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One More October 1st Release to Get Excited About!

By Brookelorren on February 4, 2019February 4, 2019Leave a Comment

As if we didn’t already have enough to look forward to on October 1st, Veronica Roth is releasing a book that day too! The End and Other Beginnings is a book of short stories, which contains stories from the Carve the Mark Universe, “Inertia” (which was my favorite story from Summer Days and Summer Nights), and some other stories.

I thought we were going to have to wait until 2020 to read something else from her, but nope! I’m excited for this one too.

It’s already available for pre-order, although I just spent the remainder of my Amazon money on Rebel, so I have to wait a couple of days to buy this one. I’m so excited for this one though! I know what I’ll be doing October 1st and 2nd now (unless I happen to score a couple of ARCs on these).

Roth and Lu are my two auto-buy authors, so I’m really psyched!

We Can Stop Calling it Legend 4 Now…

By Brookelorren on February 4, 2019February 4, 20192 Comments

So, Saturday night while I was on my last break at work, I saw that there would be a major reveal from Marie Lu on Monday morning (that’s today). So this morning, first thing I did was look to Twitter to see what the reveal would be. I was thinking it would probably be the title, and I was right.

So here it is. We don’t have to call it Legend 4 anymore, we can now call it Rebel! She also revealed the publication date (October 1st, you can pre-order it now like I did) and a description of the novel:

Respect the Legend. Idolize the Prodigy. Celebrate the Champion. But never underestimate the Rebel.

Eden Wing is a brilliant student. He’s about to graduate a year early from Ross University of the Sciences, with honors, and already has an internship lined up back in the Republic. But most people don’t introduce Eden this way. Instead, they say, “This is Eden, Daniel Wing’s younger brother.”

Ten years ago, Eden’s brother Daniel was known as Day, the boy from the streets who led a revolution that saved the Republic of America. His name was spray-painted on walls, his profile splashed on both rebel pamphlets and wanted posters. He went from being a hunted criminal to a national hero in less than a year.

Day has spent the past decade piecing together his memory of his time in the Republic, pretending to enjoy life in Antarctica’s capital, Ross City , and quietly hiding out from the world—even if it’s meant giving up June, the great love of his life. As long as he can keep his little brother safe, that’s all that matters . . .

But Eden isn’t safe. As the two brothers struggle to accept who they’ve each become, they grow more distant from one another than they’ve ever been. Eden finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into Ross City’s dark side, until even his legendary brother can’t save him. At least not on his own.

When June suddenly steps back into Day’s life, rekindling the flames of their romance, the pair team up to do whatever it takes to rescue Eden. But like the rest of the world, they may have underestimated Eden—what he’s capable of, where his loyalties lie, and how hard he’s willing to fight for what he believes.

There’s a lot of wonderful books coming out this year, but I think I’m looking forward to this one the most.

Favorite Books of January

By Brookelorren on February 1, 2019January 26, 20198 Comments

It’s Friday, so guess what we’re doing today? We’re fangirling! Fangirling on Friday is hosted by Books in the Skye. Since it’s the first of the month, we’re going to talk about the best books I read last month.

Is The Queen of Nothing out yet? Because I’m definitely in need of an ARC of that book. Stat. The Wicked King was an amazing book. If you liked The Cruel Prince, you won’t be disappointed in it’s sequel.

Books that come out at the beginning of the year are sometimes at a disadvantage when it comes to my “Best Books I Read for the First Time in 20XX” list, because by the time the end of the year comes around, I sometimes forget how great the books I read at the beginning of the year were. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if The Wicked King ends up making my “best of” lists this year.

What is it that makes books set in historical France so good (and so popular) this winter? Spectacle was another great book that I read in January. Other books set in historical France you might be interested in are Enchantée and The Gilded Wolves.

Spectacle was one of those books that was hard to put down (but I had to, because I had to go to bed). Will it make my end of year list? Maybe. Again, this book is at a disadvantage because I read it in January, but whether it makes my end-of-year lists or not, I’m pretty sure it’s going to get a lot of mentions on Top Ten Tuesdays this year.

Well, that’s enough fangirling for now! Next week, we’re going to talk about favorite diverse reads. I might have to list several because some of my absolute favorites I already fangirl over all the time, So maybe I’ll fangirl over those AND some others just for there to be a little more variety.

