Hi hello and welcome to F is for Friday, hosted by Nomadic Worlds. With F is for Friday, you answer a few prompts that relate to your reading for the past week and even share some things that made you happy! I like the idea of having a day to talk about my favorite book related things of the week and also trying to focus on some positive things. I've been away due to surgery, but I'm really trying to get back into posting regularly, so this is a perfect post to do that with. Let's get started!
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F – Feature your latest book obsession (it doesn’t have to be your current read)

I – Indicate which book/s you are looking forward to reading this weekend

I'm really excited to finish Yellowface so that I can get to The Only One Left by Riley Sager. I have loved every book that he's released so far and I just know that this one is going to be just as good!

F – Favorite quote of the week/day

"People always describe jealousy as this sharp, green, venomous thing. Unfounded, vinegary, mean-spirited. But I've found that jealousy, to writers, feels more like fear."

This is from Yellowface and it really stuck with me because it makes sense. I'm a writer (not published because I'm terrified to publish anything) and I feel like I can understand how jealousy can feel like fear to a writer. The fear of falling into obscurity, the fear of your book not being "good enough", the fear of someone stealing your idea. Fear is a scary feeling.

F – Five Things You’re Happy Or Grateful For This Week

1. My husband, Jamie. He's been amazing since my surgery at the end of May and I'm just so grateful for him. His birthday is coming up in July and I'm so excited to hopefully do something really nice for him because he really deserves a break and a good birthday!

2. I just got some new yarn to start making a cardigan with and I'm really happy about it. I've been looking at it for a while and decided to finally pick it up! It's the Neon Stripe color from Red Heart Super Saver Jumbo Stripes. Jamie said that it reminded him of the 90's skating rink arcade carpet, and I loved that because we actually met at a skating rink!

3. My incision from my surgery is healing so well. I struggled a lot at the beginning and I was so down on myself after having the surgery, but I'm just a few days away from being a month out and I feel so much better now. I suffered for over a year with a massively herniated disc in my L5/S1 and to not have hardly any pain in that area anymore is...wild. It's something I'm having to adjust to and it's definitely weird, but I'm so grateful I was able to get this surgery.

4. I got approved for an ARC of The Death I Gave Him by Em X. Liu which I'm super excited to read, and I also got an invite to a blog tour for another book! I love taking part in blog tours so I'm really excited to have the opportunity to take part in this one.

5. I've been playing a lot of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom during my recovery and I've been enjoying it so much. I played Breath of the Wild during my chemotherapy treatments, so it's kind of wild that I'm now playing the sequel all these years later during more medical stuff. But it's such a fun game and I love everything about it. 
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And that does it for this F is for Friday post! I'm so happy to be slowly picking up reading and blogging again, and these weekly posts are so helpful for me to ease back into it. How has your week been? Have you read anything good or picked up a book you're really excited about? What's one thing that you're happy or grateful for this week? Leave me a comment below so that we can chat! Thanks for stopping by and I'll see you in the next chapter!

Hi hello friends and welcome to the Spellbound Lies blog tour, hosted by the always wonderful Rockstar Book Tours! Today, I’ll be sharing my review for the book along with an exciting guest post from the author, Catherine Downen, as well as an awesome giveaway where you could win Catherine’s full ebook catalog as well as some beautiful physical art prints! So, be sure to stick around to the end of this post for all of the giveaway information because you definitely don’t want to miss out. Let’s get started!

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Guest post from the author, Catherine Downen!

“Choices are in no particular order and are spoiler free! Some include music I listened to while writing or character art that’s been created of those scenes. I also included my favorite line from each of these scenes!”

    1. When Jessamyn (our MC) meets the Beast, for obvious reasons. Who doesn’t love a good enemies meeting in an Enemies to Lovers book? This was one of the first scenes I wrote for Spellbound Lies (it takes place in Chapter 3), and I think it was a great sneak peek at all the fun scenes to come. It has a food fight, tension, and some of my favorite dialogue in the book between our two main characters. 

“My name is Jessamyn Elisdream. Ring a bell, Prince?” 

    2. One of the final scenes where Jessamyn is challenged with breaking the curse. To avoid spoilers I won’t say the outcome, but this scene was one I spent the entire writing process looking forward to. I tend to write in chronological order, so the anticipation of getting to this moment was next level. I remember mapping it out when I outlined the book and being able to see it through Jessamyn’s eyes like a movie. An added bonus was being in a new setting with some new characters, that really kept the scene interesting. While drafting I had the song Glass Heart by Tommee Profitt on repeat to get into the Prince’s head during this moment. The line “Is this how it ends” seemed to fit the scene really well!

