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 set near/on the sea.
This is a great topic that I don’t think I’ve ever answered in a meme before. Now that I’m thinking about it, I realise that I have a lot of books set near/on/in the sea, so it’s clear I love the idea of a story set by the sea or on the sea. I say I love the idea because these are all on my TBR (*cough*) LOL
It’s funny when I think about it because when I think of books set on the sea I always think of fantasy (mostly YA) and when I think of books set near/by the sea, a lot of the time I think about women’s fiction books that are set in the summer and revolve around quaint sea-side towns and have cute fluffy romances! That said, when thinking about books for this list none were the latter but one was the former 😂 I’m looking forward to reading all of these though and I’m really hoping I’ll be able to get to them them at some point this year!
Happy Friday book lovers! We’re back with another First Lines Friday, a weekly featurefor 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:
“All good stories start with bad decisions.“
Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?
Hey, hey friends! I’m so excited to be back for another @WriteReads blog tour for book two of the Venators series: Promises Forged. This was such a fun and fast-paced read and I can’t wait to share my review with all of you 😍 Be sure to check out all the other bloggers participating in this tour over here. You can also read my review for book one here.
Super big thanks to Dave for organising these tours and to the author, Devri Walls, for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review! Let’s get to it…
Goodreads: Promises Forged (Venators #2) Published: 30 April 2019 Genre: Young Adult, Urban Fantasy, Supernatural Panda Rating:
It has been mere days in the world of Eon, where Rune Jenkins, her twin brother Ryker, and their friend Grey have been trapped, fighting for their lives. After discovering the truth of their ancestry, the three are far from home, and far from anything resembling their mundane lives of the past. While Ryker is still held captive by the eerily beautiful Zio and her goblins, Grey falls into the clutches of Feena, the Fae queen. She begins to drain his soul bit by bit to feed her dark underground garden, and Grey has no hope of escaping on his own.
It is now up to Rune to save Grey, as his precious time slips away inexorably. But the Council has denied her permission to embark on a rescue mission, until she can harness her Venator gifts and prove herself capable of venturing into the Fae queen’s territory. As Rune discovers that promises in Eon are forged with life-or-death consequences, she realizes that she must act quickly, or else be swallowed and Grey along with her by the dangers of Eon
It’s been almost two years since Philip left Hell and returned to life—this time for good. But things have changed and so has Philip. He’s haunted by terrifying nightmares and has never felt so lonely. Lonely and angry. Then one day the impossible happens and Philip is brought back to Hell. Not by the Devil, but by the Almighty himself. Although the Great Devil War ended a long time ago, the battle is far from over—and the worst is yet to come.
The Fallen Angel is volume 5 of The Great Devil War series.
This is starting to feel a little bit like de ja vu but how is it already Wednesday now? What have I done this week? I feel like I’ve accomplished nothing and… that actually shows in my reading! *womp womp womp*
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 only finished one book. Technically, I read two but for the first time in pretty much ever I purposefully set aside a book and decided to DNF it. Yep, it’s a mood. But anyway, I’m going to focus on the one book I did finish this past week: The Fallen Angel by Kenneth B. Andersen. This is book five in The Great Devil Warseries and while I enjoyed it, it wasn’t my favourite in the series (that title still belongs to book four)! My review will be posted later tonight so be on the look out for that 😊
Welcome back to Goodreads Monday! 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 featured book is Romanov by Nadine Brandes. This is a standalone Young Adult Historical Fiction/Fantasy re-telling about the famous Romanov family. This was released in May 2019 and currently has a 3.80 rating on Goodreads!
Hi everyone, I’ve joined the @WriteReads gang on another blog tour and this time it’s for: Catalyst! Today I’ll be doing a spotlight and sharing some mini-excerpts from the book. Super huge thanks goes to Dave for organising these tours and thanks to the author for providing a free copy. Don’t forget to check out the other bloggers on tour here.
Goodreads: Catalyst (The Catalysts #2) Publication Date: 02 June 2020 Publisher: Brown Books Publishing Group Genre: Young Adult, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Supernatural
Marcie Horton has a sixth sense. Not in the “I see dead people” way, but . . . well, maybe a little. She feels a sort of knowing about certain things that can’t be explained—an intuition that goes beyond the normal. Then there was that one summer four years ago, when she connected with a long-departed spirit . . . But nothing that incredible has happened to Marcie since.
This summer, Marcie is spending time working at Angel Mounds, the archeological dig her mother heads, along with her brother, Eric, and his girlfriend, Renee. The dig is the site of an ancient indigenous civilization, and things immediately shift into the paranormal when Marcie and her teammates meet Lorraine and Zeke. The two mysterious dig assistants reveal their abilities to access the Universal Energy Field with their minds— something Marcie knows only vaguely that her brother has also had experience with. Marcie learns how our planet will disintegrate if action is not taken, and she and her team must decide if they are brave enough to help Lorraine and Zeke in their plan to save Mother Earth, her resources, and her history.
It looks like the summer just got a lot more interesting.
