Wow July felt like a really long month! I read 6 physical books, 2 ebooks and listened to 1 audiobook, this is the most reading I have done in a month for a long time and was mainly down to my yalc reading. It was a good month with 5 books reaching a 5 star rating!

My 5 Star Reads

My 4 Star Reads

My 3 Star Reads

When I wasn’t reading

So July was YALC month, and whilst it was a book event, technically I didn’t read, so it counts for this! You can catch up with all my YALC happenings by visiting my post from yesterday. We also pottered down to LFCC whilst we were there and got plenty of Ghibli inspred goodies, I particularly love the Cat Bus pin that me and Biba each got one of!  Geeky Clean released there “Let the Sun Shine” collection which is amazing and probably my favourite since their Ghibli collection at the beginning of the year. There is not one thing in the collection that I don’t love and the Happy Cloud bath bombs are looking like they will make permanent stock. You can catch the end of the collection by following this link and using my code Paperbacksandpinot10 at checkout.

Looking ahead

I’m currently putting together my TBR for August, I have a fair few review books on the list already – I think I may close for reviews in September Just to I can get some reading for me done, but we’ll see. It’s the start of the summer holidays here in the UK so I’m hoping to get in plenty of days out and lots of fun in the sunshine with the family. We’ve got a Zoo visit planned, trips to the beach, Mr Paperbacks will be taking Biba to the London Science Museum, I’m hoping to get to Cambridge for Movies on the Meadow and finally a trip to the Sea Life Centre in London if we can. We also have a little celebration coming up for mine and Mr Paperbacks 10 year wedding anniversary ❤  It’s looking like there may actually only be time for a few books on my Tbr for August!

Join in and tell me what were your favourite reads this month?

If you saw my July wrap up yesterday, you’ll know that we’ve got quite a busy August planned as it’s the UK school summer holidays. I’m committed to reviews this month and I’ll definitely have to reach those but I’m not sure how much else I’ll get done, so this is just a rough guide to what I’ll be reading this month!

Warcross by Marie Lu

Probably the only non review book on this list. I’m part of the Booket List group on facebook and this is one of their book club read this month. This has given me the perfect opportunity to read Warcross and join in with some chat about it as we go along. I’ve not had a reading buddy for a couple of months and I miss it, so looking forward to this!

The Retreat by Sherri Smith

Not my usual genre as it’s in a contemporary setting but I’m pretty drawn to it. It’s a last man (or woman in this case) standing scenario which reminds me of the “cabin in the woods” style movies that were high up on my viewing list about 10 years ago, I’m hoping it’s more suspense than any horror element though, but the blurb sounds amazing and I’m grateful to Titan Books for sending me a finished review copy.

Four women.
Four secrets.
A weekend that will change them forever…if they survive.
Katie Manning was a beloved child star until her mid-teens when her manager attacked and permanently scarred her face, effectively ending her career and sending her on a path of all-too-familiar post-Hollywood self-destruction.
Now twenty-seven, Katie wants a better answer to those clickbait “Where Are They Now?” articles that float around online. An answer she hopes to find when her brother’s too-good-to-be-true fiance invites her to a wellness retreat upstate. Together with Katie’s two best friends–one struggling with crippling debt and family obligations, one running away from a failed job and relationship–Katie will try to find the inner peace promised at the tranquil retreat. But finding oneself just might drudge up more memories than Katie is prepared to deal with.
Each woman has come to the retreat for different reasons. Each has her secrets to hide. And at the end of this weekend, only one will be left standing. 

The Withered King (Tempest Blades) by Ricardo Victoria

Full disclosure, I have already started reading this and I’m enjoying it so far, it’s quite sciency and I need to have a quiet area to really take it in, but it’s great so far, a bit more urban fantasy than I was expecting and the cover doesn’t really do it any favours but I’m hoping that this will be quite the gem!

