The Ultimate Game of Thrones Book Tag

I missed doing a book tag and I recently found this fun GOT book tag on The Orangutan Librarian‘s blog. Feel free to do it too!

PART I

“We DO NOT SOW”- A BOOK YOU WOULD NOT BE WILLING TO INVEST IN

Crime and Punishment. I mean, I tried reading it and I started it pretty ambitious but it was an impossible battle for me. It’s just not my type and probably I won’t try reading any Dostoyevsky any time soon. I might give Demons a shot tho’ but I’m not really sure about that.

 

“FAMILY. DUTY. HONOR.” – A BOOK ABOUT STRONG FAMILY TIES

I personally love the relationship between Scarlett and Tella from the Caraval series by Stephanie Garber. I’ve read many books with strong family ties but this one must be one of my favorites or one that stuck with me for the longest. I love them both as characters but also the series is a must-read!

 

“WINTER IS COMING” – YOUR FAVORITE WINTER READ

During winter I  usually love reading holiday love stories and my favorite one so far is Let it Snow by John Green, it’s an anthology of three love stories that’s super adorable and they actually connect which was a factor that actually made me love it this much.

 

“OURS IS THE FURY” – A BOOK THAT MADE YOU FURIOUS

Fight Club 2. I had some high expectations, I’m pretty sure lots of people love Fight Club and knowing there’s a sequel to the story and that it’s a comic book too it just makes you more excited. Joke’s on me because it was awful lol. It started promising but as you get more into it it gets worse and super weird so stay away from it.

 

“FIRE AND BLOOD” – A BOOK THAT PRODUCED STRONG EMOTIONS IN YOU

Whenever I think of the word “emotions” the only books that come into my mind are We Were Liars by E. Lockhart and All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven. It’s difficult to pick just one.

 

“A LANNISTER ALWAYS PAYS HIS DEBTS” – A BOOK YOU FEEL INDEBTED TO

One of the books I will always feel indebted to will be Wizard of Oz as I believe this was one of the first fictional books that made me fall in love with literature and it’s forever one of my favorite children books that I will surely read my kids in the future.

 

 PART II – MY GAME OF THRONES.

WOULD YOU WIN OR DIE?

For real now I think I’d die cause I’d move too slow, I wish I could be as cool as Arya or Brienne.

WHAT HOUSE ARE YOU IN?

I took this quiz and apparently I belong to the Lannisters:

“Hey, guess what? You’re rich! Congratulations. You can buy all the wine and pleasant company you want, which is very useful as the life of a Lannister isn’t exactly stress-free. You are ambitious, good at politics, and generally loyal to family members, at least in public. But you’re also under a lot of pressure, so when things go wrong, they can go VERY wrong, very quickly. Maybe consider investing in a privy door with a lock?”

 

This was a super fun book tag, I’m looking forward to doing many more.

 

 

 

 

WWW Wednesday. 05.22.19.

WWW Wednesday is a meme originally hosted by Taking on a World of Words. The big questions are: what have you recently finished, what are you currently reading and what’s next?

1. What have you recently finished?

I’ve recently finished Twilight by Stephanie Meyer. I already wrote a review about that that you can check out here.

2. What are you currently reading?
I’m reading War Storm by Victoria Aveyard, so excited to see how the series is going to end!

3. What is next?

Probably New Moon as I’m curious what the Twilight series is going to bring and I’m also looking forward to finish it soon too lol.

Five TBR List.

I constantly add books to my TBR list so I’m going to start writing about why I actually want to read them. I will try to do this for every 5 recent books I add to it.

1. Cari Mora by Thomas Harris.

I’m a huge Thomas Harris fan so how could I miss his new book that is being published soon?? It has thriller, suspense, horror and lots of action! This is going to be one hell of an adventure of a strong female survivor. It has everything a Thomas Harris novel needs.

