Month: June 2019

Lauren Lately | June 2019

Posted June 14, 2019 / Features, Lauren Lately, Wrap-Ups / 0 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 ✨ What I’ve Been Up To Money in the Bank | We were fortunate that MITB, one of the best WWE shows ever year (just because ladder matches are so fun), was in Hartford this year! A group of five of us went and it was pretty wonderful until the end. I know I don’t need to get heavily into the wrestling stuff but let’s just say I hate Brock Lesnar and he ruined everything, as usual. Memorial Day Weekend – Bridal Shower and Double or Nothing | As everyone knows by now, Chris’s sister is getting married in August and that’s the last wedding that I’m in for the year! (I have one more to attend in September, I believe… my book club friend is making sure she can squeeze us in ?) I planned her entire bridal shower basically and it went off without a hitch! That night, we had the first AEW PPV, […]

Review Round Up | Always Never Yours, The Woman in the Window, and What If It’s Us

Posted June 13, 2019 / 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! This is one of those books that I was super eager to read and still took forever to do so. I saw it referred to as a Shakespeare retelling in some places but didn’t fully believe that it was. I don’t think it fully tells any one Shakespeare story and it’s not a typical Shakespeare “retelling” but there are a lot of parts that line up to Shakespeare plot points or tropes? There are romantic entanglements, love triangles, miscommunications between characters, and countless references to Shakespeare’s plays (especially because the book centers around a Romeo and Juliet school play). The main character, Megan, is constantly compared to Rosalie from the play too. Anyways, I loved this. Megan was a fascinating character; she’s totally comfortable doing whatever she wants, pursuing guys, and flirting shamelessly. There are some pieces of her personality that could be considered ~unlikeable~ by some standards but I loved her for all of those reasons. Owen was ADORABLE and I loved the messy romance of this one, tbh. I think haters of love triangles and cheating (to an extent?) won’t like this one, but this felt super high school to me in a great way. It was real, in my opinion. The family dynamics worked […]

Mini Trip Recaps: “BEA” and Bay Area

Posted June 12, 2019 / Lifestyle, Personal / Information / Etc. / 4 Comments

June has been a super busy month so far and we’re not even halfway through yet! When I was pulling together my Lauren Lately post, I realized that I had quite a bit I could discuss on the vacation/trip front. I went to NYC for a BEA-related event but didn’t actually go to BEA or Bookcon, so that necessitated a post. I also went to the Bay Area for Cristina’s wedding the following weekend and turned that into a long weekend trip with some friends. We split our time between the Livermore area and downtown San Francisco. BEA Party When I was invited to the Big Honcho party during BEA weekend, I knew I had to make it happen this year. I was invited last year when living in Maine but obviously that wasn’t feasible at the time (at least compared to when I live in Connecticut!). I went down to the bottom of the state Friday afternoon and took the Stamford train into the city before the party. I met with Natasha (my friend you’ll see in the SF recap below) for dinner before heading to Madalyn’s hotel. I got to meet her friends Chelsea and Alexa before heading into the party. IT WAS SO GREAT TO MEET MADALYN IRL because she has been one of my favorite people in the community since she joined Novel Ink. Long overdue meeting, folks. We also caught up with various other bloggers and booktubers, including Kristin, Alexa, and Rachel. It was great […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #239: Unpopular Opinions

Posted June 11, 2019 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 8 Comments

Unpopular Bookish Opinions & Habits 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’m always on the fence about the whole “unpopular opinions” thing. People go wild with this stuff on Twitter sometimes and I don’t get it. Many times people are just using it as an excuse to be rude, other times people’s opinions aren’t actually unpopular… I don’t know. It’s not my cup of tea usually and I do a terrible job of even coming up with thoughts on this, but here we go anyways. 1. Love triangles aren’t that bad. I don’t go out of my way to read books about love triangles, generally speaking, but I don’t avoid them either. I fully understand what it’s like to be in a relationship in high school and then feel the pull elsewhere for various reasons. I genuinely feel like they’re a normal part of human existence and I think many books reflect that experience well. 99 Days is easily the best love triangle-ish book I’ve read and paints the most honest, logical picture of that kind of situation. Sorry not sorry. 2. I don’t mind cheating in books either. I know this is another hot topic that people often hate reading […]

Three Book Clubs

Posted June 10, 2019 / Discussions, Features / 2 Comments

Throughout all of my TBR posts, it’s plain to see that I’m currently in THREE different IRL book clubs. I don’t know how this happened, but it has. I thought it would be fun to just share what book clubs I’m in and how they differ from each other… because they are VERY different! I’ll also highlight the books we’ve read so far. One of my book clubs (the OG if you will) has been around for many years so I won’t get into ALL of those books, but I probably can’t resist… YA Fiction Book Club Only YA fiction, all genres within Books read so far: 40 | Meets monthly Back when I first started blogging, I decided that I wanted an IRL book club to enjoy books with and maybe make some new friends. I made a Meetup group for a YA Fiction Book Club and the rest is history! The turnout was great initially and eventually we moved the club away from Meetup. Two of the other ladies and I connected really well so we ended up forming a trio and kind of abandoning the official club once the club was gone from Meetup. (Long story.) The three of us have been meeting ever since and enjoying books over dinner every month. This one serves the purpose of giving me strictly YA books in my book club. Single/Standalone Reads We’ve read mostly standalones. Any series-starters you see below (there are a few) are books where we did […]

