Random Musings of a Bibliophile

I take the 2nd Friday of every month to highlight some upcoming releases I am looking forward to that I hope are Future Favorites. Feel free to do your own post, just please link back to my blog and tell me about your post in the comments. How I feel about "Beauty and the Beast" has been long established on this blog. At this point, it should also be pretty clear I'm quite the fan of Sandhya Menon. And now those two things are coming together. In one book. Will the princess save the beast? For Princess Jaya Rao, nothing is more important than family. When the loathsome Emerson clan steps up their centuries-old feud to target Jaya’s little sister, nothing will keep Jaya from exacting her revenge. Then Jaya finds out she’ll be attending the same elite boarding school as Grey Emerson, and it feels like the opportunity of a lifetime. She knows what she must do: Make Grey fall in love with her and break his heart. But much to Jaya’s annoyance, Grey’s brooding d...

Here are some shorter musings on recent YA Fantasy Reads. A Curse so Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer At nearly 500 pages, this book seems long, but I actually found it to be a quick, engaging read. Brigid Kemmerer certainly has a way with words and is a gifted writer. This is the first book of hers I have read, and I will definitely be reading more. As far as "Beauty and the Beast" retellings go, this one is fairly well done. Rhen has the factor the male lead in this story needs-the realization that he is undeserving of saving. I love that he rallied not for himself but his people. As far as staunch allies go, you can't get better than Grey. He is such a wonderful foil to both Rhen and Harper. (He is my favorite. I'm reading the sequel just because he's the main character.) My main issue with the book is Harper, who I never really saw as a fully realized character. Harper has Cerebral Palsy. She has a limp due to it. This causes her to have to explain it to...

Who can believe we are halfway through 2019 already??? It's certainly hard for me. (Also, where did my summer go?) Anyways...here are my favorite reads of the year this year so far. I'm featuring my 10 Favorites overall and then 5 from each age category I read. It will be interesting to see which of these will make it all the way to the December 31 list! Top 10 So Far:  Top 5 MG: Top 5 YA: Top 5 Adult: What are some favorite reads of your year so far?

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly themed blog hop created by  The Broke and the Bookish  and now hosted at  That Artsy Reader Girl . This Week's Topic: Books I Meant to Read in 2018 But Didn't Get To Hahaha! There are SO MANY due to 2018 being known as the Year of the Reading Fail in my life. But here are the ten I'm most eager to get to now. (I've already knocked some others off the list in the past few weeks.) What about you? What did you miss out on last year that you can't wait to read this year?

Here are some shorter musings on some recent YA reads.   Bright Smoke, Cold Fire by Rosamund Hodge There are some aspects of this one that I really loved-the politics, the world-building, Paris. I also rather liked the fraught relationships between the four main characters and how those developed. Other than Paris, I wasn't really enamored of the other three main characters though, and found myself wanting to smack them more than hope for good things for their lives. As this is a reworking of Romeo and Juliet with necromancy, there is a lot of angst and misunderstanding. I was prepared for that. I was not prepared for this 400 plus page book to only be the first half of the story. There's going to be a sequel. And I don't think Romeo and Juliet needs to be extended to 800 pages of angst and misunderstanding. And even Paris let me down in the ability to make good decisions department in the end so I'm more than a little annoyed with all of them. Also the end INFURIAT...

It is time for the Quarterly Review Round-Up where I talk about the best of the best, the one's I couldn't finish, and the adult novels I'm reading that I don't review here. The DNFs (links to my reasons why-if I shared them-on Goodreads): I'd Tell You I Love You But Then I'd Have to Kill You  by Ally Carter School of the Dead   by Avi Adult Books (links to reviews on Goodreads): The Catching Kind  by Catie Quinn (contemporary romance) The Courage of Eli Jackson  by Kelly Hunter (contemporary romance) The Engagement Game  by Jenny Holiday (contemporary romance) A Family for Christmas   by Noelle Adams (contemporary romance) Reunited with her Cowboy  by Genevieve Turner (contemporary romance) Round Midnight  by Emma Barry and Genevieve Turner (historical romance) You Had Me At Christmas by Various (contemporary Christmas romance anthology) The Best of the Best (the 4.5/5 star reads): The Evil Wizard Sm...