Sundays in Bed With… The Lady and the Highwayman

The meme that dares to ask what book has been in your bed this morning? Come share what book you’ve spent time curled up reading in bed, or which book you wish you had time to read today! This meme is hosted by Midnight Book Girl.

This Sunday I’m reading The Lady and the Highwayman by Sarah M. Eden.

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Goodreads Synopsis:

Elizabeth Black is the headmistress of a girls’ school and a well-respected author of “silver-fork” novels, stories written both for and about the upper-class ladies of Victorian society. But by night, she writes very different kinds of stories—the Penny Dreadfuls that are all the rage among the working-class men. Under the pseudonym Mr. King, Elizabeth has written about dashing heroes fighting supernatural threats and dangerous outlaws romancing helpless women. They contain all the adventure and mystery that her real life lacks.

Fletcher Walker began life as a street urchin, but is now the most successful author in the Penny Dreadful market, that is until Mr. King started taking all of his readers–and his profits. No one knows who King is, including Fletcher’s fellow members of the Dread Penny Society, a fraternity of authors dedicated to secretly fighting for the rights of the less-fortunate.

Determined to find the elusive Mr. King, Fletcher approaches Miss Black. As a fellow-author, she is well-known among the high-class writers; perhaps she could be persuaded to make some inquiries as to Mr. King’s whereabouts? Elizabeth agrees to help Fletcher, if only to insure her secret identity is never discovered. 

For the first time, Elizabeth experiences the thrill of a cat-and-mouse adventure reminiscent of one of her own novels as she tries to throw Fletcher off her scent. But the more time they spend together, the more she loses her heart. Its upper-class against working-class, author against author where readers, reputations, and romance are all on the line.

What book are you in bed with today?

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Six for Sunday – Bookish Wins of 2020 (books I read in 2020 that were published before 2020)

This meme is hosted by Steph at A little but a lot. The weekly prompts for 2019 can be found here.

This week’s prompt is Bookish Wins of 2020. These are the books I read in 2020 that I loved, but weren’t published in 2020. Here’s my list:

1. Pumpkinheads by Rainbow Rowell and Faith Erin Hicks

2. Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert

3. City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

4. A Gathering of Shadows by V.E. Schwab

5. A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

6. The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani

(All book covers from Goodreads)

Did you make a Six for Sunday list?

Review: Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)

Title: Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)
Author: Kristin Cashore
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy
Publisher: Dial Books
Source: Library
Format: Ebook
Release Date: October 1, 2008
Rating: ★★★★★

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Goodreads Synopsis:

Katsa has been able to kill a man with her bare hands since she was eight—she’s a Graceling, one of the rare people in her land born with an extreme skill. As niece of the king, she should be able to live a life of privilege, but Graced as she is with killing, she is forced to work as the king’s thug. 

She never expects to fall in love with beautiful Prince Po. 

She never expects to learn the truth behind her Grace—or the terrible secret that lies hidden far away . . . a secret that could destroy all seven kingdoms with words alone. 

With elegant, evocative prose and a cast of unforgettable characters, debut author Kristin Cashore creates a mesmerizing world, a death-defying adventure, and a heart-racing romance that will consume you, hold you captive, and leave you wanting more.

Review:

Katsa is a Graceling, a person with two different colored eyes who has a special ability. Katsa can kill any man with her bare hands. Since she has this special skill, she is sent on missions by the king, her uncle. On one of her missions, she meets Prince Po, another Graceling. This meeting changes her life and sends her on a journey to find the reason behind Po’s grandfather’s kidnapping.

I’m so glad I discovered this series. This was a whirlwind adventure with danger, suspense, and romance. Katsa was a strong character, physically and mentally. She knew exactly what she wanted, so she was surprised when she learned new things about herself, such as when she found herself falling in love.

This story had so many shocking scenes. The characters suffered a lot, but they grew stronger because of it. There were a few times when I thought the characters had painted themselves into a corner, and I couldn’t think of a way they could possibly get past their challenges. This made the story very exciting.

I’m so excited to read the next book in this series!

What to read next:

Fire by Kristin Cashore

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Other books in the series:

  • Fire
  • Bitterblue
  • Winterkeep

Have you read Graceling? What did you think of it?

Top 5 Saturday – Books With Multiple Points of View

This is a weekly meme hosted Devouring Books. This week’s prompt is Books With Multiple Points of View. Here’s my list:

1. Legend by Marie Lu

2. Rent a Boyfriend by Gloria Chao

3. When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon

4. A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab

5. One of Us Is Lying by Karen M. McManus

(All book covers from Goodreads)

If you’d like to do this list too, consider yourself tagged!

Did you make a Top 5 Saturday list?

Review: Punching the Air [audiobook]

Title: Punching the Air
Author: Ibi Zoboi, Yusef Salaam
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Poetry
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Source: Publisher via NetGalley
Format: Audiobook
Release Date: September 1, 2020
Rating: ★★★★★

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Goodreads Synopsis:

From award-winning, bestselling author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam of the Exonerated Five comes a powerful YA novel in verse about a boy who is wrongfully incarcerated. Perfect for fans of Jason Reynolds, Walter Dean Myers, and Elizabeth Acevedo. 