January 2019 Monthly Wrap-Up

By Brookelorren on January 31, 2019January 31, 2019Leave a Comment

January is on its last legs, so it’s time for a wrap-up of the month to see what happened.

Books Read:

My reading this month absolutely rocked! I read ten novels and one short story. Some of these books were on the shorter side, so I guess that helped.

The Gilded Wolves – Roshani Chokshi
Empire of Stormes – Sarah J. Maas
The Wicked King – Holly Black
“The Midnight Heir” – Cassandra Clare (short story)
The Unbroken Hearts Club – Brooke Carter
Spectacle – Jodie Lynn Zdrock
The Light Between Worlds – Laura E. Weymouth
Twisted Roots – Shelly Goodman Wright
Pennies – Pepper Winters
Dollars – Pepper Winters
The Last Year of the War – Susan Meissner

Blog Stats:

I went over 1900 Twitter followers this month. 1500 was a milestone for me, and 2000 will be another one of those milestones I’m looking forward to.
Blog traffic seems to remain steady. I’m trying to visit more blogs, but it’s difficult when so many things are trying to get out attention.

Writing:

This is one area I’m super excited about. I finished the first draft of The Brightness of Shadow! I’ve been going through edits and the second draft is looking so much better. I’m not one of those writers that loathes their work in the early drafts, but there’s a lot I’m doing in this 2nd draft. I’m looking forward to getting feedback from beta readers and my critique partner… they get to see the 2nd draft, not the first.
I started Shadow’s Queen. I’m not officially working on it or anything, but if your characters are telling you to do something, you listen. I have about 2000 words on this one.
I’ve done some editing on Hero, but not too much. My efforts have been focused more on The Brightness of Shadow.
My boy and I have started doing the #AtticNotebook together. It’s something that Laini Taylor started where you get a prompt (or not) and you write for 15 minutes in a notebook. Once the notebook is done, you put it aside for at least a month before looking at it again. I’m amazed at how many ideas are coming to me. Some days I have more interesting things to write than others.

Life:

I had to go to court for October’s car accident. I guess in Colorado they try to contact the other party when there’s an accident, and they couldn’t contact them, so I get to go back to court in March. My dh and I are absolutely convinced that the other party was speeding (on a dark and snowy night) and when I go back I will be bringing up those points to hopefully mitigate the fine.
My dd is back in the hospital, maybe for a month or more. We’re praying she gets better. She had to drop out of school last semester, but when she gets out I think we’ll get her into a flexible online school that hopefully won’t cause too much anxiety. When you miss a lot of school it’s really hard!
I’ll be back to teaching Spanish next week, but I’ll take next year off. We’re going to Hawaii for two weeks in the middle of the school year and I don’t really want to deprive the kids of two weeks of teaching. It’ll give me more time to advance my writing too. My friend Shelly Wright (I read her book this month) is taking a semester off teaching writing this fall to work on her books too.

Clockwork Princess Made Me Ugly Cry

By Brookelorren on January 31, 2019January 4, 20196 Comments

I read Cassandra Clare’s Clockwork Princess a little over a week before Queen of Air and Darkness came out. When I originally pre-ordered QOAAD, I figured that it would take me forever to read all of the books in front of it, but as I just happened to obtain copies of the rest of the series a week before it came out, I had a Shadowhunter’s reading marathon. Clockwork Princess was the first book in that reading marathon, and I’m really glad that I didn’t finish it at work. I don’t know if I’ve ugly cried so much while reading a book — ever.

As this review is for the third book in The Infernal Devices, there are spoilers for the first two books in this series.

Tessa is now engaged to Jem… and now she knows that Will loves her too. Her heart is breaking because she loves them both, although she tells Will she doesn’t love him, and Will won’t mention his feelings for Tessa to Jem either. Jem is also dying. The supply of yin fen is drying up, and he cannot live without it. It’s a mess, and my heart was breaking for them, even though I googled the ending and knew what was going to happen.

Mortmain is still on the loose too. He still wants Tessa for some reason, and he’s not about to let a little setback stop him. Unfortunately, Mortmain kidnaps Tessa, and Will has to make the choice of whether to go rescue her, or stay with his dying parabatai.

