Just a YA book reader sharing her thoughts with the world

2019 is about to be over and I can’t believe it. So much has changed for me this year and it went by so fast. So here is my last monthly wrap up of 2019.

This month I read 12 books with 0 DNF’s.

Let’s Talk: My 2019 Book Burnout & How I Finally Sent it Packing By Ashley @ ashsinfinitelibrary

Ashley talks about what her burnout this year was like and her top tips for getting out of one. My favorite was that is it okay to Netflix. I constantly feel guilty when I spend my time off doing things that aren’t blogging, (netflixing, shopping sometimes even necessary things like laundry and dishes). Sometimes I just wanna watch TV dang it.

Reflecting On My 2019 Anticipated Releases by Anniek @ anniekslibraryhttps://anniekslibrary.wordpress.com/

I loved seeing this and I think I might do this at the end of 2020 but we will see how it goes 🙂

67 VERY EXCITING 2020 YA RELEASES by Laura @ bbliophile

My TBR groaned when I logged into Goodreads to add all the books I wanted off of this amazing list

My Love/Hate Relationship With Blogging // a tiny discussion about what’s been goin on with me by Xandra @ starryskybooks

Xan talks about how she feels pressure from the community and put too much stock in her stats. I can relate to both of these.

Book Blogger / Reader Spreadsheet Template (2020) by Kal @ readervoracious

I was planning on making something similar to this and I became very overwhelmed. Then Kal uploaded this! I saved it, made some adjustments and I am totally ready for 2020 blogging. Thank you Kal!!!!!

I watched some Christmas movies on my own but most of the ones we got to watch together were jammed into two days. We worked more than normal the week before Christmas so the ones we ended up watching together have an asterisk next to it, otherwise I watched it in the middle of the night.

Noelle

The Christmas Chronicles

Let It Snow

Muppet’s Christmas Carol*

Beauty and The Beast: The Enchanted Christmas*

Olaf’s Frozen Adventure*

Mickey’s Christmas Carol*

Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas*

Again, we worked a ton but we have also been watching The Mandalorian or as I call it, The Baby Yoda Show.

This month flew by before I could really wrap my head around it. We mostly worked but we did take one weekend off so I could visit my grandmother and we could celebrate Alice being two years sober. I know she will always be in recovery and some days are hard but I am so proud of her. Her decision to stop drinking saved our entire relationship so I couldn’t be more happy to take a day to celebrate her.

After talking to our bosses we came out at work on December 21st, a day that we both pulled doubles, it went fine I guess? Someone who I thought/hoped would be there to help us ended up having the day off and by the end of the day, my chest hurt, I was shaking uncontrollably and I felt super hot. I also made sure to tell some coworkers at our holiday party and I am just kinda letting it go from there.

We had talked about spending Christmas day with my family as we had spent Thanksgiving with hers but with Alice working so many hours the week leading up to Christmas, I knew she was going to want to sleep in that day so we stayed home. This is the first year in three years that her dad has been home for Christmas since he normally travels. Alice made us cream chip beef since that was my family traditional breakfast and we switch off every year. After breakfast, we watched the Disney Christmas parade and we both fell back asleep. After her brother got here, we were both super uncomfortable and wanted to leave. We forced ourselves to stay until after dinner and then left right away. We drove to my uncle’s where we met up with my parents, brother, grandmother, my aunt and uncle and my cousins. We had dessert and played some card games before calling it a night. We stayed with my grandmother that night.

This December 26th marks the second anniversary of one of my best friends passing away. Every year we take off and we spend the day doing basically whatever I want. It sounds selfish but it is the one day I don’t feel guilty about grieving and I know I would be no good at work or being forced to do something I don’t want to do. This year we stayed the night before at my grandmothers and then drove to a mall about 45 minutes from her house that we like. We shopped around and I got a nightgown and jewelry plate from the Disney Store as well as some clothes I needed/wanted which included an awesome Frozen shirt from hot topic. While we were there, Leelynn came to meet us. She gave me a copy of The Book Thief (one of my favorite books) and we looked around BAM for a little before she had to go. I was in a pretty grumpy mood all day so I feel bad about it. After she left, we finished up shopping and drove 20 minutes to another mall where we got nothing. I was disappointed and by this point, both Alice and I were having a bad day so we left to go find dinner and go home.

