Top Ten Tuesday is featured by That Artsy Reader Girl. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.
Topic: Books Set In Or Around Forests
I know this is a swerve on the original topic but it’s been a long day and my mind couldn’t conjure up any and forests wouldn’t get out of my brain!
The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert The Drowned Woods by Emily Lloyd Jones Winterwood by Shea Ernshaw The Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson
The Thorns Remain by JJA Harwood The Luminaries by Susan Dennard For the Wolf by Hannah Whitten Happyhead by Josh Silver In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune
The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted by Caffeinated Reviewer It’s a chance to share news, a post to recap the past week on your blog and showcase books and things we have received.
I hope you had a great week!
Not much has happened this week, just really run of the mill! And maybe that’s good!
But it was my 10 year blogiversary so here’s to 10 more years!
I don’t want to say it out loud in case I jinx myself, but my reading is going really well this month, 6 books read so far and 3 of them were over 500 pages!
Gleam by Raven Kennedy (reread) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
🎧 The Half King by Melissa Landers ⭐️⭐️⭐️.75
Look out for my reviews soon!
Review – Gentleman and His Vowsmith by Rebecca Ide Calendar – 10 Years!
Review – The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig Challenge – 2025 JIAM Audiobook Challenge
Set in Regency England, The Gentleman and His Vowsmith by Rebecca Ide is a queer historical fantasy of magic, murder, high heat and humour.
Lord Nicholas Monterris, the last remaining heir of a crumbling ducal house, must marry to save his family from complete decline. His father chooses Lady Leaf Serral, eldest daughter of his greatest rival, at which point Nic is sure it can’t get any worse. Until he learns the head negotiator is to be Dashiell sa Vare, an old flame he has neither forgiven nor forgotten, a man their rigid class structure forbids him to love.
Locked in the mouldering grandeur of Monterris Court (a house more haunting manifestation of dynastic ambition and ancestral guilt than home), the first dead body is troubling. The second, a warning that someone doesn’t want the contract to go ahead. But while Nic and his wife-to-be team up to banter their way through a secret murder investigation, it’s Dashiell he can’t stop thinking about. What would be worse? To love and have to let go, or to wholly deny the yearning of one’s heart forever?
I do love a historical romance, there’s nothing better than the charm, their mannerisms and how they lived in the 1800’s (well the rich anyway!)
This one features a run-down estate, a young man being forced to wed to save his family, creepy goings on, and deaths…or it is murder?!
I won’t say anything about the plot because that will ruin it, but I will tell you that you’ll fall in love with Nick, Leaf and Dashiel!
Nick was so amusing (homosexual cutlery), Dashiel….was, well dashing and Lady Leaf was so inspiring! The magic and the magic system was so well crafted as well as their world, the writing = superb and the twists = jaw dropping!
Top Ten Tuesday is featured by That Artsy Reader Girl. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.
Topic: Ways in Which My Blogging Style Has Changed Over Time
So I thought I’d separate out into 10 sections about my blog, my posts, me and how it’s changed over the years!
1. My blog and age! I actually started my blog in 2015 but predominantly posted PR company material about cover reveals, releases etc for romance books until I moved that to my Facebook page as I wanted my website to be my ‘own voice’.
2. Genres As I said above, I only used to post about romance but then I branched out to my first love: pnr, fantasy, romantasy….and I haven’t stopped!
3. Favourite posts I used to really love making posts about next month’s releases that I want. I used to comb through Goodreads lists, Bookbirds lists and several romance blogs and marvel at all the books I wanted but now I just dont seem to have the time – I need to get back to that!
4. Favourite aspect of book blogging? The community. I love reading people’s comments on my posts and love reading other bloggers posts and commenting. I try and put aside an hour every evening to do this and it’s normally the most interesting, relaxing hour of my day!
5. The worst thing…… Facebook/TT/Booksta and the drama! The book community used to be a fab place to be but now, not so much!
6. Writing posts…..time and relaxation! What is time?! I try and write some bulk posts and schedule in just in case time runs away with me at work! I put my pjs on and tap away at posts!