The story that I thought

was my life

didn’t start on the day

I was born 

Amal Shahid has always been an artist and a poet. But even in a diverse art school, he’s seen as disruptive and unmotivated by a biased system. Then one fateful night, an altercation in a gentrifying neighborhood escalates into tragedy. “Boys just being boys” turns out to be true only when those boys are white. 

The story that I think

will be my life 

starts today

Suddenly, at just sixteen years old, Amal’s bright future is upended: he is convicted of a crime he didn’t commit and sent to prison. Despair and rage almost sink him until he turns to the refuge of his words, his art. This never should have been his story. But can he change it? 

With spellbinding lyricism, award-winning author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam tell a moving and deeply profound story about how one boy is able to maintain his humanity and fight for the truth, in a system designed to strip him of both.

Review:

At sixteen, Amal Shahid was convicted of a crime he didn’t commit. He was an artistic student and a poet. The only way he can survive prison is to express himself through his art. Over and over again Amal is let down by the adults around him. He needs to figure out how to speak his truth and fight for justice.

This is a story written in verse. The poetry suited the emotional story. Amal had a lot of emotions that he expressed through his art. He was able to explore his anger in a constructive way by writing poetry and drawing. This story couldn’t have been told the same way if it was written in prose rather than verse.

I listened to the audiobook version of this story. The physical book has some illustrations that I missed out on in the audio version. However, I loved the narrator for the book. He sounded like a teenage boy, so it was like Amal was telling his story. He put a lot of emotion behind the words, which made the story come alive. I really want to check out the physical copy to see the art, but the audio was very good!

This is a great, powerful story!

Thank you Balzer + Bray for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

What to read next:

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

Have you read Punching the Air? What did you think of it?

First Lines Friday – January 8

This is a weekly meme hosted by Wandering Words, where you give the first few lines of a book to hook your readers before introducing the book.

Here are my first lines:

“There was a reason Gavin Scott rarely drank. He was bad at it.”

Do you recognize these first lines?

And the book is… The Bromance Book Club (Bromance Book Club #1) by Lyssa Kay Adams.

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Goodreads synopsis:

The first rule of book club: You don’t talk about book club.

Nashville Legends second baseman Gavin Scott’s marriage is in major league trouble. He’s recently discovered a humiliating secret: his wife Thea has always faked the Big O. When he loses his cool at the revelation, it’s the final straw on their already strained relationship. Thea asks for a divorce, and Gavin realizes he’s let his pride and fear get the better of him. 

Welcome to the Bromance Book Club.

Distraught and desperate, Gavin finds help from an unlikely source: a secret romance book club made up of Nashville’s top alpha men. With the help of their current read, a steamy Regency titled Courting the Countess, the guys coach Gavin on saving his marriage. But it’ll take a lot more than flowery words and grand gestures for this hapless Romeo to find his inner hero and win back the trust of his wife.

Check out my review of The Bromance Book Club here.

Have you read The Bromance Book Club? What did you think of it?

Review: The Bromance Book Club (Bromance Book Club #1)

Title: The Bromance Book Club (Bromance Book Club #1)
Author: Lyssa Kay Adams
Genre: Romance, Contemporary
Publisher: Berkley
Source: Gift
Format: Paperback
Release Date: November 5, 2019
Rating: ★★★★★

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Goodreads Synopsis:

The first rule of book club: You don’t talk about book club.

Nashville Legends second baseman Gavin Scott’s marriage is in major league trouble. He’s recently discovered a humiliating secret: his wife Thea has always faked the Big O. When he loses his cool at the revelation, it’s the final straw on their already strained relationship. Thea asks for a divorce, and Gavin realizes he’s let his pride and fear get the better of him. 

Welcome to the Bromance Book Club.

Distraught and desperate, Gavin finds help from an unlikely source: a secret romance book club made up of Nashville’s top alpha men. With the help of their current read, a steamy Regency titled Courting the Countess, the guys coach Gavin on saving his marriage. But it’ll take a lot more than flowery words and grand gestures for this hapless Romeo to find his inner hero and win back the trust of his wife.

Review:

Gavin Scott’s marriage is in trouble. He’s one of the star athletes on the Nashville baseball team, and now his wife, Thea, is asking for a divorce after he walked out during a fight. His friends on the team invite him to the Bromance Book Club, to learn how to get his wife back. They read romance novels to figure out what their wives want. The men in the book club guide Gavin on how to get his wife back, using a regency romance novel.

The Bromance Book Club is such a fun premise for a novel! Since romance novels are usually written for women, they show exactly what women want in a romance. The men in this story have figured out that romance novels are the key to figuring out what women want.

Since Gavin was studying romance novels and how he could use them to get Thea back, the men had to break down how the plot develops in the romance novel. When Gavin got stuck, they pointed out that he needed to figure out Thea’s backstory or past. I loved the way this described how romance novels are plotted, while also creating a romance between Gavin and Thea. This was a clever way to break down the parts of a romance novel within the story.

This was such a great story! I’m so excited to read the rest of this series!

