The Happy Place 5 is a monthly series where a few friends and I post 5 of our favorites books for a certain topic or theme. The name is from a Discord group that I am a part of. We created the space to have a positive environment for a handful of close friends. All of us are bookworms, and many of us are bookstagrammers and bloggers. So we decided to start a blog post series together! I’ll link my friends blogs and posts for this month’s topic at the end of this post.

Aaaaand just like that, it’s March. Which means! Yes, it’s time again for The Happy Place 5! This month we are talking about “Places you’d take a portal to in an instant.” To be honest, this one was kind of hard for me. Mostly because a lot of the settings in the books I read seem really cool but also really dangerous or scary lol. I tried to pick books where I’d be okay living there if there’s no portal back. Buuuuut really, I’m making this post assuming that I can portal back home if I want to hahaha.

For a hundred years, the once-prosperous kingdom of Perin Faye has suffered under the rule of the greedy and power-hungry Thungrave kings.
Maralyth Graylaern, a cacao farmer’s daughter, has no idea her hidden magical power is proof of a secret bloodline and claim to the throne.
Alac Thungrave, the king’s second son, has always been uncomfortable with his position as the spare heir—and the dark, stolen magic that comes with ruling.
When Maralyth becomes embroiled in a plot to murder the royal family and seize the throne, a cat-and-mouse chase ensues in an adventure of dark magic, court intrigue, and forbidden love.

Thank you so much to Tor Teen for sending a finished copy to me!

I was super excited when Tor Teen reached out about this book. I readily admit that I do love a good secret/forbidden magic plot line. The romance also hinted at an enemies to lovers deal, and we all know that I can’t resist that. This was a fun read, and I did enjoy it, but ultimately I didn’t feel very strongly about it.

Although I missed the first day of Lunar New Year, I know that at least in Chinese tradition the new year celebration lasts for 15 days. So really, I’m only a little bit late to the festivities, as today (Feb. 26) is the last day (Lantern Festival). I originally wanted to make a post about books that take place during LNY, but ummmm I didn’t know of any haha. SO you get to have a good smattering of my favorite Asian authors (and a few authors I need to read)! Lunar New Year is celebrated in many different Asian cultures, so I wanted to include authors of many different Asian heritages.

I think I may have mentioned before that my whole family are readers. My parents are basically the reason that I became a reader! When my brother and I were very young, they started by reading all sorts of books to us. Eventually once I started to learn to read, I stopped wanting my parents to read to me because they were too slow hahaha.

My mom reads a lot of similar things to me (science fiction and fantasy), and more!! She likes pretty much all genres haha. But mostly I would say historical fiction, mystery, action/thrillers, and nonfiction in addition to SFF. Dad on the other hand mostly reads action/thrillers, mystery, and nonfiction. Occasionally he reads some science fiction, but it’s not that often. So I guess my mom is a mix of my dad and me haha. My brother likes mostly science fiction and fantasy, like me, but reads a lot more manga and graphic novels than I do.

I obviously discuss books frequently with my family, so I thought it would fun to share with all of you what my family’s favorite books/series/authors are! My parents both wanted to put like 100 books on this list, but I had to limit them hahaha.

I just couldn’t get enough of retellings hahaha. So here is my list of retelling recommendations, part two! A lot of you seemed excited by the last post, so I hope you will enjoy this one as well. And if you have any other suggestions, please do let me know so I can further expand my TBR lol.