Fiction Friday: Recommended Reads- Personal Finance

Managing money can feel like a game where everyone else got the rulebook except you. But the good news? You can catch up. You just might need to do a bit of homework first. Here are a few personal finance books that are both practical and actually engaging.

The Money Answer Book by Dave Ramsay

This book is a quick, no-nonsense Q&A-style guide covering budgeting, debt, investing, and saving. Ramsey’s approach is simple: live below your means, get out of debt, and build wealth the smart way. I loved that this book was so quick and easy to read. It’s just a bunch of relatable questions other people have asked.

Manage Your Money Like a F*cking Grown Up: The Best Money Advice You Never Got by Sam Beckbessinger

Basically the book, I wish I read in school. I felt like Sam understood life as a South African which is what made this so fun for me to read. Packed with humor, real-life examples, and a much-needed dose of reality, this is a book I go back to over and over again.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki 

I know there are often conflicting opinions about this book but what I really liked was looking at the way the two dads thought. My uncle made me read this book as a kid (I don’t know why) but until I reread it as an adult a few years ago, I had no idea how many ideas from this book, I still carry with me today. This is an entertaining read but I do wonder if it is still relatable today.

The Latte Factor: Why You Don’t Have to Be Rich to Live Rich

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say this book changed my life. If you want a mindset shift that makes saving feels effortless, this is the book for you. Despite this title, this book has little to do with coffee. Instead it talks about how to save money in a way that won’t make you feel deprived.

Personal finance does not have to be overwhelming. These books break things down in a way that’s easy to understand and implement. Whether you’re looking to get out of debt, build wealth, or just feel more in control of your finances, there’s something here for you.

My Top 4 South African Beauty Brands

I am OBSESSED with good skin. I had horrible skin as a teen and in my mid-twenties developed horrible under eye lines (I worked Customer Care and it took it’s toll on my skin). Shortly after moving to Marketing, I discovered some AMAZING local beauty brands and lemme tell you they are doing all the things. Here are 4 South African beauty brands I’m obsessed with. If you love supporting local and are looking to take care of your skin, definitely try this brands out.

Switch Beauty

Switch Beauty offers a variety of make-up and skincare items as well as really cute merch. I love their quick delivery and how they made sunscreen effortless by creating a roll-on sunscreen!

Must-Try Items:

#MonoTint – universal lip, eye and cheek tint (This tint adds a subtle but gorgeous hint of colour)

#AirBalm – dewy lip tint (available in a variety of colours, this lip tint allows you to build the colour YOU want with each application)

Standard Beauty

Standard Beauty- available online and in some Clicks stores- offers products for your skin and your hair.

I credit Standard Beauty with my skin. Which is a weird statement to make but it’s true. After I overdid it with actives in my skincare and then had Oratane damage my skin even more, the Standard Beauty Customer Care team helpfully recommended a few products to help me heal my skin barrier. I’ve since pledged my undying loyalty to them.

Must-Try Items:

The mini range (a great way to learn which products work with your skin)

The green range (this range fixes your skin barrier and leaves you with super soft skin)

Silki

Silki offers products for your hair and your skin. What I really love about them is the super colourful packaging. IDK. It makes me happy. My favourite silki products are the serums and the sunscreen. Silki sunscreen was the first sunscreen that I used that didn’t leave me with a white cast and it feels super lightweight which I loved.

Must-Try Items:

SPF30+ Daily Defence Sunscreen (See above)

1% Bakuchiol serum (A plant-based retinol that reduces fine lines and improves skin tone)

Beauty on Tapp

My happy place! Beauty on Tapp offers tons of different skincare brands all under one roof (or website, if you don’t have a store near you). I visited their store recently and it was such an amazing experience I can’t wait to go back.

Must-Try Items:

Anything. Everything. (Might be a good idea to go with a brand you’re familiar with though).

5 Ways to Take Care of Your Mental Health as a Remote Employee

Remote work is great. You can wake up late, skip the commute and work in your gymwear- but while it does come with its perks, the flip side is that all that alone time can take a toll on your mental health.

Without the usual office buzz or face-to-face interactions, it’s easy to slip into unhealthy habits that affect your well-being.

Here are 5 ways to take care of your mental health while working remotely:

1. TAKE YOUR LUNCH BREAK!

Yes, I am shouting at you. That is how strongly I feel about this point.

You might think that you don’t need a break because you’re working from home but this is a huge no-no. Just like you would take a break at the office, it’s crucial to step away from your desk. Use this time to eat something nutritious, relax, or even take a quick walk. Giving your mind a rest can boost your focus and productivity for the rest of the day.

