New Blog

I know I have posted this before, but I am FINALLY actually on a new blog that works! So we are moving! Although my whole blogging plan is undergoing some changes and the new blog will be a good bit different from what you are used to seeing here, it's still me! So you should totally check it out here.
And you should be sure to look at today's post, which is my review as part of the blog tour for Lauren K. Denton's Glory Road. There's even a giveaway, so hop on over and enter to win!

High Five for Friday

Happy Friday! I can’t believe it’s finally February! I feel like January just went on and on and on. But, now it’s finally February, and I’m so excited because I have so many great things to look forward to over the next few weeks. But first, I’m going to take the time to share about the great things that have happened this past week, because I do still need to be thankful for the other great parts of my life too. Besides, I’ve missed doing these High Five for Friday posts. They’re always so fun! So here’s five great things in my life right now!

 

1. Where Hope Begins by Catherine West. Oh my goodness, I cannot even tell you how much I loved this book. I just finished it this past Tuesday, and I am still thinking about it. I’ve gotten into audiobooks recently, because my life is just so crazy busy and I never have time to read—unless it’s textbooks (groan)—but I’m constantly driving or walking the dog, or other things like that, so I’ve really started to enjoy having an audiobook to listen to during those times. The funny thing is, when you listen to books like Where Hope Begins, sometimes you end up sitting at a red light crying your eyes out while the people in the car next to you look at you like you’re a crazy person. But it was worth it. This book really touched my heart—just like all of Catherine’s books do—and I can’t wait to tell you more about it. But, I’m still woefully behind on my reviewing, so that might be awhile
And now I’ve moved on to listening to Lizzy and Jane by Katherine Reay, and I am loving this one too. Lizzy is a chef, and listening to her story has made me so inspired in the kitchen lately. I made pasta last night and it was delicious, but I still feel like there will be more cooking in my future as I continue to listen to this book.

2. Quiet devotional times. I know that this isn’t specific to this week, and it doesn’t really seem like something major or especially exciting, but I have been loving the devotional book I have been using, and taking even just a few minutes for a quiet time each morning just gives me such a relaxed, peaceful, God-filled start to my day that I really love having. My sister gave me Write the Word: Cultivate Renewal by Lara Casey, and I have been really enjoying the simplicity of this devotional. There’s a spot at the top of each page to write something I’m thankful for, which helps me to always be in a more thankful mood, and then there’s a scripture reference to look up and write out on the front of the page, with space on the back for reflections, a prayer, or anything else that is on my mind at the time. I have never had a devotional like this one before, but I think it is just the perfect thing for my busy mornings and where I am at in my walk with God.

 

3. Nights with the family (mine or my boyfriends). This past week, I have spent two nights playing games with family—one with my family and one with my boyfriends—and I have really enjoyed taking the time to just sit down and do something fun together. My family always ends up arguing, but then someone will make a stupid joke and we’ll all end up in stitches, completely forgetting about whatever we were arguing about minutes before. It always makes for a very interesting, enjoyable time.
Bryce (my boyfriend) has a little bit of a different atmosphere at his house, but I love being there just the same. He has 9 siblings, so there is almost always someone to play with, and his littlest sisters (ages 7 &9) absolutely love when we play games with them, so we spent quite a while playing Spot It with them this past week.

4. My book boxes!!! I know, this technically isn’t just this week either, as I started these early last month, but I am just so excited to finally get them really up and running. Since school started not long after I first shared my boxes—and my classes immediately started with a TON of homework—I haven’t had the time to really build them up and promote them, but I am going to start really putting them out there soon. I want to make them something that people will really enjoy, boxes that are full of great goodies and wonderful books and something that my subscribers will look forward to every month. So, that is the goal!

5. Game Night!! My boyfriend and I are a part of a fantastic small group that meets every Friday night, and I am just so thankful for that group. I have wonderful friends from that group that I meet with all the time for tea and conversation, and my boyfriend has friends too and is soon to become a leader of the group, so I feel like we are thriving there. Anyway, we’re having a game night tonight and I am so looking forward to it! Almost every one of the regular attenders is bringing a friend, so I know we are going to have quite a large group, which is going to make for a lot of fun and a lot of laughs. That sounds like the most perfect way to spend a Friday night.

I hope your week has been just as fantastic! And that you have the best Friday and a FANTASTIC weekend!
Thanks for stopping by!
Mackenzie Carol



High Five for Friday is a weekly linkup hosted by tons of bloggers, I’m linking up at Della Devoted.

