burning (Aurora Cycle #2) by Jay Kristoff and Amie Kaufman ★★★★☆ This was my buddy read with Sammie and we finally finished the book last week! Both of us raged just a *tiny bit* at that ending—I mean, I really love Squad 312 but oh my, how they angered me at the end 😂 What was that? Not cool, that’s what! 😒 Overall, I still really enjoyed the book as we get a good look into Zila and Kal’s histories, plus we also learn more about just what exactly the squad is dealing with. There were also some delicious twists that had me gasping. I can’t wait until the final book is out and it has lovely bb Finian on the cover! RTC (maybe)?
Exit Strategy (The Murderbot Diaries #4) by Martha Wells ★★★★½ Yay for Murderbot! Yay for reuniting with our favourite OG humans! Yay for more feelings that we don’t want to be feeling! Honestly, at this point I’m starting to terrify myself with how much I identify with Murderbot? Just as with all the other books in this series, the intensity of the action quickly escalated and of course, Murderbot’s signature sarcastic humour was still so very on point! Leslie and I are gonna continue our buddy read for this series, and though we didn’t realise book 5 was a full-length novel, we can’t wait. 😍 Series RTC!
For this week’s topic I decided to focus on middle grade books because they have some of the BEST colourful covers! Maybe I’m biased because I love illustrated covers and middle grade books always serve hard when it comes to those. You can bet that if I had the money and the space, I would populate a whole section of shelves with these gorgeous books and it’d be fire 😍🔥 This list is a mix of books I’ve read and a few that are still waiting for me to pick them up!
dinipandareads 