Month: June 2019

July TBR

Posted June 28, 2019 / Book Lists, Features, TBR Lists / 2 Comments

My monthly TBR feature here shows my progress based on last month’s TBR, my plans for this month, and anything else I might be thinking about from a reading perspective. Sometimes I feature a little poll at the bottom so you guys can help me figure out a certain title I should read from a group of books. June Progress I had a weird reading month for June because of my travel plans AND because I managed to stretch two books for way too long. I’d keep picking other things up for various required reading plans and then putting AURORA and NATALIE TAN aside for days or weeks at a time. I knew I wanted to finish both of them off in June, which I finally managed to do. I read for blog tours, book clubs, readathons, and just for myself! Up Next in July Summer Reads As discussed in my summery TBR post from the other day, I have a bunch of seasonal reads to check out over the next couple of months! I got off to a good start with Summerathon at the end of June, but there are plenty for July. I don’t need to post the same cover images so any of the books HERE will be possibly read in July! FaerieAThon Valiant by Holly Black I read TITHE last month to start FaerieAThon and VALIANT is next for this one. I love that the reading is broken up for each day because it really helps […]

On My List (8)

Posted June 27, 2019 / Features, On My List / 2 Comments

I love Jamie’s New to the Queue feature because it highlights new things she’s added to her different “to do/ read/ watch/ etc.” lists. This new random feature – called simply On My List – will show off the most recent books, movies, shows, podcasts, recipes, crafts, and other things to make it on my to-do list. Currently Available Searching for Sylvie Lee by Kwok | This book sounds utterly fascinating. It’s about three members of a Chinese immigrant family and what happens when the eldest daughter disappears. A bunch of family secrets come out and a mystery develops throughout. Eeek! A Beach Wish by Noble | I’ve been adding a bunch of summery books to my TBR despite the fact that I bet I won’t get to them this year (womp, that’s not a very positive outlook). This one is set in a New England beach town (yes please). When the MC’s mom passes away, she goes there to spread her ashes, and learns that she has relatives she never knew about. The Summer Guests by Monroe | This author is always added to my TBR but I haven’t loved anything yet. Regardless, this story sounds good – it’s about an eclectic group of people who evacuate to a friends’ farm and bring only the essentials. They have a challenging week together and I’m intrigued. Unreleased Books Untitled Panem Novel by Collins | I cannot believe there’s going to be another book in this effing series. I genuinely didn’t see that coming. I have a good feeling […]

What’s Up Wednesday: June 2019

Posted June 26, 2019 / Weekly Memes, What's Up Wednesday / 2 Comments

What’s Up Wednesday is a linkup with Sheaffer Told Me To and Mix & Match Mama the last Wednesday of each month, in order to catch up on what’s new with you from the past month and upcoming month. The prompts can be found on their blogs or answered below by me! What I’m eating this week Sunday: Brunch at DRWB@24, dinner (takeout) from Mystic Pizza Monday: Leftover pizza for lunch, meatball subs for dinner Tuesday: Leftover meatball subs for lunch, chicken soba noodle stir fry for dinner Wednesday: Leftovers noodles for lunch, shrimp Caesar salad for dinner Thursday: Jackfruit salad sandwich for lunch, dinner out for book club (Cold Creek Tavern) Friday: Leftovers/sandwich for lunch, probably pulled pork sliders or turkey burgers for dinner Saturday: My sister’s grad party in the late-afternoon (Italian food and some BBQ/snacks) Busy week of good food, I think! I bought some stuff and stocked the freezer recently, so I planned to slowly pull things out (ground turkey for meatballs, turkey burgers, etc.) to get through this week. I couldn’t resist the pull of Trader Joe’s this week so I did a good job with getting fresh stuff to try new recipes. My sister’s grad party is Saturday at 2pm so I’m definitely excited to eat a lot over there 😉 What I’m reminiscing about This past weekend was Jen’s bachelorette weekend in Mystic, Connecticut! It was genuinely such a fun trip. I think the biggest difference between this one and others I’ve been on is that we are ALL individual/separate friends […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #241: Summer TBR + Bucket List

Posted June 25, 2019 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 6 Comments

