• Blog Tour,  Guest Post

    BLOG TOUR; The Red Beach Hut by Lynn Michell ft. Guest Post by The Author

    This is my first ever blog tour post, so I’m going to admit to being a little anxious writing out this post. I keep telling myself it doesn’t have to be perfect, but I can’t help myself! The number of times I have backtracked this little paragraph is, quite frankly, ridiculous. Especially because I am so grateful and honoured to have Lynn Michell, the author of The Red Beach Hut herself, writing a guest post for my little corner of the internet! The Red Beach Hut by Lynn Michell “Their​ ​eyes​ ​met​ ​and​ ​locked.​ ​Pulling​ ​his​ ​hand​ ​from​ ​his​ ​pocket,​ ​Neville​ ​waved.​ ​Once.” Eight​ ​year​ ​old​ ​Neville​ ​is​ ​the​ ​first​…

  • Discussion Post

    ten things I hate about first person point of view;

    I’ve always been told hate is a very strong word. Growing up, my parents preferred that my sisters and I say we strongly disliked something over hate. Frankly, they’re still that way. And for the most part, I agree. I don’t use hate very much, though sometimes I do use it as hyperbole. (A little bit of that is the case of the title, I will admit.) First person point of view is a very hit or miss with me. I was not fond of it for a very long time, and I still have issues with it. I find myself shying away from a lot of novels with first…

  • Discussion Post

    press play;

    “If music be the food of love, play on.” – Duke Orsino; Twelfth Night, Act 1 Scene 1 For a few years now, I’ve caught myself thinking about books when listening to music. Sometimes a lyric reminds me of a character, or a plot arc, or a relationship in a novel I have read or am reading and I find myself either listening to that song on repeat as I read, or sitting down and making a playlist. Playlists are a fun way of telling a story. While listening to the songs, you get the sense of the characters, get a sense of what the novel has put them through.…

  • Spotlight

    SPOTLIGHT; hashtag bookstagram challenges

    We interrupt our regular schedule to bring you this post. I recently got back into bookstagram. I have been trying to keep to a schedule (Tuesday, Thursday & Saturday posts, which are a lot less than other bookstagram accounts) but things have been going a bit haywire since I came across the challenges people post. Challenges when it comes to bookstagram are not so much competitions. They are more goals for the month. I was confused the first time I came across the term before I realised that it was much like the memes over on tumblr. Last month, a couple of the bookstagram accounts I follow were hosting a…

  • Discussion Post

    the art of poetry;

    I was never much of a poetry girl growing up. I mean, I liked them well enough, I suppose, but they never evoked that sense of wonder or roused my emotions the way getting lost in novels did. Until recently, that is. Tumblr has made being exposed to different styles of poetry much easier. The first few ‘proper’ poems I had read were Shakespearean and the more classic types taught in my English Literature classes. Tumblr has taught me that poetry can be pretty much anything. From a story, to rhyming words, to a protest (of sorts), or to – whatever this is. I have not had the chance to…

  • Spotlight

    SPOTLIGHT; food for thought & the Young Adult genre

    We interrupt our regular schedule to bring you this post. A friend recently linked me to this article, and I’ve had it open on my phone for a while. Just to go back to and read because the first time I read it, I realised something – I agree with most of these points. I mean, I love YA books. I pretty much only read YA books. Almost all the reviews on this blog are of YA books. But when I look at the audience reading these books, we are (almost) all in our twenties or older. Or in our late teens. We read these books for escapism, for the…

  • Mid-Year Wrap Up,  Monthly Wrap Up

    june 2017; it’s a wrap

    It is the middle of the year, and so far, so good! I still refuse to do the whole stats thing, because there is not enough activity on my blog – by me or by anyone else! – for that too look anything but sad. But on the blogging front, I am rather proud of myself! I have kept to my schedule of one discussion post per month, drafted in advance so that I have little stress. AND I have come up with a new feature that allows me some freedom too! Say hello to SPOTLIGHT, posts that can and will be posted as and when I write them! Posts…

  • Spotlight

    SPOTLIGHT; Katie Cross in an Interview with the Author

    We interrupt our regular schedule to bring you this post. When I stumbled across Bon Bon To Yoga Pants on Wattpad, I never expected to tumble down a hole of “Must recommend this to everyone I meet!” and “When will the next book be complete?” and even “How has this not been picked up by a publisher yet?” I did not expect to get the answers to my two questions (“Soon!” and “It has!“) ever. But here we are. If you’ve followed me here from my Tumblr book blog, you will know that I loved this book enough to make a couple of edits for it. With the intention of…

  • Discussion Post

    ;writing communities (and why we need them)

    Most readers I know are also writers. Maybe they’re not writing the next Big Thing, or posting what they are writing anywhere. But they write. Whether reviews or poems or short stories or scenes – they write. And almost every one of them has a community of fellow writers and readers around them that keep them on task, or distract them when they need it. They have a group of friends, maybe online, maybe people they meet up with – maybe even family members they trust – who know they write, who read their words, and who are there to bolster their confidence when it seems like they need it,…

  • Blogversary

    the first of many; a BLOGVERSARY post

    It’s my blogversary! Well, technically, it’s my blogversary month, not day. But because it’s easier on me, I am sticking to my schedule. One post every third Wednesday of the month. Just like I promised myself. I started book blogging about four years ago, over on Tumblr, and while I loved it, a part of me felt like all I was doing was posting reviews. There was not much interaction or discussion. I didn’t feel like I was challenging myself. And I wanted a place not just to talk books, but also a place where I could talk a little bit more openly about my views on writing and the…