To Megan…A Dedication

I normally don't do posts like this...I have lots of book reviews to write and the rest of my ALAMW trip to tell...but I felt it necessary to share with you a person that was taken too soon. A person that was a good friend and that I will miss dearly. Her name was Megan. …

ALAMW 2018 – Part II (The Con)

So I know I've been crazy busy lately - if you aren't on Twitter then you don't know I was in a panicked flurry, trying to get all my books put away. They were mostly in stacks all over the house, but my mom was getting a refinance and I had to clean them up. …

ALAMW 2018 – Part I (The Trip)

So I have been spending the last several days scanning books into my LibraryThing app...if you aren't familiar with the app, it allows you to keep track of your books and trust me, I need something like that. I am STILL not done pulling all the books in from my car: I'm not bragging, but …

Merry Christmas Eve!!

So I couldn't go without blogging about the holiday since I have the Christmas spirit! Yes, I'm frantically wrapping presents 🎁 and I'm so excited for tomorrow...but I also think of all of you and how thankful I am to have you in my life. Most people feel thankful around Thanksgiving I think (hence the …

I Wrote Something….Halloween Edition

My friend Melanie was doing a Halloween feature and asked people to volunteer with their favorite "monster." I of course am a zombie fan...I was going to write a piece about the history and such, when I noticed other people were writing stories and doing cool themes.  So I decided to write a story. You …

SJM and Bardugo Events!!

Hello, guys!! So many of you know that I got double lucky and had Sarah J Maas AND Leigh Bardugo come to my state this past month. Besides dying of eternal happiness, I got tickets to go right away. As many of you know, there aren't many authors that come to Michigan...and we get TWO …

How I Write Book Reviews: guest post with Namitha @ Teen Memoir

Namitha talks about the techniques of blogging and included MY BLOG in her examples! I am honored to be featured by a fellow blogger friend! 😍❤️

Hey, everyone! I’m Namitha over @teenmemoir and today I’m going to be doing a guest post on Katie’s blog all about How I Write Book Reviews. Click here to check out Katie’s post on how she bookstagrams! She seriously posts the best pictures and I’m in love with her Instagram feed! Working with Katie was honestly so much fun and I hope to collab with her more in the future!

Tips/Things to Remember

Have an outline: Before you start writing, have an idea of what exactly you want to say in your review. Think and organize your thoughts. For example; Make a list of the things you liked/hated most in the book. Ask yourself questions like “What stood out to me the most?” or “What could have been better?” Then, try to group them under categories such as plot, characters, writing, pros, cons, etc. Next, outline your review. Do you…

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Then and Now: Rewriting the Book on School Reading Lists

I went to high school back when YA was nothing like it is today. So did she. Read on as she explains the difference in required reading lists and the attempts to change them: this has been my biggest trial…

K.L. Kranes

In high school, although I was loathe to admit it to friends, I loved English class. Outwardly I complained like everyone else about the ‘boring’ books the teachers put on the reading lists. Inwardly I loved them. (Most of them. Moby Dick, still not a fan.) But I never thought about the books as more than just explorations of literature. I didn’t think about them on a social scale. I didn’t think about how even the choice of books impacted others.

Stagnant Summer Reading Lists

Recently, I read an article about the current lack of diverse books on school reading lists. In it, the author laments how the required reading list for his child felt regressive, like a list from another era. It had no diversity.

This made me think back to the books assigned to students to read in my high school. I grew up in a…

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BookCon, ALA, and Blogoversary…Oh, My!

I've been putting off this post because there's just so much that goes into writing a recap...first I went to BookCon, and I was going to post my recap right when I got back but I had reviews to post...then ALA came up out of the blue with an invitation and I was planning for …

A Poem – Challenge Accepted!

So Drew at TheTattooedBookGeek and Gretchen at ChicNerdReads have been posting some poetry.  I am super shy (surprise, right?) and though I have a book review to write for The Shadow Queen, I have been asked to share some of my poetry with the world. I put it off because it makes me feel super exposed...but then I figured, …