YALC 2019 | Book Haul

Hey friends, it’s been a while!

I’ve been absent for pretty much the entire month for various reasons which I’ll go into another time, in another post. The weekend just gone through was YALC weekend, one of my favourite times of the year, and I had an amazing time. I’ll be doing a follow-up post talking about the actual event itself like I did last year for YALC 2018, but for now, I wanted to start with something joyous – my YALC 2019 book haul!

This year I got a little bit wild with my book acquisitions despite promising my partner I wouldn’t be getting many books due to financial constraints. However, I was lucky enough to get a good amount of books via the wonderful book swap area as well as win a few in the giveaways run by the publishers. That coupled with the incredible deals (I mean, could you really turn down a 3 for £5 deal?!) meant that in total I acquired 21 books at YALC this year (and still came in under budget)!!! I got about 3-6 books a day which then got taken back to our hotel room so I didn’t realize just how many books I had until I had to pack them all up to transport home. Thankfully my lovely partner was able to help me carry them home and I spent a good few hours yesterday rearranging my bookshelves to make them all fit.

Here’s a look at the books I got from YALC 2019 ❤

Series Review: Constellations #1 and #2

TITLE: Defy the Stars (#1) / Defy the Worlds (#2)
AUTHOR: Claudia Gray
SERIES: Constellations
RELEASED: April 2017/ April 2018 by Little Brown Books for Young Readers
GENRE: YA Science Fiction
FORMAT: Paperback / eBook

KEY INFO: artificial intelligence, interstellar war, space journeys, complex ethical issues, romance, switching POV in third person
REPRESENTATION: female MC who is descended from Chilean relatives
CONTENT NOTICES: kidnapping, AI experiments on children, bombing of innocent civilians

#1: amazon / book depository / goodreads
#2: amazon / book depository / goodreads

2018 in Review | The Best Books of 2018

2018 has been an absolutely incredible year here at Red Rocket Panda. Although I technically set up my blog in April 2017, I didn’t start properly blogging until January 2018 and I cannot believe how much this blog has grown – I’ve made some fantastic friends, read a tonne of brilliant books, and enjoyed bringing you all content throughout the year.

One of the things that surprised me the most is that I managed to not only smash my original reading goal of reading 50 books this year, but I also smashed my second goal of 75. As of today, I have read 81 books which is 55 books more than last year. I wanted to share with you all some of my favourite books as well as new-to-me authors that I’ve read and discovered this year!

Fairyloot Unboxing | November

As of November, I hadn’t purchased another Fairyloot book box since my Whimsical Journeys one for my birthday in April, but when I saw that they were releasing a special science fiction themed one for sci-fi month I knew I needed to grab a box as sci-fi is my favourite genre! The theme for November was ‘Battles and Galaxies’, promising a box of 7 sci-fi goodies inspired by Illuminae, Red Rising and the Lunar Chronicles alongside a fantastic new YA sci-fi book. Let me tell you – it definitely did not disappoint!

Book Tag | Three Bookish Things

I didn’t have a book tag planned for today but after seeing this one on Norrie and Kristin‘s blogs, I really wanted to do it. Sometimes book tags can end up feeling all the same but I liked that these questions were a bit different – so here are my answers!