Library Reading Challenge!!

This month (April) my book club Life at the Library will be participating in a reading challenge. Join the group and you can read too! This is a public group and it is open to anyone so if you’re interested make sure to join in on the fun!

** This is a Goodreads reading challenge. You must join the group to participate!!**

What is the challenge?

To celebrate National Library Week the club is doing a moth long challenge from April 1 to May 3.

The challenge is to read as many books from the library. As possible. For every book from the library that you read your team gets one point.

If you don’t have a library near you let me know because there is still a way that you can participate!

For every book that you read that also fits into one of the selected categories you can win one bonus point for your team.

Sound good but, how do I join?

You can join by joining the book club (linked above) and commenting on the sign up post. Once I have put you on a team I will message or email you directly to confirm that you are on a team and answer any questions you have. I will also have a question post where you can ask questions as well. The last day to join a team is Sunday April 5th!!!!

How does it work?

For every book read (from the library) you can earn one or two points for your team. Once you have read a book make sure to contact me by commenting on one of my updates or messaging me directly. You must let me know before May 3. Every point you win goes to your team. Winner will be announced both on the group page and on my WordPress on Sunday May 4.

For more information join my book club!

Happy reading!

Kiera ❤

Book Club

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Any questions? Leave them in the comments below!

Songs I’m Loving Right Now!

I was tagged by Tale of a bookworm to do this and I’ve actually been wanting to do this ever since I started my blog, so thanks for giving me the push to do it.

I listen to pop, mainly the stuff that’s really popular right now so if you’re looking to discover a bunch of songs you’ve never heard before this probably isn’t the post for you because I do tend to listen to a lot of popular, current pop. I wanted to add the video of the songs in but technology made that hard so I just linked the audio.

I’m thinking about doing a post like this every month where I talk about the things that I am currently loving. Let me know if that’s something you would like to see!

***The songs are listed in no particular order***

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1. Anxiety by Julia Michaels ft. Selena Gomez

Listen to anxiety!

I love this song. I love Selena Gomez and I love Julia Michaels as well so, for me this was the perfect collaboration.

2. Ghostin’ by Ariana Grande

Listen to Ghostin’

I actually used to really hate Ariana Grande but her new album is really good, I tried to deny it but after a while I came around. This is definitely one of my favorite songs on the album. And you’ll see her later on this list.

3. Cool for the summer by Demi Lovato

Listen to Cool for the Summer!

This song came out a while ago but, it’s still one of my favorites. It’s just such a fun song!

4. Delicate by Taylor Swift

Listen to Delicate

I was never really a Taylor Swift person until Delicate, I love this song and the music video is ART! Such a cool song.

5. Hands to Myself by Selena Gomez

Listen to Hands to myself

I know this came out years and years ago (4 to be exact) but I still love this song! This song is so iconic! I love the video of her singing it with Taylor Swift it’s so cute! Sel and Taylor duet!

6. Youngblood by 5 Seconds of Summer

Listen to Youngblood

Is it just me or did you think that Zayn was signing this song? I thought that for the longest time (basically since it came out) but I recently learned that it wasn’t. Anyways, love this song!

7. thank u, next by Ariana Grande

listen to thank u, next

Yessssss!!! I don’t think my list could be complete without this song. This was another song that I was trying to convince myself that I didn’t like even though it was stuck in my head 24\7. I love this song though. And the music video is so iconic! Colleen Ballinger was in it!! (I love Colleen) and also I loved Ariana preforming this song on Ellen. Ari on Ellen

8. Nobody by Selena Gomez

Listen to Nobody!

Another Selena Gomez song! I love this one too I just had to include it. I love Selena’s voice. It’s so beautiful.

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I tag

Anyone who wants to do this!

Once again big thanks to tale of a bookworm for tagging me to do this I had so much fun making this list for you!

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Until next time,

Kiera ❤

Summer Bird Blue by Akemi Dawn Bowman

Image via Amazon

Summary from Goodreads

Rumi Seto spends a lot of time worrying she doesn’t have the answers to everything. What to eat, where to go, whom to love. But there is one thing she is absolutely sure of—she wants to spend the rest of her life writing music with her younger sister, Lea.

