Top Ten Tuesdays #290: Summer Vibes

Posted June 2, 2020 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 2 Comments

Books that Give Off Summer Vibes 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 love a summery book, especially when reading on the porch or in the sand. I’m eager to put together my 2020 summertime TBR and almost did that here, but instead I thought I would follow the prompt specifically 😉 I’ve already read a book or two with perfect summer vibes! 2020 Summery Reads The three books above are all YA fiction – I didn’t see a whole lot of summery YA books coming out in 2020! But these three are definitely on my radar. SAY YES SUMMER is about exactly what you think: a girl says yes to things for the entire summer. MEET ME AT MIDNIGHT and JUST A BOY AND A GIRL AND A CANOE both take place during the summer and have great warm covers. BIG SUMMER (a woman invited to her ex-BFF’s summer wedding… as the maid of honor, when they haven’t spoken in years) and SUMMER DARLINGS (nannying gig on Martha’s Vineyard) are new to my TBR but both seem pretty great. I’m also excited that Forever Romance has two great titles coming in July, set in two of my favorite book settings […]

Bookmark Lit Bulletin | May 2020

Posted June 1, 2020 / Bookmark Lit Bulletin, Features, Wrap-Ups / 1 Comment

This post was drafted and scheduled late last week, so I want to hop in now to address the fact that Black Lives Matter. I am fully in support of the protesting that’s been occurring over the past few days and think it’s imperative that we ALL fight for reform. We need major changes in this country immediately. 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. Lol if I thought April was bad, check out May. Yes, I managed to complete 9 books… but two were cookbooks, one was a small coffee table book, and another was a graphic novel. I just couldn’t focus on reading most of the time but I finished a few books in one sitting basically. Idk what’s going on anymore. I really wanted to finish a 10th book over the weekend but spent all of my time online following and supporting the protests instead of being able to focus on books. 9 books read in May 9 new books • 0 rereads • 0 DNF Pages read: 2,480 • Average rating: 4.1 stars Sources: 7 for review, 1 gifted, 1 Book of the […]

The Bright Side (5/29)

Posted May 29, 2020 / Personal / Information / Etc. / 1 Comment

As we’re all going through the same global pandemic with various levels of “stay the F home,” I thought it would be fun to highlight the good things in each week, instead of dwelling on the negatives, the unknowns, and the uncertain future. I tend to do some kind of wrap-up or rundown of my week/month/etc. on Fridays each week (often linking up with Friday Favorites/Currently) so this isn’t too much of a diversion from that. ✨ AEW Double or Nothing Wrestling is the only sport that’s really continued through this pandemic. Say what you want about it (and your opinions are fully valid, it’s not the smartest thing for them to be doing by ANY means) but it’s brought me a lot of joy, entertainment, and distraction during all this. (For the record too, most things were filmed back-to-back and not aired live for the first two months.) AEW had their Double or Nothing PPV on Saturday and it was SO DAMN GOOD. Pretty much everything on it was fantastic and we had a wonderful Saturday night watching it. ✨ More Recipes from Cravings We’ve continued to make recipes from the Cravings cookbooks and have really enjoyed it. We made some of John’s breakfast sandwiches (well the homemade sausage patties at least) and omg they were so good. We made the mistake of using ground pork sausage instead of ground pork, so we added salt (per the recipe) and they were a bit too salty. We chopped them up […]

Review Round Up | The Guest List, A Castle in the Clouds, and Incomparable

Posted May 28, 2020 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 1 Comment

In an effort to cut down on posts and burnout, my Review Roundups will feature 2-4 books I’ve read or listened to recently. Sometimes they’re newer releases and sometimes they’re all backlist titles. My ARC reviews usually get the solo treatment. Enjoy the mini reviews! I was trying to get back into reading so I decided to follow my mood. I joined Book of the Month specifically so I could get an early copy of THE GUEST LIST and read it ASAP. In the end, totally glad I did! It didn’t fully grab me right from the beginning like I was hoping, but I sat and read the majority of the book in one sitting on a beautiful Saturday afternoon on my porch. The story follows a wedding on a remote island off the coast of Ireland. There are a few points of view: Jules (the bride), Olivia (the sister of the bride/maid of honor), Johnno (the best man and childhood friend of the groom), Hannah (the plus one – her husband Charlie is Jules’s best friend), and Aiofe (the wedding planner who owns the island venue with her husband). The final 40% of the book was a whirlwind of twists and secrets. I love when mystery/thrillers have shorter chapters at the end that rapidly go back and forth between points of view as things come together. I’ve had this issue lately where I figure out at least part of the “mystery” or whodunnit, so the endings of suspense stories have been […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #289: Gripping

Posted May 26, 2020 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 2 Comments

Gripping Books I Couldn’t Put Down 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 have this annoying habit of needing to do TTTs no matter what even if the topic doesn’t work for me and I’m not in the mood to post one. BUT I found a way to make this one work. The topic is about opening lines, but my memory is absolutely terrible. I thought instead of talking about gripping opening lines, it would make sense to share some gripping books that I found to be unputdownable. These are all recent reads that really grabbed me or made me want to keep reading. It’s been challenging to read this year so some of these books have been incredibly helpful in getting my reading mojo back for some pockets of time.

