Recent Read-Bait: Reunions, Memories, and Boarding School

Posted March 16, 2016 / Book Lists, Features / 15 Comments

You may remember my read-bait series from a long time ago, where I talked about certain keywords, phrases, and tropes that call my name. I planned to keep going with these posts because there are many, many topics that suck me right in. I kind of abandoned it but never fear! Here I am today to talk about recent words that have grabbed me…Please note that the “boarding school” category has kind of morphed into also including secret societies/prep schools/etc. Things like that. You know what I mean. Anyways! I’ve been adding books to my TBR that feature these three topics because of the above books. I read What Alice Forgot with Cristina for Book Buddies. I ended up enjoying it more than she did in general, but the whole memory loss issue made me really interested in finding more of these amnesia books. Second Time Around was a book I VERY randomly found somewhere and decided to check out from the library. Very glad I did! It was a cute story featuring a reunion of old friends, revealing of secrets – you know the drill. Tons of fun. Last but not least, I checked out the Hex Hall series from the library recently and wanted to binge. I love the boarding school topic! I ended up getting sidetracked and having to return books 2 and 3, but I totally plan to finish sometime soon. Recent TBR Additions From What I Remember by Stacy Kramer and Valerie Thomas /// piecing together the night before It’s All Your […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #81: Spring TBR

Posted March 15, 2016 / TBR Lists, Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 23 Comments

Top Books on my Spring 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 love planning out my TBRs for Top Ten Tuesday because it’s something I rarely do. I’ve already given a glimpse at the books I planned to read in March [at the very bottom of the post] and later this week, I’ll be sharing some other books I’m really excited for. This TTT helps me think of what I’ll be reading between the end of March and probably end of May. (I start my summery reads ASAP in June! I can’t resist a beachy story once the weather warms up.) Wow, I digress. HERE WE GO: So my TBR this spring is a mix of a few things. I want to focus on reading a few books that are being published this spring, because they sound super cute. (I couldn’t resist sneaking Morgan Matson’s new book on here even though I feel like it’s been on every list I’ve made for 2016 so far!) I’m also definitely planning on cranking through a few ARCs I got from ALA Midwinter, because their pub dates are coming soon (if they haven’t happened already) and I’m SO BAD about reading books I get from conferences. Can we talk about the […]

Comic Reviews: Saga #3 and This One Summer

Posted March 14, 2016 / Book Reviews / 3 Comments

It had been a little while since I finished the second volume in this series, so I was admittedly a little lost when it got started. Luckily, the narrator does a pretty good job of rehashing what previously happened without being super repetitive. I was quickly back in the crazy world of Saga, and this is definitely one of my favorites so far. The action really picked up after the halfway point and I even loved before the action when they were just hanging around the house. It ended with a few crazy events and, as usual, I’m eager to see what happens next! It’s extremely difficult to review these without giving major spoilers for the previous books, so I won’t try to give you more info! 😉 If you aren’t reading this series yet and you have an interest in graphic novels, get going! I wish I had a dollar for every time I went to the bookstore and thumbed through this book. It was on my wishlist forever and I always resisted the urge to buy it. I wish I hadn’t waited so long, but I ended up getting it from the library. I finished it in a couple of hours – reading almost 100 pages one night before bed, and then reading the following 250 pages the next morning in the bathtub (soaking my muscles after skiing, lol). I couldn’t stop. There were some super realistic plot points that I loved. The book follows around two “summer best friends” as […]

