Good Evening,
It’s the start of another week. It’s Monday! What are you Reading is hosted by Kathryn from Book Date, this is a weekly event to share what we’ve read in the past week and what we hope to read, plus whatever else comes to mind.
Once agains I am really late getting this post up. I feel like I am all over the place lately. I am just hoping to find some form of a “routine” that I can stick to so that I don’t feel like I am just running around and not staying on top of things. I’m not sure what happened, but I just feel like I’m running in circles. I will get it figured out, I just have to remind myself that I need to take things one day at a time and allow myself to rest. I am awful about not letting myself rest and wearing myself out. Thank you for sticking with me as I continue to figure all of this out.
Anyway, you’re here for the books, so let’s get to that. I started quite a few different books last week, and I am surprised that I actually finished any of them because it felt like everyday I was just picking up a different one.
Recent Books
A Guide to Being Just Friends by Sophie Sullivan | (Jansen Brothers #3) | Romance | Add to Goodreads
A playful and emotional romantic comedy from the author of Ten Rules for Faking It
Hailey Sharp has a one-track mind. Get By the Cup salad shop off the ground. Do literally everything possible to make it a success. Repeat. With a head full of entrepreneurial ideas and a bad ex in her rearview, her one and only focus is living life the way she wants to. No distractions.
Wes Jansen never did understand the fuss about relationships. With a string of lackluster first dates and the pain from his parents’ angry divorce following him around, he’d much rather find someone who he likes, but won’t love. Companionship, not passion, is the name of the game.
When Hailey and Wes find each other in a disastrous meet cute that wasn’t even intended for them, they embarrassingly go their separate ways. But when Wes finds Hailey to apologize for his behavior, they strike a friendship. Because that’s all this can be. Hailey doesn’t want any distractions. Wes doesn’t want to fall in love.
What could possibly go wrong?
Lady Mechanika, Volume 7: The Monster of the Ministry of Hell by Joe Benítez | Lady Mechanika #7 | Graphic Novel, Fantasy, Steampunk, Historical | Add to Goodreads
In a Victorian asylum full of grotesque inmates, sadistic guards, and a fanatical doctor, a young lady wakes to find her arms and legs have been replaced with mechanical limbs. But who among this gruesome menagerie is the true Monster of the Ministry of Hell? The origins of the notorious adventuress known as Lady Mechanika!
Currently Reading
So here are all the books that I have already started, and to be honest most of there I am probably only one chapter in/ So my goal this week is to see bow many of these I can finish this week.
A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe by Mark Dawidziak | Nonfiction, Historical, Mystery | Add to Goodreads
A Mystery of Mysteries is a brilliant biography of Edgar Allan Poe that examines the renowned author’s life through the prism of his mysterious death and its many possible causes.
It is a moment shrouded in horror and mystery. Edgar Allan Poe died on October 7, 1849, at just forty, in a painful, utterly bizarre manner that would not have been out of place in one of his own tales of terror. What was the cause of his untimely death, and what happened to him during the three missing days before he was found, delirious and “in great distress” on the streets of Baltimore, wearing ill-fitting clothes that were not his own?
Mystery and horror. Poe, who remains one of the most iconic of American writers, died under haunting circumstances that reflect the two literary genres he took to new heights. Over the years, there has been a staggering amount of speculation about the cause of death, from rabies and syphilis to suicide, alcoholism, and even murder. But many of these theories are formed on the basis of the caricature we have come to associate with Poe: the gloomy-eyed grandfather of Goth, hunched over a writing desk with a raven perched on one shoulder, drunkenly scribbling his chilling masterpieces. By debunking the myths of how he lived, we come closer to understanding the real Poe—and uncovering the truth behind his mysterious death, as a new theory emerges that could prove the cause of Poe’s death was haunting him all his life.
In a compelling dual-timeline narrative alternating between Poe’s increasingly desperate last months and his brief but impactful life, Mark Dawidziak sheds new light on the enigmatic master of macabre.
The Cloisters by Katy Hays | Gothic, Mystery | Add to Goodreads
When Ann Stilwell arrives in New York City, she expects to spend her summer working as a curatorial associate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Instead, she finds herself assigned to The Cloisters, a gothic museum and garden renowned for its medieval art collection and its group of enigmatic researchers studying the history of divination.
Desperate to escape her painful past, Ann is happy to indulge the researchers’ more outlandish theories about the history of fortune telling. But what begins as academic curiosity quickly turns into obsession when Ann discovers a hidden 15th-century deck of tarot cards that might hold the key to predicting the future. When the dangerous game of power, seduction, and ambition at The Cloisters turns deadly, Ann becomes locked in a race for answers as the line between the arcane and the modern blurs.
