For our second trip in 2024, we spent five days in Bali! It’s a place we’ve been meaning to visit for a while and had originally booked a trip to in 2020, but the pandemic forced the airline to cancel our flight. It feels so fulfilling to finally tick this off our list after four years.
Wow, this is easily a 5-star read for me and is now probably my most favorite Junji Ito by far! Fragments of Horror consists 10 short stories with different themes.
This isn’t my first Junji Ito so you can say that I’m somewhat used to his out-of-this-world ideas when it comes to his works, but I still get that “what the fu–” reactions everytime I come across something so bizzare like that of Tomio: Red Turtleneck and Blackbird–my favorites–in this collection. It was freaking insane and creepy that I love it; it kind of reminds me of love potion horror stories. Continue reading
This book caught my attention the very first time I learned about it—one of the reasons is that my lolo is from Isabela which makes him Ilocano and Lam-ang is based on the Ilocano epic Biag ni Lam-ang.
Also, I feel like this is the perfect book to kickstart my reading year because I love fantasy and mythology and I’ve been meaning to get back into this genre after hyperfixating on thriller and horror in the past two years! And, not only that, but I also adore the “Chosen One” trope in fantasy, so you can definitely say that this book ticked off all of the things I am looking for in a fantasy book. Continue reading
For our second anniversary, we opted for a 7-day trip to Coron, Palawan. It’s one of the best diving destinations in the Philippines and we are so excited to experience Coron as freedivers! After taking our freediving lessons back in April 2022, we just couldn’t get enough of the ocean. It’s one thing to be in its presence and another to be one with the ocean. It’s so refreshing, calming, and peaceful to be able to do freediving and explore the underwater world.
This had been sitting on my TBR since 2022-ish and I finally decided to read it for Winterween 2025! For those of you who aren’t familiar with Winterween, it’s a readathon hosted by Gabbyreads on Youtube, so feel free to check her out for more details because another readathon similar to this will happen in the summertime as well!
Anyway, I’ve read another book from this author a couple of years back called Mukbang Princess and actually really liked it. It was a short but immensely weird book but the ending was so unexpected that I had to rate it 4 stars. So I’m really looking forward to read more of this author’s works.
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Hello, everyone. This is such an overdue post and I want to catch this blog up in terms of documenting my travels, so here’s the details of our 5-day Palawan trip back in June 2023. I got writer’s block due to working as a writer during the past year and a half, that’s why I wasn’t able to share this experience here, but I’m back so here goes! I will also be posting my 2024 travels in the next few weeks.
Anyway, my husband and I make it a point to travel to one local destination and one interantional destination per year and on our anniversary in February 2023, we went to Thailand, so in June we decided to go to Palawan.
Today I’m sharing some of my most anticipated releases in 2025!
I know there are lot more to come by the middle of the year, but as of the moment, here are the books that I am most excited about. I’m not that big of a new releases reader because I really love reading backlist books of authors, but I do read a couple of new releases throughout the year. So without further ado, here are my most anticipated books this year: Continue reading
“𝑰 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒌 𝑰’𝒗𝒆 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒌𝒆𝒅 𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒅 𝒆𝒏𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉 𝒂𝒕 𝒍𝒊𝒇𝒆—𝑰 𝒘𝒂𝒔𝒏’𝒕 𝒈𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒏 𝒎𝒖𝒄𝒉, 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝑰 𝒕𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒅 𝒎𝒚 𝒃𝒆𝒔𝒕 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒕𝒐 𝒘𝒂𝒔𝒕𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒚 𝒐𝒇 𝒊𝒕, 𝒂𝒕 𝒍𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒕. 𝑩𝒖𝒕 𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒏 𝒂𝒔 𝑰’𝒗𝒆 𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒇𝒂𝒓 𝒐𝒏 𝒎𝒚 𝒐𝒘𝒏 𝒕𝒘𝒐 𝒇𝒆𝒆𝒕, 𝑰 𝒄𝒂𝒏’𝒕 𝒉𝒆𝒍𝒑 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒇𝒆𝒆𝒍 𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒑𝒆𝒐𝒑𝒍𝒆 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒃𝒆𝒆𝒏 𝒑𝒖𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒎𝒆 𝒂𝒍𝒐𝒏𝒈 𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒚.”
My first book of 2025 is this short but whimsical fantasy novel that will definitely pull at your heartstrings and awaken the girl inside you. I love how empowering this book is! Also, I just can’t get over that stunning cover that I might grab a physical copy too! Continue reading
Happy New Year, everyone!
I had been meaning to bring this blog back to life, but decided to just wait for the new year to do so and now that we’re already a few days into 2025, I’m back and will be sharing my reading goals for this year.
Despite my inactivity here, I read quite a lot in 2024 with 157 books in total and it was my best reading year yet. And though I still intend to read plenty of books in 2025, I also plan on getting back into fantasy and catch up on my backlist or fantasy TBR so I’m already anticipating a slight decrease in the number of books by the end of this year because it takes quite some time for me to finish high fantasy books and series! I did set my Goodreads and Fable reading goal to 80 books compared to last year’s 70 though, so that’s still a lot, but I’m positive and that I can complete that by the end of the year.
Some of my reading goals for 2025 are:
*I still won’t post monthly hopefuls or TBRs though because as a mood reader, I really suck at following them. Haha
Again, happy new year, everyone!
Sorry for being MIA for almost a whole year. I know I wrote two entries before this, but those were just spur-of-the-moment thoughts and feelings. Aside from those, I haven’t really posted anything here.
I never stopped reading—I think that’s something I will never outgrow or get tired of. I haven’t really been away from the internet either since I’ve been actively posting my reviews on Goodreads and Instagram throughout the year. So if you were here for the reviews before, you might want to catch me on those platforms instead! I guess I just hit a bit of writer’s block when it comes to this blog. I’ve been thinking about how to improve its sections, but I just haven’t had the energy to start.
Besides reading, I’ve traveled to a couple of places this year and tried new activities, which I’m excited to share with all of you. It’s a bit sad that I lost the impulse to write here because this blog used to be my go-to whenever I felt down. But honestly, since getting married, I’ve been more drawn to physical journaling again. It’s been really fulfilling, and I’ve been enjoying creating spreads about anything that interests me. That’s also been taking up some of my time.
Anyway, I’m still not sure if I’ll be back here for good. I think I’ll let the rest of the year pass and start posting again in January. That way, I’ll have time to come up with new ideas for this blog.
Until next time! ♡
Lenn of Spades ♠ 