What to read next:

Undercover Bromance by Lyssa Kay Adams

Intercepted by Alexa Martin

Other books in the series:

  • Undercover Bromance
  • Crazy Stupid Bromance

Have you read The Bromance Book Club? What did you think of it?

TBR Thursday – January 7

TBR Thursday is a weekly meme hosted by Kimberly Faye Reads, where you post a title from your shelf or e-reader and find out what others think about it.

My pick this week is Soulswift by Megan Bannen.

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Goodreads Synopsis:

Gelya is a Vessel, a girl who channels the word of the One True God through song. Cloistered with the other Vessels of her faith, she believes—as all Ovinists do—that a saint imprisoned Elath the Great Demon centuries ago, saving humanity from earthly temptation.

When Gelya stumbles into a deadly cover-up by the Ovinists’ military, she reluctantly teams up with Tavik, an enemy soldier, to survive. Tavik believes that Elath is actually a mother goddess who must be set free, but while he succeeds in opening Her prison, he inadvertently turns Gelya into Elath’s unwilling human vessel.

Now the church that raised Gelya considers her a threat. In a race against the clock, she and Tavik must find a way to exorcise Elath’s presence from her body. But will this release stop the countdown to the end of the world, or will it be the cause of the earth’s destruction? And as Tavik and Gelya grow closer, another question lingers between them: What will become of Gelya?

A dark, epic fantasy about a girl who must reevaluate everything she believes after she is betrayed and hunted by the religion that raised her—from Megan Bannen, author of The Bird and the Blade. Perfect for fans of The Winner’s Curse and The Girl of Fire and Thorns.

Have you read this book? What did you think of it?

Review: Unleashed (Jinxed #2)

Title: Unleashed (Jinxed #2)
Author: Amy McCulloch
Genre: Middle Grade, Science Fiction
Publisher: Sourcebooks Young Readers
Source: Publisher via NetGalley
Format: Ebook
Release Date: January 5, 2021
Rating: ★★★★★

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Goodreads Synopsis:

The Golden Compass for the digital age in this action-packed sequel to Jinxed.

When Lacey Chu wakes up in a hospital room with no memory of how she got there, she knows something went really wrong. And with her cat baku, Jinx, missing in action and MONCHA, the company behind the invention of the robot pet, threatening her family, she isn’t sure who to turn to for answers.

When Lacey is expelled and her mom starts acting strangely after the latest update from MONCHA, Lacey and her friends work together to get to the bottom of it and discover a sinister plot at the heart of the corporation.

Lacey must use all her skills if she has a chance of stopping MONCHA from carrying out their plans. But can she take on the biggest tech company in North America armed with only a level 1 robot beetle and her friends at her side?

Review:

Lacey Chu wakes up in a hospital room with no memory of how she got there. Her baku, her personal digital pet, is missing. After Lacey is discharged from the hospital, her mother starts behaving strangely and doesn’t remember their previous conversations. Then, Lacey is expelled from her elite school. An update to everyone’s bakus, which are run by the company MONCHA, is reprogramming the way people think. Now no one can see the problems with this company taking over everything. Lacey and her friends have to take on MONCHA on their own to save everyone from being reprogrammed by this software update.

This story was very timely with the way that the young students had to stand up to make a change in the real world. Lacey is the one who figured out what was happening with their bakus and how to fix them. Her and her friends had the courage to stand up to a large corporation, and since they were underestimated by the leaders, they were more successful than the adults who went against the company.

Lacey is an inspiring character. She’s very smart and determined to do what’s right. She had to go through some tough challenges, such as when her dad left suddenly when she was a kid and when her mom started acting strangely after getting the update from the company. Lacey also had to be creative with figuring out how to get around the update that would remove her memory of what was going on. She was a fast thinker and strong character.

This is a great conclusion to the Jinxed series!

Thank you Sourcebooks Young Readers for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

What to read next:

The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel by Sheela Chari

Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee

Other books in the series:

Have you read Unleashed? What did you think of it?

‘Waiting on’ Wednesday – January 6

This is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine. In this post we highlight a book that’s highly anticipated.

The book that I’m waiting on this Wednesday is A Lady’s Formula for Love by Elizabeth Everett. The expected publication date is February 9, 2021.

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Goodreads Synopsis:

What is a Victorian lady’s formula for love? Mix one brilliant noblewoman and her enigmatic protection officer. Add in a measure of danger and attraction. Heat over the warmth of humor and friendship, and the result is more than simple chemistry—it’s elemental.

Lady Violet Hughes is keeping secrets. First, she founded a clandestine sanctuary for England’s most brilliant female scientists. Second, she is using her genius on a confidential mission for the Crown. But the biggest secret of all? Her feelings for protection officer Arthur Kneland.

Solitary and reserved, Arthur learned the hard way to put duty first. But the more time he spends in the company of Violet and the eccentric club members, the more his best intentions go up in flames. Literally.

When a shadowy threat infiltrates Violet’s laboratories, endangering her life and her work, scientist and bodyguard will find all their theories put to the test—and learn that the most important discoveries are those of the heart.

What books are you waiting on this week?