Events & Festivals Top Ten Tuesdays were started by The Broke and the Bookish and are now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, 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’ve been fortunate enough to attend the bigger bookish events like ALA and BEA, but there are a few more on my bucket list too! Here are a couple I’ve attended and more on my list for the future… you know, when events are allowed to be a thing again! 😉 BEA I went to BEA back around when I first started blogging and it was an amazing experience to meet so many internet friends in real life! I remember feeling so damn excited waiting in line for the signed ARCs of SIX OF CROWS at the time. I went to a BEA party last year, which feels so weird to think about given the current COVID situation out there. I went into the city to attend the party above and meet Madalyn and her friends. It was a lot of fun! I hope to head back to BEA again someday 🙂 ALA Midwinter I went to ALA Midwinter a few years ago when it was in Boston because I live so close. It was awesome to see more friends and obviously meet Curious George 😉 This is another event I would […]

Books that Made Me Smile Top Ten Tuesdays were started by The Broke and the Bookish and are now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, 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. There are a lot of reviews on my blog where I claim I was “smiling like an idiot” throughout the whole book. I decided to keep it simple for this one (anyone notice how lazy my TTTs have been lately??) and keyword search for “smile” to figure out which books I reviewed and shared how much I smiled while reading. Date Me, Bryson Keller This book was pure shippy goodness and I remember blazing through it in one sitting, even during the horrible quarantine reading mood I’m in. “I thought their chemistry built up REALLY nicely throughout the week and felt so real to me. It just made me smile and keep reading all night… I highly recommend this one if you need something similar to SIMON VS. but honestly? This had even more swoons and chemistry and smiley moments for me.” 10 Blind Dates I didn’t actually write this in my review but it was the book I used in the 2019 EOY book survey as the one that put a smile on my face or was the most fun to read. Totally loved it. From the 2019 EOY […]

Nonfiction Books on Race and Fiction by Black Authors I Have on my TBR Top Ten Tuesdays were started by The Broke and the Bookish and are now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, 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 post is supposed to be the books we added to our TBR and don’t remember why, but there are a few reasons I’m shifting to this topic today instead. I recently culled my TBR and moved things around a lot so there aren’t really any books on there I didn’t intentionally put on. So, instead I’ll talk about ten books I intentionally put on my TBR about race relations and how to be an antiracist/better ally, as well as some fiction books by Black authors on my TBR (either recently added or already on there). The past couple of weeks have been unlike any other (hell, the past few months have to, for different reasons). I’m so inspired by people out there protesting! I have a anxiety about large crowds (I barely even like concerts) so I haven’t gone myself, but I’ve donated as much as I can each day and signed more petitions than I can count. It’s important to recognize that Black Lives Matter. I also usually don’t link books because I’m incredibly lazy, but am linking to Goodreads today so […]

Books that Give Off Summer Vibes Top Ten Tuesdays were started by The Broke and the Bookish and are now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, 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 love a summery book, especially when reading on the porch or in the sand. I’m eager to put together my 2020 summertime TBR and almost did that here, but instead I thought I would follow the prompt specifically 😉 I’ve already read a book or two with perfect summer vibes! 2020 Summery Reads The three books above are all YA fiction – I didn’t see a whole lot of summery YA books coming out in 2020! But these three are definitely on my radar. SAY YES SUMMER is about exactly what you think: a girl says yes to things for the entire summer. MEET ME AT MIDNIGHT and JUST A BOY AND A GIRL AND A CANOE both take place during the summer and have great warm covers. BIG SUMMER (a woman invited to her ex-BFF’s summer wedding… as the maid of honor, when they haven’t spoken in years) and SUMMER DARLINGS (nannying gig on Martha’s Vineyard) are new to my TBR but both seem pretty great. I’m also excited that Forever Romance has two great titles coming in July, set in two of my favorite book settings […]

Gripping Books I Couldn’t Put Down Top Ten Tuesdays were started by The Broke and the Bookish and are now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, 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 this annoying habit of needing to do TTTs no matter what even if the topic doesn’t work for me and I’m not in the mood to post one. BUT I found a way to make this one work. The topic is about opening lines, but my memory is absolutely terrible. I thought instead of talking about gripping opening lines, it would make sense to share some gripping books that I found to be unputdownable. These are all recent reads that really grabbed me or made me want to keep reading. It’s been challenging to read this year so some of these books have been incredibly helpful in getting my reading mojo back for some pockets of time.

Reasons I Love YA *and* Adult Fiction Top Ten Tuesdays were started by The Broke and the Bookish and are now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, 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 thought I would take this one in two directions, since I’m terrible at coming up with 10 of anything like this for a list. Since I read both YA and adult fiction, I’ll share the top 5 reasons I love both age ranges for reading. Reasons I Love YA 1. They remind me of being a teen This is the biggest one probably. I made a lot of dumb mistakes as a teenager and these books make me feel less bad about it, to be honest. I love reading about flawed teens learning from their mistakes because that definitely was me back in the day. It can be fun to reminisce on a different time of life. 2. They often allow me to escape normal life I have to get out of my 28-year-old brain while reading YA most of the time, but that’s kind of the point for me. I love being able to think of the times I spent in high school or early college, when life seemed super hard but was often a lot easier. Bills, man – I’m sick of them. 3. They’re […]