Finding new books to read

Posted in For the love of books by rebeccabook17

I posted last year about a variety of different book recommendation sites that can be used to find a good book to read next. Other than these sites though, a source that I use constantly for finding new books to read is Bookpage.com. This can be a great source of finding new books in all genres, and even for learning more about authors. I get the print edition of their regular newsletter from my local library (which can be viewed online), but they also have newsletters that you can sign up to receive periodically on certain genres, including a romance newsletter beginning in February, “Smitten.” Readers can also sign up to receive a daily newsletter featuring a different book every day. I think the good thing about the Book of the Day newsletter is that it features a great variety of books. I’ve seen everything from romance to non-fiction to cookbooks to biographies to fiction featured on there. This is a great way to read about books that might be out of your comfort zone and maybe expand your reading horizons. Other newsletters include a top 10 (top ten books of the month), a children’s newsletter, and a YA newsletter.

And if you like romance novels, another great source for new books I highly recommend the Heroes and Heartbreakers website and newsletter. This is a great site to find new romance novels to read. I especially like their “new release shopping list” that they put together. This listing shows different romance genres that have releases during the current month (shown by week). I have found a lot of new books through their newsletter. They also publish great articles and posts about different topics, including first looks at upcoming releases. Check out this article featuring a first look into Erin Knightley’s newest histroical romance release, The Earl I Adored.

So what about all of you? Where do you all find your next great read?

11Jan2015

Bookish Bingo reading challenge – January through March 2015

Posted in Bookish Bingo: Jan-March 2015, For the love of books, Reading Challenges by rebeccabook17

I have singed up to participate in the Bookish Bingo reading challenge! This challenge is hosted by the Great Imaginations blog and will run from January through the end of March (of 2015). I got the idea to join this reading challenge through Hit or Miss Books. This is such a creative idea, combining reading with a game! I am very excited to do this reading challenge, especially since it helps me to meet one of my goals for 2015 (one reading challenge per quarter)!

So here is the bingo card:

This is my first time attempting the Bookish Bingo (per review of the website that hosts it there seems to be quite a following for previous Bingo challenges!) and I am excited to see what kinds of different reads will help me get to a BINGO! The host site has some great recommendations for each of the categories if any of my readers are also interested in participating!

Happy reading everyone!

9Jan2015

Friday Finds (Jan. 9)

Posted in Book memes, For the love of books, Friday Finds by rebeccabook17

FRIDAY FINDS is hosted by shouldbereading and showcases the books you ‘found’ and added to your To Be Read (TBR) list. Whether you found them online, or in a bookstore, or in the library — wherever! (they aren’t necessarily books you purchased).

My finds this week include an upcoming YA release, a thriller, a memoir and of course a romance:

1. The Conspiracy of Us by Maggie Hall

First off I just love this cover. Second, I love the book description. It sounds awesome. Rich girl is the key to an ancient prophecy and people are trying to kill her so she can’t fulfill her destiny? Sounds great to me!

2. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

I saw this book in the January edition of the BookPage newsletter and it was described as being “the next Gone Girl.” And I loved the Gone Girl novel so I read further into the article about “The Girl on the Train” and it sounds fascinating to me. A drunk jobless woman rides a train everyday and makes up stories about the people she sees as the train zips by. It even mentioned in the interview with Hawkins that there has been a discussion with DreamWorks but no definite plans have been made yet.

3. It Was Me All Along: A Memoir by Andie Mitchell

This is another book that I saw in this month’s BookPage newsletter. This book about a woman’s lifelong struggle with weight and food. While I try not to consider myself fat, I can relate to seeking comfort in food. I have struggled a lot with my weight the past few years and I am really excited to read about this woman’s journey to being more healthy and learning to love every part of herself.

4. The Loving Daylights by Lynsay Sands

I just love Lynsay Sands vampire novels. And while this may be a reprint I was excited to find something by her in the contemporary romance genre.

So those are my finds this week! Please feel free to share your finds or leave a link to your own “Friday Finds” blog posting below! Happy Friday!

