First Lines Fridays: January 3, 2020

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

• Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
• Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
• Finally… reveal the book!

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First Lines:

The buzzing flies and screaming survivors had long since replaced the beating war-drums.
The killing field was now a tangled sprawl of corpses, human and faerie alike, interrupted only by broken wings jutting toward the gray sky or the occasional bulk of a felled horse.

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Did the quote pique your interest? View this book on Goodreads!

First Lines Fridays: December 27, 2019

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

• Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
• Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
• Finally… reveal the book!

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First Lines:

Maybe I’d always been broken and dark inside.

Maybe someone who’d been born whole and good would have put down the ash dagger and embraced death rather than what lay before me.

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Did the quote pique your interest? View this book on Goodreads!

First Lines Fridays: December 20, 2019

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

• Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
• Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
• Finally… reveal the book!

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First Lines:

The forest had become a labyrinth of snow and ice.

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Did the quote pique your interest? View this book on Goodreads!

Top 5 Wednesday: November 14, 2018

Books You Want to Read Before 2019

Our Goodreads goals are quickly closing in. What are you prioritizing for the end of the year?
To participate in Top 5 Wednesday, head over to their Goodreads Group!

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Muse of Nightmares (Strange the Dreamer, book 2) by Laini Taylor

This goes at the top of the list because technically I’m already reading it. I loved Strange, but it left me with such high expectations that it’s nearly impossible to read Muse! So I’m annoyed with myself, but I intend to finish this before the end of the year.

A Court of Frost and Starlight (A Court of Thorns and Roses, book 4) by Sarah J. Maas

I was so excited for this one and then I did that same stupid thing where I have all these expectations and it keeps me from even being able to read the book I wanted to read so badly!

A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children, book 4) by Ransom Riggs

ARE YOU SEEING A THEME HERE???? Someone just end me. I finally got to preorder some books and I haven’t even touched them because I suck. I’m actually a little worried on this one because it has a lot to live up to with how much I loved the series up to now.

Kingdom of the Blazing Phoenix (Rise of the Empress, book 2) by Julie C. Dao

This just came a few days ago and I can’t wait to enjoy it. I’m interested to see how I like a book more focused on Jade than on Xifeng, because I really dug the sympathetic villain angle. I am fully sympathized!

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han

I’m really to give this book a chance since I saw the Netflix series. I’m a little nervous because it’s not my usual type of book. In fact, it’s the type of book I usually avoid. I’m determined not to put it off like I usually would so I’m going to get to it by the end of the year.

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What books are you guys hoping to finish by 2019?

First Lines Fridays: August 3, 2018

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

• Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
• Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
• Finally… reveal the book!

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First Lines:

The first snow of winter had begun whipping through Velaris an hour earlier.

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Did the quote pique your interest? View this book on Goodreads!

First Lines Fridays: July 27, 2018

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

• Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
• Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
• Finally… reveal the book!

---

First Lines:

The buzzing flies and screaming survivors had long since replaced the beating war-drums.

The killing field was now a tangled sprawl of corpses, human and faerie alike, interrupted only by broken wings jutting toward the gray sky or the occasional bulk of a felled horse.

---

Did the quote pique your interest? View this book on Goodreads!

First Lines Fridays: July 20, 2018

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

• Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
• Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
• Finally… reveal the book!

---

First Lines:

Maybe I’d always been broken and dark inside.
Maybe someone who’d been born whole and good would have put down the ash dagger and embraced death rather than what lay before me.

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Did the quote pique your interest? View this book on Goodreads!

First Lines Fridays: July 13, 2018

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

• Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
• Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
• Finally… reveal the book!

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First Lines:

The forest had become a labyrinth of snow and ice.

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Did the quote pique your interest? View this book on Goodreads!

April 2018 Reading Wrap-Up

Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
(Twilight Saga, book 3)
Rating:  ★☆☆☆☆ – did not like it
Review:  No
Format:  E-book
Reading Dates:  April 1 – 2
Read Count:  2
Favorite Thing:  It could have been longer, but it wasn’t and I’m grateful.
Least Favorite Thing:  Bella’s doormat impersonations…

Lordy this book was obnoxious. There were a lot of parts I hated, but all of them in some way tie-in to the whole “Bella as a doormat” crap so… Like seriously I kept wanting to climb into the novel and shake her like “just stick to your guns about literally anything, just stand up for yourself, just stop letting these idiots run right over all your boundaries!” and then scream for an hour.

