Lifestyle Of Me

Tuesday, February 13, 2024

Blog Tour: Not the Worst Friend In the World by Anne Rellihan

I am thrilled to be hosting a spot on the NOT THE WORST FRIEND IN THE WORLD by Anne Rellihan Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out my post and make sure to enter the giveaway!

About The Book:

Title: NOT THE WORST FRIEND IN THE WORLD

Author: Anne Rellihan

Pub. Date: February 6, 2024

Publisher: Holiday House

Formats: Hardcover, eBook

Pages: 272

Find it: Goodreads, https://books2read.com/NOT-THE-WORST-FRIEND-IN-THE-WORLD

Can Lou Bennett keep a secret? She’ll do just about anything to prove herself to her new friend—and the best friend she betrayed—in this debut novel that is a modern-day Harriet the Spy with high emotional stakes.

It’s the thirty-fourth day of sixth grade at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic School in Missouri, and eleven-year-old Lou wishes she could rewind time.

Lou wants to go back to the ninth day of sixth grade—the day before she fought with her best friend Francie and said the terrible, horrible things she can’t unsay. Or better yet, she would go back to fifth grade when Francie was still the Old Francie.

Then the new girl, Cece Clark-Duncan, passes Lou a mysterious note. It says she was kidnapped. (!) If Lou can help Cece, maybe she can prove she’s not the world’s worst friend.

But as observant Lou uncovers the complicated truth about Cece’s family, she starts to panic. Can she help Cece without hurting her? Or will Lou end up losing another friend instead?

Anchored by an outstanding voice and a page-turning mystery, this remarkable debut novel honors the powerful middle school friendships that can both break and heal a tender eleven-year-old heart. Perfect for fans of Fish in a Tree and My Jasper June.

About Anne Rellihan:

Anne Rellihan is a former elementary school teacher and an alumna of Teach for America with a master’s degree in education from Columbia University. She lives in Kansas with her husband and four children. When she’s not writing, Anne volunteers as a Court Appointed Special Advocate. This is her debut novel. Find her online @AnneRellihan and annerellihan.com.

Giveaway Details:

1 winner will receive a finished copy of NOT THE WORST FRIEND IN THE WORLD, US Only.

Ends February 20th, midnight EST.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tour Schedule:
Week One:

2/5/2024	A Dream Within A Dream	Excerpt/IG Post
2/5/2024	Log Cabin Library	Excerpt
2/6/2024	YA Books Central	Excerpt/IG Post
2/6/2024	Fire And Ice Reads	Excerpt/IG Post
2/7/2024	@darkfantasyreviews	IG Post
2/7/2024	#BRVL Book Review Virginia Lee Blog	Review/IG Post
2/8/2024	Kountry Girl Bookaholic	Excerpt/IG Post
2/8/2024	Kim's Book Reviews and Writing Aha's	Review/IG Post
2/9/2024	@paws.read.repeat	Review/IG Post
2/9/2024	@evergirl200	IG Review
2/10/2024	Callisto’s calling	IG Review
2/10/2024	Avainbookland	IG Review

Week Two:

2/11/2024	@dana.loves.books	IG Review/TikTok Post
2/11/2024	Review Thick And Thin	Review/IG Post
2/12/2024	One More Exclamation	Review/IG Post
2/12/2024	GryffindorBookishnerd	IG Review
2/13/2024	@dharashahauthor	IG Post
2/13/2024	Lifestyle of Me	Review
2/14/2024	PopTheButterfly Reads	Review/IG Post
2/14/2024	Country Mamas With Kids	Review/IG Post
2/15/2024	@anitralovesbooksanddogs	IG Review
2/15/2024	More Books Please blog	Review/IG Post
2/16/2024	@stargirls.magical.tale	IG Review
2/16/2024	Two Points of Interest	Review/IG Post

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Romantasy Books I Want to Read Because FOMO!!!!!

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jana from That Artsy Reader Girl.

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day and so this weeks topic is a LOVE freebie. I am not into romance books but I do have major FOMO for all the romantasy books out there in the world. I loved Fourth Wing and Iron Flame, and I want more.

