Thursday, January 31, 2019

January Wrap-up

There really wasn't much of that going on this month. More so out of personal choice. I have a small vacation coming up and I'm saving up for that. However, my work put on an  amazing Christmas party that was a lot of fun, and I was the plus one to a friend's end of year work dinner. I had to be a little more dressed up for that one. Still, it was a lot of fun. Mostly I was a home body this month, which after all the running over the Holidays. I'm finally getting caught up on Lucifer, forgot how much I love this show. Slowly getting back into my writing as well. I've got some kind routine going for the new year between everything. We'll see if I manage to keep to it over the next few months.

Books Read: 5
Pages Reads: 695
DNF: Revival Series & Muder and Mayhem in Seattle
Currently Reading: Chasing Graves & LIFEL1K3 & Deadly Class Book 1: Noise, Noise, Noise


Beat the Backlist 2019: This is ongoing all year. Managed one book this month (The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge).  Right now two of the books I'm currently reading are Backlist books!

2019 Book BINGO: Another all year event with some friends. I'm already down two squares! My personal goal is to hit two squares a month minimum through the year. Which if I keep reading at the pace I am, should be doable. 

February TBR:
  • Finish Deadly Class Book 1
  • Finish LIFEL1K3
  • Finish Chasing Graves
  • Grim Solace
  • the Witch of Willow Hall
  • Silver Volume 4

Wednesday, January 30, 2019

Waiting on Wednesday

Can't Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings to spotlight and talk about the books we're excited about what we have yet to read. Generally they are books that have yet to be released, but don't have to be. It is based on Waiting on Wednesday, hosted by the fabulous at Breaking the Spine.




Magic is not allowed, under any circumstances — even if it could save someone’s life. Instead, there are herbal remedies and traditional techniques that have been painstakingly recorded in lieu of using the mystical arts. Fee knows this, so she keeps her magic a secret.

Except her best friend, Xavi, is deathly ill. He’s also the crown prince. Saving him is important, not only for her, but for the entire kingdom.

Fee’s desperation to save her friend means she can barely contain the magic inside her. And after the tiniest of slips, Fee is thrust into a dark and secretive world that is as alluring as it is dangerous.

If she gives in, it could mean she can save Xavi. But it also means that those who wish to snuff out magic might just snuff her out in the process.





Why I'm Waiting: This hits two genres I read a lot of, and the premise sounds really good. So I'm excited to pick this one up.

HAPPY READING!!

Tuesday, January 29, 2019

New Release Tuesday

Genre: Young Adult
Series: Berserker #2
Pages: 448

Sissel Hemstad and her siblings have been living peacefully in a small town in Montana, trying to blend-in and escape the violent events that haunt them, but they’ve all been tricked -- James Peavy, the handsome young man courting Sissel is secretly a Pinkerton spy.

The Hemstads possess supernatural powers bestowed upon their family by the ancient Norse gods. Now Sissel, the youngest at 16, discovers her gift: she is a Ransacker. She can find gold and other precious metals and pull them to her. Hers is an awesome and dangerous gift.

If James discovers her secret, he will undoubtedly report back to his boss, the ruthless Baron Fjelstad who wants desperately to control the Hemstads. But James is not the only person interested in Sissel. She’s also caught the attention of a local mine owner, Isaiah McKray. He is convinced Sissel has a lucky touch when it comes to finding gold.

Sissel is torn between the two men, both determined to have her secrets. With betrayal lurking around every corner, Sissel must tread carefully. Harnessing her powers could summon great fortune… or doom them all.


HAPPY READING!!

Sunday, January 27, 2019

Cover Runway Sundays


They say don't judge a book by its cover, but we all know we do it. Sometimes it's the cover that originally catches our eye, drawing us to give a book a closer look. It's the first thing we see, our first impression. Every Sunday I'm going to post some of my favorite covers of books coming soon! Some are by authors I already enjoy, some are the reason I gave the book a longer look. Either way they're all going to find their way here!

Release Date: March 19th, 2019
Genre: Sci-Fi
Pages: 384

An old flame of Jayne Cobb's, Temperance McCloud, sends a message to Serenity, begging him for help. She lives on the arid, far-flung world of Tethys, and bandits are trying to overrun her town to gain control of their water supply: the only thing standing between its people and dustbowl ruin. Jayne tries to persuade the Serenity crew to join the fight, but it is only when he offers Vera, his favourite gun, as collateral that Mal realises he's serious. 

When the Serenity crew land at a hardscrabble desert outpost called Coogan's Bluff, they discover two things: an outlaw gang with an almost fanatical devotion to their leader who will stop at nothing to get what they want, and that Temperance is singlehandedly raising a teenage daughter, born less than a year after Temperance and Jayne broke up. A daughter by the name of Jane McCloud...


