Book Review – Page 20

Valentine’s Buddy Read with Bai.books (AKA Me)

Love is in the air!

I have decided for the month of February and maybe the months to follow I would like to host a buddy read! This month is based on romance reads due to the Valentine’s day Holiday. I was originally only going to pick one book for this because hosting two chats can be intimidating. However, I decided to host two this month because I have been dying to read both of these books!

The Books

“The Unhoneymooners” By Christina Lauren

Olive is always unlucky: in her career, in love, in…well, everything. Her identical twin sister Ami, on the other hand, is probably the luckiest person in the world. Her meet-cute with her fiancé is something out of a romantic comedy (gag) and she’s managed to finance her entire wedding by winning a series of Internet contests (double gag). Worst of all, she’s forcing Olive to spend the day with her sworn enemy, Ethan, who just happens to be the best man.

Olive braces herself to get through 24 hours of wedding hell before she can return to her comfortable, unlucky life. But when the entire wedding party gets food poisoning from eating bad shellfish, the only people who aren’t affected are Olive and Ethan. And now there’s an all-expenses-paid honeymoon in Hawaii up for grabs.

Putting their mutual hatred aside for the sake of a free vacation, Olive and Ethan head for paradise, determined to avoid each other at all costs. But when Olive runs into her future boss, the little white lie she tells him is suddenly at risk to become a whole lot bigger. She and Ethan now have to pretend to be loving newlyweds, and her luck seems worse than ever. But the weird thing is that she doesn’t mind playing pretend. In fact, she feels kind of… lucky.

4.01 Average rating on GoodReads

“Weather Girl” By Rachel Lynn Solomon

Ari Abrams has always been fascinated by the weather, and she loves almost everything about her job as a TV meteorologist. Her boss, legendary Seattle weatherwoman Torrance Hale, is too distracted by her tempestuous relationship with her ex-husband, the station’s news director, to give Ari the mentorship she wants. Ari, who runs on sunshine and optimism, is at her wits’ end. The only person who seems to understand how she feels is sweet but reserved sports reporter Russell Barringer.

In the aftermath of a disastrous holiday party, Ari and Russell decide to team up to solve their bosses’ relationship issues. Between secret gifts and double dates, they start nudging their bosses back together. But their well-meaning meddling backfires when the real chemistry builds between Ari and Russell.

Working closely with Russell means allowing him to get to know parts of herself that Ari keeps hidden from everyone. Will he be able to embrace her dark clouds as well as her clear skies?

3.97 Average rating on GoodReads

Reading Schedules

If you are wanting to join in on one or even both of these buddy reads please head over to my Instagram and comment on my buddy read post! I will then get you added to the chats for that particular book.

The group chats will be held on a designated night that we all vote upon in the group chat. We will then be able to discuss the book and talk about reading schedules. As I get the updated information I will update this blog post.

I am so excited to be hosting these buddy reads and I hope you are all excited to join!

Book Review: “Crescent City” By Sarah J. Maas

This book left me speechless! This is my first official deep dive into a fantasy world beside Harry Potter, However I feel like the wonderful world of Harry Potter is very simple to catch onto. This book had some major world building to follow along with and being my first big dive into fantasy it was hard to keep up at times but I am so glad that I trekked forward and finished this behemoth of a book!

“Through love, all is possible.”
Direct Quote from page 282

About The Book

Author: Sarah J. Maas

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Publish Date: March 3rd 2020

Page Count: 803 Pages

Main Genres: Fantasy, Romance, New Adult

GoodReads Rating: 4.45

“There are worse fates than death, you know.”
Direct quote from page 383

Synopsis

As a Half-Fae Half-Human Bryce Quinlan spends her days working at an antique shop and her nights out partying. She is known as the party girl around Lunathion but all it takes is one horrific night to strip the party out of the girl.

Two years after a gruesome murder tore apart Bryce’s life she is recruited to help track down the murders. Fueled by revenge Bryce is determined to find all the missing clues to avenge her friends but as secrets reveal themselves Bryce is forced to question how well she really knew the ones she cared about.