“You could lose everything.” 

“I know.” 

    3. Jessamyn and Prince Nikolaus baking the desserts for the second courting ceremony would be another favorite! As the two are wrapping up, a flirtatious fight with flour and sugar breaks out and it’s the first time we see either of them carefree and happy. I loved how this scene (full of flirting and love and kindness) was written as a nod back to the food fight between the Beast and Jessamyn (full of anger and hatred and frustration). It was a nice nod to the Jekyll & Hyde aspects (the Good vs the Evil), and it also just gave the cutest dialogue! 

“I’m doing the Courting Ceremony as a distraction for the people of Strize. The only girl I have any interest in is standing before me now.” 

    4. The Fire Festival. The whole event was a dream to write, and it gets me hooked each time I go back to read it. In a way, it’s their world's form of Fourth of July, celebrating the witches being exiled. Jessamyn, a baker’s daughter who came from practically nothing, gets to experience the event in all its glamor. There’s a lot that goes down in the scenes at the Fire Festival, but two moments stick out from the rest. The first is when Jessamyn compares the fireworks she and another character (remaining unnamed for spoilers) lights to a flare of distress, each of them searching for the other to help them. This moment was inspired by and written to Flares by The Script. The second is of course our first kiss in the book! It happens during the dance at the end of the night, which in my head, had a piano instrumental to Champagne Problems by Taylor Swift playing in the background. 

“I will dance with you until the sun rises.” 

    5. The Broken Barrel! I loved writing Jessamyn’s first outing to the local Tavern in disguise, as she was VERY much not supposed to be there. Much of this book is spent with only four characters since Jessamyn is a prisoner in the castle. The Broken Barrel scenes were one of the few that introduced some new characters to the story, and I loved crafting each of them. Especially because I knew, at the time of writing, I was growing the cast of characters that will play a big role in the sequel! Of course, River by Bishop Briggs was viral on TikTok while I wrote this scene, so naturally, that made it on my book playlist. 

“I don’t fight for her. I fight with her.” 
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About the Author:

Catherine Downen is a Young Adult author in both fantasy and contemporary romance. She graduated from Bradley University with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. Currently, Catherine is working as an engineer in St. Louis while writing her books.

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | TikTok | Pinterest | Spotify | Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tour Schedule:

Week One:

10/3/2022	Wanderingwitchreads	TikTok Review/IG Post
10/4/2022	Under the Book Cover	Review/IG Post
10/5/2022	Nagma | TakeALookAtMyBookshelf	IG Review
10/6/2022	@jacleomik33	IG Review
10/7/2022	The Caffeinated Reader	Review/IG Post

 

Week Two:

10/10/2022	@bookishreviews_byalison	IG Review
10/11/2022	A Bookish Dream	Review/IG Post
10/12/2022	Book Reviews by Taylor	Review/IG Post
10/13/2022	Jael Just Reading	Review/IG Post
10/14/2022	Beers Books Boos	Review/IG Post

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And that’s it for my review of Spellbound Lies by Catherine Downen! I had such an amazing time with this book and I’m so grateful once again to Rockstar Book Tours for giving me the opportunity to discover a new favorite fantasy story. Don’t forget to pick it up when it releases on October 11th, 2022! Thanks for stopping by and I’ll see you in the next chapter!

Hi hello and welcome to the blog tour for Sundial by Catriona Ward, hosted by JeanBookNerd! I'm so excited that I finally get to share my review for this incredible book. This was such a wild ride and I was not expecting any of the twists and turns that it had! Please be sure to check out all of the other tour stops here and stay tuned to the end of my review for an awesome giveaway where you could win a copy of Sundial! Let's get started!
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"It's these little details between people that sometimes seem to spell the future when you look back on them."

"Everyone has one story that explains them completely. I thought I knew what mine was. I was wrong- I am in it, here and now. This will be the choice that defines me. The decision tree unfolds before my eyes, the terrible fruit at the end of each branch."

"Everything comes around the dial in the end."

