Song of Blood and Stone by L. Penelope

Song of Blood and Stone – L. Penelope

Ebook provided by NetGalley for review. Thank you

Read Nov 18

The world-building in this was fantastic and so immense! At times though all the information was a little overwhelming and I’d need to put the book down for a bit. Also, as detailed as it was bits felt like the were missing. Jasminda is an outcast due to her darker colouring and assumed to be from a different area but we’re never told why.

The Earthsinger thing is really interesting and different and I liked Jack, he was kind and noble and somewhat naïve in an adorable way. Also, hella sexy love scene! Also beware attempted rape scene earlier in the book. My main criticism is that the relationship was too happy and the main plot was rather slow, lots of waiting and travelling.

4/5 stars

Stef Out x

2019 Film Breakdown

Compared to 2018's 88 films 2019 was a cracker of a year! I watched 139 and of those 40 were new to me!

January: 10. 5 animated, 3 musicals, 2 comedy. 2 were new to me.

February: 23. 20 animated, 2 comedy, 1 fantasy. (Land Before Time re-watch.)

March: 12. 4 animated, 3 musicals, 2 comedy, 2 fantasy, 1 superhero. 2 were new to me.

April: 21. 12 animated, 3 fantasy, 2 action, 2 drama, 2 comedy. 4 were new to me.

May: 5. 1 animated, 1 animal, 1 comedy, 1 action, 1 fantasy. 2 were new to me.

June: 14. 4 animated, 6 fantasy, 4 action. 4 were new to me.

July: 11. 1 animated, 1 musical, 1 fantasy, 1 action, 7 superhero. 6 were new to me.

August:  4. 2 animated, 2 fantasy. 2 were new to me.

September:  4. 2 fantasy, 1 superhero, 1 action. 2 were new to me.

October: 2. 1 animated, 1 horror. 1 was new to me.

November: 6. 2 animated, 2 fantasy, 2 horror. 4 were new to me.

December: 27. 6 animated, 4 animal, 1 superhero, 6 fantasy, 10 seasonal fun. 10 were new to me.

This was the list I wanted to see in 2019, I've struck through the ones I did see:
How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
A Dog's Way Home
Aladdin
Artemis Fowl
Avengers: Endgame
Captain Marvel
Charlie's Angels
Dumbo
Escape Room
Frozen 2
Hellboy
It 2
Missing Link
Pet Sematary
Rocketman
Shazam!
Spider-man: Far From Home
The Kid Who Would Be King
The Lion King
The New Mutants
The Queen's Corgi
The Secret Life of Pets 2
The Sun Is Also A Star
Toy Story 4
Uglydolls
What Men Want
Wonder Park
X-Men: Dark Phoenix

And here's the 2020 list:

Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn
Dolittle
Sonic the Hedgehog
Wendy
Onward
My Spy
Trolls World Tour
Mulan
The New Mutants
Antlers
The Secret Garden
Black Widow
Untitled Saw Project
Fast & Furious 9
Artemis Fowl
Wonder Woman 1984
Candyman
Ghostbusters: Afterlife
Jungle Cruise
Morbius
In the Heights
Infinite
The Witches
Eternals
Raya and the Last Dragon
West Side Story

So to recap my film goal is 100 with a stretch goal of 150 and for 50 to be completely new to me and a cinema goal of 8.

Stef Out xx

New Year's Resolutions 2020

So now I've got 2019's resolution recap out of the way - my film recap will come after this post - I can do the post with this year's resolutions so:

1. Get at least one piercing
2. Get at least one tattoo
3. Get fitter
4. Sort out my health
5. Draw or write something every day
6. Get a new car
7. Learn to drive
8. Get a new puppy
9. Watch 100 films
10. Read 100 books
11. Go to the cinema at least 8 times
12. Go to Longleat
13. See a show on stage
14. Start to save more money
15. Learn to knit
16. Learn to crochet
17. Learn embroidery
18. Write 20,000 words for NaNoWriMo
19. Get up to date with book reviews
20. Start to grow my hair out

So rather a long list this year... Still doable in theory but we'll see how it goes. I actually got books for embroidery and crochet for my birthday last year but thanks to the bought of depression mentioned in the last post I lacked the motivation to do anything with them. I've also seen a knitting book on Amazon that I'd like to get to help with that one. 9 days into January and the draw every day is working well since I picked up a 365 Days of Art book at work.