Today I’m coming at you with one big review for the three books in The Great Devil War series that I read over the last week! I read the first book, The Devil’s Apprentice (read my review here), when I took part in the blog tour organised by Dave @ TheWriteReads. I thought it was a bizarre book but highly enjoyable and like nothing I’ve read before. This was followed by Andersen contacting me on Twitter a couple of months ago to ask if I’d like to be part of his ARC team and I said yes! So a big thank you to Kenneth Andersen for reaching out to me and for sending me the books to read. Of course it goes without saying that this did not influence my reading experience or review, which is, as always, honest and unbiased.
Now let’s get back to the review before I get even further off track! Despite a slightly slow start with book two, I’ve really enjoyed reading these books and I think book four is without a doubt my favourite in the series so far.
Ah, Disney. Who doesn’t love Disney and the Disney parks? It’s been a freaking long ass time since I went to one of the parks but it’s definitely on my bucket list to go back and experience it as an ‘adult’! A few years ago I discovered some childhood photos taken at Disney (world or land I can’t be sure) and well, while you can’t say much about my fashion sense (coz clearly I didn’t have any and neither did my brother), you can definitely tell these were happy times!
But back to this tag… I was tagged to do the Disney Parks Book Tag by the wonderful Kay @ Hammock of Books and awesome Brittany @ Perfectly Tolerable — go check out both their blogs because they have great content and they’re lovely people to follow so you won’t regret it! Thanks for tags, lovelies and I’m sorry its taken so long for me to get around to doing this tag. First up, the rules!
The Rules
☆ Mention the creator and link back to original post [Alexandra @ Reading by Starlight] ☆ Thank the blogger who tagged you [done above!] ☆ Answer the 10 questions below using any genre ☆ Tag 5+ friends ☆ Feel free to copy the heading graphics
Oof, it took me a hot minute to recall a title set along the river but this heart-stopping thriller certainly ticks that box! I’m still amazed by Caine’s writing versatility 😍 Wolfhunter River is book three in the Stillhouse Lake series — which is crazy and absolutely thrilling!
You guys… I’m kind of shook because scouring the dark corners of mind (and Goodreads), I’ve realised that… I haven’t read (m)any ‘swashbuckling high seas adventures’… Wot wot?! Can it be true? It sadly is. Many of them adventures are still on TBR though! For now, I’m leaving you with A Gathering of Shadows because there’s certainly some swashbuckling in this favourite series of mine!
Ooh, just looking at this cover again already covers me in mad goosebumps and makes me wanna cry! But I have to give a shout out to Rules for Vanishing because even I, most Ultimate of Chickens™️, managed to read this and loved it! Ugh, this book was drowning in eerie vibes.
Surprisingly absolutely no one, the Illuminae Files absolutely takes the cake for this one! Ugh, I love this series so much 💞 Kristoff and Kaufman can take all of my monies!
Ugh, Where the Crawdads Sing was just beautiful, beautiful, beautiful! I loved Kya and the lyrical descriptions of the marsh lands and of nature swept me away to an enchanting but also dangerous world that I’d love to one day see IRL.
I feel like I also have to give an honorary shout out to The Natchez Burning Trilogy for this prompt. This trilogy is one of my all-time favourite thriller/court drama and is just *chefs kiss*!
A Curse So Dark and Lonely was of course the first book I thought of. There’s no Beauty & the Beast (retelling) without that eerie and beautiful enchanted castle!
The Trials of Morrigan Crow, book one of the Nevermoor series, was an utterly enchanting and whimsical read! There were fantastical adventures, magical and terrifying creatures, and otherworldly settings. This was an absolute treat to read! 💞
Okay, I’m cheating a little bit with The Mountains Sing. There is some trekking through mountains but that’s not what the whole book is about. It is an absolutely stunning, heartbreaking and hopeful read though and I would highly recommend this debut for those interested in own voices reads!
I haven’t read very many Spanish inspired fantasy books (I could also be totally wrong because my memory very often fails me) so Incendiary was a refreshingly set fantasy world with a cool magic system that I can’t wait to learn more about in the next book!
Another non-surprise here with Aurora Rising (this is totally a space opera, right?)! This book was a fabulously crazy, fast-paced space adventure that was full of all the things! Seriously, just read it.
No pressure to do this if tags aren’t your thing. Also, even if I haven’t tagged you here, feel free to go for gold if you want to do this one and link back to me so I can check out your answers too 😍
Um, excuse me, how is it already the last Wednesday in May?! Can someone also please tell me where this month has gone? I feel like I’ve done nothing but I *know* I did the things… What are these vibes?!
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 managed to read a little bit more than the previous week. Still not my best reading weeks these days but work has been driving me mental and the added stress of a big island move during this pandemic (admittedly the worst time to be moving anywhere) is making my ‘normal’ levels of anxiety sky-rocket. But I’ve been enjoying my escape into hell these last few days! What am I talking about? Don’t worry, I haven’t lost the plot completely (yet).
I’ve been reading The Great Devil Warseries by Kevin B. Andersen lately and I’m sure you can guess what it’s about based on the series name. I’m planning to share one review for the three books I read later tonight, as the fifth book releases tomorrow! 🥳
dinipandareads 