bellini

I read to learn more about our world and to escape into different ones.

7042 points

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My Taste

Children of Blood and Bone (Legacy of Orïsha, #1)

Reading...

18%

bellini commented on a post

NuclearRemorse

Thoughts from 3% (page 12) End Freeing of Melancholia Bishop

What in earth did I just read🤯. I mean I was prepared somewhat but this is soooo good and the mood is instantly set in the first 10 pages.

Post from the Chain-Gang All-Stars forum

bellini

Thoughts from 3% (page 10, The Freeing of Melancholia Bishop)

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bellini is interested in reading...

The Blueprint

Rae Giana Rashad

In the vein of Octavia E. Butler and Margaret Atwood, a harrowing novel set in an alternate United States —a world of injustice and bondage in which a young Black woman becomes the concubine of a powerful white government official and must face the dangerous consequences. Solenne Bonet lives in Texas where choice no longer exists. An algorithm determines a Black woman’s occupation, spouse, and residence. Solenne finds solace in penning the biography of Henriette, an ancestor who’d been an enslaved concubine to a wealthy planter in 1800s Louisiana. But history repeats itself when Solenne, lonely and naïve, finds herself entangled with Bastien Martin, a high-ranking government official. Solenne finds the psychological bond unbearable, so she considers alternatives. With Henriette as her guide, she must decide whether and how to leave behind all she knows. Inspired by the lives of enslaved concubines to U.S. politicians and planters, The Blueprint unfolds over dual timelines to explore bodily autonomy, hypocrisy, and power imbalances through the lens of the nation’s most unprotected: a Black girl.

bellini commented on bellini's update

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Chain-Gang All-Stars

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America's own. Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly-popular, highly-controversial, profit-raising program in America's increasingly dominant private prison industry. It's the return of the gladiators and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom. In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death-matches for packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thurwar and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, she considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games, but CAPE's corporate owners will stop at nothing to protect their status quo and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar's path have devastating consequences. Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors to the CAPE employees and beyond, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system's unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means.

bellini started reading...

Chain-Gang All-Stars

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

bellini is interested in reading...

Blacktop Wasteland

S.A. Cosby

Beauregard "Bug" Montage: husband, father, honest car mechanic. But he was once known - from North Carolina to the beaches of Florida - as the best getaway driver on the East Coast. Just like his father, who disappeared many years ago. After a series of financial calamities (worsened by the racial prejudices of the small town he lives in) Bug reluctantly takes part in a daring diamond heist to solve his money troubles - and to go straight once and for all. However, when it goes horrifically wrong, he's sucked into a grimy underworld which threatens everything, and everyone, he holds dear . . .

bellini commented on bellini's review of Razorblade Tears

bellini

Feb 05, 2026

4.5

Enjoyment: 4.5Quality: 4.5Characters: 5.0Plot: 5.0

This is one that will certainly stick with me for a long while. The characters. The raw emotions. The pacing. The tone. The atmosphere. The themes. All of it just unexpectedly smacked me right in the face, and I said thank you.

I had been hesitant to read S.A. Cosby's works because I didn't think it sounded like my type of genre. I was completely wrong. My thoughts now are: If Cosby wrote it, I am on board to read it.

Powerful messages of love (romantic, platonic, fraternal, and familial) and hate (racism, homophobia, prejudice, toxic masculinity, etc) intersect in this absolutely thrilling (and gruesome) tale of vengeance and redemption.

bellini wrote a review...

bellini

Feb 05, 2026

4.5

Enjoyment: 4.5Quality: 4.5Characters: 5.0Plot: 5.0

I had been hesitant to read S.A. Cosby's works because I didn't think it sounded like my type of genre. I was completely wrong. My thoughts now are: If Cosby wrote it, I am on board to read it.

bellini commented on a post from the Founder Announcements forum

jenniferPagebound

Product Updates + New App Version [2/5/2026]

Hi everyone, we've just released a big app update with many quality of life improvements, bug fixes, and some new features. These are all available on web as well. Please make sure your apps are updated to the latest version, 1.1.1, to see these changes! As a reminder, you can check out what we're working on and what's coming up next via the public roadmap (in the footer on web, in the more menu on the app)

Here's a list of updates:

