worldofbai

July Wrap up

At the beginning of this month I made a pretty big TBR hopeful list for myself that I really wanted to tackle. Did I complete my hopefuls or did I fall short? Lets find out!

The Honest Truth

These three books were my main hopefuls for this month! I got “The Maidens” and “One Last Stop” in my June Book of the Month box and was dying to read them! “Devil’s Knot” came in a true crime premium book box from One Night Stand With a Book and I have been dying to read it since!

I am going to be honest with you, I only read one of these hopefuls and that was “One Last Stop” by Casey McQuiston. I know I will get around to the other two books hopefully soon! I have read so many great reviews about “The Maidens” that I need to hop on that train soon!

What Did I Really Read

Did you really think I only finished one book this last month? I am a slow reader but come on, I’m not that slow!

I read a total of four books this month, one of which was a graphic novel. Have you read any of these books? Would you count a graphic novel towards your reading goals?

Five Star Ratings

“One Last Stop” by Casey McQuiston

I gave this book a five star rating because it truly deserved it!

The characters in this LGBTQ book were written so well and I could really find someway to relate to each and everyone of them. From true crime to psychics you can find some reason to love these characters.

I hope everyone will give this book a try.

Check out my full review here!

“Black Lantern” by Chris Bodily

This was my first ever graphic novel, I stumbled across this gem at an art festival in Utah! Turns out Chris is also from Utah and created this gorgeous piece of work!

The cat Julius is my absolute favorite! He is so cute and hilarious! I haven’t wrote an official review yet but you should give it a look!

Four Star Reads

“Where the Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens

I gave this a four star read because it didn’t fully live up to the hype but was still really good! It started off a little slow but the ending was so good!

This is a very talked about book and honestly I would be so surprised if you haven’t read this one yet, but if you haven’t here is your sign!

Check my full review out here!

Three Star Reads

“A Type of Hunger” by Pamela D. Beverly

I found this book just scrolling through blogs and read a comment about an author wishing for some more reviews, and so that’s what I did.

This book received three stars because it had many grammar errors that were very distracting and the story felt very rushed towards the end.

This was a self published book so the grammar errors make sense and are expected. Please support Indy Authors!

Read my full review here!

Overall

Last month went a lot better than I originally expected. I have lately only been reading two or three books each month so to get four books finished I am pretty happy with that! I am hoping I can keep this momentum up for August and read at least four books!

QOTD: How many books did you finish this month? Did you read all the books on you list or did you mood read?

Current Rep Positions

Hello friends and family!

I have been on a book journey for almost one year now! Wow, time flies!

I opened my blog about a month ago and since then I have had the chance to become an ambassador for a few small businesses! I would really love to share them with you!

If you would like to support me along this journey of mine I would love for you to check these small businesses out and buy something using my code down below or just saying I sent you!

This would mean the absolute world to me as it lets these small businesses know that I am serious about working with them!

1. One Night Stand With a Book

This is a business that will ship you out a blind date with a book along with tasty treats! You can also order a premium box which will come with all sorts of goodies along with your book and it’s all one big surprise!

They have many options and I’m sure one of them will suit your needs.

Use my code Baibooks20 to get 20% off your order!

One Night Stand With a Book

2. Two Sisters Custom Creations (By Amy)

Amy and I have been lifelong best friends and she makes these gorgeous shirts and crafts! I will be posting more of what she has done for me in later posts. But if you have a custom t-shirt (or even like mine) maybe you have a tumbler or sign you’d like made, just tell her your idea and she will turn it into something stunning!!

Just ask for Amy and tell her I sent you ❤️

Two Sisters Custom Creations

3. Courtney’s Bookmarks

I met her on Bookstagram and she makes the cutest bookmarks around! These are just some of the options but you can see more on her page!

Just DM her and give her the code Baibooks20 for 20% of your purchase!

Courtney’s Site

Once again I am beyond excited to share these lovely businesses with you all and it would mean the world if you checked them out! When my code and name gets used with these companies it helps my site grow! It also can help me keep these positions so please check one of them out, I promise you won’t be disappointed.

(Book Review) “One Last Stop” By Casey McQuiston

One of the most talked about LGBTQ books I have seen lately is Casey McQuiston’s second book “One Last Stop”. After reading her first book, “Red, White and Royal Blue”, and absolutely loving it, I knew I had to pick this one up and see if all the hype lived up to the expectations.

“I don’t know how to have something that I do, every day, like as an adult who does a thing. It’s nuts that we all start out having these vague ideas of what we like to do, hobbies, interests, and then one day everybody has their thing, you know?”
Direct quote from book. Page 159

Summary

August moves to New York for school but mostly to escape her mothers obsession with finding Augusts missing uncle. With luck she finds a cheap apartment for rent with the most unlikely roommates, a decent job at a pancake diner and a perfect subway route on the Q train. But she could never have imagined this combination of things could change her life.

