Welcome to Inspirational Skai. In case you are new here, I thought I should give a little background. I started this blog thirteen years ago to share my fictional stories. I've taken a few breaks over the years, but late last year I came back to it. In the past few years, I started reviewing books on Instagram and thought changing this blog into one about books would be a natural extension of that. I also discovered Five Fall Favorites on Instagram from Once Upon an Ordinary. Last year was my first time doing the Five Fall Favorites it was six days of grueling blogging, and since I like punishing myself, I decided to do it again. 😉 Although this year, I have been working on this since August, and all of my prep work will make this year go smoother, I hope. We'll have to wait and see.
This year's Five Fall Favorites kicks off with a theme that makes me really glad I did this challenge last year. If I hadn't done it last year, I wouldn't have anything to talk about today. Our first theme is Books I've Recommended. To get started I went back to last year's blogs and picked Five Favorites. I limited myself to one title per day of last year's challenge. You may notice I skipped Wednesday, Day 3. That was intentional. It was a very heavy topic, with a theme of "Peace." I shared books that brought me peace. If you're curious, you can find that blog and the rest of 2024's blogs under "2024: September" on the sidebar. For today's blog I talked briefly about what I like about each book, but I also wanted to share updates on the books/authors/series. A sort of update on last year's blogs. So, without further ado, here are Five Fall Favorites, that I've Already Recommended for Five Fall Favorites.
1. Loveboat, Taipei by Abigail Hing Wen
Kicking today's list off is Loveboat, Taipei by Abigail Hing Wen. I recommended this one last year for Day 1's theme, "Love" on Monday of last year's challenge. This is one of my favorite romances. Loveboat, Taipei is a messy love triangle where the main character, Ever attracts the attention of both a rich, artistic, playboy and a strong, silent, football player. However, it isn't really about the love triangle. It's about a young woman discovering herself and navigating honoring her parents and family history.
Since Loveboat, Taipei, Hing Wen has
written four other novels. Two sequels, Loveboat, Reunion which
follows Ever's friends Sophie and Xavier as they mend their relationships with
their families and each other, and Loveboat Forever which
follows Ever's younger sister, Pearl now sixteen years old and following in her
sister's footsteps to Chein Tan. Pearl is a pianist and the whole story is focused on
music and chronic pain interfering with playing music. Two things that I have
personal experience with. Additionally, the first book was made into a direct-to-streaming
movie, Love in Taipei. I enjoyed the movie, but it wasn't as
good as the book. Hing Wen has also written two other novels, one of which came out last week on September 16th, 2025.
2. The Heartbreakers by Ali Novak
On the second day of last year's Five Fall Favorites, the theme was "Joy." I choose to share books where the ending wasn't necessarily the expected ending, but actually what the character needs. They are also endings that teach readers about themselves. The Heartbreakers by Ali Novak at the surface is a romance about a normal girl who loves photography and meets a superstar boyband singer. While underneath, it's about growing up and letting go of trying to control everything.
Before writing The Heartbreakers, Novak wrote My Life with the Walter Boys which is now an Amazon show. She published three books initially, My Life with the Walter Boys, The Heartbreakers, and the sequel Paper Hearts. she started on Watt Pad, and those three titles were published with Watt Pad Press. In the past couple years those have been re-released, and she has written a sequel, My Return to the Walter Boys. Her next title is book three in The Heartbreakers series, Heartstrings. It releases next month, on October 7th, 2025. I'm currently reading a digital ARC. I will share a review on Instagram when I am done.
3. Scorpia, Alex Rider book 5 by Anthony Horowitz
This is one of my favorite series. On Thursday of last year to match the theme of "Patience," I shared my favorite books of my favorite book series. I discovered Alex Rider when I was twelve years old, after watching the movie starring Alex Pettyfer. Alex Rider is about a fourteen-year-old schoolboy who becomes a spy after his uncle's mysterious death. As a twelve-year-old girl, I had a major crush. When the story picks in book five, Scorpia Alex has recent discovered some disconcerting things about his parents' death, and he heads to Italy to find the truth.
