Light Up the Darkness | Series Roulette

Welcome to the first day of the Light Up the Darkness | A Throne of Glass Celebration! This week is so exciting! The final book of the Throne of Glass series, Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J Maas, releases tomorrow and I am so.excited.I.cannot.wait.I.have.been.waiting.for.this.book.for.years.!. I cannot wait to see what happens to all my babies and what they do and what happens to them and how they all end up and everything!

To honor this exciting moment in one of my favorite series, Hannah from So Obsessed With, Alexa from Alexa Loves Books, Rachel from hello, chelly and I are doing a blog event to celebrate the series! This series means so much to me in so many ways and I know it does to the other ladies, too. We have had so much fun putting together these posts and talking about the series. Fun but also painful having to make some difficult choices as to favorites!

Today we are doing series roulette--a play on our previous collaboration of Book Boyfriend Roulette. We're each choosing our favorite female character, male character, and book to share. And then on my blog, I'll share our choices for favorite Member of the Cadre/Thirteen. The other ladies are featuring one other favorite category unique to their blog, so don't forget to check out theirs, too! AND feel free to share your choices and picks in the comments below!

I'm Fine, You're Fine, We're All Fine...Right?

"These days, loneliness is the new cancer – a shameful, embarrassing thing, brought upon yourself in some obscure way. A fearful, incurable thing, so horrifying that you dare not mention it; other people don’t want to hear the word spoken aloud for fear that they might too be afflicted, or that it might tempt fate into visiting a similar horror upon them."

--Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

My Thoughts

The Belle

Wow. This book. This book is one of those magical books that makes me remember why I love reading. It made me feel to the deepest part of my heart how characters and their stories can change you. This book is about Eleanor who is quite different than the average bear. She lives alone, has zero friends, is awkward in her social interactions, and the only people she talks to her coworkers who aren’t very kind to her and her mother who calls once a week. Her voice sounds very traditional in it’s viewpoint, stuffy, if you will which makes it sound like it would be difficult to connect to her as a reader but I found the exact opposite to be true.

Quick and Dirty Mini-Reviews {7}

I know it's been quiet on the blog recently but I'm trying to get some motivation to cross post my mini-reviews from Instagram and write longer reviews for the books I have more to say about. I've got a few reviews and ideas in the wings so stay tuned if you're still here! I've been reading so many incredible books lately so here's a roundup of mini-reviews of the books I've been reading and loving lately!

DEAR MRS BIRD by AJ Pearce | A few weeks ago I read DEAR MRS BIRD because Hannah had read and loved. She definitely nailed it with a historical Bridget Jones vibe and I had such a great time reading this book. A woman with goals to be a Female War Correspondent accidentally finds herself instead being an assistant to a crotchety, set-in-her-archaic-views advice columnist. I loved this book! It was so fun to read, I loved the heroine Emmy and her ambitions and her relationship with her best friend. While there are many moments of humor, there also was a surprising level of emotional depth that I wasn’t expecting. War time does not come without its costs and how Emmy navigated her own choices and the advice she gave was fantastic to read about. READ THIS IF...you love historical fiction, WWII London, and females with Ambition.

Mad for Marchetta

My Thoughts
I am well aware that I may be the last person in the bookish world to read Melina Marchetta. I am self-aware enough to realize this but I am not above proclaiming her as an instant favorite author. After my binge of Finnikin I knew I had to try her other books and I knew from Hannah that she write a variety of genres which I was SO EXCITED about! I was not disappointed with any of them! It was SUCH an incredible treat to find an author who writes so many different kinds of stories. I was obsessed with each and every one for different reasons. Here are those reasons.

Adventures in the Great Wide Somewhere // Tourist Tuesday at Voyageur Books

If you read my post last week or been following my Instagram, you'll know that I have just started to adopt Tourist Tuesday. This means that every Tuesday--or as each Tuesday allows--I will try and do something big, small, or in-between that I have never done before. It can be as simple as walking by a part of a neighborhood I've never been to, a new restaurant, a cafe, etc. ANYTHING that I haven't done before. This idea was inspired by ALONE TIME by Stephanie Rosenbloom. This week the weather derailed what I really wanted to do so I'll save that idea for another day; what I actually did decide to do was Google search bookstores near me and I found one I've never been to before!

Adventures in the Great Wide Somewhere // BFF Visit, Alone Time, & Tourist Tuesday

Last week, my BFF Hannah came to Wisconsin to visit! It was SO much fun but if I start going into details about what we did and how fun it was this post will literally turn into a dissertation because it was THE BEST! Before she came to visit, I was thinking of things to do with her. My initial response was 'there's nothing to do here' which is ridiculous but its still the thought I had. Milwaukee is a big city but it's not New York or Seattle or Denver, places that tourists flock to visit. But after thinking about it more, I realized there were so many things big and small that I could take her to do. I think that wherever you grow you, or maybe it's just me, you become a little desensitized to your surroundings and take for granted the uniqueness around you. I know I definitely did!

True Love Starts With You

My Thoughts

The Belle
I have read and loved every Kristan Higgins book I have read before this and Good Luck With That is no exception. This book as part of the pseudo series that takes place in Cambry-on-Hudson has a different feel from her other romance books. They are definitely more women's fiction that romance, although romance does play a part, they are also much deeper and more emotional in my opinion. And wow, was this particular book emotional and hard to read at times. I know there’s been a lot of criticism of this book and it’s topic, I have to say in my opinion and POV it’s unfounded. But this is my opinion. Not to say it won't be hurtful for some readers but it's also not a story that shouldn't be told.

Consumed: The Wedding from Hell Blog Tour by JR Ward

Anybody that knows me knows how deep my love for all things JR Ward goes. The Black Dagger Brotherhood is lifeblood. The Fallen Angels series was inspiring. The Bourbon Kings was scandalous and exciting. I AM SO EXCITED for her next series about firefighters! Oh, my word who doesn't love a man in uniform, especially a firefighter?!

To prep for this new series, JR Ward is writing a free--yes, you heard right FREE--three part novella to help give you some background about this setting and world and characters. I am personally ridiculously here for anything and everything she writes and you should be, too! Today on this blog tour, the publisher and JR Ward are sharing an exclusive look at the series with a summary, excerpt, AND a video from JR Ward herself! All the info and good stuff is below, so pull a Dory and just keep reading! 

Who Dunnit?

With minimal encouragement from Hannah while I was looking for books to pad my TBR with, she suggested a change of pace with the Cormoran Strike series by Robert Galbraith aka JK Rowling. I have always been hesitant to pick up her pseudonym books because Harry Potter has a Horcrux on my soul and I didn't want anything to taint my love for this author in case it didn't jive with me. Fortunately for me, I had nothing to worry about. 

An Open Love Letter to My Best Friends

While taking to Hannah one day, okay one of the several times that day, and she told me about a book called TEXT ME WHEN YOU GET HOME by Kayleen Schaefer that she heard was about female friendships and how important they are and I knew right then I had to read it. Let me start with the book review.