207 Book Talk

  Layla  by Colleen Hoover Hoover is an author I stumbled across last year when one of her books ( Regretting You ) was available on Kindle Unlimited. I have really enjoyed many of her stories (check out Verity , seriously) but I am not too sure about this one. About 40% done at this point with this story of a ghost possessing the woman the main character is in love with.

 Almost done with my ATY 2021 reading challenge list. Still need books for #6 (a love story) and #29 (a book you consider comfort reading), but those should be easy to decide on, whether I do it now or during the coming year. If you've seen the post with my 2021 PopSugar reading challenge list, you will notice lots of duplicate entries here. That is totally intentional on my part. I want to try to finish both challenges this coming year (I came within 3 books on PopSugar and 5 on ATY this year and could have done it, but just did not want to read any of the books I had chosen for the prompts I had left).  Even though both lists are supposedly made independently from one another, they often have so many common themes or elements that I start to wonder if their creators are checking in with each other as they compile their respective lists. Anyway, doing different books for each prompt would total 102 books. That number doesn't concern me. I usually read around 160 books a year ...

  I almost stopped this book after the first 30 pages, not due to bad writing, but because of my own reluctance to read books by British authors. I read the beginning of the book and then took about a day off from it to celebrate Christmas with my family. I was in no rush to get back to it, but did open it back up Christmas night before bed and then read it randomly throughout yesterday until I finally finished. Did I love this book? No. Did I end up liking it? Not exactly. Did I hate it? No. The story opens with 40 something mom Zoe Walker looking through a newspaper while traveling on the Tube. Imagine her surprise to see her own photo on the page of advertisements for dating and escort services. While her boyfriend and best friend are hesitant to believe it is a photo of her, she is eventually convinced it is her in the photograph for a website called FindTheOne.com, a site she has never heard of, let alone joined. Police Constable Kelly Swift is introduced in the next chapter, ...

 Just started I See You , written by Claire Mackintosh and published by Sphere in 2017. I am about 20 pages in, and can already tell I am really going to have to work hard to finish this one. I generally do not enjoy books by British authors, but am trying to get over being annoyed by unfamiliar names for familiar things, because that's a silly reason not to even give something a try, I know. Wish me luck... I think I'm going to need it.

Still a work in progress, but after hours and hours, and days and days, I have most of my 2021 POPSUGAR Reading Challenge list ready to go. Do you plan ahead, or read what you want and then hope it fits in to a category? 2021 POPSUGAR Reading Challenge REGULAR 1. A book that published in 2021 📘  Every Last Fear 2. An Afrofuturist book 📙  Kindred 3. A book that has a heart, diamond, club, or spade on the cover 📕  The Silent Wife 4. A book by an author who shares your zodiac sign 📗  Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind 5. A dark academia book 📕  Ninth House 6. A book with a gem, mineral, or rock in the title 📘  The Nickel Boys 7. A book where the main character works at your current or dream job 📙  The Book of Two Ways 8. A book that has won the Women’s Prize for Fiction 📘  Bel Canto 9. A book with a family tree 📙  Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family 10. A bestseller from the 1990s 📕  The Reader 11. A book...

About 12 years ago, give or take a year or so, I was reviewing books for an independent website out of Texas. I loved it, even when I didn't like the book. I am opinionated, love to read, like to write. It was fun. It didn't pay; I did it for the enjoyment. My now ex-husband did not enjoy it. He didn't actually care about the reviews I was writing, never read them for that matter. He was bothered by the amount of time I spent reading. I was still in my twenties, and instead of standing up for what I wanted to do with my free time, I just stopped.  Just before this I had had a review picked up by Reuters, which the website I reviewed for told me was a BIG DEAL. It was exciting to see my name on a news site, and to read comments on my review. An independent publisher had used another review on the back cover of the author's book when it went to print. It was maybe the start of something bigger, but I folded to someone else's desires.  Last year I started a blog to tra...