Like last month, t’s a little later in the month again, but I’m here again participating in another Birthstone Book Covers!
Birthstone Book Covers is a fun monthly post created by Leslie @ Books Are the New Black. Each month, she features book covers that are either the same color of that month’s birthstone or include the color in the title.
July has one birthstone – Ruby.
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!
Blood & Honey by Shelby Mahurin
Dreadful by Caitlin Rozakis
What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher
The Forest King’s Daughter by Elly Blake
The Dragon Heir by Cinda Williams Chima
The Shadow Throne by Jennifer A. Nielsen
What are your favorite books with red book covers? If you participated in Birthstone Books, which books did you choose this July?
Thanks for reading, and I hope you have the most amazing day/night!
I’m a little bit late with the Monthly Wrap-Up again, but thankfully still not as late as last month, lol. I’m not literally posting this on St. Patrick’s Day (unlike February’s prominent holiday). I still didn’t read as many books as I’d have liked last month, but we can’t all get what we want sometimes.
So yeah, even though my reading goal was a measly two books in February, I still didn’t make it, unfortunately. But I still read one book, so I’m still doing this!
So here’s my stats from The StoryGraph from February 2024.
February 2024 Reading
1 read 1 book and 152 pages
So, once again, there’s not a lot here, unfortunately. I only read one book, and my StoryGraph statistics reflect that.
I still have three different Moods though – Tense, Mysterious and Dark. It’s not my usual Mood graph, so that’s pretty cool. My pace was pretty medium, the book I read was sub 300 pages, and it was fiction (as seems to be the usual with me).
Still not a lot here – courtesy of my reading habits last month. But there is stuff here. The novel I read – What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher – had two genres applied to it: Horror and LGBTQIA+.
The format of this novel was digital – as in, an ebook – so the Format chart is once again wrong, as it tends to be. I rated the three and a half stars, and my reading was split between both ends of February.
So yeah. I didn’t really do a lot of reading last month. Again, ugh. (Well, technically I read a lot of fanfiction, again, but I don’t count that here.) The only thing that I really want to do for March is read at least two books. Hopefully one book a week even, but that would be kind of a miracle. Anything’s better than the last few months.
Regarding my poor, neglected reading blog, I’m hoping to post a little better. I’m planning on posting some Tasteful Tuesdays again, hopefully starting today, I’m planning on participating in my monthly posts, and I have a St. Patrick’s Day post I’m thinking about. I’m also hoping to post a few book reviews, if I can manage to read more than one book in a month. Fingers crossed. 🤞🍀
Anyway, thank you to anyone who still checks out my blog. I hope you have a wonderful day/night!
Alex Easton, retired soldier, returns in this novella-length sequel to the bestselling What Moves The Dead.
When Easton travels to Gallacia as a favor to Miss Potter, they find their home empty, the caretaker dead, and the grounds troubled by a strange, uncanny silence.
The locals whisper of a strange breath-stealing being from Gallacian folklore that has taken up residence in Easton’s home . . . and in their dreams.
My Review
Soldier’s heart doesn’t know the difference between terrible things. Fungus or cannon fire, it’s all just the war.
Though not as good as its predecessor, What Feasts at Night is still a great follow-up to What Moves the Dead. Unlike the latter, it isn’t a retelling of a classic story, but an original story.
I still enjoyed reading about Easton and Angus and Ms. Potter, as well as the new major characters. Angus and Ms. Potter especially – their little romance is still absolutely adorable. But I felt that this book was missing… something that was prevalent in the first book.
I believe it had to do with the novel’s atmosphere. When reading What Moves the Dead, I could feel the story slipping downhill. Weird things kept happening and kept getting worse and worse, and you knew it was building up to something terrible. But here, in the sequel, there isn’t really any of that same pervasive horrific tone. Sure bad things happen – but never to the degree of book one.
And I didn’t really like the monster twist in What Feasts at Night. The fungi thing that the first novel had going for it was interesting and sinister. But the creature in the second book was more… supernatural in nature. And I didn’t really like that. I wanted it to be another mushroom monster – heck our marvelous mycologist Ms. Potter was even here and she found a strange fungus she hadn’t seen before. I thought it was all building up to another fungus thing, and then it didn’t.
So yeah, the lack of more creepy mushroom stuff disappointed me, and colored my perception of the book, unfortunately. Which is why I didn’t rate it as highly as I did the first one. I just didn’t enjoy it as much; it also felt slower than book one. And those of you who have been reading my posts for a while know how I love a good, fast-paced romp.
But I still recommend What Feasts at Night to fans of What Moves the Dead, as well as other works of T. Kingfisher. It’s a fine, well written book, and even though I criticized the decision not to have another horrifying mushroom adventure, I did still enjoy the monster we got. Just… not as much. (Also, we got to visit Gallacia for the duration of the story and got to learn more about it in a natural way, which I really loved.)
My Favorite Quotes
May he shit pinecones in hell.
“You know,” I said to Angus, “we could still be in Paris right now.”
“I didn’t force you to come,” he said.
“You blackmailed me.”
“I most certainly did not.”
“There was guilt. I distinctly remember guilt being involved.”
If this was a fairy tale, it was the kind where everyone gets eaten as a cautionary tale about straying into the woods, not the sentimental kind that ends with a wedding and the words, “And if they have not since died, they are living there still.”
You really don’t want to drink our wine. We export it because we don’t want to drink it either.
Tomorrow, in my experience, is only worth worrying about when there’s something you can do about it.
This is a few days later than I wanted to post this, but I was still recovering from being sick earlier this week. And I was busy. But it’s here now – the first post about anticipated books in 2024!
