Review: The Widows of Malabar Hill, by Sujata Massey

Rating: ★★★★☆

Genres: Mystery, Historical Fiction

Goodreads / Amazon

The Widows of Malabar Hill is a mystery set in India, and our protagonist is Perveen Mistry, a lawyer in Bombay who works with her father as a solicitor. After coming back from Oxford, she is the first female solicitor, which puts her in a position to deal with some of her father’s clients – a group of widows who wish to leave all their inheritance from their late husband to a charity, leaving them in a very bad financial situation. When Perveen talks to them to make sure they understand what they’re giving up, many mysteries and tensions start showing.

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Review: Commonwealth by Ann Patchett

From the book’s

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Genres: Fiction, Drama

Goodreads / Skoob / Amazon

I saw this book being hyped all over Goodreads and also at the The Washington Post and New York Times, which got me really curious. I am quite into family drama stories, and this one follows the Keating and the Cousins families through five decades of the life of 4 adults and 6 children.

It all starts with the christening party of one of the children, Franny, Beverly and Fix Keating’s second child. Bert Cousins, trying to escape his pregnant wife and three small children at home on a Saturday, shows up at the party uninvited and with a bottle of gin as a gift. He and Beverly tipsily kiss during the party, and that changes everyone’s lives, settling in motion the dissolving of marriages and entangling of families, which will bring decades of resentment, frustration and unlikely bonds.

Books Coming Out on 2019 I’m Looking Forward To

I love reading these posts every season – it’s one of the best ways to find new books to read that one might not have heard of otherwise. Also, there’s overwhelmingly more YA than anything else because I follow basically only blogs of YA readers… although that’s not the genre I read most of (??). So I am sure I will add lots more General Fiction, Sci-Fi and so on as the year goes on!

So, without further ado, here are the books that come out this year that I want to read the most!

Middle Grade:

To be perfectly honest, I don’t read MG a lot, but I always have so many on my TBR. *shrugs* When I’m on the mood for MG, I like to know there’s great stuff to read, and Dragon Pearl looks like a fantastic one.

Young Adult & New Adult:

Goodreads Challenge! + Updates

Hello book lovers! How are you?

I’m on vacation for the next week and half still, and it’s been a bit crazy with travelling to see my family and keeping up with my reading and so on.  It’s so, so hot in Brazil right now, it’s impossible to be outside for too long before 17h. Really!

I’ve scheduled lots of posts the past few weeks and did lots of reading, as you guys saw, I’m trying to post more reviews of the books I read, not only the very best ones (as I normally do). I got so many books for Christmas and birthday and also I’m trying to curb my TBR so that I read only the stuff that really interests me and also get more spontaneous with my reading, so I’m using any time I can this vacation to get reading done!

Review: The Trial, by Franz Kafka

Rating: ★★★★☆

Genres: Classic, Dystopia, Literary

Goodreads / Amazon

This is one of the books that German students seem to get quite often for their High School language studies, and I am very sorry for all the teenagers being subject to this complex novel. I went into it without much knowledge of the plot, and in fact I do recommend you go that way into it! The next paragraph, as per my usual reviews, has a short description of the synopsis, but please feel free to skip it if you’d like to read the book in the dark. Also skip the last part of the review (helpfully called Spoilers) to not have too much of the story revealed 🙂

The Trial is the story of Josef K., a bank worker who one day wakes up to find out he is being arrested for a crime that he is sure he didn’t commit, and doesn’t know the nature of. He then tries to find ways in which to make his case and obtain an acquittal, but there is never any progress, and just a long, maddening, pointless process full of contradictions.

My Bookish New Year’s Resolutions

Hello bookworms!! Happy new year!!

This year my bookish resolutions are a bit different from last year, so I thought I would share with you guys!

1. I want to read less than I did in 2017. I want to read only what interests me, and not the books I feel I have to read for the hype, for blogging about it, for saying I’ve read it… I want to be 100% excited about every book I pick up!
2. For the reason above, I want to request fewer eARCs
3. I want to listen to more bookish podcasts!
4. I want to read a lot more nonfiction, especially memoirs
5. I want to get my TBR under 100 books, to encourage me to read more spontaneously, instead of feeling like I have to read certain books

The Best Books I Read in 2018

Hello readers!

This is the second year that I get to write a Best Books of the Year post, and I’m super excited! I love talking about books (wow, really?) and I got to read so much this year, so I have lots of new loves and lots of recommendations. This has been a brilliant year reading-wise and I am glad to share with you my favorites. I have read almost 200 books (no kidding) and while I will never repeat this feat again, it gave me the opportunity to read lots of different genres! What were your favorites this year? Tell me in the comments, leave the link to your own blog posts, tweets I want to know what you’ve read and loved! 🙂

New Favorite Authors

(only counts if I’ve read more than one book by the author)

Alyssa Cole certainly made a huge difference on how I see the romance genre. Her novels are so brilliant, so addictive and emotional without being cheesy. Gosh, I love them. I need all her books in my life. A Duke by Default is my favorite so far!

I had not read Patrick Ness until this year, but wow, I’m in love with how emotional his books are. I have lots more of his books on my TBR. I was so heartbroken after A Monster Calls, although it was such a short read. Just wow.

But I do think the medal goes to… Elise Kova. I devoured her Alchemists of Loom series and I am so excited to get to her other series. I think Air Awakens is a bit more popular in the YA bookish community, and I look forward to reading it. Although I don’t see how it could be better than this steampunk fantasy world with girls with big guns and deadly half-naked hot guys who are secretly soft in the inside. Just sayin’.

Best Contemporary Fiction

Review: The Book of M, by Peng Shepherd

Rating: ★★★★☆

Genres: Dystopia, Fantasy

Goodreads / Amazon

The Book of M is one of the most talked about books of this year! And still, I was not prepared for it – it was so much more than I expected! It’s a wonderful fantasy world with well-rounded, interesting characters and a thoughtful work about memories and love. Damn, this was such a good book.

The story begins with one boy in India finding out one day that he’s lost his shadow. At first this is seen with much interest from the public, until it becomes apparent that the boy is starting to forget things: at first a few words, and within a few days, his family. When more and more people throughout the world start losing their shadows, the epidemic of memory loss and despair drives the world into apocalypse.

Review: Nine Perfect Strangers, by Liane Moriarty

Rating: ★★★★★

Genres: Contemporary fiction

Goodreads / Amazon

I had absolutely no idea what this book was about, but once I saw it in the bookstore, I knew I had to have it. I am a fan of Liane Moriarty’s books and this one was a pleasant surprise!

Normally, I’m not too keen of books with several POVs, several main characters and several ARCs, but sometimes it just works, and this is one of those times. This flew by and I read it in two sittings!

Nine Perfect Strangers tells the story of nine people who book ten days at a health resort that promises to change their lives. Some are there for stress relief, others for weight loss, and others aren’t so forthcoming with their reasons (even for themselves). But there is more to this health resort than any of them expected, and something is not quite right with the owner. She couldn’t possibly be dangerous… could she?

Best Books to Come Out in 2018

Hello readers!

I have a post of best books I read this year coming out, but I thought it would also be interesting to list which of the books that were published this year, regardless of when I read them, were the best ones in my opinion. Since I read a lot of eARCs, I thought this would be a list a bit different from the other one and still interesting to read!

Not necessarily all books I put here will be on my “Best Of” post. For example, for the Wintersong duology, I loved both books, but I don’t want to be repetitive, so I added only the first book to that post. I also created this post separately in order to have a master list of books published this year which I liked very much, so I will keep updating this as I read more.

  

Books I think are probably fantastic that came out in 2018 but I haven’t read yet: