Month: December 2017

Lauren Lately | December 2017

Posted December 14, 2017 / Features, Lauren Lately, Wrap-Ups / 9 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 ✨ Home for Thanksgiving {Lego meeting, hotel stay} | Even though the last recap was basically right after we came home at the end of October / early November, we had to come home again a few weeks later for Thanksgiving. We really didn’t do anything in between the two trips home, honestly. So! We we were able to come home a few days before Thanksgiving to go to our Lego club’s holiday meeting, which was a blast. We got sooo much free Lego. That night, we actually got a hotel room in a little CT town that we’re considering living in after we leave Maine. We enjoyed a nice dinner out and walking around in the rain, then ended our night in the hotel by the fire with drinks. We did some exploring the next day before heading to my dad’s house for football. I worked in the office in the days leading […]

ARC Review: The Cruel Prince

Posted December 13, 2017 / Book Reviews / 11 Comments

Initial Excitement & Summary I loved Holly Black’s TITHE series when I was younger. Unlike a lot of bloggers I’ve noticed, I actually love fae stories. My cousin and I were always obsessed with faeries when we were kids and that definitely spilled into my reading life. And, of course, Black is the absolute QUEEN of fae stories. Needless to say, I was realllly jazzed up about this one. I had it on my Goodreads TBR since 2015, then Ellice grabbed it for me and let me borrow it early, so I read this back in September/October. Jude and her two sisters, Vivi and Taryn, witnessed a faerie come kill their parents and whisk them away to the Faerieland. They live there with Madoc, a high-ranking fae, because he is technically Taryn’s father. Jude grows up and starts to fight for power. She clashes with one of the princes, Cardan, and trains to become a Knight. I can’t say too much more summary-wise because things get awesomely twisty as the book goes on! Storytelling & Characters Hoooly shit, you guys. This book was amazing. All of Black’s descriptions were out of this world (I guess literally?) and I really felt like I was there. The beginning part of the book is sort of a slow climb up to the climax, where we learn more about the land they live in and Jude’s relationships. She forms alliances, learns new skills, and even has to kill. She is manipulative, fascinating, and a straight-up […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #161: Favorites of 2017

Posted December 12, 2017 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 5 Comments

Favorite Books of 2017 Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, 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. Honestly this year did not have as many all-time favorites or REALLY GREAT books as I expected or hoped for. Of course, the ones I did really like were so perfect… but the quantity was just not there with the quality for so many others. In other words… this list may be a little easier to narrow down! However, as I usually do with my top books of the year, I’m going to feature all of my five star books AND 4.5 star books. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas // The Names They Gave Us by Emery Lord // When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon // The Cruel Prince by Holly Black What I Lost by Alex Ballard // Juniper Lemon’s Happiness Index by Julie Israel // The Dirty Book Club by Lisi Harrison // The Cruel Prince by Holly Black // The Nowhere Girls by Amy Reed Honorable Mention: 4.5 Stars Hogwarts: An Incomplete and Unreliable Guide by JK Rowling // Geekerella by Ashley Potson // Alex, Approximately by Jenn Bennett // The Forgetting by Sharon Cameron // Chloe Snow’s Diary: Confessions of a High School Disaster by Emma Chastain The Adjustment by Suzanne Young […]

Unreleased Book Cover Love

Posted December 11, 2017 / Book Lists, Features / 8 Comments

It’s no secret that one of my favorite features is Cover Snark at A Reader of Fictions. I usually add 90% of my unreleased books to my TBR from these posts. I don’t want to take a page out of her book here (weird sort-of pun?) but I did want to share some recent book covers I’ve seen that I added to my “cover love” shelf. You’ve seen this post on my blog in one way or another for years, because you know how I feel about covers, but here are some unreleased books with covers I am looovin. Covers I Already Love See all the books here. Covers I Can’t Wait to See I always keep some books on my “jazzed up for this” shelf so I can remember which synopses really grabbed me. There are quite a few books on this shelf in any given moment, so I wanted to check out which books I can’t WAIT to see covers for! Here are a few… Serious Moonlight by Jenn Bennett Synopsis: Simon Pulse has bought a YA title by Jenn Bennett. In Serious Moonlight, a mystery aficionado spends the summer before college knee-deep in both intrigue and a romance with her charismatic co-worker while working the night shift in a Seattle hotel. The book is scheduled for 2019. Why I’m excited: I love Jenn Bennet in general and this book sounds so good! I’ve enjoyed her other covers for the most part and think they usually fit the book pretty […]

Holiday Movie Roundup: Reviews/Recs

Posted December 8, 2017 / Features / 2 Comments

I wanted to include some movie reviews, recommendations, and general thoughts this year, since these are usually the biggest piece of my holiday cheer! I do love the holiday books, of course, but the movies are what REALLY gets me in the mood. I watch many of the same ones each year but always try to mix in some new favorites. In this little roundups, I’ll be sharing “reviews” of both new-to-me movies and repeat watch feels. They’ll be going in chronological order based on when I watched it this season! Coming Home for Christmas Number of watches: First time Source: Hallmark original movie Rating: Worth the watch, especially if you read the book I loved the book by Jenny Hale, so I HAD to watch this one! It ended up being my first Christmas movie of the season and it was enjoyable. Hale’s holiday books are my favorite because she has the most Christmassy feels of ALL the holiday books I read. They’re atmospheric and super cozy, which is exactly what I want. The movie did a pretty good job of capturing those feels, as all Hallmark movies should/do! I don’t remember as much of the book as I’d like, so I can say that in general… it definitely lined up with the overall plot of the book. It seemed like a pretty true adaptation. I wish the movie was a little longer or something; the romance didn’t develop as nicely as I remember in the book. It felt kind of […]

