Hey guys! Happy new year! I know it’s already halfway through January but it’s better late than never right? I’ve missed writing and reviewing books so this year I plan to make it a goal of mine to write a blog post every week, no matter if I’ve finished a book or not. I know I’ve missed a couple weeks already in January but better late than never right?

I want to include the tv shows and movies I watch as well as the books I read this year. I will be doing wrap ups each month as well as reviews.

So far this year I have read seven books!

1. A Map of Days by Ransom Riggs: 4/5 Stars
2. Nimona by Noelle Stevenson: 5/5 Stars
3. Bad Blood by John Carreyrou: 2/5 Stars
4. Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart: 3/5 Stars
5. Mooncakes by Suzanne Walker: 4/5 Stars
6. The Kiss of Deception by Mary E. Pearson: 4/5 Stars
7. Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins: 5/5 Stars

I am currently reading Reputation by Sara Shepard and re-reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and the review of Reputation will be up next week!

I started watching the TV show You on Netflix and am already on the second season! I am enjoying it so far. I just finished AHS Cult on Netflix and it wasn’t my favorite season. I’m hoping I enjoy Apocalypse more.

As for movies, I’ve seen Frozen 2 and LOVED it. Maybe even more than the first one. I saw Knives Out and man that movie was a ride. I saw Blinded by the Light. I really enjoyed it and didn’t realize that Hayley Atwell was in it. I loved the incorporation of Bruce Springsteens music in the movie.

That’s all so far this year I’ve seen and read. I’m excited to see what the rest of this year holds!

I hope you are enjoying your year so far and have a wonderful week!

~ Erin

 

Hello, hello! So instead of doing a monthly book review this month, I am doing a wrap up because I ended up not finishing our book of the month. This was an okay reading month for me. I tried to do two readathons this month and ended up only finishing one and 1/4 of them. I don’t know if that makes sense but I will get into the books and you will see what I meant.

The first readathon I participated in this month was the Sci-Fi Summer Readathon. It ran from June 1st-14th. These were the books I finished:

I read Restore Me by Tahereh Mafi and gave it 4/5 stars. I’ve been listening to the audiobooks for this series and this one really took a turn I wasn’t expecting. Before reading this one I was debating on finishing this series but now I’m super excited to read the next book!

I also read a few graphic novels this month and the ones I read for the readathon were: Saga Volume 2 and Paper Girls Volume 2 both by Brian K. Vaughan. I gave them both 4/5 stars. I really like both of these series and will be continuing on with them.

The last book I read for this readathon was Stars Above by Marissa Meyer. I gave it 5/5 stars. I listened to the audiobook for this and it was really good. I really loved getting back into this world after being away from it for awhile. The Lunar Chronicles is one of my favorite series so getting back to these characters was really fun.

The second readathon I tried to do this month was the Biblio Games Readathon. This was for the whole month of June. There were five books that I chose to read for this readathon but I didn’t finish any of them. Eeek.

The book of the month for Gwen and I’s book club was Six of Hearts by L. H. Cosway and it was also one of the books I chose for this readathon. I really tried to finish this book but I got halfway through it and I just couldn’t read it anymore. I realized that I didn’t really care for any of the characters and I was bored with the story. I felt like nothing was happening. Maybe I’m just in a fantasy/action mood but I just was so bored with this book.

The two books that I plan on finishing that I started within this challenge are War Storm by Victoria Aveyard and Archenemies by Marissa Meyer. I am listening to the audiobook for War Storm and I really like how all the different points of view are read by different people.

The two books that I also chose for this challenge but did not start and did not finish were You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) by Felicia Day and Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins. I will eventually read these two books but not at the moment.

The other books that I read this month are as follows:

Paper Girls Volumes 3 and 4. I gave them both 4/5 stars.

Saga Volume 3. I gave it 4/5 stars.

Our Stories, Our Voices edited by Amy Reed. I gave this one 5/5 stars.

Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Y. Dennis Benn. I gave this one 4/5 stars.

The Princess Saves Herself in this One and The Witch Doesn’t Burn in this One both by Amanda Lovelace. I gave both of these poetry collections 5/5 stars.

This was my June 2019 Wrap Up! I hope you guys enjoyed! Let me know if you’ve read any of the books I mentioned and what you thought of them!

Happy reading!

Hello everyone! Hope you had a wonderful May! I can’t believe we are already halfway through the year! Our June Book of the month will be Six of Hearts by L.H. Cosway!

We hope you will join us this month in reading this book!

Happy reading!

Hello again! This month I read This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab. I listened to the audiobook and I loved it!! I gave it 4.5/5 stars on Goodreads. I haven’t read a dystopian novel that I loved in awhile so this one was a great jump back into the genre for me. I loved that there were two different perspectives between the two main characters. Kate and August were amazing and I love them with all my heart. I can’t wait to read the second book in this series and see where they end up.

