Month: March 2019

Book review: Paper Girls, Vol. 4 by Brian K. Vaughan

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Paper Girls, Vol. 4 by Brian K. Vaughan
Rating: ★★★★☆
Links: Amazon • TBD • Goodreads
Publication Date: April 10, 2018
Source: Borrowed

The mind-bending, time-warping adventure from BRIAN K. VAUGHAN and CLIFF CHIANG continues, as intrepid newspaper deliverer Tiffany is launched from the prehistoric past into the year 2000! In this harrowing version of our past, Y2K was even more of a cataclysm than experts feared, and the only person who can save the future is a 12-year-old girl from 1988.

Volume 4 of Paper Girls was, by far, my favorite of the series. It’s definitely the most exciting of the volumes, and despite being a little jumpy sometimes, I felt like it was really well-written.

The girls end up in 2000 amid the Y2K scare, and wow, that really took me back to elementary school! (Just saying that makes me feel old.) I remember Y2K like it was yesterday and this alternate version of history in which a bunch of crazy things actually happened was so fun to read about! (In real life, the craziest thing that happened was the computers at my school thinking it was 1900 and not 2000.)

I’m really enjoying this series so far and I’m looking forward to reading the next volume!

#ps19: a book that makes you nostalgic
#mmd19: a book in the backlist of a favorite author

Have you read Paper Girls? What’s your favorite graphic novel?
Let’s talk in the comments!

Find me all over the internet: Goodreads | Twitter | Bloglovin’

Weekly Update

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In case you missed it, here are this week’s blog posts:

Tags this week:

I’ve been reading:

Recently acquired:

2 things this week:

  • Did you know I’ve only finished four books so far this month? I’m not sure what kind of disaster my life is, but yikes. (For reference, I read 22 books in February.) I’m hoping April will be better.
  • My one-year anniversary giveaway ends tomorrow! There’s still time to enter if you haven’t already!

Blog hopping:

  • Gerry is celebrating her blog’s anniversary and doing an amazing giveaway!
  • Angela defined common book blogging terms!
  • Adam reviewed The Music of What Happens, which has been on my radar for a while!
  • Lotte shared some graphic novels set in space!

Song of the week:

I get such Miniature Tigers vibes from this song! It takes me back to being like 19 years old and staying up all night writing a paper. This is the kind of music I’d listen to so that I’d stay awake but still be focused.

How was your week? What’s the best thing you read or listened to? Anything interesting happening in your life? Let’s talk in the comments!

Find me all over the internet: Goodreads | Twitter | Bloglovin’

Tag: The Emoji Challenge

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First things first, a big thank you goes to Mandy & Sha for tagging me in The Emoji Challenge! This is such a great idea and a really great way to get to know other bloggers!

From this tag, I learned that Mandy likes spooky things and Sha would also be a cat. 🙂

Rules:

  • tag the creators @bookprincessreviews
  • share one thing you learned about the person who tagged you
  • for each prompt, you can use a maximum of three emojis
  • tag at least two other bloggers you want to get to know better

[1] What country do you live in?

🇺🇸

[2] What was your dream job growing up?

👩‍🏫

[3] How many siblings do you have (if any)?

👧

[4] What are your top three favourite activities?

📚🍰🎶

[5] What is something you’re very good at? 

🏥➡️️🔢

[6] What is something you’d like to become better at?

📣

[7] How many languages do you speak? 

🇬🇧🇪🇸🇵🇹

[8] What is something you could talk about for hours? (non-book related if possible)

🐱

[9] What’s your favourite book genre? 

😍

[10] What is your favourite season of the year?

🌱🌺🌻🌼

[11] If you had to describe yourself as an animal, what animal would you be?

🐈

I’m tagging:

A.J. ♥️ Jaymi ♥️ The Orangutan Librarian ♥️ Alyssa ♥️ Tinkablee

Feel free to do this tag even if I didn’t tag you! (If you do, please link back to me so I can see your answers.) Did you understand any of my answers? (I’m not great at emojis.) Let’s talk in the comments!

Find me all over the internet: Goodreads | Twitter | Bloglovin’

Book review: Famous in a Small Town by Emma Mills

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Famous in a Small Town by Emma Mills
Rating: ★★★★☆
Links: Amazon • TBD • Goodreads
Publication Date: January 15, 2019
Source: Borrowed

For Sophie, small town life has never felt small. With her four best friends—loving, infuriating, and all she could ever ask for—she can weather any storm. But when Sophie’s beloved Acadia High School marching band is selected to march in the upcoming Rose Parade, it’s her job to get them all the way to LA. Her plan? To persuade country singer Megan Pleasant, their Midwestern town’s only claim to fame, to come back to Acadia to headline a fundraising festival.

The only problem is that Megan has very publicly sworn never to return.

What ensues is a journey filled with long-kept secrets, hidden heartbreaks, and revelations that could change everything—along with a possible fifth best friend: a new guy with a magnetic smile and secrets of his own.

Emma Mills has been on my radar ever since I moved my blog to WordPress, but I never found any of her books at my library. That is, until recently, when Famous in a Small Town was prominently displayed on the new arrivals table in the YA section. I, of course, jumped on the chance to read it. Unsurprisingly, based on all of the positive reviews I’ve seen of her books, it was great.

