if you loved The Seven Husbands Of Evelyn Hugo and would like more of that but with a slightly darker tone, some light thriller elements, a tropical location, and a contemporary setting- this might be your perfect summer read

a reading rainbow

Trigger warning: all of them

This is not about partisan politics for me, some people seem to think I‘m holding a personal grudge- I‘m not. This is about a person who gleefully jokes about racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynist views pretending to be someone he‘s not. I was just trying to be subtle and not to go for the jugular. But, here‘s your receipts. You would have been shocked enough to screenshot too. People deserve to know.

I‘ve spent 3 years convincing myself not to do this because this community seems to be one of the few sources of fulfillment in his life but oh well.
This person who you all know and probably admire is a trump apologist and this person‘s politics is the reason I left litsy- because I couldn‘t stand to watch a man gain renown and leadership in a group of women when he actively and gleefully derides everything most of them stand for. Now you know.

https://gf.me/u/ypnvs4 Hi friends, one of my best friends has family in Beirut, Lebanon that lost their home, car, and source of income (he is a fisherman and his boat was destroyed) in the explosion last Tuesday. They are currently living in a tent with their two young daughters surviving on limited food and water. We put together this go fund me to help. Would you please consider donating, even $5 is helpful. And if not could you help me share?

Whoah four years. 💕

1) Beach Read, The House in the Cerulean Sea, Wolf‘s Hall
2) RightNow-Heart of Flames by Nikki Pau Preto- more generally... The Raven Cycle
3) The bookstore in Harvard Square or Porter square.
4)Raven Boys
5)Hopefully Emma 🤞🏼
6)The Shadows Between Us, The Glass Hotel, The Library of Legends
7)The Thousandth Floor, Valente‘s Fairyland
8) A Tale for the Time Being
9) 77
10) 🏖
11) Cheaper by the Dozen
12) my lovely @Avanders tagged me

I skipped January #BOTM on both my accounts so I was able to get all 4 of these books for “free”. I was also eyeing Ink in the Blood and All The Stars And Teeth- but until BOTM starts posting detailed trigger warnings I‘m shying away from their dark fantasy picks. The Girl With The Louding Voice really intrigued me as well, so maybe next month! SO excited for Anna K! I squealed when I saw it!!! Also my choices seem to have two themes haha 😂

Randomly popping in here to say this was a really fun book with a pretty original premise and more people should read it because I would like a sequel please.

Technological dystopia based around an incredibly plausible imagining of influencer culture replacing jobs when full automation kicks in and people themselves being listed on a social stock index PLUS secret resistance societies,spy school, thief training, code breaking, heists and cons.

🐝🔑🗡👑🦉🤎

Thirteen most favorite books of the decade✨

Top 13 reads of 2019 -not a high number reading year, but a good one.

#botm Golden Hour is one of my 7 most anticipated of 2019. The man who abdicated the throne to marry an American divorcee (and may or may not have been a nazi spy) and the woman frustrated by how she came so close to royalty but never managed to grasp it- the way they weave in and out of the Royal story- and how indelibly they changed the royal family- fascinate me. Not least for the abundance of conspiracies and dearth of fact about their lives.

Logging onto litsy for the first time in (checks watch) FIVE? months to freak out and gush over how good this book is and how amazingly happy the reading experience was and how I smiled almost the whole time I read it and how the film rights have been optioned and it‘s gonna be amazing and I can‘t wait. My favorite read of 2019. I‘m bereft that it is over.

(For the record this is NOT YA, anymore than ACOTAR series should be, so be aware haha)

2018 Top nine.

In 2014 I set a reading challenge for 107 books a year. I read about 60. I kept the same challenge in 2015, 2016, and 2017. Never made it above 75. In 2018, I finally beat my reading challenge for the first time ever. 126 out of 107 books read! Definitely feels like the greatest accomplishment of the past four years!

Say hello to the first book I‘m reading without a challenge to work towards in five years! I hope it‘s a good one!

And yet my TBR is still so massive...

But after four years of setting the same goal and failing every year, I finally did it! I feel like there should be some sort of award?

Now what am I supposed to do with these leftover three months? Read books that don‘t count towards a challenge? Is that even a real thing? Sounds fake?

Life has been so crazy and overwhelming in so many ways but I‘m so ridiculously excited to start my very last book of my 2018 reading challenge and my first book in my new apartment and new city. I love the serendipity and synchronicity of it all. It‘s just one of those things that feels right and makes you believe everything is going to turn out good. Thank you @ScorpioBookDreams for the ARC all the way from England. Im so glad we‘re friends 💙

Every damn day.

My bf (who barely reads) and I are reading through my favorite series by my favorite author together, and it was his idea. Pinch me, I think I‘m dreaming.

Time for another brain break from Bonfire Of The Vanities. I‘ve never encountered a book that I need a mental break from every few chapters before. I can‘t figure out why, considering it‘s a very well written and incredibly absorbing book. But every hundred pages or so my brain feels like mush and I have to stop. I read Bleak House faster. Here‘s hoping some beachiness will be the perfect antidote.

Also, this is my first ever Mary Kay Andrews!

Beyond in love with this cover reveal!

Don‘t mind me, just casually obsessing over this series.

Golden milk and a book is my new night time ritual.

