Month: February 2023

Top Ten Tuesdays #398: Mystery/Thriller

Posted February 28, 2023 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 2 Comments

Genre Freebie: Favorite Adult Mystery/Thriller Reads 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’ve found myself gravitating more and more toward mysteries and thrillers lately. Maybe I’m turning into my mom as I get older, because as she puts it – “if there’s not a murder in the first couple of chapters, I’m not interested in reading it.” I find myself being more in the mood for these books than contemporary romance lately and am constantly looking for upcoming new releases to get excited about. I thought today’s genre-related freebie would be a good place to share some of my favorite mystery/thriller reads since I’ve gotten more into the genre recently. These are all adult, not YA, and have ratings in the 4.5-5 star range. (Sidenote: according to Goodreads, I’ve read 58 adult mystery/thriller books total and 140 YA ones!) Gone Girl is a classic for a reason and nothing – absolutely nothing – compares to that plot twist. Unbelievable. The Finlay Donovan series is my all-time favorite within this genre and are just some of my favorite reads in general. I loved books one and two; book three was good but not great. The Night Swim was another quick favorite of mine – I loved […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #397: Heroines

Posted February 21, 2023 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 2 Comments

Favorite Heroines from Recent Reads 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 have a Goodreads shelf of main characters that I would want to be friends with, so I thought that would be a great place to look for this prompt! Alex // Finlay // Stella Miriam // Florence // Freya // Alexis Franny // Rachel // Dani

Series Audit

Posted February 17, 2023 / Discussions, Features / 2 Comments

I’ve been watching a lot of booktube lately and have loved watching people like Meg With Books hold themselves accountable about reading and finishing series. I thought it would be fun (and tedious…) to see how I personally do with reading and completing series. Do I start too many and never finish them? How far along do I get before I lose interest? How many series have I read in my life? Read on to find out these answers and more! Overall Series Stats I’ve engaged with 192 different book series in my lifetime. Yes, this is not super accurate since I only put some of my pre-2014 history in Goodreads when I started using it. I didn’t include random books like Watership Down that I read in high school and is technically in a series, but I did include many/most of the series I read for pleasure back in high school (The Clique, Gossip Girl, etc.). I was going to include books that are kind of a series, like the author wrote one full-length book and then followed it up with a novella epilogue or prequel, but those didn’t make the cut here for obvious reasons. I’ve read a total of 560 books that are a part of a series in my life as well. On average, the book series that I’ve started/read contain 4.18 books in the series. This is probably balanced out a bit because some series are duologies or trilogies while others have a lot more books. I’ve read an average of 2.92 […]

Review Roundup | Ninth House, Shady Hollow, and Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries

Posted February 16, 2023 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 2 Comments

Oh man, that was a ride. I put off reading this one for a long time because I was honestly just nervous. The story definitely intimidated me, and I was right to be a little nervous! It took me a very long time to settle into this and really understand what was going on. (Even though I plan to read HELL BENT soon, I’ll be watching or reading some kind of summary of this one…) Leigh Bardugo is really masterful at writing though – she’s the main reason I picked this up. I do fantasy/paranormal and mysteries but usually not ones quite like this. It’s pretty dark but Bardugo manages to inject humor in certain scenes and keep intrigue up even when I was confused. Truthfully, I almost DNFed this after the first 100 or so pages but I decided to press on. Luckily, the literal next chapter I listened to helped pull things together and keep me interested. The other reason I wanted to read this is that it’s set at Yale in Connecticut. New Haven is really its own character, and it was fun to line up the locations/setting with my experience going there and walking around Yale. I forgot that Bardugo went there, so it was nice to see her accurate depictions of the area. I really liked Alex as a character, as well as Darlington and Dawes. Even her roommates, who weren’t in this too much, were enjoyable to read about. The timeline went back and […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #396: Valentines Day

Posted February 14, 2023 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 2 Comments

Valentine’s Day Freebie: Upcoming Contemp. Romances I Can’t Wait to 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. I used my usual cover-related freebie the other day so it was harder to think of what to feature here! I thought it would be fun to keep things romance-y and highlight some of the upcoming contemporary romances that I’m excited to read in 2023. I couldn’t keep this to ten books so I did only choose to highlight March through September-ish. March April May June August and September

Review Roundup | Begin Again, The Housemaid, and Kill Joy

Posted February 10, 2023 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 0 Comments