I think my favorite part of this book was all of the friendships. Sophie has a great group of friends, all with really distinctive personalities. They have fun together most of the time, but sometimes they argue and fight and clash, and I loved that because it was so, so realistic. I also loved their group chat! I’m old enough that group chats were not a thing when I was in high school, but if they were… I’m pretty sure my friends and I would have had one like this.

I also really liked August and the whole “will they or won’t they” vibe he had with Sophie. He was also such a great person! He genuinely cared about his nieces, he wanted to do what was best for everyone else even if it meant doing something that would be uncomfortable or difficult for himself, and he’s just been through so much in his life.

The Megan Pleasant thing was interesting. It wasn’t really what I expected it to be, but honestly, that was a good thing. I did not see that twist coming and thought that it added another whole aspect to the book that made it even better.

I’m not really sure how to explain why I didn’t give this book five stars since I really did like it so much. Maybe because the whole fundraising thing, which was supposed to be a main point of the book, really felt like an afterthought? A few of the interactions between Sophie and August kind of rubbed me the wrong way, too, although I did like their relationship overall. I guess I could also say that the ending felt a little rushed? I’m not really sure, because all of these are pretty minor complaints. Whatever the reason, I liked this book a lot, but didn’t quite love it, so four stars it is.

I’d highly recommend it if you’re looking for a good YA romance.

#romanceopoly: read a sweet or small town contemporary romance

Have you read Famous in a Small Town? What about any of Emma Mills’ other books? Are they as good as this one?Let’s talk in the comments!

Find me all over the internet: Goodreads | Twitter | Bloglovin’

Tag: Behind the Blogger

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Thanks to Laura Beth @ Hot Shot Headlines for tagging me in this one! ❤

THE RULES:

  • Thank the person who nominated you
  • Answer all the questions down below
  • Pingback to the creator: Ellyn @ Allonsythornraxx
  • Nominate 5+ bloggers you’d like to know more about, to do this tag

1. Why did you start blogging & why have you kept blogging?

I feel like I’ve kind of beat the life out of this question in various tags over the last year, but here’s the short version: I moved to New Jersey, I knew no one, and I started reading a ton of books. I’d blogged about other things in the past, so I figured a book blog would be a reasonable thing to do!

I’ve kept blogging because I just enjoy it so much! Every day I get to have conversations with people who love books as much as I do. 🙂

2. What is your favorite type of blog post to write?

I think tags are my favorite! That and really snarky book reviews.

3. What are your top 3 favorite blog posts?

4. What are some of your favorite things to do to relax?

The most relaxing thing for me is probably a hot bath with candles and a bath bomb. A phone call with my boyfriend also relaxes me really quickly, and so does a phone call with my mom (usually). For things outside of the house, I love looking around used bookstores and just going into a bunch of shops downtown and looking around. Oh, and massages! I hardly ever actually get a massage, but that’s always a great, relaxing experience.

5. What are 3 of your favorite things?

Not counting any humans or animals… books, chocolate, and my plants.

6. What are your proudest blogging moments?

There are some ARCs I’ve gotten that have made me really excited, like 99 Percent Mine and Renegades. The first time I was approached by a publicist was really very exciting. I think I may have yelped when I hit 1,000 followers. But I think what made me the most excited (and the proudest, and made me feel like my book blog was really succeeding) was when I asked for questions for my recent anniversary post and I got so many responses! ❤

7. What are your hobbies outside of blogging?

Sometimes I feel like I don’t really do anything aside from reading and blogging, but I suppose I do. I love baking. I love listening to music and I’ll sometimes get sucked into a black hole of clicking related artists on Spotify (especially when I start listening to emo music from when I was a teenager… that’s the most dangerous). I like watching movies with my boyfriend, though I don’t really watch any by myself. I also love going to this little cafe by where I used to live and looking at all the fun candies and cookies and specialty products that they sell.

8. Describe your personality in 3 words:

Crazy cat lady. 🐱

9. What are your top 3 pet peeves?

  • I hate it when people don’t listen,
  • I hate it when people don’t pay attention to (or just don’t care) about what’s going on around them, and
  • I hate it when I have to painfully pull answers out of someone — don’t be dramatic, just tell me what you want me to know

10. What’s something your followers don’t know about you?

I feel like my followers know literally everything about me by now, but let’s see… you might not know that when I was in college, I worked part-time for the veterinary medicine program. I loved that job so much! They’d just call me when they wanted me to come in (and they were super flexible about the times and didn’t mind if I wanted to work from home) and I’d do things like transcribe audio from presentations before they uploaded them to their website, follow up with farmers who’d agreed to participate in research with the university, or proofread press releases before they went out. It was honestly the ideal job for me.

I’m tagging:

Alex ❤ Susan ❤ Bibliogyan ❤ Mani ❤ Megs

Please feel free to do this tag even if I didn’t tag you! (And if I did, no pressure whatsoever do it.) What are some of your favorite things? What do you like to do outside of blogging? Let’s talk in the comments!

Find me all over the internet: Goodreads | Twitter | Bloglovin’