Recent Books I Liked More & Less Than Expected Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, 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. This is one of those prompts that makes me so happy because I have Goodreads shelves for this! There’s the “pleasant surprise” shelf and the “super disappointed” shelf to keep track of books I liked more or less than expected. I decided to go back as far as 2016 from those shelves but nothing older than that (in terms of read date, not pub date). Monstrous Beauty | How to Hang a Witch | Cruel Beauty | Down with the Shine | The Leaving Most of these books were just not ones I expected to enjoy as much as I did! This is mostly genre-related (I don’t read too many books about witches or mermaids or magical realism). CRUEL BEAUTY was a pleasant surprise because I actually DNFed another book by this author. MONSTROUS BEAUTY was a random choice based on a recommendation and I ended up loving it. It just wasn’t a book I’d reach for on my own. Otherwise, yep – just basic not-Lauren books surprising me in a very good way. I don’t read books about witches or anything too creepy, but HOW TO HANG A WITCH and THE LEAVING […]

Ten Recent Super-Shippy Books I’ve Read Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, 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. So yes there are so many random things happening with this TTT. First, you may notice, it’s a day late. I figured I’d just push it off to Wednesday instead of double-posting on Tuesday (I had a blog tour). On top of that, I decided to combine this TTT topic with the monthly topic for the Contemporary Romance challenge. The general TTT topic involved counting down favorite romances, tropes, etc. – so I thought this would be a perfect combination for this week. The Contemporary Romance Challenge, hosted by my friend Andi, features a new romance-related topic to link up and talk about about each month. I’ll try to squeeze out individual posts when I can, but otherwise they’ll be located in the Bookmark Lit Bulletin. This month’s topic is… favorite shippy books. What’s the point in reading contemporary romance with a crappy ship? NO POINT, I tell ya. There are plenty of books that have a good ship but not enough to be a favorite though. These OTP-level ships are found on my ship-so-hard shelf on Goodreads in case you’re in the mood to check it out 😉 Upcoming Releases    When Dimple Met Rishi by […]

Ten Books that Needed More Pages Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, 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. Top Ten Books I Wish Had (More/Less) X In Them is a fun topic for me because I wish I had a dollar for every time I said “ugh this book needed more pages.” I guess this can be interpreted in two ways – the books that genuinely needed more pages because there wasn’t enough development or information, and the books that I never wanted to end and just NEED MORE from. Here are ten books that fit the bill! Loved Em & Need More The Hating Game by Sally Thorne | I adored this book. Every single page. I read it so quickly and never wanted to be out of their heads. I would have loved more pages full of banter and cuteness. Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy | I remember getting to the end of this one and thinking it was a little rushed, but I also really loved the whole story. More pages could have helped but otherwise <333 Winning by Lara Deloza | This was another near-perfect book that could have used more oomph toward the end. I wanted some more wrapping up and ~finalizing~ by the end of it, if I remember correctly. Maybe in Another […]

Ten Graphic Novels/Comics – Faves & Up Next Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, 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. This week’s topic is all about the visuals. I don’t read picture books, so I wanted to talk COMICS. I almost never read them anymore, which is sad, but I hope to get more done in 2017. I’d love to catch up completely on the Saga collected volumes (I don’t read the individual issues) at least. I have so many to read (that I already own, gah!) and some I’ve already enjoyed. Read more comic reviews here.            Saga     |     This One Summer     |     Fables I’ve read the first four volumes of SAGA so far and thoroughly enjoyed all of them. I own all of the published volumes, I believe, so I just need to sit down and enjoy them soon. THIS ONE SUMMER was something I kept eyeing at the bookstore, then randomly got out from the library. Loved the story of growing up and fun illustrations. FABLES has been really great so far too. I’ve read maybe three? I keep checking them out on Hoopla when I’m in the mood and it’s a loooong series.            Saved by the Bell  […]

Classics on My 2017 TBR Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, 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 recently came across the app Serial Reader, which allows you to “subscribe” to certain classic books and have bite-sized pieces pushed to your phone each day. You read the book for 10-20 minutes per day to keep it manageable. I don’t really like classics too much because I find them hard to read and too dense at times. The idea of reading them in small bursts every day really appeals to me, and I’ve already started one of them. Here are the top classic books I plan on reading through Serial Reader!             Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll This is the first book I started on Serial Reader. I wanted to do something a little bit shorter so that I could blaze through it and see what the process was like. I’ve always wanted to read the original story instead of basing all my retelling feels on the movie. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte This book has always been on my TBR but I really never thought I’d get around to it. It’s a little longer and will take 72 issues/days to read. I’m excited to hopefully read it at some […]