Next month will be an even bigger month for me because I am flying out to Vegas to be a bridesmaid in my sisters wedding! This will be my first time flying alone, first time in Vegas, first time going to a wedding as an adult and first time being a proper bridesmaid. I am super nervous if I can be honest. I am going without Alice which breaks my heart but it was the only way we could afford it. I will be gone basically the whole first week of January so I am making sure to prep for that before the new year.

How was your December? If you celebrate any holidays or special traditions, what did you do?

Love, Dana

I am only listing a few books here. I am traveling in the start of the month so while most of these are a recent library haul, I included books I plan to travel with this month.

Also this somehow became more of a “last week of December and January TBR” so enjoy that haha.

This month I have two ARCS I need to read and review.

The Books I Own and Plan to Travel With

Books From The Library

I am super excited for all of these books and I can’t wait to start them. Have you read any of these before? Let me know!!

Author: Michael Cart (editor),

Publisher: HarperTeen

Published on: October 6th 2009

Number of Pages: 368

Bought, Borrowed or ARC: Bought when withdrawn from my library

Where can you get it?

Again, I make no money off of these links. These are simply for your convenience. These prices are accurate as of December 23rd 2019

Amazon: $11.37

Book Depository: $12.96

Barnes and Noble: $16.19

Books-A-Million: $17.99

A girl thought to be a boy steals her sister’s skirt, while a boy thought to be a girl refuses to wear a cornflower blue dress. One boy’s love of a soldier leads to the death of a stranger. The present takes a bittersweet journey into the past when a man revisits the summer school where he had “an accidental romance.” And a forgotten mother writes a poignant letter to the teenage daughter she hasn’t seen for fourteen years.

Poised between the past and the future are the stories of now. In nontraditional narratives, short stories, and brief graphics, tales of anticipation and regret, eagerness and confusion present distinctively modern views of love, sexuality, and gender identification. Together, they reflect the vibrant possibilities available for young people learning to love others—and themselves—in today’s multifaceted and quickly changing world.

I don’t read many books that are set up this way because I normally don’t like some of the stories so I end up skipping through them. I got this one at the library at a withdrawn sale months ago and I hadn’t even thought about reading it until this morning. We recently started coming out at work and between that and JKR recent twitter posts, I needed a little something LGBT themed to read. This book was fine. I skipped some stories but my favorites were

A Word From The Nearly Distant Past

First Time

Dear Lang

I will probably pass this book on fairly soon as I don’t see myself rereading it.

Have you read this book? What is your favorite LGBT based book? Let me know!!

Love, Dana

Happy Christmas Eve y’all! Today I am working but I realized this week that all December, I have only done one holiday related post. Then I saw this tag on Whimsypages, made by Between my Lines and I knew I had to do it. So let’s hop to it!

 What Is Your Favourite Christmas Scene In A Book?

I haven’t read Harry Potter in so long (and probably don’t plan to, thanks JKR) so I can’t remember if this is in the books but the scene where Harry and Hermione see his parents grave on Christmas has always touched my heart.

Do You Have Any Christmas Book Traditions?

I don’t right now but I would love to start receiving books on Christmas Eve and then spending the night reading them. I don’t think that possible for us right now just because I didn’t bring it up in time and we both work from now until Christmas.

Do You Prefer To Get Presents Of Book Vouchers Or Books?

I try pretty hard to make sure I am asking for specific books because I don’t like most people buying me books. If I don’t have a certain book I want or don’t want anyone buying it, I ask for vouchers.

Do You Give Books As Presents?

Not normally. I am just getting to the point where I buy gifts for more than one or two friends but most of them don’t read like I do so it’s never really been a thing I do.

What Bookish Item Is On Your Christmas Wishlist?

I have an exact thing I want. I want this book sleeve from Cozylibrary in a medium. I would legit cry if I got this and have been trying to drop hints about it for about a week and a half.

What 3 Books Would You Love Santa To Have In His Sack For You?

Fake Christmas Tree Or Real Christmas Tree?

