This year is my year of ARCs, and in the excitement of receiving something in exchange for an honest review, I went a little overboard and committed to many.

The Villa by Rachel Hawkins: A delectable gothic, suspense, thriller novel with complex characters, sure to mislead you in the best possible way.

The Jot Down – December 17, 2022 Happy Saturday y’all! Phew! This week was a myriad of things. If I had to give it a title, it would be “Different: The Scripted and Unscripted.” I didn’t get around to posting a WWW Wednesday this week because I had some extraneous tasks outside of my normally scheduled program to tend to. One of them being a stressful journey running errands on Fannin at UTHealth Houston and another being a task that took longer than expected. By the time I finished both, Wednesday was gone. It would’ve been fruitless of me to…

Get your tissue ready. Underneath the Sycamore Tree is a heartbreaking exploration of reinforcing familial relationships heavily strained by invisible diseases and the harsh realities of them when someone is diagnosed with one.

How to Be a Better Adult is a book that expresses most, if not all feelings that many people experience while navigating their work and personal lives. It’s a quick read with a relatable main character trying to make sense of adulthood. Truthfully, most of us reside in a similar headspace (lol).

The setting and atmosphere of You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight is isolated and creepy. Kalynn Bayron creates a work experience at Camp Mirror Lake for Charity Curtis with just as many perks as hiccups. Taking advantage of an unsupervised summer job, Charity is living her best life curating a full-contact horror experience for those who are brave enough to face Camp Mirror Lake. It’s tainted, but hidden history is the main attraction. What happens when hidden history is revealed and tries to repeat itself? Strange things start happening, and what a ride it was!

Natalie’s been passed up for a promotion, lives with a clingy best friend, and dating a man that’s B-O-S-S-Y (always making decisions for her). I didn’t want to be with her in this moment. Let’s be real. It sucked (lol).

Get in here! Diane Marie Brown’s, Black Candle Women checks these boxes: black and female characters of varying ages, family secrets, voodoo and hoodoo magic, and R&B music references. If this rings any of your bells, give it a read.

There’s an old saying that for every death, a new person is born. There may be some truth to that. Maggie experiences great losses after the birth of her son and vows that she will stick closer to him than she did before. He’s her only surviving blood-relative. Would you react the same?

I recommend Cameron Battle and the Hidden Kingdoms to readers who like their middle-grade fantasy, fast-paced, full of adventure, combat, history, and West African-inspired mythology.

What do loogies and Final Destination have in common? Nothing much. They just make me uncomfortable. I want to pick your brains about your levels of discomfort, so let’s talk about it!

What’s the purpose of this post? Realistically, weekends are more conducive to productivity for me and the blog. My weekdays are consumed by a full-time finance position in Higher Education, keeping home, reading, whatever else comes up and now drafting blog posts. Lately, I’ve shared ‘Weekend Reads’ posts to social media, and as of recently, I’ve realized how long-winded those have been. I tend to get passionate about whatever is going on in the media I’m absorbing, and before you know it I’m either ranting, raving, or rambling about it (lol). In retrospect, those social media posts really should have…