You guys (and gals, and enbies), this book was so good!!! I don’t even know where to start. When I accepted the review copy, something made me think the book would be much more lighthearted than it was. I didn’t expect Prepped to be so serious and kind of heart-breaking. I thought it would be an adventure, but it’s so…
Continue Reading→5 Tips On How To Write A Good Book Blogger Review Request For Your Book Guest Post By Shaun Paul Stevens
The story of this guest post starts with me receiving the most brilliant book blogger review request I’ve yet to see. As book bloggers, we are used to seeing things like “Hello [Mis-spelled name], would you like to read my book”, without any info about it, sometimes missing even the book’s name, never you mind punctuation! So every time we…
Continue Reading→A New, Unexpected But Very Heart-Warming Story From Catherine Ryan Hyde My Name is Anton: A Novel by Catherine Ryan Hyde
Writing yet another review for a book by Catherine Ryan Hyde makes me feel dejavu. Every couple of months a new book of hers comes out, I instantly grab it despite any other review commitments, and I never regret it. So far, all her books have just been so good that I can’t resist reading them as soon as possible.…
Continue Reading→How To Get Book Bloggers To Actually WANT To Review Your Book Guest Post By Savannah Cordova at Reedsy
As an author, have you ever emailed a reviewer for a potential book review? Or maybe you’ve received a review request as a book blogger? If you’ve been on either end of this deal, you’ll know that writing a good book submission email is quite a hard thing to navigate. If I’m honest with you, as a blogger, 70% of the…
Continue Reading→Disinherited, Cut Off… Reinvited? A Story About A Summer When Past Secrets Come Back The Cousins by Karen M. McManus
Today I’m happy to be part of The WriteReads blog tour for The Cousins by Karen McManus! I don’t often read thrillers, but when I do, I make a point to choose good ones. The Cousins was a good twisty mystery of sins done in the past and family grudges still running strong – it wasn’t one of those stories…
Continue Reading→A Story Of The Most Unusual Friendship And Lots Of Adventuring Harpyness is Only Skin Deep and Finding Your Harpy Place by D.H. Willison
Well, this was one hell of a story! Today I’m going to tell you about two books in a series called The Tales of Arvia, and it’s just about the most unusual set of books I’ve ever read. Harpyness is Only Skin Deep and Finding Your Harpy Place should really work for someone who’s into fantasy and RPGs – it’s…
Continue Reading→A Tale Of Bravery In A Seemingly Impossible Battle Skyhunter (Skyhunter #1) by Marie Lu
I couldn’t be more surprised about falling head over heels for Skyhunter – me, who is always cautious of YA – but I did. It’s really good! I was initially suspicious – I started it through an excerpt on NetGalley – and rated it 3 stars cause it failed to draw me in. But I still grabbed the audiobook review…
Continue Reading→This Story Was Everything – Basically My Winner Of 2020 Anxious People by Fredrik Backman
How can a book be both hilarious and also heart-rending at the same time? Well, Anxious People is exactly that kind of story. It somehow manages to talk about complex and painful issues such as suicide, insecurity in life and our daily struggles at adulting in such a quirky and funny, yet graceful way you wouldn’t believe it. I chuckled…
Continue Reading→A Book About Finding Yourself And Belonging – And So Many Other Themes The Royal Abduls by Ramiza Shamoun Koya
I feel like if I wanted to give The Royal Abduls a proper review, I’d have to write a whole other book about it – I just can’t see how I would put it all into a single-post review. This story was great, and it’s just so full of everything – it covers a large variety of topics, but the…
Continue Reading→A Truly Otherworldly Story Of Secrets, Growing Up And The Magic Of Woods Otherwood by Pete Hautman
Otherwood was a brilliant story, and I loved it – but I also sort of don’t know what to make of it? It’s one of those stories that you understand more subconsciously rather than in a straight-forward manner. When I got the review copy, I expected it to be a fantasy woodsy tale, but it’s nothing like that – it…
Continue Reading→Imagine Stepping From The 19th Century Straight Into The 21st The Lost Shtetl by Max Gross
