Reviews | February 2019

I read 6 books in February, which is one better than January. But I started several that I’m in the middle of, that I just didn’t finish before the month was up. It was a better reading month rating wise as well, since I read a few 5 star books and a few 4 stars. On to the reviews!

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Reviews

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The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

The Wife Between Us was one of those books I kept seeing around and wanted to read but wasn’t planning on getting to very soon. Then it was chosen as the book of the month for my IRL book club and I decided to download it as an audiobook. I can say that yes, I liked it, but it was mostly a just okay book. Because the summary warns you that there’s a big twist, I was able to guess it because I was waiting for it the whole time. Once that was revealed (about half way), I lost a bit of interest in the characters. I didn’t find the protagonist(s) likeable and really didn’t care about their marriage or the lives they were leading. It was interesting in the mystery aspect, but once I figured out what that was, I sort of felt meh about it. It was entertaining enough to keep interested until the end, but not for any particular reason other than I wanted to see how the authors would wrap up the story. The ending was just okay too, kind of weird. And the epilogue felt completely unnecessary and totally unrealistic. I gave this one 3 stars but it’s closer to a 2.5 (I just don’t do half ratings). It was fun to discuss for my book club but the book was just whatever for most of us.

Rating: ★★★

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Dread Nation (Dread Nation #1)
by Justina Ireland

This book takes place during the Civil War era but with zombies. It’s such an interesting take on history while being super fast paced, so I was sucked into the story immediately. There’s lots of twists and turns, non-stop adventuring, and plenty of zombie killing to keep me satisfied. The author didn’t shy away from the racist times and how such would have affected people of color if a zombie outbreak would have affected everyone. I wasn’t too sure if this one was for me at first, but I’m glad I gave it a chance because I really liked it!! I look forward to seeing where this series goes after this and hope to see the second book soon!

Rating: ★★★★

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Defy the Stars (Constellation, #1) by Claudia Gray

This one caught me by surprise because I was a little unsure if I wanted to read a Claudia Gray book. I tried reading her Evernight series and basically hated the first book. But I knew it was time to give her a chance and I’m so glad I did! This sci-fi book takes place in outer space and follows to different perspectives, both very different characters who are forced to team to accomplish a mission. I was pulled in from the beginning and came to really like both characters, Naomi and Abel, and really wanted them to succeed and survive. The story is fast-paced and I look forward to continuing this series with the next book because I want to know what happens next asap!

Rating: ★★★★

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Shadow and Bone (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #1)
by Leigh Bardugo

I’ve been hearing about this series for a while now because it’s so popular, but I’ve had this on my shelves for years and didn’t feel as intrigued to read it as everyone else. I finally picked it up to read Six of Crows, which takes place in the same world, but wasn’t sure what to expect. I don’t pick up fantasy books as easily as others because sometimes the expansive worlds are too much for me to actually get into, but that wasn’t the case with this one. Leigh Bardugo has written a very complex work but the story/characters are followed with ease because the protagonist, Alina, is discovering herself and world as we are. The book is slower paced, but I found myself captivated by she was dealing with and read this a lot faster than I expected. I am looking forward to starting the next book in the series right away.

Rating: ★★★★

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Fullmetal Alchemist: Fullmetal Edition, Vol. 1
by Hiromu Arakawa

I’d been dying to pick up the manga for Fullmetal Alchemist since I watched the anime years ago. I love this story of two brothers who go through so much to try and gain their bodies back after an alchemic mistake. I picked up the Fullmetal Edition and love it. The story is almost the same as the anime, as the first two or three episodes I believe, and I was able to appreciate so much. I definitely recommend any fans of the series to pick this up, although I do suggest watching the anime before the manga because it is a lot to take in and easier to be understood on screen.

Rating: ★★★★★

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White Fur by Jardine Libaire

In all honesty, I had no idea what this book was about but it was on my Netgalley list and I found it available in audiobook so I checked it out without knowing anything. The story takes place in dual perspectives following two completely opposite characters that develop a sexual obsession which eventually turns into something more. Together they face all odds, and I was really surprised which how much I wanted to know where it would all end. I wasn’t captivated throughout the whole book but I was interested in knowing where the story was going to end because of the glimpse into the future we get in the first few pages. I did lose some interest in some of the middle areas and probably would’ve skimmed it if I had been reading a physical book. Instead I found myself losing focus in the audiobook but kept going. I’m glad I got through it cause this was such a unique story that I’m glad I didn’t miss out or give up.

Rating: ★★★

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And that’s all for my review in February! I do hope to finish more books next month, but I’m glad I was able to get through these at least this month.

