Tag Archives: book club

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.

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.

Escape to Book Island books

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I recently participated in the Creating & Co Escape to Book Island Readathon. Here are some of the books I read during the week along with a short review on each.

I found that I actually read quite a few books this week, both more and less than I had hoped. The first book I started and read this week was Everything Nice by Ellen Shanman. This book fulfilled the Beach Read prompt challenge. I had previously read this book over 9 years ago, when I would randomly browse Borders and find books on my lunch break from my retail job at the time. I enjoyed the book and definitely thought it was worth keeping. While I enjoyed the book again this time, I don’t feel the need to keep it on my shelves forever. The short synopsis of this is that Michaela Edwards, a hot shot ad executive is rifted from her job and finds that her life is quickly spiraling down the tubes along with the fact that she has become untouchable in the advertising world. She ends up moving back in with her dad and getting a tip on a job tip from her dad’s girlfriend. While Michaela might not know anything about teaching, she does know a few things about staying safe on the streets of New York and how to make it on her own. The twists and turns of the story will have you hoping that everything turns out just as it should be and it will tug at your heart strings just a bit.

The second book I finished this week was Mera: Tidebreaker by Danielle Paige. This book fulfilled the prompts for matching the colors of the kit and an adventure book. This was the first comic book that I had read in a long time. Probably since two years ago, when I read two comic books in a row for the first Rest in Peace Readathon. I loved at how fast paced and easy to read comic books are. The quick synopsis on the book is that this is the prequel to Aquaman. Mera is teenager trying to prove herself to her father and goes to the surface to kill Arthur. It isn’t long before she falls for him and realizes that things might not be so bad after all. I would definitely recommend this book and any of the other books in the reimagined DC icon series.

Ahhh! This was the last and final book that I read this week. I will admit that I wasn’t able to finish the book during the readathon, but did manage to finish this right after. Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid is my first book of hers that I’ve read. I love that it is written in an autobiographical style making you believe that the band is real and that you are sometimes, so sucked into the world that you have a hard time believing that the band isn’t real. This was a majorly hyped book that has been featured nearly everywhere since its release date earlier in April. A quick synopsis of the book is that is an autobiographical fictional piece on a band called Daisy Jones & The Six focusing on the rise and fall of the band during the 1970s. It’s an extremely well written time period piece that draws you into the world of the 1970s.

I love that I’m back into reading again after having such a hard reading slump in the past couple of weeks. I hope to continue to keep reading since I’m also participating in Books_and_planners Finish a Series Readathon for the month of May and the next Creating & Co Readathon in June. It’s definitely going to be a busy summer reading and hopefully I will be able to get in a few more lifestyle post here for you.

Let me know what you have been reading lately and if you have ever participated in a readathon. Until next time.

The Wedding

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I’m back with yet another book review, but I thought that this one was incredibly fitting. I definitely owe you more diverse posts here and I definitely plan and bringing it in the near future, but that won’t be today’s post.

Today we are going to talk about Nicholas’ Sparks The Wedding which is the sequel to The Notebook. This was also the Paper & Glam read for the month of February if you are also participating in that book club. If you loved The Notebook movie you will not like this book as much because it gives you a definite ending to the movie, which was slightly different than the book. In this book, we catch up with Noah Calhoun several years after Allie has died, but he is still continuing to live at Creekside home. We interact with Noah far less than we do in The Notebook, but we still have interactions with him since his love story with Allie is the driving force behind what happens. In the sequel, we meet up with Winston and Jane, a couple who have had a rough couple of years being empty nester, which is only made worse when Winston forgets his wedding anniversary. His wife takes an extended vacation to see their son and makes it clear that she was extremely hurt by his lack of carelessness.

Winston spends the majority of the book in the year since trying to put together the ultimate surprise for his wife the following year in order to save their marriage. Since, the book is narrated by Winston it is difficult to know how Jane truly reacted to the changes the Winston made throughout the year and the surprise. I won’t give away the surprise, but if you have read any Nicholas Sparks book you can guess pretty good where this story is headed.

Even though, this was my second time reading this book I found myself still cheering for Winston and the little victories that he made in surprising his wife throughout the year. I thought that his trips down memory lane recalling his romance and love story with his wife were especially touching. I also loved the fact the when Winston talked to Noah about his plan and ask for advice Noah didn’t judge him and Winston also didn’t judge Noah for believing certain things and wanting them to be true.

I felt that Nicholas Sparks correctly portrayed the plight of the every man in the every day life. We all can’t be Noah Calhoun’s and have beautiful romances like Noah and Allie’s. Noah does admit that he and Allie did fight in the book and not everything he did for her was sweet and beautiful as people might think. I would definitely recommend this book if you are needing a bit of romance in your life and would need to live a bit more time in the world of Noah Calhoun and Allie.

How to get Sh*t Done

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I’m back once again with a book review, because as much as I would like to write other things and feel as if my life is more together at certain times of the day I just lose motivation and can’t. Hopefully with a day off coming up I will be able to get a bunch of things done and feel motivated to do other things. All of this is pretty fitting since this is a book review for Erin Falconer’s How to get Sh*t Done.

The quick rundown and why I read this book. I really enjoy self help books and I find them a little motivating, however this was a Paper & Glam book club pick for January that didn’t go over quite well.

While, I did take quite a bit of notes, but I didn’t find any new information out of the book that I had not heard before. Though the book was published in 2018, I found that the information was a bit dated and wasn’t as motiving as it could be. I know that the book was marketed as a woman CEO self help book for other women since most self help or productivity books are written by men.

If you have not read any major authors in productivity, which I plan on doing this year, so hopefully you’ll be able to read some of those reviews here this year. I would recommend that you read some of those. Otherwise, if this is your first productivity book this is a good starter book.

Let me know what you have been reading lately and what other books that you would recommend that I read? Thanks for reading along and hope to see you again soon.