Romance Readers Reading Challenges discussion
Archive - Pass The Parcel
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PtP - Plots-a-Percolating (7)

2. Captain Grinder - reserve a couple of posts in this thread tracking your team's book selection and completion. (Alternatively they could convert a chat comment to the tracking post/s.)
3. Name your team. Using this round's theme, come up with a fun name. Given we are an open/public group with no age limit, so please make sure any chosen name is smart, not smutty ;)
Please PM your name to Jane(PS) by 14 September
4. If you have a private profile, please 'friend' your team-mates. This is really important, because without this, your team-mates can't see your shelves to select a books under option 2. (It will also help with one of the categories in this round!)
5. Please post your book selections/completions in the format provided below. (This format is also posted in both the Q&A and Sign-Up threads.) We need to know the week that each book corresponds to, the page numbers, and how the book qualifies including links to lists/shelves (where applicable), etc. I can't stress this enough. When in doubt - link it*!
* don't link to your review in your completion post - reviews in your completion posts should be included in full in that post.
You don't want to start reading a book and then find it doesn't meet the requirements because some information (eg page count or theme link) was missing from your original post.
I will be monitoring this and your book will not be considered complete until I am satisfied that your selection and completion posts comply with the format rules of the challenge.
Remember - you can ONLY change your book selection in the week that the theme is called.
6. You MUST check in with your team each week, ideally once the theme is announced. Please let your team know if you expect to have spotty communication or are on holidays or having an operation, etc.
7. When you post the completion of your book, you must post a review; enough for us to know you have actually read the book. Please don't link to a review. You must post the review in this thread.
8. Re-reads are allowed but you can't read the same book twice within this challenge.
9. There is no prize for the winning team - bragging rights only :)
10. Each week, the theme will be announced in the Q&A/Announcement thread. The full list of themes announced during this round will be maintained in msg 1 of that thread.
The Rule on the Pass Option
* Each team can only have ONE member using their pass each week.
* Each member can only use that pass once each 5 weeks.
* This means that one or two team members (dependent upon the size of your team) will miss using a pass in each 5 week block.
* No-one can use the pass option in the last week of the challenge.
* In the final week Option 2 has altered and I will be allocating each team another team from which their book selection must be chosen :)

For selection post Option 1 you must have:
Week #
Bookcover/link
Page numbers
How the book qualifies - please note which qualifying bookshelf/list you are using or the tags that justifies that it works.
If the theme is based off the bookcover, post the cover. If there is a letter count in the title, publication date etc, please note these details.
For selection post Option 2 you must have:
Week #
Bookcover/link
Page numbers
Name of the team-member, their star rating, the date they read the book.
For selection post Option 3 you must have:
Week #
PASS
For the completion post you must have:
Week #
Bookcover/link
Rating (1-5)
Review
Please DO NOT CHAT in these selction/completion posts. It needs to be super clear.
If you 'waffle' about your decided book - please REPOST your selection once you decide. DO NOT go back and edit your waffling post.
IF YOU NEED TO CORRECT A POST FOR MISSING INFORMATION or because the didn't qualify etc, please REPOST this information in a NEW post. I don't want to have to keep going backwards in the thread.

LaurLa: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...
Avigail: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...
ForTheLoveofBrishen: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...
Vi: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...
Em: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...
bamaace83: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...

✅LaurLa☕ Just Say Yes
☕Selection☕ message 200
☕Completion☕ message 208
✅ForTheLoveofBrishen☕ Kāwai For Such A Time As This
☕Selection☕ message 198
☕Completion☕ message 207
✅Vi☕Her Best Worst Mistake
☕Selection☕ message 204
☕Completion☕ message 205
✅Em☕ Happy Place
☕Selection☕ message 203
☕Completion☕ message 229
✅bamaace83☕Satisfaction
☕Selection☕ message 206
☕Completion☕ message 213

✅LaurLa☕ Winning Back His Wife
☕Selection☕ message 221
☕Completion☕ message 225
🫘ForTheLoveofBrishen☕ Something Wilder
☕Selection☕ message 211
☕Completion☕ message xx
🫘Vi☕City of the Lost
☕Selection☕ message 231
☕Completion☕ message xx
🫘Em☕ Book Lovers
☕Selection☕ message 228
☕Completion☕ message xx
🫘bamaace83☕ Roomies
☕Selection☕ message 237
☕Completion☕ message xx

🫘LaurLa☕ Return to Monte Carlo
☕Selection☕ message 240
☕Completion☕ message xx
🫘ForTheLoveofBrishen☕ book
☕Selection☕ message xx
☕Completion☕ message xx
🫘Vi☕book
☕Selection☕ message xx
☕Completion☕ message xx
🫘Em☕ book
☕Selection☕ message xx
☕Completion☕ message xx
🫘bamaace83☕ book
☕Selection☕ message xx
☕Completion☕ message xx

I see names I recognize but not sure I've played on a team challenge with any of you. If I have and I've forgotten... well, I'm getting forgetful in my old age!!
Just a bit about me... I'm married, have 2 grown sons and an almost daughter in law... finally those days of becoming a grandma are getting closer! Maybe.
Anyway, I also have 2 dogs but one is not doing so well. She seems to have some sort of doggie dementia and her hips are not working quit right. But we love her still!
I read all romance all the time... any genre. Don't love YA, some NA or high fantasy but I read them if needs must! My favorites would probably be romantic suspense or sports romance. Love pnr too!
Let me know if you've played before or have any questions. This was the first challenge I ever played on GR so it's near and dear to my heart!

