I haven’t done a book tag in a while and I like the creative questions that people come up with! Other people are much more creative than I am LOL. Anyways I saw Meghan @ Whimsically Meghan do this one, and I really loved the questions so I thought I would do it myself! It’s all about discussing why you pick up the books that you do. Here’s a preview of some of the books that I chose for the prompts:

Thank you to Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl for hosting/organizing Top Ten Tuesday!

I think I’ve done a similar topic before, but it was actually like two years ago?? Which is weird. But anyway, world-building/settings is one of my favorite aspects of books. I mean, I read to escape the real world! So I love going to wild and wonderful places in my reads. There are so many great settings, but here are just ten books with ones that I love. I won’t summarize the books, I’ll just talk a little bit about the different settings. But of course I’ll link the Goodreads pages so you can check them out yourself!

September was a bit of a hectic month for me. I didn’t realize it was over until I saw people on bookstagram posting their monthly wrap ups haha. During the last week of the month, I traveled across the country with my partner to move to our new home in the desert (Las Vegas). Since he did the driving, he got to choose the soundtrack. We listened to lots of podcasts, so I’ll talk about that in addition to the books that I read. I can’t read in the car, so most of these were read before we set out on our trip.

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.

Hello and happy September! Today for The Happy Place 5, we’re talking about book recommendations that we’ve gotten from our friends. One of my favorite things about the book community, be it bookstagram, book blogging, or Twitter, has been meeting people! Naturally, since these people all love books and have read different things than me, I’ve ended up VASTLY INCREASING MY TBR.

I’m just sad that I don’t have all the time in the world to read everything haha. So anyway, today I want to highlight a few books I’ve read because of some of my dear friends! I picked only five books, but there are actually more than five friends. This is because a couple of these books I can’t remember who recommended it first, but I know all of them were shouting at me to read it hahaha.

The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the mecha aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall. It doesn't matter that the girls often die from the mental strain.
When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it's to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister's death. But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected—she kills him through the psychic link between pilots and emerges from the cockpit unscathed. She is labeled an Iron Widow, a much-feared and much-silenced kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead.​
To tame her unnerving yet invaluable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest and most controversial male pilot in Huaxia​. But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. She will miss no opportunity to leverage their combined might and infamy to survive attempt after attempt on her life, until she can figure out exactly why the pilot system works in its misogynist way—and stop more girls from being sacrificed.

Welp. I’ve absolute found both a new favorite book, and a new favorite author. This book was incredible, and I cannot wait for the sequel. It had everything I could ever want. Found family, queer characters, GIANT ROBOTS?? Ancient China inspired setting, vengeance, unapologetic rage, and so much more. Wow. I’m blown away. I couldn’t stop reading it, but I also never wanted it it end!! Maybe I’ll just have to reread it many many times until the sequel comes out…haha.