“It sucks that everyone just…moves on, and forgets. They expect me to forget. But I can’t.”
Direct quote from page 556

Rating

Review

All I could say when I finished this book was “Wow!” I don’t think I have ever read a book that tugged so much at my emotions! I laughed, I cried, I threw my book at the wall and my heart fell in love! I tab my books and if you watch my Tiktok video of my thoughts ten minutes after finishing this book, you will see that I used two whole tab sleeves to tab all my emotions into this book!

I haven’t ever read a book that had actually made me cry! This book will tug at your heart and I think that was one reason why I really enjoyed it.

Full disclaimer, this book took me about 60% of the way through to actually pick up the pace and fully understand the world. This book has a ton of world building and characters that you need to understand but once you get it and it clicks then you will fly through this book!

This is my first book over 700 pages that I have read and I finished it in a week and a half and that really impressed me! Even though this was a long book for me and also way out of my reading comfort zone, I still read this book in a week and a half which I think is some kind of record for me! I grant my fast reading speed to the wonderful writing in this book. I feel like if I hated the world building and the characters I probably would have DNF’d this book about 200 pages in, if I am being honest with you. However, I did fall in love with the characters, so much so that I was falling in love right along side Bryce.

I highly recommend this book to everyone out there, especially since the second book will be coming out in just a few short weeks!

QOTD: Have you read this book? If so, What did you rate it and will you be reading the next book?

“That’s the point of it, Bryce. Of life. To live, to love, knowing that it might all vanish tomorrow. It makes everything that much more precious.”
Direct quote from book from page 773

Book Review: “Malibu Rising” by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Five days into January and I have officially finished my first read of the year! I chose this book because of my Reading Challenge for January. The reading prompt for this month was “A GoodReads 2021 Good Choice Award book”. I was really excited to read “Malibu Rising” because of all of the amazing reviews I have read since this book was released. Lets see if this book lived up to all the hype.

“Our family histories are simply stories. They are myths we create about the people who came before us, in order to make sense of ourselves.”
Direct quote from book. Page 31

About The Book

Author: Taylor Jenkins Reid

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Published Date: June 1st, 2021

Page count: 369 pages

Main Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Contemporary

GoodReads Rating: 4.10

“I’m just saying…. I don’t come from any money at all. But I don’t think what you’re born into says anything about where you’re headed.”
Direct quote from book. Page 38

Synopsis

The Riva family may be famous but that doesn’t mean their life was easy. Four siblings who grew up with an absent father and an alcoholic mother are forced to grow up real quick their mother drowns and their father doesn’t come home.

Nina, the eldest sister of 17 years, drops out of high school to take over the family restaurant and become the sole guardian of her younger three siblings. Money might be tight but nothing can come between their love for one another.

As time goes on her and her siblings make a name for themselves and find a life of riches, fame and love. This brings on the party scene and Nina is known for throwing the coolest parties around and this years party would be one that no one will ever forget!

“It would not be her that broke and bent anymore.”
Direct quote. Page 317

Rating

Review

In all honesty I felt like this book was way over hyped. Maybe I would have given this book a higher rating if I had picked it up without reading any reviews but I did read almost all five star reviews so I went in with high expectations that didn’t get met. Was this a bad book? No, it wasn’t terrible, definitely something people should read sometime in their life but maybe don’t go in with such high expectations.

I thought the beginning was super slow but worth while for the story building. Part two is where the story really picked up and started connecting in places and even got a bit emotional at the end. I just felt like the second half of the book wasn’t great enough to bring up the rating any higher.

One of the biggest problems I had with this book was the amount of characters and people you had to remember between each of the chapters. Each chapter was based on a different characters point of view but it wasn’t always one of the main characters, it was typically some random famous person talking about what they were doing at the party and it didn’t really connect to the main story till the final few chapters. There was too much going on and it got confusing at times.