A coffee stain threatens embarrassment when she stumbles onto the Q train and a very attractive girl is standing there starring back at her. After a delightful conversation a friendship, but mostly a big crush, blooms.

As August goes about her daily routines the Q train takes her to each destination and Subway Girl happens to always be on the train with her. Life continues, love blossoms and trials occur. Will love concur all? Will Augusts mom ever figure out what happened to her brother? Read this book and fall in love as every mystery gets opened up.

“But to kiss and be kissed. To be wanted. That’s a different thing from love. And maybe, maybe if she tried, they could have something. Not everything, but something.”
Direct quote from book. Page 210

Rating

Review

I absolutely loved this book! It had everything that I could have ever asked for in a good romance read. Steamy scenes, check! Loveable characters, check! Great writing, check! I fell in love with this book from the first chapter, no joke. I really love Casey’s writing, she has this way of pulling you into the story and making relatable characters.

There was a sentence at the beginning of the book, Page 49 to be exact, that states “All I listen to are podcasts about murder.” When I read that one single sentence I knew that August and I were pretty similar. I really do listen to true crime podcast all day every day! I feel that it is very important for authors to create relatable characters so their audience gets pulled into their books and feel some kind of emotional ties to the characters they are reading about.

I honestly didn’t find anything about this book that bugged me. It felt like an original idea, I didn.t find any spelling or grammar mistakes or at least any that caught my attention, I had no issues with any of the characters and I devoured this entire book! I Highly recommend for everyone to stop what they are doing and grab this book!

I will be completely honest, I haven’t read too many LGBTQ books and I really regret it. Especially after I read this book I know I will be searching for my next LGBTQ read! If you have any suggestions please send them my way!

If You Liked This Then You Will Love This

Written by the same author, of course you would love her second book. However, I feel like “One Last Stop” was even better than “Red, White and Royal Blue” which amazes me because I loved RWRB so very much! If you haven’t read either of them then pick them both up!

QOTD: What is your favorite LGBTQ book that you have read? What is one on you TBR?

Throwback Thursday (Book Review): “A Type Of Hunger” By: Pamela D. Beverly

I found this book while I was scrolling through blogs and reading comments. Pamela has a few books available for people to read other than this one, one is even a children’s book that sounds so adorable! She published these books on her own and I am so excited to support her!

Title: A Type Of Hunger

Author: Pamela D. Beverly

Number of Pages: 132

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Synopsis

Nate is a man who values the idea of working hard to get the things in your life. When he loses his job unexpectedly he would rather keep it to himself instead of talk to his girlfriend and get some advice. This caused some issues in his relationship and they ended up breaking up due to the secrets. After months of searching for jobs and picking up temp work and scrounging every penny his health declines and serves as a major wake up call! Will he find a job? Will he come clean about his secrets?

Review

Pamela published this book all on her own which is so great! I love Indy authors! The only issue with this is that I found quite a few spelling and grammar errors that were very distracting when reading the book. However, you will run across these errors even in professional editing situations.

I really enjoyed the beginning of this book because she sets up her characters so well! However, towards the middle of the book it started to feel quite rushed and I missed some key elements to the story. I loved a lot of the ideas behind this story but with the book only being 132 pages I felt there was room to expand the storyline and add in some missed details. But overall this is a book and an author that you should really give a chance.

Pamela D. Beverly’s Blog

Buy The Book

I always feel like three stared books get a bad rep because it seems mediocre or just not good enough. This book is honestly worth the read! I am just giving it a three star rating right now because of the many grammar and spelling errors along with the fact that it was really short and felt rushed. However, maybe you are looking for a really quick read, this book would be a great option for you.

Please check out my rating scale here to better understand why this book received this rating.

Rating Scale

Book Stack For A Cause: Save The Bees

I have seen some book stacks for a cause on Instagram and I have never participated until I saw one for Honey Bees. I think Honey Bees are extremely important to our world and human survival!

A book stack for a cause is basically exactly how it sounds, you post a picture of a book stack with certain colors pertaining to your specific cause to raise awareness. Some people will put money towards these posts saying for every book stack for a cause that uses this certain hashtag I will give a certain amount of money.

Bee Information

While looking into this cause to save the Bees I ran into two websites that I thought were really helpful and amazing!

The first website I came across is called Project Honey Bee. This website is mainly focused on just the honey bee species. They list a lot of alarming facts that make you really think about where this world might end up without the bees. Let me share some of these facts with you. (All these came from the website linked above).

Beekeepers all over the world lose up to 90% of their bee colonies per year!
Millions of honey bee hives are disappearing every year!
Bees pollinate 1/3 farm crops

“If Honey Bees die out, Humans will follow a few years later”
-Albert Einstein
Found on Project Honey Bees website

This website also offers you the opportunity to adopt a bee by buying one, or more if you choose, of their cute bee merchandise. you have four options; A necklace, earrings, bracelet or a cute little bee enamel pin. All proceeds go to UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center to help fund research.