Team Seven Reads a Latte
7 Coffees for 7 Books (go for a play on 7 Brides for 7 Brothers but doesn't seem to be working)
Four Score and Seven Coffees Ago
Yeah, I got nothin'...

As for names what do you think of Bookworms & Lattes (Like Legends & Lattes if you have read😜). Looking forward for reading some good books with you.
Food luck to all of us.


Hi Anna - Where in Southern Indiana are you? I forgot to mention in my post I am from Indianapolis. But I ask because my husband, his family and the rest of my family are all from Evansville.

As for names what do you think of Bookworm..."
Hi there! Welcome! I love hockey romances too! And it'g great you are ahead of us in timezones... you can tell what happening tomorrow ;-)


We live in Floyd County so really Louisville metro area but I usually say Southern Indiana. We are transplants though and moved here for work. We are originally from Alabama, me north, and John south.

That's quite a switch!!

Welcome Vi! Glad to have you back among the reading!

This is my first Pass the Parcel challenge, and my second GR challenge. I just finished The Bachelor challenge and enjoyed it a lot. I used to play, and host, online competitions like this pre-kids. I’ve missed doing it.
I am married. We celebrated our 15 wedding anniversary in July. We have 2 kids, age 8 and 11. Our house is full of neurodivergent people. My kids are autistic, ADHDers, sensory seekers, and developmentally on their own path different than their peers. After my son was diagnosed as autistic, I saw a lot of similarities in my husband and we realized he was also autistic. Later realizing he is also ADHD. I’m the odd one out and the only one in my house who is not autistic. Lol But I realized at age 30 I was ADHD. I realized at age 35 I was demisexual. And I’ve always known I struggled with anxiety lol Needless to say, I enjoy reading books with neurodivergent characters (when accurately portrayed).
I am a social worker and enjoy books with a mental health theme, social justice, grief, or trauma. I also am a hopeless romantic, so I read a lot of romance novels. In the past year have found out that I love smutty romance novels! Ironically, many of you seem to like similar romance novel themes that I do not enjoy, mainly sports romances. I struggled in The Bachelor challenge to find sports romances I was interested in.
I tend to binge read a genre for months then move on to another. At the beginning of the year, I read all fairy tales and fairy tale retellings. I read some fantasy for a while, including Sarah J. Maas books. I did get hooked on one sports romance series by Choe Liese, who is an autistic author. Read a few books by autistic authors/ about autistic characters. Then started bingeing Historical Romance novels at the end of May and have been stuck on those since. I love long historical romance series.

Team name ideas:
Plot lines & pours
Plot twists, page turners, & Palazzo
Bookworms & biscotti
Bookworms & Breve
Pass the pages & palazzo
Parchments & Percolators
Romance & Ristretto
Paper Lattes


Week 1
4. The two most commonly grown coffee bean types are C. arabica and C. robusta
read a book written by two authors
Qualification needs to be shown on the main page with 2 authors listed (narrators don’t count) or through a list which shows authors that write under a single name.

-- Selection and Completion posts need to be separate posts. Even if you tend to read your book as soon as you pick it, the posts need to be separate.
-- Please link the edition of the book you actually read
-- Please try to post our selection within a few days of the call, but that's not absolutely required, just helpful to me for keeping track of who's done what.
-- Please use the GR page count of the edition you read - if that edition doesn't have a page count, then you can link to another edition but state what edition it is and why it's different.
-- See the Message 3 for the format for posts.
-- It's really really super super helpful to me if you would post a broken link in your selection post. You can do this by inserting an * or a space in the book link after the first bracket. This makes it so much easier for me to copy the exact book edition you read in the tracking posts. Example:
normal book link: Love on the Brain
broken link: [*book:Love on the Brain|59571699]
-- To make things easier for you, if you choose Option 2 (reading from a teammate's shelf), I've linked each of our shelves in Message 4
Time to read! Let's have fun Percolators!

Option 1

Call ➖ 4. The two most commonly grown coffee bean types are C. arabica and C. robusta
Task ➖ read a book written by two authors
Book ➖ Beautiful Bombshell
Pages ➖ 127 pp (GR kindle, linked edition)
How it fits ➖ Christina Lauren is the combined pen name of long-time writing partners/best friends Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings.
[*book:Beautiful Bombshell|17831617]

Option 1

Call ➖ 4. The two most commonly grown coffee bean types are C. arabica and C. robusta
Task ➖ read a book written by two authors
Book ➖ Beautiful Bombshell
Pages ➖ 127 pp (GR kindle, linked edition)
How it fits ➖ Christina Laurent is the combined pen name of long-time writing partners/best friends Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings.
Date Read ➖ 09.16 ★★★★
Review ➖
This was fun, lots of smexy... okay, mostly smexy but still a nice look at the two couples from the first two books and how they interact in a full-fledged relationship now. Truly nothing happened that furthered any overall series story-line, just a day in the life kind of thing. But I love the by-play between Bennet and Chloe, so I enjoyed this for what it was.

