Month: May 2024

Recent Reads | This Summer Will Be Different and Falling

Posted May 30, 2024 / Book Reviews, Recent Reads / 0 Comments

I read both of these books Memorial Day weekend but also managed to finish one book per day across Sunday and Monday. Finally brought me current on my reading challenge! Carley Fortune has been an interesting author for me (and many other readers, as far as I can tell!). Many of us fell in love with EVERY SUMMER AFTER and all of its messiness. MEET ME AT THE LAKE didn’t quite have the same charm or affect on its audience but, to me, was still a worthwhile read. I was looking forward to checking out whatever she did next… and boy did she knock THIS SUMMER WILL BE DIFFERENT out of the park. One summer, Lucy heads to PEI to visit with her best friend and hooks up with a hot restaurant worker named Felix. The next morning, they quickly realize that Felix is actually Wolf and Lucy is Bee – she just hooked up with her best friend’s brother and she’s already landed at their summer home. The two of them end up hooking up on and off throughout the years and it’s just an occasional secret fling… or is it? I loved that this was sort of quiet and slow-moving throughout the romance/plot, despite the initial hot start between the characters. Lucy and Felix really needed to find themselves and it didn’t feel rushed at all, even though every reader probably knew exactly where it was heading. While I do think this is her actual best book, it’s […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #447: Unread Anticipated

Posted May 28, 2024 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 0 Comments

Books I Was Super Excited to Get My Hands on but Still Haven’t 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 haven’t done a TTT in a bit but this was definitely made for me. I used my “jazzed up for this” shelf on Goodreads to see all the fun books I was jacked up about and haven’t read yet. Without further ado, here are some of them!

Recent Reads | The Paradise Problem and The Search Party

Posted May 24, 2024 / Book Reviews, Recent Reads / 0 Comments

Man, Christina Lauren has truly done it again. I know I’m a relatively new reader of theirs but I just think they’re in the top-echelon of contemporary romance / rom-com writers. I noted on my Instagram caption that each year I most look forward to new books by Emily Henry, Abby Jimenez, and Christina Lauren. These gals are my top auto-read authors for romance… and none of them have disappointed. ALL three 2024 releases by them were five stars for me. THE PARADISE PROBLEM has a marriage of convenience trope, super duper rich people with inheritance on the line, a tropical setting with a wedding involved… genuinely what more could I want? Excellent characters with fun personalities, a ton of sexual tension, and really funny moments? Yes, all of those too! Anna and West got married almost five years ago to secure cheap family student housing. Anna didn’t exactly read the finer details of their contract and surprise! They’re still married and West needs her to be his guest to his sister’s wedding on a private island in Indonesia so he can collect his multi-hundred-million-dollar inheritance. While this was the usual steamy, tension-filled rom-com from Christina Lauren, there were definitely some heavier elements involved too. West’s family is…something else. The two of them were not set up for an easy trip, especially with Anna actually being a broke artist instead of the med student he thought she was when they first got married. It was so frustrating to read about […]

Ranking Books by Favorite Authors | Christina Lauren

Posted May 13, 2024 / Book Lists, Features / 1 Comment

I thought this was going to be a more common series on my blog but I basically wrote one post and never tried it again! The idea came from the late Grace at Rebel Mommy Book Blog. I still miss her positivity in the book community and hope I can keep doing this post justice! Previous installments include Sandhya Menon and Rachel Lynn Solomon. Today I’ll be featuring… Christina Lauren I was inspired after finishing their latest perfect release to finally do an installment for Christina Lauren! I’ll be honest – I’m not like my friends who have been reading their books since the Beautiful Bastards days. I joined in reading their books soonafter they made the switch to their current rom-com style. I’ve had a ton of success with their books in general and have essentially loved all 9 of them. 5 Stars The Paradise Problem // This review is coming soon. I have to be honest, their last two releases have been my favorites by them! I loved everything about this book and hope they keep writing books set in tropical locations forever. So many excellent tropes in here! Fake dating, marriage of convenience, super rich family/inheritance, artist and heir… everything! The True Love Experiment // I loved this companion novel to THE SOULMATE EQUATION even more than its predecessor. There was just something about it that totally hooked me. I liked the reality TV show element and that the “third act breakup” was very different here. 4.5 Stars The Soulmate […]