This year I decided to change my normal 'lose weight' goal to something more meaningful. I want to feel less out of breath when I'm running around work and I need to sort out various health stuff. For a start this dizziness thing I have. I can't turn on the spot without going wobbly and looking a certain patterns makes my eyes go all fuzzy and I can't focus. I'm also type 2 diabetic and while at my last appointment my sugars had gone down to a better range (it was bad enough that I was on 3 month review but now I'm back on 6 month review) I obviously do want to improve it. If I could come off the injectible medication would be great.

Last year I watched 7 films at the cinema so I thought I'd stretch it to 8 for this year and 1 is already done. Cats on New Year's Day, despite the bad reviews I really enjoyed it.

Anyway that's enough for this post.

Stef Out xx

Long Time No See... 2019 Resolutions Progress.

Hello. So the resolution for keeping up with this blog and reviews didn't exactly happen. 2019 was a bit of a crap year. It seems a bit of depression snuck in somewhere and life circumstances around April meant it really dug it's claws in. It still hasn't let go yet. I suppose some people might see a doctor about that sort of thing but I don't have time to wait around. Appointments at my doctor's surgery regularly run half an hour late although recently my mum was waiting about an hour so... I end up avoiding it when there's a small list of things I could do with talking to them about.

Another thing that hasn't helped in more recent months (mid October onwards) is that I got a new job. I'm now Assistant Manager for a local charity shop. It's fun but busy It's - currently - four days a week working 9 til 5, well half-5 by the time you've cashed up and gotten out of there. It's been a massive learning curve and it doesn't leave a lot of computer time. I am typing this on my laptop which is an option but it's big and heavy and awkward so I'd like to get a little Chromebook or something soon. Something light and fast! A Macbook would be the dream but considering they cost more than my monthly wage that's all it'll be, a dream. Even if I had the money an iPad Pro would be higher priority, mostly for Procreate, the drawing app, I follow artists online who use it and it looks epic!

Anyway resolutions. These were last years:

1. Lose at least two stone
2. Get at least one piercing
3. Get at least one tattoo
4. Learn to drive
5. Read 100 books
6. Watch 100 films
7. See at least 5 films at the cinema
8. Write at least 30,000 words for NaNoWriMo
9. Buy a tablet
10. Get a second dog
11. Find a new job
12. Draw more and improve my art

As you can see I did not do very well at all last year. If I recall I lost a bit of weight but not as much as I wanted to, one of those things that depression affected, like my concentration which is why I failed my reading goal. I thought I consistently read above 100 a year but checking back I've failed a few times, 2014 I read 97, 2017 was only 84, 2018 was 91 and last year, 2019, was 92. My best year overall since I started the challenge on Goodreads in 2012 was 2013 when I read 207 but that was due to re-reading my Animal Ark books before re-homing them. Concentration also affected NaNoWriMo, also with that one time was a factor, having only recently started my new job.

Speaking of the job as you know I was originally at Sainsbury's. I'd not been happy for a while but then a bunch of stuff went down in April which led to my mum losing her job which then left me feeling awkward and stressed and extra unhappy. I was planning on looking for something new soon anyway but then I was in the charity shop talking to the manager there who I used to work with at Sainsbury's and she said they had an Assistant Manager vacancy and I should apply, so I did and I ended up getting it!

Now... the dog... That was not great. We'd been looking into adopting a Greyhound since March and had filled out forms with Hounds First and Forever Hounds Trust, it was taking so long for anything to happen we later filled out one with Bath Cats and Dogs Home but later all they could offer was a Yorkshire Terrier, not going to work. We had a meet with a Greyhound from Hounds First but he was an older, slower chap so we didn't feel like it would work. Forever Hounds Trust kept on giving us the runaround but eventually we got told about Stacey, a Greyhound x Whippet. We went and saw her mid August and despite reservations we decided we'd take her home (not helped by the distance and horrible country roads to get to the centre) and renamed her Breeze. Things were difficult from the start. We had to buy her a slow feeder and stand between her and Forest to give him a chance to eat his food. She didn't understand toys, she blocked him from getting on either bed and he ended up sleeping in the kitchen which he'd never done before in his life! She was also a chewer, ate a pair of my shoes and put a hole in my towel. Her training was also non-existent, pulling strongly, barking at other dogs, couldn't walk in a straight line, she also had several accidents inside. Of course this was mostly stuff we could have worked with (except maybe the beds) but then she quickly started to get quite nippy with him and caused a couple of small injuries and so we decided after a few weeks that she needed to go back for his safety and hers if Forest decided to retaliate - being so much bigger and all). We have now decided if we're going to get another dog then another puppy is going to be the best plan for us personally. We need to know a dog's background, Breeze was a former stray so was always going to be a mystery.