A haunting and magical blend of genres, The Cloisters is a gripping debut that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
Silver Under Nightfall by Rin Chupeco | Silver Under Nightfall #1 | Fantasy, LGBT, Romance | Add to Goodreads
Remy Pendergast is many things: the only son of the Duke of Valenbonne (though his father might wish otherwise), an elite bounty hunter of rogue vampires, and an outcast among his fellow Reapers. His mother was the subject of gossip even before she eloped with a vampire, giving rise to the rumors that Remy is half-vampire himself. Though the kingdom of Aluria barely tolerates him, Remy’s father has been shaping him into a weapon to fight for the kingdom at any cost.
When a terrifying new breed of vampire is sighted outside of the city, Remy prepares to investigate alone. But then he encounters the shockingly warmhearted vampire heiress Xiaodan Song and her infuriatingly arrogant fiancé, vampire lord Zidan Malekh, who may hold the key to defeating the creatures—though he knows associating with them won’t do his reputation any favors. When he’s offered a spot alongside them to find the truth about the mutating virus Rot that’s plaguing the kingdom, Remy faces a choice.
It’s one he’s certain he’ll regret.
But as the three face dangerous hardships during their journey, Remy develops fond and complicated feelings for the couple. He begins to question what he holds true about vampires, as well as the story behind his own family legacy. As the Rot continues to spread across the kingdom, Remy must decide where his loyalties lie: with his father and the kingdom he’s been trained all his life to defend or the vampires who might just be the death of him.
Masked by Moonlight by L.G. Rollins | Steam and Shadow #0.5 | Fantasy, Steampunk | Add to Goodreads
When it comes to defending her family, Adaleigh Dubois backs down from no one.
Not from a competitor caught cheating—
Not from fear while stranded in a barn during a full moon—
Not even from a crazed werewolf—
Because no matter what,
Family takes care of family.
(A novella.)
Birthright by Kathryn Amurra | Soothsayer’s Path Book #3 | Historical Romance | Add to Goodreads
The daughter of a patrician woman who chose to marry beneath her class, Nerilla has witnessed firsthand the detrimental effects of following your heart. Determined to correct her mother’s mistakes, she has carefully selected the perfect patrician man to wed. The fact that the man is only marrying her to obtain her father’s legendary sword Ceres, which is to serve as her dowry, is of no consequence–that is, until that very sword is stolen right out from under her nose by a handsome thief with a charming smile and innocent eyes.
As an orphan with no memory of his birth parents, Jovian has been searching for the truth about his parentage for as long as he can remember. When a soothsayer tells him that to uncover the key to his past he must seek out the sword called Ceres, he can hardly believe his luck, for he has already stolen that sword from its owner. Unfortunately, he has also already sold it to a man bound for Neapolis.
A chance meeting between Nerilla and Jovian results in what they both know is an ill-advised arrangement. As they work together to find the sword, they discover secrets from their pasts that make them question everything they thought they knew. And they find themselves having to choose between pursuing the perfect plans they’ve laid or risking failure for the chance of achieving their true birthright.
The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson | The Stormlight Archive #1 | Epic Fantasy | Add to Goodreads
Roshar is a world of stone and storms. Uncanny tempests of incredible power sweep across the rocky terrain so frequently that they have shaped ecology and civilization alike. Animals hide in shells, trees pull in branches, and grass retracts into the soilless ground. Cities are built only where the topography offers shelter.
It has been centuries since the fall of the ten consecrated orders known as the Knights Radiant, but their Shardblades and Shardplate remain: mystical swords and suits of armor that transform ordinary men into near-invincible warriors. Men trade kingdoms for Shardblades. Wars were fought for them, and won by them.
One such war rages on a ruined landscape called the Shattered Plains. There, Kaladin, who traded his medical apprenticeship for a spear to protect his little brother, has been reduced to slavery. In a war that makes no sense, where ten armies fight separately against a single foe, he struggles to save his men and to fathom the leaders who consider them expendable.
Brightlord Dalinar Kholin commands one of those other armies. Like his brother, the late king, he is fascinated by an ancient text called The Way of Kings. Troubled by over-powering visions of ancient times and the Knights Radiant, he has begun to doubt his own sanity.
Across the ocean, an untried young woman named Shallan seeks to train under an eminent scholar and notorious heretic, Dalinar’s niece, Jasnah. Though she genuinely loves learning, Shallan’s motives are less than pure. As she plans a daring theft, her research for Jasnah hints at secrets of the Knights Radiant and the true cause of the war.
The result of over ten years of planning, writing, and world-building, The Way of Kings is but the opening movement of the Stormlight Archive, a bold masterpiece in the making.
Speak again the ancient oaths:
Life before death.
Strength before weakness.
Journey before Destination.
and return to men the Shards they once bore.
The Knights Radiant must stand again.
What are you hoping to get to read this week?
Follow me on other platforms:
Instagram | Goodreads | Bloglovin |
Facebook | Amazon Wishlist
Sophril Reads 