Reviews | January 2019

I read 5 books in the month of January, but my goal was to read about 8 a month so I’m already behind on that. For the most part, it was an okay reading month. There wasn’t anything I really loved, although there was one book I enjoyed more than others, which was Bird Box. I started a few other books during January but I have yet to finish them.

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Reviews

Dry Spell
by Vi Keeland

This was my first taste at a Vi Keeland book and while it was a cute, sexy read it was also too short. There was not enough sexy times, but I couldn’t really expect more from such a short read. I’m definitely looking forward to checking out a full Vi Keeland novel in the future.

Rating: ★★★

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Bird Box 
by Josh Malerman

I heard of this one years ago and I meant to read it sooner but never had the chance to. Once the movie came out on Netflix and there was so much hype surrounding it, I felt motivated enough to finally pick it up. It’s definitely a mysterious story about a dystopian world where people must keep their eyes shut in order to survive because once they look at whatever is outside, they die.

The story was thrilling enough to keep me listening, but slow paced enough that I was never overwhelmed. It switches from past to present through alternating chapters and I was intrigued to learn more. Definitely a creepy thriller to keep you at the edge of your seat.

Rating: ★★★★

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Jaded and Tyed (Forbidden Romance 2.5)
by Penelope Ward

While this could’ve been a good introduction to a new couple in the Forbidden Romance series, I couldn’t connect with it at all because one of the characters takes part in cheating on their partner and I was just not okay with it. Because of that, I really wasn’t enjoying the romance/relationship that was developed and felt like maybe this wasn’t a good place to start with Penelope Ward. I saw other reviews that mentioned this author usually does write books with cheating so I might just steer away from future Penelope Ward books.

Rating: ★★

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Sharp Objects
by Gillian Flynn

I was expecting a little more because Gillian Flynn is such a popular author, but for the most part, I found Sharp Objects to be anticlimactic. The plot follows reporter, Camille, who returns to her hometown after years of being away to learn about murders taking place. As a protagonist, she felt unreliable and her actions are so disjointed, I felt this whole book did not flow well. I was able to figure out the mystery (or part of it), early on and kept going only to find out if I was right. There are no likeable characters, Camille isn’t that great of a person, and the whole mystery aspect was sort of pushed to the side and overrun by the family’s issues. I was pretty disappointed but am looking forward to watching the miniseries soon anyways.

Rating: ★★★

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A Little Something Different 
by Sandy Hall

This is a cute story, and that’s about it. It takes place from 14 perspectives that are not the two main lovers being followed. The idea is unique, but the book itself was just okay. It’s cute, but not much else. I was hoping for a little more depth, although how much depth could I expect when some of the POV’s are from a squirrel and a bench? I can’t say I didn’t enjoy this, but it’s a very forgettable albeit adorable story.

Rating: ★★★★

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And that’s it for my reviews in January! I hope you guys enjoy this new way of reviewing will be taking over individual reviews on my blog, unless I specifically review a book sent by the publisher and/or tour here on my blog. I’m looking forward to continuing my reviews and staying up to date with them going forward!

Healthy(ish) Vol. 1

I saw this post idea over at To Love and To Learn which she got from Franish. But here I am making it my own. Since starting up my blog again, I wanted to incorporate a few more things from my life, and an important one is my health, eating habits, workouts, and overall fitness. I am constantly worrying about what I'm eating, how much I weigh and how my muscles are changing. So I thought it would be fun to do a monthly sort of post where I share what my fitness and dieting habits are like.

Let me start off by saying that I know I am not fat. I know I am about average weight for a woman my age and height, and that even though I don't always eat that great, I am conscious of what I am consuming. I have been worrying about my body image for as long as I can remember and it would be great to feel like I look good the way I am, but let me be honest and say, I would like to look better. Again, not because I feel like I am overweight or really unhealthy, but because I know I have room to improve.

Let's Talk About Weight

The last time I weighed myself was a couple weeks ago and I was at 144.4 lbs. I've been fluctuating between 140-148 pounds for the last two or so years and have noticed that as I've gotten older it's been harder to shed the pounds and reach the 130's. My goal weight is and has been for a few years 125 lbs. I look back at my weigh-in's on MFP from years ago, and notice that when I was around 125(ish), I wanted to be lighter. Like I said, I've always struggled with accepting my body the way that it is, and I have come to accept that it's just part of the way I am. I don't mind thinking I could look better, and in no way do I think that my mentality is unhealthy.

