Weekly Wrap Up | December 13, 2021

Happy Monday and welcome to my Weekly Wrap Up post! I link these posts up with The Sunday Post, hosted by Kimberly over at Caffeinated Reviewer; The Sunday Salon, hosted by Deb at ReaderBuzz; It’s Monday! What Are you Reading? hosted by Kathryn of Book Date and a children’s/middle grade version hosted by Jen Vincent, Teach Mentor Texts, and Kellee of Unleashing Readers; Mailbox Monday, hosted by Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit and Martha of Reviews by Martha’s Bookshelf; and Stacking the Shelves, hosted by Marlene at Reading Reality. For my Weekly Wrap Ups, I’ll recap what I posted, read, and watched this week, plus I’ll let you know about any current giveaways I have up. I’ll also tell you about recent updates on my TBR and new books I received and/or bought. Okay, time to see what happened this week!

Hi! I’m back again and I’m excited to share some updates!

On the Blog

Here are the links for everything that was published last week on Kait Plus Books:

• Blog Tour: The Winter Charlatan by Victoria McCombs (Interview + Aesthetic Board!)
• Blog Tour: Wider Than The Sky by Katherine Rothschild (Guest Post + Giveaway!)
• Blog Tour: Destroyer of Light by Jennifer Marie Brissett (Spotlight + Giveaway!)

Off the Blog

• I haven’t felt that great, so I haven’t posted much. Oops!
• I got my booster!
• The holiday season is here (yay!) and I’ve been busy buying and sending cards and presents to and for friends and family!
• I meant to take time to learn how tiktok (well, booktok really) works, but I haven’t yet. Maybe this week?
• I’m really boring, so nothing else really happened! I worked, I read, I watched tv with my family and spent time with my puppers. Other than my health, I’ve had a really great week!

Currently Reading: I’m reading This Golden State by Marit Weisenberg, and oh my stars I am LOVING IT! It’s like if Naomi Kritzer and Sarah Dessen wrote a book together. It’s great!

Currently Listening To: I’m currently listening to Among the Beasts & Briars by Ashley Poston! It’s a fantasy and I’m really enjoying it so far!

Just Finished Reading: I finished Shattered Midnight by Dhonielle Clayton the other day and WOW is that good! Review coming first week of January!

Just Finished Listening To: My last book was You’ll Be the Death of Me by Karen M. McManus!

Books: Either One For All by Lillie Lainoff, Forward March by Skye Quinlan, or All I Want for Christmas by Wendy Loggia. I’m not sure which order I’ll end up reading them in, but these will be my next three books!

Audiobooks: I have no idea what I’ll listen to next!

I have some #bookmail to share and I added a few books to my #tbr this week, but no library haul. Here’s some of what I stacked my shelves with lately:

#bookmail

She Gets the Girl by Rachael Lippincott, Alyson Derrick
Published on April 5, 2022 by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Genres: YA, Contemporary, Queer, Romance
Pages: 384
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Alex Blackwood is a little bit headstrong, with a dash of chaos and a whole lot of flirt. She knows how to get the girl. Keeping her on the other hand…not so much. Molly Parker has everything in her life totally in control, except for her complete awkwardness with just about anyone besides her mom. She knows she’s in love with the impossibly cool Cora Myers. She just…hasn’t actually talked to her yet.
Alex and Molly don’t belong on the same planet, let alone the same college campus. But when Alex, fresh off a bad (but hopefully not permanent) breakup, discovers Molly’s hidden crush as their paths cross the night before classes start, they realize they might have a common interest after all. Because maybe if Alex volunteers to help Molly learn how to get her dream girl to fall for her, she can prove to her ex that she’s not a selfish flirt. That she’s ready for an actual commitment. And while Alex is the last person Molly would ever think she could trust, she can’t deny Alex knows what she’s doing with girls, unlike her.
As the two embark on their five-step plans to get their girls to fall for them, though, they both begin to wonder if maybe they’re the ones falling…for each other.

Scorpica by Greer Macallister
Series: The Five Queendoms #1
Published on February 22, 2022 by Saga Press
Genres: Fantasy, Adult
Pages: 448
Source: A Giveaway
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A centuries-long peace is shattered in a matriarchal society when a decade passes without a single girl being born in this sweeping epic fantasy that’s perfect for fans of Robin Hobb and Circe.
Five hundred years of peace between queendoms shatters when girls inexplicably stop being born. As the Drought of Girls stretches across a generation, it sets off a cascade of political and personal consequences across all five queendoms of the known world, throwing long-standing alliances into disarray as each queendom begins to turn on each other—and new threats to each nation rise from within.
Uniting the stories of women from across the queendoms, this propulsive, gripping epic fantasy follows a warrior queen who must rise from childbirth bed to fight for her life and her throne, a healer in hiding desperate to protect the secret of her daughter’s explosive power, a queen whose desperation to retain control leads her to risk using the darkest magic, a near-immortal sorcerer demigod powerful enough to remake the world for her own ends—and the generation of lastborn girls, the ones born just before the Drought, who must bear the hopes and traditions of their nations if the queendoms are to survive.

