Review: Missing, Presumed Dead by Emma Berquist

Rating: ★★★★☆

Genres: Mystery, Young Adult, F/F Paranormal Romance

Goodreads

Lexi doesn’t like it when people touch her. No, that’s an understatement – Lexi flinches whenever someone touches her, because she can see how anyone will die if she has contact with their skin. She also sees ghosts, and can send them to wherever it is they should’ve gone when they died, but at great cost to her. She’s lonely and miserable, working at a night club to make ends meet where people like her are welcome. One night, she touches a woman who’s going to be murdered violently that night and when she meets her ghost, she knows she must do whatever it takes to avenge her.

Review: The Chain, by Adrian McKinty

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Genres: Thriller

Goodreads

The Chain tells the story of Rachel, who has been battling cancer for years, and now suffers the worst blow of all: her daughter has been kidnapped. But not by a regular criminal wanting ransom – she’s been kidnapped by a regular mom who is part of the Chain, and Rachel is now part of it, too. To have her daughter back, Rachel must pay up and do the unthinkable… kidnap a child.

I was initially not really going to pick up The Chain because the synopsis didn’t call to me, but after seeing so much hype around it (it’s even being turned into a movie) and also how excited my sister was to read it, I decided to pick it up on audio!

The Sunday Snuggle W43/2019: Weekly Wrap Up, How I did on #Tropeathon

Hello readers!

This week I participated in Tropeathon, and well, I failed. But I did very well (2 books finished for the readathon and 1 eARC, plus starting Jade War) and I’m content with the result! If I’d read any more than that, I would certainly not be able to do other things this week and that’s okay. Next week I have the October Wrap Up coming up and I don’t really know if I’ll be able to read all the books I’d intended for the month! I’m only done with 2 of the 5 books and honestly I have no idea how I’ll read 4 books until Thursday. Probably won’t be able to make it either *sigh*

Oh and I completed my challenge in Goodreads of reading 100 books!

I have read 100 of 100 books for the 2019 Reading Challenge! What should I read next? https://t.co/M2dV1aZW7f

— Naty's Bookshelf 👩‍💻📚 (@natysbookshelf) October 23, 2019

Next year I’m setting the challenge at a lower number, because I wanted this year to get lots of books off my TBR and be able to choose my next read more freely instead of always worrying about the new releases and eARCs I have. In terms of ARCs I’m actually happy with my progress, although I hope to make more before the year is out. But my TBR somehow does not shrink nor grows particularly, always somewhere between 180 and 220 books. Hopefully next year I’ll get it to 100.

Weekly Wrap Up

eARC Review: The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War #2), by R. F. Kuang

Rating: ★★★★☆

Genres: Fantasy

Goodreads

I received an eARC for this book from Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.

The Third Poppy War is over, but it does not feel like victory to Rin. She has become more and more dependent on opium, her senses dulled as she tries to control the Phoenix god and not lose her sanity to the horrors she saw and committed during the war. If she assassinates this one last target, the Pirate Empress Moag will lend her the ships and army to kill Daji – but it won’t be so simple. There are bigger players who want Rin by their side as a weapon. As the stakes become even higher than before, Rin must find out who she can trust and what she is willing to sacrifice.

Review: Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Genres: Fantasy

Goodreads

Neverwhere is the story of Richard, who leads a perfectly normal life in London with a perfectly normal job and is engaged to the beautiful Jessica – until the day he decides to save a strange girl named Door and his life is turned upside down. Suddenly no one else can see him. He no longer exists in the London he knows – in fact, the only people who see him now belong to the world of the strange girl he saved, in London Below.

Neverwhere was such an entertaining read, I was very impressed by the world building, how dark, vivid and enticing it was, and was so many times enchanted by the writing. I do love a witty, dark style, and Neil Gaiman surely did that. He managed to create villains so unapologetically caricatures of themselves that it just worked – their comical evilness was delightful to read!

eARC Review: Most Ardently, by Susan Mesler-Evans

Rating: ★★★★☆

Genres: F/F Romance, Contemporary Fiction, Retelling, Young Adult

Goodreads

I received an eARC of this book from Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Most Ardently is the story of Elisa Benitez, the second of five sisters, who starts taking classes at University, where she meets the insufferable, cold and condescending Darcy. She’s tall, beautiful and… fifthly rich. Elisa despises her, admires her and is determined that, no matter what, Darcy is the kind of girl she could never fall for.

This is a YA F/F retelling of Pride and Prejudice – what else did I really need to know to pick this up? I’ve read quite a few retellings of P&P, which is one of my favorite books of all times, and this one is among my favorites! It’s a light-hearted hate-to-love romcom, with a half-Black lesbian girl (Darcy) and a bisexual Latina (Elisa). This is a lovely read which also touched on sensitive topics like student loan debt, consent, statutory rape. But while these topics were treated seriously and are quite relevant to the story, it didn’t make the novel emotionally difficult to read.

The Sunday Snuggle W42/2019: Weekly Wrap Up, #Tropeathon

Hello readers!

This week has been quite eventful, so for the weekend I stayed home most of the time and relaxed. The weather has now gotten a bit colder, but it was sunny and lovely all day so I did end up running!

This next week I hope to have a little more free time and pick up more books from my TBR! I’m currently at 99 books read!