My Posts About Eclipse

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Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
(Twilight Saga, book 4)
Rating:  ★☆☆☆☆ – did not like it
Review:  No
Format:  E-book
Reading Dates:  April 2
Read Count:  2
Favorite Thing:  Bella is slightly more tolerable as a vampire.
Least Favorite Thing:  Nessie. Both the name and the concept.

I read all of the Twilight books and my head didn’t even explode it’s a miracle! Never again.

My Posts About Breaking Dawn

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Empire of Storms by Sarah J. Maas
(Throne of Glass, book 5)
Rating:  ★★★☆☆ – liked it
Review:  No
Format:  Print
Reading Dates:  March 8 – April 4
Read Count:  1
Favorite Thing:  Lorcan being like “I hate Elide, but if anyone ever even thought about hurting her, I would kill everyone in this room and then myself.”
Least Favorite Thing:  Up until the very end of the novel, it was like “everything that can go wrong, will go wrong” and that made me tired.

My least favorite thing is actually why I rated this book only 3 stars. It was good, interesting, and there were a lot of parts I enjoyed, but it felt like for every good thing there were two bad things and it just starts to wear on me after a while and make me tired so it limits my enjoyment of the novel.

Also can I just say, why are they like “oh obviously someone has to die to forge the lock” when they have two heirs of Brannon? It takes all the power of one heir of Brannon to forge the lock, they have two heirs of Brannon. Halfsies, bro. Everybody lives.

My Posts About Empire of Storms

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The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale
(Books of Bayern, book 1)
Rating:  ★★★★☆ – really liked it *
Review:  Yes **
Format:  Full-Cast Audiobook
Reading Dates:  April 5 – 7
Read Count:  5-ish
Favorite Thing:  Vicious Attack Geese!
Least Favorite Thing:  Um literally all of Selia’s guard friends. Too skeevy, blech.

* Please note that this rating is for the novel as a whole, not the Full Cast Audio version.
** This review is for the Full Cast Audio version, not the novel as a whole.

My Posts About The Goose Girl

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Life and Death by Stephenie Meyer
(Twilight Saga, book 1.75)
Rating:  ★☆☆☆☆ – did not like it
Review:  Yes
Format:  E-book
Reading Dates:  April 10 – 13
Read Count:  1
Favorite Thing:  The alternate ending.
Least Favorite Thing:  So boring.

Please tell me she’s done beating the dead horse that is the Twilight Saga???

My Posts About Life and Death

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White Oleander by Janet Fitch
Rating:  ★★★★★ – it was amazing
Review:  No
Format:  E-book
Reading Dates:  April 5 – 15
Read Count:  1
Favorite Thing:  The amazing prose.
Least Favorite Thing:  Literally every male past puberty that ever came in contact with Astrid….

This was recommended to me as part of the Buddy Reads activity in an online Book Club I am a part of. My “buddy” recommended this to me because I wanted to try more books outside of the YA genre this year. I am so incredibly glad I signed up for this activity because I got an excellent recommendation here. A recommendation which I happily pass along:  Read this book!

My Posts About White Oleander

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Once and for All by Sarah Dessen
Rating:  ★★★☆☆ – liked it (real rating: 3.5)
Review:  No
Format:  Print
Reading Dates:  April 15 -17
Read Count:  1
Favorite Thing:  Snarky wedding planner comments.
Least Favorite Thing:  Ambrose’s habit of writing everything off as being somebody else’s fault. Fucking obnoxious…

I read this book for my book club’s April Challenge (Read a book with a pastel cover.) and also because I’ve never yet met a Dessen novel I didn’t like. I wish I could give half-star ratings on Goodreads though.

My Posts About Once and for All

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What’s Left of Me by Kat Zhang
(Hybrid Chronicles, book 1)
Rating:  ★★★☆☆ – liked it
Review:  No
Format:  Print
Reading Dates:  April 20 – 28
Read Count:  1
Favorite Thing:  Sisterly bond? Is that an accurate term for the bond between two souls sharing the same body?? Whatever. That’s what I’m calling it.
Least Favorite Thing:  Slow? Kind of slow… Not slow enough to DNF, but still slow.

April Challenge #2 complete with the finishing of this novel! Yay! (I don’t know how quickly I’ll move to the sequel though.)

