Tag Archives: book club

Escape to Book Island books

Hey!
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.

The Notebook

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I’m back once again with yet another book review. At some point there will be more real life posts, but since I am sort of behind on my reading goal this year I thought that I would try and use the month of March to catch up. It also doesn’t hurt that the Creating & Co book club is also having a readathon month where we attempt to clear books of our book shelves.

I’m pretty sure that I hadn’t read The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks before though I will admit that I have read quite a bit of his books in the past. I do know that I have read the follow-up to this called The Wedding several years back. I’m glad that the Paper & Glam bookclub made both books their February read and that I got to read both in succession. After reading the book and then watching the movie, which is currently on Netflix. I think that I honestly like the book better.

In case you haven’t heard of this book or the movie, here’s a quick synopsis Noah Calhoun and Allie Nelson have a summer romance in the North Carolina town where Noah was raised. Then circumstances beyond their control tear them apart for several years until in 1945 Allie comes unexpectedly back into Noah’s life. Flash forward years later and Noah as an old man is reading their love story to Allie hoping for a miracle that she’ll remember since she has been living with early onset Alzheimer’s disease.

I loved the story to pieces, I think what really did it was the way that Noah never gave up on Allie even though her disease affected her memory in such a tremendous way. It takes great patience and perseverance to keep doing something so simple like reading and being with someone like that everyday. This is the love story that people hope for and this is a classic Nicholas Sparks book that has made him the romance author of this time.

Let me know if you have read The Notebook or watched the movie starring Rachel McAddams and Ryan Gosling. I hope to see you soon.

Tistheseasonathon

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I’m back again with yet more book reviews. If you haven’t been here in a bit because I haven’t posted and notice that the site looks different, that’s because it does! I’ll talk more about it in another post. Let’s get back to the real reason you are here. Recently several book tubers I follow including Heather from Bookables decided to host a readathon for the holiday season, called ‘Tistheseasonathon. I decided to participate mainly because who can resist reading holiday books around the holidays! I did manage to almost finish 4 books during the week and also did a vlog on my reading. So here’s a recap of all the books I read during the week

This was the first book I tackled this week mostly because it was short, I had also been wanting to read this book during the holidays ever since I read Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist earlier in the year. I found the back and forth between Dash & Lily charming and delightful though very YA romance. This book almost makes me want to visit New York during the holidays just to experience it like in this book. This may make my list of books to read during the holidays every year. 

The second book I finished during the week was the follow up book to Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares. I loved that there was a follow-up book that took place one year later and that explored more of the intricacies of relationships and family. I thought the how the authors played off the 12 days of Christmas theme was cute and added to the experience of the book. I should also add that I thought that it was so charming that all the books that I have read from this pair of authors have tied together in simple ways building a series that could be read together or simply as standalone books.

The third book I read this week was also the Paper & Glam book for December. Yay for knocking 2 birds out together. I am honestly surprised at how much people hate this book. I found the book cute and charming again for a holiday read. This is the book that the movie Christmas with the Kranks is based off of. If you have never experienced the mentality of a small town, you may not be able to relate to all the hijinks that happen in the book, but if you are then you will definitely be able to understand. I found myself in some ways relating to Luther Krank throughout the story and thinking about how I treat Christmas in my own way.

The last book I read during this week though I will admit that I didn’t finish it during the week was the group book for the Readathon. This is a recently published compilation of 4 short stories all around the holiday season. I would say Christmas, but one of the stories is about Hanukkah in a way. I liked several of the stories in the book and didn’t like some of the others. This made for a nice variety of authors and encouraged me to check out some new authors in the coming year.

I hope that you enjoyed this wrap of books that I read during the ‘Tistheseasonathon Readathon. I hope to do this readathon again next year with some even more amazing books to read. I hope to see you in another post real soon!