Review: Our Bloody Pearl

A delightfully queer tale of soft pirates and fierce sirens, filled with kindness and adventure and excellent rep… Our Bloody Pearl is an absolute treasure!

Review: Bookish and the Beast

The third instalment in the Once Upon A Con series ticks every box I was hoping for, and more!

Review: Thorn

I first read Thorn in 2018, as a self-published novel, and I loved its smart, wry, thought-provoking take on one of my favourite fairy tales, The Goose Girl. When I heard it was being reworked for traditional publishing, I was thrilled, and I’m so happy to be able to tell you it’s even better in this form!

Review: The Rage of Dragons

The Rage of Dragons is an epic, own-voices, African-inspired fantasy with a morally ambiguous protagonist you can’t help but be compelled by – but also a shocking absence of female characters with agency…

Review: The Pirates Are Coming!

What’s more fun than pirates? A piratical retelling of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, with a fun twist!

Review: Dragon Age – Tevinter Nights

I don’t talk a lot about video games on here, but there’s one thing you need to know before you go into this review: I am a huge fan of the Dragon Age games. Dragon Age: Origins was one of the first games I ever fell in love with and really connected to, and the whole franchise holds a very dear place in my heart. I’ve collected all the novels set in this world (and I’m working on the comics) – so I was absolutely thrilled to be asked to review the new short story anthology, Dragon Age: Tevinter Nights!

Review: The Winterborne Home for Vengeance and Valour

As a teen I was a big fan of Ally Carter’s Gallagher Girls series, which is set in an elite boarding school that’s a front for a training academy for spies – they were a lot of fun! Since they were heavy on the teen drama, I was interested to see that she’d turned her hand to middle grade with her new book, The Winterborne Home for Vengeance and Valour.

Review: The Wolf of Oren-Yaro

If your fantasy features a woman with the unofficial title ‘Bitch Queen’, it’s pretty much a dead cert I’m going to be interested..!

Review: Leap Frog

It’s a beautiful bright morning here, so what better time for a review of a beautifully bright picture book?

TBR Check In: March 2020

February has mostly been a good month! I’m finally starting to get some energy back, and though I’ve had a lot on, between #Februwitchy and my drive to finish my NetGalley shelf by May, I’ve been roaring through my TBR!

Goodreads Reading Challenge

Somehow I read 50 books in February, which makes it my best reading month since starting blogging! My previous best was 49, in April 2019, which included two 12-hour flights and a bunch of train travel, so I’m genuinely not sure what made me read like the wind this month, but I’ll take it! Like last month, the majority of it is stuff that’s been sat there for a while, or was waiting for a review, so it feels really productive!

My Owned TBR

My TBR is all the way down to 519! It was 565 at the beginning of February! I destashed 27 books, 13 of which were from the TBR, so that helped, and I’ve been heavy on DNFing things that didn’t grab me, so I think that balanced out my ins this month (lots of bookpost from publishers and a couple of things from friends’ unhauls).

Kindle Unlimited

I read one and DNFed one of my Kindle Unlimited books, so there are four left for me to finish up and return. Though I didn’t finish them before March, I will try to squeeze them all in this month so I can cancel my subscription.

• Fire Falling by Elise Kova
• The Confectioner’s Coup by Claire Luana
• A Thief and a Gentlewoman by Clare Sager
• Heartless by Anne Elizabeth Stengl

Finish Series

The focus on witchy books and review copies meant these didn’t see any love this month either. I need to put some more work into this goal!

• the Flavia Albia series by Lindsey Davis. 1/7 (with the 8th coming in July 2020).
• The Chronicles of St Mary’s by Jodi Taylor. 2/10 are read, with the 11th coming in April 2020, plus bucketloads of short stories and a spin-off series that already has one book out.
• The Invisible Library series by Genevieve Cogman. 4/6 are read, and 7 and 8 are coming but don’t currently have publication dates.
• The Spellslinger series by Sebastien de Castell. 3/6

NetGalley

I made it over 80%! I was at 74% at the beginning of last month, so you can see I really put a lot of effort in here! I have 79 books to review (was 106 on Feb 1st), which is really starting to feel like progress. I submitted 33 reviews, and was approved for just 4 new titles. I have 3 requests pending, but I only expect to be approved for one of them.

Overall

I’m thrilled with my progress for February, and I think March should be another good month. I’d like to keep chopping away at NetGalley, and I’d like to get my TBR down to 500 books (which means just 19 books if nothing else comes in, but really, how likely is that!). It went up to 500 in March last year, so that would be neat, if nothing else… I’d also like to focus on my physical review copies and get those reviews up on the blog – it would be nice to have some desk space back!