Category Archives: Challenges

A new reading challenge: Wolf Marked

Oh you guys, I found a new reading challenge. You know how much I love to build little reading challenges for myself!

I generally keep See Sadie Read and Sadie’s Spotlight fairly separate, so that promoting books won’t compromise the integrity of my reviews (or even give the impression of it). But lets be honest, I find a lot of new books over at Sadie’s Spotlight and end up reading and reviewing them here. I mean, give an obsessive reader access to tons of new book posts and she’s bound to find a few (hundred) that interest her.

Well, that’s what is happening now. The idea actually started as a joke. I noticed that there had been three different books with the same title on Sadie’s Spotlight within a short time of one another.

So, I took to Twitter to share the fun. And to my delight I wasn’t the only one who was amused.

They absolutely need to duke it out

— Rhode Red masked indoors at public places (@rhoderedpvd) August 9, 2021

Well, when @rhoderedpvd agreed, seeing them “duke it out” seemed like an excellent idea after all…and feasible.

I already had a copy of Veronica Douglas‘ Wolf Marked, as Xpresso Book Tours included a copy with the tour material, and I was able to buy a copy of Alexis Calder’s Wolf Marked. That only left Harper Brooks’ Wolf Marked as a hold out. It isn’t actually released until Sept. 9. But, Lady Amber’s PR came through with a review ARC. So, this reading challenge is on.

Here’s how they break down. All are in the Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Romance arena. Calder’s calls itself New Adult, while the other two don’t. But Books’ heroine appears to be in her twenties. So, it very easily could be, and Douglas doesn’t specify in the blurb. But I’m anticipating a lot of early twenties female leads and growly wolf love interests. (We’ll have to wait and see if I’m right or not.)

To be a little more detailed, here are the actual blurbs:

Description:

The cycle of the moon can bring love… or death.

Time is running out for Astrid. If the wolf-shifter doesn’t find her soul’s mate before her twenty-fifth Blue Moon rises, the consequences will be fatal. With only three weeks left, things aren’t looking good… until Erec, a smooth-talking rogue wolf, lands at her feet.

The strange spark between them leaves Astrid wondering if this mysterious man could be the one meant to break her curse. But can she trust him?

From the moment Jerrick killed the only man Erec ever looked up to, Erec vowed to stop the crazed wolf. Partnering with the west-side pack seemed the logical move to accomplish that goal. But he never expected to fall for the alpha’s beautiful daughter, and now this lone wolf is wondering if she could be the one to save him from the curse.

With imminent dangers looming and the swirling patterns on their skin marking them for death, can Astrid and Erec save the west-side pack from the encroaching pack before their last Blue Moon rises in the sky?

Description:

They tried to break me. Now I’m going to break them.

Cursed to never shift, the only thing I was looking forward to about the First Moon Ceremony was that the magic sealing me into Wolf Creek would break, and I could finally leave.

Instead, the ceremony reveals my true mate: Tyler Grant, future leader of my pack and the man responsible for my most recent concussion and black eye. He’s as brutal as he is handsome and fate is a bitch to put us together.

There’s a rumor that a mating bond could break my curse and just as I’m getting my hopes up, Tyler destroys them all.

Instead of bonding with my mate, I’m beaten and left for dead.

A hot-as-sin feral shifter finds me and helps me back on my feet. But his help comes with a cost and I’m not sure I’m willing to pay the price.

With my former pack hunting me down, even an enemy might be a better ally than trying to stay alive on my own.

Description:

Werewolves are hunting me down.

I was just an ordinary girl working tables in small-town Wisconsin. I had no idea magic was real. That was, until I backed my car over a werewolf a couple times.

In my defense, the wolf was trying to murder me, and I was all out of mace.

Now I’ve got a pack of rogue wolves on my heels, and the only one who can protect me is Jaxson Laurent—the Chicago Alpha. He suspects I’m special and can’t take his eyes off me, but the problem is—he’s the sworn enemy of my family and every time we get close it feels like something is going to rip out of my soul.