Then Lea dies in a car accident, and her mother sends her away to live with her aunt in Hawaii while she deals with her own grief. Now thousands of miles from home, Rumi struggles to navigate the loss of her sister, being abandoned by her mother, and the absence of music in her life. With the help of the “boys next door”—a teenage surfer named Kai, who smiles too much and doesn’t take anything seriously, and an eighty-year-old named George Watanabe, who succumbed to his own grief years ago—Rumi attempts to find her way back to her music, to write the song she and Lea never had the chance to finish.

My thoughts

Summer Bird Blue is the first book of Akemi’s that I had read. While I wasn’t completely blown away by this book there were some things that I really enjoyed about it. Summer Bird Blue takes place in Hawaii. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that takes place in Hawaii so I really enjoyed the change of setting.

Our main character, Rumi is grieving over the loss of her sister, Lea. Lea and Rumi both share this love of music and Rumi wants to finish a song that she and her sister were working on before Leaving died. Rumi was not my favorite character. I just didn’t really latch on to her.

However I did really enjoy the neighbors personality. I loved Mr. Watanabe soooooo much. I honestly would have loved for Rumi to have spent even more time with him and for him to share more of his story and his wisdom with her.

Spoilers……….

Something I did like was that Rumi stopped herself in the romance with her and Kai and said, I’m not ready for this. I really liked that she was able to muster the strength to say, no I can’t do this.

I also really liked the finished song, I thought it was very beautifully written

End of spolier…..

What I didn’t like

I didn’t really like the writing style. For some reason I never really found myself very invested in the story. So it was less enjoyable for me and I didn’t like it as much as I wanted to.

Age Rating:

Ages 13 up

This book has swearing

Talk about romance and feelings but no kissing

No explicit scenes.

Overall

3.5 stars

Not super impressed with Summer Bird Blue. I didn’t really find myself enjoying it and Never really got into the story, even though there were parts that I enjoyed I couldn’t enjoy them because I wasn’t fully into the story.

Until next time, happy reading

Kiera ❤

For updates on my reading add me on Goodreads!

Join my book club!

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Have you read Summer Bird Blue too? Tell me your thoughts in the comments below!

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100 Followers??????

Just a quick announcement, thanks for 100 followers! I’ve had so much fun sharing my reading with the lovely book community here on WordPress and I just wanted to say thank out for all of the love and support!!

Anyway, just wanted to say thanks!

Happy reading,

Kiera ❤

For updates on my reading, add me on Goodreads!

ARC review: Dead School by Laura Gia West

Dnf at 34%

2 stars

***I received an eArc in exchange for an honest review***

Summary from Goodreads

There is no death… only a change in worlds

It is Valentine’s Day at John Hopkin’s High, and the disgruntled Tina Crocker is having the best day of her life as she performs at the school’s largest talent show. She kills it. Literally. The moment she steps off stage: Tina Crocker croaks and ends up in… Dead School.

Entering a grotesque new world, she is greeted by a furious, hair-wobbling mentor who dispels her into the Spirit Guide division. But, unlike the rest of her class, she becomes the school’s first Spirit Guide’s Assistant while paired with the biggest floozy in the afterworld. Together, they are assigned to guide a living loser, in order to pass their course.

However, there is a light at the end of the tunnel… a rather long tunnel. Tina also meets a mysterious artist from the Suicide division, Alexei. And, somehow, their different breeds of awkward strangely click. As finals approach, Tina’s focus has to switch or else a miserable reincarnated life awaits. Yeah, rest in peace, my ass…

My thoughts

This book has a really interesting premise but, the execution was sloppy. It follows teenage, Tina Crocker who dies and goes on to a world of the dead. This seems like it would be a good book but unfortunately I ran into some conflict with the book.

I dnfed this so as for the plot I cannot say much but I saw enough of the writing to know that this book wasn’t for me.

What I liked

The start of the story was a very strong beginning and I was hooked. I liked Tina’s humor and the whole idea of the dead school was pretty cool.

What I didn’t like

The book was really hard to follow, while some parts were pretty easy to understand I was constantly feeling lost in the book and I wasn’t able to follow it. I felt lost, and not in a good way. The story was hard to understand and the deeper into the book I went the worse the book got.

Overall

This just wasn’t the book for me, I felt it was messy and hard to understand and I really didn’t enjoy it.

2.5 stars.

Happy reading,

Kiera ❤

The Love and Lies of Rukhsana Ali by Sabina Khan Review

5 stars.

This book shattered my heart, and then picked up the pieces and put it back together.

