The Bargainer series review
Overall rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
“And the mountains may rise and fall, and the sun might wither away, and the sea may claim the land and swallow the sky. But you will always be mine. And the stars might fall from the heavens, and night might cloak the earth, but until darkness dies, I will always be yours”
Okay so I went into this series with very low expectations. For some reason I thought this was just going to be a standard smutty adult fantasy book but I did not expect there to be such an engaging story line to go song with it.
The first book in the series was definitely my favourite. The story follows Callypso, a siren, who makes a deal with The Bargainer after she kills her stepdad at 15 and ends up calling him back to her almost everyday just for company. After seven years apart, The Bargainer returns to cash in all the 300+ favours she owes him. It had a really engaging storyline where it switched between the present struggles she faces and the past of how she got to end up with so many deals with The Baraginer.
I loved pretty much everything about the first book. It was equal amounts sexy and interesting and I found that I couldn’t put it down. The other two books I’m my opinion we’re not as good as the first but still had interesting plots enough for me to finish the series. They also had interesting characters, but I would have liked them to go a bit more in depth with some of the more minor characters like Temper and Malakai rather than focusing solely on Callie and Desmond. But I guess that’s just a con of books written in first person.
I definitely fell in love with Callie and Desmonds love, even if it did give me ACOTAR vibes in that Desmond seemed to have zero flaws and it was all a bit too perfect blah blah (Don’t get me wrong ACOTAR is my favourite series don’t come for me). However, for a bit of smutty fantasy escapism, it was brilliant. Definitely a nice easy read, the world building and magic systems were simple enough yet still charming.
Overall I’d definitely recommend this series to people who like ACOTAR but are looking for something a bit more spicy. Or if you’re looking for a nice easy read that’s not too hard to follow and want a bit of escapism into an interesting fae world
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I finished Beach Read yesterday ✨ some amazing characters and very heartfelt story line. 4/5 🌟
5Books I’ve read and reviewed in 2020.
1.Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy
2.Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
3.Living Well Spending Less: 12 Secrets of the Good Life
4.A Court of Wings and Ruin (A Court of Thorns and Roses, 3)
5.The Financial Diet: A Total Beginner’s Guide to Getting Good with Money
6.Find Me (Shatter Me Novella)
9.The Moth & the Flame: A Wrath & the Dawn Short Story (The Wrath and the Dawn)
10.Romeo and Juliet (Folger Shakespeare Library)
11.Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, 6)
12.The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Do in 12 Months
13.Whiskey in a Teacup: What Growing Up in the South Taught Me About Life, Love, and Baking Biscuits
14.Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.
15.The Power of a Praying® Woman
17.Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World
18.Switch On Your Brain: The Key to Peak Happiness, Thinking, and Health
19.The Last Librarian: A Booker Thriller (The Justar Journal Book 1)
20.A Court of Frost and Starlight (A Court of Thorns and Roses)
21.Pillow Thoughts II: Healing the Heart
22.Empire of Storms (Throne of Glass, 5)
23.The Proposal
24.Queen of Shadows (Throne of Glass, 4)
25.Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass, 1)
26.Summer Days and Summer Nights: Twelve Love Stories
27.Love Letters Of Great Men - Vol. 1
28.All The Things I Never Said
29.The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph
30.Nocturnal
External image32.Isla and the Happily Ever After
External imageExternal imageExternal image35.Dance of Thieves (Dance of Thieves, 1)
External image36.Sunshine
External imageExternal image38.The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living (The Happiness Institute Series)
External imageIf you want to hear my thoughts you can check them out under #bookreview. What will I read next? Happy 2021!
0I’m not gonna lie.
She had no idea who she’d just hired.
