I’m really sneaking this in right at the end of the month because honestly time has not been REAL this year! I can’t believe we’re at the end of July already. I still thought it would be helpful to some folks to write my upcoming holiday releases post, even if it’s half-assed with no links or descriptions. Contemporary Holiday/Christmas Romance Holiday-Themed Fantasies Christmas Mysteries
This book intrigued me from the start but I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect. It doesn’t help that almost everyone gave it five-stars! I was truly expecting to be blown away lol. I think my expectations got the best of me and I really expected MORE from the elements that I knew the book contained: time travel, mystery spanning generations, romance, and general magical realism. I don’t know how to even review this, especially after sitting with it for a few days. The story follows June Farrow, the last in line of the Farrow women, after her grandmother passes away. They all have some kind of “illness” that makes them hallucinate doors and other things. June begins to investigate what’s happening to hear and steps through a door that appears. Cue the time travel science that was hard to follow but I just ignored it while pretending I understood. I realized that there’s a good chance literary mysteries are not for me – it made the book only somewhat intriguing and also quite boring, pulling the weaker elements from both genres together. I wanted more twists and intensity like I’d get in a mystery while also seeing some strong character development and romance. All of the elements of this story felt surface-level. I heard people describe this as a fever dream and discuss how much they loved the characters and didn’t want to leave them behind, which totally baffled me. I felt zero connection to any of the characters […]
Summerween is a readathon hosted by GabbyReads that runs in early July each year. This year’s readathon was hosted July 5th through 11th with the following prompts: read a book in the dark, read a thriller or horror book, read a book with a night sky on the cover, read a book with 5 words in the title, and read a book set during the summer. For more information click HERE. Okay, this was really fun for me! I can absolutely see this as a polarizing book and the low-ish rating doesn’t surprise me. I think you have to be in the mood for something a little different, where the narrator breaks the third wall and involves the reader in the story. There are a couple of other reasons people don’t love this one but I’ll get into that shortly. This book follows Eleanor, bestselling author of the Vacation Mysteries series, as she travels on a “book tour” kind of giveaway event in Italy. Along for the ride are a few other authors (including her ex), the man who inspired her first book, her sister (slash person who manages her entire life), and some fans who won a giveaway to join them. Connor, the hero-turned-nemesis, thinks someone is trying to kill him and the group spends the book trying to figure out who’s doing it, if he’s the real target, and more. I haven’t yet read EVERYONE IN MY FAMILY HAS KILLED SOMEONE but from what I understand about the narrative style, […]
Believe it or not, this little blog is officially ten years old today yesterday. I started it one summer after finishing BEFORE I FALL by Lauren Oliver, reading some Goodreads reviews and seeing blog links in the reviews, and thinking… I could do that too! Why not? I like to read, I like to write, and I love starting and abandoning new hobbies. Well, joke is on 2014-Lauren because somehow, against all odds, 2024-Lauren still semi-regularly blogs here. The pandemic took a bit of a toll on this space for me and I’ve seen SO many blog friends come and go over the last ten years, and here I still am! Throwback to the OG header as I dive into some of the reading stats across this fucking decade. Note: stats are thanks to Storygraph, since all of my data has been imported there and is the best place to find everything. I can’t promise that it’s 100% accurate but I feel fairly confident in these numbers lol. Ten Years of Reading According to Storygraph, I’ve read over 1200 books since July 16, 2024. That’s insane. It equates to over 404k pages. I also included the fun mood chart here to give you a sense for my reading life over this ten year time period. Clearly I’m still a romance girlie (despite the fact that the bulk of those books are from the first 7ish years lol). My average time-to-finish is 5 days, which checks out in the grand scheme […]
Ten Things I Loved 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. This week’s topic is meant to highlight the ten things you like about a certain book or series. Today, I decided to go with two separate series and discuss the five reasons I like each of them. I can’t think of ten things for one book!! Truly Devious 1. The setting The best part of this series is the Vermont boarding school full of smart kids. I absolutely love reading books set in New England and this takes the cake. Boarding school books are absolutely read-bait for me in general and the location of this one, plus the mystery at the center of the school, are so cool. 2. The cozy-ish vibes I don’t consider this a cozy mystery really but there’s something comforting about this series when you add all of these elements together. There’s just something about it that can’t be replicated for me. No other book series compares – it’s like coming home for me for some reason. It’s like Nancy Drew at boarding school. 3. The characters Stevie is a little annoying and her boyfriend is even worse, but their friend group is really at the […]
