Christmas in July: Upcoming 2021 Holiday Books

Posted July 1, 2021 / Book Lists, Features / 6 Comments

I always have the idea to do a “Christmas in July” feature on my blog because it’s riiiight around this time of year when I notice all of the holiday books coming out in September/October. I browsed Nick’s amazing list of romances coming out in the second half of 2021 and many of them were excellent-sounding holiday books! I thought now would be a great time to dive into back into this kind of post (last/first done in 2019). Duke, Actually by Jenny Holiday // I’ve adored every single Jenny Holiday book I’ve read so far and have plenty more to dive into still. She wrote a lovely royal holiday romance last year and this one will probably be just as excellent. Sleigh Bells Ring by RaeAnne Thayne // It’s not a holiday season without a book from RaeAnne Thayne! I’ve read a ton of her companion series books and usually there are some holiday stories sprinkled in. They’re always a touch cheesy and more wholesome, but usually have a cute small town holiday vibe that I love. A Season for Second Chances by Jenny Bayliss // I really enjoyed her debut last year and was so excited to see another holiday book from her for this year. British Christmas books in charming country towns? Sign me up, always. Also, her covers are super cute and wintry. The Christmas Village by Annie Rains // I feel like a broken record because all of these books so far have been from tried-and-true authors I […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #346: Most Anticipated

Posted June 29, 2021 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 2 Comments

Most Anticipated Releases July-Dec 2021 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 will likely be repetitive from my summer 2021 TBR post from a few TTTs ago (because I usually focus on new releases) but at least this is most anticipated through the end of the year. I actually decided to start at December and work backwards to guarantee a bit more variety. I also decided to skip holiday books too, for whatever reason. Here we go! IF THE SHOE FITS by Julie Murphy: new companion series based on “contemporary takes on Disney princesses” /// IN MY DREAMS I HOLD A KNIFE by Ashley Winstead: dual timeline book about a murder on a college campus and its present-day reunion /// THEY’LL NEVER CATCH US by Jessica Goodman: a new girl goes missing and star cross country athletes (and sisters) are at the center of it THE WOODS ARE ALWAYS WATCHING by Stephanie Perkins: the next thriller/horror novel from Perkins is FINALLY coming out! /// YOUR LIFE HAS BEEN DELAYED by Michelle I. Mason: a flight takes off in 1995 and lands 25 years later, while the rest of the world has moved on /// THE HEART PRINCIPLE by Helen Hoang: finally the third installment in this amazing companion romance series! /// THE […]

Currently

Posted June 23, 2021 / Currently, Personal / Information / Etc. / 0 Comments

I’ve been doing some kind of Currently post on and off for many years. Ironically, Hannah at So Obsessed With credits me for inspiring her to finally make a Currently post… and now here *I* am, stealing *her* Currently prompts. I just like the way she lays them out and it’s a nicer format than some I’ve done in the past. So here’s credit-ception for you. Bookish Currently reading: I’ve been attempting to read RULE OF WOLVES since it came out basically. I just haven’t been motivated to read fantasy lately. I had a similar issue with taking forever to read ACOSF. I finished a bunch of romance novels in a row on my Kindle and this one has been sitting around. I also just started WAIT FOR IT last night because I got approved on Netgalley and started reading it right away because I actually thought it was something different lol. Currently audiobook-ing: Even more embarrassing? I have RULE OF WOLVES on audio too. I’ve been mostly listening to podcasts though. Currently recommending: Seriously, the last 4 romance books I read received 4-4.5 stars, with the majority receiving 4.5 stars. If you want mostly fun rom-coms, try out: ROSALINE PALMER TAKES THE CAKE by Alexis Hall TO SIR, WITH LOVE by Lauren Layne SATISFACTION GUARANTEED by Karelia Stetz-Walters THE SOULMATE EQUATION by Christina Lauren Currently on hold at the library: I actually have run out of library holds, for the most part. The only one remaining is THE HEART […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #345: Wishes

Posted June 22, 2021 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 0 Comments

Book Wishlist 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 don’t buy a lot of physical books anymore due to lack of shelf space, so I don’t really want to include an actual wishlist like the prompt suggests. I’ll just include the top ten books I hope to own or want to buy at some point! Some may be preorders too 😉 ALL CLOSED OFF still doesn’t even have a pub date – no clue what’s happening there… but I still want to own it!

ARC Reviews: To Sir, with Love and Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake

Posted June 17, 2021 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

I shouldn’t say things like “this was a pleasant surprise!” when I read a Lauren Layne book at this point, but that was my immediate reaction. I adored the Central Park Pact series and have a feeling I’ll go on to enjoy many of her other romances. I don’t think I was expecting to love this one quite as much as I did though. The premise is essentially You’ve Got Mail, so you can’t go wrong! Gracie is a romantic, obsessed with fairy tales and finding her soulmate. She’s got a pen pal she’s falling for on a dating app who she’s never met, but she can tell they’re perfect for each other. She took over the family business, a sparkling wine store in NYC, after her father passed away. Her siblings bowed out a long time ago and she never wanted to disappoint her father, even after his death. Her brother moved to New Hampshire and her sister still lives in NYC with her high school sweetheart husband; they’re not as close as they used to be. Enter: Sebastian. His company owns the shop Gracie leases and they want to buy her out of their lease. As you can imagine, Gracie does NOT want to give up the family business and the two fight constantly whenever they see each other. Enemies-to-lovers, baby. It’s very obvious to the reader who Sir (the pen pal) is – she already knows him IRL. It was wild to watch them fall in love in person […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #344: Summer TBR

