mintypanda_

for my bookish delusions :D hopelessly in love w the secret shanghai series f1 girlie!! (gonna be inactive for a little bit)

[mintypanda]

realised i don’t have an intro post how would you ever know who i am

HELLO - I’m mintypanda, (bc pandas are my favourite animals and mint green was is my favourite colour :D )

my name is kay, (‘06) , i’m an avid reader and f1 girlie. my favorite book series are: secret shanghai (obviously), the inheritance games (and the naturals), the scorched throne duology, and shatter me ! but ofc there are a lot more

i’m a max verstappen fan for LIFE - just had to get that out there

i love meeting new people so feel free to interact w me !!

[mintypanda]

i think I’ll continue to express my love for the jasad heir by sarah hashem for many years to come - and that’s not an exaggeration in the slightest

first AND FOREMOST: the queen sarah hashem is a muslim/hijabi/egyptian author, and it makes me so happy to see authors like her being represented in the industry !!

i think the most glaring thing about this book is that it is a TRUE representation of enemies to lovers. There’s a lot of discussion about how the enemies to lovers trope has been distorted (eg. it’s more like hatred mixed with insta lust etc.), but sarah hashem just does. it. right. arin and sylvia are PURE ENEMIES with a deep rooted animosity towards each other - no thoughts of “oh he’s so attractive but I can’t bc he’s the enemy” . no. The slow burn is hella slow, and when the romance does come, it leaves you reeling in delight and wonder that two souls who were so far apart, are now deeply intertwined.

thirdly: the concept. part of it is undoubtedly my own love for MENA culture, but also the fact that it’s so rich, and so story worthy ! seeing the language and the folklore shining through the story adds a deeply realistic layer that you wouldn’t typically expect from a fantasy book. hashem’s descriptions and worldbuilding are fascinating and creative, and the plot twists (which are more apparent in the second book than the first) create an enthralling atmosphere that really make the book difficult to put down.

i did have to take a point off, because the overall editing of the book could have been done better (mainly there were sentences that didn’t entirely make sense - an opinion shared by other readers also), but by no means does it take away from the book’s brilliance.

sara hashem, i am your biggest fan, i will read whatever you publish and recommend the jasad heir forever !

[mintypanda]

these summer storms by sarah maclean is actually just an adult variation of the inheritance games and i’m kind of obsessed

don’t get me wrong it’s not EXACTLY like the book - it just resembles it in terms of games/challenges/mysteries in order to inherit and billionaires who misuse their power and fudge up their families

i saw some people getting bored with the constant mention of storms and the metaphors related to it - but i for one freaking ATE IT UP. The way she created a whole semantic field of storms throughout the entire book felt so clever

the romance was FIRE and the way everything tied in was pretty satisfying to me

so here’s my official recommendation ! if you fancy a more ‘mature’ (in terms of the themes explored, character age etc) version of the inheritance games - read this book !!

and let me know what you thought of it after 😁

[lmyramcnq]

ALL THE HAWTHORNE BROTHERS IS TEAM LYRA LMAO

[mintypanda]

oh how this aged

[laurilovesbooks-deactivated2026]

My POV on the Jameson Lyra controversy.

I may be biased bc Jameson is truly one of the characters I conned with the most in the series, but I don’t really see how any of this is truly his fault. The Alice secrete was a BIG one, I get why he kept it and Gray wasn’t even that mad, cause he understood the gravity of the situation. Lyra was just caught in the crossfire, Jameson has been on edge all this time and he is looking for a way to gain any shred of control over a situation he has no grasp on. Lyra as well, she has so many unanswered questions she won’t stop until she finds them, even is it means getting tangled in this whole Alice mess.

Now, Jameson blaming her for Avery being gone, came out of anger and desperation, in someone like Jamie when they are spiraling out of control, they need to somehow regain control and center themselves, pinning the blame on Lyra is his way of doing that . It sounds really bad, but in that type of scenario I get it, cause I’ve done the same 😑. It’s almost like a defense mechanism, placing anger on someone else to divert from the true problem (Avery missing, and Alice out to get them).

His mistrust of Lyra is somewhat understandable, he doesn’t really know anything about her, and her and Gray have gotten really close, which could be dangerous. Plus the whole thing with Eve being her sponsor, I think is what truly led to the mistrust. But we don’t really know, bc we aren’t seeing his perspective of things, we only know the story from Lyra and Grays eyes. However, if he had payed more attention and actually talked to Gray and Lyra at any point, he wouldn’t be so hesitant. But given the fear he is experiencing I get that communication isn’t exactly a priority right now. Tough it should be a priority for all of them, it would solve like 99% of the problems in this whole entire universe 😭

Also, notice how Gray and Lyra didn’t even seem that mad. I think everyone understands that Jameson is hurting and the love of his life just went missing, so his actions and words aren’t exactly sane right now.

In conclusion I don’t think any of them were in the wrong, emotions have a way of making people do reckless things so they are both valid.

I need TGB to come out, so that all of this tension can be resolved and the Fast and Furious family bbq type ending can happen 😭😭.

Idk why this is so long lol

[alwaysthefangirl]

this was all so nicely worded.

That, yes- ALL OF THEIR FEELINGS ARE VALID.

People shld stop painting jameson as some machiavellian 💀

He reacted. He shouldn't have in that way. It wasn't Lyra's fault. End of storyyyy

[mintypanda]

glorious rivals !! my take on Jameson/Lyra (spoilers)

nah I’m sorry but the jameson crash out is so valid when you think about it like this:

avery’s been kidnapped, supposedly by alice - jameson’s already BEEN kidnapped + tortured by her, and is def imagining avery “i would die to protect you” going through the same thing

we - as readers - know that lyra has done nothing wrong and therefore didn’t deserve jameson’s comments. but like he doesn’t know that ?? neither does Avery?? lyra is just some mysterious girl who has turned up to the game (..reminiscent of eve’s appearance in a way honestly …), and theyre simply so cautious to repeat past mistakes

lyra doesnt deserve the hate, but in a situation like that, no one can say that they wouldnt crash out too - she just happened to be the closest target

[mintypanda]

*boops your nose* send this to ten blogs you think are lovely and deserve a boop on the nose (-)

ur so cute anon <3

[ganymede-dewormer]

What book this.

