Hi friends! Welcome back to another discussion question post. This month, for those who don’t know, we read and discussed Like a Love Song by Gabriela Martins, and let me tell you, we had an absolute blast doing so. Grab a warm drink and a cozy blanket, and keep reading to see what we thought of Like a Love Song.
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Hi, everyone! We hope that you’ve been enjoying LIKE A LOVE SONG! We’re looking forward to starting discussion questions soon! Today is the 22nd, which means it’s time for us to announce our June pick for TeaTimeReads. We’re so excited to announce that in June we’ll be reading THE CARTOGRAPHERS by Peng Shepherd!
Here is the full summary for The Cartographers:
What is the purpose of a map?
Nell Young’s whole life and greatest passion is cartography. Her father, Dr. Daniel Young, is a legend in the field and Nell’s personal hero. But she hasn’t seen or spoken to him ever since he cruelly fired her and destroyed her reputation after an argument over an old, cheap gas station highway map.
But when Dr. Young is found dead in his office at the New York Public Library, with the very same seemingly worthless map hidden in his desk, Nell can’t resist investigating. To her surprise, she soon discovers that the map is incredibly valuable and exceedingly rare. In fact, she may now have the only copy left in existence… because a mysterious collector has been hunting down and destroying every last one—along with anyone who gets in the way.
But why?
To answer that question, Nell embarks on a dangerous journey to reveal a dark family secret and discovers the true power that lies in maps…
From the critically acclaimed author of The Book of M, a highly imaginative thriller about a young woman who discovers that a strange map in her deceased father’s belongings holds an incredible, deadly secret—one that will lead her on an extraordinary adventure and to the truth about her family’s dark history.
Links for The Cartographers: Goodreads | TheStoryGraph | Bookshop | IndieBound
Content Warnings for The Cartographers: death, murder, gun, estranged parents, grief, fire
We’ll be doing a loose reading schedule this month, but of course, feel free to read at your own pace!
We hope that the rest of May treats you well and that you’ll join us in reading THE CARTOGRAPHERS next month! As always, you can join the Discord here.
Hello, friends and happy Friday! I can’t believe May is almost over — there’s so many books I wanted to get to this month and haven’t yet, but that’s okay. I’ve been reading quite a lot this month, and so I wanted to share some mini-reviews with y’all today! So, grab a cup of tea — or a beverage of your choice, and get cozy!
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Hi, hello everyone! I hope you’re all keeping well, and the month of May is delightful! As special editions of books become increasingly popular, the likes of Illumicrate and Fairyloot are releasing more and more, it’s often hard to keep track. So, I thought it would be fun to go through five of my favourite announcements as of late, and get everyone excited for some amazing book releases coming soon.
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Happy Friday, dear friends! Today, I’m super excited to bring to you some of my bookstagram tips and tricks. I’ve been meaning to do a quick little post on some of the things I’ve learned about bookstagram during my time on the platform, and finally sat down to write this post! In all honesty, this post is inspired by a conversation in one of my bookstagram group chats (hello, bookstagram eye doctors), where my dear friend Stef realized that I photoshop the covers of my books sometimes!
I’ve always found Instagram to be an interesting form of social media. I’m not particularly active on my personal Instagram anymore (there’s a longer conversation about how people use Instagram, curated feeds, what’s real vs. what’s fake) but surprisingly enough I’ve kept up with bookstagram over the last year and a half. I wrote a post last October reflecting on my one year of Bookstagram, and shared a few things I’ve learned there, but I wanted to do a longer post today! I compiled some questions through Twitter/Instagram/Discord, and then have some other tips of my own, so as always, grab a cup of tea and get cozy!
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Happy Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month! I think that it’s always so important to celebrate our cultures and heritage, but I think after the last few years it’s extra important to celebrate and uplift the AAPI community.
There are so many exciting new books coming out this year by AAPI authors, so I thought it would be fun to talk about some of the ones that I’m looking forward to!
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Hi, hello friends and welcome to another post! I’ve started this month on the slow side, and we’re 9 days into the month without me having picked up a book! Granted, I’ve been very busy, but still it feels almost tragic to go this long. So, I thought — why not share some of my planned TBR with you guys and keep myself accountable for what I read this month. Without further wait, let’s get into the list!
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Read moreNora Stephens’ life is books—she’s read them all—and she is not that type of heroine. Not the plucky one, not the laidback dream girl, and especially not the sweetheart. In fact, the only people Nora is a heroine for are her clients, for whom she lands enormous deals as a cutthroat literary agent, and her beloved little sister Libby.
Which is why she agrees to go to Sunshine Falls, North Carolina for the month of August when Libby begs her for a sisters’ trip away—with visions of a small town transformation for Nora, who she’s convinced needs to become the heroine in her own story. But instead of picnics in meadows, or run-ins with a handsome country doctor or bulging-forearmed bartender, Nora keeps bumping into Charlie Lastra, a bookish brooding editor from back in the city. It would be a meet-cute if not for the fact that they’ve met many times and it’s never been cute.
If Nora knows she’s not an ideal heroine, Charlie knows he’s nobody’s hero, but as they are thrown together again and again—in a series of coincidences no editor worth their salt would allow—what they discover might just unravel the carefully crafted stories they’ve written about themselves.
They Wish They Were Us meets The Queen’s Gambit in the world of competitive Scrabble when a teen girl is forced to investigate the mysterious death of her best friend a year after the fact when her Instagram comes back to life with cryptic posts and messages.
CATALYST
13 points
noun: a person or thing that precipitates an event or change
When Najwa Bakri walks into her first Scrabble competition since her best friend’s death, it’s with the intention to heal and move on with her life. Perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to choose the very same competition where said best friend, Trina Low, died. It might be even though Najwa’s trying to change, she’s not ready to give up Trina just yet.
But the same can’t be said for all the other competitors. With Trina, the Scrabble Queen herself, gone, the throne is empty, and her friends are eager to be the next reigning champion. All’s fair in love and Scrabble, but all bets are off when Trina’s formerly inactive Instagram starts posting again, with cryptic messages suggesting that maybe Trina’s death wasn’t as straightforward as everyone thought. And maybe someone at the competition had something to do with it.
As secrets are revealed and the true colors of her friends are shown, it’s up to Najwa to find out who’s behind these mysterious posts—not just to save Trina’s memory, but to save herself.
From New York Times bestselling author Claudia Gray—a summer house party turns into a thrilling whodunit when Mr. Wickham, one of literature’s most notorious villains, meets a sudden and suspicious end in this brilliantly imagined mystery featuring Jane Austen’s leading literary characters.
The happily married Mr. Knightley and Emma are throwing a house party, bringing together distant relatives and new acquaintances—characters beloved by Jane Austen fans. Definitely not invited is Mr. Wickham, whose latest financial scheme has netted him an even broader array of enemies. As tempers flare and secrets are revealed, it’s clear that everyone would be happier if Mr. Wickham got his comeuppance. Yet they’re all shocked when Wickham turns up murdered—except, of course, for the killer hidden in their midst.
Nearly everyone at the house party is a suspect, so it falls to the party’s two youngest guests to solve the mystery: Juliet Tilney, the smart and resourceful daughter of Catherine and Henry, eager for adventure beyond Northanger Abbey; and Jonathan Darcy, the Darcys’ eldest son, whose adherence to propriety makes his father seem almost relaxed. In a tantalizing fusion of Austen and Christie, the unlikely pair must put aside their own poor first impressions and uncover the guilty party—before an innocent person is sentenced to hang.
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