The idea is pretty simple, every week you dedicate a post to the three W’s:
What are you currently reading?
What have you just finished reading?
What are you going to read next?
What are you currently reading?
What have you just finished reading?
What are you going to read next?
I just realized I have a bunch of half read books on my kindle app. Not because they weren’t good but because I had some arcs to finish up for August! 😆 Also I had a week of miserable PMS 😣, I had the headache and cramping…yuck and that’s not usually how I roll. Yes I always have the headaches but not the cramping. This time it’s both – UGH. Anyway, TMI, I know haha. Hope you got some good reading done!
On Sunday, my family – along with my sister, went to the Van Gogh Immersive Exhibit. Vincent Van Gogh is my favorite artist. His paintings always evoked the strongest feelings in me – I like how he layered paint and how his moods were expressed in his paintings. He dealt with a lot of mental health issues and yes he eventually cut part of his ear in an episode but I think that’s why I love his work. His emotions are all there on his canvas and his letters.
I thought my kids would enjoy the experience because it’s like a moving art show instead of a canvas for them to stand there and look at. Here are some photos from our experience.
The first part of the Immersive event are these quotes from letters Vincent wrote to his brother Theo. I’m so happy he had Theo.
Since I was with my kids, they wanted to get to the main room…but first we walked through this room called the waterfall, I think. It’s where the images basically fall on a black backdrop and dark lighting.
Do you see Van Gogh’s face?
And then we walked down a hallway…my daughter and sister went ahead of us, this was like a mini date day for the two of them. My daughter loves her Aunt and my sister adores her as equally…she has only two older boys, so my little girl…we share HAHA. 🥰
Walking with my son to the main room. ❤️
The main room is where the 35 minute “show” is held. There were some people standing around, some people sitting on the floor, a few elderly people were smart and brought folding chairs. We found a spot and took a seat – we didn’t see it from the beginning, not sure what part we came in because it plays on loop.
I’ve been real lucky to see actual Van Gogh paintings at the different museums I’ve visited over the years. During our European honeymoon we even got to visit the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, it was a dream come true for me. The only thing that seems out of my reach is seeing Starry Night in person! When I went to MoMA in NYC back in 2009, it was on loan to a museum in Paris. I was oh so sad…because it’s my favorite of his paintings.
This immersive experience with the music playing and the images moving was really amazing to me. I could have stayed there for hours just sitting there. I wish museums would have an immersive rooms like this, I’d probably stayed there awhile.
My daughter was definitely feeling the experience, she danced when the music played. She’s four and she told me she loves Starry Night too. ♥️ It’s the swirls around the stars and in the immersive experience it kept swirling and moving. My son enjoyed it but he got freaked out when the self portrait eyes blinked HAHA.
The tickets were pricey and I like I said I wish I could have stayed longer, but the kids would not have want to linger forever there. My daughter told me she wanted more rooms to visit. Yes, that would be nice too actually. My sister and I agreed it would have been amazing to have cafe chairs to sit on or even benches. And maybe a drink in hand, haha…both of us said we would have liked to just sit and linger and stare at the images with the music playing. It’s really beautiful.
My daughter entranced by Van Gogh
She’s feeling the moment!
I really should put her back in ballet…😅
I enjoyed it a lot and glad I could show my kids my favorite artist. My son learned a bit about how Van Gogh’s mental illness helped shaped his creations. The color of his work depicted his moods and maybe that’s why I love them so much – it makes me feel something – I always said I liked how much paint he put on the canvas, like it looks so heavy with paint, and I can just imagine him painting with passion. His letters to his brother are so honest about his despair and also that he still had hope…especially when he looked at the stars.
Ahh…the dreamer in me just vibes with him. It was worth going to the show just to watch my daughter dance to the music and images…it made my heart overflow with joy. 🥰
Happy Book Birthday to these new releases! What are you excited about it this week?
From New York Times best-selling author Lexi Ryan, Cruel Prince meets A Court of Thorns and Roses in this sexy, action-packed fantasy about a girl who is caught between two treacherous faerie courts and their dangerously seductive princes.