Image via Amazon

Summary from Goodreads

Seventeen-year-old Rukhsana Ali tries her hardest to live up to her conservative Muslim parents’ expectations, but lately she’s finding that harder and harder to do. She rolls her eyes instead of screaming when they blatantly favor her brother and she dresses conservatively at home, saving her crop tops and makeup for parties her parents don’t know about. Luckily, only a few more months stand between her carefully monitored life in Seattle and her new life at Caltech, where she can pursue her dream of becoming an engineer.

But when her parents catch her kissing her girlfriend Ariana, all of Rukhsana’s plans fall apart. Her parents are devastated; being gay may as well be a death sentence in the Bengali community. They immediately whisk Rukhsana off to Bangladesh, where she is thrown headfirst into a world of arranged marriages and tradition. Only through reading her grandmother’s old diary is Rukhsana able to gain some much needed perspective.

Rukhsana realizes she must find the courage to fight for her love, but can she do so without losing everyone and everything in her life

Wow. The Love and Lies of Rukhsana Ali was amazing. I flew through this book.

Things I didn’t love

• Some parts of the book were a bit unrealistic

Things I loved

• The diverse characters. This book follows a Muslim lesbian teen.
• The characters were great and they were all very well developed.
• The writing was so beautiful.
• While this read was definitely a bit heavier on substance than a regular contemporaries usually are it wasn’t long or boring. I liked how it was short and sweet.
• This book deals with some really serious issues that are present to today’s teens and I thought that all of these issues were shown well in the book.
• I liked how you got to see a glimpse into Bengali culture and learn about their food and their customs. That was very interesting.
• The dialogue and the interaction between the characters was well written.
• The book was very well paced and relatively easy to follow.
• Some parts of this book were very intense between characters.

“You must never let anyone take your happiness from you. You are young and strong and you must fight.”

“Do you know why I have kept this veil all these years?” she said.

“Because our wore it at your wedding.”

She shook her head. “No ammu. I kept it as a reminder to never let anyone force me into a life I didn’t want.”

Age Recommendation

Ages 14 up

Very little swearing (if any)

Romance, but just kissing

Only a few explicit scenes involving sex, but not super detailed.

Overall

I really enjoyed The Love and Lies of Rukhsana Ali it was a great book. While some parts were a bit unrealistic I loved how the story was written. This is definitely one of my favorites of 2019.

5 stars.

Until next time, happy reading,

Kiera ❤

For updates on my reading add me on Goodreads!

My review on Goodreads

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Buy this book!

Book Depository–Barnesandnoble–Amazon

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Have you read this book? Let me know in the comments below!

ARC review of The Humilations of Pipi McGee by Beth Vrabel

***I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review****

4.5 stars.

Summary

Eighth grade is going to be the year. The year that Pipi McGee redeems herself from her past Humilations, nose picking, drawing herself as a piece of bacon with boobs, shooting the winning point for the wrong team in basketball and then there’s seventh grade…we don’t talk about seventh grade. Pipi McGee has a plan to reverse her Humilations, but what happens when it goes to far?

First off,

This book is hilarious! I am definitely buying myself a copy of this when it comes out because, it was so fun to read. I was laughing from page one. I’ve read a few books of Beth Vrabel’s and have really enjoyed both of them and this one was no different. I loved our main character, Pipi she is such a fun main character and I felt like I some aspects that I could really relate to Pipi and how she was feeling in certain situations.

Why I loved it,

This book is the perfect combination of funny, empowering, and silly. I absolutely loved it and I just couldn’t put it down. This book is different from other middle grade books that I have read, it has such a unique and funny idea of this character who has had some pretty embarrassing stuff happen to her and she is determined to reverse it. This is a great book about friendship, and revenge…which some can argue is equally as awesome.

This book also has a few diverse characters, Sarah, who we later find out is gay and Eliza who is Pipi’s older sister who is teen mom to four year old Annie. This book introduces these characters and portrays them in a good manner. It is always nice to see really different and diverse characters, ecspeially in middle grade.

This book is a good mix of humor and serious-ness. In the book we explore topics like bullying and friendship and we have a character who is discovering her sexuality (our characters are in eighth grade, about to transition to high school).

Age recommendation

Ages 8-13

No explicit content or swearing

Overall

I absolutely adored this book, it was funny and well written. The characters were enjoyable and we’ll developed. I loved this and I can’t wait to read more of Beth’s work in the future!