My Bookshelf: Flights of Fancy by Jen Turano

Miss Isadora Delafield may be an heiress, but her life is far from carefree. When her mother begins pressuring her to marry an elderly and uncouth duke, she escapes from the high-society world she’s always known and finds herself an unlikely candidate for a housekeeper position in rural Pennsylvania.
Mr. Ian MacKenzie is known for his savvy business sense and has built his reputation and fortune completely through traditional hard work. But when his adopted parents are in need of a new housekeeper and Isadora is thrown into his path, he’s unexpectedly charmed by her unconventional manner.
Neither Isadora nor Ian expected to find the other so intriguing but when a chain of mysterious incidents on the farm point to a larger threat, they’ll have to set aside everything they thought they wanted for a chance at happily-ever-after.

Blog Relaunch!

The rest of my new journey is finally here! As I stated in one of my earlier posts, I have just gotten my own website where I will be selling my very own subscription book boxes, but the blog aspect of my website was still in the works. However, I finally have everything put together, so as of today I am relaunching my blog on my new website!
I will still have this blog open and will often link some of the posts here to my posts on my new blog, so feel free to still explore here whenever you wish! But for now, check out this post on my new blog!

EDIT

Unfortunately, this relaunch has been postponed just a bit. I have had SO many issues with this new website! Therefore, I am having to find another host for my blog that will make this transition easier. But keep your eyes out for the real relaunch soon!

Featured Releases—February

Happy almost February! And, happy blog relaunch day for me! This is my very first ever blog post on the new blog, and I am so excited to be sharing this new journey with you! I felt like it would be fitting for my first ever post to be something that I’ve brought with me from the old blog, so today I’m writing all about my featured releases for February! I’ve written must-have releases posts for years, and then that morphed into these featured releases posts less than a year ago, and that’s something I cannot imagine not continuing as I relaunch. I love doing the research, finding which authors are releasing what new books when, and I absolutely love sharing what I’ve found with you, my lovely readers. So, here are the fantastic-sounding new novels I’ve found for the month of February!

My Bookshelf: A Stranger at Fellsworth by Sarah E. Ladd

Could losing everything be the best thing to happen to Annabelle Thorley?

In the fallout of her deceased father’s financial ruin, Annabelle’s prospects are looking bleak. Her fiancé has called of their betrothal, and now she remains at the mercy of her controlling and often cruel brother. Annabelle soon faces the fact that her only hope for a better life is to do the unthinkable and run away to Fellsworth, where her estranged uncle serves as the school’s superintendent. Upon arrival, Annabelle learns that she must shed her life of high society and work for her wages for the first time in her life.

Owen Locke is unswerving in his commitments. As a widower and father, he is fiercely protective of his only daughter. As an industrious gamekeeper, he is intent on keeping poachers at by even though his ambition has always been to purchase land he can call his own. When a chance encounter introduces him to Annabelle Thorley, his steady life is shaken. For the first time since his wife’s death, Owen begins to consider a second chance at love.

As Owen and Annabelle grow closer, ominous forces threaten the peace they thought they’d found. Poachers, mysterious strangers, and murderers converge at Fellsworth, forcing Annabelle and Owen to a test of fortitude and bravery to stop the shadow of the past from ruining their hopes for the future.

Featured Releases—January

Happy January! I know this is a little delayed; I normally post my Featured Releases posts at the end of the previous month, and here we are already over a week into January. However, I’ve been so busy working on my new website, and I wanted to try to wait and share this after the blog relaunch, so that is the reason for the delay. But, I’m sharing about these new books now, so get excited! Besides, the good thing about the delay is that some of these books have already released so you can go out and get them now!

The Recommended Reads Box Website Is Live!

Hello again, friends!

I have some wonderful news! My new website is now up and running! Other than one little snag (the blog is still giving me fits so it is unfortunately not live just yet) my brand new subscription box website has just rolled out and is ready for you to explore! You can find my new website here, so please feel free to check it out! Soon I will be relaunching my blog there as well, but for right now that is still under some serious construction. Until the relaunch happens, I will continue to post all about my new adventures here, and once that has launched I will share that with you here as well!

I’m still learning how to do this business-owner-thing, so if you have any advice I would greatly appreciate it! I hope you check out my boxes, and even if they aren’t for you, you can always share my website with a friend who might like them! Hopefully the longer I work on this, the better they will be, so I hope you’ll join me on this journey and give me any feedback you see fit to share. I love to read, and I think books are wonderful things, and that’s why I can’t wait to share my love of them with the world!

Happy reading!

Mackenzie Carol

More About Recommended Reads

Hello friends!

As those of you who read my post from last week know, I announced that I am going to be relaunching my blog on another site and will begin selling my very own subscription box! (You can find the post I’m referring to here.) However, in that post, I announced that everything would be rolling out on a Tuesday, which would be today actually, but unfortunately that is not the case. Technology is super complicated, and for some reason it decided to hate me yesterday, and that bumped my relaunch back a bit. I’ve been having some issues with really complicated technical aspects to having a website, but we are getting it all figured out! So that’s great at least. I’m hoping to still relaunch before the end of this week, and as soon as everything is ready I will share it here and on all of my social media so that you know for sure, but I just have to wait and see how long it takes the powers that be to recognize all of the changes that I have made. So, for now, I’m going to share a little bit more about my subscription boxes!

