Five on Fridays [4]

Posted January 24, 2020 / Five on Fridays, Weekly Memes / 5 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. I’ll generally be posting these biweekly and linking up with Friday Favorites (hosted by A Little Bit of Everything, Grace and Love, and Momfessionals). Previous posts can be found here! Podcast: CounterClock It’s been 20 years since emergency responders found Denise Johnson inside of a burning home. An investigative journalist, Delia D’Ambra, revisits her small coastal hometown in North Carolina to dive deep into a 22-year-old cold case murder and arson that’s marred the image of where she grew up. This investigative series reveals new clues, never-before-heard interviews and tracks down potential suspects in the case. The only way to understand Denise Johnson’s story is to go move counterclockwise in time; to go backwards to the point her clock finally stopped. (CounterClock website) It’s no secret that I’m a true crime procast junkie and I’ve shared them randomly throughout the years. I actually have a roundup coming sometime soon to catch you up on all the ones I’ve enjoyed since my previous roundups back in 2017. Anyways, I heard CounterClock was coming because its produced by the Crime Junkie podcast group. The pod is hosted by someone else, who I enjoy, and the investigation into this cold case is essentially reopening in real time. It’s about a woman who was found dead (from stab wounds) in a burning […]

Pondathon Sign-Up and Tracking/Etc.

Posted January 23, 2020 / Book Challenges, Features / 2 Comments

What is the Pondathon? The Pondathon is a co-operative and story-driven readathon hosted and run by CW from The Quiet Pond. The aim of the Pondathon is to read books and collect points to protect the friends over at The Quiet Pond from the encroaching malevolent forces that threaten our friends in the forest. Have fun participating in the Pondathon readathon by joining one of five teams, each with a unique way to collect points and signing up! You can also follow the story of the Pondathon as it unfolds, and participants can also complete ‘side quests’ during the readathon to collect extra points. The readathon takes place from January 24th 2020 to March 7th 2020. More information about the readathon can be found here. Information about Joining the Pondathon To join the Pondathon, simply sign up anytime between January 18th 2020 to March 5th 2020. Choose a team, create your own animal character for the Pondathon and create a character card! Create a blog post, bookstagram post, booktube video, Twitter thread, or whatever medium you wish, with ‘#Pondathon’ in the title or your tweet. Share the character you have created and your character card! Link back to this post so that others can find this readathon and join in. Share your updates on your blog/bookstagram/booktube and social media. You are more than welcome to tag @thequietpond or @artfromafriend on Twitter or Instagram in all your updates! We’d love to see all of the beautiful and awesome characters that you […]

January Adult Contemporary | ARC Reviews: You Were There Too and Mermaid Inn

Posted January 22, 2020 / Book Reviews / 2 Comments

I really enjoyed Oakley’s sophomore novel but STILL have managed to skip her debut. Regardless, I knew I needed this one. It reminded me of an adult version of my YA favorite Dreamology, where the main character has recurring dreams with a man/boy and then finds that they actually exist in real life… and they’ve been dreaming about her too. Mia has been dreaming of Oliver for years and discovers he’s also been dreaming of her too. They don’t share/live out the same dreams at the same time but they do have similar ones sometimes. This was a heavy book (major trigger warning for miscarriage and infertility) – definitely heavier than I expected – but very impactful. The first line of the synopsis says “heart-wrenching” but I didn’t expect this level of it for some reason. I really enjoyed the rare pops of chapters we got from other points of view (Harrison, Whitney, etc.). It added a little something different to the story. I did enjoy reading Mia’s point of view though. I felt her struggle and knew there was really no easy solution to her problems. The book just felt so REAL and raw, following the ebbs and flows of her relationship(s) in a way I could understand and empathize with. Like I said though: it made for a pretty hard read, and not every decision she made was perfect or logical. I didn’t agree with everything she did or said along the way. I’m a huge fan of […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #271: Bookshelf

