eARC Review: The Lady Upstairs, by Halley Sutton

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Categories: Mystery, Noir, Psychological Thriller, F/F

Goodreads

I received an advance copy via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.

Jo has been working for the Lady Upstairs for three years , and is so close to paying her debt. She makes ends meet by finding the perfect girl to seduce a powerful, awful man and with her help, blackmail him for the things they do to the girls. Things start going wrong when one of the girls starts falling in love with her mark, and then things escalate and she finds herself dealing with a dead body.

Review: Ducks, Newburyport, by Lucy Ellmann

Rating: ★★★★☆

Categories: Literary Fiction

Goodreads

Ducks, Newburyport is told through the stream of consciousness of a housewife in Ohio. Her thoughts meander through her daily routine, baking pies, her four children, the current news, the state of the world and memories of her life. It’s a story that gets woven with every page, and as you are literally reading what goes through the mind of the main character for a thousand pages, it’s quite delightful that she’s funny and the book goes so seamlessly into more serious topics or random thoughts,.

It is incredibly difficult to rate this. At times, when it bore me a little, I wanted to give it 3 stars – then the next page I was in awe of this book, the intricate, rich inner life of our protagonist and the impressive writing style and want to give it 5 stars. In the end, I compromised with 4, although I have a feeling I will change it to 5 at some point.

The Sunday Snuggle: January Wrap Up, February TBR & more, W5/2020

Hello readers!

How is it February, oh my gosh, one entire month of 2020 is over and I’m still writing 2019 on the dates. My Ducks, Newburyport saga is done! I am quite glad to be able to pick up new books now, although I did like it very much!

My Favorite Brazilian Books Translated to English + 1 Written in English

Hello bookworms!

So, in case you don’t know, I’m Brazilian! I don’t talk much about Brazilian books here because they don’t get translated very often and I have little access to them in Germany, but I love reading in Portuguese – it’s a beautiful, beautiful language that I miss all the time. I thought it would be a nice and timely post to publish, some stories that don’t involve capitalizing on Latinx pain but rather tell stories about identity, love, adventure and so on. Who knows, you might even humanize us! (If you don’t get my joke, read this)

(Also, I don’t like Paulo Coelho’s writing, so please don’t ask me in the comments why I didn’t include his books here.)

Stubborn Archivist by Yara Rodrigues Fowler

This book is written originally in English, which means it’s probably the most accessible book from this list! It’s the story of a young woman, half-English, half-Brazilian, living in the UK and navigating her identity through her life. It was a very interesting experience to read this book as I was nodding along “Yes, it’s exactly like that!”. Really good representation, although I feel like readers with no context on Brazilian culture & history might feel a little lost.

My Review / Goodreads (EN)

F/F Books Recommendations

Hello readers!

I’ve been reading a lot more F/F lately, and thought I’d share with you my favorite books where the main character is Sapphic (so, lesbian, bisexual, pan etc) and the main romance (if there is any) is F/F. Not all these books are romances or have romance at all, and the genres are sort of everywhere. Since there is #FFFeb next week already, I thought it’d be timely to post this!

It’s Not Like It’s a Secret by Misa Sugiura / Goodreads

This is an adorable YA contemporary about two girls who fall in love, one with Japanese heritage and the other with Mexican heritage. This is lovely and made me try running!

Once Ghosted, Twice Shy by Alyssa Cole / Goodreads

This novella is from the Reluctant Royal series, which I absolutely adore. It’s a second chance romance with a strong but loyal main character who’s still in love with the sweet, beautiful girl who once ghosted her.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid / Goodreads

I think at this point most people in the book blogging community know of this book, the story of a glamorous, retired Hollywood star who has always been secretive about her life. Evelyn Hugo has many secrets, and she agrees to give a young journalist the book deal that will launch her career – but why her? Why now? This is a fantastic book.

The Sunday Snuggle: Weekly Wrap Up W4/2020

Hello readers!

This week I spent mostly reading Ducks, Newburyport which means I had no new reviews to post and had to post creative stuff instead and then I found 2 posts on my drafts that I started writing like a year ago. It was fun writing something different from my usual reviews + wrap up, and they fared really well!

Blog Post Ideas for Book Bloggers

Book Blogging: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

In a week it’s February and I have a TON of books to read that month, but I’m like, halfway through Ducks and I have no idea how I’m supposed to read all those other books, too. Thankfully it’s a leap year so I get an extra day? Yay? We’ll see how all the stuff I wanna read this month will actually go… I think I gotta write a post on that so I can keep track of the books I want to read.

Book Blogging: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

Hello readers!

Today I’m writing about something that has been on my mind a lot lately. Book blogging is a unique experience for each one, but there are some things about it that are quite universal, and I wanted to know what you think about it. I intend of keep blogging for as long as it’s feasible and enjoyable, but I have changed my approached to book blogging a few times, and I’m right now also in the process of trying to change my reading, my TBR and my posting schedule.