If yall have ready any of these, give me a priority list in the comments.

Sunday, February 11, 2024

Super Bowl// Sunday Post #64

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimberly from The Caffeinated Book Reviewer.

It is Super Bowl Sunday. I look forward to this day every year. As long as I can remember, I have always watched the super bowl and I am keeping the tradition alive with my daughters. It is also the one day a year where I allow them to yell at me because they all the time choose the opposing team. So I am pulling for the Kansas City Chiefs and my girls are going for the 49ers.But other than the super bowl, we have another event next weekend that we are looking forward too.

My county library has a program where volunteers gather together and do fun things for the community like book sales, garden dates, dances. Next weekend they are hosting a father daughter dance and I bought the tickets for my hubby and three daughters. It was a 115.00 dollars well spent. We have also spent a little over 100 for new dresses and shoes. I can't wait to share pictures in next weeks sunday post.

Speaking of next weeks post, I am hoping to get back into the weekly Sunday Post routine. Life has changed once again but I feel that it is good. I am no longer babysitting because the mom just started taking advantage of everything and not wanting to pay me what I was owed and just started to make excuses for everything. I just called it off because this is the third stint for babysitting her kids and it just kept getting progressively worse and she would constantly want to give me less and less and want me to watch them longer and longer. It got to the point where I was getting them at 4 in the morning to put them on the bus at 630 and then getting them off the bus at 230 and keeping them until 6 in the afternoon and then she just kept trying to stir up trouble and gossip about her ex and his wife.

I cut ties 2 weeks ago and it was stressful but honestly it was not worth the money she was offering which was less than 100 a week at this point. Since then, I have felt more relaxed and my kids have seen a notable change in myself and my hubby. I am finally getting back into a routine and feeling more productive.

I have finished three books so far this month which were started in January.

I am in the middle of two and I am wanting to start another that I wanted to get to last month. I am in a reading mood.

There is another thing that has been on my mind and that is my youtube channel. I have not made a youtube video since March 2022 when I got my German Sheperd. I feel like I will have time to think about my channel and what direction I want it to go in. I don't want to solely be a booktube channel anymore but I would still talk about books, but I want to incorporate homeschooling high schoolers and gardening and becoming a homestead.

I am so excited about my upcoming garden and I will be starting seeds indoors in the next week or so. I have grow lights thanks to my hubby.

I have so many plans. We are going to continue building the fence around our property. Removing trees on our other 2 acres. Possibly start clearing the back of my grandmother's property so she we can fence it with our propety so she can let her dog run and play. I want this year to be so productive.

Hope everyone has a great week and I am going to try to reply to comments and visit your posts but the wordpress blogs have me log into my wordpress account and I feel that yall wouldn't know it was me.

Friday, February 9, 2024

Review: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

My first classic of the year and it was ok. I decided to pick this up because it is on my classic club list and I have read reviews that this is for people who like utopian- dystopian worlds and I hyped myself up for it. I went in knowing absolutely nothing.

It is also a short book so I went in with the mindest that I would finish it very quickly and that was not the case. I should have known better because my track record with short books is not good. It takes me about a week to finish a book under 250 pages. But with that being said, whenever I did put this book down, I picked it back up within 15-20 minutes because I wanted to read it and know what was going to happen next.

With this being a classic, most people should know what this is about and for those that don't know like me, I will be keeping spoilers to a minimum. This is set in a world where humans are created in labs and conditioned to be a certain type of personality. There are Alphas, Betas, Deltas, Gammas, and Epsilons. That is the caste system that this world conforms to.

They are conditioned to think of mothers and fathers as derogatory and disgusting where when they are children they are encouraged to involves themselves in erotic play. They get taken to a death center where they are paraded around dying people to show them that death is nothing to be scared of and it will happen. The people get pumped full of a drug called soma to keep them complicit and everything happy.