SPOILERS BELOW

I never usually annotate books while I am reading them but I tried to with this one and have a lot of notes so let’s get into them!

I love that the book was split up into parts of a song, it really added to the novel and I like how the section names related to what happened in the section. Some books that I’ve read are split up into sections but I never figure out why they are but maybe that’s just something that I need to do with annotating. I don’t know if that makes sense but yeah those are my thoughts.

I want to know more about Kate’s backstory. I feel like we get snippets of it but I want the whole thing. I want to know what drove her to try to get kicked out of all of her schools just to get back to her father.

I want to know what happened in this world to spur all these monsters. I want a map. I love maps in books and I want one for this. Verity seemed like maybe at one point in time it was the midwest of the United States but I’m not sure. They mention something called the Phenomenon and I wonder what caused that and what it was. I have soooo many questions!

I love the idea of August’s skin covered in tally marks and how every Sunai has a specific way they show on their bodies how many days they have survived not going dark. I love how August’s sister has stars.

I want to know what happened to Henry Flynn and how he got to where he is in the book. Random thought but it goes along with how this world got to the way it is.

“We are the darkest acts made light” I always wondered where this quote from because I kept seeing it on booktube and bookstagram and now I know. I love it. That is all.

Also another quote I loved: “It was a cruel trick of the universe, thought August, that he felt human only after doing something monstrous.” ❤

I also loved the part in the book where Kate and August are talking about stars and they talk about how they are all made of stardust. It made me smile and feel fuzzy feelings. I wish everyone could think like that. We are all made of the same stuff so why can’t we just all get along. A pipe dream, I know, but it’s not bad to hope.

OMG when I got to the part in the audiobook where Kate killed that monster I literally said out loud Oh sh*t. Everything turned out fine in the end but in that moment I was like NOOOOO AUGUST NOOOO.

I didn’t really feel any sort of way when Leo died. I didn’t really care about Leo, I didn’t really like him so when August killed him I was like okay, that happened. I feel bad for August but that’s about it.

I’m so mad that Sloan didn’t die. Also, who is this new monster named Alice? Is this the first time we have heard of her or did I miss something? I’m excited to read the next oneeee I need it right now!

Those are all my thoughts on This Savage Song! What did you think? Please no spoilers for the second one! Comment what you thought and we can discuss!

Hope you are having an amazing day/night!

Happy reading!

~Erin

Our May 2019 Book of the month will be This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab!

We hope you will join us in reading this month!

Happy reading!

 

Another month, a whole boat load of books. I listened to the audiobook for this book and I enjoyed it a lot! What was surprising to me though, was that I was also following along in the physical copy and some parts of the book were different in the audiobook. That might just be because of a change in times but it didn’t change the story too much which was good. There are some illustrations in the book so I can see why they changed the audiobook for those but there were other parts that were just slight wording changes.

I’ve realized recently that I enjoy books with short chapters. I like the different style to it and with my busy schedule it’s easy to put down the book when I need to and not have to stop in the middle of a chapter. I can see now why this book was turned into a movie before the first one in the series (Angels and Demons). There was a lot more action and adventure in this book compared to the first one. I still love the first one, this one was just more fast-paced. There were car chases, false accusations, secret identities, and so much more. I gave this book 4/5 stars on Goodreads.

SPOILERS BELOW

Something different that I did while reading this book was I made a likes and dislikes list. I don’t annotate my books while I’m reading. I’m not opposed to writing in my books I just forget to do so and sometimes when I add annotating to my books it makes me like it less. I guess because it takes me back to high school when we were required sometimes to annotate our books and if we didn’t have enough annotations we wouldn’t get good grades on them. It was weird, I know. Anyway, I am going to start with what I disliked about this book.

We are introduced to a new character named Sophie and she ends up being a really important character at the end but I wanted to see more of her throughout the book. She is always with Robert Langdon as they are on the run from the law but it’s mostly in Robert’s point of view. I wanted to see more Sophie chapters and what she felt about Robert. I felt like the kiss at the end was weird because we only got to see what Robert was feeling about their relationship and we didn’t get to see her opinions very much. She seemed like she was just there for the plot’s sake and not for her character’s sake.

Something that I had a hate/love relationship with in the book were all the descriptions of the history and art and all the stuff that had to do with the mystery of the story. Sometimes they were needed and I appreciate that but sometimes the descriptions went on FOREVER and I felt like I was sitting in a lecture hall and needing to take notes. I was so bored after awhile. I felt like I was hearing the same information over and over even though I don’t think that was the case.

Okay, now onto what I liked about the book.