A Day in the Life // Work From Home (5/22/20)

Posted May 25, 2020 / Currently, Lifestyle, Personal / Information / Etc. / 2 Comments

Another round of a quarantined work day in my life! It’s Friday y’all, right before a long weekend, and I have to say… I am in desperate need of a day off. So, this is a very welcome Friday!! If all this corona stuff didn’t happen, I would have had a day off last weekend for my friend’s bachelorette trip so I am definitely feelin it right now. Here we go! I woke up early this morning and dicked around on my phone as usual. I downloaded the Philo app to the TV so I could watch my movie. I had to pee (lol) so I got out of bed somewhat quickly, compared to usual, and came down to find Chris making our now traditional morning smoothies. Our Vitamix is amazing! He usually delivers it to me in bed when he leaves for work around 6:30 but I snagged it from him, grabbed my piece of banana bread, and decided to try a cappuccino with my new coffee machine. Yes, we’ve upgraded all of our appliances basically lol. I took my two beverages back up to bed to watch the latest Aurora Teagarden movie from Hallmark on demand. I tried to watch the other day but ended up getting distracted with other things, so I restarted it to catch up and finish. It was a solid one as usual! I don’t know why I’m such trash for these movies. I did a bit of meal planning on a new app (Favoreats) […]

Full Day of Eating Cravings by Chrissy Teigan Recipes (and a Bunch More Since!)

Posted May 23, 2020 / Food & Drink, Personal / Information / Etc. / 1 Comment

It’s not a secret that we’ve been super into cooking and baking lately, so I decided to go ahead and finally purchase the Cravings cookbook by Chrissy Teigan. After legit hugging it all weekend, reading the recipes and her funny stories, listing the recipes I could make from what I have on hand, and meal planning over the upcoming weeks, I decided we should do a full day of Cravings recipes to kick off this new obsession. I also immediately bought her second cookbook, FWIW. Some recipes come from book one and some are book two! It’s interesting timing as well because I had drafted this post a couple of weeks ago, not realizing that Chrissy Teigan would end up with a shitstorm of nonsense. I’m happy to make this post now so hopefully you can see the tasty recipes she’s developed all by herself and with her mother. Everything we made has been utterly delicious and just a slight step up from what I might usually make, meaning it challenges me enough to feel like I’m learning something new and trying something super tasty… while not being too overwhelming. These two cookbooks are exactly what I’m looking for in a cookbook, basically. A Sunday of Cravings Breakfast I started Sunday with her Dutch Baby Pancake, which is truly one of the easiest breakfasts I’ve made. Way easier than normal pancakes! You need a cast iron skillet or oven-safe pan and some basic pancake ingredients. You blend it together, pour it […]

The Bright Side (5/21)

Posted May 22, 2020 / Personal / Information / Etc. / 1 Comment

As we’re all going through the same global pandemic with various levels of “stay the F home,” I thought it would be fun to highlight the good things in each week, instead of dwelling on the negatives, the unknowns, and the uncertain future. I tend to do some kind of wrap-up or rundown of my week/month/etc. on Fridays each week (often linking up with Friday Favorites/Currently) so this isn’t too much of a diversion from that. ✨ Vitamix Blender We didn’t love the experience of using our crappy blender for the Dole Whip recipe so we finally bit the bullet and bought a fancy ass blender. We love smoothies and (now) making our own sorbet, so why not get something that makes life super easy?? It has been a gamechanger so far. It’s genuinely so easy to blend anything and everything. ✨ Socially Distant Visits in Beautiful Weather Chris’s sister came by to hang out outside last weekend and it was really nice to see someone new! It’s obviously been hard to not spend time with friends in recent months, so it was good to hang out with her. The weather was totally gorgeous all weekend, so we got some tasty food and drinks to hang out all day, from a distance! ✨ Takeout: Pizza and Ice Cream! We were watching a show about pizza the other night (as one does) and of course they referenced Frank Pepe’s and other New Haven pizza shops – the best pizza in the […]

Reviews: Killing November and Hunting November

Posted May 20, 2020 / Book Reviews / 1 Comment

I have to say, Dahlia’s review on Goodreads is what really made me make sure to push KILLING NOVEMBER up on my TBR. To be fair, I haven’t read THE CONSPIRACY OF US (yet) but the PRIVATE part? Yes please. I miss that series and continue to put off reading it for various reasons. I decided to dive into this one when I saw my library had a digital copy coming available soonish, and it was ready at the end of January. I thought I would lump my review in with the sequel, which was due to come out a few months after I read book one. So here we are! I was intrigued and confused SO much at the beginning of this novel – it was completely fascinating to try to figure out what the hell was going on. No electricity, so much secrecy about everything… damn. I would have run for the hills the moment I arrived there (although it sounds like that would’ve been impossible)! The main character, November, ends up at this boarding school and is told by her ex-CIA father that she’ll be there for a few weeks while he goes to “help” her Aunt Jo with something. The place has no electricity and technology, is shrouded in secrets (the location is literally like Hogwarts and hidden somehow in the mountains), and has the sketchiest teenagers I’ve ever read about. Her roommate, Layla, is one of the oddest ones initially and it was so wild […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #288: YA/Adult

Posted May 19, 2020 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 1 Comment

Reasons I Love YA *and* Adult Fiction 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 thought I would take this one in two directions, since I’m terrible at coming up with 10 of anything like this for a list. Since I read both YA and adult fiction, I’ll share the top 5 reasons I love both age ranges for reading. Reasons I Love YA 1. They remind me of being a teen This is the biggest one probably. I made a lot of dumb mistakes as a teenager and these books make me feel less bad about it, to be honest. I love reading about flawed teens learning from their mistakes because that definitely was me back in the day. It can be fun to reminisce on a different time of life. 2. They often allow me to escape normal life I have to get out of my 28-year-old brain while reading YA most of the time, but that’s kind of the point for me. I love being able to think of the times I spent in high school or early college, when life seemed super hard but was often a lot easier. Bills, man – I’m sick of them. 3. They’re […]