A Bookish Update and Snack Size Review

Today's topic: books. Surprise! ;)

Kindle Purchases

One of my goals for 2014 was to purchase only 3 Kindle (or other format) books a month. (I've already reached my limit for February...) So I thought I'd share with you the purchases I've made so far, because I've found some really great reads!

For January:

• Pieces of Jade by Lani Woodland and Melonie Piper (My review)
• This is What Happy Looks Like by Jennifer E. Smith (My review)
• The Afterlife of Lizzie Monroe by Kelly Martin (My review)

I got the first for $3.99, the second for $1.99 (Kindle Daily Deal), and the third for $.99. I've already read all of them, surprisingly, and they were all great reads! My favorite was This is What Happy Looks Like - it could possibly make my list of 2014 favorites. So good!

For February:

• Romance Through the Ages (7 Book Romance Boxed Set)
• Sean Griswold's Head by Lindsey Leavitt
• Under Zenith by Shannen Crane Camp

I got the first for $.99, the second for $6.15, and the third for $2.99. Can I just say what a steal of a deal the first is?? (It's still only $.99, by the way, as part of a limited-time offer!) I already owned two of the seven e-books (The Reluctant Bachelorette and My Own Mr. Darcy), but the set includes a couple I had eyed before and others that sounded quite good. My understanding - based on the authors and what I've heard - is that these are all generally clean romances. And really, the list is phenomenal!

As for the other two, I *think* the first came to my attention when I found another book by the author on NetGalley. (Not sure if I'll be accepted to review it, but honestly, it's not like I need any more books to read right now, LOL.) I started looking around on Goodreads, and I came across Sean Griswold's Head. When I read the blurb, saw Kara's review, and looked at the new cover on Amazon, I couldn't resist. And Under Zenith? Well, I think I found out about that because of the blog tour, and as soon as I read the description and saw the cover, I knew it had to be my final purchase of the month! I started stalking Amazon until it's release, LOL. ;) And I wasn't disappointed! You can find my review at the end of this post.

Other Finds

I haven't read this book yet, but I'm very eager to - it's Making Faces by Amy Harmon. Now, if you've seen the cover either on Goodreads, in the sidebar here, or on Amazon, I know it doesn't quite fit with most of the other books I pick up. It looks very much like a mainstream romance, and I'm told it does include some language. But this post over on Fiction Hero Features not only brought the book to my attention - it provided me a chance to read a copy (thank you, Nancy!) and it made me really, really intrigued. (Be sure to check the post out - along with the comments section!) I just love finding "diamonds in the rough" - discovering gems outside of my normal reading scope. And it's fun being able to then share about it with others! There's something exciting about the thrill of the hunt and the victory of a good discovery. ;) Anyway, I can't personally recommend it yet until I've read it, but I'm confident it's going to be good!

Also, I received two books in the mail yesterday - one was a review book that I'm very excited about (The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn by Lori Benton, which makes me think of Courting Morrow Little by Laura Frantz and has a very gorgeous cover to boot!) and the other was this little (or should I say big? there are a lot of pages!) beauty I pre-ordered around Christmastime:

I cannot tell you how excited I am to read Cress!!

Reviewing...

As you can well imagine, I'm not making a ton of progress with the Review Copy Cleanup. However, I am in the middle of The Thief by Stephanie Landsem, which I'll be reviewing either later this month or beginning of next month for the Litfuse Publicity blog tour - and it is so good! I also plan on reading Fly Away Home by Rachel Heffington in the next few days, so be looking for my review on Valentine's Day (when the book releases)!

...and Editing (etc.)

While I do hope to get more reviews up, I know I'm going to have to step back a bit from the blogosphere and world of social media. I confess I've been caught up with chasing ideas for my books (like The Audiobook Question), along with all the bookish stuff mentioned above. But while I hope to work on Morning Glory in the coming weeks, I need to let the rest go for a time. (I'll still plan on posting occasionally on the series blog and all that, but I need to focus on other things besides non-stop marketing!) This isn't a good-bye or anything like that... It's more an attempt to tell myself to stop getting so ridiculously distracted online! LOL. Yeah, we'll see how that goes. ;)

Anyway, one of the main reasons I need to get offline this week is that I have an editing project for a client I'm currently working on. Fun stuff, and I look forward to sharing more with you soon! And March (and possibly April?) is going to be swamped with blog-tour stuff, just as an FYI. I've got several blog tours coming up, each of which is unique and should be great fun! Looking forward to sharing more about these projects with you all.

A "Season"-ed Snack Size Review

And now for my snack size review of Under Zenith!

Under Zenith by Shannen Crane Camp

Rating: Spring/Summer

Under Zenith is an intriguing, wild, and super creative read! For most of the book, events are rather bizarre, and yet the overall mystery and constant "what will happen next?" feeling kept me engaged in the strange story world. While one aspect of the ending seemed obvious the closer I got to the finish, I was still surprised by other twists - and admittedly giddy at how things turned out (even though a certain character came across as inconsistent, and I'm not quite sure I bought the reason why). I loved the way family was ultimately portrayed in this story, and I'm really impressed with the imagery and cleverness of it all. An addictive and fascinating NA (New Adult) read!

Note: "Seasoned" or "unseasoned" is in reference to my book rating system. Thanks to Juju of Tales of Whimsy for the inspiration regarding mini reviews!