HAPPY READING!!

Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Waiting on Wednesday

Can't Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings to spotlight and talk about the books we're excited about what we have yet to read. Generally they are books that have yet to be released, but don't have to be. It is based on Waiting on Wednesday, hosted by the fabulous at Breaking the Spine.


As a human vessel for an ancient spirit, Sandis lives no ordinary life. At the command of her master, she can be transformed against her will into his weapon—a raging monster summoned to do his bidding. Unlike other vessels, Sandis can host extremely powerful spirits, but hosting such creatures can be fatal. To stay alive, she must run. And in a city fueled by smoke and corruption, she finds a surprising ally.

A cunning thief for hire, Rone owns a rare device that grants him immortality for one minute every day—a unique advantage that will come in handy in Sandis’s fight for freedom. But Sandis’s master knows how powerful she is. He’s determined to get her back, and he has the manpower to find her, wherever she runs.

Now, to outwit her pursuers, Sandis must put all her trust in Rone and his immortal device. For her master has summoned more than mere men to hunt her down…



Why I'm Waiting: A lot of aspects about this book intrigue me, so I'm excited to see how it all plays out and works together.

HAPPY READING!! 

Sunday, January 20, 2019

Cover Runway Sundays


They say don't judge a book by its cover, but we all know we do it. Sometimes it's the cover that originally catches our eye, drawing us to give a book a closer look. It's the first thing we see, our first impression. Every Sunday I'm going to post some of my favorite covers of books coming soon! Some are by authors I already enjoy, some are the reason I gave the book a longer look. Either way they're all going to find their way here!

Release Date: April 9th, 2019
Genre: Historical Fiction
Pages: 432


When famed Byronesque poet Hugh de Bonne is discovered dead of a heart attack in his bath one morning, his cousin Robert Highstead, a historian turned post-mortem photographer, is charged with a simple task: transport Hugh’s remains for burial in a chapel. This chapel, a stained glass folly set on the moors of Shropshire, was built by de Bonne sixteen years earlier to house the remains of his beloved wife and muse, Ada. Since then, the chapel has been locked and abandoned, a pilgrimage site for the rabid fans of de Bonne’s last book, The Lost History of Dreams.

However, Ada’s grief-stricken niece refuses to open the glass chapel for Robert unless he agrees to her bargain: before he can lay Hugh to rest, Robert must record Isabelle’s story of Ada and Hugh’s ill-fated marriage over the course of five nights.

As the mystery of Ada and Hugh’s relationship unfolds, so does the secret behind Robert’s own marriage—including that of his fragile wife, Sida, who has not been the same since the tragic accident three years ago, and the origins of his own morbid profession that has him seeing things he shouldn’t—things from beyond the grave.

Kris Waldherr effortlessly spins a sweeping and atmospheric gothic mystery about love and loss that blurs the line between the past and the present, truth and fiction, and ultimately, life and death.


HAPPY READING!!

Friday, January 18, 2019

Mini Reviews



Bless the Libby app for allowing me finally read these. I put them on my TBR thinking I'd snag them from the library just like I did with X-Files: Earth Children are Weird, but in true me fashion that did not happen. However now it has and I forgot how cute these are! Back to the Future is one my favorite movies that I've seen enough I can quote the whole thing, and I never missed an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer when it original ran. To flaunt my age just a little bit. So I was so excited when Kim Smith added these to her Quirk Book collection of kid's books. They are so cute! I read them curled up on the couch while I unwound from work and kept turning my phone around to show my roommate. I'm not sure which I loved more: my favorite monsters from Buffy living in her closet or Eisenstein's cute little bio-hazard vest! Both were super cute and I'm so excited for the next book, the Karate Kid, which comes out this year.


HAPPY READING!!

Thursday, January 17, 2019

The Assassination of Bragnwain Spurge - Review


Author: M.T. Anderson & Eugene Yelchin
Genre: Fantasy / Humor / Illustrated
Format: Hardback
Pages: 544

What I strange book I just devoured. I found this gem while Christmas shopping at one of my local bookstores last month. It wasn't the first time I'd seen it, but for some reason this time I actually opened it up. While I technically wasn't there to shop for myself, I'm always ready to add another book to my ever growing Goodreads pages.

Those first few pages I flipped through interesting. I'm always willing to pick up a book with a different way of story telling. So a book that is partly illustrated, and has a cover like this. I quickly added to to my library queue.

Now I wished I'd have picked this book up sooner.

