I’ve talked repeatedly on here about how I love books where random people come together over a shared event or traumatic experience – people who would otherwise never have met each other. Movies like Valentine’s Day, Love the Coopers, and New Years Eve always interested me too, where interconnected stories play out slowly throughout the movie and you wonder how the people you’ve met will end up knowing each other. There are a lot of topics that fall under this kind of “connection” category, like people meeting up during trips (traveling around the world, road tripping, etc.), being snowed in or stuck somewhere with someone, health-related connections (through organ donation, being in a hospital, etc.), working together for the summer or at a first job, or even being connected over time (where some of the story happens in the past and some happens in present day, but the characters’ stories are related). There are A LOT of flavors to this category that I love so much, but one thing remains true: these people would not know each other if it weren’t for the weird, extenuating circumstance that ends up binding them together.    In my recent read-bait post, I talked about “travel meet cutes.” This is the kind of situation where someone meets a ~special person~ during their travels (road trip, airport, stuck on a train – the list goes on) and fall in love. I’ll talk about those books here a little, but I wanted to also expand into those […]

I wrote a TTT a while back where I created a book club that read specific books based on the season or month. I thought it’d be a fun post to revisit now with newer books! I also wanted to add in more details, like the setting for the book club meeting and/or if there’s a specific theme to the month that can go beyond the story itself. I haven’t read any of these books yet because this is my fictional book club where I’m reading everything for the first time with my friends! I also thought it would be fun to do this in December because who knows – maybe I can use some of these as inspiration for my real-life book club in 2018? 😉 Monthly theme: “New Year, New Beginning” Book: People Like Us by Donna Mele Location or activity: Trying a new restaurant for the meeting I wanted to focus on the New Years aspect without actually reading a book about the holiday. I chose PEOPLE LIKE US because it’s about a girl who reinvents herself at a new school in order to cover up some secrets of her past. I love books set at prep schools, plus the murder mystery element. (Let’s pretend this book comes out in January instead of February, okay?) I think this would be a fun way to kick off the year by thinking of reinvention and how it doesn’t always work. For the meeting location, we’d keep it simple by […]

I don’t do as much rereading as I could, should, or want to. I always tell myself I don’t have enough time with all of the other NEW books out there. However, the best kinds of rereads that sort of take away from this issue are (a) audio rereads because it’s like bonus reading time anyways and (b) rereads of books I read for the first time a VERY long time ago, so it’s like I’m reading it again for the first time. I’ve had success with some nostalgic series in the past. I hope to reread some more recent releases this year though, because lots of books have sequels coming out and I decided I wanted to be prepared! MY LADY JANE by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows Reason: It was SO good and I got the audiobook on sale recently; companion story coming out soon Format: Like I said, I got the audiobook on sale after Black Friday! When: Probably sometime close to the release of the new book? They’re not an actual series so I don’t HAVE to do it this way, but I’m guessing I’ll read it sometime around April. I realistically could hold off on rereading this because I don’t have a NEED, but I may as well let myself have some fun 🙂 CARAVAL by Stephanie Garber Reason: I don’t remember much from my first read of the book (what else is new though?) and I preordered the second book in the series. I remember there […]

I’m really feelin’ the inspiration that people are getting from Booktube for blog posts! I’ve been noticing this a lot lately and it’s created some fun posts for sure. The latest one I’ve loved is from Madalyn, who got the inspiration from BooksAndLala’s video. It’s about some low rated books (on Goodreads, sorted by overall rating) that we loved. This is the ever elusive “positive black sheep” opinion. Everyone hated it but I loved it.    Anne & Henry by Dawn Ius Goodreads average rating: 3.06 stars | My rating: 4 stars I can’t put my finger on why I enjoyed this so much, but I did. I think it was an interesting retelling of Anne Boleyn and King Henry VIII, but I think people who don’t know too much about their story may like it more. I saw a lot of mixed reviews from people with more knowledge of their situation. I talked in my review about how Henry was really lame; I could see why he liked Anne but not the other way around. Ask Me How I Got Here by Christine Heppermann Goodreads average rating: 3.19 stars | My rating: 4 stars I suppose I can see why this would be hit-or-miss. I don’t love books in poetry or verse (or even books of straight-up poems, usually), but I enjoyed both works by Heppermann. This story was powerful while still being a very quick read for me. The topic is very heavy and I guess wouldn’t be […]

It’s no secret that one of my favorite features is Cover Snark at A Reader of Fictions. I usually add 90% of my unreleased books to my TBR from these posts. I don’t want to take a page out of her book here (weird sort-of pun?) but I did want to share some recent book covers I’ve seen that I added to my “cover love” shelf. You’ve seen this post on my blog in one way or another for years, because you know how I feel about covers, but here are some unreleased books with covers I am looovin. Covers I Already Love See all the books here. Covers I Can’t Wait to See I always keep some books on my “jazzed up for this” shelf so I can remember which synopses really grabbed me. There are quite a few books on this shelf in any given moment, so I wanted to check out which books I can’t WAIT to see covers for! Here are a few… Serious Moonlight by Jenn Bennett Synopsis: Simon Pulse has bought a YA title by Jenn Bennett. In Serious Moonlight, a mystery aficionado spends the summer before college knee-deep in both intrigue and a romance with her charismatic co-worker while working the night shift in a Seattle hotel. The book is scheduled for 2019. Why I’m excited: I love Jenn Bennet in general and this book sounds so good! I’ve enjoyed her other covers for the most part and think they usually fit the book pretty […]