Welcome to another TTT! This week’s topic is “May Flowers”, the companion to last month’s “April Showers” topic. Pick your own title for this one to reflect the direction you choose to go with this prompt. Some ideas include books with flowers on the cover, flower names in the title, characters whose names are flower names, stories involving flowers/gardeners, etc. I decided to showcase flowery book covers because I loooove flowers and pretty book covers make me smile!

Do You Want to Start a Scandal by Tessa Dare
Ready or Not by Cara Bastone
All’s Fair in Love and War by Virginia Heath
Old Flames and New Fortunes by Sarah Hogle (bonus points for me, the heroine in
this is a witch who tells peoples’ fortunes through flowers!)
The Fiance Dilemma by Elena Armas
Devil In Spring by Lisa Kleypas
The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren
In the Weeds by B.K. Borison
The Love Remedy by Elizabeth Everett
Scoundrel of My Heart by Lorraine Heath

How did you interpret this week’s prompt?
Can you think of any other flowery book covers?

Welcome to another TTT! This week’s topic is Top Ten Petty Reasons I’ve DNF’d a Book or Lowered its Rating. This topic was submitted anonymously through the topics suggestion form, and sounded like a lot of fun. I had to put it on the calendar! We’re all at least a little nitpicky when it comes to our books, right? Any avid reader, who has read and loved (and hated) a lot of books develops some kind of dealbreakers list. Sometimes it’s the very little, insignificant gripes that bring down a book for us. Maybe it’s the straw that broke the camel’s back, or maybe it’s something that seems insignificant to others but is HUGE and insurmountable for us! Whatever the case may be, this is where we can air those out. I’m not going to be sharing the books in question because I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. Plus, some of these individual reasons have made me unhappy with multiple books. So here we go! I’m super excited to see all your lists this week.

1. For being too quirky.
Like, maybe the character is so unrealistically quirky that I couldn’t believe they existed. Or maybe the writing, setting, concepts were just so wild.

2. For having too many unnecessary commas.
I cannot stand it when I’m reading a book and there are commas everywhere. I love a good comma, but sometimes there’s so many and a sentence runs on forever. Just end the sentence! Let me catch my breath!

3. For being too “slice of life”. 
I need a plot. I need for things to happen. I don’t care to read about a character’s mindless musings and meanderings through life, with no point.

4. For being too many genres at once. 
I recently read a book that was supposed to be a historical romance/historical fiction blend. Great. But the romance was so underdeveloped and the historical fiction was so basic that I was left unsatisfied with all of it. If you’re promising a romance, I want to be swept away and swoon and fall in love. If you’re promising historical fiction, I want to be immersed in history and learn something. If you smush them together and don’t give me either thing, I’m not going to think favorably of the book.

5. For not being Christmassy enough. 
I’ve read so many books that had beautiful Christmas covers, festive titles, and a back cover synopsis that sounded like the story was going to be filled with cheer, only to get halfway through and forget that I was supposed to be reading a Christmas story. Don’t tell me it’s a Christmas book, but have no Christmas in it! A book set in October, ending with a scene or two around the tree in December is not a Christmas book!

6. For having an annoying narrator. 
I’ve been known to abandon an audiobook 10 minutes in because I couldn’t stand the narrator’s voice, the voice acting, or the narrator’s inability to pronounce words correctly.

7. For being sad when it’s not supposed to be. 
Sometimes I can expect that a book will be sad. If I’m reading WW2 fiction, it’s to be expected. But if I’m reading a rom-com and am hit with super sad subject matter, that’s a kind of whiplash I can’t recover from.

8. For having characters of scientifically impossible sizes. 
I get so tired of reading about heroines who are OBSESSED with recounting how large their male love interests are. Or men talking about how tiny their female love interests are. Hands the size of her entire head, shoulders the size of a car, thighs the size of her waist, neck the size of her thigh, manhood the size of a log. And this is not an uncommon trend. lol. I see this more than I’d like. Are these men 8 feet tall and 500 pounds of muscle? Are these women Thumbelina?

9. For having too many easy-to-research inaccuracies. 
It is not hard to research what it’s like to go on a cruise. I’ll leave it at that. lol.

10. For clearly ripping off another book. 
I have a lot of favorite books, so I’m always looking for similar books that will give me the same adventure. I am not looking for an inferior rip-off of the story. Write something new! Not everything has to be ACOTAR to be romantasy!

