Tag Archives: 2019

Daughter of a Pirate King

Hey!
I’m back with another book review. I would like to tell you that more original content is coming, but honestly I’m not really sure. In case, you haven’t figured it out yet, this post is going to be a book review on Daughter of a Pirate King by Tricia Levenseller. I had originally started this book for Creating & Co’s Journey to Atlantis Readathon that happened at the end of June, but I didn’t get a chance to finish it and I’m not one to quit on books most times after I start most times.The unfortunate thing about this book is that it’s part of a duology and at the time I am writing this post, have yet to read the sequel. I do plan on reading it though I haven’t gotten around to it yet.

In this book we meet Alosa daughter to Kalligan the pirate king. She volunteers to fetch her father part of a map that had belonged to Jeskor the Headbreaker. Alosa puts in motion a plan that means that she will be captured and upon finding the map return to her father. She doesn’t count on Jeskor’s two sons, Draxen and Ride having taken over the ship or that there is an additional spy on the ship from another crew that also wants the full map.

I love that Tricia Levenseller, put so many plot twists in here and even though the book started a bit slow at first the twists throughout the book make you want to keep turning pages. My copy of the book also had a Q&A with the author and in it she says that she modeled the series after Pirates of the Caribbean. I enjoyed reading the book and plan to continue the series very shortly and you will also get that book review here sometime in the future.

In regards to this book, I definitely recommend that you read it or at least make an attempt at reading it. If you do end up liking it remember to read RIden’s story on Tricia Levenseller’s website so that you can get a bit more insight into Riden and a bit of his backstory. Hope to see you soon!

To Kill a Kingdom

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I’m back with yet another book review. I wish I could say that for Creating & Co’s Journey to Atlantis Readathon I read a couple of books and actually caught up on my Goodreads goal, but I actually only finished one book for the entire week. I probably have a vlog up on my youtube channel documenting part of the readathon week and the following week, where I attempted to read more books.

Let’s get back to real reason you are here. To Kill a kingdom by Alexandra Christo is a Little Mermaid retelling. From the minute you start the book, you can tell that you are about to dive into something amazing. The story is told from the two perspectives of the main characters, Lira and Elian. Lira, is the daughter to the Sea Queen and is also known as the Prince’s Bane, since she has only taken hearts from Princes for her whole life. Elian is also a prince from a land kingdom, but loves the sea and is determined to make it safe for everyone by killing all the sirens including the Prince’s Bane and the Sea Queen.

When Elian’s best friend Cristian is killed by Lira, he becomes more determined than ever to destroy the Sea Queen and begins a hunt to find a mysterious key that would unite both the land and ocean world once and for all. Lira on the other hand was banished from the ocean for killing Cristian, a prince not on her birthday and was told by her mother that she would need to take Elian’s heart before her birthday. Determined to step out of her mother’s shadow and into her own, Lira begins her own quest to destroy the Sea Queen. Lira leads Elian to believe that she is just an ordinary human before he comes to find the truth.

If you enjoyed The Little Mermaid as a child or have enjoyed any off the other retellings that have come out in recent years this is the book for you. I hope to read more Alexandra Christo books in the future and can’t wait to read her next one!

As for the Journey to Atlantis Readathon, I’m sad that I only finished one book for the entire week, but I know that I am still working toward my reading goal for the year to read 52 books and I will get there. Let me know what you have been reading lately? And what would you recommend to read for a friend? Hope to see you soon in another post.

Mid year catch-up

Photo by Colton Duke on Unsplash

Hey!
Welcome back to the blog, I know that it has been a while since you have actually heard from me , but I thought that I would pop in and give you some thoughts, well actually as you can see from the title this is my official mid-year resolutions catch up posts. If you just found me welcome, if you have been here a while, thanks for sticking around.

Like so many people at the beginning of the year, I am full of hope, anticipation, and excitement for what the new year brings and yet sometimes after the first week it is hard to get my feet under me and really get going on those goals. Well, it is just about the middle of the year when this post is going up, so I’m going to update you on my goals for 2019, how I’ve been working on and how we are going to proceed going forward.

The first goal I had planned on is reading 52 books this year. Well, as of writing this I’m not quite halfway to my goal, but I’m hoping that with a little luck and some good motivation I will be able to catch up very soon and hopefully even be a little bit ahead.

