It seems the obvious answer is with a glass of wine and chilling on the couch watching TV (nothing wrong with that)! But I unwind by drinking some ice cold water and chilling on the couch with my current read. Shiiiit, if the day was bad enough, catch me sitting on the couch staring at the wall 😂
To unwind, I need silence. I need to escape into another world with my books or maybe even listening to an audiobook while I crochet. I just started crocheting this week and it helps you get out of your head! At least for me it does because I’m too busy cursing the loops I made too tight! Everyone has to find some way to unwind and I hope you found yours.
Hello followers, lately I’ve been in a reading slump (as we all have been there) and am giving an update on both my mental health and the More Than a Review book discussion with Wild Dark Shore. Well…it’s not happening…but Count My Lies book discussion is still a go! With how the world has been going lately, it has been hard to clear my mind enough to relax and read my multiple books, let alone one of them. I feel a lot of my readers can relate.
I’ve struggled with my anxiety and depression for as long as I can remember, and I hate that it always takes a toll on my hobbies. Why it gotta take away the one thing that makes us happy?! Fighting it is an everyday battle and I’m in a type of weird funk where I want to sit down and read but at the same time, I feel like I should be up and doing something so I can’t relax and it’s a bit of a dilemma…I catch myself just getting on TikTok and scrolling through Facebook instead of doing anything actually productive. I’ve compiled a list of things to do to help me through this situation and wanted to share it in case you find yourself also through this situation.
ONLY READ ONE BOOK AT A TIME. I know it’s hard but damn…you don’t need to overwhelm yourself with reading multiple books at once.
ALLOW YOURSELF TIME TO DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Stare at the wall and think about the meaning of life if you have to. Clear your brain!
STOP EATING SHIT. For the love of god…stop eating junk food and allowing your depression to tell you it doesn’t matter what you load in your face because it does!
CLEAN FIRST…READ SECOND. A hard one for me to follow at times and I know y’all can relate.
STOP BEATING YOURSELF UP. We all get in funks sometimes, so we don’t need to be mean to ourselves if we are taking time off from certain things.
DONT LOSE YOUR CREATIVITY. So difficult to follow while in a depression but don’t let this world take it away.
DONT FORGET TO CHECK ON OTHERS. Yes, there are times that people don’t check on you, but they could be going through a lot worse, and you’d have no way of knowing. Watch out for each other in this world.
GET MOVING. I’m going to aim for 30-45 minutes of activity a day before sitting on my butt with a book. Hey…listen to an audiobook while getting active!
Thank you so much for reading! Take care of yourselves!
So, was I expecting that? NO, I WAS NOT! I thought I was getting a regular mystery/thriller story but got surprised by elements of horror. Elements? I mean this full on became horror on top of the detective story. I got this copy from the library because I wasn’t for sure if I would like it or not, but this is a story that I might want a physical copy of!
Blood Like Mine follows a couple POV’s. One being a woman named Rebecca, who is on the run with her daughter who she calls “Moonflower.” The other being a detective named Marc Donner, who is on the search for a serial killer who has been active for 15 years. The connection between these POV’s was obvious to me but I didn’t expect the turn this story took.
I’m not big on detective stories but the mix of genres made it easier for me to read. I don’t know how to explain it, but modern-day detective characters bore me to tears! Older stories like Sherlock Holmes are just tolerable…I think this is the only reason I didn’t rate it higher. I just can’t stand the same detective tropes of them ignoring their family for their work and spending years on one killer or making that their excuse for ignoring everything else in their lives. Also, them always being alcoholics…. Just tired of the same stuff OVER AND OVER AGAIN. It was not the usual ending for Donner like other stories similar to it though. Different endings are just what the detective stories need to even catch a glimpse of my interest.
Adding the horror element was definitely the move to create a different and more exciting story. Of course, the first book I rent in a while is better than the last book I bought! LAWD help me. This book may be added to my shelf soon.
What a fun and very odd month of reading! I hope you got as many reads in or more than I did! Welcome to the beginning of April! Huge things coming your way soon with More Than a Review book discussions, writing blogs, and of course more reviews. Stay tuned!
