24 Days of Book Recommendations Announcement

I am so excited to announce that I am doing 24 days of book recommendations! From December 1st to 24th, I will be recommending a new book every day! Each day I will sharing a book recommendation on my Twitter. There is also a blog post associated with it and it will be linked on my twitter as well.

All 24 books will be on the same post but each day I will be adding to it so on day one you will only see the book recommendation for day 1 and day 2 you will only see the book recommendation for days 1 and 2. This way all the recommendations will be in one place. The blog post will have a small description of the book, some of my thoughts, and if applicable any content / trigger warnings you should be aware of.

Hopefully this goes well and thank you so much for reading this announcement!

Twitter: https://twitter.com/andreahylau

An Enchantment of Ravens [ Spoiler Free ] Review

Title: An Enchantment of Ravens
Author: Margaret Rogerson
My rating: 2.5/5 stars
Date Read: 10/19/18


I first heard of this book around its release time and added it to my TBR because it seemed interesting but after a month or two after its release I have not heard that much about it. I was looking through by TBR list and found this book on it so I finally decided to request it from my local library and two my surprise the physical copy is a 300 page, including the acknowledgements, standalone fantasy. Meaning that the actual story itself is less then 300 pages. That is very short for a fantasy book and especially short for a standalone fantasy. This made my expectations for this book very low.

In this book, the fae cannot do anything related to the craft of art and they hire humans to do things for them such as painting. The main character Isobel is a painter and she one day is asked to paint a portrait of the Fae prince of the Autumn court. She makes a mistake by painting mortal sorrow in his eyes. Now she is taken into the fae realm to face a trial for her crime and they go through several obstacles among the way causing them to become closer.

It is very clear what direction this book goes in. I thought this book was very romance heavy and I wish it was not. I am not the biggest fan of most romances in books, although there are some that I love. This one happens to sadly be not one of them. I thought it felt forced, maybe because the book was so short it made a longer period of time feel shorter. The plot of the story is basically about their romance.

I think this book should of at least been a hundred pages longer. The world building was not that good and an easy way to help with the world building is having a map in the book. I think it would of helped me understand the book so much more. I also thought that the magic system was not well done. There are still a lot of things I do not really understand about the book. Maybe because about halfway through I got bored a little in the middle and kind of skimmed read. That is my fault if I missed something. But from what I remembered, I thought that there should of been more world building, and a better explained magic system. I also thought the character development could of been improved a little too.

Despite all that, the writing style was good, and the concept and ideas were very interesting. I never read a book about fae in which the fae cannot do any sort of art such as drawing, or cooking. It added a unique touch to the stereotypical fae book which I really appreciated.

Overall I thought this book was meh. I probably will forget what it is about in a few weeks and I do not plan on rereading it. I will probably pick up another one of the authors books when they are released.

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I Believe in a Thing Called Love [ Spoiler free ] Review

Title: I Believe in a Thing Called Love
Author: Maurene Goo
My rating: 3/5 stars
Date Read: 10/15/18

I Believe in a Thing called Love is a contemporary following a Korean American girl name Desi. Desi thinks that anything is possible when you have a plan. She is very smart academically and also on the schools varsity soccer team and has her eye on Stanford University. However, the one thing she is not good at is romance and is always embarrassing herself in front of her crushes. She then has an idea. Her father is obsessed with K-Dramas and the main characters always have a happy ending in love. She decides to watch them and come up with a plan on how to make someone fall for you.

Here is the thing, I found this book to be very cute but the main character can be annoying and does make dumb decisions here and there. You want to scream at the book at her not to do something, but she does it anyway even if it is clearly not a good idea since in a certain way it is completing a step in the K-Drama formula. Other than that I really liked it.

The main character, again is Korean American and it did have Korean culture integrated in the story, but not in a forceful way.

I personally do not care much about K Dramas but I am pretty sure if you like them then you will love this book. There is a K-Drama guide in the back as well if you are interested in watching one and you do not know where to start.

I love the father daughter relationship in the book and how important each of them is to each other and how they care for one another. I love how the parents are not mysteriously absent in this book like a lot of YA stories.

Overall I did like this book but it is not my favorite. It is very ridiculous at times, but it still made me smile a lot when reading and I would recommend it.

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Lucky in Love (Spoiler free) Review

Title: Lucky in Love
Author: Kasie West
My rating: 2/5 stars
Date Read: 2/28/18

I kind of read the whole book, but I did skip many pages to finish the book faster and did skim read the pages and scenes I did not skip.

This book was such a disappointment. It may be because I absolutely fell in love with Love, Life, and the List, Kaise West's other book and I did read this one quite soon after. I did have high expectations going into this book as well so part of the reason why I did not enjoy this book was partially my fault.

This book follows a girl name Maddie who one day wins the lottery. With the money comes her no longer stressing about college payment as well as people treating her differently and wanting to be her friend because she has the money. The only person who does not seem to know about her win is Seth, who also works at the local zoo with her. For some reason Maddie also does not want to share the news with her.

First off, I love the writing. It is simple and really easy to read. Kaise West's writing is one of the things I love most about her books. Because it is so simple, it helps me read a lot faster when I am in a slump or super busy. The other thing I usually love about her books is the characters and in this book, I did not like Maddie that much. I liked before lottery Maddie, but not after lottery Maddie. I felt like she was irresponsible at times and she changes quite a lot. At the end of the book though she did learn her lesson so that is a plus. I did like Seth throughout the book, though a lot less than I expected. If I like the characters in the book, my enjoyment of the book would be so much more.

I will not lie, Maddie was the main reason why I did not like the book if I were completely honest. I expected to like her a lot more than I did and I did not think she would annoy me. I understand how she could of changed because she won the lottery and she did change in a way that made perfect sens, but it frustrated me to read about which made me end up skimming and skipping pages. At least she learned her lesson at the end.

Am I glad I read this book? Yes for sure. I will be reading Kaise West's other books in the future too. Overall it was eh to me but if you decide to pick it up, I hope you enjoy it a lot more than I did.

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Literary Book Gifts

Today's post is an exciting one today. I have been asked to review the design of the products of the shop Literary Book Gifts. I have not used any of their products before so I will not be able to talk about the quality of the products but I will say the designs are amazing! This shop sells so many different designs of tote bags and T-shirts. Remember to add my code AndreasBookishThoughts20 before paying for 20% off anything in the store!

Here are some of my favorite designs that I wanted to highlight.

Literary Book Gifts Alice T-Shirt

The first one is my favorite and that is the Alice in Wonderland T-Shirt. I love Alice in Wonderland so it is kind of biased but I really do love the design of the shirt and the font of the words! The shirt also comes in many. The shirt does come in many different colors as well which you can see on the website.

Literary Book Gifts Emily Dickinson Tote

The next design is a Emily Dickinson inspired tote bag. I think this design is absolutely gorgeous. i love how the bag looks like she has written one of her poems on it and I love the bird which in my opinion adds a lot to the bag in a very good way. It is very simplistic which is my style and the type of designs I gravitate towards.

Literary Book Gifts Pride and Prejudice Tote

The final design that I am highlighting is the Pride and Prejudice tote bag.  I really like the color that it comes in I think it suites the design and theme of this bag. It does come only in one color. The one thing I really love about it though is how simple it is. It is not in your face but has enough going on in the design to draw your attention.

Thank you so much Literary Book Gifts for asking me to review the designs of your products. Remember to use AndreasBookishThoughts20 to get 20%!

Literary Book Gifts site: https://literarybookgifts.com/