It’s been well-established that I’ll read everything Emma Lord writes, even if YA is lower on my list overall these days. I’ve never been disappointed by one of her books (even the ones that maybe don’t sound like my favorite premise) – and luckily BEGIN AGAIN was no exception to this rule! To be fair, it was probably my “least favorite” of her books (which seems dumb with a 4+ star rating)… but I don’t fully know why. I liked that this was a slice of life story set in college (let’s make a petition to get more YA books set during that time period) and the characters were really enjoyable. I liked that there was a solid mix of new friendships taking off, romantic relationships and crushes, and tons of family feels. The whole premise was good but the ~love triangle~ vibes were a bit drawn out IMO. My jaw dropped at a very unexpected twist that made for some intrigue for a few chapters, but I kind of with the dual love interest situation was wrapped up earlier. The main character, Andie, and her friends had their ups, downs, and flaws, which were all well-explored. I really liked that there wasn’t any major drama and miscommunication – the vast majority of the time, all of the characters said how they felt (within reason) and forgave each other for certain issues. It was definitely refreshing to read! I’m now craving a very fancy bagel and ridiculous flavored cream cheese. Whew, […]

2022 Reading via StoryGraph

Posted February 8, 2023 / Features, Wrap-Ups / 2 Comments

I started using StoryGraph this year in addition to Goodreads. I still use Goodreads for the majority of my book updates because 99% of my friends are still there. Goodreads is where I update reading progress, search for new books and add them to my to-read shelves, and follow what my friends are up to. Storygraph, for me, is for tracking when I start and finish books. I also like using it to better browse my shelves, especially because they have moods and pacing as options for filters – something I love! I also really like their auto-populated charts and graphs, so I thought it would be fun to have a quick wrap-up post from 2022 using specifically information from StoryGraph. It’s no surprise that I read the most pages in December lol even though 6 of my books were graphic novels, I still read the most books within that month overall. I was clearly doing catchup to make sure I finished my reading goal for the year! Again, no surprise here. Pretty sure all of the nonfiction books I read were cookbooks as well. Story of my life! I like how this is more specific than Goodreads because I have to tag my own genres via shelves. Storygraph did it for me! Not surprised whatsoever that my top books were contemporary and romance, followed closely by young adult, and then mystery and thriller. This is another fun part of Storygraph! You can assign moods as you finish reading and […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #395: Debuts

Posted February 7, 2023 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 2 Comments

2023 Debuts I’m Excited About 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 definitely need to do a better job of tracking debut authors! I realized some of my most anticipated reads of the year are debuts, which is fun! Here are some I’m excited to read – broken down by genre and/or age target where appropriate. Contemporary (+ One Fantasy!) I already read and really enjoyed LUNAR LOVE (highly recommend you check it out!). The other books featured here are primarily contemporary novels (a couple YA and the rest adult). There’s also one highly anticipated fantasy read down there (EMILY WILDE) that didn’t fit anywhere else. Mystery / Thriller / Etc. I’ve been loving mystery/thrillers lately and all of these are on my highly anticipated list for the year! I didn’t realize a few of these were debuts. These are mostly adult books with just two YA picks (CLARISSA and HOW TO FIND). There’s at least one (RUTHY) that’s more of a mixed literary/mystery and BOARD TO DEATH is a cozy.

February TBR

Posted February 6, 2023 / Book Lists, Features, TBR Lists / 4 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. February TBR I’m off to a great start this year, as you saw in my BL Bulletin the other day. My general goal is to read 7 books per month to get ahead and stay ahead when it comes to my Goodreads goal. I read NINE in January! February is a shorter month but still looking to read 7-8 books without issue. I’m impressed because I read all four review copies in January that I had on my TBR! Review Copies I have one lingering review copy from the very end of January (BEHIND THE SCENES) to read at the start of the month. I also got a copy of KILL JOY (novella) for review so I’ll probably have this be my Holly Jackson book of the month 😉 (I was going to finally read FIVE SURVIVE, which I own, but I can wait on that one a little bit.) Owned or Kindle Books This is a tough category to pick from this month because I’m feeling like it’ll be a heavier library book month so I can stay on top of those! I think I’m likely going to try THE HOUSEMAID […]

Bookmark Lit Bulletin | January 2023

Posted February 3, 2023 / Bookmark Lit Bulletin, Features, Wrap-Ups / 2 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. 2023 started and it’s like I’m a new woman (or older version of myself from pre-pandemic days when I read a lot more than I have the last two years…)! I’m off to the races. 9 books may not seem like a lot when you think about my 17-book-January, but I’m currently 3 books ahead on my Goodreads challenge. That’s all I could hope for. Even better? I’m really in the MOOD to read. Like all the time! Books are exciting again! 9 books in January 9 read • 0 rereads • 0 DNF Pages read: 3056 • Average rating: 4 stars Genres: 3 mystery/thriller, 2 contemporary, 2 fantasy, 1 nonfiction, 1 literary fiction Formats: 4 egalley, 2 paperback, 1 hardcover, 1 audiobook, 1 review audio Sources: 12 borrowed, 2 review, 2 purchased, 1 BOTM Age Target: 6 adult, 3 young adult Here are all the books I read this month and the challenges they applied to! Popsugar Reading Challenge: 16% 52 Book Club: 15% Buzzword Reading Challenge: 0% Must Read in 2023: 0% Romanceopoly: 5% Mystery/Thriller Reading Challenge: 12% Breakdown: 10 purchased | 1 […]