Month: April 2018

Apr 30

April 2018 Monthly Wrap-Up Round-Up Link-Up

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Monthly Wrap-Up Round-Up 8

It’s time for the April Wrap-Up Round-Up! Those of you who are observant noticed that I didn’t do the giveaway for this in March. Sorry about that, but I just decided I needed a one-month breather to catch up on a few things. I’ll be back at it in April (and I’ll allow people to use the March OR April wrap-ups for the giveaway). On the positive side, I used my extra time to make sure I got around to all of the March wrap-ups that were linked up (unless you linked up on the late side—I’m about to head over there to make sure I didn’t miss any!) The February giveaway winner was AJ @ Read All the Things. She chose to make me read Refugee by Alan Gratz, which I was very excited about! Watch for our dual review coming soon! This is the link-up for our April… Read more »

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Apr 29

Sunday Post & Giveaways Galore – 4/29/18

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Sunday Post 38

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimba @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer ~ It’s a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week on my blog and share news about what’s coming up in the week ahead. This past week on FYFA (and in my life): I totally reorganized my bookcases yesterday! (And my closet, but who cares about that?) I was going to add some pictures here, but then I decided I’d give them their own post because my hours and hours of work deserve more attention. (And I need post ideas lately. LOL!) SO, check in Wednesday if you want to see pics. You’ll get a tiny preview in the Book Haul section, though. 🙂 Here’s what you may have missed on the blog this past week: The Queen of Bright and Shiny Things by Ann Aguirre: A Dual Review with Danielle Hammelef… Read more »

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Apr 26

Bite-Sized Reviews of Children of Blood and Bone & Dread Nation

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Reviews 33 ★★★★½

I’ve got two bite-sized reviews for you today. I hope these bite-sized reviews will be enough to feed your fiction addiction! First off, I just have to start by saying that the audiobook version of this book is amazing! Bahni Turpin is a fantastic narrator, and I absolutely love the accents she uses for the book I have no idea if they are accurate African accents—or if they’re even meant to be, since the book takes place in a fantasy world, not the real world—but they definitely have an African flair to them. I appreciated the differences between Zélie’s more rural sounding accent and the smoother sound of Amari and Inan’s voices (those ultra-rolling r’s are so beautiful to listen to). I almost never had trouble determining whose narration I was listening to, which is hard for a single narrator to manage. Now on to the story. The fact that we… Read more »

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Apr 23

The Queen of Bright and Shiny Things by Ann Aguirre: A Dual Review with Danielle Hammelef

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Dual Reviews, Make Me Read It, Reviews 24 ★★★½

(No actual dueling—or even arm-twisting—was involved. Don’t worry, this is a dual review, not a duel review. Sorry if you’re disappointed.) Today I have another dual review of a book from my Make Me Read It Giveaway (as part of the Wrap-Up Round-Up). Danielle Hammelef was once again my winner (which just goes to show that entering often is well worth it!) and she chose to make me read The Queen of Bright and Shiny Things. Once I read the book, I sent it along to her. Once again, Danielle took me up on the option of doing a dual review, which I was really excited about since it’s such a fun way to review! Read on to see what we thought of the book… Danielle and I disagreed about this book somewhat (which sort of makes this review more fun, in my opinion). I think it mostly came down to whether… Read more »

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Apr 22

Sunday Post & Giveaways Galore – 4/22/18

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Sunday Post 22

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimba @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer ~ It’s a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week on my blog and share news about what’s coming up in the week ahead. This past week on FYFA (and in my life): I got to meet with one of my CPs this week, which was really fun! It was the craziest thing—she found me via #CPMatch on Twitter, and when I visited her profile I learned that she lived ten minutes from me. Even weirder, she actually used to live in my neighborhood, just down the block from me. So, we got together for coffee Friday and talked about our books. Such a great opportunity, since neither of us get to talk writing all that often. My daughter had her first two track meets this week. I have now learned that track… Read more »

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Apr 17

Expectations About POC Names in Books. Let’s Discuss.

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Let's Discuss 44

I have to start by pointing out the obvious: As a white woman, my opinion on this subject doesn’t matter all that much. Some people might even say I shouldn’t get to have an opinion on this. But I do, so… I’m giving it… with this little disclaimer that you can take it or leave it as you see fit. I actually started writing this as a note in my review of Picture Us in the Light, but then it was getting really long, and I thought I’d turn it into its own discussion post. I happened across a random comment on Goodreads where someone said they wondered if Disney was afraid to use names that sounded too Asian in Picture Us in the Light, since all the characters have American-sounding first names. This seemed like a strange reason to write the book off to me, especially given the fact that the… Read more »

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Apr 15

Sunday Post & Giveaways Galore – 4/15/18

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Sunday Post 34

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimba @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer ~ It’s a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week on my blog and share news about what’s coming up in the week ahead. This past week on FYFA (and in my life): I don’t know where my head has been this week, but it apparently hasn’t been attached to me. It was one of those weeks where I just felt so scatterbrained. On Sunday, I forgot to show up to something at church. Then I forgot to order books for my co-op language arts class and missed half my daughter’s guitar/voice lesson because we assumed her teacher was out of town—we had reasons, but I won’t go into a long explanation. Suffice it to say, I should have checked. Today, I figured out I was a day late for submitting something… Read more »

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Apr 13

Picture Us In the Light by Kelly Loy Gilbert: So Much I Want to Say About this Book (But I Can’t)

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Reviews 18 ★★★★½

This is one of those books that I’ll be thinking about for a long time. There was just so much substance to it, and it addressed several important topics from unique perspectives. The problem is, this is a tough book to review without spoiling things, so I’m going to be very general in my review. Trust me when I say you should just read it for yourself! What Fed My Addiction: Covers all the issues. Without feeling like an issue book. This book touches on so many topics, and honestly, that’s hard to do well. Oftentimes when I read a book like this, I feel a little overwhelmed or like I’m constantly being hit over the head with another issue, but somehow Gilbert manages to weave them all in so seamlessly that I almost don’t notice they’re there. This is because Gilbert focuses so much more on Danny’s emotional journey than she does on the… Read more »

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Apr 11

Why Is Voice in Writing So Hard? And Do You Think About It When You Read? Let’s Discuss.

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Let's Discuss 40

I actually started writing this as a completely different post (how I read differently now that I’m writing more seriously), but I ended up writing a lot about this voice, and I decided to go with it. Maybe I’ll write that other post another time. But for now, I’m talking only about voice. What is it that makes it so hard to capture? Is it something we think about when we read, or is it just there? Voice in Books First of all, if you’re sitting there wondering what I’m even talking about, let’s define “voice” when it comes to writing. Voice is simply what makes a character stand out as an individual—what makes the character sound like them. Voice can be established in a lot of ways—little repeated words and phrases, an attitude (such as a snarky teenage voice), worldview, phrasing, apparent education level that’s evidenced in word choice, etc. It’s actually… Read more »

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Apr 08

Sunday Post & Giveaways Galore – 4/8/18

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Sunday Post 34

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimba @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer ~ It’s a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week on my blog and share news about what’s coming up in the week ahead. This past week on FYFA (and in my life): This week was another busy one! My two acting classes (at our homeschool co-op) had their final performances on Tuesday and Saturday. It was a little bittersweet since these are my final final performances. With Danielle headed off to public high school next year, our time at the co-op is done (at least for now—I suppose you never know what the future might hold!). I’ve been having some weird nerve pain in my arm this week as well, which has made all sorts of things unpleasant—including typing for too long. But I still managed to get a couple of… Read more »

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