Top Underrated Books I Read in 2016 Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, 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 highly encourage all of you to make shelves on Goodreads for the books you read in each year. I wish I had a dollar for every time I used my “2016-read” shelf for sorting things like this! I decided to go with the literally underrated books on Goodreads that I read (minus shorter novellas and such). Not all of the books were necessarily published in 2016, but I did read them in 2016. (None were published in 2017 either because obviously they don’t have a lot of ratings yet if so!) I tried to keep the books under 500 Goodreads ratings, but I couldn’t resist adding the final book, which as around 700 ratings. I really enjoyed all of these stories and hope more people pick them up! Some ended up on my all-time favorite list, so I seriously suggest you get reading, friends! This Is Your Afterlife by Vannessa Barneveld | Sometimes We Tell the Truth by Kim Zarins Game On by Michelle Smith | Liars and Losers Like Us by Ami Allen-Vath  Wrecked by Maria Padian | Winning by Lara Deloza  All I Want for Christmas by Jenny Hale | The Lost & Found by […]

Top 2016 Releases I Meant To Read But Didn’t Get To Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, 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. Last year I yelled at myself for not getting to SO many books and I have to say… I totally did not succeed in even reading those 2015 releases in 2016. I read two out of those ten. Good lord, someone punch me. I need to get going on actually reading the books I get all jazzed up about. Hopefully I can manage that for 2017! Once Upon a Kiss by Robin Palmer | The Love That Split the World by Emily Henry Chasing Spring by RS Grey | The Smell of Other People’s Houses by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock The Leaving Season by Cat Jordan | The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney Holding Up the Universe by Jennifer Niven | The Last Boy and Girl in the World by Siobhan Vivian Love & Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch | The Society by Jodie Andrefski The Loose Ends List by Carrie Firestone | With Malice by Eileen Cook The Choices We Make by Karma Brown | The Season by Jonah Lisa and Stephen Dyer A Week of Mondays by Jessica Brody | Unscripted Joss Byrd by Lygia Day Peñaflor The Graces by Laure Eve | How to Make Out by Brianna Shrum I’m Not Your Manic Pixie Dream Girl […]

Top Ten 2017 Debuts I’m Excited For Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, 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 have to be honest and say I do a terrible job about keeping up with debut authors vs. the authors putting out their sophomore novel vs. the people who have a million books out. I can only keep track of my favorite authors in my brain apparently. Because of this, I joined in with the 2016 Debut Author Challenge last year. It was fun to keep track of how many debuts I read… especially because I almost never intentionally read them because they were debuts! Jana creates a Google spreadsheet to keep track of the debuts for the challenge participants, so I decided to take a peek at her list to form the TTT. You’ll see that some of these books have definitely been featured on my blog before, while the majority of them haven’t been talked about yet. I’m trying to include less contemporary fiction than usual too; I’ve noticed a trend for these where quite a few are mystery/thrillers. In any case, here are 10 books by 2017 debut authors that I’m looking forward to reading! Juniper Lemon’s Happiness Index by Julie Israel | I don’t know what to say about this one that I haven’t […]

My Top Books of 2016 Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, 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 can never really let go of enough favorites to make this list short, like 10 books, so I am going to split up by genre and category. All of the books here were rated 4.5 or 5 stars. The first section just has the best (non-reread) books I read in 2016 – all 5 stars. The other categories below feature my other popular categories, like YA contemporary, other YA genres, and Adult contemporary. I don’t know what it says about what’s going to happen in 2017, but two books that haven’t even been released yet made it into my five-star list here. I loved all of these books but if I realllly had to pick an all-time favorite or three, I’m leaning toward After I Do, Results May Vary, and The Hating Game. Other reviews and Goodreads pages can be found here: The Score, We Are The Ants, The Lost and Found, The Long Game, History Is All You Left Me, and Caraval. The last two are 2017 releases so those links go to Goodreads. I loved this selection of YA Contemporary Romance this year! It’s hard to pin down major favorites from this excellent list, […]