I was struggling at the beginning because it was a big info dump about how everyone is created and the fertilization process and how the episilons are given alcohol to make them the most inferior and pretty much become mentally unstable and slave like. Whenever they talked about God and religion and how they wroshipped Ford and the model T, I was bored to tears. But other than that, when the main characters Bernard and Lenina and John(Savage) were together, it was the most interesting.

Saturday, February 3, 2024

Review: The Rose Code by Kate Quinn

I have been interested in Kate Quinn's writing for years now and I have always put at least one of her books on a yearly TBR and just never got around to them. This year, I made it a priority for January and I am freaking OBSESSED. This just solidified my love for WW2 fiction. It also made me more interested in learning about the Enigma machine and this particular bit in the war. I love that this book had a further reading section and some movies to watch and I will be taking full advantage of this list.

We follow three different women Osla, Mab and Beth who work as codebreakers during WW2. We also follow them during Queen Elizabeth's royal wedding. So during the war and post war. Osla and Mab meet on a train heading towards a meeting at Station X. They have no idea what they are walking into.

We learn more about the women throughout both timelines. We learn that they betrayed each other and don't know why. Beth is in an asylum and you are made to believe that she broke her Oath when she joined Bletchly Park. Osla is the girlfriend to a Prince and during the post war chapters she gets dragged through the tabloids and gets harrassed for information on said Prince.

Mab's character is more background and angry in the post war chapters because she wants nothing to do with Osla or Beth, but she is front and center in the war chapters. I really loved Beth and Mab during the war chapters. I was rooting for Beth to finally grow a spine and stand up to her horrible mother and stop being a wallflower. Mab and what she went through is something so tramatizing that when I read it, I cried like a baby because it's the kind of accident that happens more often then people think.

Osla's character just pined after her Prince most of the book and that was about it. She hated being called a silly deb and you can tell she was a social climber. She also survived something traumatic and for most of the book, she was hung up on the person who rescued her for the duration of the war and the three years after. She had no character growth in my opinion but this story would have not been as good without her.

My first 5 star read of the year.

Friday, February 2, 2024

BLOG TOUR: City Spies: Mission Manhatten by James Ponti

I am thrilled to be hosting a spot on the CITY SPIES: MISSION MANHATTAN by James Ponti Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out my post and make sure to enter the giveaway!

About The Book:

Title: CITY SPIES: MISSION MANHATTAN

Author: James Ponti

Pub. Date: February 6, 2024

Publisher: Aladdin

Formats: Hardcover, eBook, Audiobook

Pages: 430

Find it: Goodreads, https://books2read.com/CITY-SPIES-MISSION-MANHATTAN

In this fifth installment in the New York Times bestselling series from Edgar Award winner James Ponti, the young group of spies take on New York City in another international adventure perfect for fans of Spy School and Mrs. Smith’s Spy School for Girls.

The City Spies head to the Big Apple when a credible threat is made to a young climate activist who is scheduled to speak in front of the upcoming United Nations General Assembly. With Rio acting as alpha and a new member in their ranks, the team’s mission to protect a fellow teen takes them on an exciting adventure in, around, and even under the greatest city in the world as they follow leads to the outer boroughs, the UN Headquarters, and even the usually off-limits stacks that extend deep under the main branch of the New York Public Library.

Grab the rest of the CITY SPIES BOOKS now!

Book Trailer:

About James:

JAMES PONTI (he/him/his) is the New York Times bestselling author of three middle grade book series: City Spies, about an unlikely squad of five kids from around the world who form an elite MI6 Spy Team; the Edgar Award–winning Framed! series, about a pair of tweens who solve mysteries in Washington, DC; and the Dead City trilogy, about a secret society that polices the undead living beneath Manhattan. His books have appeared on more than fifteen different state award lists and he is the founder of a writers group known as the Renegades of Middle Grade. James is also an Emmy– nominated television writer and producer who has worked for many networks including Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, PBS, History, and Spike TV, as well as NBC Sports. He lives with his family in Orlando, Florida. Find out more at JamesPonti.com.

Giveaway Details:

1 lucky winner will receive a finished copy of CITY SPIES: MISSION MANHATTAN, US Only.

Ends February 6^th, midnight EST.