Category: Books

YA Mini Reviews: The Inheritance Game and Majesty

Posted January 25, 2021 in Books, Reviews / 4 Comments

The Inheritance Games was one of my most anticipated books of 2020, so I was excited to be able to squeeze it in as my last book of the year! The description was giving me major The Westing Game vibes, one of my favorite middle grade novels, so I was excited to dive into the story. As expected, it was a very twisty plot with Barnes’ signature plot twists, puzzles and opportunities for readers to be kept on their toes. The whole wish-fulfillment premise was really fun (who doesn’t like to daydream what they’d do if they unexpected came into […]

ACNH: Thoughts On the First Year

Posted January 20, 2021 in Features, Lifestyle, Series Reviews, Video Games / 2 Comments

Like many, many others, I kicked off quarantine in March of 2020 with the newest installment of the ever popular Animal Crossing franchise, Animal Crossing New Horizons. I loved everything about it: the updated graphics (I hadn’t played since the original version on my Gamecube!), the island setting, the calming music, and the sense that here was something I could control when everything in life was so out of control with the pandemic. Now that the first year is more or less over, I thought it would be fun to recap some of my favorite elements of the game and […]

ARC Reviews | The Project & You Have a Match

Posted January 18, 2021 in Books, Reviews / 2 Comments

It’s no surprise that after the delicious success of Emma Lord’s Tweet Cute, that her sophomore novel would be highly, highly anticipated with several expectations among readers. Following teenage protagonist Abby, the story is sort of a Parent Trap-esque situation complete with a summer camp setting and pulling the wool over their parents’ eyes. While I overall enjoyed the long lost sister and unearthing a troubling past elements of the story, they did feel a bit clumsily handled at times, crowded in among more juvenile situations and writing. There were so many compelling, excellent, and almost hard to read moments […]

2020 End of Year Bookish Stats

Posted January 13, 2021 in Books, Features / 2 Comments

It’s finally 2021! I could not be more thrilled to have a fresh year in front of me (though I know in actuality not that much has changed and it will be a long time before things can return to “normal,” but hey it’s something to be excited about!) While I had high hopes for reading 100 books in 2020 I ended up lowering my Goodreads goal because it ended up being a difficult year and at times I just wasn’t in the right mindset to read and didn’t want to force it. I ended up finishing a respectable 78 […]

Adult Fantasy Mini Reviews | The Once and Future Witches & The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

Posted January 11, 2021 in Books, Reviews / 2 Comments

I’ll be the first to admit I don’t read a lot of adult fantasy, but I loved the premise of The Once & Future Witches and how it merged witches + women’s suffrage in a wonderfully creative historical fantasy setting. I didn’t anticipate how long it was going to take me (I naively did not realize going into it that the book was 500+ pages) and I find with fantasy novels I tend to read them in smaller chunks than other genres. However, I did enjoy this story of 3 sisters coming together in adulthood to fight for (and against) […]

Looking Back On My Most Anticipated Reads of 2020 | How Did They Do?

Posted December 31, 2020 in Book Recommendations & Lists, Books, Features / 2 Comments

I LOVE end of the year wrap up posts. Not only are they fun to read, but they’re fun to write too- it’s so helpful to have a digital record on the blog of my roundups from each year, and today I’m going to be looking back at the books I deemed as my most anticipated 2020 releases and see how I ended up feeling about them! For reference, I made two lists of anticipated releases, one for the first half of 2020 and one for the second half of 2020. Not if a book has a half star rating, […]

Top Ten Books of 2020

Posted December 29, 2020 in Book Recommendations & Lists, Books, Features, Top Ten Tuesday, Weekly Features/Memes / 12 Comments

December is one of my favorite months for blogging because there’s so many fun wrap-up posts to be made and read! Arguably the ~most important~ is the best books of the year lists that everyone comes up with! While this year I didn’t read quite as many books as I had hoped to, I did read many excellent books and the amount of 5 star reads I read this year is over double that of last year! I am thrilled to say that every single book on my “best of” list for 2020 was a strong 5 star rating for […]

YA Mini Reviews: Chasing Lucky + The Voting Booth

Posted December 28, 2020 in Books, Reviews / 0 Comments

I was a little nervous going into Chasing Lucky, because I’ve had mixed luck with Jenn Bennet books. I adored Starry Eyes but never even got around to finishing Serious Moonlight, and I didn’t know where Chasing Lucky would end up on the spectrum of enjoyment for me. Luckily (pun intended), Chasing Lucky proved to be an enjoyable read for me, falling right under Starry Eyes in my ranking of Jenn Bennet books. Chasing Lucky follows protagonist Josie who is returning to her hometown after being gone for several years moving all over the east coast with her mom. She’s […]

The Simple Wild + Wild At Heart + Forever Wild | Reviews

Posted December 14, 2020 in Books, Reviews / 7 Comments

I’ve had The Simple Wild on my radar for a few years now- I feel like it would always pop up on Goodreads as one of my friends was either reading or raving about it (or both!) I knew it was a romance set in Alaska, but that was honestly the extent of my knowledge. I have been having some trouble finding my groove my romance novels lately so I was a little hesitant going in, afraid it was going to be yet another romance everyone loved that I ended up having to DNF. However, I shouldn’t have worried because […]

Kingdom of the Wicked by Kerri Maniscalco | Review

Posted December 7, 2020 in Books, Reviews / 0 Comments

I have to admit, the second I heard Italy + witches I was all in for this book. I love that witches seem to be making more of a comeback in paranormal YA and I’d never read an Italian historical fantasy about them, so I was more than ready to dive into Kingdom of the Wicked. I didn’t have high expectations given my lukewarm experience with Stalking Jack the Ripper, but I found myself torn between flying through the novel and being exasperated with some of the writing and plot points. To be clear, I did enjoy this novel. It […]