Posted June 15, 2021 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 2 Comments

Summer 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. Man, I don’t feel like I should be allowed to make TBRs anymore because my reading is so crappy. I usually like to focus on new releases instead of ARCs I already have. Summer here will be June, July, and August releases. Maybe dip into September. (PS… AS GOOD AS DEAD is out in the US in September but you know I preordered the UK version from Book Depository, which comes out in August. Ya girl can’t wait.) June July August September

ARC Reviews: The Box in the Woods and The Next Wife

Posted June 10, 2021 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

I was obsessed with the TRULY DEVIOUS series and was completely over the moon when I saw a fourth book announced. The first three involved Stevie at Ellingham Academy trying to solve the school’s murder from many, many years ago, so I expected the series to end after that. This is a “standalone” installment where she spends the summer at a camp where infamous murders happened in the 1970s, in an attempt to solve it too. I could easily read a hundred books, Nancy Drew-style, where Stevie just goes around and solves mysteries everywhere. I liked that this crime happened in the 1970s so there were actually people in the town who were alive and/or involved with what happened back then. (I’ll also say that the 70s-based mystery involved a lot of Led Zeppelin references, which is always welcome for me.) The Ellingham mysteries were so long ago that she couldn’t rely on any actual witnesses or people from that time period. I love that this took place in a small Berkshires town in MA because I could completely picture it. It was nice to have her friends at the summer camp too because this felt like a continuation of the Ellingham series while also managing to be a standalone story. Good references to the past but not a ton (thank god because my memory for the rest of the series is terrible). This one was so twisty – I truly don’t think anyone could figure out the mystery in […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #343: More Books

Posted June 8, 2021 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 2 Comments

Books I Loved that Made Me Want More Books Like Them 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 week’s TTT is about featuring books that we loved so much that we sought out more books like them. Two books immediately came to mind for this one, which is a decent start. The rest took some investigating but still a solid list here! I actually wrote a whole post about THE SEVEN HUSBANDS OF EVELYN HUGO where I requested that people help me find similar books. It just felt so unique to me. FINLAY DONOVAN IS KILLING IT is the second book that came to mind right away. I know it’s sort of a cozy mystery, which I also talked about here (and brings me to my next book), but it was very contemporary-ish as well. It focused even more on her life than the actual murder mystery. The Rose Gardner mystery series, starting with TWENTY-EIGHT AND A HALF WISHES, was another cozy mystery series that I read after loving the Aurora Teagarden movies on Hallmark. I’ve been feeling those books a lot, but the Rose Gardner books are not the best… THE CURE FOR THE COMMON BREAKUP and the rest of […]

ARC Reviews: The Soulmate Equation and Satisfaction Guaranteed

Posted June 7, 2021 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

I won’t bore you to death with my usual story about Christina Lauren books, but just know that I’ve really enjoyed all of the ones I’ve read (and yes they all fall into the “recently published rom-com” category instead of their previous series). I tend to not love books involving kids as much so I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about this one, but I ended up really enjoying that aspect. Jess is a single mother and freelance statistician with excellent grandparents who help her out whenever needed. When she and her friend Fizzy are recruited to join an up-and-coming dating app based on DNA matches, she is shocked to find that she is a top-level match with the owner and founder of the company, River. She also hasn’t had the best experiences with him so far, so she’s really unsure of how this would ever work. They offer to pay her a lot of money to just spend time with River and see how things go. You can guess what happens from here, I’m sure! I thoroughly enjoyed this one. Many are comparing it to Christina Lauren’s older books, which I haven’t read, but I think this is on par with all of their books that I’ve read. I tend to just love the characters’ chemistry and their easy, addicting writing style. I was able to mostly read this via audiobook while doing stuff around the house and it really kept my attention. That’s genuinely hard to do with […]

June TBR

Posted June 3, 2021 / Book Lists, Features, TBR Lists / 0 Comments

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. June TBR Just as I caught up on my Goodreads challenge, I fell back in the hole again. At the time of writing this I’m FIVE behind, which is worse than before lol. I know it’s because I’m still reading RULE OF WOLVES after too long of a time period, and just didn’t read much overall in May. I have to catch up on review copies too. Woof. Owned Books/Audiobooks to Read Again, just moving INSTANT KARMA, SEX AND VANITY, and MAJESTY from month to month. I am currently reading RULE OF WOLVES but it’s taking me forever and I’m not far into it. Hopefully I’ll get some traction in June and finish it by the end of the month. Like I did with ACOSF, I will probably plan for a chapter or two per day until it’s done (I have about 40 chapters left and 30 days in June, so it will work if I get cruising at the end!). Review Copies Already published: June pub date: I decided to break this down by overdue review copies (ugh) and ones that come out in June. OF PRINCES AND […]