I bought on Audible:

And on my Kindle:

ALSO, this week starts Tropeathon, hosted by Chelle and Misty! I participated on round 1, so I’m excited to join for round 2, although I’m quite worried I won’t do so well this time, especially considering I still have to finish The Poppy War before picking up another book on Kindle. We will see! The prompts are:

And for that I chose:

Creepy Atmosphere, Second Chance, Night Time Reading, Missing Person & Halloween Colors: Missing, Presumed Dead, by Emma Berquist. This is SUCH a great fit for this Tropeathon! Because it’s about a girl who gets a second chance at justice to see her murderer go to jail, it’s all about ghosts and murder so definitely a creepy atmosphere. Jane is dead but I think nobody found her body yet, so she is “missing, presumed dead”. I will read it at night and, lastly, it’s got black and orange on the cover!

Initials in the Title: I actually am hoping that my copy of Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo arrives this week, so I could pick this up! If not, I will read Nevernight instead.

Fated Mates & Magically Inclined: Jade War by Fonda Lee. I will choose to interpret that fated mates includes people who are fated to meet, and if you read book one you know what I am talking about here. I’ve been wanting to read this for months, so it’s a perfect excuse!

As usual, I combined a bunch of prompts because I love combining challenges – I think it’s part of the challenge itself! Especially because I didn’t want to get books that weren’t in my TBR already – I initially didn’t want to buy any books for the challenge but Missing, Presumed Dead just fit SO WELL that I had to get it. This will be a great week for F/F reading!

Weekly Wrap Up

7 Books I Read and Loved Because of my Mom (It’s her birthday!!)

Hello readers (hello mom!),

Today is my mom’s birthday and I thought dedicating a post to her would be a nice and fitting thing to do – I took my reading habits from my parents, and read many books together with my mom and sister as a kid and teen. Even nowadays we still read similar books and recommend books to each other. I am 100% positive that I would not be half the reader I am today without my mom. She’s also one of my most assiduous readers in this blog, which is why I barely curse in here. 😀

Without further ado, here are books that I read because of my mom and loved!

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, by J. K. Rowling: I got as a gift from her this book when I was maybe 9 years old or a bit older?, and I devoured it, and then proceeded to inform her that there was, in fact, a book before that one and she had given me book 2. My mom then proceeded me to supply me faithfully with all the other books.

The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien: we read these books together when I was maybe 15. We’re big LOTR fans and have re-watched the movies lots and lots of times. My sister famously slept thought the big battle scene on The Two Towers one time. I loved drawing the Middle Earth map and, at some point, had it memorized.

The Iron King, by Maurice Druon: I still have a lot of books from this series to read, but my mom has been trying to get my dad and mw to read these for a while, and even my fiancé has joined in, and I have finally succumbed to social pressure. Which is great, because this is such a great read and I look forward to reading the next ones! Drama, politics, royalty… these books have it all.

Death on the Nile, by Agatha Christie: well, really any Agatha Christie book, but this one is my favorite. My mom must have dozens and dozens of her books and I am not even sure how many I’ve read. My sister and I used to take a few on vacation and exchange them after reading (so only taking half the books we’d need to otherwise) and trying to guess who the murderer was and more or less how. I particularly remember reading this one on vacation and guessing the murderer.

The Martian, by Andy Weir: my mom RAVES about this movie so much. I don’t particularly like Matt Damon, so instead of subjecting myself to it, I decided to pick up the book instead and ohmygod, this was HILARIOUS and so good. I want to re-read just talking about it!

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows: another movie my mom bullies me into watching and instead I picked up the book because I’m too lazy to watch a movie if it isn’t on Netflix. This was super charming, sweet and bookish and I love this book so much.

Artemis Fowl, by Eoin Colfer: I was 10 when this book came out and the main character was 10 so I was like !!!! and also this book is GOLDEN and beautiful and I was so hyped for it! Artemis Fowl book 1 has been an all-time favorite since then, although it’s been a few years now that I haven’t read it! There’s a kid genius, fairies, scheming and magic… what else does a person even need?!

There are probably a lot more that I am forgetting, but these ones stood out to me, plus the ones in Portuguese I don’t think you guys would know! I love every single one of these books. (I also think she gave me His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman, another of my all-time favorites, but I’m not 100% sure about that…)

Mom, happy birthday. Thank you for everything. Te amo ❤

I hereby formally invite you to write a post on the books I recommended to you and you loved (or hated), too! 🙂

 

Review: Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion, by Jia Tolentino

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Genres: Non-Fiction, Essays

Goodreads

Trick Mirror is a collection of essays by Jia Tolentino, a writer for The New Yorker, in which she discusses social media, gender violence, reality TV, self-optimization and more.

I did not know Jia Tolentino very well before reading her book, but I saw Sarah reading it and it sounded like such an interesting book that I decided to pick up the audio. The author herself narrates the book, and it’s pretty well done!

I found this book to be a mixed bag, with some essays very interesting and thought-provoking, but others felt more like a narration of news I already knew, without adding much more to them than adding them together. Jia Tolentino is a witty, matter-of-fact writer and her essays make for really good reads, even those I didn’t enjoy as much.

The Sunday Snuggle W41/2019: Weekly Wrap Up

Hello readers!

I think I am finally out of my reading slump – this week I managed to finish a bunch of book I had started weeks ago, so it looks like a very prolific week reading-wise but really it’s just the result of reading many books at the same time and finally finishing them.

The two audiobooks I read this week were just okay, although objectively good, neither really impressed me too much – maybe I’m still having audiobook hangover from Lock Every Door? It’s possible. It was just so good.

I received from Netgalley:

On Audible, I got:

Weekly Wrap Up