Birthday haul!

Well, it was the big day yesterday – my birthday – and I not only got to spend a really nice day with my parents (and off work! Yaaaayyyy!!! ) eating lots of sweets and cakes, but I was also lucky enough to get some of the books I’ve been dying to get my grabby hands on for months!

Sorry for the poor photo quality but in case you can’t make them out I was gifted with these bad boys –

• Scarlet by Marissa Meyer – I loved the first book in the Lunar Chronicles series, Cinder, and while I’ve heard some reviewers say this one isn’t just as good, I’m still uber excited to get stuck in!
• The River of No Return by Bee Ridgeway – Time travel meets period drama. I’d never heard of this one until I read about it on the blogs but it sounds amazing!
• Dreams of Gods and Monsters by Laini Taylor – The third and final instalment of the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy hardly needs an introduction! This has been one of my favourite series of recent years and I’m dying to know what happens next! On a side note, both this book and The River of No Return are actually pretty massive so while I would in no way condone violence to books, it’s handy to know if I’m attacked while out reading somewhere they’ll double as an attacker smasher! 🙂
• Austenland – Well I have to come up for air sometime so when I’m not reading I’ll be stuffing my face with chocolates and watching this little gem. A rare example of a film that I not only much preferred the second time I watched it but was also actually better than the book!

I’ve been lucky enough to get this whole week off work – after YEARS of exams or studying for exams on or around my birthday, I vowed that when I started work, I would turn it into a holiday if I could, and that is exactly what I’m doing. 🙂 Today was my penultimate training run for my Race for Life this Sunday followed by an afternoon of shopping where I tried to pretend I was genuinely  looking at clothes and not just casually working my way closer to the bookshop. I’d just got 3 new books after all. I didn’t need any more.

Yeah right! If you can’t treat yourself on your birthday week off, when can you treat yourself? 😉 I bought Sea of Shadows by Kelley Armstrong – I loved her Otherworld series so I’m excited to see what’s in store in this new series from the author. Got up some random romantic comedy on special offer as well and if I’m honest, I’m probably going to order Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo later (would you believe the shop didn’t have it in??)!

So what are you all reading this week?