The Kindred by Alechia Dow
Published on January 4, 2022 by Inkyard Press
Genres: Contemporary, Queer, Aspec, YA, Science Fiction
Pages: 400
Add to Goodreads
Author Links: Website, Twitter, Goodreads, Instagram

To save a galactic kingdom from revolution, Kindred mind-pairings were created to ensure each and every person would be seen and heard, no matter how rich or poor…
Joy Abara knows her place. A commoner from the lowly planet Hali, she lives a simple life—apart from the notoriety that being Kindred to the nobility’s most infamous playboy brings.
Duke Felix Hamdi has a plan. He will exasperate his noble family to the point that they agree to let him choose his own future and finally meet his Kindred face-to-face.
Then the royal family is assassinated, putting Felix next in line for the throne…and accused of the murders. Someone will stop at nothing until he’s dead, which means they’ll target Joy, too. Meeting in person for the first time as they steal a spacecraft and flee amid chaos might not be ideal…and neither is crash-landing on the strange backward planet called Earth. But hiding might just be the perfect way to discover the true strength of the Kindred bond and expose a scandal—and a love—that may decide the future of a galaxy.

new to the queue

This Vicious Grace by Emily Thiede
Series: The Last Finestra #1
Published on June 28, 2022 by Wednesday Books
Genres: Fantasy, YA
Pages: 448
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Three weddings. Three funerals. Alessa’s gift from the gods is supposed to magnify a partner’s magic, not kill every suitor she touches.
Now, with only weeks left until a hungry swarm of demons devours everything on her island home, Alessa is running out of time to find a partner and stop the invasion. When a powerful priest convinces the faithful that killing Alessa is the island’s only hope, her own soldiers try to assassinate her.
Desperate to survive, Alessa hires Dante, a cynical outcast marked as a killer, to become her personal bodyguard. But as rebellion explodes outside the gates, Dante’s dark secrets may be the biggest betrayal. He holds the key to her survival and her heart, but is he the one person who can help her master her gift or destroy her once and for all?

New Year's Kiss by Lee Matthews
Published on December 1, 2020 by Underlined
Genres: YA, Contemporary, Romance
Pages: 240
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Tess and her opinionated older sister Lauren are spending the week after Christmas at the snowy Evergreen Lodge in Vermont and they aren’t happy about it. Their stern grandmother, who owns the holiday resort, is not known for her warmth and good humor. But when shy, straight-laced Tess meets Christopher in the lobby, things are suddenly looking up. And when she decides to get out of her comfort zone and create a bucket list of things to accomplish before the New Year-like singing in public and skiing a black-diamond slope-Christopher is happy to help, even as he keeps a secret that could turn everything upside down. When the ball drops, will Tess and Christopher share a magical kiss-or will Tess start the new year off alone?

Lucky by Marissa Stapley
Published on December 7, 2021 by Simon & Schuster
Genres: Contemporary, Adult, Thriller
Pages: 256
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What if you had the winning ticket that would change your life forever, but you couldn’t cash it in?
Lucky Armstrong is a tough, talented grifter who has just pulled off a million-dollar heist with her boyfriend, Cary. She’s ready to start a brand-new life, with a new identity—when things go sideways. Lucky finds herself alone for the first time, navigating the world without the help of either her father or her boyfriend, the two figures from whom she’s learned the art of the scam.
When she discovers that a lottery ticket she bought on a whim is worth millions, her elation is tempered by one big problem: cashing in the winning ticket means she’ll be arrested for her crimes. She’ll go to prison, with no chance to redeem her fortune.
As Lucky tries to avoid capture and make a future for herself, she must confront her past by reconciling with her father; finding her mother, who abandoned her when she was just a baby; and coming to terms with the man she thought she loved—whose dark past is catching up with her, too.
This is a novel about truth, personal redemption, and the complexity of being good. It introduces a singularly gifted, multilayered character who must learn what it means to be independent and honest...before her luck runs out.

No new #bookstagrams last week, sorry! Hopefully this week I’ll remember to post something!

Big Sky is finally back after being on hiatus for a few weeks (yay!) and my family and I started watching Sons of Anarchy, which is really good! Oh! And I’m rewatching Once Upon a Time. What are you watching?

The giveaways widget is always the most current and accurate way to tell what giveaways you can find on my blog, but since you’re here…

• Print Copy of DESTROYER OF LIGHT by Jennifer Marie Brissett — Ends Dec 27th, 2021
• Print Copy of WIDER THAN THE SKY by Katherine Rothschild — Ends Jan 3rd, 2022
• Print Copy of YOU’LL BE THE DEATH OF ME by Karen McManus — Ends Dec 20th, 2021
• Print Copy of THE FOWL TWINS GET WHAT THEY DESERVE by Eoin Colfer — Ends Dec 26th, 2021

So that’s everything! What have you been up to this week? Anything important happen? Did you have any posts that didn’t get a lot of attention? I’d love to check them out! Leave your links in the comments below and don’t forget to have a splendiferous week!