Top Ten Tuesdays #83: Best Recent Books

Posted March 29, 2016 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 16 Comments

Best Books I’ve Read Recently (4.5 or 5 stars) 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 actually just had a post planned for last week involving a similar topic. After some adjustments, I was able to get ahead and make it this week’s TTT instead! I love being able to highlight favorite recent books because I feel like books always need love. A lot of these books are actually not even released yet, so keep your eyes peeled for them when they’re out! Hopefully you’ll add them to your early TBR list 😉 Please note that the months below show when I read the book, not its release month. After I Do by Taylor Jenkins Reid: This book is also one of my favorite books ever, I’d say. Just like 2015, there’s a good chance that TJR takes home the “favorite book of the year” award. I know there are still 9 more months left for some favorites to pop up… but I dunno. This one could take the cake. I absolutely love her writing style. Everything about this book was relatable – from relationship issues to spending time with family to treating yourself instead of focusing on other people for once. Even though I personally wouldn’t spend a year […]

Organization Part Six: Goodreads II

Posted March 28, 2016 / Discussions, Features / 14 Comments

Inspired by my recent organizational acquisitions (and posts by Hannah), I wanted to share some information about how I keep myself organized – primarily for blogging and reading, but also a little about my personal organization, too. Part Six: Organizing My Goodreads Shelves (II) Yeah. My most recent organizational post was about Goodreads too. I’m already ready for a little update because I’ve made some GREAT changes to help me further organize my TBR. I talked on Friday about how many problems I have with actually creating and sticking with a TBR, so today will show a couple ways I’ve worked towards fixing that issue. It’s not a perfect system because I’ll never have a strict TBR, but it helps a lot. In the previous Goodreads organization post I also shared links for more Goodreads organization posts by some other bloggers, so I’ll do that here for your reference again: Brittany’s, Bekka’s, Hannah’s. This one is specifically about two new shelves I recently created that help me manage my TBR and keep track of books I’m excited to read. TBR-Next | an exclusive shelf Do you want to hear something really stupid? When I first saw people like Danielle creating exclusive shelves on Goodreads to mark what books they’re planning to read next, I thought it was a great idea to keep your TBR ideas in one place. I made a shelf and it lasted like a day or to. The reason? I hated having to scroll down on my Goodreads app to click to access […]

TBR Planning Issues and Required Reading

Posted March 25, 2016 / Discussions, Features / 23 Comments

I always have a very, very general idea of what books I want to read within the upcoming weeks. There are definitely times where I’m like “wait… what the hell should I read next?!” … but those times are few and far between lately. And usually, when those moments happen, it’s just because I can’t decide which books out of a certain ~group~ of books I want to read NEXT. I always have some idea. This is especially true for the different “required reading” books I have each month. My problem though is spacing out books correctly and WHEN to read certain things. Each month, there are a few bookish events that I take part in. They always require reading a book by a certain time or within a certain timeframe. These ones are usually able to be planned for with my TBR but sometimes things get in the way (like ARC tour books – they always surprise me…) The books I know I will have to read by certain dates include: Last Wednesday of the month: Book Buddies Review book selection Mid-to-late-month (dates often change): Book club (IRL) book selection Whenever they come in, within a week: ARC tour books Whenever I have them planned: Blog tour review books / posts So each month, by the middle or end of the month, I have 2 books to read – one for book club and one for Book Buddies. My issue is that I usually don’t start reading them until the week before (or a […]

Cover Colors: Meant to Be

Posted March 24, 2016 / Cover Colors, Features / 12 Comments

It’s no secret that I’m obsessed with book covers. I love the colors, the typography, the different designs that cover artists can create. I even have a guest post feature where people share their favorite book covers and bookmarks! I decided to start up this random feature where I draw color inspiration from my favorite book covers. I may create an outfit, pick out some nail polish, or design a quote graphic. Today’s cover is… Meant to Be by Lauren Morrill This cover is so adorable and colorful – I had to keep the outfit really bright. Honestly I would probably wear this on Easter because of all the pastels! I love the necklace and how the backpack ties everything together. You definitely need a bag like this if you were trekking around London, as well as comfy flats instead of heels. Meant to Be by bookmarklit featuring pink tops What do you think? Perfect for this upcoming Easter weekend, no?

ARC Review: Seven Ways We Lie

Posted March 23, 2016 / Book Reviews / 15 Comments

I’ve seen some mixed thoughts on this one overall but I really, really enjoyed it. There are many people who didn’t think the seven points of view were different enough, but I fall firmly on the opposite side of that opinion. I really could see the difference between each person and felt that they were all different and unique in their own ways. I’m super impressed that the author was able to take seven different people with distinct personalities and carve them out THAT well. Corresponding to the different sins, however, was a little less clear for some characters compared to others. Some of them were very obvious while others didn’t click right away. I did some researching around other reviews and confirmed what I suspected about some of them, so that helped. However, I think in terms of matching up with that completely, the sins could have been more obvious – since that seemed to be the entire idea behind the story. Because this is such a character-driven story, I’ll talk a little about each character and go through them in order of my favorite to least favorite. The character descriptions may be spoiler-y in the sense that I WILL say which sin I think they each correspond to. Characters Olivia | I feel like she was kind of the main character even though there wasn’t necessarily a MAIN character. Her sin was pretty clearly lust because she hooked up with a lot of guys. I really loved her perspective and feminism. […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #82: Need More Love

Posted March 22, 2016 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 24 Comments