Books On My Summer 2019 TBR 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 wrote a post like this back in 2016 to share my bookish and personal summer goals, as well as my summertime TBR for the year. I always enjoying working on seasonal TBR posts each year and bucket lists specifically for autumn, so why not do a big ol’ post for this summer? Because of the nature of this TTT, I figured I’d kick the post off with my TBR list instead of my goals / bucket list, just in case you’re only here for the books 😉 All of these are summer-ish books that hopefully take place near a beach or lake or ocean or someplace WARM. The Summer House by Hale | Review copy, able to use for challenges The Summer House by McKinnon | Able to use for Popsugar (two books with same title) Boys of Summer by Brody | Owned book foreeeeeever and need to read! Summer of ’69 by Hilderbrand | Gimme this timeframe for historical fiction always Summer by the Tides by Hunter | Family-oriented summer vacation book It Happens in the Hamptons by Peterson | Gimme all the rich people Hamptons books! The Last Book […]

Reviews: Aurora Rising and Red, White & Royal Blue

Posted June 24, 2019 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

When this was added on Scribd, I knew I needed to listen to the audio and read this one way earlier than I thought I actually would. I loved the Illuminae books but for some reason I wasn’t in the mood for this right away. I think I felt like it’d end up being too similar somehow? Not exactly the case as I got reading because OBVIOUSLY LAUREN not all science fiction/space-oriented books are the same. Anyways, I also got the physical copy from the library because I knew I wanted to blaze through it a little faster. LOL at that – I took over a month to read this because other ~required reading~ things popped up and delayed things. It’s a bigger book too, of course, but still. I finally made it! There were a lot of characters but I do think they were fleshed out well enough to differentiate between them. Tyler is kind of the lead character because he’s the leader of their squad. On draft day, he was busy saving Aurora and being the goldenboy they all claim he is, which meant he got the leftovers to add to his squad instead of the top people he could have drafted. Scarlett, Tyler’s twin sister, is the best and so cute and flirty and fun. Kal is the kind of alien person? Something bad happened between his people and everyone else’s, so they don’t super trust him sometimes. Cat is in love with Tyler, Finian is in […]

ARCs I’m Excited About

Posted June 21, 2019 / Book Lists, Features / 6 Comments

After writing my TTT about my most anticipated books for the second half of the year (and removing any books I currently have for review), it would be good to highlight some review copies I DO have that I’m excited to read! I need to genuinely be a lot better about reading ARCs and sticking to the schedule I’ve talked about but I just get so goddamn sidetracked all the time. Without further ado, here are some egalleys I have waiting on my Kindle that I’m super pumped to read in the second half of the year! We Came Here to Forget by Dunlop | I requested this a long time ago because I liked the sound of Dunlop’s debut (even bought it!) and wanted to motivate myself to read her books. This one is about a skier who loses everything and moves to Argentina to reinvent herself. Stealing Home by Wallace | I was pitched this one by email and it was a very easy “yes” to make! I love romance books surrounding sports, even if I don’t pay much attention to the sport IRL 😉 I love that the MC is gunning to become the GM of a local minor league team and is thrown a curveball (hehehe). Past Perfect Life by Eulberg | This is another author who I’ve been really meaning to read. The synopsis is perfectly vague, where the MC basically learns that her entire life is a lie and she doesn’t “exist” by the name she knows. […]

ARC Review: The Friend Zone

Posted June 20, 2019 / Book Reviews / 2 Comments

I had this book for a very long time and AS USUAL my terrible reading habits got in the way. I ended up starting this the week it published and wanted to turn my review around quickly. (I even knew that I’d need a full-length review for this one… something that hasn’t been seen on my blog in a while!) I love Forever Romance so much – please check into them if you live under a rock haven’t read my blog in a while. I had enough time to see early readers’ reviews of this one and let’s be real – the hype was huuuuge. I saw from others that it would make me laugh AND cry, so that’s my favorite kind of book. It didn’t take me that long to warm up to these characters. Josh, who just moved to California to work at the firehouse with his best friend, literally ran into Kristen on his way there. Turns out, they’re both in the wedding of Sloan and Brandon, maid of honor and best man, respectively. They didn’t get off to the best start but when Kristen needs help with her business, Josh is the only logical person to help her out. They become quick friends and Josh spends a lot of time at her house, while Kristen gears up for her deployed boyfriend to come home. Naturally they catch some feelings. I like that this was a slow-burn, where Kristen was already questioning her feelings for her boyfriend, […]