@robinb thank you for the recc all those months ago! I‘m loving this so far! ✨

✨The seven randomly selected winners of my thousand follower giveaway! Y‘all shoot me an email with the subject “Litsy giveaway” to laalaleighh@gmail.com with your addresses so I can get your book choices and their companion books sent to you, please. Thanks to everyone who participated, you all chose such great books! This was so much fun I think I might do it again if/when I hit my reading goal for the year! Happy Sunday Littens!✨

I had so much personal success with picking out my TBR ahead of time that I decided to keep it up. For the first time in forever I‘m not rushing through my books impatient to figure out what I‘ll read next. It‘s quite nice. I‘m really looking forward to the tagged book. I saw it recommended on Janie Chang‘s Twitter as her top historical fiction. It‘s the story of China‘s only female empress. It sounds amazing!

Breaking Bad meets White Collar set in 1880‘s high society. An architect related to the Astor‘s has to plan heists of his friends and clients for a high powered gang in order to pay back his Harvard graduate son‘s gambling debt before his whole family gets killed in retaliation. Just a really fun read that feels like you are thrown into the early gilded age. Bonus points for being set in a plethora of real life gilded age mansions that still exist

Twin sisters split parent trap style during their parents divorce live on the competing islands of Nantucket and Martha‘s Vineyard, not speaking up until the day an unfortunate series of events causes them to have to switch lives for awhile.

Definitely a character driven novel. There‘s nothing special about it but when I finished I turned around and ordered a few more of her books because it managed to make me forget it was snowing in April.

Maybe if I read a beach book the weather will get the message and hurry up with the warm already.

It‘s really disconcerting to read a novel where the fact of each main character‘s mortality is always looming, inevitable. Mortality is always in the background, sure to come at some point, but perhaps not during the sliver of life we‘re reading. Being forced to come face to face with it again and again, in fact knowing you‘re reading towards it as long as you keep reading, is an eerie feeling. Even more eerie in a book titled The ~Immortalists~

Ok. I was not expecting to have to put this book down and walk away and deal with my feelings after just reading the first section. Wow. I can‘t be the only one who felt like maybe they got in over their head emotions-wise on this one. I thought it was a fantasy. That‘s what I get for not reading book descriptions anymore. Too late to turn back now! I have to know what happens!

I‘ve never cared how many followers I have, but I do have a thing for big nice round numbers and hitting 1000 followers that also like to read and talk about books is admittedly kind of fantastic, sooooooooooo.

I think I‘d like to do a #giveaway! I‘ve never done one! Here‘s the deal: Pick a book off my Litsy or Goodreads list of books I have marked as read that you would most like to receive and comment below by Wednesday! 👇🏼

This book was everything I wanted Gatsby to be. I‘m sure that might get me excommunicated from some literary circles, but it‘s the truth. 💅🏼 Easily one of my best books of the year so far, with endless passages begging to be underlined, and meaning transcribed into every sentence. I have a feeling this is one I‘ll be returning to over and over, and that each time I will gain something new in the reading. All the stars.

Y‘all wish my next book good luck. After Circe it has some big shoes to fill.

I grew up accepting that Circe was a bad, evil witch with too much power. Miller paints her as a woman whose strength and independence threatens all the men she comes in contact with. Instead of a reimagining, it feels like Miller has at last unearthed the truth behind her story. A soul affirming masterpiece that everyone will love, but feels especially written to remind women to marvel in our power no matter how the world tries to twist it.

I literally cannot wait any longer to start this. RIP sleep.

All this, plus spies. Set in post-war Siena. This has been compared to Beautiful Ruins and I can definitely see the similarities.

My upcoming TBR. I noticed I‘m rushing through books out of curiosity about what I‘ll decide to read next 🤷🏼‍♀️ (please tell me this happens to someone else besides me) So I went and picked out my next few books (plus a couple not pictured alternates) (ok actually I had my bf pick them out because... indecision) And I‘m excited to see if this lets me enjoy my current read more without constantly wondering about what comes next. Fingers crossed!

(From Holly Black‘s insta)

THERE ARE ARCS FLUTTERING AROUND OUT THERE! 🧚🏼‍♀️AND THIS COVER! 😻

I‘m so jealous of all the ARC getting people.

I thought Litsy was broken and I was so so sad.

Not a single spoon was bent in this entire book.

My first Sarah Addison Allen! Definitely a #blamelitsy purchase! Excited!

#marchwrapup #marchrecap

🥇The Vatican Princess; Traitor To The Throne; The Seven Husbands Of Evelyn Hugo, The Disappearances; The Perfume Collector; The Coincidence Makers; Three Souls
🥈The Last Equation Of Isaac Severy; Rainbirds; Not That I Could Tell; When Dimple Met Rishi; The House On Tradd Street, Other People‘s Houses; To Kill A Kingdom
🥉The Traitors Game; The Land Of Stories 4

🙅🏼‍♀️ The Hazel Wood; Your One And Only

My Fiftieth book of the year!!! #50 !!! I love this author and this new-to-me series is fun. Old historic homes, the city of Charleston, southern society, old family secrets, a little romance, and ...ghosts- lots of them!

The first in a series that‘s ratings only seem to get better as they go!

Did I mention it was my 50th book? I only read about 67 all year last year.

My second book by this author (who also wrote Dragon Springs Road) and I loved it just as much! The MC is a ghost who can‘t move on to the afterlife and reincarnation until she rights the wrongs she made while alive. Set during the civil war before communist China, this novel depicts a society pulled in multiple directions, between the past and competing versions of the future, through the lens of the everyday business of domestic life and family.

About 1/3 of the way through this book about the Borgias told from Lucrezia‘s point of view and utterly absorbed.