Bookish Yarn

Book Blitz: Between

Synopsis
Lana Hathaway wasn’t supposed to die. But when she suddenly finds herself face-to-face with a handsome guardian angel named Kade, Lana learns she has just drowned in her best friend’s swimming pool. Kade explains that because of her untimely death, Lana has become a Watcher like him—a soul stuck in limbo between Earth and Beyond. However, not wanting Lana to suffer his same fate, Kade breaks eternal rules and releases Lana back to Earth.

Soon, Lana and Kade discover that releasing her back to Earth had profound and unexpected consequences: now Lana is being hunted by those who dwell Below, including an enigmatic soul named Damien. With both their eternal destinies on the line, Lana and Kade must decide if Damien is an enemy or an ally as they race against time to save themselves . . . and if they fail, they will remain Between forever.

Author’s Bio
TJ Amberson hails from the Pacific Northwest, where she lives with her husband and nutty cocker spaniel. When she’s not writing, TJ might be found pretending to know how to garden, riding her bike, playing the piano, enjoying a hot chocolate, or scouring the Internet for cheap plane tickets. She adores all things cozy, seasonal, and holiday-themed; she cheers for happily-ever-afters; and she believes there’s no such thing as too much seasonal decor. With a love of multiple genres, TJ writes sweet romance and romantic comedies for adults and advanced teen readers, and clean fantasy adventures for teen and advanced tween readers.

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60191125-between
Purchase:Amazon: https://amzn.to/3r6rIyZ

Top Ten Tuesday: Character Names

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish and is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. The theme this week is books with character names in the title. This was a fun topic, although I definitely didn’t realize the number of books on my TBR that include a character name in the title.

Hetty Feather – Jacqueline Wilson (my review)
The Infinite Lives Of Maisie Day – Christopher Edge
The Surprising Days Of Isla Pembroke – Tamsin Keily

The Afterlife Of Holly Chase – Cynthia Hand
The First Fifteen Lives Of Harry August – Claire North
Get A Life, Chloe Brown – Talia Hibbert
Jessica Beam Is A Hot Mess – Kirsty Greenwood

Opal Plumstead – Jacqueline Wilson
Daisy Jones & The Six – Taylor Jenkins Reid
Peter Darling – Austin Chant

Have you read any of these books? Let me know your thoughts!

Book Blitz: The Liars Beneath

Synopsis
A romantically dark YA thriller set in the backdrop of Iowa’s suspenseful farmlands.

After a tragic accident ends her best friend’s life, 17-year-old Becca Thompson succumbs to grief the only way she knows how: by wallowing in it. She’s a fragment of the person she once was—far too broken to enjoy the summer before her senior year. But when Ben McCain, her best friend’s older brother, returns home, Becca must face her new reality head on.

She isn’t interested in Ben’s games, especially since he abandoned his sister during the months leading up to her death. But when he begs for her help in uncovering the truth about what really happened the night of his sister’s death, Becca finds herself agreeing, hoping to clear up rumors swirling in the wake of her best friend’s accident.

An unhinged ex-boyfriend, secret bucket lists, and garage parties in the place Becca calls home soon lead her to the answers she’s so desperate to unveil. But nobody is being honest, not even Ben. And the closer Becca gets to the truth—and to Ben—the more danger seems to surround her.

Clearing her best friend’s name was all she wanted to do, but Becca is quickly realizing that the truth she craves might be uglier than the lies her best friend kept.

Author’s Bio
Heather Van Fleet is a stay-at-home-mom turned book boyfriend connoisseur. She’s married to her high school sweetheart, a mom to three girls, and in her spare time you can find her with her head buried in her Kindle, guzzling down copious amounts of coffee.

Heather graduated from Black Hawk College in 2003 and currently writes Adult contemporary romance. She is published through Sourcebooks Casablanca with her Reckless Hearts series and Bookouture with her Red Dragon series.

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58094102-the-liars-beneath
Purchase:Amazon: https://amzn.to/3fTkQhX

Top Ten Tuesday: Contemporaries I Didn’t Get To In 2021

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish and is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. The theme this week is supposed to be new -to-me authors I discovered in 2021, but I decided instead to continue on from last weeks post (link) about 2021 releases I was excited for and didn’t actually read. Last week I made a list of the thrillers I had wanted to read but didn’t. This week it is the turn of the contemporary novels.

Second First Impressions – Sally Thorne
People We Meet On Vacation – Emily Henry
The Love Hypothesis – Ali Hazelwood

The Ex Talk – Rachel Lynn Solomon
One Last Stop – Casey McQuiston
Instructions For Dancing – Nicola Yoon
The Highland Fling – Meghan Quinn

The Road Trip – Beth O’Leary
The Layover – Lacie Waldon
Have We Met? – Camille Baker

Have you read any of these books? Let me know your thoughts!

Book Review: I Invited Her In

I Invited Her In – Adele Parks

‘I invited her in… and she took everything.’

When Mel hears from a long-lost friend in need of help, she doesn’t hesitate to invite her to stay. Mel and Abi were best friends back in the day, sharing the highs and lows of student life, until Mel’s unplanned pregnancy made her drop out of her studies.
Now, seventeen years later, Mel and Abi’s lives couldn’t be more different. Mel is happily married, having raised her son on her own before meeting her husband, Ben. Now they share gorgeous girls and have a chaotic but happy family home, with three children.
Abi, meanwhile, followed her lover to LA for a glamorous life of parties, celebrity and indulgence. Everything was perfect, until she discovered her partner had been cheating on her. Seventeen years wasted, and nothing to show for it. So what Abi needs now is a true friend to lean on, to share her grief over a glass of wine, and to have some time to heal. And what better place than Mel’s house, with her lovely kids, and supportive husband…

I didn’t fully know where to begin when I started to talk about this one. It has taken me several days to figure out what I want to say.

