First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?
Hello, everyone! It’s Wednesday! That means it is time for another WWW Wednesday, a weekly meme hosted by Sam @ Taking On A World of Words. I’ll be answering the following questions:
Hello everyone! Today’s prompt is top 5 books with one word titles. I’ve tried to focus on books I enjoyed that I don’t see people talk about very often. The covers all link to the book’s Goodreads page, and I’ve included the official covers and synopsis when available. Top 5 Tuesday was created by Shanah @ Bionic Book Worm, and is now being hosted at Meeghan Reads!
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February flew by. I was sick with COVID for half of it, including my birthday. It was definitely a bummer, but I’m grateful to be feeling much better now and getting back into the swing of things. On the bright side, all the time laid up gave me plenty of time to read. So, the month wasn’t a total loss.
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For such a short month, I sure did haul a lot of great books. I was hoping I’d spend less in February, but I actually ended up spending even more than in January, $176.91 not including book boxes. I got tons of great stuff, though. I think at least part of my increased shopping this month was due to feeling like crap for half of the month thanks to COVID. Once I was better, I wanted to celebrate and couldn’t think of a better way than new books. lol. I didn’t use the library quite as much in February, but I’m more than making up for it in March already. I’ve had what seems like a billion holds come in all at once, which is both stressful and exciting. It is also important to note that I unhauled 20 books in February, as well. So, I made a little space on my shelves for all the newbies. 🙂
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I can’t believe it is already time for another round of Trope-ical Readathon. It seems like August was just yesterday. I’ve decided to switch things up this time and join a different team, Team Science Fiction. I’ve always been on Team Fantasy in the past, but I liked the prompts better for Team Sci Fi this time. For the last Trope-ical Readathon, I didn’t set a specific TBR. Instead, I filled in the challenges as I went along throughout the month rather than picking specific books for the prompts the way I usually have in the past. This worked really well for me last time since it was the first time I’ve finished all the challenges. So, I’m going to proceed the same way again.The general and team prompts are in the graphics below, and more information about this readathon can be found at Jen Jen Reviews. If you are interested in participating, you have until March 5 to sign up!
Read More »Hello, everyone! It’s Wednesday! That means it is time for another WWW Wednesday, a weekly meme hosted by Sam @ Taking On A World of Words. I’ll be answering the following questions:
Hello everyone! Today’s prompt is top 5 smol books. I enjoy reading novellas and other short works because I can finish them quickly and feel accomplished. lol. Here are some of the shortest books/stories I’ve read and enjoyed. The covers all link to the book’s Goodreads page, and I’ve included the official covers and synopsis when available. Top 5 Tuesday was created by Shanah @ Bionic Book Worm, and is now being hosted at Meeghan Reads!
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Hello, everyone! Today I’m participating in the blog tour for the BBNYA finalist, Haven by Ceril N Domace. This was one of my BBNYA reads last year, and I had a lot of fun participating as a panelist.
BBNYA is a yearly competition where book bloggers from all over the world read and score books written by indie authors, ending with 15 finalists and one overall winner. If you are an author and wish to learn more about the BBNYA competition, you can visit the official website http://www.bbnya.com or Twitter @bbnya_official. BBNYA is brought to you in association with the @Foliosociety (if you love beautiful books, you NEED to check out their website!) and the book blogger support group @The_WriteReads.
Most people think the fae are gone. Most people are wrong.
Owen Williams wakes after a horrific car accident to find his wife is dead—and somehow turned into a gryphon—and his kids gone after a home invasion turned horribly wrong. Shattered and reeling, he vows to do whatever it takes to find them.
When a fae scout appears and promises to reunite him with his kids, he doesn’t hesitate before joining her. But she warns him that if he wants to protect his family, he must follow the fae to their city, the hidden haven of Tearmann.
With enemies on the horizon, Owen needs to set aside his fears and take up arms to defend their new home alongside the people he’s always been taught were monsters—or he’ll lose everyone he’s trying to protect.
***Thank you to BBNYA for providing a copy of the book. My review contains my honest thoughts about my reading experience.***
My thoughts on this one are mixed. I enjoyed learning about the world the author created, and the characters really tugged at my heart. However, the pace of the story was just dreadfully slow at times, and the writing wasn’t always the best. For example, I had trouble tracking what was going on in some of the action scenes.
I liked the world-building. I found the struggles of the fae to be realistic, and I was fascinated, and a bit horrified, by the process of changing that turned humans into fae. There were so many different types of fae, and I enjoyed learning about each of them. My only problem with the world-building was the delivery. It was really slow and primarily delivered via lengthy dialogue. There was so much telling happening that it felt like I was reading the slowest lecture in history. I found the information on the history of the fae in this world fascinating, but it was a huge drag on the story.
The characters and the family dynamic were the things I loved most about this story. These children grasped hold of my heart and would not let go. The entire family went through so much trauma in this story, and I was in my feelings right along with them. I also liked seeing a story about a father and his kids because it is not something I read nearly often enough. Although, the father, Owen, did get on my nerves sometimes because his characterization was really inconsistent. The text kept saying he was so worried about his kids and would never leave their sight again, and then he’d be off to some new meeting by himself in the very next scene. He made quite a few choices that left me shaking my head.
The themes related to ‘othering’ were timely and important. The story illustrated how important it is to get to know people rather than demonizing entire groups based on preconceived notions and baseless propaganda. The transition of the fae and the persecution they faced afterward reminded me of the challenges facing trans people, who are often demeaned and attacked for transitioning into their true selves. I’m not sure if it was the intention of the author, but that’s what I took away from it.
Was this book perfect? No, but I still enjoyed it. The world-building was clever despite being a bit clunky in its execution, and I would die for the children in this book. I came to love them that much. Therefore, I rate this book 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Ceril N Domace is an accountant, the owner of the feline embodiment of violence, and a dedicated dungeon master. On the rare occasions she manages to free herself from an ever-growing and complex web of TTRPG, Ceril enjoys taking walks and griping that all her hobbies are work in disguise.
March is absolutely STACKED when it comes to exciting new book releases. This is nowhere near an exhaustive list of everything I hope to eventually read, but I felt the list was already getting a bit too long. So, I arbitrarily capped it at 11 books this month for absolutely no reason at all. 🤣 Here are (some of) the books I’m anticipating the most in March 2023:
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