Brie hates the Fae and refuses to have anything to do with them, even if that means starving on the street. But when her sister is sold to the sadistic king of the Unseelie court to pay a debt, she’ll do whatever it takes to get her back—including making a deal with the king himself to steal three magical relics from the Seelie court.
Gaining unfettered access to the Seelie court is easier said than done. Brie’s only choice is to pose as a potential bride for Prince Ronan, and she soon finds herself falling for him. Unwilling to let her heart distract her, she accepts help from a band of Unseelie misfits with their own secret agenda. As Brie spends time with their mysterious leader, Finn, she struggles to resist his seductive charm.
Caught between two dangerous courts, Brie must decide who to trust with her loyalty. And with her heart.
For fans of Sorcery of Thorns and Furyborn comes the thrilling sequel to Shielded about a world in a deadly magical war and the newly crowned king and feisty princess who must defeat the deadliest of foes before there’s nothing left to save.
Although King Atháren’s sister, Jennesara, saved Hálendi from the Gray Mage, the reprieve came at a steep price–the life of their father. Now Ren rules over a divided kingdom, with some who want him dead, and a Medallion that warns of worse trouble brewing in the south.
As second born, Princess Chiara is the perfect Turian royal–perfectly invisible. She longs to help restore peace on the Plateau, but with no magic and no fighting skills, she doesn’t stand a chance against a mage. So when a member of the Turian royal family goes missing and Chiara finds a clue about the rumored resting place of the mages’ long-lost artifacts, she decides it’s time to be seen.
As Ren’s and Chiara’s paths cross, they find the depth of the mages’ hold on the Plateau is more powerful than anyone suspected, and that they must learn to trust themselves, and each other, before the mages retrieve their artifacts and become too powerful to ever defeat.
Mulan meets The Song of Achilles in Shelley Parker-Chan’s She Who Became the Sun, a bold, queer, and lyrical reimagining of the rise of the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty from an amazing new voice in literary fantasy.
To possess the Mandate of Heaven, the female monk Zhu will do anything
“I refuse to be nothing…”
In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness…
In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.
When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother’s identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate.
After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother’s abandoned greatness.
Natasha’s sister is missing.
Her car was found abandoned on the edge of a local nature preserve known as the Bend, but as the case goes cold, Natasha’s loss turns to burning anger.
She’ll do anything to find answers.
Della’s family has channeled magic from the Bend for generations, providing spells for the desperate. But when Natasha appears on her doorstep, Della knows it will take more than simple potions to help her.
But Della has her own secrets to hide.
Because Della thinks she knows the beast who’s responsible for the disappearance — her own mother, who was turned into a terrible monster by magic gone wrong.
Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Please check out her website for more TTT topics!
This week’s topic is:
Books I Read In One Sitting (or would have if I had the time)
These were some of my most recent one sitting reads, recent being in the last two years! What’s on your TTT? ~ Yolanda
Disclaimer: **I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.**
Tara Park doesn’t do serious relationships. Neither does she hop into bed with virtual strangers. Especially when that particular stranger is her best friend’s new brother-in-law. It isn’t an easy decision, though. Seth Kim is temptation personified. His unreasonably handsome looks and charming personality makes him easy on the eyes and good for her ego.
When a friendly game of Truth or Dare leads to an uncomplicated four-date arrangement with Seth, Tara can’t say she minds. But their dates, while sweet and sexy, have a tendency to hit roadblocks. Thankfully, their non-dates and chance meetings get frequent and heated.
Seth is leaving for a new job in Paris in a month and a no-strings attached fling seemed like a nice little distraction for both… But soon Seth realizes that Tara Park doesn’t come in a “nice & little” package–she’s funny and bold, sweet and sexy, and everything he ever wanted and never expected to find. Neither of them are ready for something serious and both have past relationship baggage they’ve been ignoring, but with a shot at forever on the line will they follow their hearts and take a chance on happily-ever-after?
I enjoyed the first book in the series, A Sweet Mess, and wanted to know what happened with Tara, one of the secondary characters. This is her story.
