So, a little bit about me, huh? I’m 30, and I live in Nottingham in the UK with my boyfriend, Alex, and our cats, Ahri, Galio, and Zed (they’re flamepoint ragdoll kittens, they’re named after League of Legends champions, and yes they are adorable, see the proof below!) 

I’ve loved reading since I was around seven years old and I found my first fantasy books in the aisles of our local supermarket. For years, I’d wait until my parents had definitely gone to sleep before I’d turn on my bedroom light again and read into the small hours of the morning, even if it meant I was half-asleep at school the next day!

I started this blog in 2017, when I was in my final year of my American Studies undergrad degree. This blog is the result of this wonderful chaos, and while I haven’t always been good about updating it throughout the years, it’s been a steady companion where I’ve always had space to share my thoughts and my enthusiasm for reading.

In 2023, I successfully defended my PhD at my viva voce. My thesis topic was on trends and tropes in YA fantasy fiction since the publication of Twilight in 2005. In it, I talked about the YA community, and how content creators acted as tastemakers in the community, often influencing readers on what to buy and what to avoid, and sometimes even influencing authors and publishers to make changes to what they were putting out into the stores. In it, I used case studies such as A Court of Thorns and Roses, Shadow and Bone, Truthwitch and Children of Blood and Bone to talk about how YA challenges some of the conventions of fantasy fiction through female heroes, how romance in YA can sometimes be toxic and promote hegemonic masculinity and how YA addresses serious topics of diversity.  Hopefully, you can sometimes see glimpses of this research in my approach to blogging. While the PhD was a massive struggle, I definitely appreciate my time working on it. It also gave me the chance to interview some amazing authors, and I even gave a talk at YALC in 2024. 

One day, I’ll look at publishing my work in a monograph. However, that will probably have to wait until I receive a diagnosis. Part of the reason I struggled so much with my PhD was what we now believe to be ADHD, and wow, it really did result in a lot of procrastination, anxiety, and time-blindness. It just took a while to figure that out, since nobody just sails through that experience! It also means that I now have a lot of neurodivergent friends, and a wonderful support network, so I’m definitely in a good place.

These days, I’m working in admin and I sadly don’t have as much time to read, but I do what I can. When I’m not at work or reading, you can usually find me with a gigantic cup of coffee, playing video games or board games. Sometimes I even stream over on Twitch where I mostly play cosy building games such as The Sims 4, Dragon Quest Builders 2, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I’m also hoping to start discussing books more with chat.