Pumpkin Pounder by Laura Lovely

🍎🍎🍎

The last book I read for September was Pumpkin Pounder by Laura Lovely. I wanted a quick novella to end the month and something fall vibes for Fall in Love and the Bang in the Night Bingo. October 1st also started the Love in the Night Readathon so I wanted to stick away from paranormal and save those for both that and the upcoming Paranormal Romance Readathon. Okay, so this is the second book in her Fairytale Remixes series and I went against my normal reading things in order rule. I applied this to the prompt fall release for Fall in Love. This also covers the trick or treat, a dark, dark and stormy night, #squadgoals and published in October prompts for Bang in the Night Bingo.

Daisy and her roommate are headed to a Halloween party at a run down tugboat. Daisy is known as a "pumpkin pounder." She is pretty much just attracted to red-headed men and has made it her personal goal to go through the red-headed population of New York. At the party, she comes across a new man with a gorgeous Irish accent. Is one night going to be enough?

This was cute. I have to say though, it took me a bit to get into it. The way that they were talking felt so "movie" and just didn't seem natural. I've never been a bit partier or night club attendee, so maybe people talk like this. I don't know. It just felt weird and it almost immediately made me nervous if it was going to be like this the entire time. I almost dnf-ed it, this 60 page novella. Once they stopped being "on," I was able to get into the story more.

There are a couple things that saved this for me, the first is Jack. He was just so sweet and I really loved how he took her out for a date and really pushed her to want more than just a "wham, bam" one-night stand. I also liked the scene where Daisy went to therapy. I felt it was done well outside of the quick breakthrough. This is a novella though, so the quickness didn't bother me much. I also liked that it ended with a we're going to start dating and not too much of an instant love. 

If you're looking for a quick Halloween and/or fall read, certainly check this out. I think going over it in my head for this review I'm leaning more towards 3.5 stars. I'll definitely check out the first book since it's about mermaids. I just wanted to stick to fall or Halloween vibed books this month.

Have you read Pumpkin Pounder?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

STATISTICS: Pumpkin Pounder, Laura Lovely, 3-stars, 0 days, eBook, 60 pages, published in 2019

End of Year Book Tag

Time for another book tag! I first saw this one thanks to Crystal from Crystal's Bookish Life! She's one of my favorite booktubers to watch and has the cutest dog Cosmo. Definitely check her out if you haven't yet! Now, despite the name, this is a book tag focusing on your plans for the rest of the year and not a wrap up tag. Let's do the thing!

1. Are there any books you started this year you need to finish?
Outside of what I'm currently reading, nope. I'm pretty good at finishing what I start. I mean at this point I have only one DNF and I don't plan on picking it up again.

2. Do you have a autumnal book to transition to the end of the year?
Not really. I do tend to read more paranormal this time of year. Although, this kind of goes with fall, but I tend to read more hockey (and other fall sports) romances late summer and fall. Mostly because I'm getting hyped for hockey coming back. This year I didn't really pick up many, but I kind of want to reread at least Mister Hockey by Lia Riley.

3. Is there a new release you're still waiting for?
I mean, I have a quite a list of preorders that are supposed to come out later this month. I do have a couple books I'm keeping my eyes for November and December as well. Most are mentioned in my Mid-Year Freak Out Tag. The ones that aren't are mentioned are Walking in a Witchy Wonderland by Juliette Cross (out Tuesday!) and The Lady Gets Lucky by Joanna Shupe (out 10/26 & look at that gorgeous cover). Also recently announced was The Wit and Wisdom of Bridgerton by Julia Quinn, but it's more of an official guide.

4. Three books you want to read before the end of the year?
Well, outside of any new releases, this was harder to narrow down to just three. I think if I look at my backlists or more current reads... First is Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade. It's been on my tbr forever and I have the paperback copy. The second book comes out in late Ocotber, so I should finally get to, especially with the hype having lowered lately. Two, I want to get to Marriage for One by Ella Maise. I really enjoyed reading her recently and have heard good things about it. I also need to finally start Molly Harper's Mystic Bayou series; the first book is How to Date a Dragon.