Posted January 21, 2020 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 14 Comments

Recent Additions to my Shelves 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 actually don’t buy very many books, so this went back pretty far! I try to keep many books on my Kindle and purchase only favorites to display (or ask for them as gifts!). For Review or Gifted Books below received in exchange for an honest review and/or were gifted from friends where mentioned The Hand on the Wall by Maureen Johnson | I was sent a copy of this finished hardcover from the publisher and I was SO excited! I actually received the second book from them as well. I was hoping to read this ahead of the pub date but my reading life has been weird so far this year. I will probably be reading it as we speak though! Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe by Heather Webber | Cristina ended up with two copies of this one so she sent her extra my way, along with an adorable photo of us from her wedding that I can’t wait to hang up somewhere!! When We Were Vikings by Andrew David McDonald | I received this book from the publisher via Big Honcho and am definitely intrigued! It’s a little different […]

Blog Tour: Tweet Cute

Posted January 20, 2020 / Book Reviews / 4 Comments

BUY THE BOOK HERE! Book Review I was so excited when I was asked to join the TWEET CUTE blog tour! I’ve been looking forward to this book ever since it was first announced, and the early glowing reviews from friends only furthered my interest. Needless to say, I had high hopes and expectations… so luckily this book delivered. The story follows a few different elements involving our lead pair getting to know each other, so try to keep up. Big League Burger is a rising star in the fast food business now, but Pepper remembers when it was just a family-owned burger joint in Nashville, owned and operated by her parents. When business takes off and they start franchising, competing with the likes of McDonalds and Burger King, she moves to NYC with her now-divorced mom to run the show. She’s often responsible for the lighthearted, witty tweets and jabs from the company on social media. Enter Jack, the son of family-owned NYC deli Girl Cheesing. It’s been in the family for generations and he’s due to take over (not his twin Ethan, but that’s a whole other thing!). When he discovers the Big League Burger has not only stolen their grandma’s NYC-famous grilled cheese recipe, they’ve also stolen the name of it too, he starts an unexpected Twitter war with the burger company… and therefore Pepper… in the process. Meanwhile, the two are unknowingly chatting it up anonymously on an app that Jack developed for their private school. AND on […]

Blog Tour Spotlight and Cover Colors: Lie to Me

Posted January 17, 2020 / Cover Colors, Features / 0 Comments

Welcome to my stop on the LIE TO ME blog tour! I’m here to do a quick spotlight on the book and a little bit of Cover Colors, since it’s been a while! In case you haven’t seen it before, I typically pull the colors from the book cover and create a palette. I usually make some kind of outfit and accessory post to correspond but it’s hard to do that when the book is a mystery and involves some kind of murder or death… 😉 Cover Colors I was drawn to this cover right away because it’s pretty simple but haunting! The pops of pink color lighten it up a little bit too. I was definitely curious to read the story after having seen this cover initially. About the Author Kaitlin Ward grew up on a dairy farm in a tiny New Hampshire town, the same town where she lives now with her husband and son. She studied animal science at Cornell University and cofounded the well-known blog YA Highway. She is also the author of Where She Fell, Girl in a Bad Place, and Bleeding Earth. Find her on Twitter at @Kaitlin_Ward.

Anatomy of a TBR Post (2020 Update/Plans)

Posted January 16, 2020 / Discussions, Features / 3 Comments

Here I am yet again with another post about TBRs (you’ve seen the original version of this last year and I’ve also discussed ARC habits and how I pick the books for my TBR)! As I started plotting out my reading challenges for 2020 at the end of last year (and my reading resolutions, including a focus on adding variety to my TBRs), I realized I should update this and PLAN for more variety. I always think about the books I missed out on reading, and how it can be really challenging to fit in everything I want to read in a given month. If I read 120 books a year, 10 books a month doesn’t feel like a lot in terms of balancing backlist, new releases, favorite authors, blog tours, book clubs, owned books, and review copies. How can I squeeze ALL of those in each month??? It seemed like a good time to remind myself what’s important and how I can curate monthly TBRs with a solid amount of variety that keep me interested and on track. So, a lot of this will be similar to last year’s Anatomy of a TBR Post that I made but will specifically include other challenges and balancing in the backlist / catching up on old review copies. As I said last time: I remember back in 2015 I followed Andi on an experiment of using TBR-related categories when picking books for the month. It worked so well for me because my mood […]