Summerathon Sign-Up, TBR, and Tracking/Progress

Posted June 19, 2019 / Book Challenges, Features / 3 Comments

Header image from Summerathon Twitter account linked below Hosted by: Melanie @meltotheany | Jen @pinotandpages247 | Heather @bookables Aimee @aimereadstn | Amy @acourtofcrownsandquills More information and to follow along: @summerathon on Twitter and Instagram Mere moments after tweeting something like “ugh I wish I could participate in Summerathon but I won’t be able to read much during its first weekend,” I started drafting this post. Sorry not sorry, I cannot help it and discourage myself from a SUMMER-THEMED READ-A-THON, guys. Because I did a decent job tackling my June TBR and didn’t have a lot of books left to go on it, I thought I might be able to squish some of those reads into this readathon AND just treat myself to more summery stories for the final week of June. I have Summer TBR / bucket list post going up on Tuesday, so you can see more books, but I am going to pinpoint ones specifically to match the challenge prompts below. I’ll dive right into my potential TBR and goals underneath! View this post on Instagram A post shared by Summerathon (@summerathon) on May 11, 2019 at 6:31am PDT Goals and Possible TBR Like I said before, I have my full summery TBR post going up on Tuesday, but I thought I would highlight the top four summer-related books I plan on reading first, as well as how they apply to the guidelines above. The hosts are allowing double-counting for the prompts, so I hope to tick off […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #240: Upcoming Releases

Posted June 18, 2019 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 13 Comments

Most Anticipated Releases of the 2nd Half of 2019 (that I don’t currently have review copies of) 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 always like to do this post excluding my review copies, because I can’t necessarily anticipate them to the same extent if I HAVE them already, right? Here are the TWENTY-NINE WHOOOOPS books I’m most excited about for 2019 that are not currently in my possession! As usual, I’m including a tiny snipped of the synopsis that made me add it to my “jazzed up for this” Goodreads shelf – the selling point or the Lauren-bait. July The Last Book Party by Dukess | “A propulsive tale of ambition and romance, set in the publishing world of 1980’s New York and the timeless beaches of Cape Cod.” Me Myself & Him by Tebbetts | “this story of parallel time lines cleverly explores how our choices can change and shape us–as well as the ways in which choices don’t change the core of our being at all.” The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Waxman | “but she isn’t convinced real life could ever live up to fiction. It’s going to take a brand-new family, a persistent suitor, and the combined effects […]

Skincare and Makeup Lately: Hits and Misses #2

Posted June 17, 2019 / Health & Beauty, Personal / Information / Etc. / 4 Comments

It’s WILD to read my previous skincare/makeup post from just MARCH and how much things have changed! I’m still leaning toward a skincare-purchasing kick compared to makeup, but there are definitely new makeup things to report on as well! Some good hits and misses to discuss in general, as well as lessons learned. Skincare Lessons Learned and New Skincare Routine / Products I’ve become slightly addicted to certain subreddits on Reddit lately. My most common place to be scrolling through endlessly is the r/SkincareAddiction page. That’s where I learned that I may have oily skin, but I’m likely overproducing oil because I’ve destroyed my moisture barrier with majorly drying/stripping/harsh products for literal years. The minute I got acne and learned I had oily skin as a preteen, I started using so many cleansers that have probably beaten my skin to death. I just wanted to get some products that I could use successfully to make sure my skin looks better and feels better. I bought the CeraVe Foaming Facial Cleanser to restore my skin to a normal pH level and also some more hydrating products for the evening. I modeled my routine sort of around this person’s (The Ordinary products) and around the general ScA routine that is suggested on Reddit. Trader Joe’s & The Ordinary Hauls In my Reddit reading, I saw some recommendations from The Ordinary and Trader Joe’s skincare selections, so I thought I’d review and discuss them here now that I’ve been trying them for around 3 weeks. […]