If that wasn’t bad enough, members of the council are still plotting against Charlotte Branwell. Will they deem her competent enough to keep the Institute? Or will her career end up in disaster?

All these tangled plots make Clockwork Princess a masterpiece. Yes, I wanted to read these four very long books before the even longer Queen of Air and Darkness came out, but I could not put this one down. In this book, we finally find out the truth about Tessa’s heritage (which is complicated in itself). There are things that happen in this book that affect events in The Mortal Instruments series. If I hadn’t already decided to reread the series at some point, then I definitely wanted to reread the series after this. This book gave me writing goals: write in little inconspicuous lines in one book that are explained in a later series.

The last chapter and epilogue to Clockwork Princess made me ugly cry. Hard. Snotting up and everything. It was so beautiful. I warn you, don’t read it at work. This was one of the most beautiful but heartbreaking ends to a book ever. But it was the best possible resolution to this story that I could think of. And after reading this story, you’ll want to make sure you read Chain of Gold just as I will.

This was a gorgeous final book to an amazing series, and if you liked The Mortal Instruments, then I highly recommend you read this book.

The Ten Most Recent Additions to My TBR

By Brookelorren on January 29, 2019January 28, 201926 Comments

It’s Tuesday again, which means another edition of Top Ten Tuesday! Today’s Topic is “The Ten Most Recent Additions to my TBR”. I am writing this slightly in advance, so it might change a bit, but these are what was added to my TBR when I wrote this.

As always, Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl!

The Queen of Nothing – Holly Black

I stayed up to finish The Wicked King on the day that I got it. I didn’t want to put it down. While the ending wasn’t a huge cliffhanger (I mean, nobody got stabbed right before the end or anything), I certainly want to find out what happens next. ASAP. I’ll be looking for ARCs of this when it comes out.

The Tiger at Midnight – Swati Teerdhala

This description from the author: “I’m the author of THE TIGER AT MIDNIGHT, which is LEGEND x AN EMBER IN THE ASHES set in a fantastical ancient India.” completely got me. She must be a mind reader or something, because I fangirl over both those books. All the time. I need to read this book! Can I get an ARC? I’ll be stalking Netgalley for this one.

Once & Future – Amy Rose Capetta

A gender-bent King Arthur retelling set in the future? Sign me up. This was another book I found from Top Ten Tuesday bloggers.

Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages – Gaston Dorren

I’m a polyglot, so I’m always learning languages. If you learned twenty languages, you could speak to half of the population. This book sounded pretty interesting.

Sweet on You – Becky Wade

This is another Top Ten Tuesday book that I saw that looked good. Since it’s part of a trilogy, I guess I have to read the others first?

Song of the Abyss – Makiia Lucier

I still haven’t read Isle of Blood and Stone yet, but it’s in my TBR Jar. The second book is Song of the Abyss, which I added to my TBR because I was trying to win it. It looks good. Hopefully I’ll get to read it soon.

Blood Heir – Amélie Wen Zhao

I love how this story is Russian-inspired. I see it on Twitter all the time, and the author seems nice too. I’m looking forward to reading it! I requested an ARC on Netgalley; I hope I get approved.

The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead

I saw this book last summer and it looked interesting, but then I forgot about it. Another person’s Top Ten Tuesday post reminded me about it, so it ended up on my TBR.

The Land of Yesterday – K. A. Reynolds

The cover to this book is gorgeous! It looks like such a cute book. It’s a middle grade book that I plan to read and have my boy read too. My library doesn’t have it (gasp) but I ordered it through inter-library loan.

Ghosts of the Shadow Market – Cassandra Clare

I’ve pre-ordered this book already, so guess what I’ll be reading on June 4th? This book tells a bunch of short stories involving different shadowhunters throughout history, as seen from the eyes of Brother Zechariah (Jem Carstairs). Looking forward to reading it!

So there’s your Top Ten Tuesday for this week. Next week is supposed to be “Upcoming Releases I’m on the Fence About” but after writing it I realized I didn’t want to be so negative, so I changed it to a post on the books that have been on my TBR the longest.

What books did you recently add to your TBR? Are you inspired by other people’s TTTs like I am?

Spectacle was Spectacular!