What small things make you DNF a book or lower its rating?

Welcome to another TTT! This week’s topic is a fun one, unread books on my shelves I still want to read. I’m hoping some of you will have great things to say about the books on my list! My to-read list is lifetimes long. I will never get through everything I hope to read, but here are ten books on my shelves that I haven’t read yet and still really want to! I’ve chosen to feature titles that have been on my to-read list for 10 years or more and I’m including the date I shelved them, just for fun!

1. The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton (shelved on June 1, 2008)

2. The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig (shelved on October 4, 2010)

3. Can You Keep a Secret? by Sophie Kinsella (shelved on October 15, 2011)

4. Victoria and the Rogue by Meg Cabot (bought in 2004)

5. Just Like Heaven by Julia Quinn (shelved June 3, 2012)

6. Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers (bought September 13, 2012)

7. The Perfect Lie by Emily Barr (shelved March 30, 2013)

8. Goddess of the Hunt by Tessa Dare (shelved July 5, 2013)

9. Virgin River by Robyn Carr (shelved October 6, 2013)

10. The Luckiest Lady in London by Sherry Thomas (shelved February 11, 2014)

Have you read any of these? Which should I prioritize?

Welcome to another TTT! Don’t panic! This week’s topic is Characters I’d Like to go on Vacation With, but I’m feeling uninspired. My favorite travel companion is my mom, and she’s always who I will have the most fun traveling with! So I’ve tweaked the topic! I’m sticking with the vacation theme, but instead I’m sharing some of my favorite books I’ve read while on vacation. I’m going to tell you where I was, too! And yes, my mom was there for all of them. My mom’s birthday is tomorrow, so happy birthday Mom!

I love reading travel-themed books, low-angst romances, and books that take place in tropical locations while I’m on vacation. I also love reading mysteries and thrillers because I’m sharing a room with people and don’t have to feel scared sleeping in a room alone. lol. My favorite method of travel is cruises, so the bulk of these books were read while I was either traveling to/from or on a cruise ship. I love getting off the ship in port to soak in the new and exciting locations (and I love shopping), but sea days make the best reading days!

1. The Tourist Attraction by Sarah Morgenthaler
I was in Seaside, California. My mom, sister, and I traveled to Monterey to go whale watching, hang out at Fisherman’s Wharf, visit the aquarium, and eat lots of yummy food. I read this book every night in the hotel room before bed.

2. Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder
I read this while on the plane home from a family wedding in North Carolina. There had been some mix-ups with the airline and my mom and I were upgraded to first class!

3. Delirium by Lauren Oliver
I read the bulk of this poolside while at sea on a cruise! The very bottom of each page is slightly rippled from getting wet when I rested it on my stomach, and there’s some saltiness to the pages. It’s so much fun to open it up and remember where I was!

4. Girl At Sea by Maureen Johnson
I read this while on a transatlantic cruise from Florida to Italy, which was so perfect because this book takes place on a yacht in the Mediterranean Sea. I remember sitting on my balcony reading about the characters sailing on the Mediterranean Sea while I was sailing on it, too. I couldn’t have planned it better!

5. Lock Every Door by Riley Sager
Also on a cruise with this one. Since I never get internet packages while on cruises, I had made a list a few days before we left of books on my Kindle that I thought would be fun to read while on board. I had my sister select from the list because I was having trouble making decisions. This was a creepy thriller, and I was so glad I had her in my cabin with me because I wouldn’t have been able to sleep otherwise!

6. Moonlight Sins by Jennifer Armentrout
Another cruise read, and I ended up binging this series back to back to back!

7. Roman Crazy by Alice Clayton and Nina Bocci
I said this list was mostly books I read while on a cruise. lol. I love reading books about people on vacation while I’m on vacation, so this one was really fun!

8. I Temporarily Do by Ellie Cahill
Cruise. I LOVED this book so much that I read the second one right away.

9. Till Death by Jennifer Armentrout
This is another good thriller (well, romantic suspense in this case) to read when you’re not sleeping in a room alone! I read this on a… you guessed it: cruise.

10. All By Myself, Alone by Mary Higgins-Clark
My mom and I always made a point of reading an MHC book on a trip together. I might have read this one on a plane to a cruise? LOL.