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Diverse genres & stories that shape us 📚 | Reviews, bookish questions, & fun | Book blogger | Turn the page with me!

First time posting a monthly wrap-up this year!😁 A

First time posting a monthly wrap-up this year!😁 August was surely my best reading month. Funny and thought-provoking reviews are on their way 👌🏾.

📚The Burning Library
Historical mystery / dark academia / speculative fiction
Secret manuscripts, powerful women, centuries-old drama… because apparently women have been disagreeing about how to save the world for a VERY long time. 😂

📚The Tin Men
Military thriller/hint of sci-fi
The military builds autonomous robot soldiers, gives them one job, and is then absolutely shocked when they take that job a little too seriously. 😭

📚The Amalfi Curse
Historical fantasy / mystery / romance
Two timelines, mysterious women, witchcraft and the Amalfi Coast—because some secrets apparently need 200 years and TWO protagonists to sort themselves out. 🤣

📚One Summer in Savannah
Contemporary fiction / family drama / romance
A woman returns home, confronts a past she absolutely did NOT order, and somehow forgiveness gets invited to the family reunion. 😭

❓️Have you read any of these? And did we rate it approx the same way?
❓️What was the most unexpected thing about your reading month?

📚 I do! Well… “read” might be a generous word😄. I

📚 I do! Well… “read” might be a generous word😄.
I usually skim through them. I like seeing who helped bring the book to life, and sometimes you find little stories or interesting details in there.

But I recently finished One Summer in Savannah and turned to the acknowledgements...Then turned another page. And another one. And another one. 😂

I was like, wow. Terah Shelton is definitely thanking the whole world here. 😍

No judgment though. It apparently took a village AND the neighboring villages to make this book happen. And she always had something good to say about everyone. ❤️

So tell me: do you actually read the acknowledgements, skim them like me, or close the book the second the story ends? 👀

#Bookstagram #BookishQuestions #ReadersOfInstagram #BookCommunity #ReadingLife

Guys, I really tried. I made it to 70%. But the dr

Guys, I really tried. I made it to 70%. But the drama was just too much for me. 🥴

I know The Favorites is a favorite on Bookstagram (see what I did there? 😏), but it wasn't mine.

Betrayal. Revenge. Foul play. More betrayal. MORE DRAMA.

I love drama when it advances the plot or develops the characters. Here, it started to feel like the drama was the plot. 😭

BUT Bella and Heath being mysteriously absent from the podcast interviews kept me curious. So please spoil it for me. Did they die?? Did Kate kill them because...you know...DRAMA??? 😂 And DID SHE GET HER OLYMPIC GOLD??

Because one thing I loved was Kate's dedication to winning.

She loved Heath. She just wanted the gold more. 😂 Heath wanted to be her gold. Kate wanted THE gold. 🥇

Pain? Skate.
Injury? Skate.
Concussion? Doc, respectfully, I have a final to win.

Was it healthy? Probably not. 😂 Could she communicate better? ABSOLUTELY. But I loved that winning mattered to her that much.

Also, the full-cast audiobook was my first and I LOVED the experience! It honestly kept me going longer than I probably would have otherwise.

If you've read this one, tell me what you thought.

And please SPOIL THE ENDING FOR ME. I have officially left the rink. ⛸️😂

⚖️ ORDER IN THE BOOKISH COURT! Today’s case: Roma

⚖️ ORDER IN THE BOOKISH COURT!

Today’s case: Romanticizing morally grey characters — red flag or reader’s right? 🚩📚

He lies. He manipulates. His moral compass is somewhere in a ditch. He maybbe involved inbshady matters.
But he has ✨trauma✨, a tragic backstory and apparently only one soft spot.
Her.

And suddenly readers are in the comments like:
“Okay, but hear me out…” 😭😭

ABSOLUTELY NOT. The court will hear NOTHING until counsel is present. 👩🏽‍⚖️

The prosecution says: RED FLAG. RUN. 🚩
The defense says: Your Honor, he’s fictional. Let us live and love. 😌❤️

Judge Plot-Twist will not be disclosing her own reading history at this time. The court has advised her to exercise her right to remain silent (we wonder why). 🤣⚖️

Jury, drop your verdict: red flag or reader’s right?

And be brave: which morally grey character would have you defending the indefensible? 👀

#BookishCourt #JudgePlotTwist #MorallyGrey #RomanceReaders #DarkRomance

☀️📚 Summer called for a little romance. 📖 I picke

☀️📚 Summer called for a little romance.