 

2. You Owe Me A Murder by Eileen Cook.

This plot seems insane! I loved One of Us is Lying and I’m pretty sure I will love this book too. You don’t hear every day about swapping murders, when you don’t fulfill your end of deal you either have to commit one or just take the fall for one which sounds as creepy as it must be!

 

3.  Regretting You by Colleen Hoover.

I could talk about Colleen Hoover for hours, I love her and she is one of my favorite all-time authors so of course I added her newest book that is going to be published some time next year on my tbr list. I don’t know what is going to be about but I will pray Montlake Romance will put a nice cover on it.

 

4. Five Feet Apart by Rachel Lippincott.

I’m down for romance novels any time and I got pretty excited when I watched the trailer for the movie especially because Cole Sprouse is in it. I didn’t watch the movie yet because I’m waiting to read the book first which I hope will happen soon.

 

5.  The Umbrella Academy, vol 1: The Apocalypse Suite by Gerard Way.

Besides the fact that Gerard Way is cool, I watched the show not long ago not knowing that actually he was the writer, which makes him cooler. I really liked the show and I’m looking forward to reading the series now.

Twilight.

Yeah I know I’m super late to this but I just had to read it at least since I never read anything about the books or watched any movie so this comes from the point of view of a 22 year old who doesn’t know almost anything about Twilight.

Rating: 2.8/5.

The book didn’t have a bad start. I went with the flow up until she started to get close to Edward and it went kinda downhill from that. Her brain must have melted or something. What I find annoying is how awkward Bella is throughout the book, I couldn’t get over it.
I also thought it was weird how kinda hateful she was towards Edward and how friendly she was with Jacob later on and a few chapters later she is suddenly super friendly with Edward and very open about her feelings and she starts to be distant towards Jacob with no explanation or anything. She almost died 3 times in 2 months which was also stupid. She also trips and falls too much!
There is no character development so far and I also hated the fact that she broke her lovely dad’s heart over a stupid plan to escape James. She also believes Edward is a god and never questions him which is pretty dumb.

One thing I liked about this book was Edward. I liked him more than I thought I would. He’s a sweetheart and his family is also awesome and welcoming which I didn’t expect.
I believe the plot was badly written and there were so many little bad details about it but even tho’ it’s a hated book generally, I don’t regret reading it and I will surely read the rest of them.

Gifts For Bookish Moms

Since mother’s day is coming up really soon I thought I might help some of you with a list of gift ideas for the mom that loves to read. I will also link the items, just click on the title!

1. Bookish Soy Candles.

You can find a candle for any book that she likes and they are also made of soy which is awesome! I know you can’t go wrong with a candle no matter if you’re a mom or not.

2. Literary Pillows.

Society6 has some really awesome and also diverse designs on pillows. I’m sure you can find something beautiful for your lovely mom (and you) and you will also get to support smaller designers!

3. Bookish Jewelry.

You can always find cool stuff on Etsy, especially these awesome pieces of bookish jewelry which I’m sure she will wear proudly everywhere. I’m all up for supporting small shops like the shops on Etsy so why not?

4. Bookish Scarves.

Moms always like to cozy up, why not do it with a unique literary scarf? There are so many to choose from on Etsy!

5. Mismatched Banned-Books Socks.

I’m a fan of these socks! I love everything about them and I’m sure any mother would think they’re fun.

6. A Reading Journal.

Make it easy for your mom to track the books she has read, thoughts and books she wants to read with this awesome journal.

7.  Tote Bags.

Get her a tote bag that will fit all the books she’s going to buy on her shopping spree like the good child you are!

8. Bookish Mug.

Every mom deserves to drink her coffee in the prettiest mug! In spirit of supporting smaller artists, I definitely recommend ordering one off of Redbubble.  There are plenty to choose from!

9. The Book Lover’s Cookbook.

I’m a huge Thriftbooks fan, almost all of my books are from them and I recommend them to anyone searching for books on a budget! It happened that I stumbled upon this cool cookbook that contains recipes inspired by literature. I’m definitely thinking of buying it right now.