[rxsewqter-deactivated20241003]

i finished these violent delights....WHAT THE HELL????

[herondalesbooklover]

Lyra Catalina Kane...

Haven't you all consider how weird is that we got her full name??? And that is mentioned quite a few times?

I saw jennifer's ig post and I realized that she wrote her whole name, in the posts for gigi and rohan she only wrote their first name which I don't know but seems a little suspicious.

So far we have no idea what is gigi or savannah's middle names. We know rohan doesn't have neither a middle name or last name.

The thing is that every character that has a middle name so far in the tig series, their name has been relevant to the plot of the story, the boys middle names were part of a puzzle and avery's was part of an anagram...so what about lyra??

Part of me thinks that it might be related to the whole everything comes in three, but I don't know. It might be a coincidence, but there are no coincidences in tig.

Am I the only one who finds this sort of strange?

[mintypanda]

hiii does anyone have any book recs ?? it can be any genre just YA preferably :DD

[ria-lina]

RANT NUMBER 2 ( Grayson and Lyra)

GUYS its another Rant time bc yall liked the last one ig STOP IT WITH THE GRAYSON AND LYRA ARE RUSHED THING, GUSY STOP ‼️ PLEASE

Ok so first off if you’ve read the brothers hawthorn you’d know from the MOMENT she called he was interested, this man was like “ wow her voice is so soothing and I love listening to it” “ I head the phone ring and hoped it was that girl” “ who was that girl who called me, her voice was so lovely” “ I must find that mystery girl” “ I must help her find out about her father”

HE LITERALLY ASKED HIS GREAT GRANDMOTHER TO GO LOOKING FOR HER FILE LIKE GUYS THEY HADN’T EVEN MET… Now imagine for a YEAR AND A HALF Grayson, kinda in the back of his mind, is wondering about that mystery girl, who he never got to contact again. Like Yall know the pain when you see a Pin on Pinterest, but then the page refreshes and you LOSE IT, its like a diff type of rage fr omg ( seriously i hate that) so like that x10 is what Grayson was going through. This man literialy thought abt the wedding ring his brother gave him, AND THOUGHT ABT LYRA LIKE HE WAS OBSESSED ( i don’t blame him, she had the whole fandom wrapped around her finger in like 1 sentence) also like I feel like saying it’s a rushed relationship is so ANNOYING bc we ( the readers) already love her, like we fell in love after she called him like 3 times in the brothers Hawthorne 😭 And for Lyra, she states how she’d literialy had a celeb crush on him for like 3 yrs and be honest guys, if you met your celeb crush irl and found out he was AMAZING ( bc Grayson is) AND he liked you back?? Well shoot dang sounds like I’m getting married at dawn like ??🤭💀 Like call it underdeveloped if you HAVE TOO ( it’s not by any means) but dont you dare call it RUSHED. The fandom has waited forever for Grayson to be happy! Fans were complaining like BABIES when grayson was emo in the Final Gambit and now that hes ACC HAPPY, people are still COMPLAINING. Like ppl would be like “ Jen ruined his character I hate this ARGHHH” and now people are like “ UGH he’s too happy too soon!! Jennifer when I catch you 😠” GUYSSSS Guys I love yall and i love these books, please stop i beg 😫 Anyway you dont have to agree with me, but I just had to speak out bc Grayson and Lyra are AMAZING, and like new fav ship UNLOCKED, and ppl are scaring the LIFE outta me with “ the conflict in glorious rivals” I PRARY THE CONFLICT IS BETWEEN ROHAN AND SAVANNAH LIKE HELLO

[cocomowgy]

I think the glorious rivals will be NA

[mintypanda]

icl I don’t agree - it’s so random to completely change the age rating of a book halfway through the series? you’d have to be really out of touch w your audience to do that n I don’t think jlb is like that. also I could be wrong but I don’t think jlb has written NA before so again it doesn’t make sense for her first NA book to be again, right in the middle of a YA series ?? also - this is completely subjective, but I feel like tgg was kinda blown out of proportion in regards to its ‘freakiness’ by ppl who’ve reviewed it, because technically nothing was really explicit , and it really is a mindset thing if you want to interpret it in that way. be fr the hot tub scene in thl was ‘worse’ than anything in this book

and taking into consideration that savannah/rohan bonus chapter, that was DEF breaching YA standards I agree w all of you on that, but you’ve gotta remember that it wasn’t included in the book for a reason - and maybe that reason was something other than the fact that savannah’s pov was cut out (such as jlb and her editor realised that it wasn’t exactly YA as the book was marketed to be). additional point - tgg did have more romance than the og trilogy but jlb SAID that this was the most romance she’s ever written in a book so we were warned !

so yeah i THINK that glorious rivals will remain YA, plus Goodreads has it listed as YA but ik that’s not very reliable

[haeology]

this might be unpopular but a slow burn for lyragrayson would not make sense 😭. idk I just liked the pace they were going at and honestly you never know what happens next with jlb books

[hawthornesbiggestfan]

kinda spoilers?

if calla is a redhead ill burn the book xx

[wonderstruck]

If you see this you’re legally obligated to reblog and tag with the book you’re currently reading

[inmyheaddd]

lowkey more excited for games untold because hannah and toby?!??? what actually happened in prague?!???

can november come any sooner