I had every intention of doing a real update this month reflecting on the first two quarters of 2024, but life got in the way, and this wasn’t even published last week like it should’ve been. I’m back dating it though. So, this is the short update that you get which includes:
- The adorably hilarious photo of Barnaby from January when we were on vacation in the Caribbean. Because he’s a doodle, we generally have him in boots and a jacket/snowsuit so that his hair doesn’t get super matted, so seeing the excitement and freedom of him running in the snow was just such a heartwarming thing for us on vacation.
- A screen shot of some lovely feedback on a piece of writing from a course I took wrapping up my degree. I graduated in May, and we then went on a two week cruise in Scandinavia, which was fantastic and I loved it and bought so much yarn. But this feedback on a piece gave me the life I needed to get through February-May and graduation!
- And list of books that I’ve read since my last monthly update. I am VERY slowly making my way through these responses. I was on track to catch up but had to demonetize the blog because WordPress/Jetpack got super greedy and wanted to charge for stats access and the cost of that was significantly more than any kickback I got from being an affiliate. As well as even more ARC’s I should never have said yes to.
In general, Annabeth Albert can do nothing wrong. She’s explored some kinks that weren’t exactly for me, and she’s written a few books that were meh overall, but every one of them contains well written character written romances and this one was no different. Winning Bracket was a bit of your standard nerd/jock trope added in with a bit of friendly competition and long suppressed feelings for each other.
I don’t know how I didn’t know about this one sooner. I mean, I do. Life has been incredibly busy and non-stop post-pandemic, and 2022-2024 was a blur of classes and life, which explains how this 2023 release slipped under my radar, but OMG I’m so glad I found it. Terciero takes Jane Austen’s
This was the last book I had to read as I wrapped up my master’s degree earlier this year. It was part of the negotiation course it was written for many years ago and we were taught by members of the negotiation project (but not these authors). Reading it for a course made this a bit more of a slog than it probably would’ve been. We only had to read roughly half of it so I was like may as well finish it out. If I would’ve picked this up on my own, I probably would’ve read through it a lot faster.
Apparently, there are three stories in this one short collection, and I only remember one, so that doesn’t bode well. The biggest struggle for me was the style. I’m not the biggest fan of the super stretched out/tall bodies and super angular faces. I think it just makes them all look creepy.