Spoilers: I’m keeping it short, so I won’t give any spoilers because you all deserve to experience this all by yourselves!
WOMAN DOWN! WOMAN DOWN! We got a pimp in distress! My heart ACHES! Now that’s what I’m talking about, Suzanne Collins! Bring me back to the heart break and insane after book depression that was brought on as well after The Hunger Games series. Sunrise On the Reaping was all I wanted and more! I craved this writing with A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and was sorely disappointed, but Collins has made her comeback!
We follow Haymitch Abernathy at age 16, during his turn in the 50th Hunger Games and my emotions were not ready. When I talk about feeling like I want to know these characters and feel for them like in real life, this is what I’m talking ABOUT! Every single character was written so WELL! My heart actually broke for them which is hard for me these days because of how much I read and am introduced to SO MANY different characters. Remembering characters is usually a bust but the tributes of the 2nd Quarter Quell will not easily be forgotten.
That’s all you get from me because if you are reading this and are also a fan of The Hunger games series, you need to go into this not knowing too much and just off what you know about Haymitch from the original series. You will not be disappointed.
Thank you for reading and following! I would say happy reading but at this point, you better guard your heart with this one…
Hello, my fellow AWESOME readers! I wanted to let y’all know of a new monthly segment where I will be going into deep discussions about one or two books a month! Yes, I know I already post reviews, but these are MORE THAN JUST REVIEWS! READ THE TITLE! WE ARE GOING HAM ON THESE BOOKS AND COMPLETELY BREAKING THEM DOWN TO THE KNITTY GRITTY! WE ARE LOOKING AT THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY! THESE WILL NOT BE REVIEWS, THEY WILL BE HARDCORE BOOK CLUB ANALYZING AND I BETTER SEE SOME THOUGHTS ON MY THOUGHTS AND JUST YOUR THOUGHTS AS WELL! Got it????
I will be researching questions for each book to answer and yes, SPOILER ALERTS! I highly recommend that you read the book or books with me when I announce each month because I truly mean breaking them down to THE KNITTY GRITTY. Do you just want to see what I think and want all the details before going into a book even though it will spoil the ending? Well shit, go ahead and read the More Than a Review discussion anyway! It is whatever works for you, but I hope to hear your answers to some of the questions and your thoughts for any of it as well! We will be starting in April and there will be two book choices. Starting April 1st, we will be reading Count My Lies by Sophie Stava!
Count My Lies follows a woman named Sloane, who doesn’t seem to know how to keep the lies out of her MOUTH! With such an uninteresting life, she makes up as much as she can to find some enjoyment where she can. What Sloane needs to remember is that she’s not the only one who does lie and that her lies land her a job with some people that she may be up for a competition for the most lies in one life…oh man. I totally over simplified that because I love going into mystery/thrillers not knowing much so I wanted to give y’all the same treatment! The spoilers and details don’t come until the DISCUSSION FOR HEAVENS SAKE!
I will have to check but I am pretty sure this is a debut novel for this author, so I am excited to get started since I love supporting new authors! Stay tuned for the second book announcement!
Happy reading!
Gotta love the cat hair making its appearance in almost every book picture!
So that was something! Something as in some immaculate writing and great depictions of grief that I was not expecting. I listened to the audiobook (obviously by the photo) and let’s say listening to it got difficult at times because of how painful this story is, but what starts with sadness, quickly turns to horror (MY FAVORITE)!
In Suffer the Children, we follow a few POV’s in a world where every child that hasn’t hit puberty yet passes away. At first, there is absolutely no explanation, and the parents are reaching for answers. We follow a couple named Joan and Doug the most it seems, a single mother named Ramona, and a doctor named David and his wife, Nadine. We also get a couple surprise POV’s!
This story was not what I was expecting AT ALL! I refuse to spoil too much for you, but things are not what they seem! At first, with so many children passing, it was difficult listening to the book, but I am HAPPY I continued! What an insane turn of events and showing a depiction of how crazy the world would get in a situation like this was done very well. All our POV’s shared completely different ways of grieving and situation handling and I enjoyed every one of them. Mostly Ramona’s excessiveness…IYKYK.