I bought the cute little bee necklace!

After I finalized my purchase I got an Email with a certificate saying I adopted a bee and then I got this email introducing me to the bee I adopted!

Everyone meet my Queen Bee Aviva! She is the bee that has a colored dot on her. Did you know that is how they keep track of their queens? According to my source here beekeepers follow a common mnemonic each year to remember which color they should use for their newly introduced queen. “Will you raise goods bees”, White/gray, yellow, red, green, and blue.

Adopt Your Own Bee

The second website I came across was The Bee Conservatory. This website is the one most people are using to donate in order to save the bees. This website really highlights what our world would be like if we lost bees by also listing some pretty interesting facts. The biggest thing that stood out to me were the lists of things that are killing the bees. (All information is pulled from the above website).

Habitat Loss
Climate Change
Chemical Pesticides
Invasive Plant Species
Diseases and Parasites

You might be curious what you can do to protect the over 20,000 bee species. Maybe you don’t feel comfortable giving your money to some company in fear they won’t do as they promise. Try some of these ideas instead! (All information came from The Bee Conservatory website)

Plant a Bee Garden
Go Chemical Free
Provide Trees
Create a Bee Bath

Donate To The Bee Conservatory

Find Other Ways To Help

Book Stack For A Cause: Save The Bees

Instagram has been so inspiring lately posting all of these book stacks for a cause including things like a rainbow stack, mental health stack and now a bee stack! I figured it is time for me to hop on this train and finally do one!

Bees are a very important part to human survival and they are in critical need of our help!

I would like to challenge everyone who reads this to either post about bees to share the issue, donate in one way or another (links above) or try to plant more flowers in your garden to promote bee survival.

Anything helps and I promise a small act makes a big impact!

Let’s Make A Difference!

Whether you are sharing awareness to save the bees or any other cause that is important to you, you are making a difference! I hope you all will take a moment to reflect on things that are important to you and share those thoughts with someone today. Don’t be afraid to make a change.

How can you not help a face as fluffy as that cute little bees?

QOTD: What other Stacks For a Cause should I do?

Other Save The Bees Book Stacks

Sources

Project Honey Bees

The Bee Conservatory

Piedmont Bee Keepers

Book Mail

Last week I received three boxes of book mail! What an exciting week! My favorite day of the week is what ever day I have a package at my door. Whether I know what I ordered or if I have honestly forgotten what I got for my house, it will always be a good day when I see that mailman.

My three boxes came from only two different sources. One came from One Night Stand With a Book and the other two were from Book of the Month Club. I know I am a bit obsessed with Book of the Month, I can never pick just three books so I have two subscriptions to it, yikes!

One Night Stand With a Book

This is not a subscription based book site. They have many options to choose from and each option comes with a drink mix and some snacks! The option I chose from for this order was their primum book box that changes theme each month and comes with a book, snack, drink mix, and many other fun goodies!

Lets explore!

This boxes theme was “Summer”!

Inside we have so many goodies!

“Been There, Married That” by Gigi Levangie
Flamingo rubber duckie
Two bookmarks
Tumbler
Sunglasses
Lei
Scrunchie
Beach ball
drink cozy
Snacks
drink mix

All of this was only $34.99 and it was all a surprise! What a fantastic company! I promise you will not be disappointed! July’s theme is true crime and it looks as if they still have a few boxes left, go check the web site out ASAP!

One Night Stand With a Book

Book of the Month Club

For the people who haven’t heard of this subscription service let me walk you through it real quick! Each month for $15.99 you get one credit that is good for your first book any book after that is $9.99, up to two extra books, so a total of 3 books for $36.00! That is honestly a steal if you think about it! Every book is a hardback which normally runs for about $26.00 a piece! Sorry, I am just so excited about this subscription! Each month they will pick five main picks for you to use your first credit on and then with your two extra books you can pick any book from previous months. A lot of these books are new or early release, this is a fantastic opportunity!

Ok, that is plenty of information , let’s move on to the good stuff!

My four picks were…..

“Last Summer at the Golden Hotel” by Elyssa Friedland

“We are the Brennans” by Tracy Lange

“Razorblade Tears” by S.A Cosby

“56 Days” by Catherine Ryan Howard

Three of these books were main picks this month which is insane! Normally I like one or two main picks and then I choose from previous books. This month they had so many good choices and if money would have allowed I would have gotten all six books.

Look at all these cute bookmarks!

Each box will come with a funny, or should I say puny, bookmark. I have a decent sized collection going but these are a few of my favorites.

If you sign up using the button below you can get your first book for only $9.99!

Book of the Month

I am so excited to read these books! I would dare say that this is the best haul I have ever gotten since I started this journey. If you haven’t looked into these book boxes please give them a try! I promise they are worth it!