Booklover Book Reviews Recap

September Recap Well September turned out to be a big month here at Booklover Book Reviews, featuring an unexpected trial to dampen our anniversary celebrations.

Firstly, my apologies to those who have not been able to access my site over the last few days. On 29 September I was notified by Google that my site had been hacked and unbeknownst to me contained malicious content – it was blacklisted.

I quickly enlisted the help of a WordPress expert who cleaned up the site, added another security plugin and re-submitted to Google for review within 24 hours. Google then quickly removed that warning, which meant their systems rated Booklover Book Reviews safe again – phew.

It seems it was some form of malware, but I cannot say what exactly that code was intended to do. Suffice to say, I’ve run scans on my devices and they are all fine, as hopefully are those of my valued readers.

Once the site was cleaned up I also decided to take the opportunity to move it to a new hosting service provider who list malware protection as one of their strengths – a large exercise in itself – and so far, so good. There still remain a few things I need to tweak after the change, streamline/reactivate a few plugins etc, so please bear with me while I do that over the next week.

Now, back to normal programming! Let’s recap what happened here on Booklover Book Reviews in September.

Books Featured

Clicking on the book cover will open that post in a new window.

Disclosure: If you click a link in this post and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission.

6th Anniversary Celebration Giveaway Winner

Booklover Book Reviews 6th anniversary giveaway Time sure does fly when you’re doing something you love, and the ongoing interaction with and support from readers and writers is such a big part of that. And so as a small token of my appreciation, I offered everyone a chance to bring another book into your home, on me.

The winner can choose to receive either a $30AUD Bookworld Gift Card, or a book of their choice from Book Depository valued up to $20USD.

The winner is: Vicki S N

Congratulations Vicki – check your inbox for my email seeking your decision regarding prize selection.

Other Bookish Banter

I had a fantastic time at the Brisbane Writers Festival in early September, sharing my experiences in these articles:

We looked at 10 October Book Releases that have caught my eye and Emma Viskic joined us to discuss her debut novel Resurrection Bay. We also welcomed some more interesting new titles into our home.

After several attempts, both Darkness and Day by Ivy Compton-Burnett and Who is Mr Plutin? by Rebecca Strong were assigned to the DNF pile unfortunately.

The Aussie Author Challenge 2015 is going strong, with a total of 161 reviews published by 26 registered participants so far.

And we published Issue 39 and Issue 40 of our Booklover Book Reviews & Bites Newsletter – subscribe to have the next issue delivered straight to your inbox.

What is planned for October?

If all goes to plan I’ll be launching a Booklover Book Reviews App, a way to read our website directly on your device rather than through your web browser — more on that soon.