Month: May 2018

Lauren Lately | May 2018

Posted May 16, 2018 / Features, Lauren Lately, Wrap-Ups / 6 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 […]

Blog Tour | Cover Colors: Love & Luck

Posted May 10, 2018 / Book Reviews, Cover Colors, Features / 3 Comments

More purchase links: Book Depository | Kobo | IndieBound | iBooks I’m excited to be another stop on the blog tour for LOVE & LUCK! Any book involving international travel makes it high on my TBR because I love learning about other countries. I haven’t been outside of the US yet (anywhere!!) so these books give me ideas about where I may want to take my first trip someday. This story is about Addie, a girl who travels to Ireland with her family for her aunt’s destination wedding. The book opens with her and her brother falling down a hill and getting muddy while in their wedding party attire. It’s definitely not a good look. For me, the most fun aspect of the story was the guidebook, Ireland for the Heartbroken, that is featured throughout. Addie finds it in the library before the trip and uses it to guide her travels around the country. I really had a wonderful reading experience with this one. I love road trip books and I don’t know if I’ve read one set internationally before! The family feels were super strong and the main character was a lot better than her best friend was in the previous book. There was a little bit of every emotion throughout the story and I really love the journey that they all went on. I genuinely cried AND laughed out loud. There were so many moments that could have been corny but somehow they just worked in the story felt deeper as a […]

ARC Reviews: 9 Days and 9 Nights, Love Songs and Other Lies, and August and Everything After

Posted May 9, 2018 / Book Reviews / 4 Comments

^ can we just talk about how many times the word “and” appears up there?? You know those books you finish and you wish you could have a sequel, but you also really don’t want one because you feel like it’ll get ruined? Well when that sequel ends up happening and the original story DOESN’T get ruined, it’s one of the best feelings as a reader. I’m here to confirm that totally happened for me with 9 DAYS AND 9 NIGHTS. Katie Cotugno writes the messiest characters and situations that have me on the edge of my seat, anxious the whole time, and completely enthralled too. I read 99 DAYS in one sitting, way past my bedtime, and I did the same thing here (luckily a little earlier in the night though). Preamble aside… that was so fucking good. I loved it. Almost maybe more than the first one, or at least very close? Everything in Molly’s head felt so real, as it did before, and I loved every conversation that happened. It was just so authentic. In a lot of books, if the main character has a boyfriend but is considering someone else, there’s usually something super wrong with that guy. It’s obvious from the get-go that he’s not right for her and the breakup is logical and tidy. Ian was a really great guy in this story. He was funny, thoughtful, and fairly perfect most of the time. Then of course… there’s Gabe. The guy she can’t help […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #182: Pink Books

Posted May 8, 2018 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 4 Comments

Books with my Fave Color 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 week’s topic is about books that involve your favorite color, whether that’s on the cover or in the title is up to you! My favorite shade of pink is kind of the in-between pink and purple… best described as magenta. But I’m going to bring out all shades of my fave color here because it’ll be a lot easier for me!

Groundhog Day Fiction

Posted May 7, 2018 / Book Lists, Features / 6 Comments

One of my biggest read-bait keywords/phrases in a book synopsis is the Groundhog Day scenario – the Bill Murray movie where he relives the same day over and over again, trying to figure out how to escape. I love books involving time loops and alternate universes, and I definitely view this as a subsection of that “genre.” Countless YA books and other fictional stories have centered around this plotline as a “retelling” of sorts, and I’m here today to chat about them! Tried & True Favorite The book that started it all for me is obviously Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver. A mean girl dies in a car accident but keeps waking up the next morning to relive the day over again. She tries to right her wrongs and figure out what it will take to break out of this loop, so she can move on to the afterlife in peace. I loved every single element of this book and Lauren Oliver’s writing. It remains a favorite even after rereading it last year and ‘m so glad it held up for me. I loved seeing how she lived each day a little differently, taking advantage of this “extra time” by doing things she normally wouldn’t do. She got all sorts of things out of her system, that’s for sure! It definitely was reminiscent of the movie version because it involves a “bad person” learning from their mistakes and hopefully making amends for things they’ve done wrong. The fact that […]

Bout of Books 22 | Sign-Up, Goals, and TBR

Posted May 4, 2018 / Book Challenges, Features / 3 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 I’m here for what feels like my millionth round of Bout of Books! I feel like I say this every time, but I definitely need this week of reading. I wanted to participate in the Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon a couple of weeks ago but ended up having a friend come to visit instead. This round of Bout of Books is going to help me boost up my totals so I can prepare for a busy late June/early July. I have so many things to do, between weddings and moving and traveling across the country, so I’m not sure how much I’ll read. I’m sure I will on those flights to and from California but I didn’t want to bank on it. In any case! I have big goals for this week. Goals The biggest goal that I can’t really put numbers to is to get ahead on my Goodreads goal by at least a few books. I’m hoping for it to say somewhere between 3-5 books ahead […]

ARC Review: All of This is True

Posted May 3, 2018 / Book Reviews / 3 Comments

Initial Excitement & Summary I struggled with THE UNSCRIPTED JOSS BYRD because the main character was too young for me. It read like a middle grade, which I don’t read very often, so I decided to put it aside. However, when I saw ALL OF THIS IS TRUE, I was fascinated. I loved the idea of YA readers getting too close to an author and ~scandals~ happening as a result. The story is told through a few different ways: interviews with a TV producer (Miri and Penny’s perspectives), a journal (Soleil’s), newspaper articles, and excerpts from Fatima’s book (essentially Jonah’s POV through Brady, the character she created. Storytelling & Characters This book was suuuuuper meta, which I usually love. It was telling the story of these teens who were duped into being friends with an author, who then turned around and wrote a “fictional” book based on all of the things she learned about them. With the excerpts from that book on top of the interviews/regular story, it was a book within a book that’s also about a book? Confusing but yes, meta. It was also an incredibly quick read since it alternates between all of the different formats and perspectives. I couldn’t stop reading it. You can tell from the synopsis that the four teens that this book is about all have different feelings about what happened with Fatima. Miri still sticks up for her and is okay with what she did. (Miri was frustrating to read about because she […]