10. HERE’S. THE BOOKISH. TEA!!

To finish it up all nice and cozy, of course you can’t buy a mug without a bag of tea! Of course I come back to Etsy for this kind of stuff. Whether she’s a potterhead or an Agatha Christie lover you will surely find a perfect tea blend for her.

 

I hope you found something helpful scrolling through the list I made. I wish all the mothers a life full of happiness and love!

Happy Mother’s Day!

TOP 5 BOOK SERIES RECOMMENDATIONS.

Hi there, I decided to make another post about recommendations but this time it’s all about book series. I actually tried to rank them (silly me) but of course that is impossible so this is basically just a list, it doesn’t matter which one is the first or last.

1. LORIEN LEGACIES (Pittacus Lore)

If you’re my friend and you’re reading this, you probably expected this series to be the first one just because I’m still obsessed with it! No matter how many book you have read, you’re not mentally or physically prepared to deal with everything this series is. Do you want YA awesome action? You got it. Do you want even more action? All kinds of action? You got everything you want. Do you want superpowers? Legacies are served. Aliens? Dang right. Fictional planets? Heck yeah. Love? YESSS. Drama? You got it. Feels? No problem.

I literally postponed finishing the last book because I just didn’t want this whole thing to end. I even made a boomerang when I closed the book after reading it lol. Here’s a brief summary of it I found online, just because I’m not good at writing summaries:

“Nine small children came to Earth and they are from a planet, Lorien, and there is a war there. A brutal race of aliens, called the Mogadorians, have set their sights on the planet and are determined to conquer it. We find out that these nine kids (called the Garde), along with a guardian for each, are important for the survival of their species and so they were sent away with a charm put upon them. Each child is assigned a number, one through nine, and when the Mogadorians inevitably come, they can only be harmed in order. The Garde are meant to be the warriors and protectors of their planet, so they develop powers, known as legacies. These range from standard legacies that all Garde members have, like telekinesis, to more rare ones, like healing, invisibility, and shape-shifting.”

Here is a link to find the whole page where the people from EpicReads talk about it: https://www.epicreads.com/blog/lorien-legacies-crash-course/

2. Gone (Michael Grant)

So imagine a huge dome covers the world and all the adults are being left out, all that is left are all the kids raging from newborns to teenagers that disappear at the age of 15. You get no internet, no signal, no tv. Animals are mutating, there are bullies, you might die of hunger and on top of everything, they start gaining powers! In each book you get a different tragedy that happens to them. For example, in one book a plague attacks them, in another book the light goes out so everything happens in darkness… crazy stuff like this. I really recommend reading this, I promise you it’s very catchy and awesome!

3. Slammed

If I want romance, I check out a Colleen Hoover book. One of my favorites is definitely Slammed. The last book is not that interesting as it only recaps pretty much what happens in the first 2 but from Will’s point of view. Will and Layken will be one of my favorite couples forever and ever, and probably you’ll feel the same way too after reading the first book. If you want a unique and beautiful relationship, try this series. It also has enough drama and a lot of feels so you should grab all the towels to wipe your tears.

4. Robert Langdon (Dan Brown)

Dan Brown probably writes the smartest books I’ve ever read. Everything is a plot twist and he creates these crazy plots that are complicated but he somehow makes the reader understand everything that is going on. I love how much he talks about art and all the book references and art references just draw me into the books even more. I love the strong female characters he gets to work with. His books are worth it, at least for the knowledge you get from them.

5. Red Queen (Victoria Aveyard)

This series is so good I can’t even describe it. This world is divided by Reds and Silvers. If you’re a Red it means that you’re a peasant and the Silvers actually are the rich ones, they own all the gold and stuff like that. The main character finds herself working in the Silver elite and discovers she has a power just like the other Silvers. Besides the fact that she has to deal with everything royal and people with powers and maintaining a certain status, she also has to worry about the two princes in the kingdom. One is evil, one falls in love with her and this just doesn’t turn out well but she saves herself from any situation. This is that kind of series that gets your heart racing, especially after the first book.

