I’ve gotten a few exciting review copies already for 2024 and thought I would do a little post to share what those are so far! Some of these have been waiting on my Kindle for a long time and I can’t believe I haven’t been tempted to dive in… Mystery/Thriller and Fantasy Contemporary and Literary
Mainstream/Popular Authors I Haven’t Read 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’m going to use this to discuss mainstream and bestselling authors who are clearly popular, but also some of the more “super hyped on booktube and booktok” authors as well. I know that’s less “mainstream” but usually these authors gain a ton of popularity and the hype becomes super intense. R.F. Kuang / I’ve said this before but her books intimidate me a bit! Between BABEL’s length and YELLOWFACE’s hard-hitting topic, I just have not plucked up the courage to read her books yet. Mona Awad / She’s another one on that list of books/authors who scare me. I know BUNNY is a mindfuck and I’m super curious to read it, but her books seem complicated lol. Stephen King / I promise I won’t spend the whole TTT referencing the same blog post but Stephen King is another intimidating, major bestselling author. I’m not a huge horror reader so a lot of his books aren’t on my list, but I would love to read a few (FAIRY TALE, BILLY SUMMERS, and 11/22/63). Simone St. James, Ruth Ware, Shari Lapenia, and Alex Finlay / There are a ton of super popular, bestselling mystery/thriller authors […]
Usually I do review round-ups at this point in my blogging life but because this book took me longer to read and I assumed I’d have more to say about it, I thought I would do an old-fashioned single book review here. It’s no secret that I did not love FOURTH WING as much as everyone else did. I ended up rating it higher than it probably deserved at 3.5 stars because of how addicting it was and how intriguing the ending was as well. I was curious to read IRON FLAME for sure and even preordered a copy to partake in the nonsense of release week with everyone else. I didn’t like the cringe-worthy romance and cheesy writing of the first book. I really thought it was like a mash-up of every fantasy book written before. I can totally see why people read it and got similar nostalgic vibes of some early YA paranormal/fantasy books, but that didn’t make it a five-star read for me. The…interesting…writing was still very much present in this book. The conversations sounded so weird sometimes and language felt out of place. For example, she says at one point that her heart is beating like a hummingbird’s wings (or something like that). Are there hummingbirds in this world somehow? Just out there flying around with the dragons? Are there dogs and other normal animals too? The world-building here is so weird! Another moment that stuck out was when her and Rhiannon were chatting before class […]
I’m really bummed by this one to be honest – it was really just FINE. I’ve loved this series so much and was excited to get into the heads of a couple of the brothers for this “spinoff” fourth book. It follows Jameson and Grayson as they embark on their own individual journeys. (It may have been more fun to follow Nash and Xander instead because they were featured less than Grayson and Jameson in other books.) Grayson’s part of the story was more interesting as he learned more about his father and the family that he never knew about. There was a little mystery there for him to solve and some lovable new characters introduced. Jameson is also dealing with his father and more games/riddles. I thought the concept behind his part of the book was good but not executed in a way that made me want to keep reading? It took me all of September to read this one because I just kept being more interested in other books. I did end up reading the final section pretty quickly and was curious to see how things would wrap up. I’m glad there’s another book and I’m hoping it’ll be more interesting than this one was. I really enjoyed THE MARTIAN despite not usually reading adult science fiction. (Even YA sci-fi is lower on my list unfortunately, despite enjoying them!) I kept seeing insanely positive reviews for this one and decided I should give it a try. The audiobook […]
I decided to remove the holiday movie section of this post because I just have not been on my game this year! If I get my crap together, I may feature some holiday movies on my watch list in a different post. This year we’ll focus on the MANY holiday books I could pick from. I also will do my usual past holiday post roundup at the bottom. Here’s a roundup of ALL of the holiday books I may read, including review copies (both backlist and current year), new releases, and backlist titles that have intrigued me. I have five review copies this year. Last year I only managed to read two of the four I had! Yikes. This year my number one goal is to read all of these without exception. 2023 really goes hard for holiday book releases. I’ve never seen so many! I did a roundup of a bunch of them that were announced by July (in my Christmas in July post) but I added a lot more to my TBR after that. I know I won’t get to all of these (obviously) but I hope to read more than I did last year. I keep deleting older books on here that I lost interest in but there are some that I still can’t believe I haven’t read yet (PRINCE IN DISGUISE, hello??). I added 2022’s books I didn’t get to on here as well. I think I’m going to put all of these titles on […]