I first cracked this open at a local coffee shop I go to on my days off.. Before I knew it, the brunch crowd was coming in and I was nearly two hundred pages into this book. The story had sucked me in, and I lost track of time. It has been a while since a book so whole hardly pull my attention in like that. My idea was for this to be my coffee shop book. To only read on the mornings I go in and carve out a couple hours just to read. The farther into the book I got, the less I kept to that.

For me I loved the way the story was told. It's set into three different point-of-views: Brangwain an Elfen Historian whose story is told through Top Secret photos of his mission into the Goblin Kingdom, Archivist Werfel who is a Goblin, and the every smarmy Ysorset Clivers of the Order of the Clean Hand. The best part is none of these point-of-views is the same. Each one is how those characters saw each moment. Through Brangwain's sort of twisted idea of what a Goblin was suppose to be, compared to how they are. Werfel trying to put a shiny spin on everything to make peace, and Ysoret just trying to make sure no blame befalls on him.

Despite three different narratives happening at the same time, a complete story gets told. One that is hilarious, strange, and oddly enough has a somewhat happy ending. Well, happy for some, despite a few chapters where I thought the end was near for Werfel and Brangwain. Even once for sweet, sweet, annoying little Bekky.

Hands down, my favorite bit was the Elfen King taking Ysorset's fingers every single time another thing went wrong. Actually all those letters that Ysorset wrote were my favorites. Just the way he spoke to the King, calling him maj and trying to be so positive. Smarmy bastard.

It was a fun take on the tension that always seems to be between these two races in Fantasy novels. Elves and Goblins never seem to get along about anything, but this one took a more humorous approach to the idea. A more buddy comedy sort of take, and I loved it!

But, Borrow, Skip: Buy or borrow, which ever floats your boat with this. Personally, both of these authors were new to me, so I borrowed it just in case, but this one I would re-read. Mostly because so much happens that there was a chance I was focused on one thing and missed something else. So I say any way you feel comfortable giving The Assassination of  Brangwain Spurge a try is perfect.

HAPPY READING!!

Wednesday, January 16, 2019

Waiting on Wednesday

Can't Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings to spotlight and talk about the books we're excited about what we have yet to read. Generally they are books that have yet to be released, but don't have to be. It is based on Waiting on Wednesday, hosted by the fabulous at Breaking the Spine.


Deep within the enchanted woods in the town of Watch Hollow stands the once-grand Blackford House, whose halls hold a magical secret: a giant cuckoo clock that does much more than tell time. But when the clock’s gears cease to turn, an evil presence lurking among the trees begins to come out of the shadows.

When Lucy and Oliver Tinker arrive in Watch Hollow, they have no idea that anything is wrong. A mysterious stranger has made their father an offer that’s too good for him to refuse. All Mr. Tinker needs to do is fix the clock at Blackford House and fistfuls of gold coins are his to keep.

It doesn’t take long, however, for the children to realize that there is more to Blackford House than meets the eye. And before they can entirely understand the strange world they’ve stumbled into, Lucy and Oliver must join forces with a host of magical clock animals to defeat the Garr—a vicious monster that not only wants Blackford House for itself, but also seeks to destroy everything the Tinkers hold dear.




Why I'm Waiting: I love a ghost story, especially when it's also a monster story. Sounds like an adorable book and I cannot wait!

HAPPY READING!!

Tuesday, January 15, 2019

New Release Tuesday

Genre: Historical Fiction
Series: Gilded Wolves#1
Pages: 464

Paris, 1889: The world is on the cusp of industry and power, and the Exposition Universelle has breathed new life into the streets and dredged up ancient secrets. In this city, no one keeps tabs on secrets better than treasure-hunter and wealthy hotelier, Séverin Montagnet-Alarie. But when the all-powerful society, the Order of Babel, seeks him out for help, Séverin is offered a treasure that he never imagined: his true inheritance.

To find the ancient artifact the Order seeks, Séverin will need help from a band of experts: An engineer with a debt to pay. A historian who can't yet go home. A dancer with a sinister past. And a brother in all but blood, who might care too much.

Together, they'll have to use their wits and knowledge to hunt the artifact through the dark and glittering heart of Paris. What they find might change the world, but only if they can stay alive.


HAPPY READING!!

Monday, January 14, 2019

Bout of Books 24 Wrap-Up


What a week!? I don't think I've ever had a Bout of Books where I've finished all my goals. Not only am I a handful of chapters into Chasing Graves by Ben Galley, but I both books I wanted to complete before the end are in fact just that, finished. Not to mention I managed three smaller bonus books. Hopefully I can keep the momentum going throughout 2019. It would be nice to see some of my stacks disappear completely this year. Now, on to just how good my week really was!