-Warping Minds & Other Misdemeanors, Annette Marie
0
i currently have 3 reads and coincidentally they’re all blue 🦋 and they have the prettiest covers
over these last couple of days i’ve taken a break from here to focus on uni but i’m now up to that point i can relax a little… thankfully
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hey booklr let’s play a game
[image description: tweets reading “i miss human interaction, let’s play what 5 books and movies would you bring if you were gonna be stuck on a deserted island which somehow has a dvd player
i’ll go first
movies: iron man, legally blonde, the other woman, oh brother where art thou, and my cousin vinny
books: (much harder to choose but here i go) an absolutely remarkable thing & a beautifully foolish endeavor by @hankgreen , one of us is lying by karen m mcmanus, amelia westlake was never here by erin gough, and a man called ove by fredrik backman
end image description]
1those moments when Character A is close to Character B, who has resisted A and resisted A and resisted A despite how obvious A has been about being open to a relationship with B and just how badly B wants A, that B finally says “fuck it” and kisses A with everything they have
12Just a reminder that I also have a YouTube channel!! I’ve been uploading pretty consistently so I hope you check out. I upload on Monday Wednesday and Friday! The channel name is BookDragon and this is my beginner manga recommendations!
2
The Guest List
By Lucy Foley
*****
When a wedding on a remote, deserted island takes a dark turn, the guests descend into chaos knowing a murderer is in their mix and that they have no way off the island. This was such a fun lil who dunnit murder mystery. I read The Hunting Party a few months ago (which I liked) and although Foley was following a pretty similar recipe, I felt that this book was much more effective in terms of atmosphere and building suspense. There was a huge mix of characters from all sorts of walks of life which was really enjoyable to read as well. Worth picking up.
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Our first stop on our continental reading challenge is North America. North America is in the northern and western hemispheres. As of 2016, North America was home to roughly five hundred and eighty million people, four hundred and fifty-seven species of mammals and a little scarily, four thousand known species of arachnids.
Click here to read our list of books set in North America
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15.01.2021 | last read before the semester starts
just took my first covid test and then decided to read in the student union building after. there’s a coffee shop right in front of me but in true broke college student fashion, i made and brought my own lol. three days before my semester starts, so i’m trying to squeeze in this short story as my last “for fun” read of the break.
3Rating: 5923840/5
I just finished this book and sat down straight away to write this. I don’t think I can put into words how much I loved this book. Without a doubt can I say that this has been one of the best books I have ever read and will not stop recommending it to others. I put this book down after a few days of reading it, leaving me with about 200 pages left. Not because it bored me, or I didn’t like it, but because I simply did not want this masterpiece to end.
The way V.E. Schwab told Addie’s, Henry’s and Luc’s leaves you longing until the very end. The characters, so beautifully and well written, I have rarely caught myself rooting for a character as much as Addie. Every character has left an imprint on my heart. This book brought me to tears and I know I will think about this for a long time. It makes you think, the ending leaves you speechless and wanting more, but also broken.
I certainly remember you, Addie LaRue.
Favourite quote: “Three words, large enough to tip the world. I remember you.”
Also, for everyone who likes listening to music while reading, here are some of my favourite tracks that remind me of this book (and the heartbreak it caused me); Silhouette by Aquilo // New York City by The Chainsmokers // In the Woods Somewhere by Hozier. Young and Beautiful by Lana Del Rey // You & I by RHODES // Finally/beautiful stranger by Halsey // Pierre by Ryn Weaver // Seven by Taylor Swift // could cry just thinking about you by Troye Sivan // line without a hook by ricky montgomery
0“He was they guy who taught my everything a kiss could be. Before him, I couldn’t grasp the big deal about touching my lips to someone else’s, but when his soft tongue met mine, I understood in an instant. A good kiss can reach every organ, every cell. It can steal your breath and make a cathedral of your mouth. Those kisses woke me up.”
Group - Christie Tate
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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
by
My rating:
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory follows the story of a boy named Charlie when he wins a golden ticket to a magical factory.
I’m not going to lie, I really didn’t enjoy this book much, and I went into reading it knowing the story pretty well. I’d seen both
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
and
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. (1971)
I read not too long ago in the original drafts Charlie Bucket was black and Dahl was pressured into changing his race upon publication. Bringing the character’s lower social class than the other ticket holders, and the “lessons” the story tries to impart on the dangers of ill-behaved children I thought it might be a good time to read the book itself.
