If you’ve been book blogging for any length of time, you’ll have heard of Netgalley – a website for book bloggers and reviewers to receive ARCs and review them. Unfortunately Netgalley is both a blessing and curse – it’s great to receive this books and get excited about them before they’re released but there’s always a problem with getting too excited and requesting all the books! When I was just a baby book blogger, this happened to me, leaving me with a whole pile of unread books that I’ve requested and committed to reviewing.
So here’s my list:
- The Sister Pact by Stacie Ramey
- Fire Colour One by Jenny Valentine
- Demon Road by Derek Landy
- Polaris Awakening anthology
- In Search of Sam by Kristin Butcher
- Those Girls by Lauren Saft
- The Memory Hit by Carla Spradbery
- The Hidden Pivot by Jack Tapscott and Judith Tapscott
- From a Distant Star by Karen McQuestion
- It’s About Love by Steven Camden
- Faking Perfect by Rebecca Phillips
- Tape by Steven Camden
- Love Hurts by Malorie Blackman
- Mind Games by Teri Terry
- Locked by Parker Whitter
- Trial by Fire by Josephine Angelini
- Blood Entwines by Caroline Healy
- Heart of Dread: Frozen by Melissa de la Cruz and Michael Johnston
- Unmarked by Kami Garcia
Have you read any of these books? Which would you recommend I start with? Have you got any tips for tackling a Netgalley TBR list? Let me know!
So for the first time ever, I tested out Audible. If you have an Amazon account, you can get a free trial month of Audible that gives you one credit. If you don’t know how the Audible system works, basically you get a credit per month which entitles to you to one audiobook. (Disclaimer : I am the furthest thing from an expert, so if you want any more details, don’t rely on me!)
Since it was free, I decided why not give it a go? It would give me a free book and everyone knows how much I love a free book! I decided to go for Geekerella by Ashley Poston because it was nominated in the Goodreads awards and I fancied the sound of it. So I downloaded the Audible app and my audiobook adventure began!
I genuinely can’t remember the last time I listened to an audiobook – I think we used to listen to Roald Dahl audiobooks on long car journeys when we were little, so I wasn’t sure how the audiobook thing would work out. Here is my list of pros and cons related to Audible:
Pros:
- You can listen to books on the go, when you can’t really read books, for example I can listen to Audible when I walk home from school, allowing me to squeeze in extra reading time.
- It has loads of cool features and settings such as a sleep timer, a button free mode, the ability to just skip back or forward 30 seconds, which helps remind me what’s happening.
- For the first audiobook it is 100% free, which is a really good deal because nowadays books and especially audiobooks are super expensive.
Cons:
- For me it means I take way longer to read a book – the audiobook is approximately 10 hours long but I would be able to read the book much quicker than that.
- It means you can’t listen to music whilst reading (obviously!) and I quite enjoy listening to music whilst I read so this is a little off putting. I find myself having little breaks from listening to the audio book just to listen to some music.
- Once you start paying for Audible it is relatively expensive – £7.99 a month so I guess it depends what books you’ll be listening to, as you can buy some books in paperback or on a Kindle for only a couple of quid.
In conclusion I’d 100% recommend everyone who has an Amazon account to get their free trial – after all it’s a free book! But for me, I don’t think Audible is worth it so after I finish my audiobook I will be cancelling my subscription so I don’t ever have to pay. That’s not to say I think Audible is terrible but just don’t think it’s for me.
Have you ever tried Audible? What do you think?
Recently there has been a lot of talk about in the book blogging community about pirating books and some people might do it as they feel it is the only way for them to get any books, however there are other choices! I’ve created a list of a few of the best books I’ve on Amazon which are completely free! All you need is a kindle or a kindle app which can easily be downloaded on any smartphone or tablet.
I think all these books are written by indie or self published authors, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give them a chance! It has been a while since I’ve read most of these books but I do remember enjoying them all!
So if you’re book budget is blown or you don’t really have a book budget, how about picking up one of these five great yet free books?
Prince of Wolves by Quinn Loftis
Both my Mum and I absolutely adore this book and its subsequent series! As you can probably tell by the title it is about werewolves but these werewolves aren’t like all the others out there in YA. First of they’re Romanian (who doesn’t love a foreign accent?) and the main characters are so much fun! They’re a trio of teenage girls who are absolutely hilarious and compliment each other perfectly. I 100% recommend you pick this one up!
This one is all about fairy tales but with a modern twist – Mina is cursed and must complete the endings to all the fairyvtales we all know and love. It’s certainly a really interesting idea and a great way of being inspired by fairy tales.
Raven is a little cliché but that doesn’t mean it’s not an enjoyable read. It’s about a girl who finds out her whole life has been a lie and she has special abilities but she moves to Canada which is a beautiful place.
Clockwise involves time travel! I absolutely love books with time travel but I just don’t feel like there are enough of them out there! It also involves some cute romance, which is always nice.
This is a paranormal novel but it’s not cliché and includes some super interesting paranormal elements. I felt like the plot was pretty good and involved lots of twists and turns which is something I enjoy in a book!
My final point is a bit of a disclaimer – these books are completely free and that does sometimes have consequences. In some of these books the editing isn’t the best and I have spotted grammatical errors in the best, but in general they’re good, quick and enjoyable so I would recommend you check them out!
So October was the month I made my grand come back to blogging and blogged for the first time in around 7 months! I’m so glad I have finally come back to blogging and I’m loving it more than ever!
This month I posted:
It Only Happens In the Movies Release Party
5 TV shows I’m loving at the moment
This month I read:
Misty Falls – 4 stars
Angel Dares – 3 stars
Summer Shadows – 4 stars
A Quiet Kind of Thunder – 5 stars
It Only Happens in the Movies – 4.5 stars
What happened this month:
Like I said I start, I commenced blogging once again and I got a new Twitter, since I may or may not have deleted my old account – I’m @opinionful and I’d love to reconnect with you on Twitter, I find it a great place to chat with you guys! Nothing else particularly of note happened last month, as I only started blogging again half way through the month. I did attend a book release party, which was great fun and I blogged all about! I also received a very exciting parcel from My Kinda Book (see photo below) which got me so excited about the Almost Midnight readalong taking place this Friday – the 3rd of November.
So all in all it was a decent month for me once I got started at both reading and blogging!
How was your month? What was the best book you read?
alwaysopinionatedgirl 