4.5 stars.

Until next time, happy reading,

Kiera ❤

Join My Book Club!!!

Life at the library is a book club for all library lovers and users. We will be doing read alongs, challenges and other bookish fun. This is a public Goodreads book club, so anyone can join.

Feel free to join and invite your friends to join too!

Join Life at the Library!

Happy reading,

Kiera ❤

For updates on my reading Add me on Goodreads!

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo review

⭐⭐⭐⭐.5

***THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS***

Shadow and Bone is a young adult novel by Leigh Bardugo. That i’m pretty sure just about everyone has already read it but let’s just ignore the fact that I’m late to the party…like 8 years late.

Shadow and Bone follows Alina Starkhov who is in the military with her best friend Mal. When she finds out that she has magical ablilities the Grisha take her to become trained. But she learns secrets about the magic and she is forced to run off and hide.

I know my synopsis wasn’t very good. But I’m still trying to sort my thoughts.

Let’s talk about the Darkling. Who is maybe one of the coolest villains I have read about…maybe besides Voldemort and Sebastian Morgenstern. But you gotta admit the Darkling is pretty cool.

Also, I think we all saw the romance between those two coming.

I really liked the Darkling. I heard a lot of people talk about the Darkling and how cool he was on Goodreads so I’m glad that I know who the Darkling is now. He was very cool and very evil. I definitely saw more of the evil side of him at the end and I was really loving it. I would love a book just written in his perspective because, I think he’s a really cool character and I wish we could have explored more of his back story.

Alina is such a brave and strong main character. I loved her witty sense of humor and her bold personality. While Alina is not my favorite character in the whole world I still enjoyed the story.

I quite liked the world. The shadow fold and the Volcra are really cool and I can’t wait to dive back into the ‘Grishaverse’ as they call it and learn more about the world… Future Kiera here, I actually ended up not finish the rest of the series…please don’t attack me!

Even though I ended up enjoying Shadow and Bone quite a bit I felt that some parts were slow and a bit boring. Mainly parts at the start and the middle.

Age recommendation:

13up (this is a young adult novel)

• Not much swearing
• Romance, but just kissing throughout the book
• No super explicit scenes

Overall, I quite enjoyed Shadow and Bone. It was very entertaining and I really enjoyed the world. Can’t wait to read Siege and Storm!! Again I am not continuing this series.

Untill next time, happy reading!

Kiera 💜

Link to my Goodreads

Shadow and Bone

Two Can Keep a Secret by Karen M. McManus Review

4.25 stars

Image via Amazon

Summary from Goodreads

Echo Ridge is small-town America. Ellery’s never been there, but she’s heard all about it. Her aunt went missing there at age seventeen. And only five years ago, a homecoming queen put the town on the map when she was killed. Now Ellery has to move there to live with a grandmother she barely knows.

The town is picture-perfect, but it’s hiding secrets. And before school even begins for Ellery, someone’s declared open season on homecoming, promising to make it as dangerous as it was five years ago. Then, almost as if to prove it, another girl goes missing.

Ellery knows all about secrets. Her mother has them; her grandmother does too. And the longer she’s in Echo Ridge, the clearer it becomes that everyone there is hiding something. The thing is, secrets are dangerous–and most people aren’t good at keeping them. Which is why in Echo Ridge, it’s safest to keep your secrets to yourself

What I liked

• I really liked Karen McManus’s writing style I liked all the twists and turns in the book that kept me engaged the whole time.
• The characters we’re very well developed and easy to follow.
• This book is written between the perspectives of Malcom and Ellery, both of these characters were very enjoyable.
• The dialogue was good and the story was well paced.
• The book kept me guessing until the end and was a very well plotted mystery.

What I didn’t like

• I wasn’t really feeling some of the romance that went on in the book. But, I didn’t feel like the romance was rushed or that the characters were being forced together.

Age recommendation

Ages 14 up

Some swearing and romance, but just kissing.

Discussion about afairs between characters.

Overall

I really enjoyed Two Can Keep a Secret. It was very entertaining and well written. It kept me engaged and on the edge of my seat. However, I didn’t feel like the ending completely blew me away. I am looking forward to reading more of Karen’s work in the future.

4.25 stars.

Until next time, happy reading,

Kiera ❤

My review on Goodreads

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