I’m barely making it, but I’m determined not to miss a month for my favorite monthly post. (This month has been very difficult for me, unfortunately.) So here’s Birthstone Book Covers for October 2025.
Leslie @ Books Are the New Black created a fun monthly post called Birthstone Book Covers. Each month, she features book covers that are either the same color of that month’s birthstone or include the color in the title.
October has two birthstones – Opal and Tourmaline.
This month is sometimes difficult for me, and so many of the covers I end up picking end up being romance novels. I guess that’s what happens when the birthstones of the month are mostly pink and white (I’m not gonna get into opals – they’re weird and complicated when it comes to this kind of post). So I light pink and bright pink covers again.
Rules:
📚 Mention the creator (Leslie @ Books Are The New Black) and link back to her so she can check out your post. 📚 Pick 5+ book covers that match the current month’s Birthstone. 📚 HAVE FUN! 📚 Nominate people if you want!
Check & Mate by Ali Hazelwood
So This is Ever After by F.T. Lukens
Prince Charming by Rachel Hawkins
Bunny by Mona Awad
Emiko by Chieri Uegaki
The Poisons We Drink by Bethany Baptiste
What are your favorite books with pink and/or white book covers? If you participated in Birthstone Books, which books did you choose this October?
Thanks for reading, and I hope you have the most awesome day/night!
This is a bit later than I had wanted to post this, but it’s better than last month, so I’m taking that as a win! As usual, this wrap-up for March Reading 2024 features my reading statistics from The StoryGraph.
I met my goal from February’s wrap-up – to read more than one book. But I know that I can still do better, and had hoped to read about a book a week, so it isn’t quite what I was hoping for. But I still read more than February, January and especially December, so I don’t feel that irritated with myself.
So yeah, let’s get on with the wrap-up!
March Reading 2024
I read 2 books and 797 pages
😐 MOODS: All the slices of pie were equal this time! The Moods that I had in March were: Adventurous, Funny, Mysterious, Dark, Lighthearted and Tense.
👢 PACE: My books from last month were two different kinds of paces: medium and fast.
🔢 PAGE NUMBER: Everything I read was between 300 and 499 pages. A nice blue pie!
📖 FICTION/NONFICTION: It was once again all fiction this month.
🎭 GENRES: Of the two novels that I read, neither of them shared any Genres. So I didn’t have any predominant Genres at all, but I did have seven of them. The Genres I did have, though, were: Fantasy, Horror, Manga, Romance, Short Stories, YA and LGBTQIA+.
📄 FORMAT: This little StoryGraph pie chart is, in fact, correct for March. I read one ebook and one physical print novel.
⭐ RATING: My median star rating for last month was 4.25. The ratings I gave were either 4 or 4.5 stars so it makes sense.
📉 PAGES READ DAILY: I didn’t read as much as I’d have liked in March, but that’s just the way it goes sometimes. I read a little bit at the beginning of the month, but most of my reading happened during different points of the last week.
So yeah, March reading for 2024 wasn’t as strong as I’d have liked, but it was better than the three preceding months, so I’m still happy with myself. I wish I was able to read a couple more books, though.
April has a bunch of books that I’m interested in, several that have already come out, so we’ll see what I read. I’m also still interested in continuing with One Piece, so I’m planning on reading the next arc this month. I’m hoping that I get out of this reading slump soon. It’s miserable.
Also, it’s a bit late, but Happy Eclipse Day!! 🌑☀️🌕🌙 I hope that anyone in or near totality was able to see it that was interested. We were pretty close where I live, and it was still really cool, even though we weren’t in the path of totality.
So yeah, thank you to everyone for reading, and I hope you have an awesome day/night!
Carry On meets Arthurian legend in this funny, subversive young adult fantasy about what happens after the chosen one wins the kingdom and has to get married to keep it… and to stay alive.
Arek hadn’t thought much about what would happen after he completed the prophecy that said he was destined to save the Kingdom of Ere from its evil ruler. So now that he’s finally managed to (somewhat clumsily) behead the evil king (turns out magical swords yanked from bogs don’t come pre-sharpened), he and his rag-tag group of quest companions are at a bit of a loss for what to do next.
As a temporary safeguard, Arek’s best friend and mage, Matt, convinces him to assume the throne until the true heir can be rescued from her tower. Except that she’s dead. Now Arek is stuck as king, a role that comes with a magical catch: choose a spouse by your eighteenth birthday, or wither away into nothing.
With his eighteenth birthday only three months away, and only Matt in on the secret, Arek embarks on a desperate bid to find a spouse to save his life—starting with his quest companions. But his attempts at wooing his friends go painfully and hilariously wrong…until he discovers that love might have been in front of him all along.
My Review
“The prophecy doesn’t mention true love’s kiss or long hair or guessing names.”
“You pulled it out just to tell us that?” Lila crossed her arms and quirked an eyebrow.
