Category: Spotlight

Spotlight: Calendar of Crime Challenge

Posted December 20, 2019 / Book Challenges, Features, Spotlight / 0 Comments
Spotlight: Calendar of Crime Challenge

My new Spotlight feature highlights anything within the bookish world that I feel deserves a spotlight for a few minutes – publishers (or more specifically, imprints!), new or old favorite authors, bookish people/bloggers, covers or cover trends, topics/genres within books, and anything else that should be on your radar. Calendar of Crime Challenge I thought it’d be really fun to put a spotlight on the Calendar of Crime reading challenge, hosted by My Reader’s Block. You can read their post about the 2020 challenge HERE for more details and to sign up, but I wanted to highlight why I think this is such a worthwhile and intriguing challenge. If you’re someone like me who LOVES researching things, plotting highly specific TBRs, and enjoys scheduling their reading, you have to take a look at this challenge. Challenge Rules/Premise The basic idea of this challenge is to read at least one crime-related book a month (mystery, thriller, police procedural, cozy mystery – you name it) that fits one of the prompts on the Calendar of Crime. Each month has a number of challenges that you should follow for your mystery book of choice. “To claim a book, it must fit one of the categories for the month you wish to fulfill. Unless otherwise specified, the category is fulfilled within the actual story. for instance, if you are claiming the book for December and want to use “Christmas” as the category, then Christmas figure in some in the plot. Did someone poison the […]

Spotlight: Backlist Books (2016)

Posted September 20, 2019 / Features, Spotlight / 3 Comments
Spotlight: Backlist Books (2016)

Backlist Books My new Spotlight feature highlights anything within the bookish world that I feel deserves a spotlight for a few minutes – publishers (or more specifically, imprints!), new or old favorite authors, bookish people/bloggers, covers or cover trends, topics/genres within books, and anything else that should be on your radar. One of the bigger issues with book blogging is that we all tend to chase the new pretties. We get excited for new releases, read advanced copies, and yell about them… until the next new release comes around. I do love having TTT posts to highlight books from ALL reading and blogging years, but I often notice myself reaching for the same titles on those posts too. I’ve tried to bring some old books to the blog with my Nostalgia Project, reread-a-thons with Cristina for books from our pasts, and Backlist Book challenges, but it doesn’t feel like enough. I think now would be a great time to pull out a bunch of Spotlight posts that focus on books I read in specific ~past years~ that I loved, yelled about at the time, and have since not talked about as much. Each Friday of September will feature one year of books/releases from my blogging past, from 2014-2017. BL Favorites from 2016 Monstrous Beauty by Elizabeth Fama | I really enjoyed this one and it was completely unexpected! It was recommended to me for a challenge prompt and I ADORED the audiobook especially. Great story! Close Enough to Touch by Colleen […]

Spotlight: Backlist Books (2015)

Posted September 13, 2019 / Features, Spotlight / 2 Comments
Spotlight: Backlist Books (2015)

Backlist Books My new Spotlight feature highlights anything within the bookish world that I feel deserves a spotlight for a few minutes – publishers (or more specifically, imprints!), new or old favorite authors, bookish people/bloggers, covers or cover trends, topics/genres within books, and anything else that should be on your radar. One of the bigger issues with book blogging is that we all tend to chase the new pretties. We get excited for new releases, read advanced copies, and yell about them… until the next new release comes around. I do love having TTT posts to highlight books from ALL reading and blogging years, but I often notice myself reaching for the same titles on those posts too. I’ve tried to bring some old books to the blog with my Nostalgia Project, reread-a-thons with Cristina for books from our pasts, and Backlist Book challenges, but it doesn’t feel like enough. I think now would be a great time to pull out a bunch of Spotlight posts that focus on books I read in specific ~past years~ that I loved, yelled about at the time, and have since not talked about as much. Each Friday of September will feature one year of books/releases from my blogging past, from 2014-2017. BL Favorites from 2015 I had a lot of favorites that I read in 2015 but still talk about, so I’m going to only focus on the ones that I don’t feature on my blog QUITE as much as others! I’m also […]