Fionn is the wielder of a legendary Tempest Blade, and he is blessed – or cursed – by the Gift. Though his days as a warrior are long over, his past leaves him full of guilt and regret. Life, however, has other plans for him, when he agrees to help a friend locate a missing person.
Gaby and Alex never expected to become heroes… until they met Fionn. As an ancient evil arises and consumes the land, Fionn must help them to master their own Gifts and Tempest Blades.
Together the three of them, and their friends, will chart a course aboard the flying ship Figaro to save the planet. Will Fionn’s past be an anchor, or will he overcome the one failure from his former life before time runs out?
In a world where magic and science intermingle, anything is possible.
Including second chances

By the Feet of Men by Grant Price

Going back to my post apocalyptic roots for this one, I think I’ve had a big enough break from the genre now to accept them for reviews again, I know very little about it and sometimes that’s for the best – fingers crossed!

The world’s population has been decimated by the Change, a chain reaction of events triggered by global warming. In Europe, governments have fallen, cities have crumbled and the wheels of production have ground to a halt. The Alps region, containing most of the continent’s remaining fresh water, has become a closed state with heavily fortified borders. Survivors cling on by trading through the Runners, truck drivers who deliver cargo and take a percentage. Amid the ruins of central Germany, two Runners, Cassady and Ghazi, are called on to deliver medical supplies to a research base deep in the Italian desert, where scientists claim to be building a machine that could reverse the effects of the Change. Joining the pair are a ragtag collection of drivers, all of whom have something to prove. Standing in their way are starving nomads, crumbling cities, hostile weather and a rogue state hell-bent on the convoy’s destruction. And there’s another problem: Cassady is close to losing his nerve.

Fortuna Sworn by K.J. Sutton

It’s always lovely when an author contacts you to review because they’ve enjoyed reading past reviews on the blog. With a dose of high fantasy combined with magical realism, this one sounds fantastic and I desperately want to read it first, but I can’t as other books are due for release earlier!

Fortuna Sworn is the last of her kind.
Her brother disappeared two years ago, leaving her with no family or species to speak of. She hides among humans, spending her days working at a bar and her nights searching for him. The bleak pattern goes on and on… until she catches the eye of a powerful faerie.
He makes no attempt to hide that he desires Fortuna. And in exchange for her, he offers something irresistible. So Fortuna reluctantly leaves her safe existence behind to step back into a world of creatures and power.
It soon becomes clear that she may not have bargained with her heart, but her very life. 

Turning Darkness into Light by Marie Brennan

You had me at Dragons! Another finished review copy courtesy of Titan Books, it came with a lovely little next of chocolate “dragon eggs” – I do love dragons 🙂

As the renowned granddaughter of Isabella Camherst (Lady Trent, of the riveting and daring Draconic adventure memoirs) Audrey Camherst has always known she, too, would want to make her scholarly mark upon a chosen field of study.
When Lord Gleinheigh recruits Audrey to decipher a series of ancient tablets holding the secrets of the ancient Draconean civilization, she has no idea that her research will plunge her into an intricate conspiracy, one meant to incite rebellion and invoke war. Alongside dearest childhood friend and fellow archeologist Kudshayn, must find proof of the conspiracy before it’s too late.

As always, please let me know if you want to read along with any of these as I do love a buddy read!

Another year and another YALC has come to an end. It was only peripherally on my radar last year, Biba and I had tickets to LFCC downstairs and we came up to YALC for a look around but didn’t really understand enough, however this year we were well prepared! We could only make it up for the Sunday this year but I think that was good when you have a child with you as it wasn’t as busy as it could have been and also we got to get some of the best book bargains!

In the foyer we bumped into the lovely Kasia (Kashpoint) and also Kirsty from We Read Box, this was especially lovely as Biba got to meet the people she will be repping for in September and November. We then made our way up with Jemma from @fantasticbooks_awtft to head straight to the Rock the Boat News stand to find out which Aurora Legion we would be in, both Biba and Jemma got Alpha, I got Face! We got to spin the Sythe wheel of fate, whilst I will die by falling hardback, Biba managed to get immunity and won a shiny sweetie ring too! I have to say that I found it a little overwhelming as it was still our first proper visit and I wasn’t really sure how it all worked. But we made our way round picking up some wonderful bits and pieces, sadly we didn’t win any arc raffles, but we got lots of other lovely things!