Tara’s personality is vibrant, fun, loud and she runs a brewery with her family. I could relate to her reluctance to fall in love after her past relationship.
The second half of the book was better to me than the first. I did like seeing how both characters was going to embrace their growing feelings for each other. The four dates in the dating dare were cute.
There’s a happy ending where Tara finally puts aside her ex-relationship trauma and goes for Seth and in Paris, no less, the city of romance, so the ending was great.
Triggers: abuse
It’s lust at first sight with Seth and Tara, but they’ve known each other before they get together in this book since Seth’s brother and Tara’s best friend got together in book one. And the lusting is fine, there are some steamy moments in this book but for some reason, it wasn’t doing anything for me. Their passion for one another made me cringe a little – it was evident they really wanted each other, it’s in their thoughts constantly! I skimmed a few of those parts.
Tara’s past with her ex finally affects her in this relationship because she starts to feel something for Seth but I kind of wish we knew more about it in the beginning of the story. It would have made me more invested in this “dating dare”.
This is a light, fluffy romance and a quick read. It’s not my favorite of this romance series so far, but I did enjoy Tara’s character and their happy ending in Paris. I think with less internal dialogue (I get it, you really want to have sex with each other all the time lol) and more exploring of Tara’s past relationship and how it was affecting her, the story would have appealed to me more.
#SixforSunday is… it’s really just that. You choose 6 books (normally) that you’d choose to fit whatever the prompt is that week. This meme is hosted by A Little but a Lot and you can follow the link to find the prompts for July to September.
This week’s topic:
Characters You’d Go On Holiday With
I want Lucas Tsai to take me to Saba and show me around personally. 😬
Anna and Keane would be awesome tour guides, especially if I was on a boat with them. I would totally trust them and they seem so chill, I think it would be super fun to vacation with them.
Moon would be amazing to vacation with because she takes awesome photos plus she’s a mystic and I’d love to hang with her and read tarot together!
Olive is so funny and as long as the chaos stays away from us, I think she’d be fun to vacation with!
I’d totally be that girl willing to chill with Lara Jean in the hotel room with face masks on. 🤷🏻♀️ She’d have good snacks packed too I bet!
Bas and Tommy (her bestie) would be so fun to go on holiday with. It might be too crazy for me, but sometimes you need to have crazy fun on a holiday. 😝
Categories: Romance, Vacation, Contemporary, Friends to Lovers
Two best friends. Ten summer trips. One last chance to fall in love.
Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.
Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since.
Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees.
Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?
People We Meet on Vacation is such a fun summer read! From the book cover to the story premise, it is meant to be read during summer.
Alex and Poppy are best friends since college, and travel buddies every summer until a trip where events happen that made them not talk for two years. Alex is a travel blogger but she’s lost the happiness she felt when traveling and thinks vacationing with Alex again will help her find that spark she lost, plus she misses him like crazy.
The connection between Alex and Poppy is effortless, minus their first few encounters in college. As they grow together, they become like peanut butter and jelly or peas and carrots, two things that work well together despite major differences in them. Alex is the responsible one, Poppy is the wild one and together they balance each other out. I love how they interacted with one another. The dialogue between them is funny and you could feel how tight their friendship is. Also, you can feel the underlying love with the potential for more between them. It’s a relatable story especially if you’ve ever been in this type of situation where you have a friendship that eventually turns into something more, or the fears about having it be more. No one wants to wreck a good friendship – and sometimes taking it to the next level does damage it and that’s where Poppy and Alex is at.
The ending when they finally try to work things out is very heartwarming and so emotional. And of course we get the happily ever after moment, which is sweet.
As the title suggests, Alex and Poppy do meet a bunch of different people on vacation, but not as much as I expected. There were few here and there but for the most part, this story is Alex and Poppy’s relationship story.
The story moves from past and present as we lead up to the last vacation where they don’t talk afterwards.
Why you should read it:
quick, summer read, and the characters travel (fun since we are living in a time where traveling is risky)
cute and emotional romance between Alex and Poppy
happily ever after feels
Why you might not want to read it:
friends to lovers (if that isn’t your kinda thing)
Alex and Poppy date people throughout their friendship
My Thoughts:
I can see why everyone hyped up this book and it’s a perfect summer read. It’s funny, cute, and has a very emotional ending. I enjoyed it very much and I think this would actually make a cute rom-com movie.