I used to be team real tree but I don’t want to have to pay for the same thing every year if I can just pay for it once and then use it for years.

What’s Your Favourite Thing About Christmas?

My favorite thing about Christmas is the decorations. I love driving around to see Christmas lights and we often go to our zoo to see the ones there.

What Christmas Book Would You Recommend?

I don’t typically read Christmas themed books but this year I read A Wedding in December and I really enjoyed it!

What Dish On Your Christmas Menu Are You Most Looking Forward To?

This year we aren’t having our normal dinner, in fact I don’t even know what we are having yet so I can’t really answer this!

When Do You Open Your Christmas Presents?

As a kid, I opened gifts basically as soon as I woke up, then had breakfast with my grandparents and opened their gifts and then we went to my uncle’s so we kinda opened gifts all day. But as a adult, my wife and I are terrible at keeping gifts a secret (also terrible at having time to shop alone) so we often either trade gifts super early OR we just kinda buy our own?

What’s Your Favourite Christmas Song?

This is a really great question. I am going to say All I Want For Christmas is You because we play it at work all the time and it always makes us laugh and feel better when a shift is rough.

 Are You Dreaming Of A White Christmas?

Absolutely not!! I hate winter in general but it is so much worse when it snows. I can’t run from my house to car and car to work without a jacket if it is snowing!! Also it causes accidents and delays when you are trying to go places.

And there we have it. I am not going to tag anyone simply because this is going up on Christmas Eve and I don’t think anyone would have time left to do it. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas or any Holiday you celebrate.

I know this isn’t book themed but I really wanted to share some of my favorite Christmas movies with y’all. Every Christmas my wife and I have been together we have stayed in and watched some or most of these movies.

Most Christmas movies remind me of Canada… the real winter wonderland! Cannot wait to celebrate our first Christmas there. Fingers crossed for our successful immigration to Canada! 

So, about movies. My top favorite Christmas movie is… Santa Clause!

Speaking of Santa Clause… Santa Clause 2!

Olaf’s frozen adventure has stolen my heart this year. When we went to Disney we did the Frozen Sing Along and because it was during the holidays, it was extended with some of the songs from OFA and I cried so hard. Gifs aren’t enough so here is a link to the song that had me bawling.

Belle is one of my favorite Disney princesses so it is no wonder that I love Beauty and The Beast: The Enchanted Christmas so much!!

Muppets Christmas Carol is my wife’s favorite Christmas movie. I normally don’t like The Muppets but I actually really enjoyed this movie this year.

Another one I love is Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer

Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas is one I grew up watching every year with my family.

Eloise At Christmastime is one of those ones that I will forget about but every year I can’t wait to watch it.

A new movie I fell in love with this year is The Christmas Chronicles on Netflix.

Another new christmas movie I liked was Noelle on Disney+!

So normally I would review each book in a series separately but I thought I would try something new. I’m going to review and talk about each book and then give the series a rating as well. So hang in there, this one might get a little long!

Because I am talking about all three books, there WILL be spoilers in this post. Please proceed with caution.

Thou shalt kill.

A world with no hunger, no disease, no war, no misery. Humanity has conquered all those things, and has even conquered death. Now scythes are the only ones who can end life—and they are commanded to do so, in order to keep the size of the population under control.

Citra and Rowan are chosen to apprentice to a scythe—a role that neither wants. These teens must master the “art” of taking life, knowing that the consequence of failure could mean losing their own.

I was so sure I wasn’t going to like these books that I had Scythe on my not interested shelf on Goodreads. I am so glad that I found it at Books-A-Million for less than 5 dollars and gave it a chance. I loved this book. Dystopian Fiction/Science Fiction are normally hit or miss for me but I really enjoyed this. I got attached to most of the “good” characters so quickly. I didn’t want to put this book down and almost as soon as I was, I requested the next two from my library.

Rowan has gone rogue, and has taken it upon himself to put the Scythedom through a trial by fire. Literally. In the year since Winter Conclave, he has gone off-grid, and has been striking out against corrupt scythes—not only in MidMerica, but across the entire continent. He is a dark folk hero now—“Scythe Lucifer”—a vigilante taking down corrupt scythes in flames.