The “New voices of YA fantasy” panel was a must for me and it was a great one to sit in on. I was there primarily for Bex Hogan and Adrienne Young, both of whom were lovely and I think I was the only person to put my hand up when Bex Hogan asked about people who played Hero Quest when they were younger (I’m now gutted that my mum sold mine on ebay years ago) so now we’ve like totally bonded lol.  I had both Viper and Sky in the Deep signed by the authors too and it was lovely to get to meet them both, it was even lovelier to spend my time in the signing queues catching up with Emily from @emilysbookcorner who got me up to speed with all the gossip 🙂  Sadly Lauren James had to cancel her appearance as her dog needed emergency treatment, I hope they had a speedy recovery.

The highlight of YALC was finally getting to meet Rebecca Gibson, lost twenty something blogger and author. We have been friends online for around 3 years, never quite making it to meeting in person, but we were determined that YALC would be the place. It was so wonderful to meet her, sitting chatting like it was the most natural thing in the world even though we were doing it in person rather than over a screen. We managed to snag some bargain books, The Binding hardback for £5!!! buy some Cake in a Jar, fill out a strangely harder than it looked book quiz from Hodderscape, and just generally enjoy hanging out with one another ❤

The real stars of Sunday though were Geeky Clean, because I’m part of their rep team we were able to base ourselves with them for the day. Steph and James are truly wonderful, kind and lovely people, they helped to look after Biba when she was to tired to stand in the signing queues with me. I came back to find that Steph had helped her find lots of goodies around the room, James chatted to her about Japan and her fandoms and she loved keeping the candles and soaps restocked! In fact more often than not Biba wanted to stay with them and Emily, who was showing her the ropes on the till, than come out around the floor with me! I can’t thank them enough for all they did on Sunday, we also made sure we bought as many candles, scrubs and bathbombs as we could fit in our bags!

I think the only thing that I have to gripe about what the fact that I had to buy a full price ticket for Biba, who is 8. Children under 4 are free and I get that it’s a convention for young adult readers, but she is a middle grade reader and other than one lovely author there wasn’t really much there for her at all, I loved having her with me but it would be nice if in future years they could consider a child ticket, given that LFCC offer these and last year we came up to YALC on that ticket mid morning. It was a wonderful day though, I’m definitely going to try for 2 days next year if we can afford it, I think Biba is already more than willing to help run the Geeky Clean stand again!

Earlier in the week a post was going around twitter which I don’t necessarily feel the need to weigh in on but it did get me to thinking proportionally about my time spent blogging and the money invested in it. I will refer back to the twitter post for context but it’s clear that those over at The Quiet Pond spent a lot of time researching this and it’s interesting to see what people some people see as a cost of blogging and what others see as just life. So if you’re interested, here is a little snapshot of my blogging life which I’ve split into three parts, Time, Money, and Mental Health.

Time

Now for me, the biggest cost of blogging is time. Everyone is different and this is done in no way to say I do more or less than anyone else. My week outside of blogging involves work 4 days a week in a stressful court room environment, I have a freelance evening job which is intermittent, I have 2 children (8 and 4), my husband and keeping on top of our home.  This is enough to fill my day, but I have managed to find away to do this and blog. I’m not ashamed to say that out of my list, housework is the first to fall away if I have things I would rather be doing! In a typical day, after breakfast I’ll go through Instagram with a cup of tea and reply to comments, follows and likes. After doing the school run, I’ll put an audio book in the car on my way to work. At lunch I’ll read a kindle book on my phone app. Home time is family time until the children are in bed by 8. At some point during the day I’ll get my bookstagram pic up for the day if I have one. I usually spend about 2 hours an evening reading, sometimes more depending on whether there is anything good to watch on TV, but honestly we’re not big watchers. I’ll then spend about an hour online, typing up reviews, blog posts, updating my blogs facebook and twitter accounts. At weekends I try and take enough bookstagram pics to last me the week. The most important thing I have learnt is that I don’t have to feel guilty about not having a pic for every day of the week or have daily content on my blog – this took me a long time!!!

