Category: Book Lists

March TBR

Posted February 28, 2020 / Book Lists, Features, TBR Lists / 2 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. Last month’s progress: I got so bogged down trying to read KING OF CROWS (which is fine because it was wonderful) that I got super behind on my reading. I wish I was able to finish a book before KoC was published, because then I would have gotten on track. I spent the rest of the month constantly two books behind schedule and trying to catch up. I snuck in a short non-TBR book, which helped during my car rides, but overall it was a weird reading month. I was unmotivated to read for the majority of the month, so some TBR picks will carry over into this month. Review Copies I’ll be reading THE JUNE BOYS for the pub month and then ALL YOUR TWISTED SECRETS and SUPER ADJACENT for blog tours. My backlist choice is MARRIAGE ON MADISON AVENUE and my freebie is UNDERCOVER BROMANCE since it comes out this month too. I also was just added to another blog tour for the end of the month for THE SEA GLASS COTTAGE (not pictured but below). Required Reading Book Clubs We picked GHOSTED for my adult book club because one of the […]

Far, Far Away Books I Literally Cannot Stop Thinking About II

Posted February 24, 2020 / Book Lists, Features / 6 Comments

There have been plenty of posts where I talk about unreleased, upcoming books I’m excited about. (If my TBR keeps growing, yours needs to as well!) I usually only do books with covers because reading an entire post about books without a *single* cover image is not my favorite thing, personally. HOWEVER there are so many books that are too far away to have covers that I can genuinely not stop thinking about. I’m going to include some kind of related and/or excited GIF (gotta make up for the lack of covers somehow, no?) for each book and what we know about it so far. // I posted the first round of this in 2019 and am here for another! Mary series by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, Jodi Meadows (2021-3) My Contrary Mary (2021): About Mary, Queen of Scots. My Atomic Mary (2022): About Marie Curie. My Typhoid Mary (2023): About Mary Mallon. I’ve been a huge fan of the My Lady Janies and their companion series so far: retellings of famous Janes from history. I was super pumped a while back to see that they would be continuing with these fun stories with a new round set in the same world, but this time about famous Marys (or Marie, in one case). The original series about Janes has taken a few years in between each book so I’m delighted to see that this next round will have one each year instead! Doomed by Laura Pohl (2021) The story of […]

Ranking Books by Favorite Authors | Sandhya Menon

Posted February 17, 2020 / Book Lists, Features / 2 Comments

Taking some inspiration from the late great Grace at Rebel Mommy Book Blog, I’ve decided to participate in a fun post she used to share from time to time! I’ve been meaning to for AGES and she’s been on my mind lately so I thought I would give it a go. My gut told me to go with Sandhya Menon because she has so many wonderful books and it’d be a real challenge 😉 Ranking Published Books When Dimple Met Rishi is my favorite book still, I think – and it was her first! I just adored these characters SO much and vividly remember rushing to finish reading it at work before my boss got into the office 😉 I love the adorable cover and how it makes me crave an iced coffee every damn time. Just the cutest! There’s Something About Sweetie is clearly a close second. I honestly think depending on my mood these two could switch! I will say that it was a bit hard to read at times with how challenging and frustrating her mother was. Even though I gave this book 5 stars still, that was the one thing I didn’t enjoy about it. Ashish is my FAVE. The Grand Ishq Adventure inside the Hungry Hearts anthology is my third-favorite. There was a lot going on in this little story and I remember that it was a welcome happy tale after a few darker/heavier ones. It involved the classic “advice columnist can’t take their own advice” trope and I adored […]

