Gimme the Books (3)

Posted May 24, 2018 / Features, Gimme the Books / 4 Comments

I’ve written a few posts to talk about books I’m super excited about that haven’t been released yet, but I felt like adding to that title repeatedly like I had been doing was a bit much. See early posts here: 1, 2, and 3. I decided to make this into a realistic regular feature where I do kind of a Waiting on Wednesday wrap-up post for when I add books to my TBR and “jazzed up for this” Goodreads shelf. Two Can Keep a Secret by Karen McManus Pub date: February 5th 2019 Synopsis: Ellery Corcoran has never been to Echo Ridge, but she’s heard all about it. Her aunt went missing there at age seventeen, and five years ago the town became notorious when its Homecoming Queen was killed. Now Ellery has to move there with a grandmother she barely knows. Malcolm Kelly grew up in the shadow of the Homecoming Queen’s death, his older brother the prime suspect. His mother’s remarriage vaults the Kellys into Echo Ridge’s upper crust—but nobody has forgotten what Malcolm’s brother might have done. The town looks picture perfect, but it’s hiding secrets. Before senior year even begins, someone’s declared open season on Homecoming. They’ve promised to make the dance as dangerous as it was five years ago. And, almost as if to prove it, another girl goes missing. Ellery and Malcolm, the last people to see her, are on a hunt for the truth. But the thing is, secrets are dangerous—and knowing them can be the most […]

Trip to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park

Posted May 23, 2018 / Lifestyle, Personal / Information / Etc. / 3 Comments

This past weekend was our trip to the Bar Harbor, ME area, which includes Acadia National Park. This was actually the first national park I’ve ever been to (!!) so I was super excited to see everything I could. I thought a full recap with pictures would be fun here because the sights were just gorgeous and we did SO much. Friday May 18th We left Portland around 9 AM on Friday with the intention of getting up there by 12 PM-ish. Our campground where we rented a cabin was outside of Mount Desert Island (just over the bridge) so it was about 2 hours and 45 minutes away from home. The Bar Harbor area and parts of Acadia were about 20-40 minutes away from where we stayed, depending on where we were heading. The best part was that half of that time was spent actually driving within Acadia, so the time flew by and the views were constantly gorgeous. Anyways! We were able to check into our cabin early, put our stuff in the fridge, then head to our first stop. We purposely stayed at the Narrows Too Campground because they had small cabins with just a microwave and fridge; we wanted to actually camp (without having to use a tent). Jordan Pond blueberry lemonade, view from the start of the trail, us! I made a reservation at the Jordan Pond House restaurant for 1 PM, which was perfect timing. They have views over Jordan Pond and are the […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #184: Best Character Names

Posted May 22, 2018 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 2 Comments

Best Character Names Top Ten Tuesdays were started by The Broke and the Bookish and are now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, where we make lists of our top ten books (or something else!) based on that week’s prompt. The topics are provided ahead of time and can be found here. Book links bring you to Goodreads or my review. I definitely never remember character names well enough to do this topic in any extensive way. My memory is rough. I’ve noticed an uptick in unique character names but that doesn’t necessarily mean GOOD names. I have a list of some names I love in general that I would consider naming a child someday, if I decided to take that life path, so I’m going to match some books to those… and just pull a few more favorites out if I can remember them! I did a good job of not duplicating too much from this post, but I had to pull in a couple at least.

