Tell Me Something Tuesday Round-Up (March 2025)

Tell Me Something Tuesday is a weekly meme created by Heidi at Rainy Day Ramblings in order to discuss a wide range of topics from books to blogging (and some slightly more personal matters throw in for good measure). After Heidi stopped blogging (apparently for good), five of us took over as hosts while providing new questions. The current team is composed of Berls at Because Reading Is Better Than Real Life, Jen at That's What I'm Talking About, Karen at For What It's Worth, Linda at Book Girl of Mur-y-Castell and Roberta at Offbeat YA. This week's question is... This time I'm doing a round-up of the last month's worth of questions, because I hate how I've been M.I.A. when it comes to the meme! 

March 2025 Round-Up

+ Question of the Day:

ARE YOU SATISFIED WITH YOUR BLOG?

• March 4th: What are three things you'll never get tired of doing? (a question I submitted)

Reading. Blogging. Perming/dying my hair (though, as my older readers know too well by now, the perm is nothing like it used to be 😭).

Sorry, nothing to see here LOL. It's not like I do other things with my time than reading and blogging, given the situation. And I don't plan on changing my appearance EVER.

• March 11th: Have you ever ventured out of your comfort zone and ended up having a nice experience? (a question I submitted)

I need my confort zone SO BADLY. I'd get too anxious if I left it behind. I need to be in control. I'm so afraid of things that can take an unpredictable turn that I've never wanted to learn to drive (not even a scooter! I did learn to drive a bicycle as a kid, but I've never actually used one to move around). I think the only "brave" thing I ever did was try for radio, for all the good it did me. And I only talked myself into it because 1) I was in love with the radio world and wanted to be part of it, and 2) I knew the station was looking for new voices...so I actually stood a chance not to be rejected on sight. Also, being a radio host came with the perk of being invisible to my audience...

• March 18th: Have you met any bookish/blogging friends in person? (a question I submitted - reworded for the better 🙂)

Of course not, since all you lovely people live miles and miles from here...The nearest bookish friend I've ever had hails from Hungary, so you understand my plight 😉. Anyhow, I would be a bit terrified to get the chance to meet you and talk in person (see: confort zone answer above). I think I'd immediately forget my English...😓 😂

Taste the Books: Review Morsels #58 Seanan McGuire: Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear, Installment Immortality, The Proper Thing and Other Stories

Intro

Hello beauties!

Welcome again to my own brand of mini reviews! I never thought I'd do minis, until I recapped a few of my long reviews in some digest post in 2014, and then guest-posted some shorties for a blogging event in 2015. And Karen from For What It's Worth started praising my short recs/recaps 😊. Just to be clear,  I'm NOT taking a break from writing long reviews - no such luck LOL (though for anthologies, shorter books or books that I didn't enjoy/I don't have enough to say about, I decided to stick to minis). But while I'm making up my mind about a new book I've read, I might as well give you the short version 😉. Just be warned - this feature will be VERY random!

Note: all the mini blurbs (in italics) are of my own creation.

Taste the Books: Review Morsels #57 Emily Yu-Xuan Qin, Dawn Kurtagich, Courtney Gould

Intro

Hello beauties!

Welcome again to my own brand of mini reviews! I never thought I'd do minis, until I recapped a few of my long reviews in some digest post in 2014, and then guest-posted some shorties for a blogging event in 2015. And Karen from For What It's Worth started praising my short recs/recaps 😊. Just to be clear,  I'm NOT taking a break from writing long reviews - no such luck LOL (though for anthologies, shorter books or books that I didn't enjoy/I don't have enough to say about, I decided to stick to minis). But while I'm making up my mind about a new book I've read, I might as well give you the short version 😉. Just be warned - this feature will be VERY random!

Note: all the mini blurbs (in italics) are of my own creation.

Philip Fracassi: "The Third Rule of Time Travel" (ARC Review)

Title: The Third Rule of Time Travel [on Amazon | on Goodreads]
Series: None
Author: Philip Fracassi [Site | Goodreads]
Genres: Sci-Fi, Thriller/Mystery, SPOILER - click on the Spoiler button below if you want to know, since revealing the other genre would ruin your reading experience...If you want to go into the book without knowing anything vital about it, I recommend not reading the Labels at the end of my review either. No need to worry though - the review itself will be spoiler-free...
Year: 2025
Age: 18+ (but it can be read by mature teens)
Stars: 4/5
Pros: Engaging variation on the time-travel trope, with a strong human angle and a transcendental core.
Cons: The side characters are slightly underdeveloped. The metaphysical interlude can feel disorienting.
WARNING! Plane crash, car crash, guns, blood and gore, loss of parents and a sibling, loss of a spouse, stillbirth, trauma, grief, implied misogyny.
Will appeal to: Those who prefer their time travel to be emotion-driven and not necessarily physical (or literal). Those who enjoy a philosophical twist to it.

Blurb: Scientist Beth Darlow has built a machine that allows human consciousness to travel through time - to any point in the traveler's lifetime - and relive moments of their life. An impossible breakthrough, but it's not perfect: the traveler has no way to interact with the past. After Beth's husband, Colson, the co-creator of the machine, dies in a tragic car accident, Beth is left to raise Isabella - their only daughter - and continue the work they started. Mired in grief and threatened by her ruthless CEO, Beth pushes herself to the limit to prove the value of her technology. Then the impossible happens. Simply viewing personal history should not alter the present, but with each new observation she makes, her own timeline begins to warp. As her reality constantly shifts, Beth must solve the puzzles of her past, even if it means forsaking her future. (Amazon excerpt)

Review: First off...DISCLAIMER: I requested this title on NetGalley. Thanks to Little, Brown Book Group UK/Orbit for providing a temporary ecopy. This didn't influence my review in any way.

EMOTIONAL VOYAGE

Time-travel stories are always entertaining and thought-provoking no matter what, but I was pleasantly surprised by the spin Fracassi put on the trope. As it turns out, you can produce an exciting specimen of time-travel narrative even by having your characters remain fixed in place and only be able to revisit moments of their past...at least if you up the ante by throwing a couple more ingredients into the mix (one of which shall remain unnamed, to avoid spoiling your fun), and ultimately allowing said characters a different kind of agency than the reader would expect. As much as the adventures of a person displaced in a different era or physically reliving the same day can be fun, there's something to be said for a more psychological - and in this case, even philosophical - approach to being untethered from your present. I know, I know...I'm being cryptic, but spoilers are just around the corner. Suffice to say, while Beth is a stationary character, the trips her consciousness makes (and the ones her late husband made before her) spin a twisty (and emotional) web while apparently warping her present - first in subtle ways, then with catastrophic consequences - and won't make you miss the thrill of "real" time travel. [...]