I read somewhere that Horowitz had written several other novels, including children's books with little success before Alex Rider. Since his TV screen writing career was doing well enough, he was going to quit writing books. Then Alex Rider: Stormbreaker became a successful young adult book. It inspired a movie, more recently a TV series, and is now a fourteen-book series. Additionally, since then he's written James Bond and Sherlock Holmes books for their estates and has a couple of successful adult mystery series. It seems to me like it's a good thing he didn't quit witting.
4. Perfect World, Vol. 1 by Rie Aruga
Because the theme for Friday last year was "Kindness" I decided to share books about characters who show incredible kindness. I absolutely loved Perfect World, Vol. 1 by Rie Aruga. Tsugumi and Itsuki face both the challenges of disability and stigma when they begin a relationship. Tsugumi is so kind and gentle with Itsuki. In volume one of this Japanese manga, they reconnect. As they rediscover each other, they see how life and changed them, but also how life's problems haven't changed them. Book one is very exciting as, Itsuki is hospitalized by complications of his disability. Successive volumes, follow a variety of different storylines that explore different elements of spinal cord injuries as well as other types of disabilities. Most fascinating part was reading about the cultural differences of how disability is treated in another country.
Of this twelve-volume series, I have read the first seven. I'm a little over halfway finished and I have a love-hate relationship with it. All stories are built upon complications, but the complications of this story cause it to take detours away from main characters as they have other experiences and even other relationships. Tsugumi and Itsuki are challenged and sometimes grew as characters, but they also sometimes regress as characters. From volume four to volume six, there was a lot of character regression, and when the story started following some of the side characters more than the main characters, I started to lose interest. Where I left off at volume seven, it seemed the story may finally be getting back to the main characters, but I haven't read any more yet.
5. Assistant to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maeher
Finishing up last year's Five Fall Favorites, I shared my favorites reads of 2024. The final book of this post is the same as my final book of last year's blogging challenge. Assistant to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maeher is a cozy romantasy adult novel. I would caution readers that it is an adult novel with adult language, adult topics and a humorous relationship with death and gore. Evie Sage is hilarious as a messy, chaotic personal assistant of a fairytale villain. She is both relatable and yet larger than life. Her boss is both a malevolent outlaw and swoon worthy gentleman. I don't often read romantasy comedies, but this titles definitely makes me wish there were more.
I recently watched an interview with the author where she talked about her series from its origins as a TikTok skit to multi-book bestselling series. There are now three books in this series, and Maeher shared that she isn't done yet. The other two titles are Apprentice to the Villain and Accomplice to the Villain. Another thing that was discussed is other potential titles to this series; she implied that Evie would be getting more promotions and maybe even other jobs. Maeher shared fan theories and suggested titles, A few memorable ones were "A Wife to the Villain" and "Acetaminophen to the Villain." I would like to propose the title "Assassin to the Villain" but I would only want to read that if she were at odd with the Villain.
Conclusion
Woo Hoo! I'm so excited to be back for another year of fall book blogging! I've got my TBR list ready and cannot wait to check out all of the other book recommendations. Today's blog was a trip down memory lane, revisiting last year's blogs and previous books I've read and shared. Full disclosure, for tomorrow's blog I have swapped the regular theme with one of the alternatives, so please come back tomorrow to read the sequel to today's blog.
I would like to thank Kate and Rebekah for hosting and coordinating all the bloggers. Links to their sites as well as to all the other bloggers on Team Walnut are down below. This year they had so many bloggers that they decided it would be more manageable to break us up into teams. GO TEAM WALNUT!
Check out all the other Fall Favorites of Team Walnut!
Don't forget to enter the annual Five Fall Favorites Giveaway! Prizes include books by authors a part of this week's blogging challenge and the grand prize even includes an Amazon gift card.
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