Month: April 2023

Review Roundup | Daisy Darker and Wrong Place Wrong Time

Posted April 26, 2023 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 0 Comments

This was such an interesting reading experience – I can now see why this is such a polarizing book haha. This is my first Alice Feeney and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not. I have really weird expectations for what her other books may be like?? DAISY DARKER follows Daisy and the Darker family as they head out to her grandmother’s island house for her 80th birthday. They all assume they’ll be learning what they’ll be getting for inheritances because her grandmother always expected to die at age 80. It follows the traditional AND THEN THEY WERE GONE plotline where people start being killed one by one. There’s a big ol’ twist that plenty of people predicted but I felt like an absolute idiot because I didn’t see it coming at all. The book itself was really sad, seeing how they treated Daisy throughout her life. It was super depressing. Because I managed to not really predict anything correctly, I can’t help but give this a pretty high rating. BUT the twist itself is kind of cheesy at this point. Even if I’m not sure I liked it in many ways, it’s definitely going to stick with me. I read this book in one day – I listened to the audiobook when tooling around the house and read the physical copy whenever I had the chance. I’m never mad about an unputdownable book, so I won’t complain too much! I’d been told by some friends I really […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #406: Audio Narrators

Posted April 25, 2023 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 0 Comments

Favorite Audiobook Narrators 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 don’t actually track this as much as other people do but luckily I’ve written some posts about this in the past to reference. I also went in and looked at some recent audiobooks that I really enjoyed, since the linked post is super old haha. Here are some favorites! Julia Whalen // Kicking off with everyone’s favorite! She’s narrated so many excellent books, including pretty much everything (?) by TJR. She’s narrated so many “classics” across multiple genres – everything from GONE GIRL to BEACH READ. If she’s narrating it, I’m listening to it. January LaVoy // Another favorite of the majority of us! She’s known to me from THE DIVINERS series but she’s also an auto-listen narrator for me. I noticed she also narrates a lot of books by Megan Goldin, who I also love. Tim Curry // Listening to A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS is such an excellent reading experience because of Tim Curry. He’s obviously a famous actor with an excellent voice, so he just totally brings these books to life. I would reread these every few years just so I could hear his voice if possible! Jim Dale // I don’t […]

ARC Review: Return to Hummingbird Way

Posted April 20, 2023 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

This series has been so lovely – I seriously love Reese Ryan’s writing style and how she set up the picturesque town of Holly Grove Island. This book is the second in this companion series and another winner! The first book featured Dexter and Dakota as they embarked on their second chance romance; this one follows Dakota’s best friend Sinclair and Dexter’s best friend Garrett. Mild spoiler for book one, but Dexter and Dakota are heavily featured in this book as they’re planning their wedding. Naturally Sin and Rett are the MOH and Best Man so they’re tasked with pulling off their wedding planning in short order while also working on a joint bachelor/bachelorette party. (Sidenote: if you’re someone who loves when the first couple in a companion series makes an appearance in the next book, you’ll love this one – Dex and Dakota were major characters throughout the story, so you can see their friendships and relationship develop throughout still.) On top of that, they’re both working on redoing Rett’s grandmother’s house to prepare for sale. Sinclair and Rett are both realtors with construction and/or interior design skills so they collaborate on the fixer upper. The only problem? These two don’t really get along. They butted heads in high school, managed to have a quick one night stand years ago, and have generally avoided each other ever since. Rett is back in town to help his family and decides to stick around to work on these projects, but he’s […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #405: Personal Freebie

Posted April 18, 2023 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 0 Comments

Non-Book Freebie: Recent TV Shows 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 usually enjoy sharing personal things on the blog but it’s been a while since I have! I thought for this non-bookish freebie that I would share some shows that I’ve recently watched… and whether or not I’d recommend them! My husband and I have been really bad about finishing shows lately. We also haven’t even tuned in to the new season of TED LASSO yet! Currently Watching & Rewatching Community // This is one of my top favorite TV shows and we’re in the middle of rewatching! We wanted to prepare for the movie and refresh our memories on what happened. I definitely missed these characters and could see myself revisiting this way more often, like I do with Friends. Party Down // We watched this show during Covid and they announced a reboot soon after we finished. We’ve watched a few episodes of the new season and it’s good so far! Definitely fun callbacks and great characters. Hopefully we get back into it because we’re a few behind as of now. Reno 911 // Chris loves this show and I’ve never seen it so we’ve been watching it on and off. It’s […]

Review Roundup | Confessions, The Golden Spoon, and Lock Every Door

Posted April 13, 2023 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 0 Comments

I recently shared that there are a number of books I planned to read this year based purely on the hype and their popularity in the community. A bunch of my favorite booktubers have read and loved this one, claiming that there is a twist or big reveal at the end of each chapter (there are 6 chapters across a quick book of 240 pages). I was curious (based on the premise) how they would pull that off and decided to finally go for it. After all, I don’t read a lot of backlist books and this looked promising based on everyone’s feelings! Unfortunately this book wasn’t what I expected and the hype was REAL. I couldn’t get everyone’s voices out of my head while reading. I expected wild jaw-dropping twists but it didn’t really read like that to me? Yes, it is definitely twisty and very well-plotted and well-written, but not in the same way people had built it up. Each chapter reveals some new information from a different person’s point of view so the backstory starts to slowly come together. My jaw literally dropped at the end of the first chapter and the build-up of reveals throughout the rest of the story was pretty great. The ending was strong – surprising and very clever. Again, the plotting made a big difference here and the order in which the author included the different character POVs. I expected a new favorite and ended up with a solid four-star read that […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #404: Animal Covers

