Ani's Book Abyss: Booklikes-opoly | Roll #20! and Free Friday #2!

Thursday, June 22, 2017

Booklikes-opoly | Roll #20! and Free Friday #2!

Booklikes-opoly

hosted by Moonlight Reader and Obsidian Blue

@ Booklikes, the book blogging social platform

Ani's BL-opoly Summary Page

The Big Game Shake Up -- Starting 6/15/2017!!!

With the Big Game Shake Up (see link above), my Bank Balance is going to be getting a nice little boost! It helps that the books were great as well.

But moving along... My last roll was on 6/18, and while I'd been hoping to finish my book early enough that my next BLopoly roll wouldn't overlap with the next Free Friday too closely... that didn't happen. So now I'm going to start this next book... and then turn around and pick up another book for Free Friday in less than twenty-four hours (~~another post to come soon~~ see end of post).

Anyway, my Roll #19 landed me on Fantasyland 6 where Teddy Bear game piece can't seem to stay magnetized to the board, and has thus slid all the way down the board to the bottom, landing his butt on my desk top. No photos, he's embarrassed enough as it is, poor guy...

Reading-wise, I chose To the Rescue by Jean Barrett, which is set in Yorkshire, England, which satisfies the game square criteria, as the UK is part of Western Europe. The book is 292 pages, which, according to the new Shake Up doubled rewards rules, is worth $6.00, bringing my lovely Bank Balance to $91.00!

To the point, To the Rescue was engaging as a mystery, but the romance could have used a bit less insta-lust/insta-love. It got a bit frustrating to me that this silly couple were continually thinking about touching each other or getting laid, while there's a killer running amok in the big creepy monastery that has been isolated by heavy blizzards in the middle of the English countryside.

Priorities, guys!

At least the writing style was easy to read and the progression was good.

Onto Roll #20... which turned into #20.1 with a doubles rolled:

I ended up rolling a Double 5 = 10, which took me from Fantasyland 6 to Luxury Tax: "Read a book where someone gets married, with jewelry on the cover, or where any character is a millionaire/billionaire!"

Monkey's back! Hi! **waves** He looks really comfortable just hanging there!

I rolled again for my doubles and got, for Roll #20.1:

Moving 9 spaces from Luxury Tax, I ended up on another utilities space, Water Works: "Read a book with water on the cover, or where someone turns on the waterworks (i.e., cries) because of an emotional event."

Monkey is meditating, Teddy is hanging... Uh oh, where did Peek-a-Boo Penni go? Probably time to go back home. Maybe she'll be back next time for another visit!

After some shuffling of books and some hemming and hawing, and had finally decided on books for each square.

Looks like I'm going to continue on with Harlequin romances, which, to be honest, it's kind of easy to find books from Harlequin that fit some of these categories. You've got small towns, millionairs/billionaires or weddings, romantic suspense with characters who are police detectives or who known how to handle guns; there are historicals, overseas travels, mysteries... Both books above also take place on an island, if anyone is interested, and, Oh Looky! Water on the cover! And trees!

Also, I think The Substitute Sister could be considered Gothic as well.

Anyway, I will be reading The Mysterious Twin by Leona Karr for the Luxury Tax square. The criteria only requires "any character" to be a millionaire/billionaire. From what I surmised from the summary and the first 5% of the book I skimmed, our MC will be staying as a nanny at a southern mansion owned by a man named Hugo Vandenburg... if there ever was a name that sounded like money... It states that the mansion is Vandenburg's summer home, which tells me he's got more homes elsewhere, and I doubt they're quaint two-bedroom ranches in a school neighborhood, considering there's also mention of him owning a baseball team or something like that.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say this guy's a millionaire and probably also comes from old money. I might be wrong. If I am, I will honorably skip this square and NOT collect my reward.

The Mysterious Twin is 256 pages, which will be worth $6.00.

The Substitute Sister by Lisa Childs, as we can see, has water on the cover, satisfying the Water Works criteria. It is 240 pages, which will also be worth $6.00.

Free Friday Read #2:

I was going to create a separate post for my second Free Friday book, but as I am writing this post, my time shows that I have about twenty minutes until midnight, which will bring us into 6/23, Friday. So I decided to just go ahead and insert my chosen Free Friday read for this Friday into this post. I promise I won't start reading it until after the clock strikes midnight.

I have checked out this book from the library twice already, hoping to get a chance to read it. The first time, because of all the other book obligations I got caught up in, I renewed the book twice, didn't get around to reading it, then had to give it back. A couple weeks later, while I was at the library for other books, I decided to check it out again. This time, I'm hoping to be able to get to it, so decided to declare it my second Free Friday Read for BLopoly!

It Had to Be You by Jill Shalvis is 327 pages. And also, it'll help me along in another challenge I'm participating in.

Altogether, I will be hitting $109.00 when I finish all three of these books. And I'm going to try my best to read in order, for my own strange anal retentiveness... Though it is entirely possible I'll start reading It Had to Be You after midnight and end up rolling right through it.

Oh well!

Current Bank: $91.00