Summerween is a readathon hosted by GabbyReads that runs in early July each year. This year’s readathon was hosted July 5th through 11th with the following prompts: read a book in the dark, read a thriller or horror book, read a book with a night sky on the cover, read a book with 5 words in the title, and read a book set during the summer. For more information click HERE. I read one Riley Sager book before and didn’t love it as much as I had hoped. MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT was much better for me – I’m a big true crime consumer but only if it’s about missing persons and unsolved cases. This book scratched that itch for me for sure. The story follows Ethan as he returns to his childhood home 30 years after his best friend Billy was kidnapped from the tent they were camping in in the backyard. The crime remains cold and unsolved… until Ethan begins noticing some hints of Billy around the neighborhood. He sets out to solve the mystery with the help of old friends and neighbors. I really enjoyed this! The way that Sager structured the book is alternating chapters between present day and the day in 1994 when Billy went missing. There were a lot more POVs in the past chapters, which I really enjoyed – they were well-timed with what Ethan was discovering in the present. I was always itching to keep reading; Sager had some kind of cliffhanger or dramatic […]
I am a Lucy Foley fangirl and kind of think she can do no wrong. I even loved THE PARIS APARTMENT and would tell you if you didn’t, this one may bring you back to her. For some reason this was yet another highly anticipated book that took me forever to get into but really paid off by the end. Like her other books, I totally could have read it in one sitting if I tried. The book centers around multiple POVs and I thought all of them were super interesting (and relevant by the end). As the synopsis states, we follow the founder, the husband, the mystery guest, the kitchen help… and then a couple more I won’t spoil just in case. Foley does such a good job with the initial slow drip of information through each person and timeline that makes you curious to learn what happened, and then the multiple twists toward the end bringing everything home. I was convinced I wouldn’t love this one compared to her others but there were a LOT of good twists. The little horror-esque elements didn’t turn me off like I expected, and I really loved how all of that ended up. The Birds and local lore were fascinating elements and I can now see how the info she shared during her book signing connects to everything. She was inspired by similar events (non-local people buying up land and making posh getaways in the farm-y countryside to piss off locals) but […]
Midyear Reflection, Book Stats, and Challenges I’ve been doing midyear “wrap-ups” for years now and they’ve taken many forms. This year I’m going to expand a little more than just showing my stats and moving on, since I set a lot of goals and TBRs that I REALLY need to check in on. I’ve been failing miserably at a few and doing okay at others. Midyear Book Stats 50 / 100 Books Read Annual Goal Check-In Stay on track or ahead of my Goodreads challenge 🤷🏼♀️ I’m currently on target because my goal was to get to 50 books read by the midpoint of the year, which is halfway to my 100-book goal, and I did! It says I’m a book ahead even though I’m kind of not so we’ll see. I’ve spent most of the year on track or behind, not on track or ahead. Keep up Instagram stories about TBRs and completed reads ✅ I’ve been amazing at this. Book reviews, monthly TBRs, and monthly wrap-ups are all present on my Instagram stories in highlights. Read my 24 in 24 😬 I’ve only read five of these but I do have plans to attack them as noted in my challenge check-in area below. I went ahead and planned which months I’ll read certain books in to ensure I complete the challenge, since I was really hoping to! Read bigger books ✅ I was going to give myself a shrug-emoji rating here but then I remembered that […]
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. June had some help because I finished a May holdover on the first day of the month, and then kept momentum going from there! Our vacation helped; I think I finished two books that weekend alone. 10 books in June 10 read • 0 reread • 0 DNF Pages read: 3,554 • Average rating: 4 stars Genres: 4 mystery/thriller, 3 contemporary, 2 dystopia, 1 graphic novel Formats: 7 mixed, 2 egalley, 1 paperback Sources: 3 owned, 2 library, 2 review, 2 preordered, 1 purchased Age Target: 6 adult, 3 young adult, 1 middle grade Here are all the books I read this month with ratings and one-line thoughts! Popsugar Reading Challenge: 26% 52 Book Club: 46% Book Cover Bingo: 72% 24 in 24: 21% Breakdown: 12 hardcovers | 0 paperbacks | 3 egalleys | 1 ebook | 0 audiobooks All review copies were provided for free in exchange for an honest review. Physical Books BOTM: Jackpot Summer by Friedland, A Talent for Murder by Swanson, One Perfect Couple by Ware Preordered or purchased: Past Present Future by Solomon, What Happened to […]
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. July TBR I can’t believe I forgot my June TBR post! I did do my summer TBR for TTT recently so that is partially true at least. I’m excited to participate in Summerween so that TBR is below and will make up a good amount of my reads for the entire month if I don’t finish. Egalleys I have a lot of egalleys from previous months but focusing in on a few here that come out in the next month or so. There are a couple more but you’ll see them in the Summerween post below. June-July Releases I’ve acquired a number of books in the last month and again, most are in the TBR below. A few of these come out at the very end of the month and I’ve preordered them. The others I already own. Summerween As I mentioned, any books I don’t finish from Summerween are going to be read throughout the rest of the month and fit into other categories in my normal TBR.