By Brookelorren on January 28, 2019January 14, 20196 Comments

2019 is already turning out to be an amazing year for books. I recently read Spectacle by Jodie Lynn Zdrock. It was a wonderful book and I highly recommend it. I was fortunate enough to be provided with an Advanced Review Copy from Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Nathalie is a normal girl living in 19th century France. Or so she thinks. She recently got a summer job at Le Petit Journal writing the daily morgue report. In Paris back in these days evidently, unidentified bodies would be put on display at the public morgue for people to identify (and gawk at). Nathalie’s job is to visit the morgue every day and report on what she finds there.

Recently, there has been a murder. When Nathalie goes to the morgue to report on it, she touches the glass separating the body from the viewing public, and has a vision of what happened. She’s freaked out by this, of course. Evidently, she says something while she’s having the vision, but she doesn’t know what she says. She also ends up with memory loss after she has the vision. The book is written from third person limited perspective, so as a reader, we know what her lost memories are, even though she doesn’t.

As the summer progresses, there are more murders. Her ability to view the murders was not just a one time thing. She is torn by wanting to help, and accepting the accompanying memory loss, and wanting to avoid these visions. She’s also afraid that she might inadvertently attract the killer’s attention herself.

Nathalie eventually discovers where this ability came from, but I’ll leave that as something for you to discover when you read this book. Her ability is connected to the murders, which become more personal as the story progresses.

I didn’t want to put down this book, because I wanted to find out who the killer was and see him come to justice. I wanted Nathalie to find out more about her gift. While reading the book, I tweeted “If only I didn’t have to sleep! Spectacle by @jlzdrok is amazing! I’m 69% of the way through it and darn it… if I could get by on less sleep to finish it I would! You have to read it.” I think that’s a good recommendation for the book.

Spectacle won’t be released until February 12th, but you can pre-order it today.

Interesting Character Names

By Brookelorren on January 25, 2019January 20, 201912 Comments

Time for another edition of Fangirling on Friday, hosted by Books in the Skye. Today we’re supposed to talk about nicknames, but I can’t really think of good nicknames. So I’m just going to talk about some of my favorite names in general.

I’ve been doing a lot of fangirling over Dragonlance since this series started, but I just love the names in this series!

Laurana (Lauralanthalasa) – I loved the name so much that’s what I named my daughter!
Tanis (Tanthalas) – Again, awesome name. Named my boy that.
Raistlin – I love this name too. Too bad Raistlin turned out to be an evil character, or I would have probably given my boy this name.
Kitiara – That’s our cat’s name.

Free – Into the Hollow

I thought Free was a pretty cool name. I think it’s short for Freedom. So I guess that is a nickname and it fits into this week’s nickname theme.

Nathalie – Spectacle

This book comes out in February and I’m sure I’ll be fangirling about it plenty in the future. I think this was the first time I’ve ever seen this name, yet I actually ran into it another time this week. Weird.

Cyra – Carve the Mark

Cyra is such a cool name. I’ve mentioned this series quite a few times lately on my blog, since The Fates Divide was one of my favorite books from last year. I should really reread it sometime (I’ve only read the second book once so far). My daughter borrowed the first book in the series so I’ll have to find it first. Or I could read it in Spanish, which I have on my Kindle. I have so many other books I want to read first though.

So those are some of my favorite names in books. I’m sure I’m missing tons. What are your favorite names you’ve come across? Next week on Fangirling on Friday we’re going to talk about my favorite book from January. Maybe I’ll mention two, because there were two that really stood out.

Clockwork Prince was Great!

By Brookelorren on January 24, 2019January 3, 20192 Comments

Last year, I started reading all the main Shadowhunter’s books, by Cassandra Clare. After reading Clockwork Angel, I had to read Clockwork Prince. This was a lovely book that you won’t want to put down. It’s also heartbreaking, but in a good way. You’re definitely going to want to read the next book in the series, Clockwork Princess, right after this one.

Because this is the second book in a series, there may be spoilers for Clockwork Angel in this book. You have been warned.

I normally don’t care for prologues, but in the prologue to this book, you’ll discover something that you probably already suspect: Will is in love with Tessa. Why is he trying to push her away though? We find out in this book, but Tessa is growing close to Jem while this happens. This leads to one of the most heartbreaking situations that I could imagine (one of the reasons why you’ll want to have Clockwork Princess ready when you finish this book). Never fear, this whole situation will resolve itself in one of the best ways possible. Just not now.