Money

Now onto money. It’s a thorny issue at the best of times but honestly, trite as it sounds, you can spend as much or as little as you want. The big twitter debate stemmed from this and the fact that nearly every blogger The Quiet Pond spoke to included the cost of buying books in their blogging costs. I only buy physical books that I want to read anyway, these are purchases I would have made had I been blogging or not and I would never include them as a blogging cost. I am able to request ebooks for free from Negalley, I get ebooks from direct approaches from authors to the blog email or contacts on instagram. I am also incredibly lucky to receive finished review copies from a publishing house that I’m on the blogging team for. All this didn’t happen overnight and I had to work hard over several years to get to this point. What do I pay for then? I pay for my website hosting and domain and I probably pay £20-30 per year on updating my props and backdrops for instagram, usually via ebay as they’re cheapest. Things like a light box are a one time purchase and an investment if you regularly use  it, as I do. I’m a rep for Geeky Clean and again I am blessed to get candles and other goodies from them to add to my pics and demonstrate on my stories. One of the bloggers questioned by the quiet pond said they included travel costs to locations to take pics in their costs, I don’t make special trips out for pics but if we’re going to the woods or the beach, I’ll take stuff with me! I get Fairyloot every month which helps with books and props, but again I get this for me and not for the blog.

Mental Health

Pressure was one thing that many (but not all) mentioned. I find it really sad that there are people out there buying books out of pressure to post the most prominent new releases on their feed. I’m not going to pretend that I’m some chilled out air of calm but I have come to a point where I just try to not sweat the small stuff. If I’m not feeling creative then I just won’t post a pic for a couple of days, If I’m feeling down that’s likely to translate in my posts and make me sound whiny and if I’ve had a bad day at work I step away from writing reviews because I feel I nitpick more – this all means that I can go for days without an online presence. If I allow pressure to dictate that I must do something every day then my content will suffer because of it. Yes it’s nice to have the latest release on a single post, but do you know what, my biggest IG post this year featured the book Six of Crows – people love their favourites and you can blog and IG about old books forever more because people love them.

Deep down for me, mental health is an huge issue. I see so many people (myself included) wanting to be relevant in a sea of blogs. Wanting to find that magic niche that makes them stand out. Never ever underestimate the lasting effects of bullying on a person, I think that even now, 25 years later I still have a deep seated need to be liked in a way I never was in my teenage years and whilst I channel this through blogging, it’s perhaps sometimes one of the more toxic environments to feel validated by. I rarely post conversationally now outside of reviews and tags (because i’ve been burned before), but occasionally I’ll open up like today to test the waters. It still a battle to separate keeping blogging to something that is fun, from my own inbuilt fears of being unpopular but I’m getting better at it and I’m hoping that by meeting and talking with other bloggers this weekend at YALC that will be a big help too!

So there you have it, every blogger will be different but this is me 🙂

These #sixforsunday posts are tough this month! I had to abandon books with sunshine on the cover a couple of weeks ago and I have to admit that today’s prompt – Books and the Seaside, is made up with books with tenuous links to a beach somewhere in it’s pages. That still counts right?

Viper by Bex Hogan

Viper is one of my favourite reads this year, travelling from island to island, discovering not all is as it appears from the outside looking in. Beaches feature regularly as you can imagine and set the scene for many of the pivotal moments. I’ll hopefully get to meet the author at YALC next week!

A Bad Beginning (A series of unfortunate events) by Lemony Snicket

If there is one scene that an adaptation really brought to life for me, it’s the sad moment when the Baudilaire children were playing at Briny beach and Mr Poe arrives to inform them they are now in fact the Baudilaire orphans. Oceans and beaches play a large part in this series but this is the scene that started them all.

Circe by Madeline Miller

The beach at Circe’s island is either a haven or a hell to arrive on, depending on intentions of course. From her home on the hill Circe can survey all those who land on her shores and make use of her coves. A life in exile, it’s her only chance for connection although some of those are not as well meaning as others.