ARC Review: Wink Poppy Midnight

Posted March 11, 2016 / Book Reviews / 18 Comments

I’m the kind of person who usually writes reviews immediately after finishing the book. I just really don’t even know what to say about this one and decided not to write the review right away, just in case it would come to me or something. This was a mistake because I’m struggling to even remember anything besides: this book was really fucking weird. While my rating report below leans strongly towards 2.5, I just can’t bring myself to do it. It’s been a couple of days since I finished the book and (a) I barely remember what happened and (b) I don’t like anything that I do remember. Within the first handful of pages, I could see the comparison to We Were Liars. As we all know by now, that book didn’t work for me in any way. I should have DNFed this one once I saw the comparison but something compelled me to keep going. For a while, I was glad I did! Things got really creepy and interesting for a handful of pages. But, then the end disappointed me. As I said in my Goodreads review (at the bottom here), the entire first half or so of the book felt incredibly pointless. We learn a bit about the characters and their weird relationships, but that’s about it. There were short, easy “chapters” to highlight each character, so that helped with being able to read it quickly, but that was the only thing that kept me going for a while. Things […]

Top 10 Romance Tropes and Themes

Posted March 10, 2016 / Book Challenges, Book Lists, Features / 14 Comments

As you (probably don’t) know, one goal I had when starting this blog was to feature recommendation lists for people seeking new books to read within different topics. Top Ten Tuesday kind of took over for this area for me, which is perfect, but sometimes I like to create my own. The Contemporary Romance Challenge hosts a monthly topic to partake in. Sometimes I’ll be posting these in my Bookmark Lit Bulletin posts and sometimes they’ll get their own post, depending on my blog calendar. Here’s March’s topic: Favorite Romance Tropes/Themes Books featuring some of my favorite tropes Warning! If you don’t want to be “spoiled” about what kind of romance takes place in each book, don’t read on. I only say this because there are a few below that may not be IN the synopsis, as far as the romance goes. Nantucket Blue /// summer love with the best friend’s brother The Summer I Turned Pretty trilogy /// summer love with a childhood friend/beach house neighbor On the Fence /// summer love with a neighbor (also brother’s friend) Two-Way Street /// second chance while on a road trip Princess of Thorns /// slow-burn and hate-to-love while on a journey First & Then /// slow-burn and somewhat hate-to-love The One that Got Away /// second chance with a slow-ish burn Emmy & Oliver /// childhood best friend second chance when returning to hometown Second Chance Summer /// second chance during the summertime with a neighbor The Deal /// fake dating with a playing Cyrano/matchmaker situation Faking It /// fake dating with hate-to-love-ish To All […]

Adjusting My Blog Post Schedule

Posted March 9, 2016 / Discussions, Features / 22 Comments

Many moons ago, I wrote a post about my blogging schedule. At that point, I had just started up the blog and had maybe a little too much time on my hands. I was incredibly specific about when I posted certain things and making sure I had 15 book reviews up per month. This was in addition to participating in 4 memes per week and posting 2 “random” things (like recommendation lists or discussions). I’d also post sign-ups for readathons and both mid-month AND end-of-month wrap-ups. You can do the math: that means that most days of the month had 2 posts. I even said, “I really try not to bombard people with any more than 2 posts per day!” SO EXCESSIVE. I mean, I’m glad I dove into this hobby headfirst… but good lord, woman. I can’t lie though, I definitely blog a bit too much still. I love signing up for readathons, participating in tags, and writing so many posts that I’m scheduled out until next year. (Slight exaggeration, but not that much. I’m insane.) I LOVE making lists and TBRs even if I know I’m never going to follow them. I love making graphics and messing around with layouts for my posts. I CAN’T STOP. I’ve changed my organization methods SO many times and I feel like I’m finally getting used to my latest plan. Today I’ll share my new blog schedule and talk about how I organize and plan… everything.Do you have a planned schedule for your […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #80: Characters

Posted March 8, 2016 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 21 Comments

Characters I Couldn’t Relate To & Others May Disagree 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’m kind of changing this topic a little bit because I really can’t think of many characters that fall under this umbrella of “everyone loves but I didn’t” or “I love but everyone else doesn’t.” I decided to take a less intense version of this and talk about the characters I couldn’t relate to, but others may have liked more than I did. I mostly enjoyed these books but the characters made me cringe or annoyed me or just didn’t resonate with me at all. Cath from Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell /// I know, I know. Put down your pitchforks. I really can appreciate and understand how SO many of you love and relate to Cath. I just didn’t. She really bugged me (maybe it was partly due to the audio narrator?) and I just couldn’t get by it. Kate from Things I Can’t Forget by Miranda Kenneally /// Nearly everyone I’ve talked to about this actually DOES agree with me about Kate, but I know there are most likely some people who related to her. Her fierce religiousness and sense of right and wrong just totally didn’t work for me. I’m not good with books centered around religion, […]