The premise sounded promising enough, and the first few chapters seemed like it would be a decent book. But after those first few chapters it just kind of went downhill from there. First off, it was a rather long and drawn out story, a lot of unnecessary (at least to me) details and descriptions about things I didn’t really care about. I started out really liking protagonist Mel, but by the time I got about halfway in I was over it. And Abi (the friend) had absolutely zero redeeming qualities.

It was an okay storyline with several unlikable characters. Truthfully, both Mel and Abi annoyed me so much, I stopped caring what was going to happen to them. From the tagline “I invited her in and she took everything” I was hoping for a fun or unexpected twist, but there was none of that. I guess I had just hoped for something … more, and it just never delivered anything but a boring plot and equally boring characters.

Abi and Mel were both pretty flat as characters go. There wasn’t much to like about them. Mel was incredibly devoted to her family at the start of the book, but it was a quick slide into domestic chaos with the arrival of a friend she hadn’t seen or spoken to in 17 years, and copious amounts of alcohol.

I listened to the audiobook at the same time as reading the paperback version, and I have to say that I did enjoy Joanne Froggatt’s narration of it. To be honest, that is probably what made me persevere until the end.

Have you read I Invited Her In? Let me know your thoughts!

Book Series I Started But Haven’t Finished (2021 Edition)

Series. There were quite a few I started in 2021 with full intentions of reading the full series. Naturally, that didn’t actually happen. There are just so many books that I want to read and not enough hours in the day. It doesn’t help that 2021 just seemingly flew by, I always feel like I’m going to have more time to get everything done.

Nevertheless, I am hoping to pick up some more books from the series I did already start. By when? I have no idea. I am not a person that is great with timelines or deadlines.

Every single book on this list is the first in the series of each one I started. I never did actually make it to book 2 in any of them, despite enjoying the books.

A Stoneybrook Mystery – Eryn Scott. I read A Crafty Crime, and planned to jump straight into book 2 the next month.

Click – Kayla Miller.

Diary Of A 6th Grade Ninja – Marcus Emerson. I started reading this series with my daughter, but it didn’t particularly hold her interest. I would still like to try the second book, just to see if she likes it a bit better.

Olga – Elise Gravel. I really enjoyed Olga And The Smelly Thing From Nowhere, as did my daughter.

Hetty Feather – Jacqueline Wilson. I did actually start the sequel, Sapphire Battersea, but we got busy with other things and had to set it aside.

Reporter Roland Bean Cozy Mystery – Rachel Woods.

Outlander – Diana Gabaldon. I’ll be honest, I didn’t love the book, but I would still like to read Dragonfly In Amber.

Hereafter – Tara Hudson.

The Jumbies – Tracey Baptiste.

Are there any series you started in 2021 that you need to finish? Let me know!

Top Ten Tuesday: Thrillers I Didn’t Get To

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish and is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. The theme this week is 2021 releases I was excited for, but didn’t get to read. Let me tell you, there were quite a lot, so in order to narrow this list down just a little, I decided to focus on the thrillers and mysteries I didn’t get chance to read last year.

The Hunting Wives – May Cobb
Local Woman Missing – Mary Kubica
The Night She Disappeared – Lisa Jewell

The Sanatorium – Sarah Pearse
Shiver – Allie Reynolds
Such A Quiet Place – Megan Miranda
The Couple At No.9 – Claire Douglas

The Burning Girls – C.J. Tudor
Survive The Night – Riley Sager
Rock Paper Scissors – Alice Feeney

Have you read any of these books? What did you think of them? Let me know!

5 Star Reads In 2021

Looking back at my 2021 books, I thought it might be fun to take a look at the books I rated 5 stars. I have to say, there weren’t many. Of the 110 books I read last year, only 7 earned a 5 star rating. Lots of 4 stars, but not a lot of the 5 stars. Maybe I’m just particularly stingy or difficult to please, I’m not sure, but anyways.

3 of the books that I rated 5 stars last year were historical fiction, while 4 were mystery/thrillers.

The House By The Sea – Louise Douglas.

Other Words For Home – Jasmine Warga

Dear Mrs. Bird – A.J. Pearce

The Edelweiss Sisters – Kate Hewitt

Whisper Cottage – Anne Wyn Clark

The Clockmaker’s Wife – Daisy Wood

Bring Me Back – B.A. Paris

Have you read any of these books? What did you think? Let me know!

Links:

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2021 Reading Wrap Up

This is one post I have been looking forward to writing all year long. I’ve always enjoyed reading, but 2021 was the first year that I really started to keep track of my books, and I’ve been excited to see my final reading statistics.

The quick numbers:

My longest book read in 2021 was Outlander by Diana Gabaldon.
My first DNF of 2021 was #No Filter by Maxine Morrey.
First book read in 2021 was Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline.
The first 5 star book I read in 2021 was The House By The Sea by Louise Douglas.
My least favourite book of 2021 (not including any DNFs) was The Woman In Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware.

What was your favourite book in 2021? What was your least favourite? Let me know!

Top Ten Tuesday: New To Me Books

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish and is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. The theme this week is the most recent additions to my book collection. This list is a combinaton of books I received as gifts for Christmas, a few I bought from the local second-hand bookstore, and a few I bought on Kindle/Audible.