January 2021 Wrap Up

I haven't been blogging much anymore and that's honestly not a surprise. But I've been really wanting to get back into it and even though I would love to redo my blog I think I'm just going to stay on Blogger because so far I haven't been able to make a new blog that will hold everything I want. I really want to combine my blogs together into one and call it ShayKay's World and then have a page for books, a page for the Disney Sims, and a page for the Berry Sims. Then on the home page, I would showcase whatever's being published that week plus some real-life stuff and even a creator showcase. I just haven't been able to figure out how to make that all possible and make it look good. Since thinking about that I've started not being all that happy with the way my blogs look now either.  I haven't even returned to my Sims blog yet. I want too but until then I wanted to get back into blogging over here. Right now I'm only doing the monthly things such as my book hauls and wrap-ups. I have a couple other things planned too but I don't know when they will be released yet. So let's jump into this month's reads! 

The Stats

I have read so many books this month and I am so proud of myself! I've read 5, and hopefully 1 more by the time this post publishes in January. This month I had 2 eBooks and the rest all physical books and I own them all. Most of them I already owned before this month. I actually bought 1 of the eBooks just so I can read it. Three of the books were written by authors that are completely new to me and I would honestly read more by those authors too. I managed to read a book by JD Robb, the third one in the series (and if I finish the book I'm working on now will be two in the series), and two Book of the Month books! So my yearly goal was at least accomplished this month. I honestly read books that were right around the same amount of pages, the most pages in a book was Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade that had 394 pages and the least amount of pages was 296 in Immortal in Death by JD Robb. Three of these books were contemporary/romance/chick lit, however, you want to categorize them. Only two books were standalone!? I thought I honestly read more standalones than anything but this month that was a negative. But to be fair a lot of the chick-lit books come off as standalones but are actually series and they follow different characters in each book. Finally, there were 2 three-star books, 2 four-star books, and one 5-star book, I'll update whichever category my current read goes into if I complete it tomorrow. I'm going to go into how I got these statistics later because I started using CAWPILE. I also want to talk about my yearly goals at some point. So let's get into what these books are! 

The Books

I started the year off with a reread of Immortal in Death by JD Robb. One of my yearly goals is to read an In Death book and a Book of the Month book every month. I have been having so much fun being back in this world and I feel like this was the best way to start the year off on this year. This is the book that Eve and Roarke get married and we finally get to see PEABODY! I think Peabody had the worst possible start at being showcased in this world because of the things that happened in this book. I just wanted more of the Peabody I love. Now that I'm thinking back while writing my wrap up I really wished I had more of her and the wedding. I talked about both over on my Instagram. I think I ended up giving this one either 4 or 5 stars originally but this time around I gave it 4 stars, borderline 3 stars. I love this series but there are over 50 books in this series so there are going to be some amazing books and some alright books but I love how the background ties together throughout all of them. Anyways my first go around with this book was with the audible book and the person who narrates these does such an amazing job and I love them! But I also think they have encouraged me to give the books a higher rating than I would have if I read them on my own which is another reason why I wanted to reread the series. 

The next book I read this month, and the one after this one, were Book of the Month books! I actually started out with a backlist one that has been on my bookshelf since summer! I was introduced to Riley Sager's books this year and my goal was to read all four of them in publication order however, I cannot get into Lock Every Door. I've tried and I've DNF'd it and it has pushed me not to pick up Home Before Dark but this month that changed because I really wanted to read it this month. Since reading Home Before Dark I want to give Lock Every Door another chance but I have until this summer when his next one comes out. Anyways I ended up giving Home Before Dark by Riley Sager 5-stars, but now thinking about it I think it would really honestly be 4-stars. But I'm leaving everything the way they are because I used CAWPILE to get the ratings and I wanted to keep to it this year. Now that I'm thinking about Home Before Dark I keep linking it to American Horror Story's first season Murder House! The stories are completely different BUT I think the vibes that both of these creations give off are the same and that is my all-time favorite season of American Horror Story. 

After I was done with this heavy thriller book I wanted to pick up something light and fast read so I picked up this month's Book of the Month pick, The Dating Plan by Sara Desai. I have never read anything by Desai, and I think this one actually her debut novel. It focuses on a girl who is incredibly smart but is working a job that is below her because she doesn't like to make ties. I was first pulled to this book because of Daisy. I wanted to see how this book would pull her, her life, and her culture into this book and I LOVED IT! She was my favorite thing about that book. Liam was amazing too but I kept getting frustrated with how much emphasis was put on Daisy's prom and I get to some people that is a huge milestone but for me, I was just never that tied to my prom so it being such a huge event for her was hard for me to relate. Now I did relate very heavily to being abandoned by her best friend and it was really showing me why prom was such a major thing Daisy and helped me link to even though prom was getting annoyed for me. I loved the part where Daisy's coworker was like it's just prom!? I so related to him. I also had an issue with the whole brother angle. I get how Liam was her brother's best friend and that's how they were introduced I just feel like if the siblings were as close as it sounded that he would know more about everything that was going on with Liam and Daisy and potentially get involved in the story earlier on in the book. I loved the writing and I would honestly pick up more from Desai but I ended up giving this book 3-stars. It wasn't bad, it was a solid read, but it wasn't a new all-time favorite read for me.

