Month: February 2022

Review Round Up | Of Princes & Promises and Reckless Girls

Posted February 25, 2022 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 0 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 series continues to baffle me a little bit. I enjoyed this book a similar amount to the first one. I was really hoping it was the characters from book one that prevented me from loving it but that turned out to not be the case here. If I were to read this without knowing Sandhya Menon wrote it, I’d be shocked to learn that she did. It just does not have the same feel as her other books, like the Dimple/Rishi universe. I think it’s mostly because she writes the characters as posh boarding school kids and her writing style feels weird as a result, like she’s trying hard to be fancy or something? In any case, this story followed Catarina and Rahul. She’s the pretty rich girl who rules the school and Rahul is the socially awkward kid whose family doesn’t even include him in public photos (his cousin stands in). The two of them had a ~moment~ after the school dance and Rahul is dying to capitalize on this. Catarina starts to “train him” to be a prince instead of a frog; she wants to make her cheater-ex-boyfriend jealous at some important events with a transformed Rahul on her arm. They acquire a magical […]

ARC Review: Wish You Were Gone

Posted February 18, 2022 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

I’ve loved Kieran Scott (also known as Kate Brian) for many, many years. Her PRIVATE series has been on my list to reread (or at least finally complete) for YEARS. I hold that series up with GOSSIP GIRL and THE A-LIST as some of my favorite addicting series about rich and/or terrible teenagers. As Kate Brian, she blew me away with the SHADOWLANDS trilogy (some of the first reviews on my blog!). She also wrote a fun mythology-based trilogy a number of years ago that I really enjoyed as Kieran Scott. Since then, she wrote two horror/mysteries (that I haven’t gained the confidence to read yet) and a fun political-ish YA thriller. I love that she’s taken a turn writing adult mystery/thrillers because honestly it seemed right up her alley. WISH YOU WERE GONE is her adult fiction debut. It follows a family rattled by the sudden death of the patriarch. Emma and her son, Hunter, hear a crash one night and discover that her husband, James, has crashed through the garage and died. They both know he was probably drunk at the time. Her daughter, Kelsey, rushes home to see what’s happened. Turns out, James wasn’t the best guy and has more secrets than he can count. The story alternates between multiple characters, including Emma and her kids, to really understand who James was. There’s an interesting power struggle between Lizzie and Gray, Emma’s two best friends who don’t really get along, and Gray’s husband (James’ business partner). This […]

ARC Review: Weather Girl

Posted February 16, 2022 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

I’ve fallen HARD for Rachel Lynn Solomon and her writing. If you’re still somehow sleeping on her near-perfect contemporary books (both YA *and* adult, y’all), you are missing out. She writes such lovely romances with great, complex characters and a good amount of diversity. She has another hit with WEATHER GIRL. I stayed up until 2am reading 90% of the book in one sitting. I just couldn’t stop. This one hits hard in a few areas but managed to also make me smile and actually laugh out loud to myself a few times. I really love that she’s able to balance the tough stuff with the gooey love stuff. Our MC, Ari, deals with depression (like her mom) – while medication and therapy help, she has a ton of “Dark Days” still and struggles with feeling like she’s going to repeat her mother’s history. Is anyone ever going to love all of her, including the dark parts? Will all of her boyfriends leave when things get tough, like her dad did? Ari and her coworker, Russell, decide its time for their bosses to stop making their work (at a Seattle news station) miserable – they plot to get them back together after divorcing. Needless to say, cute single dad Russell (who, by the way, provides some excellent fat rap for a male MC!) and Ari hit it off and start falling for each other. They had sooo much chemistry (which was further emphasized with some very steamy scenes) and I […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #370: Love Freebie

Posted February 8, 2022 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 6 Comments

Love Freebie: Recent Books I’ve Read with “Love” in the Title 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 thought I would keep this one simple… and a bit literal! For this week’s “Love Freebie,” I decided to share the ten most recent books I’ve read with the word LOVE in the title!

Bookmark Lit Bulletin | January 2022

Posted February 4, 2022 / Bookmark Lit Bulletin, Features, Wrap-Ups / 0 Comments

The Bookmark Lit Bulletin wraps up the last month in reading and what was on the blog, as well as what’s coming up next. You can check out my book haul, books read, posts shared, challenge updates, etc. You can read past bulletins here. If you’re looking for more personal updates, you can check out my Lauren Lately feature; it highlights my life events and non-bookish fun from the previous 30 days. I was determined to start 2022 on the right foot and I definitely did! I was hoping to squeeze one more book in for January but just didn’t read much during the last week of the month. I’ve been very burnt out lately training a new employee at work and trying to balance all the things, so reading took a backseat. I’m glad I cranked through seven books before then! 7 books read in January 7 new books • 0 rereads • 0 DNF Pages read: 1966 • Average rating: 4.07 stars Sources: 4 review, 1 preordered, 1 library, 1 borrowed Formats: 3 egalley, 1 audio, 1 hardcover, 1 paperback, 1 mixed Genres: 4 contemporary, 1 fantasy, 1 mystery/thriller, 1 nonfiction Age Target: 11 adult, 2 YA, 1 kids Check out my 2021 challenge sign-up post for more details, goals, etc.! Popsugar Reading Challenge 6 read this month | 6/40 read total Published in 2022, you can read in one sitting, about a secret, different book by an author read in 2021, set in sister cities (x2) Tackle My TBR January: […]

Review Round Up | The Hawthorne Legacy and You’ll be the Death of Me

Posted February 2, 2022 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 0 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 was super excited to start this book right away when it was released. I am very particular about what books I buy so it was a big deal to head to B&N on release day and snag this one. For whatever reason, I put it aside on and off over the course of multiple months. I think it’s primarily because I was doing a ton of reading in bed and therefore needed my Kindle with a backlight. As it got closer to the end of the year, I knew I had to crank through and finish it off to reach my reading challenge. Every time I sat down to read this book, I wondered how it was possible I kept putting it down and not reading it for weeks! The short chapters and overall plot make this book super addicting and hard to stop reading once you start. This book picks up soonafter the first, THE INHERITANCE GAMES, ends. Avery has inherited a multi-billion dollar empire, mansion, and all of the family drama that comes along with it, out of the blue. She didn’t know the billionaire who left it for her but quickly finds out how much he loved puzzles and riddles. His will and […]