Non-Contemporary Books I Loved but Never Talk About 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. Everyone knows that contemporary fiction – usually YA but often adult – is my JAM. Over half of my reading each year is within that genre. I love romance and swoons and summertime and fluff. That’s what I think of when I’m imagining my perfect books. Because of my love for contemporary, I am usually screaming about my favorites on the blog quite a bit. So today, I’ll be skewing the topic of “Ten Books I Really Love But Feel Like I Haven’t Talked About Enough” to just be the… Yep, today is all about anything that isn’t really contemporary fiction. Some of my other bookish interests are below, along with a couple of books I loved under each category. I’m kind of pushing my definition of “non-contemporary” here (because quite a few are essentially contemporary, but have elements of something else). Please also keep in mind that I did try to restrict it to the books that I don’t personally feel like I talk about enough. Everyone knows how much I love the Lunar Chronicles by now, so I didn’t feel like it was doing the topic justice to include that in the retelling […]

Review: We Are the Ants

Posted March 21, 2016 / Book Reviews / 13 Comments

You know you really loved a book when you find yourself immediately tracking down other books by the author. I did end up checking two out from the library (and was planning on doing an author binge review), but didn’t read them in time. The joys of being a mood reader, amirite? So that’s why there’s a bit of a delay on this book review that I actually read a few months ago. But here we go! What a book this was! I wasn’t sure what to expect from this story, but I admittedly had high expectations from all the glowing reviews. There aren’t many reviews, but the ones that do exist are damn perfect. This was a really honest, interesting, and heartbreaking book. It covered every possible topic, fully fleshed out every character, and made me feel all sorts of things. I admittedly do not read a lot of books that fall under the QUILTBAG umbrella, and I plan to change that this year. Really. I think that books about coming out are REALLY important and helpful to those in that situation, but there is much to be said about books that don’t involve that element of the community. It was nice to read a book like this, where the character was already out to his family and it was really never brought up as an “issue.” (You know what I mean; I don’t know what other word to use there.) I could spend all day talking about the characters. […]

Clean Sweep ARC Challenge and Bookish Bingo Readathon Sign-Ups

Posted March 19, 2016 / Book Challenges, Features / 3 Comments

Here today signing up for two challenges/readathons for April and May! Clean Sweep ARC Challenge This is something I am in desperate need of. I told myself I would be picky with challenges this year, and the Clean Sweep ARC Challenge is making the cut for sure. I have so many ARCs still leftover from ALA Midwinter, some that have already been published (both from ALA and eARCs), and some blog tour books coming up. At the time of posting this, my ARC TBR is a bit huge. I’m sure I’ll knock some off by the time May comes around, but I am so in for this challenge to finish up the rest. Hosted by Kimberly @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer and Kristin @ Addicted to Happily Ever After For the fourth year in a row during the month of May we will be challenging you to get those advanced reading copies read! These can be e-arc’s, finished copies, audio and physical arcs. (regardless of release date) As an added bonus you will be able to schedule advanced reviews and free up your time to enjoy the warmer weather. To make things fun there will be 24 hour readathon and a grand prize for a 2016 release. So roll up your sleeves grab your brooms and check your NetGalley stats, Edelweiss haul and those books you’ve meant to review in your ARC TBR pile..because it’s time to make a CLEAN SWEEP! Some rules I’m highlighting so I don’t forget the big ones: ARC’s must be read between May 1st, […]

New & Upcoming Books I’m Super Excited For

Posted March 18, 2016 / Discussions, Features / 14 Comments

I never highlight new or upcoming releases (unless it’s a TTT topic!) because I just didn’t give myself enough time on my blogging calendar for fun posts like this. I always love adding new books to my TBR and creeping on other people’s posts like this, so here’s my own! This list will include 2016 books that have already been released, as well as plenty that still need to come into the world. A few related posts that may be of interest to you: Anticipated Books in the First Half of 2016 • Anticipated Debut Books in 2016 • Anticipated Romances in the First Half of 2016 The Bucket List to Mend a Broken Heart by Anna Bell // From what I can gather, this one is published in the UK but I’m able to get a Kindle copy… so that’s cool! It just came out this month and sounds adorable. I’ve been recently attracted to “bucket list” kinds of books, so this was quick to join my TBR. I also have to admit the absolutely adorable cover helped my decision, too. Right of First Refusal by Dahlia Adler // Dahlia is an absolute auto-buy author for me. I have loved all of the books I’ve read from her within the last few months. (I can’t believe I’ve only started reading her books that recently!) Her Radleigh University NA series kicked off perfectly, so this second book was a no-brainer preorder for me. Now I just need to find the time to read it… […]

Mini ARC Reviews: Linny’s Sweet Dream List and Rebel Bully Geek Pariah

Posted March 17, 2016 / Book Reviews / 8 Comments

I generally liked this one, but the last half of the book bugged me. Consider this a very strong 3 stars! It was a quick, cute read about a woman trying to get her life back on track. I loved the Southern small-town setting that had lots of fun and interesting characters. The family dynamics between Linny, her sister Kate, and her mother Dottie were so great. I loved seeing their relationship, as well as Linny’s relationship with her best friend Mary Catherine. However, Linny jumped to so many conclusions throughout the book about Jack and his marital status… no matter how much evidence was OBVIOUS otherwise. QUIT ASSUMING! I also think the events of the plot could have been better spaced out; it was very slow-moving overall. The writing was a bit bland at times? I felt like the same descriptors were used too often and the book just felt… bland. I don’t know how else to explain it. She referred to Jack as “the vet” and his son as “the young boy” every other sentence instead of using their names, which felt impersonal. Overall though, it was a heartwarming, quick read with solid ending that made me happy I read it. Like most readers of this book, I expected a Breakfast Club vibe with a little mystery involved based on the synopsis. I figured it would be a contemp with multiple points of view – from the rebel, the bully, the geek, and the pariah. The book ended […]