After I finished The Dating Plan I was in an eBook mood. eBooks are just really easy for me to pick up and read since they are always with me whether through my phone or iPad plus it's easier for me to read them before bed so I can be lazy and not have to worry about turning the lights off since they are already off. Anyways that being said I knew I wanted to read something I just wasn't sure what so I looked through everyone's end of the year favorites and recommendations on Instagram, and ended up buying Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade. This book was another light, fast read but with its own spin on things. I honestly wanted something written kind of like Evelyn Hugo or Red, White, and Royal Blue that had a lot of excerpts and mixed media in it. I definitely got that in this book but unlike those other books, I didn't like the cutouts in this book. I really liked the story between April and Marcus but the excerpts from their fan fiction or scripts just confused me and pulled me out of the story. There was an excerpt between almost every single chapter and normally I would love that but this one for some reason just did not click with me! I related more to April in this book and found her amazing. She was the star of this book. I ended up really wanting more of April, Marcus was okay but he was just eh. He was one of those characters that you don't want to root for, or even really hate him. But I just didn't really care much about him. I ended up giving this one 3-stars. I liked it overall. I just didn't love it. It was a solid read though.

Then finally my last book of the month is Love Her or Lose Her by Tessa Bailey. This is actually the second book in her Hot and Hammered series. But it was the first one that I read. Most series like this one can be read out of order because each book follows someone introduced in the previous book. Like the first book in this series follows one of the characters you see in this book and the next one follows another side character in this book. I think I would love to read the first book to see how Rosie and Dominic were in that book I ended up giving this one 4-stars but I feel like it may have been more on the 3-star side of things. I loved the book overall, but I think if I had to compare it to the other two that I read this month that were similar it would be tied between all three of them. But I do want to read the others in this series. I already have the first one, I just wanted to read Rosie's story that's why I picked up this one first.

January 2021 Haul!

I'm going to ease my way back into the posting schedule so I don't have much of a schedule right now. So let's start with a book haul. January wasn't a very busy month in the book department and most of them I got today! I'm going to try to go in order of the books I got in chronological order. 

Book of the Month

Since this month we were able to get the book of the year book I was able to get two books. I opted to get a free credit instead of one of the books of the year. I ended up picking two of the month's choices! I got both The Survivors by Jane Harper and The Dating Plan by Sara Desai.

I picked this one up because I thought it would be interesting, it's a new to me author, and I'm really in the whole thriller genre right now. I just think it's going to be really good. 

The Dating Plan just sounded like a cute little book to read and something that would require no effort. I actually picked up this book this month too and it was such a fun read. I'll talk more about my thoughts about this one tomorrow in my monthly wrap up.

Walmart Spur of the Shop

So we've all been there when we are at the grocery store and your like I'm just going to go see what they have here today down the book aisle. Most of the time I actually just look and fight the urge to buy something new but I was feeling like I needed something to feel better and buying things makes me feel better. Probably shouldn't but it does and we are just going to ignore that for now. To be fair I think I could have fought the urge to buy something new if I didn't see the huge Nora Roberts selection they actually had and found a book that I'm really excited to pick up. Roberts has a HUGE backlog and I've done really good at reading her new stuff but I really like a lot of her backlist stuff too and this one sounds amazing. I picked up Montana Sky by Nora Roberts. It was originally published back in 1996, I was two when this originally came out. But anyways this book is so floppy and a fun paperback and to be honest I've missed these floppy books. It's not your typical mass-market book either, it's more of a floppy reprint. Anyways the book sounds amazing and I've been dying to pick it up!

Books-A-Million Shopping Spree

Finally my last haul of the month. I picked up 5 books! I honestly am so proud of myself to wait so long before spending my Christmas money. I had a lot of books that I was looking forward to this month and I want to pick up more new releases this year so I feel like I kind of hit a middle ground with this shopping spree. I got the 3 releases that I wanted this month PLUS 1 that isn't supposed to release until February but they had it out already. So let's start with the book that was on sale. Books-a-Million now sales used books and I LOVE IT! I just wish they would put them all in their own section instead of mixing them all in with the other books. Anyways I got the hardcover edition of Come Sundown by Nora Roberts. I have no clue what it's about but it gives me the vibes that her summer releases feel and I'm here for it. It came out back in 2017 and I remember my mom reading it but we don't have that copy anymore so when I saw this one on sale for $10 I had to snatch it up! 

I actually picked up another book by Nora Roberts however it's under her other name, JD Robb! This is the book that I'm shocked they even had out. This is the Faithless in Death! This is the book that I thought wasn't coming out until next month, I even had it down on the schedule for February 9th and even on Goodreads, it says that so I don't know why it's out but I wasn't questioning it. I love this series. I'm actually rereading the whole series and my goal is to read at least 1 a month and so far we have been doing so well with that goal. I can't wait to get to this one! I really want to get one signed by her and I might have to give in and order one with her signature instead of getting one signed in person. 