The next goal I had was to get a bit more healthy. Well in January, Matt & I did sign up for Planet Fitness since that is the new hot gym in our town that is conveniently located near a mall. I was going pretty consistently until April when I got a second job but since then haven’t been to the gym since. It’s been saddening, but hopefully when my life and finances calm down a bit more I can get back to the gym and hopefully that will be sooner than later.

My last goal that I talked about on the blog was to get this space into better shape and while I have spruced up certain areas and done a few things here and there it most certainly isn’t where I want it to be and where I hope it to be to get better traction on the web. I am still hoping to do that, but I am slowly drowning in other projects at the moment that I can’t even keep up with that.

Privately some of my goals are going a bit better than I had hoped and others are not going so well. There’s still 6 months left in 2019 what are you hoping to accomplish before the end of the year. I know that I will definitely be working a bit harder toward my goals to see if I can get a bit more done before the new year’s rings in. Let me know if you set any goals at the beginning of the year and how you are doing on them?

Family Affair

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I’m back with yet another book review, I know that it has been a bit since you have heard from me on here, but if you follow me on instagram you will know that I am slowly working my way through the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series. I have a rather large post coming up featuring the rest of the series, but if you want to read about the first book you can do so here.

In January, I like so many others throughout the world went through a huge moment reading Marie Kondo’s book and watching her Netflix series. After going through my paper products the first time I was left with things that I couldn’t part with because of sentimental reason and yet wasn’t sure if I really wanted to keep. I decided that this year in addition to reading 52 books I would reread some of the books that I am on the fence about that have been on my shelf for years. This is the start of that series.

When Caprice Crane first came into the publishing world with her book Stupid and Contagious, I was hooked onto every word. I bought nearly every book from her which is about a book a year for a while. I even went deep diving on the internet and found out that she was also a screen writer for several tv shows. After a bit I finally slowed down, but still love her as a writer. I read Family Affair back in 2011 or so and found the book cute and charming in a quirky off beat way.

In the story, you meet Layla and Brett a couple that has been married for several years and has been together even longer. Both halves of the couple, while they are still in love with each other are finding nitpick problems that are driving the other crazy. The book is told from both Layla and Brett’s perspectives alternating and occasionally other people’s point of view. If you are into meet cute romance and some sweet family involvement this is the novel for you. Sadly though, while I loved the book as a whole and I still do love Caprice Crane as a writer I won’t be keeping this book in my collection long term though I would say if you can grab this book for a read at the library do so.

Crazy Rich Asians

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I’m back with yet another book reviews. I swear that my life for the summer has turned into a whirlwind of working and non-working moments. Honestly, though I will talk about that more in my mid-year catch up on how I’m doing with this year’s resolutions and goals. Today’s post is a book review on Crazy Rich Asians.

I heard about this movie months before the movie actually premiered because Hollywood had invited nearly every Asian social media influencer to see the movie firsthand at a very special premiere. Matt said that since he hadn’t heard a word about the movie beforehand he thought it was going to be a sleeper hit. Little did we know how big this movie was actually going to be!

I had wanted to read the book before I saw the movie, but that didn’t work out because on the way to Okinawa earlier this year the movie was one of the selections on the plane, so of course I had to watch it. I LOVED it and couldn’t wait to dive into the books. It also didn’t hurt that my best friend recommend these to me because she has re-read them several times since being introduced to them. That being said this also completes a prompt in the Rachel Dawson reading challenge! Yay, just a few more books to go before I can say that I officially finished a reading challenge this year.

Back to the book review though, Rachel Chu has been dating Nicholas Young for nearly 2 years and when he invites her to his best friend’s wedding in Singapore that summer, she isn’t sure what to expect aside from a fun filled summer with her boyfriend. Once she agrees to go on the trip, Nick slowly or not so slowly begins to introduce Rachel to his real life in Singapore, meaning that his family is very wealthy and he will one day be the heir to this fortune. Rachel soon becomes overwhelmed by all this pressure and judgement that come along with Nick’s family and it almost ends their relationship. In addition, to hearing the story of Rachel & Nick you also get to read about the story of Astrid Leong and he woes with money and how it is slowly destroying her marriage.

I loved this book and it was everything I had hoped it would be. I would love to continue the series, but this is yet another group of books that my library is holding hostage since there are so many people that want to read the series and not enough copies to go around. I will definitely be getting around to reading the rest of the books soon, so there’s something for you to look forward to. I may have even loved the book more that the movie, which seems like quite a normal thing in these parts of the book community.

Let me know what you have been reading lately and if you have read this book or this series? Have you seen the movie? Do you want to? I look forward to hearing all this and more in many more posts to come.