ARC Review: Save the Date

Posted May 21, 2018 / Book Reviews / 3 Comments

Initial Excitement & Summary Morgan Matson is one of those authors that I always savor their books, trying to make sure I have one of them hanging around to read if I’m really in the mood. I jumped on reading SAVE THE DATE pretty quickly though because books about weddings and/or wedding and event planning are so fun for me. My friends who read it even earlier had alllll good things to say, so I hopped on board. In this story set in Connecticut (yay!), Charlie is excited to have all of the Grants under one roof for her sister’s wedding, which is a last hurrah in their childhood home before its sold. Her sister Linnie and brothers JJ, Mike, and Danny will all be home for the wedding weekend. It also corresponds with the final famous comic strip about their family that their mother is publishing that weekend. It’s a comedy of errors, with everything going wrong that possibly could go wrong. Storytelling & Characters I absolutely loved this book. The chaotic weekend was captured so perfectly and made me quickly fall in love with the Grants. They’re the very best part of their book. They’re not a perfect family, even if Charlie thinks so and the comic strip says otherwise. She was so stuck in her ways and absolutely clueless about some things. Each family member was interesting and fun in their own way; I loved the scenes where certain groupings of them were together to show their […]

Review Round Up | Not If I Save You First and A Court of Frost and Starlight

Posted May 18, 2018 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 2 Comments

In an effort to cut down on posts and burnout, my Review Roundups will feature 2-4 books I’ve read or listened to recently. Sometimes they’re newer releases and sometimes they’re all backlist titles. My ARC reviews usually get the solo treatment. Enjoy the mini reviews! I’m a big fan of Ally Carter… clearly, if you look at all the reviews up at the top there. She writes some of the most fun and engaging “light mystery” kinds of books. I love all of them for different reasons. I was pretty excited to explore a standalone too! This was a first for her. The whole Alaskan survival thing didn’t exactly appeal to me but I can’t resist her stories, so I dove in soonafter it came out. I enjoyed Maddie and Logan, and the complexities of their relationship. I’m a huge fan of childhood-friends-to-more, especially if there’s hate-to-love involved. This checked off a lot of boxes for me in terms of tropes I love! There was a decent amount of build for their relationship and understanding where they both were coming from. I shipped them but not to OTP levels. The survival aspects were nicely done and not overkill, considering that I don’t love that genre/topic in general. The journey was really quick (the book itself is quite short and I listened to the audiobook, which was only around 6 hours). I think I would have liked a little more to the story? It was kind of simple, if that makes sense. I […]

Caraval Reread + Legendary ARC Review

Posted May 17, 2018 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

Caraval Reread Thoughts I wanted to share some of my initial thoughts on CARAVAL because I decided to reread the book first. The audiobook was a solid choice, narration-wise, so I highly recommend that if you’re thinking of a reread! First Read: July 4 – 5, 2016 As you can tell, I read this book incredibly early. I got the bound manuscript from ALA Midwinter that year and binge-read it by the pool on the 4th of July later that year. I knew the wait was going to be miserable for the second book because its release would be in late May 2018. Can you imagine? That would have been 694 days – a year and almost 11 months! So, I knew I was going to have to reread before LEGENDARY came out. Overall though, my first read of CARAVAL back in the day was fantastic. I loved the world-building and magic, but the main character bugged me sometimes. That was really my only small complaint. Second Read: February 23 – 28, 2018 I bought the audiobook for cheap during the holiday sale on Amazon, so I knew I’d like to try that format for it. Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of time to read audiobooks in Maine (no commute or getting-ready time) so I also alternated the ebook copy in when I was too addicted to wait for audio time. The good thing about having a terrible bookish memory is that it felt like I was reading the book […]

Lauren Lately | May 2018

Posted May 16, 2018 / Features, Lauren Lately, Wrap-Ups / 2 Comments

Because my Bookmark Lit Bulletin wrap-ups got out of hand, I wanted to break up my monthly wrap-ups into two posts: one personal and one bookish/bloggy. I created Lauren Lately here to highlight all of the personal happenings in my life: events, activities, shows I’m addicted to, things I’m obsessing over, recipes I’ve loved, and goals for the next month. I decided to space them out so this wrap-up happens around the mid-point of the month and the bookish one happens at the end of the month. ✨ Check out my most recent bookish and bloggy wrap-up HERE ✨ This has been a crazier month than usual, my friends. I’ve done a lot things and traveled to many places between the end of April and beginning of May! Here’s a big ol recap: Week 1: Hikes, Makeup, and Food The weather started warming up again and we tried to get out as much as possible for a little while… before our crazy few months started up! We went to Mackworth Island for our favorite local hike. We need to keep getting out there but it’s been tough! I started to get heavily into makeup and beauty things again, as evidenced by many of my recent posts/sections. I’ve spent a lot of money on it lately and I MUST BE STOPPED. Week 2: Home in Connecticut (Lots of Celebrations) My sister and mom have the same birthday, which happened to fall the same weekend as my cousin’s bridal shower in Connecticut, so it […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #183: Hated but Worth It

