Aurora Burning by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff | book review

✧ This review is spoiler-free! ✧

“Slowly, I take my hands off of the controls. I let my mind rest. My thoughts quiet.
There are no further calculations required of me.
It is strangely peaceful.
I lean into my mic to speak to my squadmates.
‘Finian, Scarlett. It has been a privilege to serve in squad 312 alongside you.'”

Aurora Burning, Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff

Title: Aurora Burning
Series: The Aurora Cycle, #2
Authors: Amie Kaufman, Jay Kristoff
Published: May 5, 2020
Publisher: Knopf Books For Young Readers
Category: young adult
Genre: sci-fi
Pages: 495
My Rating: ★★★★☆ (4.5)
Goodreads page

The Aurora Cycle Dream Cast

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been obsessed with anything that Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff writes together since their Illuminae Files series. They recently released the sequel to their newest series (The Aurora Cycle), and I haven’t stopped thinking about the book ever since. (I mean, look at the squad! If they don’t look badass, I don’t know who does.)

I have yet to read Aurora Burning, but I thought it would be fun to make a dream cast for the characters to get into the spirit of things. I will be casting a new character, so if you haven’t read Aurora Rising (the first book), please do that first before reading this post because there are spoilers.

Just to reiterate: there are spoilers from Aurora Rising in this post. Proceed with caution.

Most Anticipated Releases of 2020

I know we’re already a month and a half into 2020, but I still wanted to create a post fangirling over the books I’m excited about that’s coming out this year. I’m not going to include any books that have already been released this year in between January 1 and February 16 (the day I’m writing this post) because technically they’re not anticipated releases anymore.

Because some of these books I’m going to be talking about is not the first book in its series, I hid all the blurbs in a drop down that you can click to reveal just so I don’t accidentally spoil anyone who doesn’t want to be spoiled.

Anywho, let’s get excited about some new books!

Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff | Book Review

Title: Aurora Rising
Series: The Aurora Cycle, #1
Authors: Amie Kaufman, Jay Kristoff
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
Genre: young adult, sci-fi, heist
Pages: 420
My Rating: ★★★★★
Goodreads page

This review is spoiler-free.

Top Five Books Set in University

[Before I get going with this, I just wanted to announce that the winner of my very small giveaway has been chosen and announced on my giveaway post.]

Hello! It’s been a hot minute since I’ve been here. I’ve been super busy struggling with chemistry and microeconomics that I haven’t had the time to sit down and write a post. Or read. Or do anything except sleep, eat, and study.

Despite the fact that I have three midterms coming up pretty soon, I’m going to take a break from studying and talk about books set in uni. I thought it would be fitting since that’s all I feel like I’m doing right now.

Let’s Talk: Favorite Book/Series

I’ll be honest: I don’t have a lot of non-internet friends that like to read. That means I don’t have a lot of people to talk to face-to-face about books, which is the whole reason why I started this blog. That being said, I’ve been wondering what everyone’s favorite book/series is and why, because I’ve been thinking about expanding my horizons and reading something I wouldn’t normally pick up (or maybe something I would read but never knew existed). Also, I’m going down the rabbit hole and trying to expand my TBR list to combat my ongoing TBR cleanse.

So now I ask: What is your favorite book or series and why?

I’ll go first.

Do I Have That Book Challenge

I was just scrolling through my YouTube feed to find a video so I had an excuse to procrastinate, when I came across this book challenge. It’s been a hot minute since I’ve watched a BookTube video, so I was intrigued. After watching Keeping Tabs (the creator) take a stab at her own challenge, I wanted to give it a shot!

Click here for the original creator of this challenge!

Granted, I recently got rid of 60+ books from my shelf so this might be a bit more difficult.

Oh well.

The general rules I got from her instructions were this:

1. Time yourself trying to find each prompt on your shelf
2. Try and beat the time of the person who challenged you.
3. Don’t forget to tag your challenger and the original creator.
4. Have fun!

I decided that rather than time myself and cause my stress levels to go off the charts, I would just try and find each prompt on my shelf. Each prompt that I find a book for will count as a point. The max amount of points is 20 (since there’s 20 prompts). Plus, me just telling the time it took me to find all these books would not be that exciting.

It occurs to me now that this challenge is probably more enjoyable in video form, but alas, I am not a BookTuber. I apologize in advanced.

September 2018 Wrap-Up

I’ll admit it. This past couple months I’ve been slacking on posts. It’s to the point that I’ve forgotten to do a wrap-up for… I don’t even know how many months I skipped. In fact, I don’t remember the last time I did a wrap up. It’s been that long.

This month, I decided I really needed to step up my post game and made a goal to post at least once a week. Because of that, I actually have enough posts to do a wrap up!

My Book in GIFs Tag

I was tagged by the lovely Audrey @ Audrey Writes Abroad. Thank you so much for tagging me. It’s been a fat minute since I’ve done a tag, so I know I’m going to have a lot of fun with this.

These are the rules:

Show your WIP in 10-20 GIFs (or more, eff them rules), or about a book recently read that you loved! It’s up to you! Just make sure to tag me so I can read your awesome GIF story!

Since I’m not writer, I’m going to choose a book I recently read.

Obsidio by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff | Book Review

“Live a life worth dying for.”

Title: Obsidio
Series: The Illuminae Files, #3
Author: Amie Kaufman, Jay Kristoff
Published: March 13, 2018
Genre: young adult, sci-fi, adventure
Pages: 615 (it’s thicc)
My Rating: ★★★★★

Goodreads page

Attention: This review contains spoilers from the past books in the series but no spoilers from this book itself!