What's a book that you think would have impacted you differently, if you read it at a different point in your life? (You don't actually have to show me 🤭)

Some things to consider: Is it a book you've read recently and wish you'd read when you were younger? Is it a book you read in the past that you feel would be more beneficial if you read it in the present? What about the book made you feel this way? Do you think you, as a person or as a reader, would be different now if that's the case?

For me, I think Check, Please! had the potential to completely change the trajectory of my life if I picked it up in my very early days of teenagehood. I never really saw the benefit of involving myself in clubs and communities in school. For context, I'm Filipino and live in Singapore. Being Filipino meant I had friends via my parents & religion at the time, and living in Singapore meant there's a certain level of edge and competitiveness that comes in school (whether actual or projected is up in the air). I already had many friends outside of school at the time, so I actively disengaged from activities that are above the bare minimum. Check, Please! highlighted to me the potential and joys out of finding the people that are truly right for you in those spaces. You are what you make of it, basically. And honestly, aside from socmed and the one group I see annually, I don't actively keep in touch with anybody in school. I don't really feel sad about it, but I do wonder if life would be different if I'd kept up with more friends from back then!

I think Sen Lin Yu is an absolutely amazing author. It is so obvious she has put a lot of work into this book! 1024 pages is no joke! I have not read Manacled but I felt the characters felt familiar while reading. She doesn't touch at all on HP or Manacled in her promotion and I understand why that is but I think the characters being so familiar helped me to emotionally connect with them much faster than I would have.

I think calling this book a romantasy is boxing the book in a way it should not be. It is so much more! And the aspects of war and terror and absolute carnage she deals with in the second part is devastatingly close to reality these days.

Having said that the story of Ferron and Helena is integral to the overall plot, they were key characters and how it ends really draws attention to the unsung "heroes" in such situations. I put the heroes in quotations cause neither actually were. They were just human I think left with the worst choices possible.

Definitely gonna be my favourite book of 2025!

I am over the moon to share that the app is officially live on both iOS and Android!!

We've quite literally poured our blood, sweat and (lots of) tears into the app development over the past 9 months and we could not be more thrilled for everyone to experience it!

We're still being indexed in app store search so you may have to scroll to find us, or type in Pagebound: Social Book Tracker. Here's links to iOS and Android: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pagebound-social-book-tracker/id6751526412 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.pagebound.app

There are quite a few improvements and new features in the app, including:

• Book Journeys (click the map icon on the book cards in your library and other user's library to see their posts, comments, and updates for a specific book)
• Quick access to "add to plan"
• Filtering your activity on profile
• Save posts
• upgraded Read Dates editing

This is the first release, so there will be many more additions and improvements to come. (PS for Android users: we're aware of two bugs related to library imports from Goodreads/Storygraph, and issues with editing read dates - these have already been resolved and are pending Google approval for release.)

We owe a huge thank you to our beta testers who worked diligently over the last month to report hundreds of bugs and help us get the app prepared for release. A huge round of applause to them.

We hope you love the app as much as we do; it definitely makes engaging on PB so much more convenient and fun. If you have a great experience with the app, we'd love if you'd consider supporting us through Pagebound Royalty; Lucy and I have worked for $0 over the past year to bring the app and website to fruition, and have been covering business costs with our savings accounts. Your contribution means we can continue to work full-time on Pagebound without influence from investors or advertisers, and keep Pagebound 100% for readers by readers. Thank you so much to all the Royalty who have already contributed; it truly means the world to us and keeps Pagebound online!

ok now go download the app and tell us what you think!

Happy Reading, Jennifer & Lucy

PS - leaving us a review in app stores also helps tremendously :)