A Royal Change of Heart

Posted June 7, 2019 / Book Lists, Discussions, Features / 4 Comments

As I said in my review for the first book in the Royals series, I am not a royal kind of gal. I’m uninterested in the real royal family over in England and haven’t gravitated toward media options about fake royals either. Not faulting anyone who is into it, but it’s just not me. I’ve noticed (I’m sure everyone has at this point) that writing books about royal families around the world has certainly grown in popularity, even just in the few years since I started blogging! The first one I can think of off the top of my head is, of course, The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan. I got swept up in the hype of this one, despite my actual lack of interest in it, and own the book. ??‍♀️ I obviously haven’t read it yet and truly don’t know if I ever will at this point, but I know many who adored the book. Since its publication, I’ve noticed a huge influx of royal-related books come out. For whatever reason, my generation (some people older and younger too, obviously) is so into this topic right now. I’m guessing it’s because we all thought Prince Harry and William were hot and grew up admiring these young royals. Now that they’re even older, got married, and have families of their own, we’re clamoring for more. I say “we” meaning my group of peers… but not really including me. H o w e v e r, there have […]

Summer Bingo TBR Ideas

Posted June 6, 2019 / Book Lists, Features, TBR Lists / 0 Comments

Hosted by Lock & Rose As usual, I’m here with another seasonal bingo TBR post and a quick recap on last month. I’m never married to these TBRs because things change and some books can go in multiple categories, but it always helps to have this post to check on again when I forget what to read next! Last month’s spring bingo card was a success – I ended up reading ALL the books for the prompts. I hope for the same success for summer bingo! I’ll dive into the books I’ve already read or am currently reading first and then get into the TBR part. Currently Reading / Already Completed Orange cover Screen Queens by Goldstein | I got lucky that there are multiple San Francisco books on my TBR for this week! I’ll talk more about that in a couple seconds but I had to read this Silicon Valley-based story for the blog tour this week. I didn’t have as much reading time over the previous weekend as I expected but I was able to get through this one in the nick of time, as well as use it for this prompt! Illustrated cover Aurora Rising by Kaufman/Kristoff | I started this in mid-May and just didn’t end up with a lot of audiobook reading time. I checked the hardcover out from the library though so I do hope to finish it very soon after the current California trip. I’ll hopefully listen to the audio on the plane too, depending […]

Blog Tour | Cover Colors: Screen Queens

Posted June 5, 2019 / Book Reviews, Cover Colors, Features / 0 Comments

Mini Review This book just looked so girl-power-ish and I am here for it. I loved that they’d be taking on the tech world and Silicon Valley, especially because I read this right before heading off on a trip to San Francisco for this week! It centers around the three girls featured on the cover and their experience at ValleyStart, a prestigious tech incubator/summer internship. Lucy has tech running in her family, growing up local to Palo Alto. Maddie is from the Boston area and is hoping to beef up her graphic design portfolio, while missing her brother on the East Coast. And finally, Delia: she taught herself how to code and now she has to see if she can match up to everyone else at ValleyStart. I didn’t love Lucy at the beginning because she was a little irritating, with her constant chatter and semi-rude comments to Maddie when they first met. She grew on me the more I got to know her and understand why she struggled (under her mom’s big name and general pressure to succeed). To be completely honest, each of these girls had their own flaws that made them different from each other, as well as their own individual strengths. I loved that they were imperfect and trying their best in the “Dave-dominated” tech world. They came out of their shells (well, Lucy was already very much out of her shell already!) and grew together as a team. I loved the idea for their app, […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #238: Fave Genre

Posted June 4, 2019 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 6 Comments

Books from my Favorite Genre: Parallel Lives/Time-Oriented Books 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. It’s no secret that I love contemporary fiction more than any other genre… but I feel like I’ve talked about those favorites over and over again at this point! My favorite sub-genre are books about parallel lives, parallel universes, and anything involving something weird happening with time. I’m not the hugest time travel fan, compared to other elements of manipulating time for books, but the Groundhog Day trope is an example of something weird and time-y happening. Anyways! I’m here today to talk about primarily parallel lives/universe books and give you my top favorites. Pivot Point and Split Second by Kasie West This one is a dual timeline book, but also involves special paranormal powers from the main character. The story alternates between the two lives she might live when her parents get divorced: one version of her chooses her mom inside the special compound and the other chooses living with her dad in the real world. She can also see and live through both decisions, in order to see the best outcome, as her power. (The second book alternates between two POVs – her and her friend […]

Blog Tour | Review: Summer on Mirror Lake

Posted June 3, 2019 / Book Reviews / 3 Comments

Review I was itching to return to Honeymoon Harbor – one of my favorite small-town settings! I fell right back in love with it from the first couple of chapters. I was worried that I’d forget the previous books (I seriously read too many cute small town companion series; I thought I would mix them up), but Ross did a nice job of reintroducing me to the town. It’d be easy to start in the middle of this series if you were unable to start at the beginning, that’s for sure. This story centers around Gabe and Chelsea. Gabe, one of the infamous Mannion brothers of Honeymoon Harbor, returns home to the Pacific Northwest after a health scare in NYC, where he has been working himself to the bone on Wall Street. Chelsea, a local librarian, begins caring for two foster children, and begins a wonderful summer romance with Gabe. I loved how honest they were about their attraction and nervousness on their first “date” – that’s always my favorite kind of romance. Miscommunication and lack of openness can lead to the black moment in romance too often and it’s refreshing to read something else. Chelsea was a great character – I loved that she was definitely not afraid to be herself and stand up for her opinions. The early scene where she talked about romance books with Gabe was perfection. (I may just have a soft spot for bookish / librarian MCs!) As I alluded to before, the romance […]