The Romance Bookie

It's almost 2013!! Which means a new year of goals, challenges, and changes coming our way! It's both exciting and daunting!  2012 went by WAY too fast I feel like...it's true what the adults said when I was younger...as you get older time flies by ridiculously fast!! Anyway, here are the challenges I will be participating in this year... First to NEW challenges I'll be participating in this year... #1: 2013 Spinelli Challenge!     This one is hosted by Auntie Spinelli Reads and the overall goal is to read as many sequel books (anything after book 1 in a series)! I'm not sure yet how many I'll be reading...I definitely plan on reading ... 1. Scarlet by Marissa Meyer (#2 in the Lunar Chronicles) 2. Size 12 is the New Black by Meg Cabot (#5 in the Heather Wells Mystery Series) 3. Awaken by Meg Cabot (#3 in the Abandon Trilogy) 4. Requiem by Lauren Oliver (#3 in the Delirium Trilogy) 5. Pretty Little Liars series by ...

Hey Everyone! My semester is officially over!! Which means...5-6 weeks of incredible freedom from school work!! I will spend the next weeks reading, spending time with family, and working! YES, working!! I got a job!!! Whoo-hoo!! It couldn't have come at a better time!! :) Anyway, today's book review is on Lynn Ricci's The Dating Intervention ! From Goodreads :   Sometimes life can get in the way of love. Vanessa had it all: handsome husband, two beautiful children, a lovely home, and a successful career. She was living the dream life she and her friends fantasized about as girls over hot fudge sundaes…but was it the life she really wanted? Leaving the life she knew behind was difficult enough, but when Vanessa’s attempt at love with someone from her past falls apart, her well-meaning friends decide an intervention is in order. Dating for a single mother is harder than it seems and they quickly discover the dating pool has become a puddle, with eac...

As some of you may or may not know, I am going to college to become an elementary school teacher. I love children.  Always have! I hope to not only teach them, but also have a couple of my own ONE DAY, not right now but in the future! I helped out today at one of my town's local elementary schools, for their annual holiday classroom party.  I was there all day from 8 this morning until their early dismissal at 2.  Over this past year and a half of volunteering for the same teacher, we've gotten fairly close. So when she asked me to print out an email for her, from the school districts Super-Intendent I didn't think much of it, because I figured it was school related. Well, it was...but it 100% wasn't what I was expecting.  I thought it would be some news about an event in town, or something. No. It wasn't. Instead, it was the news that 12-15 children were killed in a K-4th grade school in Connecticut. Do you want to know what was going through my h...

All the different designs I've got through these past two years! HEY EVERYONE!!! :) Today is not only 12/12/12, but also marks my TWO YEAR Blog Anniversary! I feel like I can't really show my appreciation in a written post, so I have decided to make all of you a video! :) Now to the fabulous giveaway I have planned (PS I AM SOOOOOO SORRY!!! But it has be USA ONLY!!, I explain it in the video, but shipping is honestly just WAY too expensive! I hope to do an international one early next year though!! :)) Here's what's up for the giveaway! The winner gets to pick ONE!! Either... One Day by David Nicholls with Swag (including a couple of bookmarks, and a cute Holiday Pin!) OR You can pick... Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen with Swag (including a couple of bookmarks, and a different cute Holiday pin!) This giveaway will run until January 12th, so one month from today! And please remember, it's for US Only! (SORRY!!!) Here's the Raf...

Jess Lourey emailed me a few months ago and told me about her fascinating unique new novel, The Toadhouse Trilogy Book 1 , about two children traveling throughout the world of books! I was definitely intrigued, to say the least! Well, I finally got to it and let me just say I was not disappointed! From Goodreads : Aine (pronounced "Aw-nee") believes herself to be a regular teenager in 1930s Alabama, but when a blue-eyed monster named Biblos attacks, she discovers that the reclusive woman raising her isn't really her grandmother and that she's been living inside a book for the past five years. With her blind brother, Spenser, she flees the pages of the novel she's called home, one terrifying step ahead of Biblos' black magic. Her only chance at survival lies in beating him to the three objects that he desires more than life. As she undertakes her strange and dangerous odyssey, Aine must choose between a family she doesn't remember and her g...

EVE HALLOWS AND THE BOOK OF SHRIEKS (BOOK 1) For fourteen-year-old Eve Hallows, life can be summed up in one word—horrible.  She has the most horrible friends.  She lives in a horrible old castle.  Even her family is a bunch of horrible monsters. However, in the monster-inhabited world of Gravesville—a world where messages are sent through Ouija boards, jack-o’-lanterns get facials to suit their moods, and the worst thing Eve has to deal with are those annoying zombie tourists who overrun her favorite graveyard during the Halloween season—horrible means wonderful.  And everything for Eve is perfectly horrible. But her life is about to go head over heels when a mysterious group known as The Source starts terrorizing Gravesville.  Now she must move to the human world—where everything is opposite ... and for Eve, that's absolutely adorable! Praise for Eve Hallows and the Book of Shrieks: "Move over, Neil Gaiman’s CORALINE and THE GRAVEYARD BOOK … ma...

Hey Everyone! I would like to welcome back Ann Lee Miller, who not only has a special celebration taking place today (it's her Birthday!!), but also her new book called Avra's God just came out recently! Today I am featuring an excerpt from Avra's God ! :) Chapter 1 A hot blast of pepperoni-laden air rolled over Avra as Stavro’s Pizza kitchen door swung shut. She inched ahead in line for a table with her family. “Yep, me and the idiot sisters are eatin’ fine tonight.” She swiveled. That voice. The guy from Humanities 301 thumbed through change he pulled from the pocket of his cutoffs. Cisco. And she didn’t shower and change after soccer practice—why? Her brother’s elbow knocked into her. “It’s gotta be meat lovers,” Drew’s stuck-in-puberty voice rasped. Cisco glanced in her direction. Her gaze skittered back to her brother. Please, God, tell me Cisco didn’t just catch me staring at him! Her attention drifted to Cisco’s corkscrew curls that brushed the shoulders of ...