I love books with different perspectives so this was cool to see both sides of the conflict as well as other parties that were involved but also not. I liked the dramatic irony that came with the different perspectives as well. There were a few Disney references in this book and I was LIVING for those. I am a major Disney nerd so that was awesome to see that in the book. While I said previously that I didn’t love the amount of history lessons in the book there were a few that I found interesting which was good. I also really enjoyed the adventurous aspect of this book. There were a lot of different locations that we got to see which was exciting.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and will probably in the future continue on with this series. If you have read this book, let us know what you thought in the comments. Have you read any other Dan Brown books, and what did you think?

Hope you all are having a great day and happy reading!

~Erin

Hello everyone! Our April book of the month will be… The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown!

We hope you will join us this month to read this book! If you have read it, let us know what you thought in the comments!

Happy reading!

Hey guys! I read this book for our March book of the month and it was and interesting read. It wasn’t horrible but it also wasn’t the best book I’ve read in a while. I gave it 3/5 stars on Goodreads. This was the first adult fantasy that I’ve ever read and while I don’t think I will continue on with the series it was a good first book in a genre I haven’t read.

Some good things: The main characters were great and fleshed out pretty well. Mercy is an interesting character and I liked seeing the book from her point of view. The world was really complex and mysterious.

Overall, it was an adventurous read and I think if I read more of the series it might not be so confusing. I could see that there was a lot of world and a lot of magic in this world but the way that it works is confusing. There was too many characters that were unneeded for the story and I got them confused. I knew the main characters but everyone else in Adam’s pack and anyone outside of Adam’s pack were confusing and I didn’t know who anyone was. Especially the end when Tony and Gabriel come in. I was confused as to who they were. I remember Gabriel’s mother came in earlier but that’s all I remember and I don’t know who Tony is at all.

I don’t understand the rules of magic in this world. We got little glimpses into each type of magical creature but the hierarchy and the rules between the different species was not explained well.

I do really think that this story has a lot of potential and it wasn’t bad at all I was just left wanting more explanations.

Mercy, Jesse, Adam, and Samuel were probably my favorite characters.

I don’t really have a lot to say about this book. If you have read this book, what did you think? Have you read more of the series and do things get explained?

Hope you are having a great Sunday and happy reading!

We are starting our books of the month again this month and hopefully we keep up with the reviews and such! This month we are reading Gwen’s pick, Moon Called by Patricia Briggs. It is an adult paranormal fantasy novel.

We hope you will join us this month to read this book! If you’ve read this book let us know what you thought in the comments!

Happy reading!

Hello everyone! This month was a great month of reading for me! I read a total of five books this month and they were all pretty good!

The first book I read this month was The Siren by Kiera Cass. I listened to the audiobook of this one for the most part and then the last 100 pages or so I read the physical book. I really enjoyed this book. I was nervous going into it because I tried to read Cass’ The Selection series and didn’t even get through the first book because I didn’t like it. But The Siren I really enjoyed. It was unique how the whole siren aspect of it was portrayed. It wasn’t just mermaids and singing. There was a whole hierarchy to it and I loved how the ocean was a character as well. I gave this book 4/5 stars.

The next book I read this month was Sadie by Courtney Summers. Oh my goodness this book. It was the first book this year that at the end of it I was literally speechless. I was feeling too many feelings and wow this book was so good. I don’t read a lot of thrillers but now I want to because of this book. It is told in two different perspectives, one is Sadie and one is a radio newscaster telling the story and trying to figure out where Sadie went. I can’t really say a lot about it without giving the whole story away but it is amazing and everyone should read it. I gave it 5/5 stars on Goodreads.

The next book I read this month was Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. I was itching for a wintery book and this one was perfect. While I loved the relationship in it, I wish the book was longer. I didn’t like how it just ended at the beginning of their relationship. It was very abrupt. The whole passing back and forth the journal thing was cute and reminded me of when people used to send letters back and forth instead of using the internet. Overall, it was enjoyable to read I was just left wanting more. I gave this book 3/5 stars on Goodreads.

The next book I read was Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi. I loved this book! I didn’t know I was looking for an awesome new fantasy series but I found it! It was really fast paced which helped me stay interested in the story considering how long it was. I loved all the characters and their story arcs were awesome. They were complex characters and I loved that. The whole world building was great too and I can’t wait to see more of it in the future books! I gave this book 5/5 stars on Goodreads.

The last book that I read this month was Queen of Shadows by Sarah J. Maas. It was a struggle getting through this book. Not because it was bad because it was not, but because I forgot what happened in Heir of Fire. I actually started reading this last year but then stopped about a hundred pages in because I could not keep up with it. When I started it again, I made sure to watch some Heir of Fire booktalk youtube videos and read about all the characters and the synopsis so it could jog my memory. I loved this book. While I think so far Heir of Fire was my favorite, this was amazing as well. I’m super excited to continue on with the series. So much happened in this book that literally changed everything and I’m excited to see what happens now! I gave this book 4/5 stars on Goodreads.

That is all that I read this past month! What did you guys read? Have you read any of these and what did you think? Let me know!

Hope you have a wonderful day/night!

Happy reading!

~Erin