The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf: A Stunning and Emotionally Charged Historical Debut

4.5 stars Emotionally moving, steeped with history, and full of meaning, Hanna Alkaf's The Weight of Our Sky is set during the historic race riots in 1969 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Melati Ahmad looks like your typical Beatles-obsessed sixteen-year-old, but she believes she harbors a djinn inside her--one who threatens her with horrific images of her mother’s …

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The Kingdom of Copper by S.A. Chakraborty (ARC): Spoiler-Free Review of this Incredible Sequel

4.5 stars The Daevabad Trilogy (The City of Brass and The Kingdom of Copper, currently) is a sweeping adventure that conjures a world where djinn summon flames with the snap of a finger and waters run deep with old magic; where blood can be dangerous as any spell, and a clever con artist from Cairo will alter the fate of a kingdom. …

Writing ARC Requests + Why It’s a Dying Art

I think you all probably know that I have had shockingly little success with writing ARC requests, despite me being lucky enough to receive a lot of ARCs in general. If you haven't read my transparency post about stats (find it here!), I talk a little bit about requesting physical ARCs and my success rate. Which …

#MailboxMonday: A Photo Journey of the Book Mail I’ve Forgotten to Share

I always feel really lucky to receive a lot of amazing bookmail--both from friends, authors, publishers, and giveaways. There's always an inner battle for me between thanking the person (and I am so grateful to be able to read these amazing books) and trying to not flaunt my privilege in a way, especially because I …

Wildcard by Marie Lu (ARC): Mixed Feelings on a Highly Anticipated Sequel (Spoiler-Free!)

  3.5 stars (note: No major spoilers for book 1!) This made me so sad that I wasn't completely blown away by this. I was hoping this would be the standout second book I was yearning for. I have a lot of mixed feelings, but in the end, it was slightly more positive than negative. …

Wrapping Up #ARCAugust 2018: What Did I Read?

Normally I don't write wrap-up posts for reading challenges, but I thought it would be nice to sum up what I read during #ARCAugust. You can read my sign-up post with more detail about the challenge here, but the gist of it is that you try and read as many ARCs as possible in one …

Over 35 Books!: June & July 2018 Book Haul (minus Book Con): Part 2

Welcome back to another week of "Vicky-was-not-ready-to-write-5000-words-of-thank-you's-in-one-post" with part 2 of my book haul from June & July! If you haven't read it already, check out the books I received in June in Part 1 here! This post is all about my July book haul & the cool swag I received...*wink wink* This is probably …

Over 35 Books!: June & July 2018 Book Haul (minus Book Con): Part 1

These past two months were so crazy in books that I had to split this post in two, can you believe it?! I didn't want to bombard you all with 35+ books and chatting about all of them in one post, so I split it up & this post is all about the books I …

Gearing Up for #ARCAugust 2018: My TBR

This is the first time I'll participate in #ARCAugust, hosted by Read.Sleep.Repeat but I want to make it a really big thing for me, because I have bunches of ARCs from Book Con that I really want to get to reading, and I feel like I'm going to fall behind on ARCs during the fall. …

A Discussion on BooksForTrade & How It Fits into Inclusivity in the Community

Last Tuesday I posted a short skit/screenplay thing I wrote about #booksfortrade that I hoped was a more humorous, different take of opening up the discussion for today's post! (If you haven't read it yet, you can find it here! It's a good precursor to this discussion, but I do admit it's probably not necessary …