-A.M. Aguilar

My First Reading Challenge

Bookstagram Reading Challenge #TheBestiesReadathon

If you have been following my recent posts and stories on Instagram (you’re not following? What are you waiting for ;)! @thebookssmuggler) then you probably noticed that I am part of #thebestiesreadathon! This reading challenge began July 5th and ends this weekend. 

The hosts for this challenge are the lovely girls, Carol and Savina, (follow their usernames right here! @carolt_reads and @bookueteofwords ) who are best friends and have a huge love for books; plus they are amazing gals! Go give them a follow if you aren’t already.

They have created this amazing reading marathon along with fellow bookstagrammers who decide to join. I decided to join too and I’m loving the time we are having 😀 .

We have a couple of prompts to choose the books we will be reading and some photo challenges to follow through the week. Make sure to stay posted and continue reading if you want to see how my first reading challenge went! 🙂 

The reading challenge, #thebestiesreadathon, consists in the following: {Picture by @carolt_reads}

a) Choose a book with a yellow cover or yellow details in the cover. Yellow is the color of happiness, optimism, enlightment, creativity and sunshine! In almost every culture, yellow represents warmth; so the girls thought this would fit perfectly with the friendship theme for the readathon! 🙂

b) Choose a color that represents your closest friendship! After doing so, pick a book with that color in its cover. The color options we had were: pink, white, purple, red, or green.

c) And finally as a BONUS READ, because it only works for people who have seen the “Friends” tv show; pick a book that starts with the First letter of your favorite “Friends” character (I haven’t seen this show, sorry 😉 ).

My reading choices for the readathon were the following:

a) I decided to pick “The Unhoneymooners” by Christina Lauren for the first book choice because of its sweet yellow cover.

“Olive is always unlucky: in her career, in love, in everything. Her identical twin sister Ami, on the other hand, is probably the luckiest person in the world. Her fiancé is something out of a romantic comedy and she’s managed to finance her entire wedding by winning a series of Internet contests.
Olive braces herself to get through 24 hours of wedding before she can return to her comfortable, unlucky life. But when the entire wedding party gets food poisoning from eating bad shellfish, the only people who aren’t affected are Olive and Ethan. And now there’s an all-expenses-paid honeymoon in Hawaii up for grabs, an Ethan is her sworn enemy.
Putting their mutual hatred aside for the sake of a free vacation, Olive and Ethan head for paradise, determined to avoid each other at all costs. She and Ethan now have to pretend to be loving newlyweds, and her luck seems worse than ever.”

This book had me hooked. I must say that the enemies-to-lovers trope never gets old, and this is such a light and fun read. The characters are very charming and I enjoyed the characters’ chemistry development through the book. If you are a fan of romantic comedies definitely pick this one up! I could not stop reading since page one, it was pretty engaging and interesting. Like playing a movie in your head 😉 ! 

b) As a second book pick, I chose “What I Carry” by Jennifer Longo. I chose the color purple, as you can see in the gorgeous cover. Purple is associated with those with a kind heart and compassion, representing my closest friendship, my twin sister. 

“Growing up in foster care, Muir has lived in many houses. And if she’s learned one thing, it is to pack light. Carry only what fits in a suitcase. Toothbrush? Yes. Socks? Yes. Emotional attachment to friends? Foster families? A boyfriend? Nope! There’s no room for any additional baggage.
Muir has just one year left before she ages out of the system. One year before she’s free. One year to avoid anything–or anyone–that could get in her way. Then she meets Francine. And Kira. And Sean. And everything changes!”

I talked about this book in my last post, “My favorite book covers,” and I mentioned how I knew it was going to break my heart. Well it did, but I was amazed with this story. I loved the main character’s development; Muir definitely went through tough moments but learned how to deal with all. She inspires the reader a lot and you of course can’t help loving the sweet Francine, Kira and Sean.

Everyone has to read this book, it is so heart warming and it shares a powerful message. The characters are so unique and relatable and share a story so different but familiar at the same time. It was beautiful!

You need to pick up this book, trust me. “What I carry” is one of my favorite books from now on and I honestly promise you, this book is worth it 🙂 .

We did our books picks and then prepared for all of the fun photo challenges. We have an instagram group chat were all of us participating in the readathon, share our daily posts and discuss the beautiful books we picked. 

It has been super fun seeing all of the bookstagrammers and chatting and getting to know all of them. They all chose very interesting books and getting all of this stupendous recommendations is great!

This challenge is full of participants from the UK, Lisbon, US, Australia, France, Greece, Honduras, Argentina and many more places. It has been kind of hard with different time zones to stablish a posting pattern, but we are all following the photo challenges with one daily. It has been so fun!

It has been so fun being part of this reading challenge and I am happy that it went well eventhough it was my first reading challenge 😀 Thank you so much Carol and Savina, for letting me join and having one of the best experiences with fellow bookstagrammers!

You can go ahead and check my last instagram posts if you want to follow my progress, and see the next photo challenges for the week. Do not forget to answer the daily questions in the comments section and talk to me about these great books and your current reads!

Have an amazing week dear book lovers and continue to stay safe. Remember that it is okay, if you do not spend your time reading. Doing what you love and enjoy is what counts 🙂 . Spread love always!

Are you part of #thebestiesreadathon?

Have you read any of the books I chose? Let me know in the comments below!

7 thoughts on “My First Reading Challenge

  1. Hey girly! It’s me @carolt_reads and I’m so so happy that you are enjoying the readathon as much as I am! I’m so grateful to have you here with us! I can’t wait to see what your next posts will be like because they look so stunning already! I hope you continue to have fun and enjoy all of your amazing book pics!❤️

    • Heyy Carol 😉 !
      Thank you so, so much for your love and support. I couldn’t be more grateful to you guys for letting me join!! And I am super excited for the rest of your picture too!
      You are the sweetest! Lots of love! <3
      xooxo

  2. Soo beautiful!! I love your blog ☺️☺️
    Lots of love ❤️
    Sara

    PS. I’m @livrosdapipoca in Instagram ☺️

  3. Darn! I wish I would’ve known about this challenge in time! I love doing mini challenges more than the monthly ones (although the monthly ones are great too ;))

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