With danger around every corner and wolves howling in the night, I need to master my magic and stand my ground, or I’ll be dead before the next moon rises.

Stay tuned to see how it all plays out!

Awakening: A New Mini Challenge

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I haven’t done one in a while, but there have been several times over the years that I’ve noticed I have a bucket of books with the same title. Off the top of my head, I remember finding that I had five called Bound By Blood, seven that included the phrase Blood Moon, and four called Blood Lust…Geez, I don’t think I realized they’re all blood-related. And because I enjoy finding unexpected patterns and reveling in them, I set these titles aside as reading challenges and read them all together.

I even did the same thing for a character model once because I kept passing covers on my Goodreads shelves with the same face on them. I called it the Annoying Close-Up Guy Challenge.

‘Annoying close-up guy’ reading challenge wrap-up

I seem to remember not liking many of the books, but the challenge itself, all with essentially the same cover, was extra amusing.

Well, today, I’m setting a new reading challenge for myself. I recently read and reviewed Jennifer Leigh Pezzano’s Awakening. And while I was hunting it up on Goodreads to cross-post my review, I noticed that I have a lot of books with the word Awakening in the title.

Book Review: Awakening, by Jennifer Leigh Pezzano

Between titles and series names, I have 25 books that include the word Awakening. And that’s just Awakening, not awakened, or awakens, or just awake. Now, some of these books I’ve read, one of them is on the Did Not Finish shelf, and I’m not prepared to commit to 25 books. (Here they are for reference, though.)

So, I’m going to whittle this challenge down to just titles that read Awakening and then stretch it a little to include the two called The Awakening (since they would be shelved as Awakening, The anyway.) That reduces us to 8 books, one of which is an audiobook and one I’ve already recently read and reviewed, but I’m counting since it’s what started this challenge in the first place. I actually feel really lucky that these are all either stand-alone or first books in series. How blessed is that?

So, that gives us (in alphabetical order by author’s last name):

The Awakening, by Kate Chopin
Awakening (Talentborn, #1) by C.S. Churton
Awakening (Triorion, #1), by L.J. Hachmeister
The Awakening (Guardian of Spirits, #1), by Kaylee Johnston
Awakening (Covenant College, #1), by Amanda M. Lee
Awakening (The Luriel Cycle, #1), by Melanie Nilles
Awakening (The Shard Cycle, #)1, by Ono Northey
Awakening, by Jennifer Leigh Pezzano

I’ll come back and link the reviews as I finish the books. I am not, however, going to force myself to read them back-to-back—which is what I usually do—because I already promised myself to spend March reading books from my physical bookshelves.

I read the first in a series on my Kindle last night and loved it. So, I'll read the next two I have on kindle too. But after that, I think I'm going to try and dedicate March to reading physical books I already own. #readinggoals #chippingawayatthetbr #tbrchallenge

— See_Sadie_Read (@See_Sadie_Read) February 28, 2021

So, I’ll start with the audiobook (Amanda M. Lee’s Awakening) since I need to fold laundry anyway. Then, I’ll start hitting the rest of these between physical books. That way, I’m not breaking my March promise to myself completely…just bending it a bit when a new, shiny idea came along.

Am I the only one who does this? I know accidentally having multiple books with the same title can only really happen once your library gets past a certain point. I have literally thousands of ebooks, so it’s less surprising to see this sort of thing happen than it would be if I owned 200 books. But still, anyone else set little mini-challenges for themselves?

Edit: Here is a link to the wrap-up post. I ended up reading 12—instead of 8—books called Awakening during the actual challenge. Then, another three after the fact because it made me laugh to do so.

New art and a new reading challenge

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I got a new stretched canvas for my office. The office is the only place in the house that I let myself put anything I choose on the walls, theme, coordination or quality be damned. If I like it, I’ll have it.