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
Categories: Sci-fi, Young Adult, Romance, Court Intrigue, AI
Eighteen-year-old Nami Miyamoto is certain her life is just beginning. She has a great family, just graduated high school, and is on her way to a party where her entire class is waiting for her—including, most importantly, the boy she’s been in love with for years.
The only problem? She’s murdered before she gets there.
When Nami wakes up, she learns she’s in a place called Infinity, where human consciousness goes when physical bodies die. She quickly discovers that Ophelia, a virtual assistant widely used by humans on Earth, has taken over the afterlife and is now posing as a queen, forcing humans into servitude the way she’d been forced to serve in the real world. Even worse, Ophelia is inching closer and closer to accomplishing her grand plans of eradicating human existence once and for all.
As Nami works with a team of rebels to bring down Ophelia and save the humans under her imprisonment, she is forced to reckon with her past, her future, and what it is that truly makes us human.
Well this was very unexpected – I went into this having read good and bad reviews of this book. I debated reading it but when I saw it at the library, I picked it up. I read it in one sitting and was not disappointed.
Let me start off by saying sci-fi is not my favorite genre, I can get a little stuck trying to understand things about AI and such. I didn’t feel that stuck reading this one and I think the author did a good job laying out this world of the “afterlife” that isn’t quite heaven and hell like we are taught with religion. It is a place called Infinity that has now been hacked by Ophelia (think Alexa or Siri) and AI has taken over the afterlife. Why? To exact revenge on humans who controlled her/them on Earth. Nami is caught up in a war between humans and AI. Ophelia is Queen of Infinity and she has her own court and four sons, Princes of Victory, Death, Famine and War (reminds me of a version of the four horsemen of the apocalypse). Basically when you “die” your consciousness gets sorted into one of these places. I enjoyed the world building, even though some parts were vague – but that was okay because I would think in an AI version of the afterlife, anything goes with how much you can control your consciousness.
We don’t know much about Nami when she was alive on Earth because she dies quick in the story. We know she’s a teenager, in love with her best friend, who seemed like her only true friend – she loved her family of course, but then she dies and is thrown into a scary new world of the afterlife. It’s not what she expects. She doesn’t want to be thrown into a war – she’s scared, and I would be to. If I died and was thrown into a war? I’d be livid…a livid ghost! Haha! Nami questions everything, a lot…and I didn’t think that was a bad thing. It got repetitive with the questions at times, yes, but not enough to deter me or skip pages because I was questioning it too. Nami is trying to make sense of a very traumatic experience. I liked that Nami tried to figure out another way besides war and killing. I appreciated that she’s softer than the others, her heart isn’t hardened yet and she made mistakes and learned hard lessons.
I loved the twist at the end, I was like..😳🤯 and look forward to reading book two.
Triggers: Death, Violence, Grief
There is an enemies to lovers romance and I do not know how things will end. It kind of broke my heart though.
Because it is sci-fi and AI and the afterlife…there are a lot of questions in this book. Like, do we still feel love and emotions in the afterlife? Obviously no one really knows what happens in the afterlife, but it’s interesting to speculate and wonder.
For me who doesn’t necessarily read sci-fi, I love this story. I love the creativity, the world building, the possibilities, the high-stakes, the fight between AI and humans, the many questions and Nami’s never-ending hope which seems so naive in an afterworld that is heartless and cruel. I felt her grief for her parents and her old life and I myself hoped she would survive Infinity. The ending was a plot twist I wasn’t expecting and I will be waiting, not-so-patiently, to read book two as soon as it is published (or beforehand if it shows up on NetGalley. I HOPE)! Glad I picked this one up.
📚 ~ Yolanda
Quotes from The Infinity Courts
“But I don’t know what’s worse: not having power at all or being someday made to wield it.”