It’s the first quarter of 2024 now, so it’s time to do that thing I’ve done every quarteragain. I’m gonna go over the books that are coming out over the next three months that interest me the most. And they’re pretty much only gonna be science fiction and fantasy. Because that’s mostly what I read.
This time I have five books that I’m interested in. We’ll see how many of them I end up reading though, lol. Hopefully all of them!
RELEASING: January 16th
When mysterious faeries from other realms appear at her university, curmudgeonly professor Emily Wilde must uncover their secrets before it’s too late in this heartwarming, enchanting second installment of the Emily Wilde series.
Emily Wilde is a genius scholar of faerie folklore—she just wrote the world’s first comprehensive of encylopaedia of faeries. She’s learned many of the secrets of the Hidden Folk on her adventures… and also from her fellow scholar and former rival, Wendell Bambleby.
Because Bambleby is more than infuriatingly charming. He’s an exiled faerie king on the run from his murderous mother, and in search of a door back to his realm. So despite Emily’s feelings for Bambleby, she’s not ready to accept his proposal of marriage: Loving one of the Fair Folk comes with secrets and danger.
And she also has a new project to focus on: a map of the realms of faerie. While she is preparing her research, Bambleby lands her in trouble yet again, when assassins sent by Bambleby’s mother invade Cambridge. Now Bambleby and Emily are on another adventure, this time to the picturesque Austrian Alps, where Emily believes they may find the door to Bambley’s realm, and the key to freeing him from his family’s dark plans.
But with new relationships for the prickly Emily to navigate and dangerous Folk lurking in every forest and hollow, Emily must unravel the mysterious workings of faerie doors, and of her own heart.
RELEASING: January 30th
The stunning third book in the sexy, action-packed Crescent City series, following the global bestsellers House of Earth and Blood and House of Sky and Breath.
Bryce Quinlan never expected to see a world other than Midgard, but now that she has, all she wants is to get back. Everything she loves is in Midgard: her family, her friends, her mate. Stranded in a strange new world, she’s going to need all her wits about her to get home again. And that’s no easy feat when she has no idea who to trust.
Hunt Athalar has found himself in some deep holes in his life, but this one might be the deepest of all. After a few brief months with everything he ever wanted, he’s in the Asteri’s dungeons again, stripped of his freedom and without a clue as to Bryce’s fate. He’s desperate to help her, but until he can escape the Asteri’s leash, his hands are quite literally tied.
In this sexy, breathtaking sequel to the #1 bestsellers House of Earth and Blood and House of Sky and Breath, Sarah J. Maas’s Crescent City series reaches new heights as Bryce and Hunt’s world is brought to the brink of collapse-with its future resting on their shoulders.
RELEASING: February 13th
Alex Easton, retired soldier, returns in this novella-length sequel to the bestselling What Moves The Dead.
When Easton travels to Gallacia as a favor to Miss Potter, they find their home empty, the caretaker dead, and the grounds troubled by a strange, uncanny silence.
The locals whisper of a strange breath-stealing being from Gallacian folklore that has taken up residence in Easton’s home… and in their dreams.
RELEASING: February 13th
During the Great War, a combat nurse searches for her brother, believed dead in the trenches despite eerie signs that suggest otherwise, in this hauntingly beautiful historical novel with a speculative twist from the New York Times bestselling author of The Bear and the Nightingale.
January 1918. Laura Iven was a revered field nurse until she was wounded and discharged from the medical corps, leaving behind a brother still fighting in Flanders. Now home in Halifax, Canada, she receives word of Freddie’s death in combat, along with his personal effects—but something doesn’t make sense. Determined to uncover the truth, Laura returns to Belgium as a volunteer at a private hospital. Soon after arriving, she hears whispers about haunted trenches, and a strange hotelier whose wine gives soldiers the gift of oblivion. Could Freddie have escaped the battlefield, only to fall prey to something—or someone—else?
November 1917. Freddie Iven awakens after an explosion to find himself trapped in an overturned pillbox with a wounded enemy soldier, a German by the name of Hans Winter. Against all odds, the two men form an alliance and succeed in clawing their way out. Unable to bear the thought of returning to the killing fields, especially on opposite sides, they take refuge with a mysterious man who seems to have the power to make the hellscape of the trenches disappear.
As shells rain down on Flanders, and ghosts move among those yet living, Laura’s and Freddie’s deepest traumas are reawakened. Now they must decide whether their world is worth salvaging—or better left behind entirely.
RELEASING: March 19th
L.M. Sagas’ debut, Cascade Failure, is a highly commercial, sci-fi adventure blending J. S. Dewes’ Divide series with the commercial fan appeal of The Expanse and the cozy SF of Becky Chambers. It features a fierce, messy, chaotic space fam, vibrant worlds, and an exploration of the many ways to be – and not to be – human.
There are only three real powers in the Spiral: the corporate power of the Trust versus the Union’s labor’s leverage. Between them the Guild tries to keep everyone’s hands above the table. It ain’t easy.
Branded a Guild deserter, Jal “accidentally” lands a ride on Guild ship. Helmed by an AI, with a ship’s engineer/medic who doesn’t see much of a difference between the two jobs, and a “don’t make me shoot you” XO, the Guild crew of the Ambit is a little… different.
They’re also in over their heads. Responding to a distress call from an abandoned planet, they find a mass grave, and a live programmer who knows how it happened. The Trust has plans. This isn’t the first dead planet, and it’s not going to be the last.
Unless the crew of the Ambit can stop it.
So yeah, these are my anticipated reads for the beginning of 2024. So far. We’ll see if anything changes, or I change my mind or something.
Anyway, thank you so much for reading and have a wonderful day/night! I know I haven’t been posting a lot lately, and I’m sorry.