8Jan2015

2015 Book #2 – Darling Beast by Elizabeth Hoyt

Posted in Book reviews, Book series, Historical Romance, Maiden Lane series, Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2015 checklist, Reading Challenges by rebeccabook17

Title: Darling Beast
Author: Elizabeth Hoyt
Date finished: 1/7/15
Genre: Historical romance
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Publication Date: October 14, 2014
Pages in book: 321
Stand alone or series: Series – Maiden Lane #7

Blurb from the cover:

A MAN CONDEMNED . . .
Falsely accused of murder and mute from a near-fatal beating, Apollo Greaves, Viscount Kilbourne has escaped from Bedlam. With the Crown’s soldiers at his heels, he finds refuge in the ruins of a pleasure garden, toiling as a simple gardener. But when a vivacious young woman moves in, he’s quickly driven to distraction . . .
A DESPERATE WOMAN . . .
London’s premier actress, Lily Stump, is down on her luck when she’s forced to move into a scorched theatre with her maid and small son. But she and her tiny family aren’t the only inhabitants-a silent, hulking beast of a man also calls the charred ruins home. Yet when she catches him reading her plays, Lily realizes there’s more to this man than meets the eye.
OUT OF ASH, DESIRE FLARES
Though scorching passion draws them together, Apollo knows that Lily is keeping secrets. When his past catches up with him, he’s forced to make a choice: his love for Lily . . . or the explosive truth that will set him free.

My rating: 4.25 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: This book will be counting towards my goal for the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2015 checklist under the “book with antonyms in the title” check box (darling and beast). I have read the other books in the Maiden Lane series, though none are yet discussed on this blog (hopefully that will be fixed in the future). I think that this is an excellent series, though I have trouble keeping the previous characters straight sometimes. Luckily, Hoyt has included a series of family trees to demonstrate the connections in the novels of the series.
I very much enjoyed this novel, there were a good amount of interesting plot twists and I was interested in the story throughout the novel. One piece of this novel specifically that I found very interesting was that at one point Lily is writing a farce (play) that her brother intends to sell to pay off his debts. I couldn’t find the exact words again but she describes a farce as a bunch of a bunch of plot twists each happening one after the other so much so that the whole idea of the play feels exaggerated and improbably. At the point in the novel when many of the characters were gathered together at the house party, I couldn’t help but notice that the events were happening much as Lily described a farce to be. I just found that interesting.

The bottom line: I would definitely recommend this book both as part of the series and also based on the merits of the book itself.

Author website: http://www.elizabethhoyt.com/
Link to Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Darling-Beast-Maiden-Lane-Elizabeth/dp/1455586307/ref=tmm_mmp_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1420719107&sr=8-1

5Jan2015

2015 Book #1 – Undead and Unwary by MaryJanice Davidson

Posted in Book reviews, Book series, Fiction, Paranormal comedy, Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2015 checklist, Reading Challenges, Undead series (Betsy Taylor) by rebeccabook17

Title: Undead and Unwary
Author: MaryJanice Davidson
Genre: Fiction – Paranormal comedy (with a very small amount of romance)
Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group / Penguin Group
Publication Date: October 7, 2014
Pages in book: 303
Stand alone or series: Series – Undead/Betsy Taylor #13

Blurb from the cover: First: kill Satan. Second: reorganize Hell. Sounded simple enough back then, but for Betsy Taylor, managing “down below” isn’t as easy as she’d hoped – even if she is doing it with her sister, Laura, a bona-fide Antichrist. So yes, Betsy has been shirking her hellish responsibilities, but she’s been just so darn busy these days. And she’s not just yanking Laura’s chain. There’s a brand-new baby drama involving a pair of uncanny (okay, terrifying) toddler twins, an upcoming birthday party that has to be planned, and, are you ready for it? Betsy’s dad – once so very dead – has been spotted in downtown St. Paul.
It’s enough to send Betsy fleeing to Hell, if only for some quiet time with Laura. But while there, in addition to meeting old acquaintances, Betsy discovers that death can be just as complicated as life.
Now, despite all the chaos, Betsy’s friends rally around, helping her handle all this fire and brimstone jazz. As for Betsy’s sister and dad – they have their own surprises in store for the vampire queen. And jolt by jolt, Betsy will discover that there’s nothing as heartwarming as family. Yeah, like Hell.