Not to suggest that this Icanvas print isn’t quality of a sort, but the rest of the house tends to run toward large, heavily framed prints. It’s not a great photo, but Mizuki by Audrey Kawasaki is what’s above the bed for example:

Though I’ve shrunk it so it doesn’t compete for attention with the canvas that is the point of this post, that frame is almost 30×30 inches (please never let it fall on us in our sleep). So, an unframed whimsical print of science fiction books is a departure from the norm. But I so loved it when I saw it that I insta-bought it, even though I didn’t really have a place for it. (In fact, I wish I’d bought the bigger size.)

After I moved Kawasaki’s Where I Rest out of place (this* one –>), I sat staring at the books and telling my husband how happy I was to see Binti and The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet included among such giants as Asimov and Le Guin. But also how I was distressed that Martha Well’s All Systems Red (Murderbot Diaries) isn’t included. It 100% deserves to be. In fact, once noticed, its absence sapped a little of my love of the print away. I mean, look, I even tweeted at Icanvas about it.

Hey @icanvas_art, if you’re going to include #Binti and #thelongwaytoasmallangryplanet in this stack of classic sci-fi (which I totally agree with) you gotta get #Murderbot in there too! I’d even buy a second copy. 🙂 pic.twitter.com/aaEuuR7Pzu — @rbnsnzsr

This led me to a second thought. If I was so happy to see Binti and The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet included, and was desperate to get Murderbot added, why no excitement for The Martian? It was published in 2014, so it’s basically just as contemporary as the others. Part of it might have been that it’s written by a man and I’m always rooting to see women included. But Dune, by Frank Herbert, is one of my all-time favorite books (even if it by a man). So I decided it wasn’t the gender issue. It was simply that I haven’t read it!

All of the books included here are well known, familiar to me, science fiction. Suddenly I had to stop and think how many of them I love by virtue of being sci-fi cannon and how many I had actually read. Before that very moment I’d have told you of course I’ve read all the classics. But once I was really thinking about it, I realized that couldn’t be true. I hadn’t read The Martian, for example. So, off to Goodreads and my reading list I went. And shock followed.

I started Left to right:

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: a favorite, read
The Martian Chronicles: ~~Ray freaking-Bradbury, NOT READ~~ read
Brave New World: read in high school
Binti: started this whole process, obviously read
The Martian: NOT READ
The Left Hand of Darkness: read it last year when Le Guin died
The Diamond Age: What!? owned but NOT READ
Solaris: also NOT READ
The Foundation Trilogy: thank god, read the whole series
The Time Machine: ~~Wells. freaking Wells, and NOT READ~~ read
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep: NOT READ
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet: read
Hyperion: read
Neuromancer: read and loved
Dawn: by Octavia Butler! NOT READ
Dune: a favorite, read
Starship Troopers: read
Ender’s Game: read
Childhood Ends: NOT READ

Eight—almost half of the books—I discovered that I’ve not read. This is a travesty that cannot be allowed to stand. I mean, for one, If I’m going to hang the picture on my wall (even if just my office wall), I should be able to point to it and know I’ve read them all, but also I’m a sci-fi/fantasy junkie and THEY’RE SCI-FI CLASSICS. How did I let this happen? Obviously, I’m going to fix it. It’s July. I have five months until the end of the year, and by that point I will have read these eight books that I have somehow grievously neglected in my life.

I don’t think I’ll bother coming back and linking reviews here. But I am setting it as an official reading challenge for myself. I do so love to have a plan. Wish me happy reading.

*
Yes, I'm totally vain enough that I spread out those two in the back so they could be seen, and there is another on the wall above. They'd been stacked together to be re-hung. I have a new one at the framer's (and a small one waiting to be framed by me) and I'm going to make a collage wall of them. I'll add a picture when it's done. But, though you can probably guess Kawasaki is my husband and my favorite artist, she's not the point of this post. But once I'd posted one, I just ran with it.