Book Titles that Would Make Good Headlines 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 really didn’t know what to do for this one at first but it was really fun to track them down! I decided to approach this as good headlines in general: whether for a newspaper or for magazine articles. I focused first on unreleased and upcoming books that are on my TBR. Newspaper Headlines I thought all of these ones would make for classic newspaper articles. FINLAY DONOVAN ROLLS THE DICE could probably be a magazine article too but it seemed like it would be more of a headline. THE NIGHT OF THE STORM could detail a recent natural disaster. THE DISAPPEARNACE OF ASTRID BRICARD and THE REAPPEARANCE OF RACHEL PRICE are both potential articles and headlines where someone goes missing or returns from being missing. Magazine Article Titles Magazine articles could consist of “how to” lists and discussions as well as opinion pieces. HOW TO SOLVE YOUR MURDER could even be a satire. THE PERFECT GUY DOESN’T EXIST seems like it could be a Cosmo article. RED STRING THEORY would be instructional – teaching the reader specifically about this theory as it relates to life and love. […]
The Bookmark Lit Bulletin wraps up the last month in reading and what was on the blog, as well as what’s coming up next. You can check out my book haul, books read, posts shared, challenge updates, etc. You can read past bulletins here. If you’re looking for more personal updates, you can check out my Lauren Lately feature; it highlights my life events and non-bookish fun from the previous 30 days. I was hoping to read a little more in October but honestly 8 books is still great! I’m impressed that I stuck to my guns and binge-read TWO series in their entirety. That was my biggest goal for October. I managed to read those 7 books across two series, then read one standalone in between. I know November and December will be big reading months though! 8 books in October 8 read • 0 reread • 0 DNF Pages read: 3,360 • Average rating: 4 stars Genres: 4 mystery/thrillers, 3 fantasy, 1 science fiction Formats: 5 mixed, 3 paperback Sources: 3 preordered, 1 review, 1 owned, 1 borrowed Age Target: 4 adult, 2 young adult Here are all the books I read this month with ratings and one-line thoughts! Popsugar Reading Challenge: 74% 52 Book Club: 75% Must Read in 2023: 75% Romanceopoly: 23% Mystery/Thriller Reading Challenge: 92% Breakdown: 3 hardcovers | 3 egalleys | 3 ebooks All review copies were provided for free in exchange for an honest review. For Review From Penguin: Raiders of the Lost Heart […]
I was a huge fan of the CARAVAL trilogy and can’t really think of a good reason for not reading this spin-off trilogy until the same year the final book was released! I kept seeing amazing reviews where so many people read and loved this (without even reading CARAVAL). My expectations were pretty high. I decided to finally take the plunge and read all three books in October (right after another series binge by a favorite author). I didn’t remember anything from CARAVAL really but definitely found that you don’t need to. I think the backstory on Jacks and the previous trilogy as a whole were helpful in understanding the world for sure, but I can see why many people jumped right into these books. I would honestly recommend reading CARAVAL first though – that’s just my opinion! Without further ado, here are my thoughts on the ONCE UPON A BROKEN HEART trilogy. I was shocked at how quickly I read this book, considering that fantasy usually takes me a looong time to get through. I would absolutely recommend this series (as well as CARAVAL) to anyone who is curious about fantasy but nervous about understanding a new world. This is super accessible fantasy that anyone could read and enjoy IMO. Garber has a great writing style. This story follows Evangeline Fox and Jacks, the Prince of Hearts, from the first series. I really like that the synopsis doesn’t give away nearly anything in the book! You only learn that […]
Halloween Freebie: October Reads 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 know that today is the final day of October, but I had planned to read some spooky / atmospheric books this month for Halloween. I ended up not reading as much as I expected but thought I would share some of the books I DID manage to read, as well as those on my TBR that I would have liked to read this month. Read – Great for October I read THE NATURALS and ONCE UPON A BROKEN HEART (the full series of each!) this past month. Both were nice books to read in October. The latter is obviously a fantasy series, which I always think is great for the fall. THE NATURALS follows teens who work for the FBI – it got really dark as they chased down serial killers! IN NIGHTFALL is a vampire book that I really enjoyed this summer. It’s perfect for spooky season. DAISY DARKER is another great one for October – I won’t say why, but I can say that it’s super atmospheric and (if I remember correctly) it takes place on Halloween. And finally, for a non-spooky option, I’m reading THE PUMPKIN SPICE […]
My monthly TBR feature here shows my progress based on last month’s TBR, my plans for this month, and anything else I might be thinking about from a reading perspective. Sometimes I feature a little poll at the bottom so you guys can help me figure out a certain title I should read from a group of books. November and December – EOY TBR Not Including Holiday Books As you may know, I usually combine my November and December TBRs into one post that excludes all of the holiday books I plan to read (that post comes separately). I have a bunch of books I’d really like to read before the end of the year, and try to mix those in amongst some holiday romances across both months. Just easier than making distinct TBRs for both months since I never really know where the books will land! Non-Holiday ARCs: Late and Upcoming These are three romances I’ve been so excited to read and have ready to go on my Kindle! I definitely thought I would have read THE WAKE-UP CALL the moment I got it but for some reason I keep back-burnering it. (To be fair, it has some holiday elements but I’m keeping it in this post because I don’t think it’s truly Christmas-forward compared to others.) RAIDERS OF THE LOST HEART was one of my most anticipated reads so I’m thrilled to have that one. I also grabbed SKIP TO THE END via audio on Libby so fingers […]