Book Review | Gallant by V.E. Schwab 🥀

Title: Gallant

By: V.E. Schwab

Series: NO

Pages: 334

By: Greenwillow Books

Published: March 1st, 2022

Genre: Young Adult – Fantasy – Horror

Purchase Links: Book Depository | Amazon

Everything casts a shadow. Even the world we live in. And as with every shadow, there is a place where it must touch. A seam, where the shadow meets its source.

Olivia Prior has grown up in Merilance School for girls, and all she has of her past is her mother’s journal—which seems to unravel into madness. Then, a letter invites Olivia to come home—to Gallant. Yet when Olivia arrives, no one is expecting her. But Olivia is not about to leave the first place that feels like home, it doesn’t matter if her cousin Matthew is hostile or if she sees half-formed ghouls haunting the hallways.

Olivia knows that Gallant is hiding secrets, and she is determined to uncover them. When she crosses a ruined wall at just the right moment, Olivia finds herself in a place that is Gallant—but not. The manor is crumbling, the ghouls are solid, and a mysterious figure rules over all. Now Olivia sees what has unraveled generations of her family, and where her father may have come from.

Olivia has always wanted to belong somewhere, but will she take her place as a Prior, protecting our world against the Master of the House? Or will she take her place beside him? 

| Goodreads |

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Book Review | Lock Every Door by Riley Sager 🚪

Title: Lock Every Door

By: Riley Sager

Series: NO

Pages: 381

By: Dutton

Published: July 2nd, 2019

Genre: Adult – Mystery/Thriller – Horror

Purchase Links: Book Depository | Amazon

No visitors. No nights spent away from the apartment. No disturbing the other residents, all of whom are rich or famous or both. These are the only rules for Jules Larsen’s new job as an apartment sitter at the Bartholomew, one of Manhattan’s most high-profile and mysterious buildings. Recently heartbroken and just plain broke, Jules is taken in by the splendor of her surroundings and accepts the terms, ready to leave her past life behind.

As she gets to know the residents and staff of the Bartholomew, Jules finds herself drawn to fellow apartment sitter Ingrid, who comfortingly, disturbingly reminds her of the sister she lost eight years ago. When Ingrid confides that the Bartholomew is not what it seems and the dark history hidden beneath its gleaming facade is starting to frighten her, Jules brushes it off as a harmless ghost story—until the next day, when Ingrid disappears.

Searching for the truth about Ingrid’s disappearance, Jules digs deeper into the Bartholomew’s dark past and into the secrets kept within its walls. Her discovery that Ingrid is not the first apartment sitter to go missing at the Bartholomew pits Jules against the clock as she races to unmask a killer, expose the building’s hidden past, and escape the Bartholomew before her temporary status becomes permanent. 

| Goodreads |

Discussion Post: Focus on Reviews | How will I Structure my New Reviews? & Some Different Ways you Can Structure your Own! 📝

 📝 Hi, friends! How are you today? I hope you’re doing great and having a wonderful day full of the best reading.❤️ Today I’m very excited to bring you a new discussion post, or at least I think it feels like one, even though I originally only intended to chat with you about reviews, but I think something like this could work, so we can all share opinions and what we think about the topic of book reviews in general. 💻
As we all know, loves, I’m back from my break 🙌🏻, and I’m still trying to catch up, get organized with my posts as well as trying to get some reading done lol, so this has been a month of planning and trying new ways to organize my posts and everything in general here on the blog. So, because of this, I’ve been mostly thinking a lot about how I could bring you reviews from now on 🤔, and although at first, I thought it would be a good idea to bring you short series of reviews, I changed my mind on the way due to the fact that I love writing reviews and it’s not something I want to change too much. You know I love chatting with you so obviously I love to go into detail with my reviews and will continue to do so, but for this, I needed to come up with some sort of structure plan to make it more fun, dynamic, and easier to read. 🌟 
So basically, I think I’ve found a new way to create my reviews so that it’s not only easy for me to accommodate my thoughts but also easy for you to read them, and I’m excited to share this idea with you today. 🎉 
In addition to all of this, I also thought it might be interesting or even helpful for some people to have 3 other types of review organization or structure that might work for other people, so we’ll be exploring those ideas in today’s post, as well! 😊😊😊  
I hope you like it, I hope you’re as excited about it as I am, and I especially hope you find it useful in some way if you’re looking for new ways to write reviews for your blog. 🥰 So, without further ado, you know you can leave me all your thoughts in the comments, and LET’S GET STARTED! 📝

PS: I already have another discussion about reviews on the blog if you want to check it out: RIGHT HERE! where we discussed the impact book reviews have on the community and also chatted a bit about the way I used to write them. 💕 

Book Review | The Kiss of Deception (The Remnant Chronicles #1) by Mary E. Pearson 👑

Title: The Kiss of Deception

By: Mary E. Pearson

Series: The Remnant Chronicles #1

Pages: 492

By: Henry Holt

Published: July 8th, 2014

Genre: Young Adult – Fantasy – Romance

Purchase Links: Book Depository | Amazon

In a society steeped in tradition, Princess Lia’s life follows a preordained course. As First Daughter, she is expected to have the revered gift of sight—but she doesn’t—and she knows her parents are perpetrating a sham when they arrange her marriage to secure an alliance with a neighboring kingdom—to a prince she has never met.