5. Is there a book you think could still shock you and become a favorite of the year?
Sure. I still have a lot of reading left in the year and can't wait! Outside of new releases that might blow me away, I'm always looking to add a new author and/or series. In the past couple months I've already found several new contemporary authors and their books are definitely in the running for my favorites of the year.

6. Reading plans for next year?
So I don't usually plan too much into the future outside of book club books (if they happen to be announced early). I do know that the Kate Daniels readalong is currently planned to finish the series in February and start the spin-off Aurelia Ryder in March. Outside of that, just any new releases I know that are coming out that I'm super excited for. I do have a list of ideas for tweaks to how I'm doing reviews on here and with my book tracking. When we get closer to the end of the year and I firm up what changes I'll be making, I'll post the updates!

I had a lot of fun thinking about what's to come. This was also a shorter book tag with more precise questions I feel like. I definitely didn't get quite as rambly as I tend too. I can't wait to see what new books I find and how things end up. A little possible teaser, I'm thinking for my yearly wrap up of doing a bracket style competition to find my favorite books. I know for sure I'll be separating out historicals and doing a separate bracket there, but I'll have to see how my stats end up looking. If you also do the End of Year Book Tag, let me know so I can check it out!

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

Paranormal Romance Readathon

Update: Wrap Up is posted!

The Paranormal Romance Readathon is back! It's hosted by the lovely ladies that also do the Historical Romance Readathon, Jess, Lisa and Lacey! I participated in this readathon last year and really enjoyed it. This year they are following suit with the Love in the Night Readathon and hosting for just a weekend as well. It'll be next weekend, October 8th-10th. There is a mini bingo board (below). I actually have plans that weekend on Saturday and Sunday morning, so I might start it early on Thursday and maybe run through Monday. It all depends on if the plans come to fruition (family is potentially coming in from out of state).

Since it's a smaller board and novella is the center, I'm hoping to read at least two books, one a novella that would also cover at least one other space. Heck, maybe I could cover almost all of the prompts with one! Below is my idea list and hopefully I can get to a couple of them! Now, I have active tbr/idea lists for Fall in Love, Bang in the Night Bingo and the Love in the Night Readathon. There are a few duplicates between those three, so I'm going to try to list something different here, but any of those books could also work for these prompts. Also, since I stuck to mainly shifters for the Love in the Night Readathon, I'll try to go with other paranormal creatures here, although a shifter or two may sneak their way in!

🎃 Jen, The Book Refuge, has a discord and hosts a buddy read. She took a couple months off, but is back this month. She did a poll and the book that won was Hollow Heathens by Nicole Fiorina. I have never heard of this book before, so I do want to try to read it this month.

🎃 A novella I heard a lot about last year was Halloween Boo by Sarah Spade. It sounds super cute and I feel like there aren't too many ghost romances out there.

🎃 A new find for me is Frozen by Meljean Brook. Another pen name for her is Milla Vane, the author behind one of my favorite fantasy romance series. I want to read books under this penname from her and hopefully can get a chance to get to this one soon. It looks like it incorporates Norse mythology, so I'm not sure if it's paranormal or fantasy, but I'm certainly intrigued.

🎃 A series I haven't started yet but want to try out is the Dark Sorcery series by Cheyenne McCray. It's a witch based series and used to be called Magic. I guess the books were re-edited or something and the series retitled.

🎃 Another new to me series is also a new series that started earlier this year by Susanna Allen. The first book is A Wolf in Duke's Clothing and is both a historical and paranormal romance!

🎃 Another series I haven't started yet but have heard good things about is Kristen Callihan's Darkest London. This is also a historical and paranormal romance series and the first book is Firelight.

🎃 A new release that came out at the end of September is The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling. I've heard its a lighter and fluffier paranormal. It's also a second chance romance, which I'm not the biggest fan of, but the blurb sounds cute.