Here’s my problem. The Chocolate Factory exists outside the rest of the world in the book. It’s magic in a world that it otherwise mundane, and that magical existence leads me to come up with my own theory as to why that is.
Life outside the factory seems dirty, grimy, mundane, where entire families can starve to death and no one notices or bats an eye lash, but inside a group of impossibly small people create magical machines and equipment. When Wonka says the Oompa Loompa’s are from some non-existent country and the Geography teacher corrects him, he brushes it off. But I think that in itself is telling of my larger problem with the magic. It’s unfounded and unexplained.
I don’t like it because it leaves me to come to a single unifying conclusion. How can the world be dark, grimy, and cruel, and the factory be bright hopeful and magical? I believe Charlie and his family starved to death.
For me, the magic inside of the factory reads to me like the fever dream of a dying child. It’s a story of fantasy where Charlie’s dying grandfather who tells him stories of wonderful things is no longer bed bound and is capable of taking him on a grand adventure. Through a stroke of Luck Charlie is able to save his family from a slow and miserable death, where they can eat as much as they want without worrying about the cost.
What possible reason could a child dying of starvation have for dreaming of a magical factory where the very rooms themselves are made of not only food, but candy, where a single piece of gum can feed a person for a full meal, where the spoiled and the greedy are punished but not harmed, and the “good” kids never have to go hungry? I don’t know the factories correlation to Charlie’s specific suffering seems a little too direct.
The part of the book that really stands out to me is a small line in the overarching story. One that doesn’t get much attention drawn to it, except the grandparents are talking about what a good boy Charlie is. Charlie’s mother who is also starving tries to give him the one piece of bread that she has for breakfast. He refuses it. Imagine being that mother. The one that knows that not only is she starving but her child is starving, and she gives him the only thing he has, attempts to stave off his dying and he refuses it. I can’t even think about what his mother must of have been going through without crying.
Was the families suffering the story that was meant to be told? Probably not. But this is the story that I’m taking away from it. The Chocolate Factory loses its magic to me in the sight of what happens outside it’s gates.
Buy me a Coffee
0Bookstagram, let’s talk second-hand, well-loved and library books!!
All books in this photo are second-hand. All of the buttons are also second-hand. The material (apart from the blanket behind) is second-hand, either from charity shops or people selling their scraps material.
🌻I’m going to tag some people who reacted to my story, and I would love for people to post second-hand, library, & well-loved/damaged books and I’d love for them to tag other people to do it too, like a second-hand books stack challenge!!🌻
I personally love second-hand books. I love the thought that they had a previous life, that they have been read and then passed on. I adore finding hidden gems like notes in the margins and I’ve even found a unused postcard in one before.
When I started bookstagram around 5 years ago, I felt very out of place. I couldn’t afford a lot of new books and a lot of the books I bought myself as a teen were second-hand because that’s all I could afford. I’d see loads of new books on here, especially a lot of the same books. I felt a kind of shame.
Over the years, I’ve deleted my photos over and over because I hated them. I hated how they made me feel like I wasn’t a good bookstagram account because my books weren’t perfect. I found myself feeling a little upset if my book had a dent in it.
In the past, I’ve avoided posting books that are well-loved or that are damaged just because it didn’t seem like the kind of things people posted on here.
It wasn’t until I saw that other people felt the same that I realised there are probably loads of people who do. I’ve had messages from people who feel out of place because they get their books from the library, I’ve had people who feel like they don’t fit in because they have a lot of old second-hand books, I’ve had people who feel like because their books are damaged, that they aren’t going to get interaction.
Bookstagram is a wonderful place and we should celebrate reading, and this of course includes audio books and ebooks. But it can also be a lonely place if you feel like you don’t fit in because you can’t afford new books or you don’t read the popular books.
(Continued in comments)
Posted on my Instagram, follow me there for book photos :)
9
15th january 2021
planning to finish piranesi, by Susanna Clarke, today~ have you heard about or read this book?
0reading snobs r irritating. i don’t wna hear about how u don’t “count” audiobooks or that ebooks aren’t authentic enough just shut up and read
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