Holiday Reviews: Snowfall on Cedar Trail and Christmas at Silver Falls

Posted December 27, 2019 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

Story I’m always so excited to head back into Sweetwater Springs! As I’ve said a hundred times before, it’s one of my favorite small town settings for a companion series. I always find Annie Rains’ books to be sweet and steamy at the same time – never too cheesy! The story follows Tuck’s sister Halona, who owns the town flower shop, and her son Theo. He’s been struggling with selective mutism since his father died. The leading man is Alex, the chief of police, and Tuck’s best friend. The two have had chemistry since they grew up together. There were heavy plot points throughout the story that affected the main romance quite a bit (and other things – more on that in the next section). Theo was so adorable and usually I don’t love kids in books that much. The progression of Alex and Halona’s relationship was sweet and seeing his interactions with her son made it that much better. Wintery Setting & Holiday Feels Sweetwater Springs is a petty magical place during the holiday season! I loved reading about the town’s traditions and decorations. I think the heavier plot points in the story, like Halona’s history with Ted and Alex trying to solve his father’s murder, really took a lot away from the warm and fuzzy Christmas feels I’m used to in books like this. Overall This was a really lovely romance. I do wish there were a bit more Christmassy feels but the nature of their story, with […]

January TBR

Posted December 26, 2019 / Book Lists, Features, TBR Lists / 1 Comment

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. Last month’s progress: I definitely blew it with my challenges for the end of the year because honestly I just stopped caring about forcing myself to complete them. I did a reallllly good job with my holiday books and review copies though! I was able to squeeze in so many Christmassy books. Review Copies I have quite a few books publishing in January for review (those seriously creep on me every year!) so that’s mostly what you’ll see here instead of the usual breakdown of review copy variety. MERMAID INN, YOU WERE THERE TOO, and TWEET CUTE are all publishing in January. BLITZED is from December (didn’t have time with my holiday romances, whoops!). I usually keep this section for egalleys only but I’m including GIRLS WITH RAZOR HEARTS in this section because it’s going to be my first book of 2020 and it’s an ARC publishing in March. Required Reading Book Clubs My YA book club is going to continue the Cursebreakers series when A HEART SO FIERCE AND BROKEN releases in early January. My adult/mystery/women’s fiction book club hasn’t made a final decision on our book yet, so I’ll probably […]

Holiday Reviews: The White Christmas Inn and Royal Holiday

Posted December 25, 2019 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

Story I really enjoyed this one, even more than I had hoped! The story is kind of a “slice of life” that takes place at a Vermont inn during the few days around Christmas. There were a lot of characters but I think there wasn’t TOO much detail about each of them, which ended up being a good thing. I was able to really just enjoy peeking in through the windows of this inn during the story. There was just enough backstory to feel invested in each of them. Molly, a writer of children’s books, comes to the inn in the hopes she’ll be able to finish her next book. She meets Marcus and his two girls and quickly falls for the small family. Hannah, who was set to get married at the inn over the holiday period, is sent reeling when her fiance calls it off. She luckily has her parents and maid of honor with her, as well as a reunion with her childhood friend Luke, to get her thought the heartbreak. Jeanne and Tim are the owners of the inn and struggling, both in their marriage and with the business itself. I loved reading about everyone’s different stories and the smaller side characters who come into play, like the grumpy British traveler and empty-nesters staying there too. Again, writing all of this further emphasizes how many characters and plotlines there are in such a short book, but it was really a nice quick snapshot of everyone’s lives […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #267: Under My Tree

Posted December 24, 2019 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 0 Comments