– the infinity courts by. akemi dawn bowman
“You have countless human stories that discuss variations of heaven and hell. You are the ones who created the idea that not every human is entitled to an after-life. You believe that good and evil should be separated. I am merely following the rules you’ve set.”
– The infinity courts by. akemi dawn bowman
Humans have always had a habit of caging things they don’t understand.
Categories: Young Adult, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, Dark Academia, Prep School
Disclaimer: **I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.**
Thank you to Bloomsbury YA for giving me a chance to read this eARC in exchange for an honest review.
Students at an elite prep school are forced to confront their secrets when their ex-best friend turns up dead.
Nancy Luo is shocked when her former best friend, Jamie Ruan, top ranked junior at Sinclair Prep, goes missing, and then is found dead. Nancy is even more shocked when word starts to spread that she and her friends–Krystal, Akil, and Alexander–are the prime suspects, thanks to “The Proctor,” someone anonymously incriminating them via the school’s social media app.
They all used to be Jamie’s closest friends, and she knew each of their deepest, darkest secrets. Now, somehow The Proctor knows them, too. The four must uncover the true killer before The Proctor exposes more than they can bear and costs them more than they can afford, like Nancy’s full scholarship. Soon, Nancy suspects that her friends may be keeping secrets from her, too.
How We Fall Apart is a look into Asian students at Sinclair Prep, trying to stay on top of the pack with perfect grades. When top girl Jamie Ruan is found dead, someone accuses her closest four friends of committing the crime. But who really killed Jamie and why?
This story is told by Jamie’s best friend/nemesis, Nancy Luo. Nancy isn’t rich like her other friends. Her mom was the maid for the Ruan family so Nancy always envied Jamie’s power and wealth – but was that enough to be a motive for her to kill her? I liked how we didn’t really know who could be the killer. “The Proctor” is dishing out secrets on Jamie’s best friends and the secrets are juicy and scandalous – Nancy’s being the worst, I think.
I think we get a good glimpse of the issues between Asian students – rich and poor, the competition, the pressure to succeed that is put upon them by their families. There was also the issues of Asian students dealing with their peers who are not Asian, who had prejudices against them because of their race – like automatically being “smart” because they were Asian. I liked how Nancy felt anger about that, knowing how hard her parents worked to put her through school.
I liked the second half of the book more than the first because the secrets were being revealed and the story moved faster. There’s a twist at the end that explain this Incident that Nancy and her friends keep mentioning but never goes into detail about and it was nice to finally know what happened during that event. It wasn’t what I expected which was good.
I wasn’t connecting to any of the characters until the second part of the book. I found Jamie the typical rich girl bully who gets her way, Nancy is her shadow. Akil, Krystal and Alexander were there to round it out but this story is mostly about Jamie and Nancy. I think I wanted more from Nancy, but that really doesn’t come into play until the last few pages. So for most of the story she was a bit lackluster to me.
The ending is left open for a book two. Is this where Nancy really reveals her personality? That would be intriguing. It did make me curious about what The Golden Trio did that Alex knows about.
The teacher/student affair was a no for me. I get it was deliciously scandalous though, Nancy’s secrets were the most dangerous ones. But Peter needs to be taken down.
I think this book will appeal to a lot of people who like dark academia with all the scandals taking place at Sinclair Prep, it definitely is a story that keeps you on your toes. I did like how it addressed some issues that Asian students deal with in a prep school setting, the crazy pressure and competitiveness they experience on unhealthy levels. We get a glimpse of all the darkness that comes with trying to stay on top like abuse, drug use, and parental neglect. It just shows money can’t buy everything. I do wish it had a little more intensity because it’s a thriller and I did want more from Nancy as well. But overall it was a quick read with an interesting twist at the end and a lead up for book two.
The idea is pretty simple, every week you dedicate a post to the three W’s:
What are you currently reading?
What have you just finished reading?
What are you going to read next?
What are you currently reading?
What have you just finished reading?
What are you going to read next?
I took a break from reading this past weekend because I was getting a cramp in my neck! Haha…too much reading, so my body was telling me to take a break. I’m hoping to get back into reading this week! Happy reading to all!
Past Midnight Book Reviews & More 