So happy and honored that my books have been included in Brina and The Books’s list of favorite LGBTQ+ reads!

The list put together by the book blogger Brina features amazing books like Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli, Fourteen Summers by Quinn Anderson, Caterpillars Can’t Swim by Liane Shaw, If I Tell You by Alicia Tuckerman and If You Say So by Teagon Hunter. A true honor to have my books listed amongst such amazing books and authors!

Here’s Brina’s words about my books:

Check out the complete list here: LGBT Books by Brina and The Books

The tour for Forever Disguised hosted by Mágico Libro Casa has now started! Every day the coming week there will be reviews, quotations, excerpts and so much more! 

Make sure to head over to Instagram and follow the tour host and all the participants:

​MLC_tours
Ravens_books
Brunetteandthebooks
Nkliterarynerd
Komal_bibliomaniac
Booksshack
Bookishaurora
Timeladyreads
Poroline

I have partnered with the lovely bookstagrammer Tata.lifepages – Library of Pastels (bookstagram @tata.lifepages) for an international giveaway for the entire Angelheart Saga book series. Click this link to enter for a chance to win a copy of First Came Forever, Forever Disguised and Beyond Forever: Angelheart series giveaway

The giveaway is international and open to everyone as long as Amazon ships to you. This giveaway closes in one week on June 24th. BEST OF LUCK!

The recent review of Beyond Forever by bookstagrammer Julcsi (@jayinbookland) is honestly the finest thing I could ever have hoped for to be said about my books. Julcsi is such a wonderful and insightful person who I learn so much from. She always manages to see the larger perspective and explain things that I’ve missed or been too naïve to see for what they are. It therefore means the world to me that she has enjoyed my books and thought the LGBTQ+ characters to be credible and written with respect. 

Read the full review here: Review Beyond Forever by Jay In Bookland

Some of the wonderful things Julcsi said in the review was that:

“Beyond Forever is the third and final book of the Angelheart Saga. It is a YA romance trilogy that features a straight couple as the main characters, but its world is just as diverse as ours: it has LGBTQ+ characters (not just one!), it speaks up against poverty, homelessness, homo- and transphobia, it features characters from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds and these are only a couple of examples.”

“Annie Woods is honestly the most supportive person I have met on Bookstagram and her respectful attitude reflects in the The Angelheart Saga books! I have seen her support the Black Lives Matter movement and she has spoken up about LGBTQ+ issues many times. Once, she also got in touch with me when she saw that I had been the object of disrespectful comments because of my queer identity. I will always be grateful to her for this.”

I am passionate about fighting injustice, racism and homophobia, and I want to contribute in every way I can, even though I only have a small platform as an indie author. That’s why I think it’s so important with diverse books and LGBTQ+ representation in YA and why it was necessary for me to have that in my own books, and also why I try my best to share and promote others. Reading gives you such an amazing opportunity to see the world through someone else’s eyes and to educate yourself. We all need to share the experience and views from as many different aspects as possible, to make this world a more open-minded, emphatic and better place. It therefore means the world to me that Julcsi has enjoyed my books and thought the LGBTQ+ characters to be credible and written with respect. Honestly, that is the finest thing I could ever hope for someone to say about my books and I am just so happy and honored right now!

Look at these amazing bookmarks that PorolineMakes has created with quotes from The Angelheart Saga books! I’m so in love with them, aren’t they adorable and so spot on the characters and story?!!

Head over to @poroline_makes on Instagram for more photos, or to PorolineMakes Etsy store to get one of your own of these gorgeous bookmarks.

To celebrate 5K followers, the bookstagrammer Bookishbong is hosting an international giveaway of my book First Came Forever. Head over to her Instagram (@bookishbong) for a chance to win a copy of the first book in The Angelheart Saga series. This giveaway is open until June, 10th. GOOD LUCK!

For all you Swedish bookworms I am giving away two copies of the Swedish edition of Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston (Rött, Vitt & Kungligt Blått) published by Lavender Lit and two signed copies of my own book First Came Forever. Since the book is in Swedish, this giveaway will be limited to Sweden. Very sorry about that, but there will be more chances to win copies of my books within short!

For more info how to enter the giveaway, see below (in Swedish).

Last month I won the Calendar Girl special Spring Time Whirl Book Bingo challenge and got to choose this month’s theme. I decided to go for favorite adaptation as there are so many great screen adaptations of books being made today. The old truth that the book is always better is simply no longer true!

We have for example the great Netflix adaptations of books such as To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, All The Bright Places and Quicksand.

And not to mention the new amazingly well done BBC/Hulu adaptation of Normal People. I’m so in love with this adaption! It’s so true to the original and catches the unique voice from the book. Even though the book revolves around the relationship between Marianne (the school’s weirdo) and Connell (the school’s popular jock) from high school through university, it’s not a very romantic story. It’s more of a deep psychological study of two people struggling to maneuver through life and how the two protagonists develop as people. I’m so impressed how that is manifested in the series as well. It could so easily have been transformed into a cliché romance, but it’s not at all. The darkness and intensity, the raw and honest portray of modern love, class and politics and the lasting effects of trauma from the book are all still there in the series as well.

There are also some adaptations that are not only as good as the books, but even better (in my opinion). For example Ready Player One where I liked Wade’s character so much better in the movie. In the book he and Aech’s friendship was not at all as strong and easy-going as in the movie. In fact, the way Wade and Aech talked in the book irritated me. And the part in the book where Wade was hiding out alone in his apartment and turning from chubby to super-fit just felt out of place for the story line, so I’m glad that was left out completely in the movie.

Another example is Noughts & Crosses where the screen adaptation is better, tighter and with a better love story than in the original story in the book. In the HBO series the love story makes much more sense as they are older when they really fall for each other and more aware of the consequences. The role of Sephy’s parents are also better portraited, and not to mention Sephy herself. In the book she comes across as quite childish at times. (But I do love the book too, and especially to get more background to Sephy’s and Callum’s friendship.)

But my winner is ...

Harry Potter!

I don’t think that Harry Potter, or “the boy who lived”, needs much of a presentation... we all know the story about the orphan Harry, who, on his eleventh birthday, learns he is a wizard and gets a visit from Hagrid who tells him he’s been accepted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. At Hogwarts Harry practices magic under the guidance of the kindly headmaster Albus Dumbledore and other school professors along with his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. Harry also discovers that he is already famous throughout the magical community, and that his fate is tied with that of Lord Voldemort – the internationally feared Dark Wizard and murderer of his parents, Lily and James. The series revolve around Harry’s struggle to adapt to the wizarding world and defeat Voldemort.

The reason why I chose Harry Potter as my favorite book adaption is because the movies are not only true to the wonderful, magical universe that J.K. Rowling created, they even expand upon and enrich the novels from which they were adapted. It’s just amazing how they have managed to give life to the setting and characters of the book’s magical world and how many of the world’s best actors that have been part of the film ensemble. It’s also very special to be able to follow the lead actors growing up and growing into their roles as the characters that I love and carries with me in my heart forever. I truly believe that Harry Potter is one of greatest characters of all times, both in the books and in the movies. With her Harry Potter books, J.K. Rowling has helped so many troubled and lonely children, giving them hope and bringing them joy, in a way that is utterly amazing.