Tag: book

Book Review: Young Queens Collection: The Velvet Messenger by Megan Hess

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It’s October 1st, which means Halloween is this month!

I own a few Halloween themed children’s books, but the one I picked to review this month is The Velvet Messenger by Megan Hess. It is a part of the Young Queens Collection book series. I like to occasionally collect Megan Hess’ books (I’ve slowed down my collecting a lot in the past few years) because I like her artwork. To me, The Velvet Messenger’s plot and illustrations reminds me of Halloween, or of a spooky story, which is why I decided to save my review for October!

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Book Review: Fame, Fate, and The First Kiss by Kasie West

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It’s now officially fall! Fall means many things for many people, but on many of the book social media sites I used to follow, it means they will post content relating to books in the horror genre. (Probably because they want to talk, and even promote, books that are good for the Halloween season of fall.)

I, on the other hand, never really liked horror movies, books, or anything relating to it. Gothic novels? Yes, I’ll read those. Suspense novels? Sure! Thrillers? I’ll read them. But horror? Nope. No way. And the same thing goes for anything macabre and contains a lot of gore. It doesn’t matter if the books are in the horror genre. I won’t read them.

This is why I tend to favor books that tell stores with horror elements in them in a different way. Or it isn’t the most important part of the story. This is the case for the young adult romance Fame, Fate, and The First Kiss by Kasie West.

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Book Review: The Apple Creek Announcement by Wanda E. Brunstetter

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For many years, I’ve had a pile of books I want to review here on this blog, but don’t. Sometimes I forget about them until I stubble on a save post that I never finished. Other times it’s because of other reasons. These reasons can include not liking the book and not knowing what to say about it.

In the case of The Apple Creek Announcement by Wanda E. Brunstetter, I read this book three years ago. Although I finished this book years ago, I ended up struggling to describe in a review post.

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Murder by Cheesecake’s St. Olaf’s Cheesecake Recipe Review

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Earlier this year, a new murder mystery novel was released. There are many murder mystery novels that get published every year, but this one was different. This one is called Murder by Cheesecake and is inspired by the TV series The Golden Girls.

I bought the novel after a suggestion from a friend of mine who just so happens to be a huge fan of The Golden Girls. Months after it was released, I’m still working my way through it (I started it a few weeks ago and I’ve been quite busy since then.) so I can’t write a review about it. So far I like it and it is written the same way the TV show would be.

Even though I’m still reading the book, there was something about the book I can review now: The St. Olaf’s Cheesecake Recipe.

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Book Review: The Boys of Benjamin Boulevard by Samantha Robinson

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It’s been a few weeks since I published a book review post. To be honest, I’ve been watching so many YouTube videos reviewing books. This caused me to suffer from book review burn out… and made me question if I really felt ready to review any of my read books in a post.

In order to get back into writing book review posts, I decided to review The Boys of Benjamin Boulevard by Samantha Robinson. This book, and it’s sequel, are published on Amazon’s print on demand service. Right now The Boys of Benjamin Boulevard is no longer in print and is no longer available to read including on Kindle. The sequel is still available to purchase and read, but in print version only. There aren’t a lot of reviews on The Boys of Benjamin Boulevard or it’s sequel, so I don’t know how my review may impact either book.

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Kate Spade New York: All In Good Taste Book Review

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While during a recent clean out and organization of my things, I came across some books I wanted to write review posts for. One of those books is All In Good Taste by Kate Spade New York.

The book, which was published in 2015, is by the fashion and lifestyle brand, Kate Spade New York. I’m a fan of Kate Spade New York and really love shopping the brand. At the time I purchased this book, I wanted to own some of the books by Kate Spade New York. I decided to pick All In Good Taste first because it is about the do’s and don’ts of entertaining.

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6 Tips Before Buying and Collecting Manga For the First Time

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For many years I collected manga. If you never heard of manga, it is a comic book or graphic novel originally from Japan. The manga I collect are English translations of the original Japanese comics. I started as a teenager in the 2000’s, but over the years I slowed down a lot. This is mostly due to the fact I didn’t like the stories enough to buy new series. As for my old favorite series, most, if not all of them, finished publication over 10 years ago.

Recently, I started watching a lot of YouTube videos about manga collections. This made me realize, if I started my collection all over again, I would establish some new guidelines for picking manga series to own. Collecting manga is expensive, especially if the series is very long. Back in the 2000’s, I didn’t have the ability to do research the way I would’ve like to. So, in honor of my old hobby, I decided to write a post about six tips I would follow today before I buy and collect hard copies of Manga for the first time.

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Book Review: What Happens After Midnight by K. L. Walther

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When I read K. L. Walther’s novels for the first time, I felt very conflicted. The first novel I ever read by her was The Summer of Broken Rules. I wrote a review about the book here.

The Summer of Broken Rules was, and still is, a book I feel conflicted about. On the one hand, I like her writing style. On the other hand, I hated the amount of Taylor Swift references, which is what it is famous for. When I heard Walther wrote another novel, I was curious about it. I was hopeful I would enjoy this novel more and here writing style would shine through more. With this hope, I decided to read it.

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Skylar x The Summer I Turned Pretty Perfume Trio Feature

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Back in the early 2010’s, I discovered The Summer I Turned Pretty novel series. I read it, like them, and then moved onto other books that were newly released. Many years later, a series based off the series was released on Amazon. Although I was excited to see the series, the books will always be my favorite way to experience the story.

Even though I like the series, I felt conflicted about buying the tie in merchandise. Although they were really pretty and were my style, I felt they were too youthful for me. So, I skipped on purchasing many of the merchandise. The ones I purchased are items I really like and make me happy to this day. Three of the products I purchased were the Skylar x The Summer I Turned Pretty perfume collection.

I love the fragrances a lot, I decided to save reviewing each of the fragrances for future posts. Instead, I will be focusing on the collaboration packaging and if they are truly worth purchasing.

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Book Review: The Summer of Broken Rules by K. L. Walther

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For many years, Booktok has been a major influence on which books become popular. A few years ago, I heard about a popular Booktok novel called The Summer of Broken Rules. It was written by K. L. Walther, who became extremely popular because of this book.

Back then, it was highly recommended by a YouTuber that I used to follow. I didn’t know at that time that the YouTuber was also a huge Taylor Swift fan and loved the book because of it’s ties to her. Today I don’t follow the YouTuber because of many reasons. One of the minor reasons is her incorporation of Swiftie references throughout her videos.

After reading the book, I felt very conflicted about how to talk about it online. This is why it’s taken me years to figure out what to say or if I should recommend reading it. Although I still feel very conflicted about how to talk about the book in a review post, I’m tired to stumbling across my book review post in my saved drafts files. So, I’m going to review it, no matter if I am sure about what to say or not.

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