My Posts About What’s Left of Me

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Heartless by Marissa Meyer
Rating:  ★★★★☆ – really liked it
Review:  No
Format:  Print
Reading Dates:  April 29 – 30
Read Count:  1
Favorite Thing:  I took sick pleasure in angry, vengeful Cath.
Least Favorite Thing:  Peter Peter.  Actually that’s not even the thing I hated most, but the real thing is a big spoiler.

It took me a minute to get into it, but once I did I couldn’t put it down! And April Challenge #3 successful by the skin of my teeth!

My Posts About Heartless

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In Progress

WWW Wednesday: April 11, 2018

Welcome to WWW Wednesday! This meme was formerly hosted by MizB at Should be Reading and revived on Taking on a World of Words. Just answer the three W’s!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

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Currently Reading:  White Oleander by Janet Fitch

This book was recommended to me by a friend in a Book Club I am in as part of a “buddy reads” program. This is absolutely not my usual genre, and I was pretty nervous about that, but so far I am loving it.

I’ve had to take a bit of a break from it for a few days because the excellent writing which easy drew me into the main character’s world and mind, also makes for excellent dissociation fodder. By which I mean, I over-empathize and get so caught up in the emotions and thoughts of the character that I get stuck in them and it takes me a little while to recover. This is how I know a character/book is really well written, because a poorly written novel wouldn’t suck me in so deeply. But it also means that if the subject matter is a little darker or the protag a little more troubled than my usual YA genre novels, then I need breaks to keep from being overwhelmed by it.

Totally fucking worth it though.

Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined (Twilight Saga, book 1.75) by Stephenie Meyer

Welp, I’m reading another Twilight Saga novel, and before you ask, yes I am Suffering. Honestly I’ve been having trouble going through this one as quickly as some of the others because I keep having to stop and reorient my thinking due to the gender and name swapping. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve taken to keeping a list of each character and their new gender swap name so I can refer to it when I get confused.

Of course, I also keep getting held up by the amount of times I have to stop and heave an exhausted sigh or roll my eyes or groan or some combination of the three.

I’m in the middle of this one, but will definitely finish it by the end of the day today.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

*** Audiobook ***

So basically I have very little self-control, so when I learned of the existence of full-cast audiobooks I was incapable of stopping myself from checking them out. I listened to one full one already, and then started this one because it was recommended to me as a quality FCA.

I have to say though, listening to some man reading me that Bilquis scene was pretty damn awkward!

Right now I’m paused at the part where Shadow is at the funeral and he’s about to learn some hard truths!

Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell

I’m still reading this technically, but I’m taking a short break because I have 5 other books I have commited to reading this month, and 2 others that I’d like to finish within the week. Because moderation is for quitters!

Recently Finished:  Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass, book 5) by Sarah J. Maas

Well it took me like a month, but I did finally finish it. Don’t even talk to me about the ending I’m not dealing with that right now. I refuse.

I had some troubles which I’ll talk about in my April Reading Wrap-Up, but one thing I have to say is like…. Why is everyone having sex every 10 seconds? Like I was trying to read a book about magic and war and all that. And my husband and I have theorized that if you cut out all the sex scenes the book would lose like half its volume so seriously, why was all that necessary?? Can we just chill even a little bit because I didn’t sign up for erotica at this time.

The Goose Girl (The Books of Bayern, book 1) by Shannon Hale

*** Audiobook **

I decided to listen to this on a whim. As I mentioned earlier I have only just learned about full-cast audiobooks, and when I discovered that one of my favorite stories had been done in that way I had to try it.

I wrote a Mini-Review, specifically about the audiobook version I listened to, not about the story itself. The story itself was as enjoyable as I have always found it to be.

It was more of a test of the FCA format, so I probably won’t keep going with the entire series at this time, especially since I’ve got so many other books to read right now.

Reading Next:  Once and for All by Sarah Dessen

I’ve been meaning to get to this one, and I found the perfect motivator. That book club I’m in has monthly challenges, and one of them is to read a book with a pastel cover.

I have some others that I need to read this month, but I’ve also been reading a lot of fantasy this year so I figured I should extend my genre break by reading a Dessen novel.

And if I’m honest, all the talking about Dessen novels I’ve been doing I’ve been considering a reread anyway, but I can hardly justify a Dessen reread if I haven’t even read the two newer novels of hers yet.