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

I was honestly only reminded of this as we watched the film adaptation last night! It’s perhaps the most tenuous of all the connections but the area for the quarter quell is surrounded by beach as the simulated ocean laps between them and the Cornucopia. The best laid plans though…..

Empire of Storms by Sarah J Maas

So there are a couple of beach scenes in this book, but it’s not the Aelin and Rowan scene (because honestly they are far from a OTP in my view) but it’s the heartbreaking closing pages that are the reason for featuring this. What Aelin goes through on that beach is some of the most emotionally draining reading I have ever done.

Truth by Christina Benjamin

Shamefully despite having the whole series, I still have only read Truth, the first in the Geneva Project series. Geneva is orphaned on Hullabee island, living with other orpahans who lost their families in the great flood. Living in the shadow of the bountiful Island of Lux. Her days are spent scouring the beaches for remnants of life before the great flood and rediscovering that which was long thought lost…..

So those are my six, seaside only in that most involve sand in some way. Thankfully it’s YALC next Sunday so I won’t be posting – I would have no idea where to start with books and ice cream!

Ahh summer is officially here in the UK now, I think I can safely say it? That means garden reading time with a nice cold drink with the children playing in the background! Chances are they’ll start fighting after 10 minutes but that’s enough for a few pages at least! I’m not one for seasonal reading, I don’t read beach based fiction in the summer or Christmas based fiction in the winter, I think it’s because I don’t read contemporary very often at all, but still there are books to be read and here are six that I definitely want to have read by the time the summer is out!

Queen of Ruin by Tracy Banghart

Grace and Fury was a top read for me last year and Queen of Ruin has been high on my most anticipated reads list for 2019! I was so lucky to snag one of the Fairyloot exclusive editions which matches in with the hardcover edition of Grace and Fury I got last year. Grace and Fury left me with probably the biggest cliffhanger since Empire of Storms and whilst my book hasn’t yet been dispatched it’s heading straight to the top of the tbr pile when it arrives!

Warcross by Marie Lu

I picked up Warcross a couple of months ago, but I didn’t get very far at all because reviewing commitments at the time led to me not being able to read for the sake of it. I have heard so many great things about this (and Wildcard which I thankfully also have) and it looks to tick plenty of boxes for things I love. I’m desperate to make time for it!

Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

This is a weird one as I’m already halfway through but honestly I haven’t touched this books for 2 months now. It’s not a bad story but I just can’t put my finger on what it is about it which I find so difficult to come back to. When I’m reading, I do enjoy the world and the characters, maybe it’s just the weight of it? Every month I tell myself that this is the month that I will finally finish Priory, perhaps I will make summer the season that a finally finish Priory!

Nocturna by Maya Motayne

I’m so behind on my Fairyloot books, who knows one day I might catch up enough to actually take part in one of their readalongs! I have The Beholder to read this month, but with June’s book and also July’s to come I need to make sure at least one Fairyloot book is on my monthly TBR, as the oldest of those waiting, Nocturna will have to take priority this summer.

The Retreat by Sherri Smith

The Retreat isn’t my usual type of read but I’m all about broadening my literary horizons since I rebranded in March. I was very kindly gifted a copy of this book by Titan Books as it really stood out to me. Touted as a psychological crime thriller, a group of troubled women are attending a wellness retreat, however, by the end of the weekend only one is left standing! Sounds very reminiscent of the late 2000’s where there was a spate of films, like cabin in the woods, where characters were picked off one by one – I loved those movies, so I have high hopes for The Retreat!

The Stones of Resurrection by Tameri Etherton

With The Prince of Dragons dragging me out of my slump this month, I’m itching to start book 2 in the series, thing is though is that it’s about 3 times the size of book 1! That’s not a bad thing at all but it does mean I’m going to have to set aside a good chunk of time to read it. The ending of book 1 and the epilogue totally whetted my appetite for what comes next as it looks to jump forward in time, which means new characters!!!