I personally really struggled with this book which makes me sad because I had heard a lot of great things. I wanted my first book of the year to blow me away and this didn’t quite reach my expectations.

QOTD: What was your first book of the year?

2021 Book Superlatives

It is finally that time of year where we have read an impressive amount of books and now we need to rank them. I know I had a handful of books that drove me nuts and then I also had a decent sized stack that I really enjoyed. Now is the time to reveal all the good, bad and ugly from my 2021 reading pile.

Top Ten Books

In no particular order here are my top ten favorite reads of 2021

Awards

Book of the year

“Verity” by Colleen Hoover

Full Review

Least favorite book

“Get a Life Chloe Brown” by Talia Hibbert

I don’t have a link to this review but honestly this book was by far my least favorite thing I read this year by a long shot.

Best Dressed (Prettiest Cover)

“The Lost Apothecary” by Sarah Penner

Full Review

Most Likely to Make you Swoon

“The Love Hypothesis” by Ali Hazelwood

Full Review

Most Likely to be reread

“One Last Stop” by Casey Mcquiston

Full Review

Best Graphic Novel

“Black Lantern” by Chris Bodily

I don’t read a lot of graphic novels but I really love how this one came together! The cat was so cute too!

A book that walked the line of morality the best

“RazorBlade Tears” by S.A. Cosby

Full Review

A book that was over hyped

“Where The Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens

Full Review

A book that surprised me

“Crave” by Tracy Wolff

Full Review

Character Awards

Favorite character

Olive from “The Love Hypothesis” by Ali Hazelwood

I felt like I could really relate to Olive in a lot of different ways. I thought she was very stubborn, she knew what she likes and she is very smart and independent. I love an independent lead woman character.

Least favorite character

Jasmine from “Desperate Measures” by Katee Robert

This book was a steamy spin off tale of Jasmine and Jaffar from Aladdin and the whole book was pretty cringe worthy. However, Jasmine just drove me nuts the whole book. If you hate a main character there is something really wrong.

Favorite couple

Jane and August from “One Last Stop” by Casey Mcquiston

These two were just so adorable! I couldn’t get enough of their relationship. Casey McQuiston for Christmas released an update for the characters written from Janes perspective and it was everything that I didn’t know I needed.

Christmas Letter

Personal Achievements

This year I accomplished more things than I could have ever imagined! I am so proud of how far this blog has came since starting in June of 2021. I have also made so many amazing friends on Bookstagram. Let’s look at some of my greatest accomplishments from this year.

Started my blog in June 2021 and have over 60 followers six months later

Reached my reading goal for the year of 35/35 books

Reached over 2,000 followers on my bookstagram

Celebrated my one year bookstaversary in October

Made friends with authors

Made friends with people all across the world

Found several books that I literally fell in love with

Proved to myself that I can achieve my goals when I work hard and dream big

I am beyond proud of myself for accomplishing all that I did this past year and I really can’t wait to see what 2022 has to bring. I have changed my reading goal for next year to 40 books and I have even created my own reading challenge so I am very excited to start this coming year.

QOTD: What is your reading goal for next year?

December Wrap Up and Mini Review

December was a pretty good month for me reading wise. I finished four books and I actually enjoyed them all! I feel like each month I typically have an outlier with a low rating but this month I actually had all above 4 stars! I also finished my reading goal for this year which I really didn’t think I would do!

I will also be posting my mini review for Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban in this post.

December Reads

“Crave” by Tracy Wolff

When Grace’s parents unexpectedly pass away due to a car crash she must leave hot and sunny California and move to cold and snowy Alaska to attend her uncles Boarding school. But when she arrives she can tell something is off about this school. Every student belongs to a clique but she just can’t seem to fit in to any of them. She can’t even make it to her first class without her life being threatened. The worse part is that everyone seems to be keeping secrets from her. How could a boarding school be so mysterious and dangerous?

I didn’t have high hopes for this book but it definitely made my list for best fantasy book I have read, so far at least. Check out my full review with the link below.