When I saw the blurb of The Lost Shtetl, I was immediately drawn in. It sounded like an absurdly ridiculous, yet mesmerizing concept – a Jewish town in the Polish woods so remote it gets overlooked for more than a hundred years, so much so that it is even missed by the Holocaust. The people living there go around their…
Continue Reading→Practical Magic Concludes, Or Rather Begins, With An Amazing Prequel Magic Lessons (Practical Magic #0) by Alice Hoffman
Being kind of a fan of Alice Hoffman’s, I loved Magic Lessons from the very start! I didn’t even doubt I would. I have loved the entire Practical Magic series, as spaced out over the decades as it was, but I think I loved Magic Lessons by far the most. I got immediately attached to the main character, Maria, and…
Continue Reading→A Quick Scifi Noir That Packs A Punch And Makes You Laugh Red Dust by Yoss
For the past week or two, I have been hearing about this new novel by a scifi author Yoss that’s gaining traction, and I mean I’ve been hearing about it EVERYWHERE. It’s been appearing on all sorts of articles and what not, and at that point, my conscience about having downloaded one from Edelweiss for free several months ago broke…
Continue Reading→One Hell Of A Ride, Riddle And Love Triangle In This YA Novel The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
The Inheritance Games is so good I just don’t know where to begin! I started reading it on a rainy day during my vacation, and it’s a good thing the weather was crap too, because otherwise I would have lost a particularly good day of being out, unable to unglue myself from the book and look at any of my…
Continue Reading→A Cozy Wind In The Willows Type Of Read! Skunk and Badger by Amy Timberlake and Jon Klassen
Skunk and Badger was such a delightful read – right from the very first pages. If you were at all a fan of the The Wind in the Willows, you will love Skunk and Badger. It is definitely different, but there is something in the vibe, something I can’t pinpoint – that they have in common (apart from the obvious…
Continue Reading→Are You Ready For Good Halloween Stories Yet? The Dead World of Lanthorne Ghules by Gerald Killingworth, ★★★★☆ 4 stars
If you’re looking for a rather quick, but very engrossing read, The Dead World of Lanthorne Ghules is definitely the book for you. It’s a middle grade adventure that will appeal to kids, teens and adults alike – it was a read of two evenings for me, and it really did leave an impression! The book has a very specific…
Continue Reading→A Tour Of A Forgotten Age Through This Amazing Historical Novel Villa of Delirium by Adrien Goetz, ★★★★✬ 4.5 stars
When I started reading Villa of Delirium, I didn’t know for sure what it was about – I often start novels without looking into it much – I’d rather the book tell me the story than the blurb. And the blurb told me it was set in a beautiful Greek villa, built based on ancient styles. That’s something I’ll always…
Continue Reading→How I Read A Memoir Of A Band I Didn’t Listen To And… Loved It It's the World's Birthday Today by Flake, ★★★★★ 5 stars
When I picked up It’s the World’s Birthday Today, to be honest, I didn’t know who Flake, the author, was. Of course I knew who the band Rammstein were – I grew up with their music being quite popular with the rock crowd. But they were not a band I’d ever listened to, personally. I was a rock chick too,…
Continue Reading→Book Tag: The Council Of The Ninja Magic Conjuring Cats, In Memoriam Of One Of Its Members Feel Free To Also Tag Yourself! (And Hug The Creator Of This Meme)
Today I was supposed to post a review. But you know what? That can wait. Because I was tagged by a friend in a tag she made up for her amazing cats, and just one or two days after this, she lost one of these cats very unexpectedly. This post is for Susan @ Novel Lives and in memory of…
Continue Reading→The Most Magical, Empowering Voyage Over Stormy Seas The Ship of Shadows by Maria Kuzniar
Okay, so what have we got here? Magic, pirate women, in fact – a pirate ship with an all-women crew (well, aside from a ghost and an owl), a brilliant library within said pirate ship, adventure and hidden mysterious treasures!! And a girl who gets told that “girls don’t go on adventures” and “girls can’t do anything”, when it’s painfully…
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