Anyway, my goal is to lose around 20 pounds this year and maintain my weight. Is it achievable? Hell yes. 20 pounds isn't that much, but like I said, these last few years have made it harder. I don't know if it's because my metabolism is slowing down, because I am eating worse, or just because that's what my body is doing now. But I know that if I really put work into it, I can reach that goal. The problem is that usually I give up about half way.

My Short Term Goal

I am going on a cruise in April and I want to lose around 10 pounds in the next month and a half. This is a stretch because realistically I only think I will lose about 1 pound to 1.5 pounds a week. But I am determined and have been doing well (for a week and a half) and am hoping to keep up the momentum. The weekend before I started my diet, I binged a bit because I knew starting Monday, I really wanted to be serious about it, so I had KBBQ, snacks, a few alcoholic beverages, and a few other things here and there. I then got rid of all the snacks in my house and prepped some stuff for the week.

What I'm Eating

My current eating goals is 1380 calories a day. That's pretty good for me since I am usually aiming for 1200 or less. This amount is good for me because I work out 3-4 days a week and am on the shorter side. Every one's goals/calories look different depending on what they look like and what their goals are. I decided to stick to this amount of calories with the hopes of, again, losing one pound a week.

My eating begins around 12:30pm every day. I know this is later than most people but I follow an intermittent fasting schedule (16/8) and this works well with me. My days usually start at 7am and I drink water throughout the morning until my first meal at lunchtime. I then have a snack in the mid afternoon and my last meal before 8:30pm. This is something that just works with me and my schedule and I plan to stick with it for the next couple months.

This weekend I prepared overnight oats for the week. I am not a huge fan of oats, and was a little weary of this when my bf suggested it, but after trying them on Sunday morning I fell in love. We made them using lactose free milk, greek yogurt, fruit (strawberries, blueberries, raspberries), almonds, coconut shavings, and honey. It is so good that I haven't minded eating it every morning for a week and a half. Since that's my first meal of the day, I count is as both breakfast and lunch, so I also have something else on the side to fill me up. Sometimes its a salad, or chicken and rice, or maybe just a bar and a fruit. It depends on what I have available and how much I am willing to save for dinner. Depending on how many calories I save for dinner (I aim for at least 500) determines what I have for dinner. Usually I try to focus on eating more protein and carbs for my last meal, but it all depends on what I feel like eating as well.

The good thing about counting calories and macronutrients is that I can basically eat whatever I want as long as I can make it fit into my calorie goals for the day. It all works out pretty well.

Workouts & Fitness

I don't make as much time to go to the gym. There I said it. I wish I could say that I don't have as much time, but even though my days are around 12 hours long from when I wake up to when I'm back home from work, I could probably hit the gym for about an hour every night before I need to be in bed. But realistically, I won't be doing that. Instead, I go 3 times a week. I go every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Yes, I complain about it almost every time, and sometimes I'd rather go out than hit the gym. There have been a couple times where I have gone out instead of going to the gym. That's real life.

Lucky for me, I now live with someone (my boyfriend) who does not fail to go to the gym as scheduled. He is disciplined beyond belief and convinces me (usually) to keep to my gym schedule. So every Friday after work, Saturday afternoon, and Sunday morning, we find ourselves at the gym. Friday and Saturday are upper body days, and Sunday's are leg days. And every day includes cardio. I can't say that it's not hard because it is. And like I said, I don't always want to go to the gym but I do.

This works for me right now. Over a year ago, I was going to the gym about 4 to 5 times a week with one of my best friends, and we were really good about for a little over a year. We both fell off track and while I tried to keep going, it wasn't as frequent or consistent. Now that my boyfriend and I are living together, I have been determined on most days, to make sure I go to the gym on the days that I can.

I started counting the days I was going to the gym on Instagram because I wanted to see how many days out of the year I actually was at the gym. For some reason, posting about it has made me feel prouder and even more motivated to go to the gym.

I've also tried finding more fun ways to incorporate cardio into my life. A while back I took some pole dancing classes and had a lot of fun but didn't keep up with it. I tried boxing and did that for a few months before I couldn't actually make it to classes anymore because of work. Recently, I found a new pole studio that's about two minutes away from my apartment, and on a whim decided to try it out. I've only been to a couple classes but after watching some of my favorite Booktubers doing this for fun, I've wanted to try it again more consistently.
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So far, I am happy with how my diet and workout lifestyle is going. I will probably only weigh myself on weekends but that all depends on how I feel. I will update you guys again next month, and am excited to share my progress. I am looking forward to this new series on my blog and to sharing more personal bits of my life on here as well.