The Good

You discover SO MANY great books

I have no idea how many books I’ve only read the past few years because of blogging. My source of inspiration before used to be mostly lists that came out on Buzzfeed or Washington Post or that were Booker winners, but now I get to read many, many unique books I wouldn’t have found otherwise! It’s surely one of my favorite things about it. At some points I even ran out of books I wanted to read, which NOW is never an issue (quite the opposite).

ARCs

Being approved for an ARC is still one of the best feelings and it never gets old. It’s so great to receive a copy of a book you’re really excited about, and it saves a bit of money too, considering how many books a blogger reads per year.

Blog Post Ideas for Book Bloggers

Hello fellow book bloggers,

Blogging slump is no fun – we end up writing so many posts it’s hard to come up with new ideas sometimes. I get  stuck in “reviews + weekly wrap ups” a LOT and no other posts at all, and don’t always feel very creative. That is totally fine and you totally don’t have to create new content all the time, but it’s really fun to do so, and if you’re trying to get more traffic, it’s also an interesting way to get new readers.

So I gathered a list of ideas for bookish posts and I hope you guys find it useful! I sure had fun writing this list (and it took a lot of time).

1. Seasonal posts

This is a classic book blogging strategy. Every year I create a draft for some of the holidays or special days and compile lists of recommendations for, or some other bookish discussing around the holiday. For example:

January

• Releases of the new year you’re looking forward to
• New year resolutions, bookish or otherwise

February

• TBR/Recs for Black History Month
• TBR/Recs for Romance Week (Valentine’s day)

And so on! For more ideas, read my post ideas for bookish posts, month-by-month.

Examples: Winter & Christmas Book Recommendations, International Women’s Day: 10 Book Recommendations, 10 Book Recommendations for Fall

2. Anti-TBRs

What are the books you plan on NOT buying and why? Some I wrote: #1, #2, Hyped Books Released in 2019 That I Am Not Going to Read

3. If you have Instagram, show off your aesthetic

Or how your Instagram aesthetics has changed over time. Bookstagrams are so pretty and really nice to look through. You can also show the behind-the-camera and share tips and tricks for photographing books!

4. Write about books that are coming soon

Quite often through the year, there’s a cycle of new releases hitting the shelves, and it’s really fun to look through those and pick a few that catch your eye or that you heard of before. You can do that per week, per month, per season etc.

Examples: Happy New Year! + Books Published in 2018 I Look Forward To, Books coming out August/2017 I’m dying to read, Books Coming Out on 2019 I’m Looking Forward To, Upcoming 2020 Releases I’m Looking Forward To

5. Create a quiz

I am not very good at creating quizzes, but they are SO MUCH FUN. If you have a paid version of WordPress, there are some plugins you can use for creating better quizzes: WP Beginners – 9 Best Quiz Plugins for WordPress (2019). Some quizzes to answer if you want to get inspired: Fun Quizzes for Bookworms!

Some quizzes I created (on the free WP): How Similar Are Our Reading Tastes?, Which Overly Specific Typical YA Couple Are You Based on the YA Books You Pick?, What Kind of Book Blogger Are You?

The Sunday Snuggle: Weekly Wrap Up W3/2020

Hello readers!

This week I finished more books than expected due to a lighter work week! So after finishing 4 of the 5 ARCs I have for January by now, I decided to take the plunge and finally start Ducks, Newburyport. I’ve no idea how long this will take, but I’m hoping to be finished by the end of the month, since February I have LOTS to read and then March the WP Longlist comes out and will probably dominate my reading. I’ll alternate a little with some audiobooks, since I like having a bit of variety. ALSO I’m hoping Ducks will be part of the WP Longlist and then I’ll feel very smug about having read it by then! One can dream, at least.

This week I bought in audio:

January Releases eARC Reviews: Miss Austen & How Quickly She Disappears

Miss Austen by Gill Hornby

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Categories: Historical Fiction

Goodreads

I received an advance copy via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.

Miss Austen is the story of Cassandra Austen, who famously destroyed most of the letters exchanged with her sister Jane. I enjoyed the witty dialogues, so very like the way the books are written, and I think it’s where it shines. I was however bored with it rather soon, despite its attempts at making a (fictional) dramatic account of Cassandra’s love life, Jane’s depression and jealousy of other women. All the characters seem to be taken right out of Jane Austen’s novels (on purpose, I assume), all wit and clear heroines vs antagonists, which did not work well for this novel, in my opinion. I hoped for more well-rounded characters. I was engrossed by the story at times, but much too often I was simply bored. The predictability of the plot (which, considering it’s based on real events, can’t be avoided) was not helped by the writing, or the characters. If you’re craving some Austen in your life, I think you’ll enjoy this, especially how much you see of Cassandra in this. I itched to know more about their real lives. The novel, although witty and loosely based to real events from the Austen family’s lives, did not feel quite strong enough.