Blog Tour | Review: Where We Fall

Posted May 4, 2016 / Book Reviews / 8 Comments

Review I mentioned this book back in my recent read-bait post. The synopsis called out to me because I love the stories about coming home, reuniting with old friends, and uncovering past ~secrets~ of some kind. I knew this book would need to be read immediately, so I’m happy to take part in the blog tour (they always give me a kick in the pants to read books I’m excited for, instead of getting bogged down in other things!). Honestly though, “For the first time in seventeen years, a trio of once-inseparable friends find themselves confronting past loves, hurts, and the rapid rush of a current that still pulls them together…” is so ridiculously ME; I can’t even deal. The book started off with a bang – it kept me interested right from the beginning. The main character, Abby, had hit an emotional rock bottom and was dealing with the consequences within her family. Her husband, Ryan, and daughter, Juliana, are very close; it weighs on Abby quite a bit that she can’t and doesn’t have the same kind of relationship as they do. There was a LOT going on within the first 50 pages of the book! As the synopsis promises, someone from their past returns home and derails everything even further. I liked when Lauren was introduced because she provided some more background about how the three of them shifted around and lost touch. Wondering about their backstory was the driving force for me. This is really character-driven story. […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #88: Revisiting Characters

Posted May 3, 2016 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 21 Comments

Ten Characters I’d Love to Revisit in 10 Years 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. The very large, excellent topic idea for this week is Ten Childhood/YA Characters You’d Love To Revisit As Adults: {(ie a novella or something to see what they grew up to be) — you could always just pick YA characters you’ve read recently you wouldn’t mind revisiting in 10 years or so. Or you could pick 10 characters and guess what you think they’d be doing in 10 years or 20 years. OR you could go the other way and wish for coming of age stories for adult characters you love.} I love this topic! I decided to go with the idea of revisiting characters in 10 years.I split this into three sections because there are always questions you have about the future when you finish a book. Does your OTP stay together forever even though they met when they were 16? Does the world come to an end? Do people have more character growth? Someone give me some answers or a nice 10-years-later-novella. I am going to use spoiler tags when I have specific ending-related questions about the book. Everything else is vague enough! Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell | WHAT ARE THE WORDS? […]

Blog Tour | ARC Review: Down with the Shine

Posted May 2, 2016 / Book Reviews / 10 Comments

Review Whew, what a fun ride! This book was incredibly unique and awesome. I had almost no idea what to expect. I don’t read a lot (or any?) magical realism and this was such an insanely cool “introduction” to the genre for me. The premise definitely intrigued me – magical moonshine that could grant wishes?! I was picturing all of these crazy consequences and that’s exactly what the book delivered on. Lennie decides to get some popularity at a party by bringing along her uncle’s moonshine. She repeats the usual protocol that they do, thinking nothing of it. They ask the drinker to make a wish, she repeats it back, and says “may all your wishes come true, starting with this one.” She has no idea that this is not just a way of enjoying moonshine with someone. It’s a secret power the family possesses where they’re able to grant wishes to the drinker. Of course, like most wishes, they can’t be undone. After a drunken night full of wishing, Lennie realizes something has gone horribly wrong the next morning. Her uncles explain what happened and Lennie is on a path to make things right. There were so many different, interesting characters in this story. For her family, Lennie has her three uncles and their tough love approach, Lennie’s wanted-by-the-FBI-murderer-robber father, and her mother who is a shadow of her former self. There’s her longtime crush Smith, who also happens to be the twin brother of her recently murdered friend […]

Bookmark Lit Bulletin – April 2016

Posted May 1, 2016 / Bookmark Lit Bulletin, Features, Wrap-Ups / 0 Comments

The Bookmark Lit Bulletin was created to wrap up each month and prepare for the next. I share my life happenings, book haul, books I read and reviewed, posts I shared, challenge updates, and more from the previous month. I also let you know what may be coming up on the blog in the coming month. You can read past bulletins here and learn more about the feature here. Yet again, read more books than I planned! I was on a crazy binge this month for some reason. I couldn’t get enough reading, even though I’m super ahead on everything. I’m happy the ARC tour books have slowed down (my fault, I know!) but my final one for a WHILE is currently in my possession, and that’s it. Time to focus on Bout of Books and the Clean Sweep Challenge for May! Average rating for books read in April: 4.07 stars All book covers link to their Goodreads pages Best of the Best • Pleasantly Surprised • Disappointed All of the books read this month: Average rating for books reviewed in April: 3.42 stars My Secret Sister sent me a “cravings” package this month and it was soooo perfect! She gave my my favorite snacks that I’ve been craving lately – Junior Mints, BBQ chips, and Oreos. She also gave me this really cute sunglasses case, which I didn’t know how much I needed until I had it! I always throw my glasses in my purse and then get mad when they get scratches. This […]

Bout of Books 16 Sign-Up | Clean Sweep ARC Challenge TBR

Posted April 29, 2016 / Book Challenges, Features, TBR Lists / 10 Comments

Bout of Books 16 Sign-Up & TBR Options First things first, I am going to be signing up for Bout of Books again! What else is new? This is a pretty great post to tack this onto because it’s going to tie in directly with the Clean Sweep ARC Challenge. More details on Bout of Books: The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, May 9th and runs through Sunday, May 15th in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 16 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. – From the Bout of Books team Goal: Read only ARCs (below) during Bout of Books! I would love to get a jump start on the Clean Sweep ARC Challenge by reading only ARCs from the TBR below during Bout of Books. It takes place during the second full week of May, so it’ll be a good way of ensuring that I get off on the right foot. Because I have an actual TBR to choose from, I don’t want to set a specific goal for how many books I’d want to read. As usual, I’d like to read 2-4 books in a week. This is pretty standard for me so let’s see how it goes! […]