I do feel like I would have enjoyed this story more if I read the physical book, just because I am picky about the narrators for audiobooks. The man who narrated it definitely wasn’t awful but very monotone at times where it was easy to zone out which WE DO NOT WANT! I CAN NOT MISS ANYTHING!!! He was cracking me up though with the voices for the kids and I think he should be responsible for most kid depictions on audiobooks. He did very well with it! Had my heart joyful and depressed for imaginary children.
Suffer the Children does live up to the title. There are trigger warnings for child loss, suicide, and animal abuse (nothing too crazy). Also, heavy alcohol use (Well yeah, what else do you do when your children die out of nowhere with no explanation?) if that is something you don’t want in your reading material. Thank you for stopping by and I hope you have a FANTASTIC day!
I would say happy reading but this one…was not so…happy…
Spoiler level: NOTHING BECAUSE WHAT COULD I SPOIL THAT WOULD ACTUALLY BE INTERESTING?!
Soooo, I got through it! Well, mostly. I already knew what happened the last one hundred pages so I DNF’d the HELL out of it! I first read this book when it was released in 2020 and couldn’t even get through the first one hundred pages so MASS improvement there. I still have to say…as a huge fan of The Hunger Games series, I was excited to get a villain origin story for Snow but was left so FRIKIN disappointed!
First things first, why was the writing so dull? Was I the only one that thought that? The Hunger Games series was well written to me but this…THIS Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes just drained my interest so quickly. I continued to read just to see if it got better but again…DISAPPOINTMENT! These characters…I couldn’t have cared less about them and their stories…I have not read a book with characters this dry for a while…even Lucy Gray couldn’t hold my interest. I really expected more from this origin story. I expected to feel the pain of the characters but the only one I felt for was a boy in the games named Reaper who had nothing to do with Snow at all! Again, couldn’t care less about the others.
We learn about Snow’s past and his hardships with losing his parents during the war, but why did the writing not really do his pain justice? I’m about to use the word again so get over it but it was all just so…dull. I expected more from this book because Suzanne Collins had blown me away before, but this story just wasn’t for me. The odds were not in my favor! I am hoping to be in love with Sunrise on the Reaping, which is coming out tomorrow, March 18th, and I am PUMPED for it! I will be MIA for all of tomorrow because I am ready for Haymitch’s story!
DNF close to 300 pages because yes, it was really starting to hurt…When it comes to DNF’s, there rarely is anything I have to say because I am LIVID that I wasted the time I did on a book that I felt nothing for! Oh, I felt a lot for the um, happenings between the characters in this book. Okay there’s SEX! And lots of it!
I got what I wanted from an erotic romance but damn, I’d like a good story or at least enough of a story to go along with it. In Does It Hurt?, we follow our main character, Sawyer, who is on the run from something horrific that happened in her past and has to steal from men just to get further and further away from home. Sawyer be committing full on identity theft by taking their names as well. She ends up meeting an absolute hottie that likes to swim with sharks and he gives her the NIGHT OF HER LIFE! Of course, just for her to survive, she has to steal his identity like past flings, in which he obviously does not appreciate because WHO WOULD?! Based on the rest of what I read, he takes his anger out on her in some..concerning ways.
Listen, I got the erotic scenes I wanted but it got to a point where it was nothing but SEX and I was like, “Where is my story?! Where is it?!” But hey, if you all are into these books just for the porn, then man, is this book for you! The characters are not my cup of tea but hell, some of those actions are! Sweet Jesus. I kind of hate that this is the first book I review since it was both not finished and not 100% enjoyed but hey, it’s going to happen. It’s going to happen ALL the time.
I repeat myself, you’ll get a kick out of this one if you’re looking for mostly erotica. I won’t judge if that’s you because a part of me knew exactly what I was getting into picking up a book by H.D. Carlton. Sometimes I’m just in that mood though and I know ya’ll get it!
The Aggressive Reader 