As I was reading the end of this book, I found myself absolutely bawling my brains out. It felt like a strange reaction to have honestly, especially with the events that are occurring during the finale, but I was just so overcome with emotion and seeing everything that I had read throughout the book come together all at once. Crying while reading is a rare occurrence for me, so that’s how I knew that I had found a book to add to my all-time favorites list. It actually made me text my mother to tell her I loved her, that’s how much this book affected me! 

Something about this book just spoke to the weirdo in me. Sundial is one of the craziest books that I've read in a long time and it was such an enjoyable experience. It’s not going to be a book for everyone, but I was absolutely the target audience. With a twisty plot, unreliable characters, and a writing style that will make you both enthralled and uncomfortable, Sundial is easily the best horror book of 2022.

 

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About the Author:

CATRIONA WARD was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in the United States, Kenya, Madagascar, Yemen, and Morocco. She studied English at the University of Oxford and later earned her master’s degree in creative writing at the University of East Anglia. Ward won the August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel for her debut, The Girl from Rawblood, and again for Little Eve, making her the first woman to win the prize twice. Little Eve also won the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel and will be published by Nightfire.

Giveaway!

Title: A Curse of Roses
Author: Diana Pinguicha
Pages: 352
Genre: YA Fantasy/ Historical Fiction
Release Date: 01 December 2020

From Goodreads: "With just one touch, bread turns into roses. With just one bite, cheese turns into lilies. There’s a famine plaguing the land, and Princess Yzabel is wasting food simply by trying to eat. Before she can even swallow, her magic—her curse—has turned her meal into a bouquet. She’s on the verge of starving, which only reminds her that the people of Portugal have been enduring the same pain. If only it were possible to reverse her magic. Then she could turn flowers…into food. Fatyan, a beautiful Enchanted Moura, is the only one who can help. But she is trapped by magical binds. She can teach Yzabel how to control her curse—if Yzabel sets her free with a kiss. As the King of Portugal’s betrothed, Yzabel would be committing treason, but what good is a king if his country has starved to death? With just one kiss, Fatyan is set free. And with just one kiss, Yzabel is yearning for more. She’d sought out Fatyan to help her save the people. Now, loving her could mean Yzabel’s destruction."

This was a wonderful LGBT retelling of this story with some really memorable characters that I instantly found myself loving (and shipping, let's be honest). I genuinely felt for Yza as I read about how she was quite literally starving, unable to eat anything because it continually turns into flowers and thorns in her mouth and throat. She's surviving on broth and is realizing that her people are also enduring the same pain that she is so she wants to enlist the help of the Enchanted Moura, Fatyan, to help her reverse her magic and allow her to turn flowers into food. But the twist? She's magically trapped and the only way to set her free is for Yza to grant her a kiss. The kiss not only sets Fatyan free but also awakens something inside of Yza and it was such a lovely story of acceptance and, well, love!

The writing. Oh wow the writing. I was immediately transported to Yza and Fatyan's world and it was absolutely magical! I have a hard time staying interested in fantasy stories if the writing is hard for me to follow but I found Diana Pinguicha's writing to be absolutely magical. She has a lyrical way of writing that had me hooked and wanting to know more about the story and the characters from the very beginning. I found the story to be both well written and easy to follow which allowed me to get through the story with ease. But it also made me want to read more as soon as I was finished so I will absolutely be looking out for more by this amazing author! Oh, and did I mention that the descriptions of the food (and for some reason the flowers as well?) made me constantly hungry?! I found myself snacking while reading because some of the foods sounded so delectable that I couldn't resist eating something, as much as I wished I could be eating some of the food from the story. That was a huge plus in my book, personally. I also liked that the magic was...simple? It didn't feel complicated or hard to keep up with like a lot of YA fantasy books tend to get sometimes. I wasn't really confused and found it easy to follow which, again, is a huge plus.

All in all, A Curse of Roses was a fantastically beautiful read. With historical legend roots, a love story between two amazing women, and world building that will draw you into this magical world and keep you hooked from start to finish, this is a book you absolutely do not want to miss!

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About the Author

Born in the sunny lands of Portugal, Diana is a Computer Engineer graduate who currently calls Lisbon home. She can usually be found writing, painting, devouring extraordinary quantities of books and video games, or walking around with her bearded dragon, Norberta. She also has two cats, Sushi and Jubas, who would never forgive her if she didn’t mention them.

Her art can be found at http://pinguicha.deviantart.com.

Also publishes under Diana Pinguicha Connors.

Website: http://pinguicha.wordpress.com

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/pinguicha