2021 Best of the Year & Choose Your Own Giveaway

January 18, 2022 04:00 PM Posted by juliannadouglas

Reaver Book Cover

It’s January, which means that it’s time once again for my annual Best of the Year giveaway. Ever since I started my review site, The Hope Chest Reviews, in 2008, I’ve been posting a Best of the Year list to highlight all the very best books I read the previous year. As always, I have an eclectic group of books on it from a wide variety of genres. Since I’m a romance writer and nearly life-long romance reader, my focus is mostly on romance, but I also have a nice selection of other books, including fantasy, YA, children’s, biography/memoirs, and non-fiction. I'm a pretty slow reader, so I rarely have time to read books when they're released, although sometimes I do. That being the case, I compile the list from the books I read during the previous year. This makes for a well-rounded list of brand new titles, mixed with older ones, and a little bit of everything in between.

I read nearly seventy books and novellas in 2021, and just over half of them made it to my keeper shelf, meaning that they earned 4.5 to 5 stars from me. These are the books that make my “Best of …” lists in the individual genres. I've also nominated books in a wide variety of other categories, including best characters, best quotes, and best covers. I hope you'll check out my full list and perhaps find your next great read.

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Categories: Giveaways

Tags: Best of the Year, Jim Butcher, Larissa Ione


2020 Best of the Year & Choose Your Own Giveaway

January 17, 2021 06:14 PM Posted by juliannadouglas

After being an avid reader all my life, in 2008, I decided to start reviewing books, as well. That’s when I joined GoodReads and founded my review website, The Hope Chest Reviews. Since becoming a published author, I haven’t stopped writing reviews of the books I read for pleasure, in part, because I’m now more aware than ever just how important reviews can be to an author in helping readers discover them. 

Ever since I started my review site, I’ve had an annual tradition of posting my Best of the Year list to highlight all the very best books I read the previous year. As in past years, I have an eclectic group of books on it from a wide variety of genres. Since I’m a romance writer and long-time romance reader, my focus is mostly on romance, but I also have a nice selection of other books, including fantasy, science fiction, YA, children’s, historical fiction, memoirs, and non-fiction. I'm a pretty slow reader, so I rarely have time to read books when they're released, although sometimes I do. That being the case, I compile the list from the books I read during the previous year. This makes for a well-rounded list of brand new books, mixed with older ones, and a little bit of everything in between. I read nearly seventy books and novellas in 2020, and a little over half of them made it to my keeper shelf, meaning that they earned 4.5 to 5 stars from me.

The Duke Book Cover

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Categories: Giveaways

Tags: Best of the Year, Gaelen Foley, Jim Butcher


Phoenix Comicon 2017 - Day 2

June 14, 2017 03:49 PM Posted by juliannadouglas

On day two of Phoenix Comicon, we didn’t have any scheduled events we wanted to attend until mid-afternoon, so we didn’t head over to the convention center until around 11 am. All I can say is that it was a good thing we didn’t have anything planned right away, because it took us about forty-five minutes just to get in the door. Because of the gunman situation the day before (you can read all about that in my Day 1 post), security measures for checking bags and wanding people had been hastily implemented, so the line was moving at a snail’s pace. Eventually we got inside, though, and we immediately went downstairs to see if Sherrilyn Kenyon was indeed in her booth like she said she would be. As luck would have it, she was, so I got my copy of Acheron, my favorite of her books, signed. After that we stopped by the Con Man booth again to get P. J. Haarsma to sign our DVD copy of the show. Then we started going up and down all the rows upon rows of cool stuff for sale, scoping out the things that caught our fancy, so we could come back later to purchase them. Turned out that wasn’t such a great idea, but I’ll get to the reasons for that later in my Day 3 post. Before heading back upstairs, I stopped by the big author’s booth again and was very excited to find Jim Butcher, another of my favorite authors, there. I fan-girled a little, got him to sign a few of my books, and got a photo with him, all of which made me a very happy camper. Authors are my rock stars, ya know.:-)

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Categories: Events, Slices of Life

Tags: Con Man, Dollhouse, Jim Butcher, P. J. Haarsma, Phoenix Comicon, Sherrilyn Kenyon