Matt’s lips twisted into a frown. “I’m making a point.”
“Is the point that you’re pedantic?” Bethany asked, fake smile plastered on her face despite looking a little green around the gills. “Because we’re aware.”
“You have vomit in your hair,” Matt shot back, stuffing the scroll into his pack.
Out of the three F.T. Lukens novels I’ve read so far, I think So This is Ever After is my favorite. (When I read Otherwordly hopefully soon, I’m thinking of doing a tier list.) It’s got my favorite tropes of theirs – sassy humor and protagonists, found family, and a reasonably well-developed romance.
I liked Arek. I also think he’s the best of all of the Lukens’ leads I’ve read (so far). He’s kind and a teeny bit sassy, and he has no idea what the heck he’s doing. I also liked that he could hold his own, as opposed to Tal from In Deeper Waters, who frequently annoyed me with some of his whining and incompetence (even though he did get better by the end of the book). But he was also more engaging of a main character to follow than Rook from Spell Bound, who was kind of boring to follow the perspective of.
Matt, following the trend of deuteragonists in these books, was the more interesting character. Yep. Just like Sun and Athlen. I’ve always liked wizard characters though, and I wasn’t more interested in what was going on with him than Arek. Which was a first for me regarding Lukens’ MCs.
The rest of the party was also great. I loved their dynamic with one another, they all had a good rapport, and it was easy to tell from the dialogue how much they all cared about each other. I also really liked how they riffed on D&D party dynamics: there was a paladin (Arek), a mage (Matt), a bard (Bethany), a fighter (Sionna), a tank (Rion), and a rogue (Lila).
My only real problems with So This is Ever After are a couple of smaller things. The first: the stupid communication problems. Just, like, talk to each other? Please?! But this is a YA novel, and seventeen year olds are notoriously bad at communicating IRL, so it made sense and honestly didn’t bother me that much.
My other issue was the pacing. I like a good ol’ fast-paced novel, but parts of this book were almost too fast-paced. Like, it was pretty much action, action, action, with little time relegated to giving the characters moments to breathe and develop. Again, this wasn’t too big a problem for me, but it still irritated me somewhat. Other than these things, I didn’t really have any problems with this book.
So yeah, I totally recommend this book, especially to fans of F.T. Lukens’ other works. If you haven’t read this one yet, definitely pick it up. I also recommend So This is Ever After to people who like medium to fast paced YA fantasy novels with a sense of humor. Also, the LGBTQIA+ rep is pretty good, so if you’re into books with that, what are you waiting for?
But yeah, as always, thanks so much to everyone who continues to read my blog posts. I always appreciate it, and I hope you all have a fantastic day/night!
See ya ~Mar
My Favorite Quotes
I’d been envisioning what it would be like to behead the Vile One since the old wizard had shown up at my door the day after I turned seventeen and told me my destiny- that I would be the person who ended the dark shadow of evil that ruled our realm. Well, okay, not that specific second because who believes a drunken stranger with a crooked hat carrying around a humming staff? No one. That’s who. At least, you shouldn’t. That’s unsafe.
“Yes, um, well, give me a moment.” I pitched my voice low. “What do we do?”
“Opening the door seems like an appropriate action,” Rion said, completely seriously. “It is time for breakfast.”
It took every ounce of my limited restraint not to roll my eyes. Rion’s earnestness didn’t deserve my ire. “Yes. But what if he’s here to kill us?”
“You,” Bethany said brightly. She had her harp clutched in one hand, the other on her hip cocked jauntily to the side. “If he’s here to kill anyone, it’s you. Not us.”
I did roll my eyes at that. “Thanks, oh so helpful.”
“There are thousands of prophecies in the world,” he said. “Not all of them are true. This one happened to be. I’m marking it down in my records.”
“Wait, what?” Matt asked again, his voice a screech. “You keep data?”
Though I echoed Matt’s outrage, I felt like he missed the bigger issue. “Do you mean to tell us there was a chance we could’ve failed?”
I’d never felt more betrayed in my life. The one bedrock of this whole journey was the prophecy, and it could’ve been wrong? My entire world tilted. “We could have died? What the fuck?”
“You didn’t,” the wizard offered helpfully. “This prophetess has a ninety- five percent accuracy rating. It’s quite astonishing.”
“Barthly?” Matt asked, his tone mirroring my own incredulity. “The evil wizard who used dark magic, usurped the throne, and kept our realm in shadow for forty years was named Barthly?” He flailed his hands. “Barthly!”
Harlow squinted. “He did not prefer to use his name.”
“Well, would you? If your name was Barthly?”
“But you continued to work here. Why didn’t you find another job? Somewhere else? Like in the village we stormed through?”
Harlow wrinkled his nose. “Find another job? That pays well? In this economy?”
“You were literally hanging out of a window this morning, trying to escape,” I said.