Full review

“The Collective” by Alison Gaylin

Five years after her daughters death Camille is still struggling through her grief. The one thing that keeps her going is knowing that her daughters killer is still living a happy and normal life and that her daughter needs justice.

After a drunken misstep at a college awards ceremony for her daughters alleged killer a video surfaces on the internet and brings light back to her daughters case but bad publicity isn’t ideal.

When a strange lady hands her a card with one word “Niobe” listed on it, she goes down a rabbit hole that leads her in the end to the dark web. She finds a community full of grieving mothers looking for justice for their children but when fueled hatred meets a sisterhood, words become action.

Walking a thin line of justice and criminality, Camille’s forced to face the truth of how far is too far?

This book was so worth all the hype! Everyone needs to pick this one up! Check out my full review with the link below.

Full Review

“Verity” by Colleen Hoover

When famous author Verity Crawford gets in an unfortunate accident rendering her incapable of finishing her series book contract with her publishing company her husbands seeks out Lowen Ashleigh to finish the last three books in the series Verity started. Lowen had just lost her mother, money wasn’t coming in from her previous books and she was about to get evicted from her apartment, so even though she felt uneasy about finishing such a famous authors books she really had no other choice.

In order to get in the headspace of Varity, Lowen has to go through Varity’s home office and sort through piles upon piles of notes from her years of writing. But when she stumbles across a manuscript for an autobiography everything changes. In this manuscript lies everything from innocent sexual fun to the omission of murder. Does she show this to Verity’s husband or let him continue to love a possible psychopath?

All I can say about this book is “WOW”! This was such a good book but it was insane! Definitely pick this one up. Check out my full review with the link below.

Full Review

“Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” by J.K. Rowling (Mini Review)

Like my other mini reviews for Harry Potter I am not going to write a synopsis because I feel like everyone who wants to read this book have probably already read it. I am just going to skip to my review.

I received this book as a gift from my brother for Christmas and I immediately had to dive into it! I knew it would be the best book to end my reading challenge for the year, and I was right!

I feel like I gave this four stars instead of five because I had already seen the movie and it just felt kind of long and drawn out. I did love the details of the book and thought it was well written, I just felt kind of bored in some places. I wish I hadn’t seen the movies before I read the books because it has ruined my thoughts of the books. I think I will continue to read the books but I am kind of sad that I have ruined it for myself.

QOTD: What was the best book you read this December?

My 2022 Monthly Reading Challenge

For 2021 I didn’t have a reading challenge that I followed along with, I only had a reading goal for 35 books. I have seen a lot of challenges out there that have so many prompts! With my reading style I know I can’t do a challenge that has a billion prompts so I decided to create my own reading challenge with a single monthly prompt.

This reading challenge is for anyone who gets overwhelmed with big challenges or are even mood readers. You will only have one prompt to fulfill a month and each prompt is fairly broad so you can really pick anything that suits your mood. I am a huge mood reader and I always find it so hard to stick with complicated or more detailed yearly reading challenges. If you fit into any of these categories I hope you will give these reading prompts a try.

World Of Bai’s 2022 Reading Challenge Prompts

January: A GoodReads 2021 Good Choice Award book.

February: A book about True Crime.

March: Don’t judge a book by its cover.

April: An Indie book.

May: A self-help or memoir book.

June: A book that intimidates you.

July: Book title that starts with the first letter of your name.

August: A book title that has the word “Game” in it.

September: A book written from the villains prospective.

October: A book about witches.

November: A book that includes a map.

December: A Holiday book with an LGBTQ lead character.

world-of-bais-2022-reading-challenge Download

Here’s to 2022

I am so excited for 2022, I think this is my year to really bring this blog to life and grow my reading portfolio. I have set my reading goal for next year to 45 books which is 5 more than this year. I know that isn’t a huge difference but I don’t want to over sell myself when I barely met my goal this year. I am a fairly slow reader and I am okay with that!

If you do end up using my reading challenge for next year use #WorldOfBai2022 .

QOTD: What reading challenge will you be using this year?