July 2022 Wrap Up

 

I didn’t read as much as I hoped in July, but part of that was because we were looking to adopt a dog.  I finally found the right one and we were in the car for about 20 hours to adopt her two states away.

Review of Blood Like Magic by Liselle Sambury (hardcover)

 

Blood Like Magic by Liselle Sambury

An urban fantasy debut following a teen witch who is given a horrifying task: sacrificing her first love to save her family’s magic. The problem is, she’s never been in love—she’ll have to find the perfect guy before she can kill him.

After years of waiting for her Calling—a trial every witch must pass in order to come into their powers—the one thing Voya Thomas didn’t expect was to fail. When Voya’s ancestor gives her an unprecedented second chance to complete her Calling, she agrees—and then is horrified when her task is to kill her first love. And this time, failure means every Thomas witch will be stripped of their magic.

Voya is determined to save her family’s magic no matter the cost. The problem is, Voya has never been in love, so for her to succeed, she’ll first have to find the perfect guy—and fast. Fortunately, a genetic matchmaking program has just hit the market. Her plan is to join the program, fall in love, and complete her task before the deadline. What she doesn’t count on is being paired with the infuriating Luc—how can she fall in love with a guy who seemingly wants nothing to do with her?

With mounting pressure from her family, Voya is caught between her morality and her duty to her bloodline. If she wants to save their heritage and Luc, she’ll have to find something her ancestor wants more than blood. And in witchcraft, blood is everything.

How You Grow Wings by Rimma Onoseta (excerpt)

How You Grow Wings by Rimma Onoseta

An emotionally riveting novel for fans of Ibi Zoboi and Erika L. Sánchez about two sisters in Nigeria and their journey to break free of an oppressive home.

Sisters Cheta and Zam couldn’t be more different. Cheta, sharp-tongued and stubborn, never shies away from conflict—either at school or at home, where her mother fires abuse at her. Timid Zam escapes most of her mother’s anger, skating under the radar and avoiding her sister whenever possible. In a turn of good fortune, Zam is invited to live with her aunt’s family in the lap of luxury. Jealous, Cheta also leaves home, but finds a harder existence that will drive her to terrible decisions. When the sisters are reunited, Zam alone will recognize just how far Cheta has fallen—and Cheta’s fate will rest in Zam’s hands.

Debut author Rimma Onoseta deftly explores classism, colorism, cycles of abuse, how loyalty doesn’t always come attached to love, and the messy truths that sometimes family is not a source of comfort and that morality is all shades of gray.

Can’t Wait Wednesday 8/10/22

 

 

Can’t Wait Wednesday/Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Wishful Endings and was previously hosted by Breaking the Spine.   It was created to show off a future release that you are excited for.

Review of Last of the Talons by Sophie Kim (earc)

 

Last of the Talons by Sophie Kim

“Last of the Talons is a stunning blend of dark romance and Korean mythology. Sophie Kim writes enemies to lovers with heart-pounding intensity, blurring the line between love and hate. Bloodthirsty, addictive, and searingly romantic.” —Axie Oh, New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea

After the destruction of her entire Talon gang, eighteen-year-old Shin Lina—the Reaper of Sunpo—is forced to become a living, breathing weapon for the kingdom’s most-feared crime lord. All that keeps her from turning on her ruthless master is the life of her beloved little sister hanging in the balance. But the order to steal a priceless tapestry from a Dokkaebi temple incites not only the wrath of a legendary immortal, but the beginning of an unwinnable game…

Suddenly Lina finds herself in the dreamlike realm of the Dokkaebi, her fate in the hands of its cruel and captivating emperor. But she can win her life—if she kills him first.

Now a terrible game of life and death has begun, and even Lina’s swift, precise blade is no match for the magnetic Haneul Rui. Lina will have to use every weapon in her arsenal if she wants to outplay this cunning king and save her sister…all before the final grain of sand leaks out of the hourglass.

Because one way or another, she’ll take Rui’s heart.

Even if it means giving up her own.

Blog Tour for The Daredevils by Rob Buyea (promo)

 

 

Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for The Daredevils by Rob Buyea.  This tour is being hosted by TBR and Beyond Tours.

 

The Daredevils by Rob Buyea

Genre: Middle Grade Contemporary

Publishing Date: August 9, 2022

Goodreads Monday 8/8/22

 

 

Goodreads Monday was hosted by Lauren’s Page Turners.   It’s now hosted by Budget Tales Book Blog.  All you have to do is show off a book from your TBR that you’re looking forward to reading.

It’s getting hard to remember which ones I’ve done already, so I’m sorry if you see a book pop up on these more than once.  It will happen.  Probably a lot.

Down The TBR Hole #250

 

Down The TBR Hole is a meme created by lost in a story that revolves around cleansing your TBR of all those books you’re never going to read and sort through it all to know what’s actually on there.

Most of you probably know this feeling, your Goodreads TBR pile keeps growing and growing and it seems like there is no light at the end of the tunnel. You keep adding, but you add more than you actually read. And then when you’re scrolling through your list, you realize that you have no idea what half the books are about and why you added them. Well that’s going to change!

It works like this:

• Go to your goodreads to-read shelf.
• Order on ascending date added.
• Take the first 5 (or 10 (or even more!) if you’re feeling adventurous) books. Of course, if you do this weekly, you start where you left off the last time.
• Read the synopses of the books
• Decide: keep it or should it go

I am going to remove sequels for books when I haven’t read book one.  They may or may not get added back later.

Since I was to all the recent books, I decided to go back to the beginning of my TBR and  remove a lot of older books I kept the first time around.

Day 5 and Random Photos from our March 2022 Cartagena Colombia Trip

 

We didn’t do a lot on our last day in Cartagena.  We mostly walked around the area where we stayed (walled city).  I thought I would just share some photos of the city from the trip for today’s post.  Our flight was later that afternoon.

Review of Dead Flip by Sara Farizan (physical arc)

 

Dead Flip by Sara Farizan

Edge-of-your-seat YA horror perfect for fans of Stranger Things
 
Growing up, Cori, Maz, and Sam were inseparable best friends, sharing their love for Halloween, arcade games, and one another. Now it’s 1992, Sam has been missing for five years, and Cori and Maz aren’t speaking anymore. How could they be, when Cori is sure Sam is dead and Maz thinks he may have been kidnapped by a supernatural pinball machine?
 
These days, all Maz wants to do is party, buy CDs at Sam Goody, and run away from his past. Meanwhile, Cori is a homecoming queen, hiding her abiding love of horror movies and her queer self under the bubblegum veneer of a high school queen bee. But when Sam returns—still twelve years old while his best friends are now seventeen—Maz and Cori are thrown back together to solve the mystery of what really happened to Sam the night he went missing. Beneath the surface of that mystery lurk secrets the friends never told one another, then and now. And Sam’s is the darkest of all . . .
 
Award-winning author of If You Could Be Mine and Here to Stay Sara Farizan delivers edge-of-your-seat terror as well as her trademark referential humor, witty narration, and insightful characters.