📖 I picked up Mickey Chambers Shakes It Up for one very sophisticated literary reason: the cover. 😂

❤️It looked fun. Slightly goofy. Curvy Black FMC? Yep. We're doing this.

❤️And Mickey delivered. She has a chronic illness and lives very much by "croquer la vie à pleines dents". Life is short. She's going to enjoy hers.

❤️I also loved that she's curvy and…that's it. Her body isn't A Very Important Plot Point™. She's curvy. She's Black. And she's allowed to simply be Mickey. A whole person with a whole story.

📖Then there is If We Were Perfect, my first Ana Huang. I've seen this woman's name EVERYWHERE on Bookstagram. Fine, Ana. Let me see what everybody is talking about. 😂

🏅This one won for me.

❤️The FMC spends years chasing perfection to earn her mother's approval. Watching her finally accept herself without needing that approval? Loved it.

❤️Also, she and her ex (this is a second chance romance) actually TALK. Honestly. Openly. No unnecessary BS. In a romance novel. Imagine that! 🤣

Both were entertaining summer reads, but If We Were Perfect gets my vote. ☀️

❓️Do women still feel pressure to have the “perfect” body? And seriously…what even IS a perfect body? Who decided?

Or, if you didn't come to Bookstagram prepared to dismantle societal beauty standards today 😂:

❓️What makes you randomly pick up a book at the library?

Clearly, I was susceptible to vibes here.😁

Mine? The best I’ve received is a bookish blanket

Mine?

The best I’ve received is a bookish blanket from @lallakaicha🥰😍, covered in book quotes and sayings. It has officially become my reading blanket during cold weather. Book + blanket + cold day = leave me alone please. 😂

The best I’ve given (so far!) was a pair of black deer-antler bookends for a bookish friend. They looked SO good on her shelf that I almost wanted to keep them. 🤣

Now your turn! 🎁📚

❓️What’s the best bookish gift you’ve ever received OR given?
❓️Also... have you ever bought someone a bookish gift and thought, “Wait... I need one too”? 😂

📚 Book review. The Invisible Life of Addie Larue—3

📚 Book review. The Invisible Life of Addie Larue—3.75 🌟

Imagine making a deal with the devil: your soul for freedom and immortality. Only to discover that nobody will ever remember you from then on. Until one day....someome suddenly remembers her!🥰

❤️I loved the premise of this book. It felt original, and I especially loved that Addie knew exactly what she wanted from life, even when it was completely different from what a woman's life was supposed to look like in 1714.

❤️And when her freedom came with a terrible curse, she refused to let it break her. She learned the rules. She found loopholes. She found little ways to leave traces of herself in the world. Basically: You will not have the satisfaction of seeing me miserable, sir. 😂

But Addie also frustrated me.

Girl. You are 300 YEARS OLD. 😭😂

💔After 300 years, I expected her understanding of life to become bigger than her need to be remembered. She witnessed wars, revolutions, inventions, enormous social changes… and yet so much of her existence was still about "Will someone remember me? Will I leave a mark?"

💔At some point I was like… Addie, how can we use this curse for humanity please? 😂 Become a spy! Whisper something useful into the ear of someone powerful! You have THREE CENTURIES of knowledge and nobody can remember seeing you. The possibilities!!!

🤔Maybe that is exactly what the book is trying to say, though. That no matter how much time we have, one of our deepest desires is simply to know that we mattered. That someone will remember that we were here.

I almost DNF'd this one, but I'm glad I didn't because I really enjoyed the ending.

Although… if Addie thinks she is wiser than the devil, she should think again. 😂😂 Girl, good luck.

⭐ Overall, a good and very original story that left me with more questions than answers.

❓️How do you want to be remembered by the people who love you? And also by the people who may hate you? 🤣🤣

I honestly thought I didn't have a book trigger 😅.

I honestly thought I didn't have a book trigger 😅.

Then I read the synopsis of The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Mottley, about girls getting pregnant very young, and my immediate reaction was: Nope. I am not reading this.

Let's just say this story hits a little too close to home for me. It's a part of my life I really don't want to revisit. Not even through a book. 😅

And I thought: Ohhhh. So THIS is my trigger.

Reading about murder? Fine. Psychological mess? No problem. Serial killers falling in love or dysfunctional families making terrible decisions? Sure. Why not? 😂

But this? Nope.

Sometimes it's not about how dark a story is. It just hits too close to home.

❓️So what's THAT trigger warning for you?

@decoratingbetweenpages Your book review on Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt inspired this question😊.

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