Stacking the Shelves: The June FairyLoot Edition

"Stacking the Shelves" is a weekly haul meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews and Reading Reality. It allows book buyers to share their accumulation of books with the online book-loving community.

July is over as of today! Woohoo! One more month of heat down, only like one-and-a-half more to go! Now, as for the books, it was an eh book week. The only new book I received was from the June FairyLoot, which wasn't really my cup of tea.

None of the items in June's FairyLoot overly excite me. They're all pretty meh. In fact, the Crescent City planter (which just looks like a regular mug without a handle) went straight to my Goodwill donation bin. It totally wasn't worth finding a buyer for and having to ship it. It's heavy.

I did end up keeping the pillowcases, though they seriously look like they'd be in a five-year-old's room. I'm going to use them for my guest pillowcases whenever I have people over at my new apartment. The Kiki pin, the Wrath standee, and the metal bookmark are okay items. I do love the tarot cards for this month, though. And, as for the book, Fire with Fire by Destiny Soria, it's pretty, but I don't think it'll be a favorite. I can't decide if it's worth keeping or not.

Other than the FairyLoot box, I got two Blood and Ash items. One is a NSFW pin by Prettygal Pins that I will not be sharing a photo of on my blog. The second is the magnetic chibbi bookmarks you see above. I ordered these towards the beginning of July, but shipping took a while since they came from Australia. But they were worth the wait. They're soooo cute! I just need to figure out how to display them now.

What books have you bought/received lately?

Stacking the Shelves: The Catch Up Edition

"Stacking the Shelves" is a weekly haul meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews and Reading Reality. It allows book buyers to share their accumulation of books with the online book-loving community.

I'm baaaaack! With a major haul! So I just finished moving to my own official apartment earlier this month. My washing machine and dryer have been installed, my chest of drawers has been built (took me 5 hours), and my car's brakes have been checked. It's been a hell of a month. But yay, more books!

First off, my preordered Realm Breaker FairyLoot edition came in, and so did my Fairy Trove Restock order of FairyLoot's Blood & Honey. I'm not super impressed with the Realm Breaker edition, as it's not all that different from the regular edition, but it's better than the other version I got.

June's Bookish Box (and my last monthly Bookish Box order) arrived sometime last month, and I was not impressed. I bought it because it had an FBAA item as well as Victoria Aveyard's new book. Unfortunately, Bookish Box's exclusive edition isn't as exclusive as I'd like. The red font is odd, and the reversible dustjacket art on it is meh. The items aren't that impressive either.

Sorry this photo is so dark, but here's a small used bookstore haul of a couple of Rachel Vincent's Shifter series books as well as some Nalini Singh Angel Blood books. I'm hoping to read both series sometime this year, so I jumped on these while they were at the bookstore, despite all of them being later books in the series' installments. Got 'em all for less than $13, though.

  

I got two ebooks. The first was The Exiled Fleet by J.S. Dewes. It's a sequel and one of my most anticipated for the last half of the year. And it's a review copy from NetGalley! Woohoo! I do wish it had been approved a month or two earlier though, as the book officially releases in August and this month has been too busy to really review anything.

 

The other book I got was Unchained: Nephilim Rising by Jennifer L. Armentrout. It was $0.99 on Kindle. I can't believe I haven't read this one yet. There are so many random JLA books I just haven't got to and it's depressing.

May's FairyLoot finally arrived. Big surprise, another late FairyLoot box. And boy, was I super disappointed in this one. That book is just not to my tastes. I much prefer the original Witches Steeped in Gold cover. The items were okay. Nothing amazing, but nothing awful either.

Another crappy photo, but I also received my From Blood & Ash Illumicrate box last week. And man, this edition is gorgeous! I can't wait to see what Illumicrate does with the rest of the series. I will be getting rid of the book sleeve/jacket thing, though. The artwork is just not to my taste. Every other item was awesome, however. I am a tad disappointed in the mug artwork, but it's still an okay design. BUT, the blanket is soft, the replica dagger is shiny, the gold-foiled print has KIERAN on it, and the little magnets are fun. Overall, a lovely box.

Next, we have some prints I bought off Redbubble, including the Poppy and wolven-form Kieran, Rowan, and Casteel behind bars. The Casteel woodmark came from a Flickerwix order, and the Zayne and Trinity print was the preorder incentive for JLA's Grace & Glory.



My Kieran Dominique Wesson print came!!! I love him so much! I also have a print that a generous FBAA Facebook group member sold me for $2.50! It has the entire FBAA trio on it. Yay!

Okay, well that's the last of my haul. Of course I've preordered many o' things that won't arrive until later, but I'll post those when I get them. For now, I hope you enjoy this enormous haul, and I'll try not to let so much time go by between Stacking the Shelves posts, as this was a doozy to write up.

What books have you bought/received lately?

Review: Flash Fire by TJ Klune

Flash Fire

TJ Klune

(The Extraordinaries #2)

Publication Date: July 13, 2021

Hardcover, 384 pages, Tor Teen

Genres: YA, Sci-Fi, LGBTQ+

Goodreads

Flash Fire is the explosive sequel to The Extraordinaries by USA Today bestselling author TJ Klune!

Nick landed himself the superhero boyfriend of his dreams, but with new heroes arriving in Nova City it’s up to Nick and his friends to determine who is virtuous and who is villainous. Which is a lot to handle for a guy who just wants to finish his self-insert bakery AU fanfic.

My Review

Nick and co. are back at it again. Doing superhero things in a superhero world. And of course Nick has to be as adorably awkward and goofy as possible trying to figure out all that superhero drama. He has zero chill.

While this second installment didn't have quite the same charm as book one, it was still an enjoyable journey. It was nice getting to see Nick go through his junior year with his friends, especially knowing it's Gibby's last year there. It always sucks when older friends graduate before you. And it was great to see a group of teenagers who got along and didn't have unnecessary melodrama just for the sake of having unnecessary melodrama. Though, in all honesty, a little bit of relationship drama between Seth and Nick would have been great to see. Sometimes their "arguments" never seemed to really dig deep into major feelings. And that was true for a lot of the conflicts in this book. You'd go from one major revelation to another with no real downtime to let the emotions play out. It was almost too fast-paced.

But there was an introduction to a certain superhero that had me absolutely in love! The name! The powers! YASSSS! Nick was 100% correct in his excitement level. I could totally relate.

Sadly, the plot developments for this book were fairly predictable, whereas in the first book, I was totally surprised by the major reveal. I guess because there aren't any more secret identities floating around, the superhero trope I won't mention because of major spoilers had to come into play. Let's just say that it's a development that was set up at the end of book one about Nick's own backstory. Oh, and something I thought I'd mention is how the author addressed the police brutality plotline from book one. The author totally made the effort to fix elements of his story; however, I'm not sure if I was just aware of these changes because I knew he was going to fix it, or if it's something I would have noticed regardless, but sometimes the writing around those particular scenes felt a little drawn out and forced. But maybe that was just me. I do appreciate him making the effort though.

So did I have fun reading this story? Absolutely! There were chuckles and a couple of face palms, but I was slightly disappointed that no major plot reveals came about, or at least not ones that I wasn't already anticipating. However, I'm not the target audience here, so I think teens will really enjoy this addition to the series. It's definitely one comic book readers and Marvel movie fans will love, and it's also a great book to diversify shelves, both in terms of genre and characters. Overall, I'm still eagerly anticipating the conclusion to The Extraordinaries trilogy, and I can't wait for Nick to finally "take out the trash."

*Note: I received an ARC of this book to review from the publisher via NetGalley. This in no way affected my opinion/review.