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

Julia’s comments from the Hooked on Books group.

Week: Week 1
Book Title: Underdog
Author: L.A. Witt
Page Count: 338
Reflection: I am a passionate equestrian, so I'm always super excited about horse-themed books. I'm super picky when it comes to weak plotlines or flat characters, and don't even get me started on unnecessary plot devices such as miscommunication... But if there's horses, I'm usually happy to overlook any flaws that the book might have otherwise. Luckily, this book was rather well-researched when it comes to the horsey parts of the story, even though there were some minor errors. But I understand that the typical, non-horse-obsessed reader won't care the slightest bit about those.

Angie ☯ wrote: "I think we should use the book set in Miami - that is absolutely a vacation destination."

Sounds good to me!

And does it just need to be a vacation destination, but the MC lives there permanently, or does the MC have to be there on their holidays?

How much of the book (percentages) has to be set there?

Team Slow Burn, Fast Escape
Link to Team Thread: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Link to Chapter Tab and new guess: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

My bad, I thought it was only articles that couldn't be used...

My two SJM books also have "of" in the title. They're potential salary books atm, but you could combine one of them with Cold Burn of Magic.

I'm reading Work for It (284 pgs) and Hot Doggin' (223pgs).

What about Man of Lies and Cold Burn of Magic? Not very satisfying since "of" is kinda boring and the page counts aren’t great, but it's not an article so it would work...

For word in text, what are the rules on plural forms (lions instead of lion) or different verb forms (vanished instead of vanish)?

🔐 Week 1 Prompt: What You Bring With You
Some locks don’t need a key—they open for what you carry.
Choose a book that reflects something you bring to this partnership:
a personality trait, a past experience, a strength, a flaw—anything that shapes how you read and relate.

Each of you will choose your own book and explain what you're bringing to the box.

Our deadline is Sunday 14th.

I'm usually online a lot, but with the start of the new school year I might not be as quick to see and and weigh in on urgent decisions reliably. Please just assume that I'm always happy to go with whatever decisions you make! 😊

I'm participating in quite a few other challenges atm, so I'm afraid I usually won't be able to read a book that fits a certain task on short notice (= within the required 72 hours), as I usually have my next couple of reads already planned out in advance. I'd obviously let you know if I have something lined up that would work but that I haven't added to the SS yet.

I have the last three books in the Throne of Glass series lined up as my next audiobooks - they all have a high page count and will have a high value for banking, but it'll probably take me a bit to finish each of them.

Please feel free to use any of my banked books in whatever way you see fit. Not sure what the best strategy with the banked books is, as I'm a first-timer. For instance, let's assume we had to read a book with the word "little" in the text, which will be the case for pretty much any book. Would you just pick the lowest value book? Or would you also look at other potential categories that the book could work for? For instance, if the lower value book also had "romanticism" in the text, which will be way harder to find, would you still use the lower value book or would you use a higher value book instead to keep the one with the requirement that was harder to meet? How have you gone about this in the past?

@Angie: My banked book or my two current reads won't work, unfortunately. Good thing you have us covered! 🤗
Side note: For word in text on the SS, it says COMPEX instead of COMPLEX. Didn't wanna edit it cause I don't wanna mess with any of the formulas, so I tried to just ignore it, but my perfectionist ass can't let it go 😂 SORRY!! Don't mean to be micromanaging, I swear I'm a fun person!!

Hi Alma 😊

Checking in Team 17. We'd like to be called Once Upon a Box.

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Awesome! I'll check us in 😉

Awesome! I suppose we need a team name... Any suggestions?
How about Once upon a Box?

Hi Michelle, excited to partner up with you for this challenge!

I'm from Austria, so I'm on CET.

I'm crap at writing reviews, but have been pushing myself to do it more, so I'm curious to see how the whole reflection part of this challenge works for me 😉

If there's still someone looking for a partner, I'd love to join!

Sooo... In a fit of utter derangement, I went over the list of all the tasks and sorted them by item, since I think that that'll make it easier to quickly figure out which tasks a book might work for. I've added a new tab named "Property Tasks sorted by Item" to our tracking sheet - hope that's okay, if not, let me know and I'll remove it again/share a link to a seperate SS.

So what's the best way of going about the banked books?

Do I search for all the potential words in text and add them straight away, add all the cover items that might come up, and so on?

If yes, is there a list that is not sorted by properties, but by task type, i.e. all the words in text, then all the colours on cover, and so on?