2. Make Time to Go Outside

It’s easy to get stuck in the bubble of your home office, but stepping outside, even for just a few minutes, can do wonders for your mental health. Whether it’s a stroll down the street or just sitting in your backyard, fresh air and a change of scenery help clear your mind and reduce stress. The physical movement also releases endorphins, which are your brain’s natural mood lifters. Plus the longer you WFH, the easier it is to slip into a habit of little to no physical exercise.

3. Chat with Your Colleagues

When you’re working remotely, isolation can creep up on you. It’s important to make time to connect with colleagues, even if it’s just a quick check-in. These virtual coffee breaks or team calls provide a sense of community and help break up the monotony of working solo. Talking to others can provide both emotional support and a welcome distraction from work.

4. Set Clear Boundaries

One of the toughest things about working remotely is finding the balance between work and personal life. Without the physical separation of an office, it can be easy to work late into the night or overextend yourself. Set clear boundaries by creating a dedicated workspace, establishing a fixed work schedule, and sticking to it. When your workday is over, truly disconnect from your job to recharge and enjoy your personal time. Which brings us to our next point….

5. Make Time for Self-Care

Whether it’s doing a quick meditation, stretching, or diving into your favourite book, make time for activities that help you relax and recharge. Your mental health is just as important as your job performance, and taking care of yourself ensures that you stay balanced and productive in the long run.

While remote work offers convenience and several perks, it’s important to invest time and effort into managing your mental health to make the most of it. Taking care of your mental well-being while working remotely is essential for staying productive and happy. By incorporating these simple practices into your routine, you’ll find that remote work can be both fulfilling and sustainable.

Review: Beauty on TApp

I’ve known about the Beauty on TApp website for a while but never bought from them. I have my tried-and-tested skincare brands, and I never quite had enough in my cart to qualify for free shipping. So, when I heard they were opening a store in Durban, I was thrilled.

But then life happened, and I only just got around to visiting.

Walking in felt like stepping into skincare heaven—all my favorite brands and products in ONE place! The best part? They had testers, which meant I could try products before committing. Since I usually judge skincare based on how it feels on my skin, this was the perfect opportunity to explore new brands I’d been considering.

The Gateway store also offers skin consultations for R400, where you get a full skin assessment and product recommendations tailored to your needs.

But what I really want to talk about is the store itself- I was in LOVE! I tried on tons of things before finally settling on the product I came in for (Pastry body wash). I was ready to pay… only to get distracted by an assortment of face masks at the cashier—and then again at the door.

My only regret? I wish I needed more stuff! I overdid it during Black Friday and now have enough skincare to last me the whole year.

If you haven’t checked it out yet, now is the perfect time. Whether you’re looking to restock your staples or explore new finds, Beauty on TApp makes the experience feel like a dream!

Book Review: The Curated Closet by Anuschka Rees

The Curated Closet: A Simple System for Discovering Your Personal Style and Building Your Dream Wardrobe by Anuschka Rees

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book changed my life.

Filled with super helpful tips that will help you declutter your wardrobe while building a collection of clothing that you will love (AND more importantly- actually use!).

I strongly recommend this book to anyone struggling with the dilemma of having “nothing to wear”.

There is a TON of work involved in this book but it is so worth it.

I have 4 cupboards…but mostly use gymwear or PJs (I’m a freelance writer). This book was the push I needed to get the closet I deserved and let go of clothes that I was keeping just because.





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Book Review: The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella

The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Samantha Sweeting wants one thing in life- to become partner at her prestigious law firm.

She’s worked overtime, birthdays, given up holidays. The partnership is almost hers..until it isn’t,
She makes a major mistake that costs the company millions. Unable to handle seeing her dreams die, Samantha walks out.

She ends up on a train and then in the middle of nowhere. When she stops to ask for directions, she’s mistaken as an interviewee for a housekeeper position. One thing leads to another and Samantha doesn’t correct the error. Instead, she starts working as a housekeeper.

Samantha has absolutely no domestic skills and this is made clear from the very start.

What interested me about this book is that I felt like I could relate to it. With absolute no domestic skills, the first thing I did when I faced a career setback was start cooking. So it was fun to see someone else go through that strange transition.

Like most of Sophie Kinsella’s books, this was a funny read. It really pulled me in and I couldn’t go to sleep until I had finished this book.
I would give it 10 stars if I could because it was that good.

The characters were lively and entertaining, there’s some small town vibes which I always love and of course a hot love interest.

What more could you want?