🎃 Finally, I have another Molly Harper book. I know I've mentioned her a lot lately, but one book I haven't mentioned is her stand-alone Better Homes and Hauntings. I still haven't read it yet and it also has ghosts, just not as a main character.

Another weekend readathon and another long list. There's just too many paranormal romances I want to read. When used to read back in high school and college, outside of my romantic suspense phase, I mainly read paranormal if I was picking up a romance. There was a lot on my tbr at that time, and having kind of moved away from paranormal there is quite a bit that I still haven't gotten to or missed completely. I feel like next year I want to try to spread my reads across genres a little better on a monthly basis, but I'm mostly a mood reader. We'll see what happens!

Are you participating in the Paranormal Romance Readathon?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

September 2021 Wrap Up

 Happy October! I can't believe we are into October and it's really starting to feel like fall. This is my favorite time of year and I am so excited. We have football back (Go Broncos!), hockey comes back soon (Go Aves Go!), the general merriment of people is higher with impending holidays and good cheer and I love the cooler weather! So, September was a slower month for me. Things picked up later in the month-ish, but I just needed a little bit of break. I ended up not picking up a book for the first 8 days. My reading will start to taper as we hit the end of the year since I'll have more games to watch and need to get moving on crafting Christmas presents. Hopefully I can still get to at least 10-15 books a month. If me reading really starts to taper, I'll probably start posting every other day instead of daily, but we'll see what happens! Thankfully I really outdid myself in August so I didn't get too behind with posts last month.

I have several readathons planned and ongoing through the month. Last month I had the start of Fall in Love and Bang in the Night Bingo. Today starts the weekend of Love in the Night Readathon Round 3 and also just announced is the Paranormal Romance Readathon. I'll have my tbr posted for that tomorrow!

As always stats are below. Books are listed in ordered read. Let's get to it!

September 2021

15 books read for 4,319 pages

💗 I averaged 1.47 days per book
💗 The average page count per book was 287.93
💗 I read 3 books under 100 pages, 3 in the 200s, 7 in the 300s and 2 in the 400s
💗 6 of the books I read were for clubs or readathons

💗 1 of my books were diverse

💗 I read 9 new authors
💗 I reread 1 book

💗 I owned 7 of the books in paperback and added 6 to my wishlist

💗 I read 6 books in eBook, 7 in paperback and 2 in audiobook

💗 I read 1 book published in 1990s, 5 in the 2000s, 7 in the 2010s, and 4 in the 2020s

💗 My average rating was 4.33
🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎 - 6 books
🍎🍎🍎🍎 - 8 books
🍎🍎🍎 - 1 book

💗 7 books were contemporary, 2 books were historical, and 3 books were paranormal romance. I also read 3 urban fantasy.

1. Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase 🍎🍎🍎🍎

2. Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎

3. Magic Burns by Ilona Andrews 🍎🍎🍎🍎

4. A Questionable Client by Ilona Andrews 🍎🍎🍎🍎

5. The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎

6. The Duplicate Bride by Ginny Baird 🍎🍎🍎🍎

7. To Love Jason Thorn by Ella Maise 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎

8. Something About Emmaline by Elizabeth Boyle 🍎🍎🍎🍎

9. To Hate Adam Connor by Ella Maise 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎

10. Yes & I Love You by Roni Loren 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎

11. Her Halloween Treat by Tiffany Reisz 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎

12. How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf by Molly Harper 🍎🍎🍎🍎

13. Remembering a Witch by Lauren Connolly 🍎🍎🍎🍎

14. Forgotten Storm by A.R. Vagnetti 🍎🍎🍎🍎

15. Pumpkin Pounder by Laura Lovely 🍎🍎🍎

~ Curran POV Part 1 by Gordon Andrews

💗 I had a lot of really good reads this month even though I didn't have many. I absolutely adored Ali Hazelwood's debut novel and am so excited to finally start Ilona Andrews's Kate Daniels series. I also really loved Ella Maise's Love & Hate duet. My least favorite read would have to be Something About Emmaline, but I did enjoy it better than the previous book I read by Elizabeth Boyle. I don't know if she's quite redeemed, but we'll see if I end up picking up another one of her books.