On the morning of her wedding, Lia flees to a distant village. She settles into a new life, hopeful when two mysterious and handsome strangers arrive—and unaware that one is the jilted prince and the other an assassin sent to kill her. Deception abounds, and Lia finds herself on the brink of unlocking perilous secrets—even as she finds herself falling in love.

| Goodreads |

I’m Back! Let’s Catch Up: Blog/Life Plans & Readings 👏🏻

 👏🏻 Hi, my beautiful bookish family! ❤️ How have you been? I hope you’re doing great, from here I send you all my love and good energies for these moments 🌟, especially to all the innocent people who are being affected by the current war, my heart and my thoughts are with all of you, I really hope everything gets better soon, the world has already gone through too much already.  🙏🏻 
So guys… I’M BACK! I’m so happy and excited to resume my blog and bring back fun content, plus most of all I’ve missed you guys so much, the interactions I have with you were always a fun part of my days, plus I’ve missed all your beautiful blogs, which I’ll be checking out these days. 😊 

This post is mostly to reconnect and catch up, I want to tell you a little bit about my life, my plans in general, but obviously, I also want to put myself in order and share with you my ideas for the blog, the content I’ll be doing and also of course, my plans as a reader, plus some books I’ve read these months that I want to tell you about. 🥰 

So, if this is the first time you’re here, welcome! 🎉 I love having you and I hope you enjoy this new stage with me, and if you’ve been there since the beginning THANK YOU SO MUCH for that, from the bottom of my heart for the love, and support of all these wonderful years. 🥺 
Now yes, without further ado, let’s get started! (I’m trying not to talk too much, this is new lol) 👏🏻

Book Review | The Mirror Season by Anna-Marie McLemore 🍃

Title: The Mirror Season

By: Anna-Marie McLemore

Series: NO

Pages: 311

By: Feiwel & Friends

Published: March 16th, 2021

Genre: Young Adult – Contemporary – Magical Realism – Hard-Hitting

Buy it: Book Depository | Amazon

An unforgettable story of trauma and healing, told in achingly beautiful prose with great tenderness and care. –#1 New York Times-bestselling author Karen M. McManus

When two teens discover that they were both sexually assaulted at the same party, they develop a cautious friendship through her family’s possibly magical pastelería, his secret forest of otherworldly trees, and the swallows returning to their hometown, in Anna-Marie McLemore’s The Mirror Season…

Graciela Cristales’s whole world changes after she and a boy she barely knows are assaulted at the same party. She loses her gift for making enchanted pan dulce. Neighborhood trees vanish overnight, while mirrored glass appears, bringing reckless magic with it. And Ciela is haunted by what happened to her, and what happened to the boy whose name she never learned.

But when the boy, Lock, shows up at Ciela’s school, he has no memory of that night, and no clue that a single piece of mirrored glass is taking his life apart. Ciela decides to help him, which means hiding the truth about that night. Because Ciela knows who assaulted her, and him. And she knows that her survival, and his, depend on no one finding out what really happened.

| Goodreads |

Blog Tour | You’ll Be the Death of Me by Karen M. McManus 🔍

Title: You’ll Be the Death of Me

By: Karen M. McManus

Series: Maybe?

Pages: 336

By: Delacorte Press

Published: November 30th, 2021

Genre: Young Adult – Contemporary – Mystery/Thriller

Buy it: Book Depository | Amazon

Ivy, Mateo, and Cal used to be close. Now all they have in common is Carlton High and the beginning of a very bad day.

Type A Ivy lost a student council election to the class clown, and now she has to face the school, humiliated. Heartthrob Mateo is burned out–he’s been working two jobs since his family’s business failed. And outsider Cal just got stood up…. again.

So when Cal pulls into campus late for class and runs into Ivy and Mateo, it seems like the perfect opportunity to turn a bad day around. They’ll ditch and go into the city. Just the three of them, like old times. Except they’ve barely left the parking lot before they run out of things to say…

Until they spot another Carlton High student skipping school–and follow him to the scene of his own murder. In one chance move, their day turns from dull to deadly. And it’s about to get worse.

It turns out Ivy, Mateo, and Cal still have some things in common. They all have a connection to the dead kid. And they’re all hiding something.