Popsugar Reading Challenge Ideas

Posted January 15, 2020 / Book Challenges, Book Lists, Features / 2 Comments

Just like last year, I decided I should make a big ol post about TBR ideas for the Popsugar Reading Challenge! Sometimes it just helps me to circle back and remember what my ideas were at the beginning of the years if I start to get lost later on. I was REALLY excited to see this list because all of the prompts seem attainable this year. Seriously, I’d probably read *most* of these without a lot of prompting. Other resources: Popsugar Reading Challenge post and Popsugar Goodreads Group TBR Ideas A book published in 2020 This is one I’ll be sure to cross off right away, as I tend to read new releases pretty frequently! I decided to list some January titles I’m excited about since I’m sure that’s when I’ll check this box off. It could be ONE OF US IS NEXT, A HEART SO FIERCE AND BROKEN, or A CASTLE IN THE CLOUDS. A book by a trans or nonbinary author I struggle with heavier contemporaries like I WISH YOU ALL THE BEST but I’ve heard so many great things about this book. I think the likely option for me based on my existing TBR will be OVER THE TOP by JVN because they identify as nonbinary. A book about a book club I’ve been seriously meaning to read THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL SOCIETY for while and I don’t really know why, but that will work here. I also have an egalley of UNDERCOVER BROMANCE, which involves […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #270: Discoveries

Posted January 14, 2020 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 8 Comments

Best Bookish Discoveries of 2019 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 topic is so fun! We’re looking at the best bookish discoveries we made in 2019. I’m going to broaden this a little beyond just discoveries, but bookish or reading-related THINGS I started doing, found, or changed from 2019. Reading Bullet Journal I enjoyed working on my bullet journal for the vast majority of 2019. I think I got burnt out and uninspired after a while, but I still fully completed it for the year! I hope that the new year has increased my interest in it, but it’s still a fun and creative way to mark progress on books. Booktube I obviously didn’t DISCOVER booktube in 2019 but I did find a lot of new favorites and spend a LOT of time watching it! I was recommended some great channels and found a few more on my own, plus loved watching “old favorites” that I would watch even before this year’s new obsession. TBR Cart My cart is a little less TBR-oriented right now because of how I have it arranged and where it’s located. I use it to store planner supplies and my bullet journal, my iPad, […]

Romanceopoly

Posted January 13, 2020 / Book Challenges, Features / 4 Comments

Just when you (probably) thought ya girl was done with challenges, yet another popped up for me to overanalyze and create TBRs for! 😉 You can learn all about Romanceopoly HERE but I’ll be discussing the general idea and plan of attack below. This is just such a fun and unique challenge that will help me read a bit more widely under the romance genre and beyond. The Basics The hosts have created a Monopoly-like game board with different prompts for each space. You can play a few different ways, including just going around the board in order or actually rolling dice to move around the board. You can pick between the SUN and MOON prompt packs as well, so you can technically complete the board twice if you wanted to. My Plan I decided to add this challenge to my life this year because it just seems like something fun I can do whenever I’m in the mood for romance or for something random off my TBR. Not all of the prompts are romance though! I decided to roll a few dice in a row so I have an idea of my next couple of books, and then decide when to read them. I know most people strive to complete the game board but I’m not 100% sure if I will or not. Unlike other challenges, I won’t be tracking it as closely in terms of completion percentage or goals. I’ve picked the moon pack for this because I […]