Will I Review Books?

I haven’t reviewed a book here on the blog in a while because, well, I’ve been gone. I’ve sort of reviewed books on Goodreads but mostly just give them a star rating a leave it at that. But I’ve been going back and forth on whether to continue to review books now that I’m back to regularly blogging, and I don’t think I’ll be doing it the same way.

The thing is, I always struggled to get through reviews even though I did it for years. I also always fell behind on the reviews I was putting up because I was reading faster than I was reviewing, which goes to show how slowly I was reviewing because I read really slow. I was always playing catch up with my reviews on here especially because I wanted to make sure I reviewed every book I read. I even started making different kinds of review posts to inspire myself to write them, such as Short Story Saturday and Quick Reviews.

But after much thinking, I’ve decided that no, I won’t be reviewing books the same way. I think what works best for me is sharing my thoughts in a few sentences and providing a star rating, which is basically what I do on Goodreads like I said. I plan to post these “wrap up” kind of posts at the end of the month on books I’ve read that month and that’s it. It’ll still be me reviewing books but in a way that works better for me, and also goes hand in hand with the wrap up videos I upload on my YT channel.

I’m pretty excited to be changing up the format of my reviews, and while I didn’t want to really play catch up anymore, I’m going to do it for the books I’ve read this year so far. So you’ll be seeing January and February reviews in the next few days. But then I’ll be all caught up and that makes me even more excited.

Thanks for sticking through all these changes with me, if you have. I can’t express again, how good it feels to be back to blogging.

Goals + How I've Been Doing.

I am one of those that sets a ton of resolutions and usually fails at all of them. It happens, but it doesn't stop me from doing it all over again. For the past few years I've been sharing my new year goals here on this blog. But I wasn't here this year, at least not at the beginning, to share them. I don't even know if I set that many, but I always have a few. So I wanted to share what those are and how I've been doing. I might do a few check-in's throughout the year (but not likely).

Goals + Am I Failing Already?
+ Read 100 books: Yes I am failing already. Yes, I try this every year. Yes, I have never made it. Yes, I am going to keep trying to make it (it's only March after all.)
+ Pay off some debt: This one will be the death of me. Moving on.
+ Lose some weight: I want to lose around 25lbs. Realistically, I will about +/- 3 lbs.

To be honest, that's most of my goals. There's a few additional reading/bookish goals I have which I talked about in a video that you can watch here, but mostly include reading my own books, not buying as many books, and reviewing on the Netgalley ARC's I still haven't reviewed.

I am not doing that great in my goals, if I am being honest. But I don't lose hope that I will succeed if I continue to try. I still think I can read 100 books, I have just fallen a little behind and need to quickly catch up. I have started a new diet and will hopefully lose some of the weight I can't seem to get rid of. And I have banned my credit cards from my presence so I won't use them. I think I can do really well, if I only try a little more. I will keep y'all updated as regularly as I can.

xoxo

Cindy

Hello, it's me.

I'm back. I can't believe I am. When I wrote my last post, I was sure I was done. I made plans to delete my blog and made up a post with links in case anyone stumbled upon my blog and wanted to find me elsewhere. I was ready to say goodbye. Except I wasn't. I couldn't actually delete everything especially after so many years. I've had this little blog here since 2009 and while it's never been anything special to anyone except for me, I couldn't just erase everything that I had spent countless hours writing. I guess I just needed a long break.

I don't know how well my comeback will be, to be honest. But I have been thinking about posts I want to write, reviews I want to add to my list, new features and ideas I want to incorporate and I feel like maybe this time I am really back.

I think the reason why I stopped blogging as much was lack of inspiration and YouTube + social media. Other websites have become huge for the book community, from Booktubers to Bookstagrammers and everything in between. Blogging just isn't as popular as it used to be and I found myself lured into these other platforms. I started my own YouTube channel under the same name and attempted numerous times to have a dedicated book Instagram but that didn't work out. And while I regularly upload videos (honestly, it's just here and there every month if I'm to it) it's just not the same for me. I have to actually get ready, and have good lighting, and go over what I want to say. There's so much planning and preparation and I miss the ease of sitting in my pajamas and writing up a post in a few minutes. There's so much more that is involved in the other platforms and I am just too lazy to keep it going as frequently as others.

Basically, what I am trying to say is that blogging has been my favorite way of sharing my thoughts on books and I've missed it. Maybe I'm back for good or maybe I won't write another post for years. Who knows. I know I want to do this again and I think that I am finally determined to really come back.

I will see you all soon.

xoxo

Cindy