The other goals as normal suffered from lack of money. Same old, same old.

Anyway this post is long enough that I will sign off and do 2020's goals in a new post.

Stef Out xx

New Year's Resolutions 2019

Resolutions 2019

1. Lose at least two stone
2. Get at least one piercing
3. Get at least one tattoo
4. Learn to drive
5. Read 100 books
6. Watch 100 films
7. See at least 5 films at the cinema
8. Write at least 30,000 words for NaNoWriMo
9. Buy a tablet
10. Get a second dog
11. Find a new job
12. Draw more and improve my art

Much the same as last year but condensed and simplified. I usually say I want to complete NaNoWriMo but that seems to be un-achievable at the moment so I thought I'll create goals to get closer. Normally I'd say 30k is too high but I want to get a tablet for writing because typing is quicker, the one year I typed my attempt I got to about 29k I think, I think I was a few hundred words off 30k so apparently it is doable for me. I need to continue that story at some point...

Last year I easily surpassed 5 films at the cinema but I though I'll keep the goal at 5 because I don't know what the year will bring and I want to achieve at least one goal on my list LOL! This list was compiled by looking at the Coming Soon section of the Vue cinema website. There were some films that had intriguing titles but no description or descriptions that had me thinking maybe. Those would need trailers to help any decisions.

Films I Want To See:
How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
A Dog's Way Home
Aladdin
Artemis Fowl
Avengers: Endgame
Captain Marvel
Charlie's Angels
Dumbo
Escape Room
Frozen 2
Hellboy
It 2 (need to watch the first one though...)
Missing Link
Pet Sematary
Rocketman
Shazam!
Spider-man: Far From Home
The Kid Who Would Be King
The Lion King
The New Mutants
The Queen's Corgi
The Secret Life of Pets 2
The Sun Is Also A Star
Toy Story 4
Uglydolls
What Men Want
Wonder Park
X-Men: Dark Phoenix

Other Goals
As well as my official resolutions list I have a list of 'stretch' goals I suppose you could call it that are unlikely but I would still like to achieve.

1. Go to Longleat Safari Park
2. Finish 'A Song of Ice and Fire' series
3. Upload book reviews on time - at the moment I am 14 books behind and 7 of those still need reviews writing, oops.
4. Refine my clothing style
5. Get a Playstation 4 - mostly for the Spyro remake :D
6. Upgrade/replace all furniture needed
7. Get a new car

Longleat has been a dream for a few years now and even more so since I upgraded my camera - still need to learn the focus thing though, fences are a pain - and it's not too far away but it always gets shoved down the list. I don't know what happened with the SoIaF books. I started reading them, got to a Storm of Swords: Steel and Snow and then stalled. Apparently I started reading that one September 2017.

Ah book reviews. Oh dear. If it were just posting them here then I could maybe work out doing them on my phone but it's the posting on Goodreads and often NetGalley as well that make it a trickier process. I only get on the PC a few times a week thanks to work and sometimes I just forget to post as well. I will do one in a minute and post straightaway and then schedule this post for later or something. This is another area that getting a tablet may help, bigger screen to see what I'm doing and a keyboard case for typing.

Clothing style... Rainbow Goth in a nutshell. I love goth style but I also love bright colours and hippie clothing Wicked Dragon and The Hippy Clothing Co. both do the kind of things I dream of wearing, the latter in particular has some epic purple velvet tie-dye dungarees that I love! At the moment the main issue is that the sizes do not quite extend enough on most items to fit me. That is why this is a stretch goal and not a main resolution, because a lot of it rides on me losing a bit of weight, then I can wear the clothes of my dreams.

PS4 doesn't need explaining beyond Spyro being the last straw in me wanting to catch up technologically. Now furniture... Some of it is due to the dog's chewing phase (coffee table), most of it is age and being generally worn out: my bed, cooker, fridge, washing machine, sofas, carpets. It's a big job and will take a while.