Posted May 15, 2018 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 10 Comments

Books I Hated But I’m Glad I Read Top Ten Tuesdays were started by The Broke and the Bookish and are now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, where we make lists of our top ten books (or something else!) based on that week’s prompt. The topics are provided ahead of time and can be found here. Book links bring you to Goodreads or my review. This is a fun one! The topic of books I hated but I’m glad I read (even just for bragging rights) immediately brought a few to mind. I think there are plenty of books that I’m happy I slogged through just to be able to say I did it. Usually it’s because there’s so much hype surrounding a book that I feel like I MUST read it, so even if I hated it, I’m glad I got it out of the way. There are other books where I hated book one but am glad I read it for the sake of the series that gets better. And finally, there are the classics I didn’t love but am glad I read in high school! Glad I Read It… So I Can Rant About It Fifty Shades series by EL James | Oh lord do I hateeee these books. I read them back when they were popular and didn’t see a lot of the issues that other people saw at first. I took a Women’s Studies class and learned a bit about feminism and holy moly did a lot come to […]

Bout of Books 22 | Tracking and Challenges

Posted May 14, 2018 / Book Challenges, Features / 0 Comments

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda Shofner and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, May 14th and runs through Sunday, May 20th in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 22 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. – From the Bout of Books team Bout of Books is underway! The nice thing is that I stay up pretty late, so starting at midnight I was able to get some reading time in 😉 In my sign-up post, I shared my goals and TBR list. Quick recap: I want to get ahead on my Goodreads goal by the end of the week, read 4-5 books, and to alternate between physical and ebooks to maintain the 1:1 ratio this month. My TBR definitely has an equal mix of my physical TBR and egalleys publishing throughout the month. Tracking Monday May 14th Currently reading: Herons Landing Tuesday May 15th Currently reading: Herons Landing Wednesday May 16th Finished reading: Herons Landing Started and finished reading: Home to Honeymoon Harbor Started reading: Shuffle, Repeat Thursday May 17th Friday May 18th Saturday May 19th Sunday May 20th Books read so far: 2 0 owned physical copies | 1 egalleys | 1 non-TBR books Challenges Daily challenges that I want to participate in will be below!

Help Me Out: Book and Movie Recommendations

Posted May 11, 2018 / Goals & Planning, Personal / Information / Etc. / 20 Comments

If you remember my 101 in 1001 list, I had a few book and movie-related goals. One of them was to get 15 book and movie recommendations from friends, then read/watch them all. It seems like an easy enough task to complete in order to get me out of my comfort zone and see what some of my favorite people would recommend. Here’s what I shared in my post: Ask 15 friends to suggest one book and movie; read and watch them all | I’ve seen this goal on the project’s website in a different flavor, but I brought it down to 15 people and wanted to also do movies. I know I can head right into the blogosphere for these recommendations 😉 I know that there are some friends I’ll be targeting directly for recommendations, but there’s a huge chance that people suggest books I’ve already read or movies I’ve already seen. I don’t want to say “nope I’ve read it” or “sorry I’ve seen it” to every person I ask, so I figured I would just collect as many recommendations as possible and pick out 15. I’ll make it easier on myself and allow picking one book from someone and not their movie, if I’ve already seen it, and vise versa. The recs don’t have to all come from the same person for both. (So ignore the phrasing in the initial goal, okay?) If you could recommend ONE BOOK and ONE MOVIE to me (or your go-to recommendation for everyone), what would […]