Oh, August. It was filled with a readathon and I’ve discovered a new way to pick what I was going to read next.
I participated in the Magical Readathon : Fall Equinox and I am happy to announce that I finished all of my studies. Also I’ve used Wheel Decide for chores, choosing where to eat, etc. and then I thought, why not let it decide how I choose my next book? I put different options like read from my ongoing series, tbr chest, book that’s been on my goodreads tbr the longest. The Bookopolathon is in September and even though I don’t play the game, I always like participating in the 48 hour one in the spring. In September it goes for the whole month, so I decided that September would be my Wheel Decide month where, if not all, most of my reads will come from these spins (we shall see, since books not on my tbr somehow always find their way into my hands.)
My career to study was Illusionist Rogue.
Major – Shapeshifting, Class – Formation: Wings, Prompt – wings on the cover
No Words by Meg Cabot – It was an entertaining read, that I read pretty quickly, but there were also things that I didn’t feel like were adding up. I liked that the MCs were authors. It was fun to read about them at a book festival. It was weird that I was over halfway through the book and it still felt like I was reading the beginning. Not enough happened between Jo and Will, and why the ending was fast. When they started dating, it was trending and I don’t feel like I ever see authors trend like that. It also seemed premature for them to be in love. They barely knew each other.
Major -Psionics and Divination, Class – Time Theory I, Prompt – time-travel (figured flashbacks counted)
People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry – I did not finish this right away. I didn’t like the characters right away. I heard that it was slow and I read Book Lovers before this which wasn’t a big hit for me either. I still counted it as a class because who cares?
Major – Art of Illusion, Class – Blur Face, Prompt – book you do not know much about
Blood Promise by Richelle Mead (Vampire Academy) – 3 stars for beginning to mid, but the ending was a 4 star and then a 5 star. SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS for the series, well and this book.
HELLOOOOO strigoi Dimitri! He was hot! This was the most interesting part of the book and he wanted Rose like crazy. Just yes. BUT then he was getting to be a bit much and I thought okay guess you can kill him.
My feelings about Dimitri have gone all over the place. I was devastated in the last book, now I’m like okay you can kill him and go fall in love with Adrian, BUT that ending! I loved it so much, Dimitri is still alive/undead!! She’s going to find Robert and the cure for strigoi and save Dimitri and then have to let Adrian down.
I mean I’m excited for some more strigoi Dimitri though.
From beginning to the appearance of Dimitri it was kind of boring and this is a big chunk of the book.
There are an awful lot of spirit users in this book for it to be so rare.
Class – Minor Illusions, Prompt – book under 300 pages
Devil in Spring by Lisa Kleypas – A historical romance with a marriage of convenience. I’ve really liked this series and how all the men are the first to fall in love. I was thinking Pandora is like Eloise Bridgerton with being independent and having her own business.
Class – Cast: Deja Vu, Prompt – pick a prompt from last semester
The Cheat Sheet by Sarah Adams – Best friends and fake dating tropes. Nathan is a pro football player who has to date his best friend, Bree because of PR stuff. I love how the football team loves her and they help Nathan with the cheat sheet. I love that their ideas for the cheat sheet are from movies and that some of them don’t go as planned. This was a very funny and cute book. I love how awkward and goofy they get around each other.
I was 15 chapters in when I finally got why he calls her Bree cheese 🤦♀️ It’s a cheese!
It was like watching a romcom, the friends coming together to make that list was genius
I was going to give it 4 stars, but I was so happy and giddy after reading it. It gets 5.
Spoiler
I wasn’t a fan of the wedding. At least if it was me, I’d be like nope, I do not want to be surprised with a wedding. But I’m glad it didn’t end on that. I loved that he showed her the cheat sheet in the epilogue and that bonus chapter was so fun and brought back the great friendship that all of the characters in the book have with each other
I follow some publishers on Instagram, so I go to their feeds and pick a book from there. The wheel chose Berkley Publishing and I chose
Dare to Run by Jen McLaughlin – These types of books have turned into a guilty pleasure. I like a bad boy (like actually bad) story. It’s a fantasy that I wouldn’t actually want to be in, but if it’s fictional? Yes please. Someone is trying to kill the main guy and I pretty much guessed it right away.
The next spin landed on a game. I have a few different TBR game ideas and I decided to do MASH. My categories were trope, color on cover, letter in title or author’s name, and genre. I put 4 different suggestions in each category and generated a random number, which was 6. I ended up with travel/road trip, red, “B”, and contemporary.
The Way Back to You by Michelle Andreani & Mindi Scott – I surprisingly really liked this book. I found the idea intriguing, but I was ready to DNF if I needed to, but I didn’t. The two main characters go on a road trip to find people who had recieved their friend/girlfriend’s organs after she died. I will say, dual perspectives with first person confuses me so much because I never know who “I” is especially if I stop in the middle of the chapter.
I really liked the slow burn/tension and the traveling and the kitten even though cats are not my favorite animal. I liked the idea of visiting organ recipients, it was a different plot than normal. I liked the detail of the places they went and it felt like we were really traveling with them and the smallest side characters had so much personality.
.
Other books:
Something Wilder by Christina Lauren – This is a second chance romance where the two main characters end up searching for treasure together. At the beginning it was hard to keep my attention because there was a lot to take in and try to know all of the characters, but it got better about 40% in. Something that I’m not used to in romances happened that kind of turned it into a romantic suspense, which I didn’t expect from Christina Lauren. It was a fun adventure, but I have others from them that are my favorite.
Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie – I like listening to the full cast audio. Sometimes it’s hard to to keep up with who’s who. I’m glad at the end when they reveal who did it, they also explain why and how because it is hard to follow.
Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood – I liked it, but there were some things like it was a lot like The Love Hypothesis. The main characters were very similar. The love interest was like the same guy with being standoffish to the heroine. But overall I did enjoy it. It had a You’ve Got Mail trope through twitter. There was a lot of miscommunication and assumptions.
The Chase by Elle Kennedy – College students, hockey player, brother’s friend. I never know how to rate books like this. Yes, I did read it pretty much in one sitting, but was it amazing? I mean, I wouldn’t reread it. I liked that she wasn’t all about her looks and was feminist and that Fitz was into game design. I liked that it went into her fashion design. It had a lot of diverse things in it, but for some reason I just feel like I can’t say I loved the book. Maybe it was the writing, and I definitely got frustrated with Fitz being flakey. I also thought that Fitz was going to be the one chasing, but that didn’t happen. I don’t really know why it’s called The Chase.
It’s one of those fast reads to get you out of a slump.
See Girl Read 