Welcome to Litsy!

Here are my upcoming plans for the year. I love having a monthly focus, and I find it helps with my reading productivity. By setting aside a week or a month to focus on middle grade, or ARCs, or chunky books i tend to do better with hitting goals, and avoiding slumps.

Not all of these events are hosted by me, just ones I plan to participate in. Check out the hashtags as the months get closer, if you‘d like to join along. ❤️

Review from #AugustARCs about a month late 🙄🙄🙄

The audiobook of this YA gothic/paranormal fantasy novel was good, but the story was a bit long-winded for my taste. There was too much woe-be-me by the main character Signa. The mysteries were, given I had paid attention from the start, obvious to me.

If you liked Kingdom of the Wicked, you will certainly like this book. After all, it's a story of romance between a not-so-mere mortal and Death.

#BookSpinBingoResults are in for August! Two! Two bingos! Woohoo!

#BookSpin and one #Roll100 book finished! Two for #AugustARCs !

This turned out to be a really good Gothic horror novel. Ivy is a main character with whom it's easy to empathise & become invested in what happens to her. The strange atmosphere & sense of foreboding at the Blackham home is evoked well & although I did guess some of the twists, I didn't guess them all.

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Full Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4866841510

#AugustARCs @clwojick

I've been waiting for a book that completely swept me away for a while & it's finally here. I absolutely loved the supernatural mystery side of things. Signa (I kept misreading her name as Sigma) is one of those main characters that starts off a bit annoying but then grows on you. (Continues in comments)

4.5🌟

Full Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4657792116

#AugustARCs @clwojick
#20in4 @andrew65

I thought this was a moving account of a tragic story. Starting with the lives of Robert's parents, the authors take the reader through the early history of the family, to the events of that night, & the aftermath. It was sensitively done, keeping the shocking nature of the murders but not sensationalising them. 4🌟

TW: stalking, violence, domestic abuse, death of a child, death of pregnant women, death of a pet.

This is an excellent read with a nod to Agatha Christie's 'And Then There Were None'. I found it a bit difficult to get into for the first 20%, but when the murders start to happen things pick up considerably. I ended up flying through the last 70% of the book in one day! The family were an interesting group of characters, but the nicest was Poppins the dog, a sweet Old English sheepdog (no harm comes to Poppins if anyone was worried). 4.5🌟

This sounded like a fast-paced action-packed read, but the first half was surprisingly mundane. Somewhere around the 48% mark, I was really beginning to regret not DNF-ing this one, but the author actually pulled it round in the second half of the book, & I ended up being glad I hadn't quit.

If you like action thrillers which don't worry too much about characterisation, you'd probably enjoy this. 3.5🌟

As a debut book, I thought this was quite good. It got off to a decent start, but then seemed to falter in pace a little towards the middle. As an MC Jen is, how can I put this, just a little bit dim at times. The men are (mostly) all a bit sleazy & you can't for the life of you understand why Jen keeps chasing after a guy who should have a neon sign around his neck saying “He's just not that into you“.

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