Julia’s Comments (group member since Jul 20, 2025)

Julia’s comments from the Hooked on Books group.

The west coast. I used to work for a yard offering beach rides near Sligo every summer when I was in uni and my sister is here full-time now. At this stage, I consider it a home away from home 😊

Thanks, I'm super excited! Popping over to Ireland to see my family from New Zealand since they’re there on vacation. I haven't seen them in 6 years... I literally found out that they were in Europe two days ago and decided that this was probably my one chance to see them again for the foreseeable future (I live in Austria).

I'm spontaneously going on a mini vacation until Tuesday and won't be online a lot - I'll put the books I read on the SS but probably won't add any info other than the title and number of pages until I get back. I'll keep up with the thread, though, and if we need a book that fits a certain requirement, I can double-check if one of my books will work.

That's actually pretty spot on as well!

contemporary romance: Exactly.

shy/stand-offish/grumpy MC: Almost. Griff is quiet and an outsider, the other people from his village find him weird and talk badly about him behind his back, but I never got why, other than that his mother had killed herself 10 years ago and people seemed to judge him for it? He's really sweet, and even though the blurb says that he prefers plants over people, I didn't really get that from the book itself. I mean, I'd also feel uncomfortable around people if I knew they were talking shit about me behind my back, but the blurb implies that Griff is a grumpy loner when actually, his being an outsider is not his choice. The whole story suffered because neither one of the MCs was well-crafted, tbh. A whole lot of things just didn't make sense or didn't feel very thought through or consistent.

landscaper/florist: Again, almost. He works on a fruit farm and develops cordial recipes. No idea what the daisies have to do with it, the clostest we get to flowers in the book is an elderflower harvest.

I agree, let's remove a low value book.

100% okay with you making decisions like that, thanks Angie 😊

Okay, guess I'm gonna start us off. The cover of your book has very dramatic vibes, maybe because of the vibrant colours, stormy clouds, and the hawk in motion? So my guess would be that it's a book with high stakes and lots of suspense. I'd also guess that at least one violent death with unnatural causes occurs in the book? Probably getting this association because of the bird of prey...
Also, I'm guessing a rural setting/maybe even with large parts set somewhere in the wilderness?

Week 2 Clarification
When the prompt says: “What do you think your partner would have expected from your cover—and were they right?” here’s how it works with Partner A and B:

Partner B looks at Partner A’s cover and says:
“If I had only the cover to go on, I would’ve expected your book to be about X.”

Partner A then responds:
“Yep, that matches what the book delivered” OR “Nope, the cover was misleading—here’s how.”

Then switch roles: Partner A guesses from Partner B’s cover, and Partner B responds.

So the flow is: one partner guesses what the other’s book looked like it would be about, and the book’s owner confirms or denies whether that expectation matched reality.

Okay, got it, thanks!!

Hi Lisa, I don't fully understand the discussion prompt for week 2: "What do you think your partner would have expected from your cover—and were they right?" Who is meant by "YOUR cover" and "were they right" - about what?
Can you rephrase this with partner A and B instead? Is the prompt:
1) What would I have expected from my partner's cover? And is my partner then supposed to tell me whether my guess would've been correct?
2) Did my own book meet the expectations that I had for it?
3) Do I think my partner's expectations in her book were met? And my partner then tells me whether my guess was correct?

Uhm... There's definitely too many "you"s in that prompt, I don't quite understand what we're supposed to do... Should we talk about our own cover or each other's? I'll ask in the Q&A...

Week: Week 2
Book Title: Work for It
Author: Talia Hibbert
Page Count: 284
Reflection: I'll admit that I did not choose this book completely randomly, but from my tbr pile of books that I already own. I try to avoid buying new books for challenges whenever I can since I already have so many that I haven't read yet. I'm a sucker for flowers on a cover; I just think they look so pretty. Also, I'm just realizing that that makes me sound like a big fat liar since there's also a half-naked man on the cover and here's me like, oh, no, I chose it for the background, not for the super-sexy cover model. LOL. My subconsciousness works in mysterious way. Joke's on me, though, the book ended up being rather disappointing, unfortunately. Lots of insta-lovey, overdramatic BS including the dreaded third-act breakup. Ugh.

I have not clue about what is clever from a strategic perspective, but it seems to me that it's kinda tricky to even land on a property that we can purchase... So I'd say let's go for it!

Michelle wrote: "My pick does actually reflect my weirdness. I love creature feature genres the most especially bigfoot/sasquatch. I like to scare myself silly. If it has some sort of cryptid in it, I will read it...."

Looks like we're the exact opposite 😂 I'm really bad with scary books/movies, and I rarely read paranormal or mysteries. I mainly stick with contemporary fiction, sometimes also historical or fantasy. The most important things for me is that it's a romance (and preferably a spicy one!).

Agreed, that's definitely easier!

OMG why is this so hard?! I actually do have a question though... Does your pick reflect the kind of books that you typically read? You mentioned that you like to read all kinds of genres - what are some of your favourites?

I guess you could argue that Aelin's and Rowan's love story in Empire of Storms is tragic since (view spoiler)[they get married but are separated immediately afterwards. The book ends with Aelin being kidnapped and Rowan swearing that he will find her again. (hide spoiler)] Feels pretty tragic to me, I even shed a tear or two. They do get their happy ending in the last book of the series, but since it's only this book that we'd be using, I think it would work.

I literally just finished this book and added it to the SS mere moments ago. It's currently our most valuable book, though, so if someone has something with a lower page count, I think it might be better to use something shorter instead.

Awesome! LOL I also found this task WAY harder than I expected 😅 I'm really curious whether the next tasks will be similar...

Will you check us in once you've added your reflection? 😊
(I'm on CET, so I probably won't be online again until time's up and we get the next prompt...)

Definitely!