It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? a place to meet and share what you have been and are about to be reading over the week. It’s a great post to organize yourself. It’s an opportunity to visit, comment, and add to your groaning TBR pile! So welcome in everyone. This meme started on J Kaye’s blog and then was hosted by Sheila from Book Journey. Sheila then passed it on to Kathryn at The Book Date.
Jen Vincent, Teach Mentor Texts, and Kellee of Unleashing Readers decided to give It’s Monday! a kid-lit focus. If you read and review books in children’s literature – picture books, chapter books, middle-grade novels, young adult novels, or anything in those genres – join them.
Personal:
I know that I missed last week’s IMWAR, but I had a good excuse. I was sick from the 12th to the 19th. I don’t know what I had but it wasn’t Covid. It has gone through the family to various degrees, and it hit me the hardest. But I did have some interesting things happen in the last couple of weeks. Let me fill you all in:
- I went to the dentist for my six-month cleaning and came out with two things. He wants me to get braces (which I won’t do because I had them when I was a kid), and I need to replace a crown on my front tooth. Yay, fun (not).
- We took Yuki to the vet and were surprised by a few things. 1) She is younger than we thought. 2) She is negative for PanLeukemia and FIV. 3) She had roundworms and got her first dose of dewormer at the vet, with me being sent home to give her the second dose this Friday. 4) She has a cold in her eye that will not go away (which resulted in a vet appointment for this morning. She can barely open her left eye). Oh, and she also isn’t deaf or pure white. She is a very diluted calico. So diluted that we didn’t see her coloring. Being inside and being groomed regularly (by the other cats) has brought it out.
- Last week was free College Application Week for seniors. Miss B applied to about six colleges (Western Carolina, Elizabeth City State University, and Appalachian State University were among the colleges she applied to). She has a fairly good chance of getting into App State and Elizabeth State University. Western Carolina, though, is highly selective. She really wants into WC and App State.
- Mr. Z is involved in his high school’s Dungeons and Dragons after-school club. His birthday is coming up in a few weeks, so BK and I got him the Dungeon Masters book and the Monster book (can’t remember what it was called).
- Miss R has had a bumpy couple of weeks. She got into a fight (yes, a fight!!) with a boy at her bus stop. He pushed her first, and she walloped him back. They have made up now, but she was so upset when it happened. Then, yesterday, she found a grey tree frog (follow the link). It isn’t toxic to humans but is to cats and dogs. She had handled it a lot, so we made her take a hot shower and an allergy pill.
Reading:
- I am very behind with my reading right now. I was doing fine until I got sick and lost a week. I am three books behind where I want to be (ideally, I want to be ahead). I am hoping to catch up this week.
- I am also very behind with reviews because of being sick and having a week of appointments last week (I had appointments almost every day last week). I am four reviews behind where I want to be (adding in the book I am reading now makes it five).
- Because I am behind, I made the hard choice of discontinuing my reading challenges on The StoryGraph. But I did learn my lesson, don’t bite off more than you can chew with them. I plan on doing all three StoryGraph Challenges, PopSugar, The ABC challenge, and the monthly themes challenge next year.
What I am Reading Now:
Erin Hahn’s Friends Don’t Fall in Love is about long-time friends, taking chances, and finding out that, sometimes, your perfect person was right there in your corner all along.
Lorelai Jones had it all: a thriving country music career and a superstar fiancé. Then she played one teenie tiny protest song at a concert and ruined her entire future, including her impending celebrity marriage. But five years later, she refuses to be done with her dreams and calls up the one person who stuck by her, her dear friend and her former fiancé’s co-writer and bandmate, Craig.
Craig Boseman’s held a torch for Lorelai for years, but even he knows the backup bass player never gets the girl. Things are different now, though. Craig owns his own indie record label and his songwriting career is taking off. If he can confront his past and embrace his gifts, he might just be able to help Lorelai earn the comeback she deserves―and maybe win her heart in the process.
But when the two reunite to rebuild her career and finally scratch that itch that’s been building between them for years, Lorelai realizes a lot about what friends don’t do. For one, friends don’t have scratch-that-itch sex. They also don’t almost-kiss on street corners, publish secret erotic poetry about each other, have counter-top sex, write songs for each other, have no-strings motorcycle sex, or go on dates. And they sure as heck don’t fall in love… right?
Books I plan on reading later this week:
One hundred and fifty years ago the Fae race vanished. Along with their magic and creatures. With the fallen Fae lands the humans were soon to follow as corruption spread throughout the realm. Heir to the throne, Delilah Covington is forced to watch her people suffer under the sinful hands of her father, the king—while she herself suffers his cruel hand. Delilah has longed for change, her prayers going unanswered until she discovers salvation.
Fae are alive.
In desperation, Delilah flees her home and crosses the border, in hopes that the Fae will save her people.
Yet she isn’t the only one who needs help.
Caught in a web of lies and riddles Delilah’s only chance at hope is Knox, one of the irritating, yet frustratingly charming Fae kings. Together they’ll need to unravel the many mysteries to bring freedom to both their oppressed people, or damn them all.
August Silvershield is a dead man walking.
He and his group (Ashes) have dedicated their lives to opposing the Magicom tyranny and how they control, sell and distribute magic.
And Magicom are hell-bent on his capture.
Pink, August’s sister, is a recently qualified mage and practitioner of the four elements of magic. Strong-willed, talented and independent, she’s determined to make a name for herself at Wing (the institution that trains and assigns its mages to contracts throughout the Island of Blake) without her brother’s help.
But the siblings’ worlds inextricably collide when Pink’s first contract leads her and her Wing friends directly to Magicom and unimaginable danger.
Can Pink and August defend their friends and themselves while trying to eradicate everything Magicom stand for?
Or will the dangerous quest prove too much, given the blurred boundaries between their friends and enemies?
Find out in this fast-paced epic YA fantasy adventure novel where elemental magic changes everything.
