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rachel_zim

lifelong reader! love lit fic and horror 🫶🏼

493 points

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Level 3
My Taste
The Possession of Alba DĂ­az
Paladin’s Grace (The Saint of Steel, #1)
Heart the Lover
The Force of Such Beauty
The Book of Longings
Reading...
The Raven Scholar (The Eternal Path, #1)
5%

rachel_zim commented on a post

7h
  • Maame
    Thoughts from 57%
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  • rachel_zim commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

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  • 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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  • rachel_zim entered a giveaway...

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    Flatiron Books giveaway

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

    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

    rachel_zim entered a giveaway...

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    Simon Books giveaway

    Family Drama

    Family Drama

    Rebecca Fallon

    A vibrant debut and powerful meditation on family, motherhood, and the cost of holding on to your dreams, reminiscent of Ann Napolitano. It’s 1997, and snow is blanketing a New England beach. Two befuddled seven-year-olds watch as their mother’s body is tipped overboard a crumbling boat. A Viking funeral, followed by a raucous wake. A send-off fit for soap opera star Susan Bliss. Fifteen years earlier, Susan is a blazing, beautiful young woman, passionate about her art. It’s impossible not to fall in love with her, and so Alcott, a practical professor, does—hopelessly. And so begins the love story of Susan’s two-paneled life, an unconventional, jetlag-filled arrangement that takes her back and forth between her home in New England as a wife and mother to young twins, and the bright lights of soapy Los Angeles. In the present, Susan’s twins grow up in the shadow of her all-consuming absence. Sebastian, a sensitive artist, cleaves to her memory, fascinated with the artifacts of her starry past. Viola, resentful of her mother’s torn allegiances, distances herself from the memories of her. But when Viola runs into her mother’s old costar Orson Grey—now a renowned Hollywood star—she finds herself falling deeply in love with him and begins to put together the pieces of a mother she never really knew. Sharp, assured, and beautifully written, Family Drama is a story told in double-helix, with intertwined timelines that explore the different versions of ourselves we share with the world and with each other.

    print • 25 copies • US only

    rachel_zim commented on rachel_zim's update

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    The Raven Scholar (The Eternal Path, #1)

    The Raven Scholar (The Eternal Path, #1)

    Antonia Hodgson

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    The Raven Scholar (The Eternal Path, #1)

    The Raven Scholar (The Eternal Path, #1)

    Antonia Hodgson

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  • The Raven Scholar (The Eternal Path, #1)
    Thoughts from 2% (page 14) - end of ch. 1

    I really enjoy the way Hodgson is setting up these characters and mapping their relationships to each other without it feeling like a slog of a backstory you have to get through before things get going.

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  • rachel_zim is interested in reading...

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    Evil Genius

    Evil Genius

    Claire Oshetsky

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    rachel_zim commented on rachel_zim's review of The Bright Years

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  • The Bright Years
    rachel_zim
    Feb 01, 2026
    2.5
    Enjoyment: 2.0Quality: 2.5Characters: 2.0Plot: 2.0
    🥃
    ✈️
    📸

    Unpopular opinion time!

    Damoff’s attempt to write an emotionally fueled multigenerational family story felt flat. Her characters felt one dimensional and the story was formulaic: things are tough, things get really good, something horribly tragic happens. Time passed quickly, making it hard to connect with all the characters at each point. I had issues with all 3 POVs - Lillian kept dropping breadcrumb clues at happy moments and was unwilling to investigate her true feelings for and about Ryan, Jet never had a complete grasp on her emotions and only aimed to please others, and Ryan was unwilling to see the full picture his violent alcoholism impacted. While a few passages struck me, I found many of the similes to be clunky and unnecessary and they stopped the characters from going deeper. I think there was a good story to be told here, but the large time span was a hindrance. Everything fell into place so perfectly, and characters disappeared for years when they were off page only to reappear at the right place in the right time with the right resources. Overall, this disappointed me, not least of all because of the portrayal of the violence of alcoholism as a force completely beyond one’s control and the ostensibly childfree woman suddenly deciding to become a mother.

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  • rachel_zim commented on a post

    2d
  • The Elements
    4 books or one?

    Am I right in thinking this was originally published as 4 separate books? Is it cheating to log them as 4 separate reads?

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  • rachel_zim wrote a review...

    4d
  • The Bright Years
    rachel_zim
    Feb 01, 2026
    2.5
    Enjoyment: 2.0Quality: 2.5Characters: 2.0Plot: 2.0
    🥃
    ✈️
    📸

    Unpopular opinion time!

    Damoff’s attempt to write an emotionally fueled multigenerational family story felt flat. Her characters felt one dimensional and the story was formulaic: things are tough, things get really good, something horribly tragic happens. Time passed quickly, making it hard to connect with all the characters at each point. I had issues with all 3 POVs - Lillian kept dropping breadcrumb clues at happy moments and was unwilling to investigate her true feelings for and about Ryan, Jet never had a complete grasp on her emotions and only aimed to please others, and Ryan was unwilling to see the full picture his violent alcoholism impacted. While a few passages struck me, I found many of the similes to be clunky and unnecessary and they stopped the characters from going deeper. I think there was a good story to be told here, but the large time span was a hindrance. Everything fell into place so perfectly, and characters disappeared for years when they were off page only to reappear at the right place in the right time with the right resources. Overall, this disappointed me, not least of all because of the portrayal of the violence of alcoholism as a force completely beyond one’s control and the ostensibly childfree woman suddenly deciding to become a mother.

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    comments 2
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  • Post from the The Bright Years forum

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  • The Bright Years
    Thoughts from 91%
    spoilers

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  • rachel_zim commented on a post

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  • Girl Dinner
    Thoughts from 47% (page 165)

    This book made me realise that the dual pov it has going on is not for me. It feels like were constantly switching stories and honestly Sloane’s pov just isn’t that interesting to me. I don’t know if we will get one storyline where both characters join each other eventually, but currently this is making it quite hard to read for me.

    Maybe a dual pov book where the main characters are actively in the same storyline will be better, but I have yet to try that.

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  • rachel_zim entered a giveaway...

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    Vera Kurian giveaway

    A Step Past Darkness

    A Step Past Darkness

    Vera Kurian

    SIX CLASSMATES. ONE TERRIFYING NIGHT. A MURDER TWENTY YEARS IN THE MAKING… There’s something sinister under the surface of the idyllic, suburban town of Wesley Falls, and it’s not just the abandoned coal mine that lies beneath it. The summer of 1995 kicks off with a party in the mine where six high school students witness a horrifying crime that changes the course of their lives. The six couldn’t be more different. • Maddy, a devout member of the local megachurch • Kelly, the bookworm next door • James, a cynical burnout • Casey, a loveable football player • Padma, the shy straight-A student • Jia, who’s starting to see visions she can’t explain When they realize that they can’t trust anyone but each other, they begin to investigate what happened on their own. As tensions escalate in town to a breaking point, the six make a vow of silence, bury all their evidence, and promise to never contact each other again. Their plan works – almost. Twenty years later, Jia calls them all back to Wesley Falls—Maddy has been murdered, and they are the only ones who can uncover why. But to end things, they have to return to the mine one last time.

    print • 10 copies • US only

    rachel_zim made progress on...

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    The Bright Years

    The Bright Years

    Sarah Damoff

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