Spotlight: Backlist Books (2014)

Posted September 6, 2019 / Features, Spotlight / 3 Comments
Spotlight: Backlist Books (2014)

Backlist Books My new Spotlight feature highlights anything within the bookish world that I feel deserves a spotlight for a few minutes – publishers (or more specifically, imprints!), new or old favorite authors, bookish people/bloggers, covers or cover trends, topics/genres within books, and anything else that should be on your radar. One of the bigger issues with book blogging is that we all tend to chase the new pretties. We get excited for new releases, read advanced copies, and yell about them… until the next new release comes around. I do love having TTT posts to highlight books from ALL reading and blogging years, but I often notice myself reaching for the same titles on those posts too. I’ve tried to bring some old books to the blog with my Nostalgia Project, reread-a-thons with Cristina for books from our pasts, and Backlist Book challenges, but it doesn’t feel like enough. I think now would be a great time to pull out a bunch of Spotlight posts that focus on books I read in specific ~past years~ that I loved, yelled about at the time, and have since not talked about as much. Each Friday of September will feature one year of books/releases from my blogging past, from 2014-2017. BL Favorites from 2014 Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver | This is one of my favorite books in general – I’ve even reread it, which I never do. I read it for the first time in 2014 and it’s the book that […]

Spotlight: YA Anthologies

Posted April 19, 2019 / Features, Spotlight / 8 Comments
Spotlight: YA Anthologies

My new Spotlight feature highlights anything within the bookish world that I feel deserves a spotlight for a few minutes – publishers (or more specifically, imprints!), new or old favorite authors, bookish people/bloggers, covers or cover trends, topics/genres within books, and anything else that should be on your radar. Young Adult Anthologies My first Spotlight feature that came out recently highlighted a favorite publishing imprint, so this next installment will show another kind of ~thing~ I plan on focusing on – bookish trends and types of books! I’ve always been a sucker for short story collections, especially holiday ones like Let It Snow, Mistletoe, and Snow In Love. These have 3-4 stories, so I’m not going to talk about them here. I’m talking about big anthologies that have upwards of 10-15 stories in them, from prominent YA authors, centered around specific topics. I’ve noticed SO many more anthologies being announced lately, so I thought it’d be a fun list to round up. I’ll be ranking my favorite anthologies and talking about some I’m excited about. Anthologies I’ve Read, Ranked While I tend to look back on BOTH Perkins anthologies with rose-colored glasses, only one of them was really that great. I loved the stories in My True Love Gave to Me and found them to be such perfect cozy holiday stories. I love that Summer Days and Summer Nights has the same adorable cover style, but the stories themselves were very meh for me, for the most part. The Meet Cute […]

Spotlight: Forever Romance

Posted April 5, 2019 / Features, Spotlight / 6 Comments
Spotlight: Forever Romance

My new Spotlight feature highlights anything within the bookish world that I feel deserves a spotlight for a few minutes – publishers (or more specifically, imprints!), new or old favorite authors, bookish people/bloggers, covers or cover trends, topics/genres within books, and anything else that should be on your radar. Forever Romance Website | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook Am I biased about Forever because I love Estelle, their marketing/PR guru? Could be. But honestly, this imprint is one of my very favorites lately. The stories, authors, books – they all speak for themselves… and, of course, my ratings speak to how much I genuinely enjoy their titles. Forever Romance is an imprint under Grand Central Publishing (Hachette). They focus specifically on romance titles. Forever Yours focuses on ebooks and digital-first publishing. I came to know Forever when Estelle started her position there and it’s been so great to collaborate with her! You may remember during the holiday season when I worked with Forever on the All Hale Christmas Wishes read-a-long. Jenny Hale has been one of my favorite holiday writers for years now and being able to see one of my FAVORITES become a cute paperback through Forever was an awesome experience. Today I’ll be sharing some of my favorite things about Forever Romance, books I recommend (and books still on my TBR!), and why I think you should focus on this imprint for all of your romance needs 😉 Small Town Romance (Including Holiday Stories!) One of the biggest […]