Change Up Your Reading Challenge Update!

Two books on my way to bingo.

I listened to the Audible audiobook ‘Over Her Knee’ by Shoshana Evers.

I also read an arc for my friend Emily Hurricane (okay technically an arc is not the same as beta reading a manuscript *shrugs* I’m known to cheat at my own self-imposed goals). Emily’s book actually could have fit multiple squares. She has the first draft of Bloodlines available on wattpad. The revised draft is being released on Radish. The book will be published on March 5th, and you know I’ll be reminding everybody of that in blitz style as the publication date draws nearer.

This book is a post-apocalyptic paranormal story. The world ends and Daphne is the only person left alive. Her incredible immune system leads her to believe that she may not be fully human….

For the book release, Emily has split the book into 5 novellas, and I’ve only read the first one so far. So is Daphne really superhuman? I’m not sure yet. The first novella ended on a hell of a cliffhanger. I’ll just say watching her explore the wreckage of this apocalytpic world while she also explores her newly-discovered superhuman powers was a ton of fun, although at times sobering, as Daphne discovers corpses and wonders if she’ll go insane from lack of human interaction.

Really strong start to this novella series and I can’t wait to read more.

And to get bingo, all I need now is a Radish book, Netgalley arc, and a Booksprout arc.

I already know what I’m reading for my booksprout arc. I have a cozy mystery I requested back in the spring and the review was actually due in (don’t kill me) July. I completely forgot all about it. Like it evaporated from my brain. Now I’m actually gonna read the thing.

For Netgalley, I’m not sure. I’ve never used Netgalley before. When I gave out arcs of my own book, I used Booksprout because I liked the UI a lot more. But Netgalley does seem to be the arc-distribution channel of choice for most book bloggers, so I’ve got to give it a try at some point. I did poke around there a little before I discovered Booksprout. It just didn’t grab me. We’ll see what happens.

And then for Radish, of course I’m gonna use this challenge as an excuse to support my friend Emily Hurricane again. I’ll be reading her Radish serial ‘Wrong Number.’

All bad decisions are born out of one key moment.

A moment, thoughtless or not, where you choose wrong over right. Evil over good. You roll the dice and brace for the consequences, and that’s exactly what Jolie and Carson did the day they met by mistake.

One wrong number, one simple conversation over text, and their lives as they knew it were gone.

Jolie, a miserable housewife who clings to the bottle just to get by, and Carson, a doctor who’s stitched together the perfect facade to hide his failed marriage from his children and colleagues.

Loneliness consumes them both, and when they find an unlikely friend at the end of a stranger’s phone number, they cling to whatever connection they can get. Neither intended to cross any lines, but then again, good people rarely intend to do bad things.

For Jolie and Carson, their key moment was fast and not at all easy.

And the consequences might be even worse.

I can already tell I’m going to relate to the female lead so much. Struggles with alcohol dependency? Lonely even though she’s married? (things are getting better on that end, but you know….years of just sort of doing my own thing, having a friendly but increasingly distant relationship-changing patterns are hard. We’ll get there, I hope). I can tell this is a character I’m going to vibe hard with.

Okay, see ya, sucker!