New Main Quest badge tiers, now viewable on the app
ability to pin comments to your own posts, lists, and activity
improved search on app: UI enhancements to make searching for things that are not books easier, removed the auto-populated most searched books from the search widget
ability to track your progress in Time for audiobooks (HH:MM)
progress bar / breakdown by status added to Plan
estimated page count added to book page
you can enlarge a book cover on the book screen by tapping the book cover
rereading button (when you go to track a reread, the button says re-reading instead of reading)
sort reviews by star rating
filter options on Book Journey
new search, filter, and sort options on Browse All Lists and Browse All Quests screens
see more info about your followers and users you follow in the following/followers modals
changed the button on the home feed "currently reading" books from "post in forum" to "go to forum" for easier access to the forum + encouraging folks to check existing posts!

We're working on monthly wrapups, reading streaks, and some prep for more stats next! We will also be making some additional enhancements to Quests (like: a book recommendations section similar to the Community Recs on book pages, stats for how many users earned each badge tier, and a feed tab like the new feed tab on book pages)

Thanks everyone and happy reading, Jennifer + Lucy

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bellini finished a book

20h

Razorblade Tears

S.A. Cosby

An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here. A Black father. A white father. Two murdered sons. A quest for vengeance.Ike Randolph has been out of jail for fifteen years, with not so much as a speeding ticket in all that time. But a Black man with cops at the door knows to be afraid.The last thing he expects to hear is that his son Isiah has been murdered, along with Isiah’s white husband, Derek. Ike had never fully accepted his son but is devastated by his loss. Derek’s father Buddy Lee was almost as ashamed of Derek for being gay as Derek was ashamed his father was a criminal. Buddy Lee still has contacts in the underworld, though, and he wants to know who killed his boy.Ike and Buddy Lee, two ex-cons with little else in common other than a criminal past and a love for their dead sons, band together in their desperate desire for revenge. In their quest to do better for their sons in death than they did in life, hardened men Ike and Buddy Lee will confront their own prejudices about their sons and each other, as they rain down vengeance upon those who hurt their boys.Provocative and fast-paced, S.A. Cosby's Razorblade Tears is a story of bloody retribution, heartfelt change - and maybe even redemption.

bellini made progress on...

Razorblade Tears

S.A. Cosby

68%

bellini commented on a post

bellini

Edited

Thoughts from 60% | Ch 30 | ebook

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bellini entered a giveaway...

Flatiron Books giveaway

Reparenting the Inner Child: The New Science of Our Oldest Wounds and How to Heal Them

Nicole LePera

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Do the Work and How to Be the Love You Seek comes a groundbreaking guide to healing our childhood wounds and rediscovering our full potential As adults, we often fall into patterns that feel irrational or out of character—shutting down, lashing out, people-pleasing, or self-sabotaging. Beneath those reactions lies our inner child, a younger part of us still trying to get its needs met the only way it knows how. We all carry the imprint of our earliest years. Childhood is brief, yet its impact is lifelong. Some parts of us were met with love while other parts were met with silence, criticism, or disapproval. To survive, we learned to adapt—learning to over perform, to hide, or stay small. Most of us made it through with a mix of love and lack. And many of us still protect the parts of ourselves that once felt unsafe. While we can’t change what happened, we can change how it lives within us and impacts our lives today. Reparenting the Inner Child offers a clear, compassionate path to self-integration, combining practical exercises, somatic tools, and guided reflections to help us create the safety, love, and boundaries we've always needed. Through her holistic framework that models individual development, Dr. LePera explains how we can cultivate the emotional maturity and regulation to respond calmly instead of reacting, to embrace desire instead of shame, and to question the stories we've long believed about who we have to be. Enlightening, empowering, and clarifying, Reparenting the Inner Child is a book that will stand the test of time as a comprehensive guide for personal development and healing, and a resource that will forever change the way we understand ourselves.

print • 20 advanced reader copies • US only

bellini commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

lucyPagebound

February book giveaways on Pagebound!

If you haven't seen our Giveaways page yet, you can find it on Discover Books. We're so happy to have a very diverse collection of genres, multiple formats, and options for international readers as well (this is entirely thanks to the authors & publishers who are working with us since they determine these details)!

There are 4 new book giveaways that have been added for Feb (and 2 more to come later this month). 14 giveaways that launched in Jan are still open to entries too! Good luck to everyone entering 💕

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