ARC Review: Liars and Losers Like Us

Posted March 7, 2016 / Book Reviews / 5 Comments

So, I’ve honestly never felt so conflicted about rating a book. There were almost equal parts YES and NO about this story, so I want to break it down a little bit to try to explain why. What worked I liked the premise of the book. It’s been awhile since I’ve read a story where prom is the center of the plot, so it was nice to be back into that area of high school. (Although I’m very glad I’m not ACTUALLY back at that point in high school…) I’m still pretty darn obsessed with the book cover. It’s something I’ll always appreciate, because I’m superficial like that 😉 I’ll get more into this later, but there was some solid banter and jokes between Bree and Sean. I definitely shipped them in a general sense, but there were awkward moments too. The entire friend group was interesting. They all definitely had their individual issues that came to light, although some felt superficial. All of them mostly felt like real people though. Again, there were some funny jokes and insults thrown at each other that made them feel realistic. I really couldn’t stop reading. The book was kind of addicting and I was interested the entire time, despite its flaws. It’s not perfect and neither were its characters, but it kept me going. The ending of the book was damn near perfect. Super minor spoiler ahead, that’s kind of revealed in the synopsis… I loved Bree’s speech and how she called everyone […]

Five on Fridays #19

Posted March 4, 2016 / Five on Fridays, Weekly Memes / 9 Comments

Five on Friday displays the the top five things that have been on my mind this week! It could be book-related, but it may be music, movies, TV, personal life, food, etc. Previous posts can be found here! I’m aware that I’m probably the last person to listen to Serial. Chris started getting addicted to podcasts because he was sick of listening to books at work. (Rude, right?) I recommended Serial to him without ever having listened to it myself, just because of the hype. We’re both not thriller/murder mystery kinds of people. He was hesitant (and so was I) but he ended up loving it and demanding I start it right away. He also started season two but I’ve already decided not to bother with it. ANYWAYS, holy shiiiiiit we’ve been talking nonstop about this case for the past week. I binge-listened to Adnan’s case in a matter of a week. Just so addicting, it’s unreal. He also started Undisclosed, which is a podcast by some other people involved with the case. I guess it goes into more detail about everything (like, way more than Serial does) and can get pretty addicting too. I decided to start that one this week but only allow myself one episode per week. I can’t handle binge-listening to another podcast like I did. Did you listen to Serial?? Who do you think did it? I don’t think Adnan did but I’m also not entirely sure that Jay did either…I’ve referenced this a few times so […]

Review: After I Do

Posted March 3, 2016 / Book Reviews / 13 Comments

I’ve now read 2/3 of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s published works and she’s easily a favorite author. 5 stars for both books. Not only are they favorites, but they both taught me so much. Her books just have a way of impacting you unlike any others. I don’t know how she does it, but she takes regular people going through pretty average things (like falling out of love and making decisions) and just makes their stories so incredibly engaging and enthralling. For once, the hype about a book didn’t ruin anything for me. I’m not entirely sure how to describe how much I loved this book and all of the characters, so I’m going to break some stuff down. The realest relationship I loved Lauren and Ryan’s relationship from the very beginning. The book shows how they met and how their relationship developed before getting to the point where they choose to separate. It was a nice segue, showing some different increments over time: when they met, a few years into the relationship, and all the way to months before the book starts. It was truly necessary to see why these people should be together and the kind of relationship they’re fighting to fix. On top of the flashbacks, I just loved them and shipped them like crazy. At the same time, it was so obvious how they started to fall apart. There were so many lessons about keeping a relationship going during each and every moment. The little things can seriously add up. Family feels […]