My Life According to the Books I Read in 2018

I've read a 100 books this year! That's a record!

So, plenty of material to fill out my-year-in-books-I-read end-of-year wrap up meme, created by Christine at The happily ever after. Or so I had thought, but I also tried to showcase my favourite books of the year while making sense and being more or less truthful, which turned out quite a challenging combination.

Nevertheless, here we go:

Describe yourself: Prisoner by Annika Martin

How do you feel: A Simple Heart by Gustave Flaubert 

Describe where you currently live: Creative Incentives by Kit Rocha

If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Point of Contact by Melanie Hansen

Your favourite form of transportation: Grounded by R. K. Lilley

Your best friend is: Promises by Marie Sexton

You and your friends are: The Dirty Ones by J. A. Huss

What's the weather like: The Hunger by Alma Katsu

What is life to you: Gilded Ashes by Rosamund Hodge

Favourite time of day: A Midwinter Night's Dream by Tiffany Reisz

Your fear:  A Royal Mistake by Elizabeth Davis 

What is the best advice you have to give: Archangel's Prophecy by Nalini Singh

Thought for the day: Victorious by Marie Force

How I would like to die: A Happy Death by Albert Camus

My soul's present condition: Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels 

Have a great New Year's Eve and I wish you all a happy 2019 with lots of good books!

Virtual Advent Tour 2018: Favourite Holiday Movies

I am again participating in Virtual Advent Tour, hosted by Sprite at Sprite Writes.

This year I decided to share some of my favourite Christmas movies, because who doesn’t like to bundle up in a warm blanket with some hot beverage of your choice and watch something sweet or funny or touching or all of the above combined?

The first Christmas movie that always comes to my mind and that I never find boring is the first Home Alone (1990) movie, mostly hilarious, but poignant at times.

Love Actually (2003) is all of what I mentioned above, funny and sweet, sometimes sad and thought provoking, and most of all simply showing the state of being human.

In While You Were Sleeping (1995), a lovely comedy about accidentally finding love and a family, the road to happiness is paved with good intentions and a few blunders.

Artistically well-made movies sometimes fail to emotionally resonate with me, but The Holiday (2006) is wonderfully heart-warming and fun story about finding love and friendship.

A tale of the Christmas truce of 1915, Joyeux Noel (2005) is a touching and poignant reminder that we are all only people no matter the artificial sides we choose to divide us.

What are your favourite holiday movies?

The Dirty Ones by J. A. Huss

NOTE: The book reviewed contains themes only appropriate for those above the age of majority.

A group of students at an elite college is pushed into an unusual – let’s call it adventure in their senior year.

Ten years later someone writes a book about it that tells the truth. Or does it? As they reconnect to uncover the book’s author, they fall into a spiral of memories, intrigues, and convoluted relationships, both past and present.

The plot that unravels completely blew me away, in particularly the twist near the end. 

I can best describe The Dirty Ones as a psychological erotic mystery thriller, the least emphasis being on erotic, although it sure contains some filthy smut. But whatever you expect from this book, I promise you are going to be wrong. A good kind of wrong, though.

Overall, this world and story of this book are opulent, sensual, emotive, and above all very human and will certainly stay with me for a long time.

The Dirty Ones was my first book from J. A. Huss, but I will surely return to her for quality writing, vivid imagery, and fantastic storytelling.