My company is called Recommended Reads, or Recommended Reads Box, and as of right now we have six different box options to choose from, like I mentioned in my other post. We have The Original Recommended Reads Box, which is a box that simply comes with your choice of either one or two books, a bookmark, and a couple of bags of tea for you to try while you read. The Original Well-Loved Books Box is mostly the same, with a bookmark and a couple of tea bags, but it comes with three gently used books that someone else has once loved before. Both of those boxes—and their deluxe versions—have a survey that goes with them. You fill out the survey as part of your purchase process, and that helps us to know your preferences so that we can recommend to you the books that you will enjoy the most when we send them to you.

That brings us to the Deluxe versions of both of those boxes, The Deluxe Recommended Reads Box and The Deluxe Well-Loved Books Box. The Deluxe Recommended Reads Box comes with one book and a bookmark, like the Original version, but it also comes with your choice of either tea, coffee, or hot chocolate, and 2-3 goodies for you to enjoy, such as soap, lotion, candles, custom decals, bath bombs, etc. The Deluxe Well-Loved Books Box is the same, it comes with 3 gently used novels and a bookmark like the original, along with your choice of beverage and 2-3 goodies.

Then, we have the last two options, which are slightly different from the ones I just mentioned. I have two different Book of the Month Boxes, the Historical and the Contemporary Edition. Both boxes are basically the same, each month I will choose a book as the Book of the Month and if you subscribe to that box you will receive that book along with some sort of tea, coffee, or hot chocolate, and 2-3 goodies that either revolve around the book that I have sent or the month you are receiving the box (such as next month’s box is a Valentine’s box so it might also contain Valentine’s Day-type goodies). The thing that makes them different is that the Historical Edition only comes with books that fall into the Historical genre and the Contemporary Edition only comes with books from the Contemporary genre, so that you can choose which one you would prefer to read. Or both, if you prefer!

I hope this has given you a little taste of what is to come, just as soon as I can get my website finally up and running! I absolutely cannot wait to share these new boxes with you, and to finally relaunch my blog. I’m still going to be writing about books, but there are also so many other things going on in my life now, especially since I’m less than for months away from finally graduation college, so I want to share about all kinds of other things as well. I hope you will follow me over to my new location once I can finally officially relaunch, and that you’ll love my new boxes as much as I do!

Happy reading!

Mackenzie Carol

New Year, New Adventures!

Happy New Year! I know, I know, I’m a bit late. And, I’m sure you’re honestly a little surprised to hear from me, considering the fact that I haven’t posted in weeks. I have been regretting that quite a bit recently, especially since I’ve been on Christmas break and have had a small amount of extra time on my hands. However, I’ve been using that time for other things and honestly, I think once you hear what I’ve been doing you just might like that better.

Over the past month, and even months before that, I have been working on starting a new blog, in a new location, so I’m super excited about that! I hope those of you who have actually stuck with me here on this blog will follow me to the new one, and I promise that I will be better about posting there than I have been on this one. I’ve already been working on lots of new ideas for posts—some about books, some about food, some about life—and I’ve read quite a few books since the last time I posted a review so there will be some new reviews coming your way too.

However, that’s actually not the biggest news that I want to share with you today. Not only am I starting a new blog in a brand new location, I am starting my very own website. While this new blog will be on said website, that’s not the only thing that you will find there. As of this coming Tuesday, I will be rolling out my very own book subscription box! I have been toying with the idea for over a year, and now I’m finally ready to get it started. Isn’t that so exciting?!

As of Tuesday, you will be able to go onto my brand new website (which I will link here when the time comes) and explore my new blog location and the book box subscriptions that I will finally have for sale. I am just so excited that I finally get to share this with you! I absolutely love reading (obviously) and I always love recommending books I have loved to people, so I have been thinking of a way to turn those loves into something more for quite some time. And now, it’s finally time to make that into a reality! My store, the Recommended Reads Box store, will have 6 different book box options to choose from: The Original Recommended Reads Box, the Deluxe Recommended Reads Box, the Original Well-Loved Books Box, the Deluxe Well-Loved Books Box, and two different Book of the Month Boxes, one for lovers of Contemporary fiction and one for the Historical Fiction fans. Hopefully one of those boxes sounds like something you would enjoy receiving!

There will be more information about each of my boxes on my website, and I will be sharing more and more about everything related to my boxes—and even other things—on my new blog once it rolls out next week. I really hope you’ll find me there! I can’t wait to share this with you!

Happy reading!

Mackenzie Carol