Citra, now a junior scythe under Scythe Curie, sees the corruption and wants to help change it from the inside out, but is thwarted at every turn, and threatened by the “new order” scythes. Realizing she cannot do this alone—or even with the help of Scythe Curie and Faraday, she does the unthinkable, and risks being “deadish” so she can communicate with the Thunderhead—the only being on earth wise enough to solve the dire problems of a perfect world. But will it help solve those problems, or simply watch as perfection goes into decline? 

I liked this one a little less than the first one but not by much. I loved Rowan going after the “bad scythes” and how Citra and Scythe Curie were trying to work within the system to better the Scythedom. I think that in situations like this you do need both people inside and outside to change how a government works. There were a lot of plot twists that I didn’t see coming in this one such as Scythe Goddard coming back and Edura sinking with a bunch Scythes being forced to self-glean. I was devastated at the loss of Scythe Curie and had to take a break before moving on.

It’s been three years since Rowan and Citra disappeared; since Scythe Goddard came into power; since the Thunderhead closed itself off to everyone but Grayson Tolliver.

In this pulse-pounding conclusion to Neal Shusterman’s Arc of a Scythe trilogy, constitutions are tested and old friends are brought back from the dead.

For probably the first one-third of this book, I was enjoying it as I had the others. But somewhere around the 2/3 I started to get bored. I was putting down the book, playing on my phone, remembering I was reading and forcing myself to start up again. I found some of the new POV’s uninteresting and I wanted to go back to Rowan, Citra and Scythe Farday and them finding each other again and fixing the Scythedom. I was so surprised by the ending because it was not at all what I thought would happen. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little disappointed. It is not a bad ending in any way but it didn’t line up with what I had hoped for. All in all, The Toll was my least favorite of the three.

Series rating (by average 3.83 but I rounded)

All in all, I think it is a pretty good series and I would recommend it to fans of Science Fiction and Dystopian Fiction.

Have you read this series? What did you think? Which of the three did you like best?

Hey y’all. So when I started devourbookswithdana in August, I had no clue what I was doing. I honestly just wanted to talk to people about books since I don’t know too many people who read.

I did my best to keep up with new releases, fomo, staying active at least here and twitter and keeping up a semi-regular schedule. Right now, I am kind of all over the place with when I post and I would want change that and some other things I have been doing. Please read on to find out what is coming starting January 1st.

As time went on running my blog, I found myself stressed when I couldn’t purchase the newest book everyone was talking about and if I did buy it, I got stressed because I have so many books I need to read. A big change I hope to make in 2020 is to try to buy less by using the library more.

Even if I was buying them, I would read them and only sometimes review them. I didn’t want to stress myself out by making every book need a review. But that also meant I was hardly doing book reviews if they weren’t ARCS or Blog Tours.

In 2020, I intend change my posting schedule to make Tuesdays, Tag Tuesday where I will post 1-2 fun tags as well as making every Thursday a book review that is not a Blog Tour. I still plan to do ARCs with this and also just general books I am reading.

I will still do Blog Tours any day of the week as I have been. Blog tours are the only thing on my schedule that I do not have a certain day for. Saturdays will be for Down The TBR and the occasional discussion post which I hope to do more of. Monthly wrap-ups will remain the same falling on the nearest posting day to the end of the month and will replace whatever tag/review would have gone up.

So here what a week in 2020 without a Blog Tour may look like…

Tuesday- Top Ten Tuesday and/or other various tags

Thursday- Book review

Saturday- Down the TBR and/or discussion post

I am open to any other weekly post ideas or recurring posts such as Top Ten Tuesday falling on any day I don’t currently post on so let me know if you know of any good ones!

In 2020, I plan to upload all my reviews to Goodreads instead of just giving a star rating. Goodreads is for the reviewers and I find myself going through the reviews of a book before buying it so I would like to add my voice to that.

The last two big changes I can think of go hand in hand. I am going to strive to interact more with everyone on twitter and Goodreads as well as here on wordpress. I often find myself neglecting to blog hop and comment on your amazing posts and I want to do better. I also hope that encourages more interaction with me.