February TBR

Posted January 31, 2020 / Book Lists, Features, TBR Lists / 6 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. Last month’s progress: I seriously stayed true to my TBR in January – wowee. I’m impressed. I usually take a lot of care in curating my “first month of a new year” TBR, so it makes sense that I worked it and stuck with it. I’ve already gotten started on one of the books on here because my library due date (digitally) is 2/3 and I wanted to be mostly done before the beginning of the month. Anyways, January was good! I got behind on my reading challenge once or twice but was always able to get ahead later. Review Copies Man, the beginning of the year really comes at you quickly! I suddenly had some February releases I really needed to hop on. STARTING OVER AT BLUEBERRY CREEK, BEEN THERE MARRIED THAT, and FOUL IS FAIR all come out in February. IN FIVE YEARS comes out in early March so it’s not too far out, but definitely want to get to this one in February. And as for the backlist title, I’m really trying to push myself to read ALL EYES ON US finally because I keep missing it and it fits a later challenge. […]

My 10 to Read in 2020

Posted January 30, 2020 / Book Challenges, Book Lists, Features, TBR Lists / 8 Comments

I made a little challenge in a few years ago called the Must Read in 2016 Challenge – we all set out to read a very specific list of books that we REALLY needed to read in 2016. The idea was to include books from previous years that you were excited to read and never got around to, so you were resolving to READ THEM OR ELSE. It was not successful for me in any way because dang I STILL have not read some of those books. I’m working through my Rainbow Try a Chapter Unhaul personal challenge for this year, which has me picking 2-3 books per month based on a predetermined color (of the cover/spine of the book), reading a chapter, and deciding if I’ll immediately keep reading it or unhaul it. Nonetheless, there are plenty of books otherwise that I still really need to READ OR ELSE. It feels like I’m making TBR posts every damn day on this blog because of my challenges, readathon, monthly reading plans, etc., but this post is really just a quick way to share some books I genuinely hope to read in 2020 because it’s about damn time. In fact, it’s far PAST time. I saw Hannah posted the ten books she’s targeting to read in 2020 based on a hashtag/challenge from Kayla of Idle Wild Reads (#my10toreadin19). I don’t want to formally sign up for anything or include this in my list of challenges, but I thought it would be […]

Popsugar Reading Challenge Ideas

Posted January 15, 2020 / Book Challenges, Book Lists, Features / 2 Comments

Just like last year, I decided I should make a big ol post about TBR ideas for the Popsugar Reading Challenge! Sometimes it just helps me to circle back and remember what my ideas were at the beginning of the years if I start to get lost later on. I was REALLY excited to see this list because all of the prompts seem attainable this year. Seriously, I’d probably read *most* of these without a lot of prompting. Other resources: Popsugar Reading Challenge post and Popsugar Goodreads Group TBR Ideas A book published in 2020 This is one I’ll be sure to cross off right away, as I tend to read new releases pretty frequently! I decided to list some January titles I’m excited about since I’m sure that’s when I’ll check this box off. It could be ONE OF US IS NEXT, A HEART SO FIERCE AND BROKEN, or A CASTLE IN THE CLOUDS. A book by a trans or nonbinary author I struggle with heavier contemporaries like I WISH YOU ALL THE BEST but I’ve heard so many great things about this book. I think the likely option for me based on my existing TBR will be OVER THE TOP by JVN because they identify as nonbinary. A book about a book club I’ve been seriously meaning to read THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL SOCIETY for while and I don’t really know why, but that will work here. I also have an egalley of UNDERCOVER BROMANCE, which involves […]

Five Star Predictions

Posted January 6, 2020 / Book Lists, Features / 0 Comments

Post found on Pretty Deadly Reviews | Inspired by Mercy’s Bookish Musings For the past few years, I’ve written some prediction posts at the end of the year to predict which books I may rate five stars in the following year. They’re all upcoming releases and usually from authors I already know, love, and have rated many books five-stars from. I did alright with 2019 predictions, with MOST of the books coming between 4-5 stars. Here I go again, this time for 2020 releases… I decided to order them from the most likely to be five stars, down to the ones that maybe are wishful thinking but still have a good chance. The King of Crows by Libba Bray | This series has been such a wonderful experience. I loved Bray’s writing before, but holy crap – she is so damn SMART. I loved the first book, seriously enjoyed the second, loved the third… I’m hoping she REALLY gets me with the final book. I’m simultaneously not ready at all and also cannot wait. Girls with Razor Hearts by Suzanne Young | As you saw in last year’s post and the recent update, I was spot-on in assuming that the first book in this series would be a five-star read. I was blown away. I’m continuing to hope and assume Young will knock my socks off yet again in book two! Four Days of You and Me by Miranda Kenneally | I adored the Hundred Oaks series even though there were a […]