STATS FOR
 BOUT OF BOOKS 24:

Pages Read: 695
Books Read: 5
Currently Reading: Chasing Graves by Ben Galley


If you missed this round of Bout of Books, do not fret it'll come around again. In fact, the next date for Bout of Books 25 is May 13th - 19th. If you have questions just click the Bout icon at the top of the page to go to the official Bout of Books page. Hopefully everyone else's Bout was full of books as good as mine!

HAPPY READING!!

Sunday, January 13, 2019

Cover Runway Sundays

They say don't judge a book by its cover, but we all know we do it. Sometimes it's the cover that originally catches our eye, drawing us to give a book a closer look. It's the first thing we see, our first impression. Every Sunday I'm going to post some of my favorite covers of books coming soon! Some are by authors I already enjoy, some are the reason I gave the book a longer look. Either way they're all going to find their way here!

Release Date: April 2nd, 2019
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 400

A girl who can speak to gods must save her people without destroying herself.

A prince in danger must decide who to trust.

A boy with a monstrous secret waits in the wings. 

Together, they must assassinate the king and stop the war.

In a centuries-long war where beauty and brutality meet, their three paths entwine in a shadowy world of spilled blood and mysterious saints, where a forbidden romance threatens to tip the scales between dark and light. Wicked Saints is the thrilling start to Emily A. Duncan’s devastatingly Gothic Something Dark and Holy trilogy..


HAPPY READING!!

Saturday, January 12, 2019

River of Teeth - Review


Author: Sarah Gailey
Genre: Historical Fiction
Format: e-Book
Pages: 114


How did I miss anything about this series?!

Actually better question. Why did it take me a whole year to pick them up after discovering them?
Because this was fantastic. I adore so many things about this book that I'm not really sure where to begin. I know I've raved about it for weeks as I read it between the holiday fun at work, and if I hadn't been so busy I'd have definitely finished it sooner. In fact, I've already pushed this book on a handful of friends who read. Actually, I also pushed it my brother who doesn't read because I know he'd enjoy it.

I feel the best place to start is by saying thank you. Because no one deserved what they got as much Cal did. From the get-go I knew he was trouble, but at first I thought it was going to be for other reasons. Then I started to realize the tension between Houndstooth and Cal was real deep. Then out of the blue, I realized why. Which didn't help at all when admitted to it, just made me enjoy the moment more. So thank you for his ending. It was one of the best moments.

Also, Ruby is adorable for an apex predator and no one can convince me otherwise.

Another really great thing about River of Teeth is the diverse cast of characters. Of course we have our token Western villain in Travers which I loved. He was so easy to picture in mind after growing up watching Westerns with my dad and granddad. However, the other characters weren't so niche. Houndstooth was bisexual, Hero was non-binary, Adelia was a badass who did what she wanted, and Regina was Grifter who needed no man. It was great to see a wide spectrum of characters that you don't normally see in such, I hate to say it, normal type setting. The story didn't change because of who they are, just what they are. It's great to see this many diverse characters just a part of the story without the whole story being about how they aren't like everyone else. They were hired for this job based on skill and nothing else. Though some are terrible people that stab my favorite character just pages before the end, which rude!

Sidenote, if Houndstooth and Hero don't find each other in the next book I'll be bad. Because I ship that so hard. I want them both to get something like a happy ending. Even if it's retirement in the swamp cabin.

It would be amiss to not mention Sarah Gailey's writing style. Personally I think a story like River of Teeth could have easily wandered off a cliff with how ridiculous it could get. But, because of Gailey's solid writing it never became too much. Outside of hippos being a thing people ride like horses, the world hadn't really changed from the history we know. Not to mention the whole book is well researched and solid. There are moments when the crew talk about hippos that show Sarah Gailey probably now has a pub quiz amount of information on the hippos.

All-in-all it's a solid novel that is so much fun. The world itself might be a little ridiculous with the hippo farming, but the story itself is amazing. There wasn't a dull moment to be had. In fact, I really only had two issues with the book. Despite my feelings about Cal, I didn't get to see him use is guns. I would have liked to see the fast guns in America in action, and it always sucks when one of the characters you really like betrays everyone and stabs your favorite character. There's no coming back from that. Not even a little bit.

So, yeah, I really liked this book and I'm excited to move on to Taste of Marrow, which takes place not long after River of Teeth. I'm even really pumped for Sarah Gailey's new book, Magic for Liars, hitting shelves this summer I believe.

Buy, Borrow, Skip: I have to say buy this one. It's a book I could totally see myself re-reading. Plus, I love the book cover that combines both Novellas together, American Hippo.