As usual, I signed up for the Contemporary Romance Reading Challenge, this year hosted by my love Andi. I generally blow this challenge out of the water because over half of the books I read each year would be classified as “contemporary romance” or just plain contemporary fiction. I’ve been trying to make my reading a little more even with fantasy, mystery, and sometimes historical fiction, but it doesn’t happen. I challenged myself this year to read a 21-book-TBR of contemporary romances I couldn’t believe I hadn’t read yet. Here’s how I’ve done so far…   HAHAHA nice work, Lauren.  So, clearly I have some reading to do. I know it will be nearly impossible, knowing me, to actually read the other 19 remaining books on the TBR between now (mid-July) and the end of the year. I just don’t think I’ll motivate myself to do it, especially when I’m trying to prioritize other genres too. This post really just exists to shame myself into reading these damn books: I do HAVE some of these books with me in Portland (either physical copies I brought, galleys on my Kindle, or found them elsewhere like Scribd, the library, or a library-related app). Some of my physical copies are still in Connecticut but I hope I’ll get to them. I think it’s most likely going to be the summery books I get to somewhat soon, since that’s my favorite thing to read. I’m going to try to split this TBR in half to […]

Every season for as long as I can remember, I’ve participated in the Bingo cards by Pretty Deadly Reviews. I don’t usually set out to complete the card and make a special TBR for it, but I always think it’s fun to see how how many books I read automatically end up on the card. For this one, I feel like I’m already killing it right away… so I definitely want to make a PLAN to knock this one out of the park and complete every square. So! Now that it’s mid-July-ish, I’m going to determine which books I’m going to read to finish filling out the card. Progress So Far Name in title | Defending Taylor – Miranda Kenneally F/F or M/M romance | History Is All You Left Me – Adam Silvera Red cover | Me Before You – Jojo Moyes Part of 4+ book series | The Assassin’s Blade – Sarah J Maas Magic | Caraval – Stephanie Garber June/July/August release | One True Loves – Taylor Jenkins Reid Water on cover | The Islanders Vol 1 – Katherine Applegate Folklore or myths | Fables Vol 3: Storybook Love – Bill Willingham Starts with S U M E or R | Run – Kody Keplinger Political intrigue | The Long Game – Jennifer Lynn Barnes Weather words in title | Mystic Summer – Hannah McKinnon Book about books | The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend – Katrina Bivald Yellow cover | Summer Days and Summer Nights – Stephanie Perkins Monsters | Throne of Glass – […]

In honor of being home “working” on this snowy day, I had plenty of time to mess around on the computer and do bloggy things. (Primarily this means making lots of graphics for posts and trying to whittle down that 300-post Bloglovin feed!) I haven’t shared a TBR post in a few months so I figured today would be a great day – especially because of the holiday approaching this month that’s all about LOOOOVE. You can clearly see that I’m planning on packing in the contemporaries this month. I’m currently in the middle of Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard and I’m enjoying it… for the most part. I’m definitely invested in the story and interested to see what’s going to happen, but my attention span is struggling. I can only read a few pages before letting myself get distracted by the internet. I’m not sure if it’s just because January was a big fantasy month for me and I’m over it (for now), or because of the book itself. Regardless, today I started Meant to Be by Lauren Morrill and am hoping that’s a nice contemporary break. It should only take me a few sittings to finish it. I have two swoony E-ARCs to read this month too and I’m super excited! Promposal by Rhonda Helms sounds cute and right up my alley; I always am interested to hear how people get asked out to dances! “Promposals” were just starting to get big while I was in school and I […]

Like any good book reader and blogger, I LOVE to creep on what others are reading and take recommendations from people. Who better to tell me what books to read than the people who (a) equally creep on my Goodreads and (b) know what the general YA-reading population would like? This can be a beautiful thing; I love this community for that! HOWEVER, I’ve been thinking lately about the books everyone is going crazy for, giving great reviews, or explicitly recommending to you that you DON’T think you’d like. How often do you trust your gut about a book, and how often do you take a risk?  It’s pretty safe to say that every review I saw for Rites of Passage by Joy N. Hensley was glowing. Everyone loved this book or at least really, really liked it… but I was totally turned off from it based on the description. The military school vibe didn’t appeal to me for whatever reason. Once I saw the reviews start rolling in and it seemed that EVERYONE loved it, I started to second guess myself. I figured, if all of these people who usually have similar tastes to mine end up liking it, maybe I will too. I also convinced myself that the military school aspect could be reminiscent of the boarding school books I loved (wrong). I learned that the main character was a badass girl who tried to change the gender norms at military school.. that’s one aspect I could get on […]