And finally the car. Our little Nissan Micra is great and it's in better condition and better to handle than the old Ford Mondeo but while the Mondeo was too long, the Micra is too small and needs a bit more power in the engine, I think it's only a 1.1 or 1.2 engine verses the Mondeo which I think was something like a 1.4 or 1.6, I can't remember now.

Anyway this post is way too long but I can't be bothered to split it, will write soon!

Stef Out x

How to Write a Love Story by Katy Cannon

Ebook provided by NetGalley for review. Thank you.

The characters are truly what drives this story. Each one is uniquely well-developed, I'm writing this review a while after finishing to had to look up the names but once I did it all came flooding back and I remembered them.

I especially loved the relationship between Tilly and her gran. I felt sad for Beatrix and what was happening to her although the morals around her and Tilly's writing relationship were a bit shady.

There were also a couple of plot points that were a bit too predictable which knocked off a star. Otherwise highly enjoyable.

Stef Out x

2018 Resolutions Recap and Film Overview

For anyone that wants a reminder here is my post about 2018's resolutions here and film overview here. I did not do well. Out of 20 goals I achieved 2 and a half. I saw 5 films at the cinema, got a new car and lost 1 stone out of 2. Not great. I even failed my usually faithful book and film challenge. This year I did change my work hours slightly. Friday's I used to do 8 til 1 and then I'd come home and watch a film before walking the dog to meet mum from work because she was doing 11 til 5. But then we realised switching round would be better because it means mum can come home and do things like cleaning or ironing. So we did so that meant bye-bye film Friday.

I will do a post in a few days about this years resolutions, I've just got to come up with them first! Back to last year's recap. Body mods, driving and days out were affected by money. We got the new car in February but then a few months later the clutch went so that needed sorting, plus it's had two tyres done. Forest had his op in the summer as well so no pups for him. Also mum had problems with her Universal Credit stopping, basically her details got deleted when the system changed so we needed to re-set that up. We also did one for me but apparently living at home means I have no outgoings - tell that to my weeping bank account - so I'm not eligible for anything. Sucks. I haven't had the energy to look into anything job-wise so I'm still in retail hell for now. The only drawing I've done all year is two Secret Santa gifts in December. I've really struggled with motivation and concentration this year, with reading as well :( I worked out that for music to play on my phone it needs to be in MP3 format so I'm working on converting my library and I will get a larger memory card for my phone. I do still need to get a tablet for writing though and It'll make keeping up with this blog easier. I can't keep taking months to post reviews...

Films
Now onto the film section! This year I only managed to watch 88 films. That's bad for me. Onto the breakdown:

January: 18 of which 4 were animated, 3 musicals, 3 superhero, 2 fantasy, 1 serious and 5 horror. 4 new to me.

February: 5 of which 1 was animated and 4 were fantasy. 3 new to me.

March: 7 of which 3 were animated, 1 superhero and 3 fantasy. 1 new to me.

April: April was a bad month and I watched no films. :(

May: 4 of which 2 were animated and 2 were superhero. All 4 were new to me.

June: 10 of which 4 were animated, 1 superhero, 1 musical, 1 romance, 1 animal and 2 fantasy. 4 new to me.

July: 10 of which 3 were animated, 3 animal and 4 fantasy. 2 new to me.

August: 12 of which 5 were fantasy, 3 were animated, 1 animal, 1 musical, 2 serious. 2 new to me.

September: 2 of which 1 was superhero and 1 was animated.

October: 2 of which 1 was fantasy and 1 was horror. 1 new to me.

November: 3 of which 1 animated, 1 fantasy and 1 serious. 2 new to me.

December: 15 of which 11 were animated, 3 fantasy and 1 serious. 4 new to me.

33 animated so less this year. 27 new to me films I ended up not tracking re-watches like I planned. I may for 2019, I've started a new notebook which is a little bigger and lined so it may be easier.

Total Cinema Trips: 10
I smashed my goal of watching 5 films at the cinema and went 10 times for 8 films!
The Greatest Showman x 2
Black Panther
Avengers: Infinity War
Deadpool 2
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again x 2
Bohemian Rhapsody
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

I haven't yet looked at what's out next year but I think that'll come in my next post with the new resolutions themselves as this has gotten a little long.

Stef Out x