ARC Review: The Way Back to You

Posted April 28, 2016 / Book Reviews / 3 Comments

So this is a really strong 4 stars for me. Sometimes I think I could round it up because I really loved it so much as I was reading it! The only issue I’m finding is that I finished the book last night and don’t feel as much of an impact as I expected. The book is about some generally heavier topics so I expected for the ~feels~ to last me a few days. I know my bookish memory is not great at all, but still. I don’t know what it is. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the many, many things I LOVED about this book: Characters I loved learning about Cloudy and Kyle. I thought they had an interesting dynamic and I was really interested to see what transpired between them (that led to their current non-friendship). I wish more was fleshed out surrounding that, or at least about their relationship before Ashlyn and Kyle started dating. I guess I just wanted all that spoiler-y stuff to be beefed up more. I didn’t feel some of it as much as I’d like to in that situation. Lots of telling and not showing. Road trip I love books involving road trips and journeys of any kind. This one had a unique reason (more on that in a second), so I was even more excited. There’s just something about being on the open road with someone, going from place to place, that makes me wanderlust-y. What […]

Older Books Get a New Look (then I Buy Them)

Posted April 27, 2016 / Discussions, Features / 12 Comments

I’ve noticed a recent trend where much older YA book series get cover redesigns and re-released, as if they’re brand new books. Right before I started my book blog, I read the Summer series by Katherine Applegate (highlighted in this post, too). It had previously been this super long series with a bunch of short books. Eventually, like 20 years after it first came out, the books were released into bigger bind-ups and sold again. I didn’t realize this when I first bought it, but thought it was kind of a cool idea. Why not give older books a facelift so they appeal to a new audience? I have no issues with this. I’m such a cover snob as it is; anything to help me buy the book is a good thing for authors and publishers. I like to think that YA books are generally timeless – teens will have similar issues today, twenty years ago, and twenty years from now. I know that changing technology is really the bigger difference between those books, though. Some books written 5-10 years ago even feel outdated if they reference flip phones or MySpace instead of Facebook, Twitter, and iPhones. However, the general message and struggles with growing up are pretty universal. Since I noticed this trend, I wanted to highlight a few book series here that recently got updated, republished, and pushed out into the world. And, inevitably, onto my personal bookshelves. 13 Little Blue Envelopes & The Last Little Blue Envelope by Maureen […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #87: Bookworm Delights

Posted April 26, 2016 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 27 Comments

Ten Bookworm Delights 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 topic was inspired by Jamie’s post on her blog recently and I have to say, it was hard not to copy all of her answers! (Don’t worry, I didn’t.) Today we’re looking at the top ten bookworm-y things that delight you or excite you in some way. I have a lot of these, as I’m sure you all do too! Here’s my list of favorite bookworm qualities or moments or other things!

ARC Reviews: The Epidemic and Dream On

Posted April 25, 2016 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

I was SO excited to grab this one from ALA back in January, but OF COURSE I waited forever to finally sit down and read it. There’s something wrong with me, okay? But after the cliffhanger at the end of THE REMEDY, I knew I had to get to it as soon as there was a break in my reading schedule. Honestly, I kind of created a break in my schedule; I knew this book was one I could finish in three sittings or less because I get sooo addicted to Young’s writing. This was definitely the case with THE EPIDEMIC! It took a few chapters for me to be reminded of what happened in the previous book. Thankfully, there was a pretty solid amount of recapping THE REMEDY without feeling like too much information. I still loved Quinn and was wondering what would happen with Deacon, after the previous book’s major cliffhanger about him. The biggest question I had throughout the story was HOW. How is all of this happening? Does Virginia have something to do with it all? How is it possible that suicide became an epidemic – something contagious – instead of something just related to groupthink. I was so eager to get to the end see everything tie into THE PROGRAM and THE TREATMENT. It’s weird reading a prequel series because you know how the world ends up afterwards… and it’s not a pretty place to be. I knew that my final rating for this story […]

Help Me Pick a TV Show to Binge!

Posted April 23, 2016 / Personal / Information / Etc. / 32 Comments

Obviously we all have our TBR lists and even posts each month, but I wanted to try to sit here and think of all the TV shows I want to watch. I saw Katrina’s post the other day about the shows she wishes she had more time to watch, and it inspired me a little bit. Maybe you guys can help me prioritize some of these shows! I’ll tell you a bit about shows I’ve loved or am currently watching, and you can make some recommendations (by voting in the poll for your favorites!). Shows I’m currently watching or finished: 90210 • Angie Tribeca • Arrested Development • Breaking Bad • Broad City Brooklyn Nine-Nine • Brothers and Sisters • Chasing Life • Community • Devious Maids Desperate Housewives • Faking It • Friday Night Lights • Friends • Fresh off the Boat Gossip Girl • Heroes • How I Met Your Mother • Humans • It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Marvel’s Agent Carter • Marvel’s Daredevil • Marvel’s Jessica Jones • Master of None Modern Family • The OC • Orange is the New Black • Parks and Recreation Pretty Little Liars • Sex and the City • Workaholics • Younger Shows I’m looking to start or binge: Aside from finishing a few of the shows above (Friday Night Lights, Orange is the New Black, Daredevil, etc.), I want to binge something else. Some of these shows are finished, which is nice, but others are still happening on TV. Why I want to watch: bookish main character, it’s coming back on Netflix, located in Connecticut! Why I want to watch: everyone seems to love this show, mystery/crimes, I own some on DVD […]