Bookmark Lit Bulletin | April 2024

Posted May 9, 2024 / 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 knew April wasn’t going to be an amazing month for reading because of our Disney trip but I’m glad I managed to finish 8 books by the end of the month! That’s my minimum goal for each month to generally stay on pace with my reading goal. I’ve been cutting it super close haha. 8 books in April 4 read • 4 reread • 0 DNF Pages read: 3,856 • Average rating: 4.5 stars Genres: 4 dystopia, 1 graphic novel, 1 contemporary, 1 mystery/thriller, 1 cookbook Formats: 6 mixed format, 1 paperback, 1 hardcover Sources: 5 owned, 2 purchased, 1 libraary Age Target: 5 young adult, 2 adult, 1 middle grade Here are all the books I read this month with ratings and one-line thoughts! The Program Reread // // // Popsugar Reading Challenge: 22% 52 Book Club: 37% Book Cover Bingo: 68% 24 in 24: 17% Breakdown: 7 hardcovers | 2 paperbacks | 2 egalleys | 1 ebooks | 0 audiobooks All review copies were provided for free in exchange for an honest review. Physical Books […]

May TBR

Posted May 8, 2024 / Book Lists, Features, TBR Lists / 0 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. May TBR I got behind in April, as expected, because it was generally a busy month… plus we went to Disney. Pretty sure I read like 2% of one book on that trip. You’ll see a lot of holdovers from April on here. Egalleys Yep, didn’t read any of these. I’m not necessarily behind but a lot of these are publishing very soon or published within the last month. I’m adding a few more upcoming ones because I know I’ll be reading them too. ONE LAST SUMMER is the book I started on my trip but then I put it aside temporarily to read FUNNY STORY. May Releases I’ve been a big Carley Fortune and Christina Lauren fan for a while so these two new releases are on my radar for sure. And thanks to BOTM and their early copies, I’ve already started (maybe even finished by the time this goes live) THE PARADISE PROBLEM. Owned / Physical Copies I didn’t read a lot of owned books in March because I focused on egalleys, but still managed to cross off at least one from March’s TBR! I’m keeping THE SPLIT […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #446: May Flowers

Posted May 7, 2024 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 0 Comments

May Flowers (On Covers) 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 love floral covers so it was a no-brainer to share them for the semi-freebie May Flowers prompt for this week! I’ll be focusing on new and upcoming releases for this one. (Yes I also included just regular plants lol)

Recent Reads | The Reappearance of Rachel Price and Funny Story

Posted May 2, 2024 / Book Reviews, Recent Reads / 0 Comments

I never got around to reading Jackson’s previous release after the AGGGTM series but there was something about this book that called to me. I think it’s because I only listen to true crime podcasts centered around missing people and unsolved cases. I always thought about how insane it would be to have someone who was missing for so long, presumed dead, turn up VERY much alive. That’s the basis for this story – Bel Price has always assumed that her mom was kidnapped (right from the car they were in together when she was two years old) by an evil stranger and murdered. Her case became one of the more popular ones in New Hampshire and her family was in the middle of filming a documentary when the unthinkable happened… Rachel Price reappeared. I didn’t love Bel as a character – she was definitely prickly and jaded, which was fine, but just didn’t make for the most fun main character POV. There were plenty of times where she annoyed me (ex: asking someone to explain themselves and then repeatedly interrupting them so they couldn’t get a word in). There was an unnecessary romance that I wish wasn’t in there – I think it made the book longer than it needed to be and could have been tighter without it. On that subject – it IS very long for a mystery/thriller but I wasn’t able to put this down. I read it so quickly and used up a lot of my […]