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Must Read Fairytale Retellings

Title: Alias Hook

Author: Lisa Jensen

Genre: Fantasy

Based On: Peter Pan

My Opinion: Before this book I couldn’t care less about Hook. I loved the character in Once Upon a Time but that was about as far as any nice feelings towards him go. But this book sucked me in and now I’m a fan. With great worldbuilding and fully fleshed characters, I was sad to finish this book. Send more Hook stories my way, please. Thanks

“Every child knows how the story ends. The wicked pirate captain is flung overboard, caught in the jaws of the monster crocodile who drags him down to a watery grave. But it was not yet my time to die. It’s my fate to be trapped here forever, in a nightmare of childhood fancy, with that infernal, eternal boy.”

Meet Captain James Benjamin Hook, a witty, educated Restoration-era privateer cursed to play villain to a pack of malicious little boys in a pointless war that never ends. But everything changes when Stella Parrish, a forbidden grown woman, dreams her way to the Neverland in defiance of Pan’s rules. From the glamour of the Fairy Revels, to the secret ceremonies of the First Tribes, to the mysterious underwater temple beneath the Mermaid Lagoon, the magical forces of the Neverland open up for Stella as they never have for Hook. And in the pirate captain himself, she begins to see someone far more complex than the storybook villain.

With Stella’s knowledge of folk and fairy tales, she might be Hook’s last chance for redemption and release if they can break his curse before Pan and his warrior boys hunt her down and drag Hook back to their neverending game. Alias Hook by Lisa Jensen is a beautifully and romantically written adult fairy tale.

Title: The Wrath and the Dawn (The Wrath and the Dawn #1)

Author: Renee Ahdieh

Genre: Fantasy

Based On: One Thousand and One Nights

My Opinion: Even if you haven’t read One Thousand and One Nights (I hadn’t), the premise of this book is too good to pass up.

With lush world-building and intense sizzling chemistry, this is a must-read for fans of fantasy romance or the enemies to lovers trope.

In a land ruled by a murderous boy-king, each dawn brings heartache to a new family. Khalid, the eighteen-year-old Caliph of Khorasan, is a monster. Each night he takes a new bride only to have a silk cord wrapped around her throat come morning. When sixteen-year-old Shahrzad’s dearest friend falls victim to Khalid, Shahrzad vows vengeance and volunteers to be his next bride. Shahrzad is determined not only to stay alive, but to end the caliph’s reign of terror once and for all.

Night after night, Shahrzad beguiles Khalid, weaving stories that enchant, ensuring her survival, though she knows each dawn could be her last. But something she never expected begins to happen: Khalid is nothing like what she’d imagined him to be. This monster is a boy with a tormented heart. Incredibly, Shahrzad finds herself falling in love. How is this possible? It’s an unforgivable betrayal. Still, Shahrzad has come to understand all is not as it seems in this palace of marble and stone. She resolves to uncover whatever secrets lurk and, despite her love, be ready to take Khalid’s life as retribution for the many lives he’s stolen. Can their love survive this world of stories and secrets?

Title: A Curse so Dark and Lonely (Cursebreakers #1)

Author: Brigid Kemmerer

Genre: Fantasy

Based On: Beauty and the Beast

My Opinion: This is one of the best Beauty and the Beast retelling I’ve ever read (and I would know because I’ve read so many). This book stays very close to the original story with enough of a world built around it that you’re still invested in seeing the series through.

I loved this series. The characters are well-developed and there’s so much going on that you really feel like you’re in another world.

It once seemed so easy to Prince Rhen, the heir to Emberfall. Cursed by a powerful enchantress to repeat the autumn of his eighteenth year over and over, he knew he could be saved if a girl fell for him. But that was before he learned that at the end of each autumn, he would turn into a vicious beast hell-bent on destruction. That was before he destroyed his castle, his family, and every last shred of hope.

Nothing has ever been easy for Harper. With her father long gone, her mother dying, and her brother barely holding their family together while constantly underestimating her because of her cerebral palsy, she learned to be tough enough to survive. But when she tries to save someone else on the streets of Washington, DC, she’s instead somehow sucked into Rhen’s cursed world.

Break the curse, save the kingdom.

A prince? A monster? A curse? Harper doesn’t know where she is or what to believe. But as she spends time with Rhen in this enchanted land, she begins to understand what’s at stake. And as Rhen realizes Harper is not just another girl to charm, his hope comes flooding back. But powerful forces are standing against Emberfall . . . and it will take more than a broken curse to save Harper, Rhen, and his people from utter ruin.

Title: Hunted

Author: Megan Spooner

Genre: Fantasy

Based On: Beauty and the Beast

My Opinion: This is another great Beauty and the Beast retelling.

The character of “Beauty”, Yeva is a skilled huntress which made for a fun twist.

