Month: August 2025

Top Ten Tuesdays #476: Non-Bookish Freebie

Posted August 26, 2025 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 0 Comments

Non-Bookish Freebie: Media Lately 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. Since we’ve spent the past few months moving and in between residences, we haven’t really sat down for a lot of television shows or movies. We’ve been zoning out with sports and Love Island lol. I thought I’d do a little summary of some of the non-bookish media I’ve been filling my time with: podcasts, movies, shows, etc. Sports WNBA // Once the W season starts, it’s really hard for us to watch any shows at night lol. We watch whatever games are on (especially our Connecticut Sun) and just hang out. Podcasts Who Took Misty Copsey // I tend to listen to missing person podcasts almost exclusively, as far as true crime goes, and this has been a good one so far! My podcast feed has been pretty dry lately so I’m always happy to see this one pop up. Good Hang with Amy Poehler // I’m a big fan of Amy but admittedly only listen to the episodes with guests that I’m interested in. I still have a few in my queue. Amy does a great job with her questions and style of podcast. I’m loving it. TV Shows Love […]

Recent Reads | Not Quite Dead Yet and Mean Moms

Posted August 22, 2025 / Book Reviews, Recent Reads / 0 Comments

I’m a huge fan of Holly Jackson and have loved all of her books (I still haven’t read one of them though), so I was really looking forward to her adult debut mystery. The concept sounded so interesting: the main character is attacked in an attempted murder and the aneurysm in her brain will trigger within the week, so she has less than seven days to try to solve her own murder before she dies. I loved the idea that she’s really “not quite dead yet” and by the time she does die, it will be literally her solving her own murder. I started this book via audio when I was setting up our new house and unpacking, so I managed to read the first third of it in one sitting. However, the audiobook narrator was utterly terrible. I thought her normal voice and Jet’s narration were perfectly fine but the voices she used for other characters were SO bad. She was basically using weird accents and caricatures of how normal people talk. Her mom, sister-in-law, and friend all had horrific voices and I couldn’t bring myself to listen to any more of it. I read the rest of the book physically. Jet goes out on the case with her childhood best friend, Billy, and they get really close during this time period. It makes her inevitable fate even sadder honestly. I’ll say my biggest issue with this book is that I really did not like Jet – she was […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #475: Books with a High Page Count

Posted August 19, 2025 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 0 Comments

Books with a High Page Count 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 read as many long books as other fantasy readers – I tend to get intimidated and focus too often on quantity to meet my Goodreads girl vs. enjoying a few long reads each year. One of my goals for 2024 was to allow myself to pick a lower challenge number and read a few bricks, but that hasn’t really happened! The longest book I’ve read in 2024 was nearly 600 pages and I read two others above 500. Here are some of my favorite long books I’ve read (literally all of them sequels in a fantasy or science fiction series) and a few on my TBR! Favorite Long Books Long Books on my TBR

Blog Tour: Love at First Sighting

Posted August 18, 2025 / Book Reviews / 1 Comment

Excerpt About the Author Mallory Marlowe is an author and video game writer living in Los Angeles, California. Seriously right-brained since childhood, her love of telling stories began with highly elaborate plots for her Barbie dolls and taking elementary school writing projects too seriously. She studied Writing for Film and TV at Emerson College. When she isn’t writing, she’s likely reading, stuck in LA traffic, or has fallen down a weird internet rabbit hole. Review I was a huge fan of Marlowe’s debut, LOVE AND OTHER CONSPIRACIES, and gave it five stars, so I was really looking forward to her sophomore novel! I love that she writes unique concepts into her novels – her first book involved cryptids and conspiracies, this one had aliens, and her upcoming book features ghosts! El is an influencer in Los Angeles who ends up getting lowkey chased by something that looks like a little UFO. She goes live on Instagram and her followers are baffled by her change in content direction. Of course her video catches the eye of Carter, local PIS agent (think Men in Black lol), and he has to track her down to make sure she doesn’t speak to anyone about what she saw. He has to wear a goofy outfit, including a fedora-like hat, so it was a little hard to picture him and think he was attractive! lol I liked the adventure that these two went on and the fact that there wasn’t a big breakup moment and miscommunication at any point. […]

Bookmark Lit Bulletin | July 2025

Posted August 8, 2025 / 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. July was rough – I was definitely expecting to read more while we were hanging out in our one-month rental but we ended up being out and about quite a bit. The house itself was fine and cozy but smelled like mothballs lol. I couldn’t get into the books I was reading after the first week of the month when we were on vacation, so I finished with a whopping five books. 5 books in July 5 read • 0 reread • 0 DNF Formats: 2 mixed, 1 hardcover, 1 paperback, 1 egalley Status/source: 3 review copies, 1 owned, 1 purchased Age Target: 5 adult Here are all the books I read this month with ratings! 25 in 25: 60% 52 Book Club: 69% Buzzword Reading Challenge: 58% Buzzword Cover Challenge: 83% Breakdown: 5 hardcovers | 3 paperbacks | 1 egalley | 0 ebook | 0 audiobooks All review copies were provided for free in exchange for an honest review. Physical Books From The Book Drop: Finders Keepers by Adler, Their Double Lives by Hendricks From Montgomery and Taggert […]

Recent Reads | It’s a Love Story and Sounds Like Love

Posted August 7, 2025 / Book Reviews, Recent Reads / 1 Comment

I’ve become a huge fan of Annabel Monaghan based on her previous two releases, and I’ve been saving her adult debut for a rainy day. This book is technically my least favorite but honestly it was quite enjoyable regardless! Annabel Monaghan’s books have a way of growing on me as I read. I consider her an auto-buy author but I never get addicted right away. It’s like a slow burn (with the plot, not the romance) where I’m halfway through and realize I’ve fallen in love with everything finally. That moment happened a little later than usual which is why I wasn’t as invested in the characters as I could have been. I didn’t love the MC here but she’s as imperfect as all of Monaghan’s others, so nothing unexpected. Jane and Dan had a lot of logical reasons for why they behaved the way they did, and also why their romance worked; it felt very realistic. I just didn’t connect to them as strongly as expected or as I prefer in a romance. I love that they were visiting his childhood home away from Hollywood – more on that later – for his parents anniversary party. They started the trip as colleagues and ended it as something a little more. The premise was enjoyable and quiet but also had some fun Hollywood stuff that I tend to enjoy. Jane was a former child star known for goofy antics and Dan is a not-super-successful cinematographer. He’s interested in the script […]

All-Time Favorite Books (Top 20)

Posted August 4, 2025 / Uncategorized / 0 Comments

I’m a bestie over at Kayla’s (Books and Lala) channel and recently filled out her survey of all of the besties favorite books. I was able to whittle down and determine by top 20 favorite books. I approached it in a couple of ways: I thought about my childhood or YA years and those favorite authors/books first. I have a decent amount of “young Lauren” favorites on there and then that moves into the YA reading from the first half of my blogging years. I looked at my favorite authors in general and picked my favorite book from each of them (mostly more recent authors and adult books). Putting all of those types of books together led to my top 20 books that I thought I would share today! They’re not in any particular order so I decided to categorize them with adult in the top half and YA in the bottom half.