Books Gifts I Hope to Find Under My Tree 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 didn’t ask for many books this Christmas, so I thought I would do what I usually do – here’s what I hope to find under my tree in general. I had different wishlists for my dad, mom, and Chris, so this will be from my Amazon wishlist for dad 😉 Clothing Leopard print tee shirt | Colorblock sweater | Joggers I’ve been following a lot more lifestyle/fashion-ish people on YouTube lately and many of them swear by these tops! I also randomly found the joggers while browsing and I need some new pairs. Household Pasta cooker | Oven mitt set | Macrame decoration My friend has the microwave pasta cooker and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I want to make more pasta; the number one reason I avoid it is because I hate waiting for the water to boil and cook it haha. I also want a Panthers oven mitt set and little macrame decor item. Books and Bags Structured bag | Panthers insulated tote | SIGHTWITCH | STRANGE PLANET I have two bags on my list and two books. I still […]

Blog Tour: Coming Home for Christmas

Posted December 21, 2019 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

Purchase Links: Harlequin || Indiebound || Amazon || Barnes & Noble Books-A-Million || Target || Walmart || Kobo || iBooks || Google I have adored the Haven Point series for multiple years now and this is a highly anticipated installment for me. It follows Luke, whose wife disappeared seven years earlier, and his quest to get her back. He knew, of course, that he didn’t do anything terrible to her, but that didn’t exactly matter to other people in the town. Everyone assumed something terrible had happened and he was responsible. The other option is that Elizabeth walked away from her family on purpose. When Elizabeth ends up being found without her memories, we’re intended to learn what happened to her and fall for this family coming back together again. I adored Luke through his cameos in other books in this series and was so eager to see his own book, as I mentioned. He was known to be a kind man (again, despite some people assuming the worst about him and his wife’s whereabouts), so being in his head was something I was looking forward to. It took a while to get used to Elizabeth and not be frustrated about her internal thoughts. I didn’t sympathize with her right off the bat but it was pretty clear that some terrible things happened to her. I knew I would forgive her eventually 😉 It took more than two-thirds of the book before this felt Christmassy enough for me, but it was really sweet to see […]

Spotlight: Calendar of Crime Challenge

Posted December 20, 2019 / Book Challenges, Features, Spotlight / 0 Comments

My new Spotlight feature highlights anything within the bookish world that I feel deserves a spotlight for a few minutes – publishers (or more specifically, imprints!), new or old favorite authors, bookish people/bloggers, covers or cover trends, topics/genres within books, and anything else that should be on your radar. Calendar of Crime Challenge I thought it’d be really fun to put a spotlight on the Calendar of Crime reading challenge, hosted by My Reader’s Block. You can read their post about the 2020 challenge HERE for more details and to sign up, but I wanted to highlight why I think this is such a worthwhile and intriguing challenge. If you’re someone like me who LOVES researching things, plotting highly specific TBRs, and enjoys scheduling their reading, you have to take a look at this challenge. Challenge Rules/Premise The basic idea of this challenge is to read at least one crime-related book a month (mystery, thriller, police procedural, cozy mystery – you name it) that fits one of the prompts on the Calendar of Crime. Each month has a number of challenges that you should follow for your mystery book of choice. “To claim a book, it must fit one of the categories for the month you wish to fulfill. Unless otherwise specified, the category is fulfilled within the actual story. for instance, if you are claiming the book for December and want to use “Christmas” as the category, then Christmas figure in some in the plot. Did someone poison the […]

Christmas Q&A

Posted December 18, 2019 / Uncategorized / 2 Comments

I was in the mood to do some Christmassy tags on the blog for this season, so I decided to start with The Christmas Tag. It looks like this particular set of questions was developed back in 2012 HERE. I decided to skip a couple and add a few more on my own at the end. What is your favorite Christmas film? This is always such an easy question for me. Since I was a kid it’s always been The Santa Clause. There’s something about this movie from the very first sounds of the opening song that just get me every time. I don’t watch the sequels every year but I do every few years (they’re not great lol the second one isn’t TERRIBLE). I’d have to say my second favorite Christmas movie is definitely National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation – just SO funny. Have you ever had a white Christmas? Oh yes, that’s one major benefit of living here! I will say that the amount of white Christmases has decreased in recent years (sup global warming) but it IS the best way to have a Christmas in my opinion. My ideal situation is that it snows December 23rd and stays on the ground but doesn’t snow MORE on the actual holiday. I got places to go, ya’ll. Where do you usually spend your holiday? Phew so we do a lot of running around – too many parents to see. On Christmas Eve, both my dad’s family and Chris’s family get together, so […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #266: Winter TBR