The end had me a bit confused but besides that this was an absolutely incredible book.

Beauty knows the Beast’s forest in her bones—and in her blood. After all, her father is the only hunter who’s ever come close to discovering its secrets.

So when her father loses his fortune and moves Yeva and her sisters out of their comfortable home among the aristocracy and back to the outskirts of town, Yeva is secretly relieved. Out in the wilderness, there’s no pressure to make idle chatter with vapid baronessas…or to submit to marrying a wealthy gentleman.

But Yeva’s father’s misfortune may have cost him his mind, and when he goes missing in the woods, Yeva sets her sights on one the creature he’d been obsessively tracking just before his disappearance. The Beast.

Deaf to her sisters’ protests, Yeva hunts this strange creature back into his own territory—a cursed valley, a ruined castle, and a world of magical creatures that Yeva’s only heard about in fairy tales. A world that can bring her ruin, or salvation.

Title: Cruel Beauty

Author: Rosamund Hodge

Genre: Fantasy

Based On: Beauty and the Beast

My Opinion: Listen…if a book is good, it’s good. IDK what to tell you. Beauty and the Beast retellings just work.

From the second the “Beast” is included here, it’s hard not to fall in love with him. He’s very charming.

The only reason why this book isn’t my favourite retelling is because the castle was magical and very confusing to me (obviously I am not meant for an enchanted castle)

Since birth, Nyx has been betrothed to the evil ruler of her kingdom—all because of a foolish bargain struck by her father. And since birth, she has been in training to kill him.

With no choice but to fulfill her duty, Nyx resents her family for never trying to save her and hates herself for wanting to escape her fate. Still, on her seventeenth birthday, Nyx abandons everything she’s ever known to marry the all-powerful, immortal Ignifex. Her plan? Seduce him, destroy his enchanted castle, and break the nine-hundred-year-old curse he put on her people.

But Ignifex is not at all what Nyx expected. The strangely charming lord beguiles her, and his castle—a shifting maze of magical rooms—enthralls her.

As Nyx searches for a way to free her homeland by uncovering Ignifex’s secrets, she finds herself unwillingly drawn to him. Even if she could bring herself to love her sworn enemy, how can she refuse her duty to kill him? With time running out, Nyx must decide what is more important: the future of her kingdom, or the man she was never supposed to love.

Book Review: The Last Battle by C.S Lewis

The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I had to brace myself going into this book since it was the last book in my boxset.

The Last Battle opens with a toxic friendship between a not so clever donkey and a very devious monkey.
When the monkey comes across a lion skin, he invents a scheme that changes all of Narnia for the worse.
Aslan summons the Friends of Narnia to help but this time it looks like they might be too late.

This was a great book but it felt like all it did was make me cry and smile and feel all warm in my heart. Over. And over. And over again.

This was a great series that I enjoyed despite my very adult age



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Book Review: The Silver Chair by C.S Lewis

The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I’ve made no secret of my absolute hate for Eustace.

But a mere two seconds into this book and it’s clear that he is a changed person. So when he and Jill are sucked into Narnia and then quickly separated, I was genuinely worried.
Aslan comes in and requests that Jill track down Eustace before the two of them go and locate the lost prince.

At this point, I no longer have any idea what happens in Narnia so it was great being thrown back into a familiar world but with no clue as to what lay ahead. I was also incredibly scared of the witch/creature who kidnapped the prince.

This was my favourite book so far and I cannot wait to see how the series ends.



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Book Review: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chronicles of Narnia, #3)

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


FINALLY A Narnia book I know very little of.

I remember the painting and the ship and that’s it. So I was excited to dive into this one. Edmund and Lucy are staying with their horrid cousin, Eustace for the holidays. I don’t think I’m the type of person to hurt a kid but gosh, I really wanted to punch Eustace. He annoyed me so so much. Take every adult trait I hate and put it in one snotty kid and that’s Eustace. Know-it-all, snobby and no imagination whatsoever (that last part bugs me because despite his lack of imagination Eustace ends up in Narnia and it’s clear that he and Narnia are NOT a fit!).

When Eustace, Edmund and Lucy end up back in Narnia, they end up on the Dawn Treader, Prince Caspian’s ship.

Prince Caspian is on a journey to find the seven lords- nobleman who supported his father and who his uncle banished. Thing is, it’s been a looong time and these lords could be dead.
(I feel like Caspian just wanted to get out on the sea for fun but okay).

I think this might have been my favourite book in the series. There was always so much happening and it was so entertaining. I couldn’t get through it fast enough.

I’ve reached the stage where it feels like Narnia is my home and it’s really going to hurt me to move on from this series.



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