While Tessa and Will and Jem are in the middle of their confusing situation, Clave members are trying to undermine Charlotte. Even though Charlotte and Henry run the London Institute together, everybody knows that Charlotte is the one that’s really running things. The Clave can be a little… old-fashioned. Benedict Lightwood is itching for her position. Meanwhile, Mortmain is still on the loose. If Charlotte doesn’t find him soon, she could be out of a job. Tessa might even have to leave the Institute.

The search for Mortmain is on, and in the process, we find out things that the characters would rather not know, as well as have a great battle. People will die. It all adds up to one amazing book.

Clockwork Prince is full of secrets, spies, and heartbreak. There is also more amazing worldbuilding. I had to find out what happened next. There were lines that seemed insignificant from the first book that were very important in this book. It makes me want to reread it (I will, at some point).

I highly recommend Clockwork Prince, The Infernal Devices in general, and the Shadowhunter’s Chronicles as a whole. I love them.

Books I Meant to Read in 2018 But Didn’t Get To

By Brookelorren on January 22, 2019January 21, 201942 Comments

Welcome to another edition of Top Ten Tuesday! It’s hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. Today’s topic is “Books I Meant to Read in 2018 But Didn’t Get To”. I have way more than 10, but I’ll keep it at that.

The last three Throne of Glass Books: Empire of Storms/Tower of Dawn/Kingdom of Ash. These books are super long and even though I wanted to read them, I just didn’t get around to it. I finished reading all of Cassandra Clare’s Shadowhunter’s books, and that was 12 really long books, and that was all I could handle last year. I’m reading these now. I have finished Empire of Storms now, but I still have the other two to get to.

I really wanted to read The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang. I got the Kindle version of the book when it was on sale; I even scheduled the review in my blog schedule. Alas, a slew of library books showed up and I have to read those first. So, I never read it. It’s in my TBR jar for this month, but it hasn’t been picked yet.

A Thousand Perfect Notes is another book I bought on sale and haven’t read yet. Along with the remainder of the Throne of Glass series, this is another book that was on my Fall 2018 TBR that didn’t get read. It’s now on my Winter 2018/19 TBR and it’s the next book I’m supposed to read from my TBR jar, so I should get to it soon?

I still haven’t read Starfish by Akemi Dawn Bowman yet. This is another book that I bought on sale and wanted to read (I think there’s a trend here) but didn’t.

I pre-ordered The Light Between Worlds because Laura E. Weymouth is such a nice lady, and I wanted to read her book. Plus, this book is supposed to be about Susan from Narnia. I was in the middle of reading something else on the day it was uploaded to my Kindle, and I didn’t read it last year. I just finished reading this book last week because it was in my TBR jar and got picked.

Rora has been on my TBR for so long, it’s not even in print anymore. I did buy the book last year though. It was even on my TBR Wipeout Challenge. Still, never got around to it. This is another book in my TBR jar.

Isle of Blood and Stone is another book that I bought on sale that I didn’t get around to reading last year (again, in the TBR jar).

I got And I Darken and Now I Rise on sale at Amazon.com too. This is kinda like a retelling of the real story of Dracula? It sounds really interesting. Every time I see this I want to read it. I guess when the time is right, I will.

Every time I see a VE Schwab book on Top Ten Tuesday, I think “I have to read her books!” Yet I own two of her books (both purchased on sale) and haven’t read either. This Savage Song is one of the two I need to read. I will read some of her books this year.

Yes, I bought Three Dark Crowns on sale too. Maybe I’ll read it in time for the fourth book to come out? And maybe the other two will go on sale before it does? I read one of he short stories last year and it was good.

You would think that maybe I should stop buying books on sale? But I actually do eventually read many of these, and I’d rather get it on sale for $2 or $3 than wait for it at the library, or pay full price for it. I can get five books on sale for the price of one at full price, plus I’m supporting more authors. It’s kind of nice to have all of these books on my Kindle… like having a bookstore at my fingertips. So I’ll keep getting these books when they’re on sale, I’m sure.

Next week, we’ll talk about the ten most recent additions to my Want-To-Read list. Let’s see if I do any better with those than I did reading these in 2018.