• Book Review - Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston 
• Book Review - The Prenup by Lauren Layne
• Top Ten Tuesday - Character Freebie (The Artists)

  

• Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston (★★★★★ / I really enjoyed this one.. except for the political theme of it because I don't really enjoy politics. I explained this further in my review.)
• The Prenup by Lauren Layne (★★★ / Not quite happy with this one.)
• Just Love by Prescott Lane (★★ / The story didn't live up to its pretty cover. I'm about to write my review for this.)

  

  

• The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman
• Crashing the A-List by  Summer Heacock
• The Storm Crow by Kalyn Josephson

 

• Sketching - I haven't been sketching lately so I decided to do some mouth and eye studies for a warm-up since classes are about to start next month too. Here's a little sample I did and this was what inspire me for my Top Ten Tuesday Character Freebie topic. And the one on the right is just a little something-something because I found this pretty witch pic on Pinterest (I wanna link it but I couldn't open Pinterest at the moment) so I used it as a reference. I just changed her hat though.
• Homescapes - I don't really play games on my phone these days because they take up a lot of space. The only apps I allow to take up that much space are Photos, Spotify and Kindle (and some other e-readers like Bluefire and Kobo). That's the holy trinity of apps on my phone. But this game??? I'M HOOKED. I love decorating the house and gardens and collecting stars. This is also the reason why I haven't been reading lately because I'm so busy with this game.
• Social Media Series - I don't know if there's any Filipino reading this blog post but there's this social media series going on around Twitter starring a famous on-and-off-screen couple and their fans cast them as main characters for their stories. The stories are basically just screenshots of Twitter tweets, Instagram posts, Messenger chats, and iMessages. It's such a creative way of writing and telling a story, and I swear a lot of us are hooked (even the actress herself who is the main female character in their stories read it and was amused). I'm one of them. Like I love the format and the way how the story was conveyed through screenshots of the characters' social media conversations and interactions. It's just really creative, I don't know if I can stop complimenting it. People are really talented and have a gifted way of telling a story through their writing. Linking it here to show to those of you who aren't familiar of it.

My name is Charlotte Spencer and, ten years ago, I married my brother's best friend. I haven't seen him since.

Charlotte Spencer grew up on the blue-blooded Upper East Side of Manhattan but she never wanted the sit-still-look-pretty future her parents dictated for her. Enter Colin Walsh, her brother's quiet, brooding, man-bun-sporting best friend, and with him a chance to escape.

He's far from Charlotte's dream guy as but they need each other for one thing: marriage. One courthouse wedding later, Charlotte's inheritance is hers to start a business in San Francisco and Irish-born Colin has a Green Card.

Ten years later, Colin drops a bombshell: the terms of their prenup state that before either can file for divorce, they have to live under the same roof for three months.

Suddenly this match made in practicality is about to take on whole new meaning...

Hosted by: The Broke and the Bookish

" But I have to remember what else my company means to me. What it has been. How it's saved me. It was an outlet where I could be creative despite my mother's constant nagging. I used to come home, rub my abused toes from pointe shoes, and sketch on my bed, in private. I was twelve. I was thirteen. Fourteen. I found solace in fashion. I found peace and happiness."

" I get it. But I don't think of what I can do is talent or a gift. It's an escape."

"But can't you feel what it does to the people who watch you act? It's like a gift of transportation. An escape for us too."

"I'm glad it can be that for you. For anyone watching. But for me... it's all I have."

"I feel the same. Like I was a little bit lost and then Hamlet fell into my lap. To help me find my way again. That sounds all kinds of dramatic. And probably silly."

"It's not silly. Things happen for a reason, I guess."

" For a second, I have this vision of just the two of us in some anonymous hotel room somewhere dickering around, her on her cello, me on my guitar, playing this song I wrote for her. And shit, if that doesn't make me so damn happy."

" Ever since I was a kid, music has always been an escape for me. When I sing, the world disappears. It's just me and the music and the deep sense of tranquility that I've never been able to find anywhere else, no matter how hard I try."

" It had almost been four years since I'd danced in front of an audience. Four years, I tried to tell myself it wasn't a big deal; Iris and Ivy was a far cry from a big dance company. But it was a huge fucking deal. I'd begun to wonder if the dancer version of myself was gone forever, still locked up behind bars even after the drug-addict had been released.

But it's still here. Me. I'm still here."

" I thought about how excited Adrian had been after only a couple classes, how he'd thrown himself into the art. His face has been radiating when he stood in his "gallery". Jill's words also echoed through my mind, about how the art had given him something to channel his feelings into."

" Clary, you're an artist, like your mother. That means you see the world in ways that other people don't. It's your gift, to see the beauty and the horror in ordinary things. It doesn't make you crazy—just different. There's nothing wrong with being different."

" Emilia wore her weird personality like a billboard, proud and loud. From the way she dressed to how she was always covered in paint and doodled cherry blossoms everywhere."

" New experiences would give me new images and emotions to draw from for my art. I usually painted what I knew, what I'd seen in my life or in pictures. I didn't rely on emotion or pushing myself to feel or see or try new things."

" Julian had been in the dream too. She didn't know exactly what she'd dreamed, but she'd woken up with a clear picture of him in her mind—tall, slender Jules, with his dark brown curls and startling blue-green eyes. His dark lashes, and pale skin, the way he bit his nails when he was under stress, his confident handling of weapons and even more confident handling of brushes and paints."

Title: Fix Her Up

Georgette Castle’s family runs the best home renovation business in town, but she picked balloons instead of blueprints and they haven’t taken her seriously since. Frankly, she’s over it. Georgie loves planning children’s birthday parties and making people laugh, just not at her own expense. She’s determined to fix herself up into a Woman of the World... whatever that means.
Phase one: new framework for her business (a website from this decade, perhaps?) Phase two: a gut-reno on her wardrobe (fyi, leggings are pants.) Phase three: updates to her exterior (do people still wax?) Phase four: put herself on the market (and stop crushing on Travis Ford!)
Living her best life means facing the truth: Georgie hasn’t been on a date since, well, ever. Nobody’s asking the town clown out for a night of hot sex, that’s for sure. Maybe if people think she’s having a steamy love affair, they’ll acknowledge she’s not just the “little sister” who paints faces for a living. And who better to help demolish that image than the resident sports star and tabloid favorite?
Travis Ford was major league baseball’s hottest rookie when an injury ended his career. Now he’s flipping houses to keep busy and trying to forget his glory days. But he can’t even cross the street without someone recapping his greatest hits. Or making a joke about his… bat. And then there's Georgie, his best friend’s sister, who is not a kid anymore. When she proposes a wild scheme—that they pretend to date, to shock her family and help him land a new job—he agrees. What’s the harm? It’s not like it’s real. But the girl Travis used to tease is now a funny, full-of-life woman and there’s nothing fake about how much he wants her...

• I'm back to blogging
• I'm pretty proud of myself this year, reading-wise.

• The Locker Room by Meghan Quinn
• Savaged by Mia Sheridan
• Faking Ms. Right by Claire Kingsley

 

• On the Come Up by Angie Thomas
• The Controversial Princess by Jodi Ellen Malpas
• Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
• The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
• Full Tilt by Emma Scott
• The Butterfly Project by Emma Scott
• The Summer of Chasing Mermaids by Sarah Ockler