Wide-Eyed Reader

I know I did a bit of a disappearing act in the last couple of months, apologies! I've been trying to figure out how to live in the way the world is right now, but I'm going to do my best to write reviews regularly here! So, in the month of June, I plan to read sequels and finish a few series I enjoy! First up is a book I've already started, The Ask and The Answer  by Patrick Ness. I read the first in the series, The Knife of Never Letting Go , in April and adored it, and I was lucky enough to find the second book from ThriftBooks. I've already been sucked back in, and I'm very excited to go on this journey. Second: Now I Rise and Bright We Burn  by Kiersten White. These are the two sequels to And I Darken , which I have actually read twice! I even have a signed copy of Now I Rise , so the fact that I haven't read them yet is surprising. So, I look forward to getting into them soon! Next, I plan to read The Midnight Star  by Marie Lu, the final

Fair warning before I begin: I'm trying out a new review style for this, so we'll see how it goes! I honestly did expect to like this book, if not love it! I'm not the biggest Alice in Wonderland  fan, but I do love retellings of all stripes, and this one seemed particularly unique, so I was looking forward to it. Sadly, I was disappointed. I did stop reading this book on page 194 of the paperback edition, so keep that in mind throughout this review! There are several things I took issue with, so let's jump in, shall we? First: the love triangle. Because this book is YA, so it has to have a love triangle, apparently. Now, I'm not a big fan of love triangles, but I don't mind them if they're handled well and the love interests are actually worth it. In this case, neither is true.  The triangle itself seems thrown in just for the fun of it, and because love triangles are popular. What I'm more concerned with is the love interests themselves. Firs

I'm very excited to share my March TBR! The Goodreads group I'm a part of, The Reading Frenzy , is running a "Travel-a-Thon" themed challenge each month this year, and for March, the "place" we are traveling to is Ireland! So all of the prompts are themed after Ireland or Irish things. I've got the prompts listed below, so you can check them out and see which books match which prompts! Brogue: read a book with a title that rhymes. For this prompt, I could only find My Plain Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows! That's just fine by me, as My Plain Jane  is a Jane Eyre retelling, and Jane Eyre is one of my all-time favorite books! Shamrock: read a book with a green cover. The first book that I found for this prompt was Splintered by A.G. Howard! I've heard lots of good things about this one, so I'm excited! Good Luck: close your eyes and randomly choose a book from your shelf. So for this one, I chose to only use my

First things first: I received a copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for a review! I was pretty interested in this book, though I'll admit I didn't expect much. However, I'm a huge fan of fairytale retellings, and I've always loved Aladdin, so a gender-bent twist on the Aladdin story got my attention! And this book didn't disappoint! CHARACTERS Our main character in Thief of Cahraman  is Adelaide, a young orphan who just wants to live in peace with her best friend Bonnie and - maybe - discover where her mother came from. She's a former thief, and though she is trying to change her ways at the start of the book, she can't resist a shiny object or six. I found Ada to be a very interesting character - smart, resourceful, and not afraid to be both feminine (she wears stunning gowns through the ENTIRE book, and doesn't shy away from cooking!) and badass. She's a strong lead, for sure! However, I did think that sometimes Ada let her t