Now they’re all wondering–could it be that their chance reconnection wasn’t by chance after all?

From the author of One of Us Is Lying comes a brand-new pulse-pounding thriller. It’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off with murder when three old friends relive an epic ditch day, and it goes horribly–and fatally–wrong.

| Goodreads |

ARC Review | With Dagger and Song (Curse of the Cyren Queen #2) by Helen Scheuerer 🗡

Title: With Dagger and Song

By: Helen Scheuerer

Series: Curse of the Cyren Queen #2

Pages: 378

By: Alchemy Books

Published: November 18th, 2021

Genre: Young Adult – High Fantasy

Buy it: Book Depository | Amazon

An empty crown. A perilous journey.
Will she answer when darkness calls?

Against all odds, Roh survived the harrowing Queen’s Tournament, but now something far deadlier awaits her: a formidable quest for the three magic birthstones of Saddoriel.

The gems have been scattered across the realms – and only when Roh retrieves them can she take her place as queen. But surrounded by hostile companions and tormented by the dangerous secret she carries, Roh begins to realise that the pursuit of power may prove more destructive than she ever imagined.

Nothing can prepare her for the nightmares that fester in the shadows of Akoris, a fanatical cyren territory, or the twisted games of its cunning leader…

Can Roh win the first birthstone without sacrificing everything she holds dear – and without losing herself?

Packed with heart-pounding action and layers of intrigue, With Dagger and Song is the second epic instalment in Helen Scheuerer’s Curse of the Cyren Queen quartet.

| Goodreads |

ARC Review | Tahira in Bloom by Farah Heron 🌸

Title: Tahira in Bloom

By: Farah Heron

Series: NO

Pages: 336

By: Skyscape

Published: November 1st, 2021

Genre: Young Adult – Romance – Contemporary

Buy it: Book Depository | Amazon

Life is full of surprises in a winning novel about a girl dreaming big during one unexpected small-town summer.

When seventeen-year-old aspiring designer Tahira Janmohammad’s coveted fashion internship falls through, her parents have a Plan B. Tahira will work in her aunt’s boutique in the small town of Bakewell, the flower capital of Ontario. It’s only for the summer, and she’ll get the experience she needs for her college application. Plus her best friend is coming along. It won’t be that bad.

But she just can’t deal with Rowan Johnston, the rude, totally obsessive garden-nerd next door with frayed cutoffs and terrible shoes. Not to mention his sharp jawline, smoldering eyes, and soft lips. So irritating. Rowan is also just the plant-boy Tahira needs to help win the Bakewell flower-arranging contest―an event that carries clout in New York City, of all places. And with designers, of all people. Connections that she needs!

No one is more surprised than Tahira to learn that floral design is almost as great as fashion design. And Rowan? Turns out he’s more than ironic shirts and soil under the fingernails. Tahira’s about to find out what she’s really made of―and made for. Because here in the middle of nowhere, Tahira is just beginning to bloom.

| Goodreads |

Book Review | Final Girls by Riley Sager 🌪

Title: Final Girls

By: Riley Sager

Series: NO

Pages: 352

By: Dutton

Genre: Adult – Mystery/Thriller

Published: July 11th, 2017

Buy it: Book Depository | Amazon

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Ten years ago, college student Quincy Carpenter went on vacation with five friends and came back alone, the only survivor of a horror movie–scale massacre. In an instant, she became a member of a club no one wants to belong to—a group of similar survivors known in the press as the Final Girls. Lisa, who lost nine sorority sisters to a college dropout’s knife; Sam, who went up against the Sack Man during her shift at the Nightlight Inn; and now Quincy, who ran bleeding through the woods to escape Pine Cottage and the man she refers to only as Him. The three girls are all attempting to put their nightmares behind them, and, with that, one another. Despite the media’s attempts, they never meet.
 
Now, Quincy is doing well—maybe even great, thanks to her Xanax prescription. She has a caring almost-fiancé, Jeff; a popular baking blog; a beautiful apartment; and a therapeutic presence in Coop, the police officer who saved her life all those years ago. Her memory won’t even allow her to recall the events of that night; the past is in the past.
 
That is, until Lisa, the first Final Girl, is found dead in her bathtub, wrists slit, and Sam, the second, appears on Quincy’s doorstep. Blowing through Quincy’s life like a whirlwind, Sam seems intent on making Quincy relive the past, with increasingly dire consequences, all of which makes Quincy question why Sam is really seeking her out. And when new details about Lisa’s death come to light, Quincy’s life becomes a race against time as she tries to unravel Sam’s truths from her lies, evade the police and hungry reporters, and, most crucially, remember what really happened at Pine Cottage, before what was started ten years ago is finished. 

| Goodreads |

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