 

I hope I helped you at least a little bit to choose your next books. I’m gonna do some more of these because I just love so many series!!

Love. Art. Thieves.

Hey guys I’m sorry for my lack of posts, I just needed some time to recharge and now I will definitely try to get back on track… again!

Lately I fell in love with the Heist Society series by Ally Carter. I’m not gonna write about each book separately but I will give a review for them as a whole.

Overall rating: 4/5.

You know how you always judge books by their covers? Well this is exactly why I didn’t wanna read this series but they still kinda made me curious. I mean… look at this cover:

You just can’t be attracted to a book that looks like this. And this is just the cover for the first book, I don’t think anyone needs any more details.

So because I can give second chances and a benefit of a doubt, I started reading the first one and could not stop. I love the characters and I love how mature they are. I forget they’re like 15-16 years old! Like how can a 15 year old rob a super safe and secured museum making up a really good plan in a super short time? Most of the 15 year olds play Fortnite so that was not very realistic.

I’m trying to keep this as much spoiler-free as I can but there’s also like a huge drama happening (of course) that might endanger Kat’s dad’s life (Kat is the main character). Of course she solves everything in the end with her squad and there’s a love story starting to sparkle between her and W. W. Hale, the rich and cool one.

In the second book Kat has been conned which was really dangerous because it involves the Cleopatra emerald, she basically steals it for the wrong people and she has to get it back from them but they know any tactic they could approach so it was pretty stressful for everyone (even myself). Long story short, there’s drama between Kat and Hale and a lot of suspense and them being smarter than everybody and we don’t know what Hale’s W. W. stand for!! I love how Kat is always trying to guess them.

Anyways, moving forward, Perfect Scoundrels (book 3) was SO GOOD!!!!This time it has to do with Hale’s family and there’s drama between Hale and Kat again because of course she wants to keep him out of it?! I didn’t like that part. It’s his family and he has all the right to know what’s going on, dear. Now they also have to rob the Henley (the museum from the first book which is even more secured) and a huge bank! I like that they make it a little bit more realistic involving the Interpol and all the travelling and talking about art just adds the perfect details. It involved a lot more complications and the most suspense so far. It has plot twists and a much more developed love story and now there’s family involved too! I think it had all the things I wanted like emotions, plot twists, love story, action and cool characters.

I can’t wait for the 4th book to come out!!

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here

Inferno by Dan Brown resurrected my hope for the Robert Langdon series after The Lost Symbol was a super disappointment for me.

Rating: 4/5.

The amount of research that is being made for these books blow my mind. I rarely see this much dedication for a fictional piece of work. And that makes it even more special for me. Besides the fact that it’s very entertaining, I also learn historical art and I acquire all kinds of information that I wouldn’t even bother about… I mean… I don’t just suddenly wake up thinking that I should check out Dante Alighieri’s biography and stuff like that. Even if I may not be interested in certain things, Brown suddenly sparks an interest in me through his awesome writing.

What made me like this book so much is the subject, Inferno by Dante Alighieri. I couldn’t wait to get to this book in the series. Although I haven’t read the original Inferno (but I will soon) Brown explains very important stuff about it and I think it’s awesome all the connections he makes to music and paintings.

I will always admire the way good writers know how to twist the plot in such a way that it seems complicated but it’s still easy to understand. All the running around, people chasing each other, shooting guns and a plague, you can still find your way through it.

Looking forward to the next one! I love Robert Langdon.

Still Me

I loved Me Before You and After You, I thought it was a perfect duo. I did not feel the need of a third book, however, I still had to read it. I would not refuse more Lou Clark.