I see names I recognize but not sure I've played on a team challenge with any of you. If I have and I've fo..."
Hi Team, So sorry I am late to this thread. To be honest I was just lost and fumbling about.
My name is Sue. I'm originally from New Zealand and currently in South Korea. I'm a Linguistics and Literary Theory lecturer, a nonfiction author, a lazy tourist and a bit of a coffee addict.
I am just catching up on all the threads. Lovely to meet all of you.


Here are some lists that might help:
Author Collaborations (Dynamic Duos)
Female Writing Teams
Romance Duo Authors
I'm sure they're on the above lists, but some of my duo go-to's are
Ilona Andrews
Christina Lauren
Kit Rocha
Vi Keeland & Penelope Ward
Bella Andre & Jennifer Skully
Jennifer Cruise & Bob Mayer


Hi Em! Lovely to e-meet you. I read scifi and nonfiction science but this year, I've challenged myself to included romance and it's been the best addition to my reading diet. It's just so relaxing and makes me feel happy. So far, I've loved Romantasy. My first Romance book was The Road Trip by Beth O'Leary - didn't warm up to it. But then I read Radiance and I just loved it.
Who is your favorite Romance author?

☕Week #1: 4. The two most commonly grown coffee bean types are C. arabica and C. robusta read a book written by two authors
☕Bookcover:

☕Page numbers: 282
☕How the book qualifies: Christina Lauren is the combined pen name of long-time writing partners/best friends Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings.

☕️ Week #1 Selection Post
☕️ Task: 4. The two most commonly grown coffee bean types are C. arabica and C. robusta read a book written by two authors
☕️ Book: The Lady Most Likely
☕️ Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...
☕️ Page numbers: 385
☕️ How the book qualifies: Book is written by three authors: Julia Quinn, Eloisa James, and Connie Brockway
Link confirms Kindle Edition page numbers and authors of book.

Week # 1
Book:

Page: 350
Task: 4. The two most commonly grown coffee bean types are C. arabica and C. robusta read a book written by two authors
How the book qualifies - Christina Lauren is the combined pen name of long-time writing partners/best friends Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings.
[*bookcover:Dark Wild Night|24811197]

☕️ Book: The Lady Most Likely by Julia Quinn, Eloisa James, and Connie Brockway
☕️ Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...
☕️ Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
☕️ Review: 3.5 stars. The book is surprisingly very cohesive despite being written in three parts by three different authors. The second half of the story was my favorite part of the novel due to the couple falling in love over time (lacking in part one) and the couple having mutual respect for each other (lacking in part two). I do love Eloisa James.

☕Week #1: 4. The two most commonly grown coffee bean types are C. arabica and C. robusta Read a book written by two authors
☕Bookcover/link: The Soulmate Equation by Christina Lauren
☕Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.75
☕Review: The Soulmate Equation, reminds me The One by John Marrs only in the romance genre. I liked the conflict and had good communication skills even though River has to find the solution by having closure and continuing his relationship with Jess.
Juno, Jessica's daughter, is the most sweet and intelligent child I read about in fiction. I enjoyed the relationship Jess has with her grandparents. I miss my maternal grandmother, and I believe that if I had met my maternal grandfather, my relationship would have been the same as that in The Soulmate Equation.
Christina Lauren is a fantastic duo that from the works I read, I enjoyed very much. I have many more novels to read by them.

Week # 1
Book:

Page: 350
Task: 4. The two most commonly grown coffee bean types are C. arabica and C. robusta read a book written by two authors
How the book qualifies - Christina Lauren is the combined pen name of long-time writing partners/best friends Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings.
Rating: 3 stars
Date Read: 9-19-23
Review: I always enjoy Christina Lauren's books. I forget how quick they are to read until I pick one up. I loved Lola and Oliver. The banter between main characters was great. I also loved how you could clearly tell they both wanted to advance their friendships but neither one technically knew what to do. Also, I do love the mention of a good accent. It was a good book and I probably need to remember to read the rest of the series.
[*bookcover:Dark Wild Night|24811197]
Books mentioned in this topic
The Love That Split the World (other topics)Return to Monte Carlo (other topics)
Return to Monte Carlo (other topics)
Book Lovers (other topics)
City of the Lost (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Christina Lauren (other topics)Sarah Mayberry (other topics)
Sarah Mayberry (other topics)
Sarah Mayberry (other topics)
Sarah Mayberry (other topics)
More...
Captain Grinder
🫘LaurLa
Frothers
🍵Avigail
🍵ForTheLoveofBrishen
🍵Vi
🍵Em
🍵bamaace83