I hope you all are looking forward to these coming changes and are having a great end to your year. If you are celebrating any holidays, I hope you enjoy them and celebrate in a way that fills you with joy.

Love, Dana

Once again, Down The TBR has snuck up on me and we are back to do another round. My TBR is sitting at 405 and I hope to get it down to at least 400.

Go to your Goodreads to-read shelf.

Order on ascending date added.

Take the first 5 (or 10 (or even more!) if you’re feeling adventurous) books. Of course, if you do this weekly, you start where you left off the last time

Read the synopses of the books

Decide: keep it or should it go?

Normally I am all for books like this but a lot of the reviews say that this feels dated and I feel that because of this my time would be better used reading more up to date books.

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I’m starting to think that books involve fame aren’t really my type. I browsed through a preview of this book and it didn’t catch my attention so I am going to pass.

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This book sounds so good to me and it is a pretty recent release (within the last year). A few people I follow have reviewed this with pretty good ratings so I am going to give it a try.

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I have read a lot of Hamilton focused fiction and Washington has always been in the background so I am interested to see what happens in this book.

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Again, this sounds like something I would normally like but for some reason, I just don’t have any interest in it so I’ll be taking it off my list.

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This is one book I keep saying I want read but haven’t made it a priority but hopefully I can in the new year.

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I think I got rid of 5 and have one undecided and four made the cut to keep. Let me know if you’ve read any of these and if you think I should read them!

Thank you as always to The Fantastic Flying Book Club, the author and the publisher who allowed me to receive an ARC so I could share my thoughts with you. You can click the banner above to connect with FFBC and see the rest of the tour for this book.

Title: Hearts, Strings and Other Breakable Things

Author: Jacqueline Firkins

Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers

Pub. Date: December 17th, 2019

Genre: YA, Romance, Retellings, Contemporary

Pages: 384

AUTHOR INFORMATION

Jacqueline’s a writer, costume designer, and lover of beautiful things. She’s on the full time faculty in the Department of Theatre & Film at the University of British Columbia where she also takes any writing class they’ll let her into. When not obsessing about where to put the buttons or the commas, she can be found running by the ocean, eating excessive amounts of gluten, listening to earnest love songs,and pretending her dog understands every word she say

Website | Goodreads | Twitter | Instagram

Mansfield, Massachusetts is the last place seventeen-year-old Edie Price wants to spend her final summer before college. It’s the home of wealthy suburbanites and prima donnas like Edie’s cousins, who are determined to distract her from her mother’s death with cute boys and Cinderella-style makeovers.

Edie has her own plans, and they don’t include a prince charming.But as Edie dives into schoolwork and applying for college scholarships, she finds herself drawn to two Mansfield boys who start vying for her attention. First there’s Sebastian, Edie’s childhood friend and first love. He’s sweet and smart and . . .already has a girlfriend. Then there’s Henry, the local bad boy and all-around player.He’s totally off limits, even if his kisses are chemically addictive.

Both boys are trouble. Edie can’t help but get caught between them. Someone’s heart is going to break. Now she just has to make sure it isn’t hers

Dream Cast

Peyton List as Edie

Ross Lynch as Sebastian

Jessica Sula as Claire

Ansel Elgort as Henry

Madelaine Petsch as Maria

Mackenzie Foy as Julia

Amandla Stenberg as Shonda

Just as a reminder, here is how Top Ten Tuesday works!

Jana assigns each Tuesday a topic and then we all post our top ten list that fits that topic. Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.

You’ll find the schedule of upcoming TTT topics here you can plan ahead.If you don’t have a blog, post your picks in the comment section below! Have tons of fun talking books and getting to know your fellow bloggers!

I haven’t done a Top Ten Tuesday in probably close to a month. I’ve either been too busy or haven’t felt inspired by the prompts. I keep jumping in and out of being a part of it but I hope to fully commit in the new year. This week was a freebie and I decided to just go ahead and use an old prompt. So here are my 10 books that have been on my TBR the longest.

June 6th 2014 (before I even graduated high school)

The rest of these were added on Jan 18th 2018 because I tend to group add books to my TBR.