My rating: 3.5 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: This book will be counting towards my goal for the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2015 checklist under the “book with nonhuman characters” check box. This book picks up a few weeks after where the last book in the series left off. I’ve been a fan of this series from the beginning, but to be honest this book was not my favorite in the series. There was just too much reviewing of previous books, and not just references but like in depth explanations of relevant things that had happened in previous books. There was even a whole chapter that was an excerpt from a previous book. And while this is probably ideal for people who are picking up this series for the first time with this book (though I don’t know why any sane person would start a series with the thirteenth book) it ends up being pretty dry and somewhat tedious for someone who has already read the whole series and knows all the background information. I also had an issue with Betsy’s big revelation concerning Laura at the end. It never really says how she figured it out, all of a sudden a light-bulb turns on and she realizes her sister sucks. I just feel like that isn’t very realistic. I went with it though. Other than those two things, I really did enjoy the book. Betsy finally takes responsibility for Hell in an interesting way, and there are a lot of interesting developments concerning Betsy’s asshat father, Jessica’s great but weird kids, and Betsy’s abilities as the vampire Queen.

The bottom line: I would still recommend the series overall (and obviously this book as a piece of the series) but I wouldn’t recommend this book as a standalone.

Author website: http://www.maryjanicedavidson.net/
Link to Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Undead-Unwary-Queen-Betsy/dp/0425263444/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1420461969&sr=8-1
Memorable quotes from the book:

2Jan2015

2014 Recap and 2015 Goals

Posted in For the love of books, Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2015 checklist, TBR Pile Reading Challenge (Roof Beam Reader) by rebeccabook17

Looking back on 2014, I feel I’ve accomplished and grown a lot in my book travels. I started out this year blog-less and having no idea how much I would love blogging and how much I would become involved in it. Blogging, and even specifically book blogging, is this whole other world that you can become immersed in. There is such an audience out there for book bloggers, it is just astounding. And while there are many things I’d like to improve about my blog in the coming year, I think that this past year has been very successful. I held my first reading challenge on my blog, and though I was the only one who participated, it was still very fun.

With regards to my 2014 reading goals, I accomplished many of them but not all. One of my goals had been to read Pride and Prejudice, it is one of my absolute favorite movies and I started it years ago and just never finished it. Unfortunately, I did not read it again this year so I will most likely be rolling that goal over to next year. I also had a goal to read at least 2 books that were made into movies that I like. I read one (Beautiful Creatures) but did not read a second. I actually ended up reading the whole series and it was very interesting. My goal for 2014 was to read sixty books and I far surpassed that during the year. I slowed down in my reading towards the end of the year due to having to work a lot of overtime and therefore not having a lot of extra time for reading but I read over 100 books for the year so I am still quite pleased with my accomplishment.

It’s very hard to decide what my favorite book of 2014 was. Fortunately, I was able to narrow it down to 4 favorites out of the 100+ I read this year. I loved Divorce Papers by Susan Rieger because it was very interesting and different. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn was a fan-favorite this year and became a fantastic movie. Glass Kitchen by Linda Lee Francis was beautiful and touching and magical. And finally, In Your Dreams by Kristan Higgins was just as wonderful as I expected it to be. Higgins never lets me down, I devour her books as soon as they’re released.

My 2015 goals will not include a specific number goal for the year. I don’t think I will be able to hit the 100 book mark again between having a house now and acquiring 3 pets at the end of 2014 and also dealing with my job, I’m lucky if I can find 20 minutes to read each day. Nor do I want to read books just to get the numbers in and to get up to my number goal. This year I want to focus more on expanding my horizons and reading different types of books that maybe I’ve never read before. I’m also creating goals this year that are more blog-related than reading-related. The following will be my goals for 2015:

1. Read at least 20 different types of the books on the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2015 checklist
2. Post at least 2 non-book review related posts per month
3. Participate in one book reading challenge (on an external site) per quarter
4. Post at least two posts per month concerning various book memes
5. Read at least 5 books from Amazon’s 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime
6. Participate in Roof Beam Reader’s 2015 TBR Pile Reading Challenge

My books for this reading challenge are all books that I currently have on my TBR shelf and that either I own or someone has loaned to me and I few thrown in that I will get from the library. My goals will be:
1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
2. Girls of a Tender Age by Mary-Ann Throne Smith
3. Lightning by Dean Koontz
4. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
5. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
6. Lethal by Sandra Brown
7. Running for Women by Kara Goucher
8. I Adored a Lord by Katharine Ashe
9. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
10. The Wonder of All Things by Jason Mott
11. The Cage by Meghan Shepherd
12. Cemetery Girl by David Bell

I am looking forward to what 2015 will bring! Happy Reading everyone!