7. Writing posts – prep I usually type posts up on my phone in notes (like I’m doing now!) and then I add to WordPress, add pics, look at spelling, fonts, colours and add anything I think the post needs. I find the WordPress app easier to use than the full site!
8. My favourite series I found because of blogging? Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas. I read years ago (and have reread) and am still obsessed!
9. Blog Success If I’m happy in my bubble, that counts as success to me!
10. Will I ever stop blogging? I have no idea! I guess if my love for reading ever goes away then my blog will too (even typing that made me sad!)
The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted by Caffeinated Reviewer It’s a chance to share news, a post to recap the past week on your blog and showcase books and things we have received.
I hope you had a great week!
Had 2 days off work this week as it was a Bank Holiday and had my normal non-working day – was bliss!
I also had a nerve conduction test at the hospital and they’ve said its not carpal tunnel but they think the reason I’ve got numb hands is something to do with the neck operation I had to remove a disc TEN YEARS AGO! I’m sceptical!!!
Has been a great reading week though!
🎧 Traumaland by Josh Silver ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Glint by Raven Kennedy (reread) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Look out for my reviews soon!
Review – Traumaland by Josh Silver Review – The Maid’s Secret by Nita Prose Feature – June releases
Review – Gentleman and His Vowsmith by Rebecca Ide Calendar – 10 Years!
Molly Gray’s life is about to change in ways she could never have imagined. As the esteemed Head Maid and recently promoted Special Events Manager of the Regency Grand Hotel, good things are just around the corner, including her marriage to her beloved fiancé, Juan Manuel, only two months away.
But Molly’s entire existence is upended when a film crew descends upon the hotel to shoot the hit reality TV show Hidden Treasures, starring popular art appraisers Brown and Beagle. On a whim, Molly brings in a shoebox containing a few of her gran’s old things for appraisal, and much to everyone’s surprise, one item turns out to be a rare and priceless treasure. Instantly, Molly is both a multi-millionaire and a media sensation—the world’s rags-to-riches darling—until the priceless piece vanishes from the hotel in the boldest, brashest antiquities heist in recent memory.
The key to the mystery lies in the past, in a long-forgotten diary written by Molly’s gran. For the first time ever, Molly learns about Gran’s true-to-life fairytale, a young girl to the manor born, the only child of a wealthy magnate. But when Gran falls head over heels in love with a young man her parents deem below her station, her life is thrown into turmoil. As fate would have it, the greatest love of Gran’s life is someone Molly knows quite well….
Together with her friends, Molly combs the past and the present to catch the thief before looming threats against her become real.
Back with Molly the Maid….and she’s had a shock!
And part of her shock leads us to Gran’s story. Then I was shocked!
I can’t believe I’m actually saying this but the younger Gran was VILE, I really disliked her! I can’t put the lovely lady, Flora, with this woman…..but this was Gran’s story and it led us to Molly.
I will literally read anything with Molly in it and this story was polished to perfection!
Seventeen-year-old Eli has been in a near-fatal car crash. As the anniversary looms, his therapist and family struggle to help him deal with the fall out. The accident has left him emotionally numb, with no memory of the months following the crash.
Desperate to feel something again, Eli winds up at an underground club called Traumaland. But this is no ordinary nightclub. Here he joins crowds of other emotionally numb people, all seeking to experience a new thrill by entering virtual reality simulations of nightmarish scenarios through the points of view of various characters.
When he enters the story of a boy called Jack, he discovers a darker truth to the club. A truth that sets Eli on a dangerous journey to find the source of his own trauma.
Oh wow, what a story!
This author has the knack of taking these seemingly broken characters and making them who they are and taking a story and making the twists so jaw dropping that I had to buy one of those chin lift mask things off TT to keep my mouth closed as I kept thinking about that ending for ages after (100% not for snoring!!!)
I don’t even know where to begin with proclaiming my love for EVERYTHING about this book. So I’m just going to say…..read it. READ IT and fall in love with Eli.
Fantastic, excellent, marvellous – and any adjective for superb! That is what this book is.
CJRTB Books 