Rating: 3/5.

Everybody loved the story of Will and Lou in Me Before You. It was truly something else that touched many hearts even through the movie.

Afterwards, I was so happy for Lou for finding someone else and being able to go on with her life in After You. And I hoped that would be the ending, we all know Lou is fine and alive and everybody can go on with their lives too.

When I saw the news of Still Me the first reaction was excitement. I was super excited for another book until I gave it another thought and talked to myself in my mind “ok why would we need MORE? I mean… sometimes LESS is MORE and this is a perfect example. What could happen now?! Is Will raising up from the dead?” and so on and so on I thought of some scenarios.

I was pretty surprised that Lou took New York (yes, the Kardashians inspired me with this line) because I couldn’t ever imagine her there. If there’s a thing I feel that’s pretty exaggerated about her is her awkwardness, especially at the beginning when she is in the airport and she is being asked questions upon entering US. That scene destroyed me.

What I also hate are clichés. Agnes is too clichéic. The idea of NY is also clichéic.

I also have mixed feeling about Sam. I was silently hoping they would break up. I felt like she would be better alone. And I was pretty intrigued about Josh until we actually got to meet him, another cliché.

If there’s a positive thing to say about Lou is that I love the positivity her character transmits. Even when people around her hated on her and were mean to her she managed to be such a sweet and kind lady, I was really impressed.

Overall, the story of the book is not super special but it’s a pretty nice cozy read.

I would recommend it if you’ve read the other 2 books and you want a little closure or you really wanna finish the series.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35791968-still-me

 

The Wedding Date Review

As promised, here I am with the review I wrote for PageHabit for February’s romance book!

       For more pics like this check out my bookstagram         @bookspottings

It usually never happens to me to be even more excited about the book in a subscription box than most of the goodies but this time I was (and the goodies were awesome btw). From the moment I have seen the cover I knew this will be a good read! The synopsis of the book made it pretty obvious that I’m gonna read something different than any other romance I have read so far.

Rating: 3.80/5 (it is hard to rate this because it is definitely more than a 3.5 but it’s still not a 4)

Even though the protagonists had different backgrounds and lived in different places, that did not even represent the only difference between them: she is a black, curvy, independent woman that you fall in love with instantly and he is a white, tall and charming man. I love that the author chose to represent an interracial couple in such a realistic and beautiful way!

They took me with them through the anxieties she has had as a black woman in a white community. I loved that the issues about race were not ignored and Alexa even educated Drew about it and Drew was so open to understanding things from another point of view.

I’m a fan of stories where relationships develop from being fake to being real and this story was exactly what I expected. It was fast paced and an easy read, what I usually call a “book-cleanse”. After reading books involving complicated plots I needed one like this, actually I needed it so bad that I’ve read it in 2 days. Everything flowed and I suddenly realized I’ve read half of it in what felt like 5 minutes.

Of course there are no romance books without some steam, and be prepared because there’s a lot of it, maybe too much but it doesn’t feel like it thanks to the author that knew how to describe the scenes without being too vulgar.

One of the reasons why I liked the book even more was the fact that both characters loved their jobs and they were so dedicated and ambitious, you just wish you could be like that. He is so good with the kids he is taking care of as a doctor and he gets so attached to them and she is so refreshing and thoughtful, a big help to the community when trying to create an arts program for underprivileged youth. Apparently the author has a background in law and that is pretty obvious when “monitoring” Alexa at her job.

Also, should I even mention that they eat a lot?! And not only that but the food sounds so good and I’m such a foodie, I could not help but observe that. I literally started craving donuts because of Alexa.

I totally recommend this as a “book-cleanse” or a beach read, all the characters in this book are really well built and each one of them have so many different personalities that Jasmine knew how to differentiate, it’s pretty hard to think that this was her debut novel. I’m totally looking forward to checking out more of her books in the future.

If you like swoony and fun romances, you have to read it!