So now let's get into the three new releases that I had on my January calendar. That I got to pick up today! I had heard amazing things about these first two books. I've been looking forward to reading The Girls I've Been by Tess Sharpe. It's a young adult book that follows the daughter of a con artist during a bank robber! It sounds amazing and I think it would be interesting to see how this one plays out. I haven't read anything by Sharpe before and I haven't been in the young adult world for a little while so I'm ready to jump back into it really soon.

This next one is the other one that I heard a lot of things about since it came out and that's Shipped by Angie Hockman. I think it will be really interesting and I've been wanting to see what happens in this book. I used to go on cruises a lot before COVID and I just think it will be interesting and it's right up my alley so we are going to have to give this one a try.

Finally my last book I got today I'm a little curious about and I think it's going to be really interesting but sound a lot like a hallmark movie I watched the other day. This one is The Ex Talk by Rachel Lynn Solomon. I really haven't heard much about this book since it came out but I've been dying to read it for forever and I can't wait to pick it up. 

Thoughts

 Hello, 

I've been thinking about making a new blog, to be honest, I haven't been posting on here for a few different reasons. It initially stopped posting on here because I was extremely busy! I was finishing up my master's degree, I was working full time, it was the holidays, and you know the whole covid thing. I've talked about it before but I was also working on my sims blog/Instagram so I really wasn't reading much so I just had no content coming out over here. Once all of that settled and I was reading more I've tried so many times to pick it back up over here. I've been reading some really good books, I've been working on my yearly goals, and finishing up the year. However, whenever I tried to post over here in my free time I would just lose interest, and it's really the site. I can't edit it how I want to. Since they've done the updates on the actual typing side I couldn't add the pictures how I was doing and link the websites to them. I just have not been happy with the way it's been working now. So I had two choices. I could either abandon this blog completely or I could just find a new way to adapt to this. Being me and dealing with these changes I just rather put it off. So I haven't looked into it but I've really been missing it because during the weekdays I mostly read books like I said January has been an amazing reading month for me so far and I'm on track to finish at least 1 more book if not 2 more which is really incredible for me and it is going to make my total for the month at either 5 or 6 and I know to a lot of people that's nothing but my yearly goal is only 50 so even though I love to read I don't read that fast. I'm going to end up having it regardless. But I haven't talked about a single one over here. I really miss blogging about it. I've been posting on my Instagram and I think it's been helping me get back into the blogging mood and really miss it even more. 

So that brings me back to do I want to rebuild my blog on a new platform or do I want to try to make Blogger work for me again. I honestly have been with Blogger for forever it seems, but I have tried other blog sites before. Most of the time I end up deleting them and coming back to my blogger site. I don't branch out because I want more people to see my content I was branching out because I was not happy with the way my blog looked. I felt like it looked like it was sloppily thrown together and I tried forever to make it look better but I couldn't make it look nice and eventually just gave up with it and just didn't look at it. But I've finally got it to look like something I'm proud of and have been in love with it. Then the site updated and turned to garbage on my end. In the beginning, the updates were amazing. If you use Blogger then you know how outdated our end was and seeing the facelift was really truly amazing. But then there was another update and it made it impossible for me to copy and paste pictures into my posts. Over here you notice a lot that I post book covers usually at the beginning of my blog posts and then I add the links to the Goodreads page either below the picture or the picture itself. The website hasn't been letting me do that and it sounds like such a minor thing but I love to add color to all these words and it just makes it look nicer in my opinion. So instead of trying to learn and work through this, I was busy and just didn't want to deal with it. I have tons of content that I've started but just never finished because I couldn't make it what I wanted it to be. So I'm back thinking about changing my host site but now if I do that it's going to be two blogs that move not just one. I've been thinking about merging two and I think it would be fun to make it a ShayKay's World blog and I've honestly have been really liking that idea. BUT if I do that do I take all my blogs too? I kind of like the idea of starting fresh. But I also really love the idea to go through all my posted stuff and copying it over and updating them as I go. So what I'm saying is that I don't know if I'm going to continue to post over here on Blogger but I am ready to return to blogging I think. I really miss it and being a person who really wants to write a book one day it helps me work on my writing skills and being out of school now I really don't have a reason to write anymore. I love using my Instagrams to showcase my books and sims and I think it would be fun to go even more in-depth with them again like I did in my blogs and I miss it. So I think I'm going to look at other blog sites first and see if it even possible because I really want it to look a certain way and then come back to the idea. I really like the idea of ShayKay's World and then have a tab for books and a tab for the Disney Sims and then another tab for the Berry sims and maybe even a little blog about my pets because I have A LOT! I have a lot of ideas and I just think it would be something fun to do and something that is definitely worth looking into before I post more stuff. I really have a lot of things that I want to work on too. If I do decide to move my posts over I know I won't be moving my hauls or unhauls or books I want to read. I think from this blog I would only move over my reviews. I'm going to spend this week and maybe next week looking into it and then if I move it I'll update this blog and if I don't move it I will have a post going up that's book-related. :)