Posted April 11, 2023 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 2 Comments

Covers with Animals on Them 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. Naturally I took the “covers with animals on them” approach instead of “animals in the book’s title” because I am a book cover girlie forever. I decided to share some recently read (and enjoyed!!) books with cute animals on the cover, as well as some on my TBR. Recently Read On My TBR

Favorite Mystery/Thriller Tropes & Plots

Posted April 10, 2023 / Discussions, Features / 0 Comments

Here again with another chat about mysteries and thrillers! My new fave genre. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if this category surpasses romance or contemporary fiction for me this year. Okay, maybe not, but it will definitely come closer! Some related posts for further or introductory reading – I’ve spoken about my favorite mystery/thriller reads (I still lump them together because I’m really bad at remembering the difference…) – both adult and young adult – in recent weeks. Way back in the day I also talked about some of my struggles with YA mystery/thrillers (and just had a general discussion about my favorite tropes back then). As for today, I thought I would go through some of my favorite tropes and plot points in mystery/thriller books. (Similar to my read-bait series but I’m being lazy about the formatting and just calling this a discussion 😉 lol). What are some of the keywords, plot points, and tropes in a mystery or thriller synopsis that lead me to pick the book up? Back when I posted my original discussion about YA specifically, I listed the following tropes and types of books within the genre: Historical fiction mysteries Political thrillers Disappearances Memory loss Long series of mystery novels Paranormal elements Boarding school / secret societies I think these are still fairly accurate but not a perfect representation today. For example, I couldn’t tell you the last time I read a historical mystery, paranormal mystery, or political thriller. (There are some notable exceptions like The […]

“Throw the TBR Away” Kind of Month

Posted April 7, 2023 / Book Lists, Discussions, Features, TBR Lists / 2 Comments

I am actually quite good at generally staying on track with my monthly TBRs. I never use them as an exhaustive list and always plan to NOT read some of the books, while subbing in other books where mood or opportunity strike. I also usually include upwards of 15+ books just to have variety when I look at what I might want to read next. My TBR lists are usually structured with the following criteria in mind: Upcoming review copies that are due Variety of formats (audio, ebook, physical, mixed) Variety of genres (usually contemporary, mystery, maybe some fantasy, etc.) Books I’ve generally been in the mood to read New releases I’ve been excited and waiting for Book club and readathon selections I usually read two books at once, and typically I have an audiobook available for one of them. I may be reading one physical book and mix in the audio of that book, while also reading another book on my Kindle. I may have a Kindle book and audio option to alternate between, plus another book as a physical copy. There are plenty of times I’m not listening to an audiobook and just skip it altogether. As you can see, I like to have all my options. I also read multiple genres at the same time – you’ll never catch me reading two contemporary romances at once. I may be reading one contemporary and one mystery, for example (this is the most common lol). I also try to […]

Books I’m Scared to Read

Posted April 6, 2023 / Book Lists, Features / 0 Comments

I hope I’m not the only person out there who has books on their TBR that they’re genuinely afraid to read… You know the ones. The big chonky fantasy books, or the super literary and flowery fiction, or the author that’s way smarter than you are… All of the books below fall into some of these categories for me and while I’m interested in reading them someday, I’m afraid to even crack the spine open. BABEL by RF Kuang // This is such a dense book! I’ve heard that it can read like a textbook at times which sounds boring and tedious, but it’s on SO many people’s “best of” lists from 2022! I’m so drawn to it because of the college setting and high ratings, but it’s such a scary length. I’m also for sure convinced that Kuang is way smarter than me and that this whole book will go right over my head. CRESCENT CITY series by SJM // The only reason I’m less afraid of this one than others on the list is because I trust SJM to write a pretty good story at this point. I’m rereading ToG to finally finish it off and adored all things ACOTAR, so I’m sure I’ll enjoy this one. The book is LONG though. I’ve seen semi mixed reviews (if not for this book, definitely the second book) so I’m just a bit cautious to devote the time to it! THE KIND WORTH KILLING by Peter Swanson // This author is on a lot of my […]

ARC Review: Yours Truly

Posted April 5, 2023 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

I’m not exaggerating when I say that I think Abby Jimenez writes the BEST romance out there right now. I’ve enjoyed (even loved!) all of her books and truthfully, I think each one is better than the last. THE FRIEND ZONE was a book I really loved when I read it but those feelings faded a bit over time for a few reasons. And her books have only gone up from there (for the most part). In order of release, they went 3.5 stars, 4 stars, 5 stars, 4.5 stars, and 5 stars again for me. I’ll backtrack and chat about the plot and then get into the gushing. The story follows PART OF YOUR WORLD’s heroine’s best friend Briana. She’s hitting her divorce finalization date after her husband cheated on her and feels like she’s just going through the motions. A new ER doctor, Jacob, joins the hospital she works at and the two do NOT get off on the right foot. Jacob secretly finds out he is a match for her brother as a kidney donor, they start writing letters (which started as an apology letter), and the rest is history. I would categorize this as enemies-to-fake-dating-to-lovers, which was very fun. It’s light on the enemies part but still. I loved watching them fake date (Jacob needed a girlfriend for his brother’s wedding festivities… did I mention his brother was marrying Jacob’s ex? And they got together three months after she and Jacob broke up?) and see their […]