January TBR

Posted December 26, 2019 / Book Lists, Features, TBR Lists / 1 Comment

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. Last month’s progress: I definitely blew it with my challenges for the end of the year because honestly I just stopped caring about forcing myself to complete them. I did a reallllly good job with my holiday books and review copies though! I was able to squeeze in so many Christmassy books. Review Copies I have quite a few books publishing in January for review (those seriously creep on me every year!) so that’s mostly what you’ll see here instead of the usual breakdown of review copy variety. MERMAID INN, YOU WERE THERE TOO, and TWEET CUTE are all publishing in January. BLITZED is from December (didn’t have time with my holiday romances, whoops!). I usually keep this section for egalleys only but I’m including GIRLS WITH RAZOR HEARTS in this section because it’s going to be my first book of 2020 and it’s an ARC publishing in March. Required Reading Book Clubs My YA book club is going to continue the Cursebreakers series when A HEART SO FIERCE AND BROKEN releases in early January. My adult/mystery/women’s fiction book club hasn’t made a final decision on our book yet, so I’ll probably […]

Books I Should’ve Read in 2019

Posted November 28, 2019 / Book Lists, Features / 7 Comments

I would usually make a TBR post at this point of every month, but my holiday TBR list and challenge-related TBR posts went live recently (and they’re pretty all-encompassing). No need to reinvent the wheel here and share the same TBRs! I thought that INSTEAD of a December TBR, I’d reflect on all of the books I should have read in 2019. Or, maybe some books I would get to in December if it wasn’t fully planned out for Christmas novels. I DID do a pretty great job of reading *most* of my highly anticipated books in 2019, but a few escaped me somehow. I usually keep at least one Kasie West book on the back burner for when I need a quick and enjoyable audiobook I wasn’t planning for, so I’m not super surprised I didn’t read FAME, FATE, AND THE FIRST KISS, but I currently have more than one KW book waiting for me. The other 2019 release I definitely should have read was HOPE AND OTHER PUNCH LINES by Julie Buxbaum because I’ve loved her writing so far. I was super excited for this one and am not sure how I managed to avoid reading it this year. Lastly, I should have read I HAVE LOST MY WAY by Gayle Forman in 2018, which means I definitely should have read it this year! Whoops. How am I sleeping on this one?! As you can tell, there are quite a few books I was jazzed up for and just never got around […]

Holidays 2019 | To Read & Watch, Readathons, Etc.

Posted November 18, 2019 / Book Lists, Features, TBR Lists / 5 Comments

Usually I’m getting jazzed up for Christmas in September and forcing myself to wait until at least Halloween, but this year I’ve been feeling weird! I’m not super duper into the holiday spirit like I expected, post-Halloween. I’ve been listening to my holiday music since 11/1 and hopefully reading some holiday books at the end of the month PLUS decorating this week will be helpful. Here we go – onto the usual holiday fun and plans! I have a system right now for scheduling my reading through the end of the year, which includes ranking and prioritizing my holiday reads. I’ll show you the priority reads and review copies (generally one in the same) then all the books I’d LIKE to get to. Scribd actually has a lot of these on audio and I don’t usually listen to holiday audiobooks since I have other stories to continue reading in December. BUT this year I’ve done a lovely job of finishing up challenges nice and early, allowing December to basically be 90% Christmas books. I have a good amount of review copies this season! The book I’ll be starting with, as a quick novella before December, is The Matchmaker’s Mistletoe Mission. I’ll be hosting a readalong of All I Want for Christmas is You with Forever Romance in early December, so be on the lookout for that! I’m participating in a holiday blog tour with Harlequin to share A Wedding in December and Coming Home for Christmas in December, and then The Little Bookshop on the Siene in early January. […]