Recent Read-Bait: Wishes and Travel Meet Cutes

Posted December 7, 2017 / Book Lists, Features / 3 Comments

You may remember my read-bait series from a long time ago, where I talked about certain keywords, phrases, and tropes that call my name. I planned to keep going with these posts because there are many, many topics that suck me right in. My recent posts discussed reunions, memory loss, and boarding school, then fake dating, bucket lists, and family drama, then carnivals, disappearances, and rich people/winning the lottery. Here I am today to talk about recent words that have grabbed me… This post is just about two read-bait topics for once, primarily because I was eager to post another one of these. The first topic is about “wishes” in some way, shape, or form. I love books involving wishes being granted or people being able to grant wishes for other people. I read Down with the Shine by Kate Karyus Quinn last year and was pleasantly surprised at how much I loved it. This book involved magical moonshine that grants wishes for the people who drink it, so the main character had to track everyone down to reverse them. The concept was an incredibly unique take on the wish topic and led me to add so many others to my TBR. Next, one of my favorite tropes in books is when people meet while traveling (especially internationally, since ya girl doesn’t even have a passport yet…). Books like Wanderlost by Jen Malone and Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour by Morgan Matson got me thinking about characters encountering “travel-related meet cutes” with the love interest. […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #160: Settings

Posted December 5, 2017 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 6 Comments

Bookish Settings I’d Love to Visit Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, 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 recently posted about how much I love companion series set in small towns, so sorry if this gets repetitive. There are definitely a few other bookish settings I would love to visit though! Black Dog Bay This series definitely kicked off my obsession with cozy small towns, especially because Black Dog Bay is so unique! Each little shop, restaurant, hotel, etc. has some kind of theme about heartbreak (and getting over it). I loved learning about each resident and the establishment they owned that kept with the theme. Even though I’m not currently heartbroken or single, I would totally visit Black Dog Bay and have the BEST time. Coronado Cove, Countryside B&B Glamping, and European Group Trip One of the most fun settings I can remember, especially in a standalone novel. It was fully developed in ALEX, APPROXIMATELY as this fun California beach town with a boardwalk and awesome stores and restaurants to browse. One of the main mini settings of the book is the museum where they worked: The Cavern Palace. I don’t remember the major details of this particular museum but it was basically a mansion from a very eccentric rich […]

Review Round Up | Kissing Max Holden and Follow Me

Posted December 4, 2017 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 3 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! My sister lent me her copy and has been bugging me for MONTHS about reading it. I can’t say that I blame her now that I’ve finished it. What a wonderful contemporary I didn’t know I needed! I had just went through a binge of mysteries and other non-contemporaries when I decided I should give this one a try. It ended up being so perfect that I read it in one sitting and stayed up until 3 AM to finish. I would call this fluff, but it’s a liiiittle more serious that fluff often implies. There is a LOT going on, family-wise, in this book. I absolutely hated her dad the entire time I was reading and was hoping she would tell him off at some point. The familial relationships were incredibly complex, both for Max and Jill. Max’s dad was recovering from a stroke that changed their relationship and, as I mentioned, Jill’s dad was basically a dickhead. I loved seeing her relationship with her stepmom grow throughout the book too. The romance was solid. I love childhood friends/neighbors-to-more SO much, because you can just feel the history bubbling into something new. They had a solid base to build a real (romantic) relationship and it showed […]

Bookmark Lit Bulletin | November 2017

Posted December 1, 2017 / Bookmark Lit Bulletin, Features, Wrap-Ups / 7 Comments

The Bookmark Lit Bulletin was created to wrap up each month and prepare for the next. I share my book haul, books I read and reviewed, posts I shared, challenge updates, and more from the previous month. I also let you know what may be coming up on the blog in the coming month. You can read past bulletins here. I recently split out my personal posts into the Lauren Lately feature, so this is a bit shorter! Not a great reading month for me, unfortunately. I was really pushing myself to finish a few more books within the last week of the month. It helped that I started to get into the Christmas books because those tend to be addicting for me. There were two books that bugged me all month that I was never in the mood to read, which definitely added some stress. The week we were home for Thanksgiving involved almost zero reading too. Oh well. It’ll be a big push to finish the reading year strong and luckily that means a lot of Christmas books. ? Average rating for books read in Octber: 3.9 stars Highlights & Lowlights This month’s books: Year-Long Contemporary Romance Challenge 6 this month | 61 read total | 610% complete Flights of Fantasy Challenge 4 this month | 26 read total | 87% complete NONE Rock My TBR Challenge 0 this month | 15 read total | 100% complete NONE Series Enders Challenge 1 this month | 16 read total | 160% complete Fall Bingo Challenge Book […]