Posted December 17, 2019 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 6 Comments

Winter TBR – New & Upcoming Releases January and February 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 still going to do a January TBR post sometime at the end of this month so I don’t want to duplicate very much… This is focused heavily on highly anticipated reads, new releases coming in the first two months of the year, and ARCs I have that I want to read ASAP. One of Us is Next by McManus: Sequel to One of Us is Lying Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McQuire: Next installment in the Wayward Children series A Heart So Fierce and Broken by Kemmerer: Sequel to A Curse So Dark and Lonely Lucky Caller by Mills: New release! The Hand on the Wall by Johnson: Finale in the Truly Devious series Mermaid Inn by Holiday: New small town companion series! The King of Crows by Bray: Finale in the Diviners series (!!!!!!!!!!) Starting Over at Blueberry Creek by Rains: Next book in the Sweetwater Springs series The Worst Best Man by Sosa: New release I’m excited for A Castle in the Clouds by Gier: Another exciting new release from a fave author

#ChristmasMovieADay (40 Movies) | Part 1

Posted December 16, 2019 / Media, Personal / Information / Etc. / 1 Comment

I thought there was too much pressure (only from myself TBH) last year to watch and review holiday movies, but I still felt like something was MISSING from my holiday post schedule without this kind of roundup! I thought I would talk a little about my plans to watch 40 Christmas movies in the 40 days leading up to Christmas (approximately). I tweeted each of them so this little roundup will discuss each movie per my Twitter feed! #ChristmasMovieADay While this hasn’t worked out exactly as I planned (because honestly a LOT of the Hallmark movies this year didn’t fully appeal to me for some reason), I still wanted to target watching 40 movies in the 40 days leading up to Christmas. I figured any time where I got behind, I’d probably make up for it later on. Chris is on board with watching some classics when we get closer to Christmas, so we’d end up seeing a few movies a day then. I also got lucky where my boss was out of the office for a few days – that meant I could play some cheesy Hallmark or Netflix movies in the background while working. Mini Movie Reviews So Far #ChristmasMovieADay A Shoe Addict’s Christmas ? I somehow didn’t get around to this one last year despite the fact that CCB is my favorite. Fun concept overall but I don’t know why God was referenced..usually Hallmark is not that overt and it felt random toward the end pic.twitter.com/jkjfLxx57h […]

2020 Resolutions and Challenge Sign-Up

Posted December 13, 2019 / Book Challenges, Features / 14 Comments

I’ve been doing these resolutions for the past couple of years and found that it’s a really nice way to keep track of some goals for the upcoming year. I’ll be honest when I say that generally “resolutions” or the “clean slate of a new year” isn’t my shtick, but sometimes the marking of a new year just helps when setting new goals. It’s an easy marker of time and that’s about it. You can find 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 resolutions as well. Continue to not feel pressured to read and enjoy other hobbies | As usual, this stays on my list for the next year! I always want to make sure I balance out my days/weeks with reading, audiobooks, podcasts, YouTube, other TV shows, and spending quality time with Chris. My goal of 120 books was super manageable last year because, as usual, I got a little ahead during certain months and it balanced out for later months with less reading. Read 50% or less contemporary novels | Yet again, can I make this one work?! I really hope the challenges below help me read more mysteries and other genres. I got VERY close in 2019 with reading other genres. Curate a monthly TBR with a lot of variety | I’m planning a post for this in the new year as an update to last year’s Anatomy of a TBR Post. I want to do a better job of really adding variety, including backlist titles and other genre requirements, to make my […]