I'm super excited to continue the Kate Daniels readalong this month and also for a couple book club books! I'm also excited to get to more paranormal with the spoopy vibes and can't wait to start getting to some more cozy and winter vibes as well. I keep saying it, but I love this time of year and can't wait. I am so ready for hot tea/sweater weather. I'm excited to see how well I end up doing on the various readathons and challenges I'm participating in. Hopefully I can get some good reads in. I feel like this month I did a good job picking up books I knew I was in the mood for and would like. Also almost everything was in paperback and I also had a lot of new authors. Hopefully I can continue reading more new authors throughout the end of the year!

How did your reading go last month?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

Charts: Decades, Genres, Pages, Stars

Forgotten Storm by A.R. Vagnetti

🍎🍎🍎🍎

So the next book I picked up was Forgotten Storm by A.R. Vagnetti. This is the first in her Storm series and also her debut novel. I applied this read to Fall in Love for the starts with F prompt. This also covers the Bang in the Night Bingo prompts a shocking twist and bite me.

Nicole used to dream about a man named Logan that fulfilled all of her fantasies. Two years ago, the dreams ended. After being on the run for years, she is starting to feel an itch that she can't stop. Suddenly Logan shows up, not only is he real but he's a vampire. He brings Nicole's forgotten memories from her youth and soon she learns she's the key to a century-old prophecy to bring down her father, the vampire king Dimitri.

So, before we get into my thoughts on the book, I want to talk about how I found this. A.R. Vagnetti is actually a friend of my Aunt Rowie! She came to town a couple months ago for a high school reunion and we were able to see each other a couple days. One night we were talking about books and when she heard I read paranormal romance she said her friend writes it. She also said it had sex (and that she skipped it since there was so much), but I didn't mind. I immediately bought the first book and added the other three books to my cart. The paperback was actually cheaper than the eBook, so I ended up buying a copy of it. When I was looking through my long tbr on goodreads for books that started with F and were paranormal or adjacent, I totally had spaced about this book. Which is crazy because I had reorganized my paranormal and fantasy shelves the day before.

I didn't know too much before going into this outside of it being too steamy for my aunt. I have to say, I liked it. Now, it was good and I liked a lot of the elements. The writing style was a little odd to me. I'm not sure what exactly it was, but sometimes I would just think, that was an odd transition. Even though I though it was good, it wasn't quite as engaging. It was very easy for me to put it down. I just wasn't quite as pulled into the story as normally happens. Once the plot starting really going I was expecting to be a little more engaged, but there were some choices made by the character that kept pushing things back. There are quite a few things I can get nitpicky about. The biggest issue I had though is that it felt a little over plotted. There were almost too many twists and/or setbacks and character points. I feel like it needed paring down a little bit. That is an issue I've seen before from indie-published author debuts. They just aren't quite there to self-edit for streamlining of the plot and want to just throw everything but the kitchen sink into their book. This led to me disliking Nicole the further we got in the book. When we got to the big battle at the end, I almost didn't really care if she made it through or not. It was a solid 4-stars for a debut novel, but some choices started getting made around the 200 pages mark that I think I'm going to drop it to a 3.5 and just round up on goodreads. I just wasn't emotionally invested in the book overall.

I'll definitely pick up the other books. I'm super sad that one character I wanted a book for ended up dying in the battle. There were some teaser for other couples. I also want to see how she grows as an author. There's a lot of good and unique world building here, I just wish that it was more engaging. We'll see when I pick up the next one!

Have you read Forgotten Storm?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

STATISTICS: Forgotten Storm, A.R. Vagnetti, 4-stars, 3 days, paperback, 312 pages, published in 2020