Treat yourself, in honor of my birthday!
Happy Friday of my birthday week, friends! (My birthday was last weekend, I spent it on the beach in Mexico, it was lovely). By the time you read this I will likely be in the air on a flight to Boston, where I'll start the East Coast leg of the Royal Holiday tour! I'll be doing the Romance keynote at the Boston Book Festival on Sunday, October 20th at 4:30, and I'm very excited to see New England fall for a few days. Then I head to New York on Monday October 21st to Word Bookstore to talk about books with two of my favorites, the writing team superstars Christina Lauren (authors of many many books, including one of my favorites of the year, The Unhoneymooners, and the new on Tuesday Twice In A Blue Moon) moderated by Hannah Orenstein, author of Playing with Matches and Love at First Like. From there I go to Baltimore for an event at 7:30 on Tuesday, October 22nd to the delightful Greedy Reads bookstore, and then at 6:30 on Wednesday, October 23rd, I'll be in Washington DC at East City Bookshop with the fantastic Andie J. Christopher, author of the forthcoming Not the Girl You Marry. And on Thursday October 24th I head down to Winston-Salem, North Carolina (a city I've never been!) to go to Bookmarks and talk to Victoria Kantra, of the forthcoming Meg & Jo (a book right up my alley). And finally I head to Austin to go back to the Texas Book Festival on October 26th, where I'll have one panel with Christina Lauren, and another with Casey McQuiston, author of Red, White, and Royal Blue, and I feel very lucky to get to chat about books with so many incredible authors and will hopefully get to meet many of you!
The night I got back from Mexico I decided to splurge and use one of the more expensive sheet masks in my stash, the Tatcha Luminous Dewy Skin Sheet Mask. Now look -- I enjoy sheet masks a whole bunch, but mostly for the soothing factor; I find them very relaxing, and if they happen to make my skin look or feel a little better, what a nice bonus. But oh my God, this mask might be one of the best sheet masks I've ever used (the other is Sulwhasoo, which is outrageously expensive and I got as a gift so put this in your back pocket for a major splurge). I put the Tatcha on, left it on for like 30 minutes, took it off and let everything sink in for a bit, and then put the Huxley sleeping mask I told you guys a few weeks ago about on top of it and went to sleep, and my god my skin has been incredible all week that I'm mad this expensive mask works so well, which means I'll have to buy more.
Another thing I spent not very much money on recently that has made me so happy is a spa towel. I got the idea after going to a spa, putting on one of those towels they had with the elastic at the top, and thinking "I wish I had one of these for at home." So I went home and googled it and now I do, and it is the best thing to lounge around in when you want to pretend you're at a spa but you are not. Put a plush robe on top and you can spend your whole weekend on the couch like that. I got this one, which comes in a whole range of sizes, but you can find a ton of them online.
My book recs this week are all of those books linked above -- order or preorder them or get them from your library! And I did not make my birthday cake this year, but if I did, it would be one of my two favorite cakes, both of which I've given you before: this double chocolate layer cake I gave you this time last year or yellow cake with chocolate frosting which I gave you a recipe for two years ago (though I think I've changed my mind and like a dense chocolate buttercream for that instead of the ganache).
Have a great weekend, friends, and I hope I see some of you soon!
Jasmine
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Buy The Wedding Date, The Proposal, The Wedding Party and Royal Holiday!