Welcome to another wrap-up! Today, we are discussing *drum roll* APRIL BOOKS! I had a huge month planned for April of around 5 books, but I read 3, so I ultimately failed. The books I read were: Blood of Wonderland, by Colleen Oakes Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy, by Cassandra Clare Lady Midnight, by Cassandra Clare If you want a more in-depth talk, be sure to watch my April Wrap-Up and May TBR, which is coming soon to my YouTube channel. (check out the SOCIAL MEDIA tab for more!) Thoughts: This was a solid read! I enjoyed it, but it isn't my favorite Alice retelling. This is the second book in the Queen of Hears saga, which is a series about the Queen of Hearts, before she became the Queen of Hearts! I do enjoy these books, but they're more of a guilty pleasure for me rather than a series that I am fully devoted to. I gave this 3.5/5 stars on the Goodreads rating, and 8.5/10 on my personal scale. Thoughts: I started this book because Christine (polandbananasBOOKS on YouTube) said she would recommend reading this before Lady Midnight, which is what I did! I loved seeing all of our characters from TMI and TID coming back and all of their interactions! I won't go into detail about what this is about since it spoils the entire TMI series, but I did really enjoy it! I gave it 5/5 stars on Goodreads and 9/10 on my personal scale. Thoughts: Another great read! This book took me forever to read, and it had nothing to do with the content; I believe it was because I had just read TFtSA and I needed a break from the Shadowhunter world, but I did finish this and did love it a lot! Unless you have no interest in reading TMI or TID, (which you should--TID is soooo wonderful and TMI is great as well) don't pick this up yet because it will spoil you, and it doesn't give a huge introduction into the world, because we are focused on two parabatai who have grown up in the world of Shadowhunters. I loved this book and the characters, and can't wait for Lord of Shadows!
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Hello lovely readers! As we come together for a March Wrap-Up, can I just say that March was a flop-a-doo of a reading month for me. I had such great plans! But, alas, they all fell into the trash and I was left alone with a grand total of 5 books! So, without further ado, let's get into my Wrap-Up! Books Read: Last Year's Mistake, by Gina Ciocca; Red Queen, by Victoria Aveyard; Glass Sword, by Victoria Aveyard; King's Cage, by Victoria Aveyard; Saving Red, by Sonya Sones. Books I Started But Didn't Finish: Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen; The Unexpected Everything, by Morgan Matson What I'm Currently Reading: Lady Midnight, by Cassandra Clare Last Year's Mistake Thoughts: This book was a satisfying contemporary. However, I did have some problems with the story. One, I thought that the main character was pretty clueless at times. I know romance contemporaries are meant to be cute and a bit cheesy, there is a line that I believe should be drawn. Sometimes in our favorite contemporaries, the character doesn't realize the love interest likes them. This was one of those cases. Another problem I had was that some events were just too perfectly wrapped up, or happened so conveniently that I just couldn't help but notice it. Other than that, the book was a good one and I was pleased with it. Overall, a 3/5 star rating! Red Queen, Glass Sword, and King's Cage Thoughts (wrapping up as a series total): This series is not the most orginial series in the universe, but it is simple to understand and very solid! I honestly give it an A+ for enjoyment and it deals with ALL OF THE THINGS!! There's love, betrayal, loss, pain, confusion, everything! In each book, we see Mare, our main character, grow as a person. She suffers, she prevails, and it's wonderful, seeing this character grow. In the 3rd book, King's Cage, I had trouble getting through it (It took me around 2 weeks, which slowed me down), and I believe it was becasue I chose to read the whole series in order and I was just tiring of the world, which happens. Overall though, I love this series! RQ: 5/5 stars GS: 5/5 stars KC: 4/5 stars Saving Red Thoughts: This book was amazing. I recieved an ARC of this book in a giveaway offered by EpicReads on their website, before the book was released. I hadn't gotten to it until now. And, I'm going to be honest, it was awesome. In the novel, we are exposed to a homeless girl, who is dealing with problems that are discovered in the book. Basically, our main character Molly strives to get Red home to her family by Christmas, but is having trouble due to challenges that I won't talk about. Molly is slightly assisted by Cristo, a boy she meets at a fair. This book was so eye-opening. It is written in verse, which makes the story all the more beautiful, and I really enjoyed this book. 4/5 stars overall. In January, I read a lot of books! A lot more than I expected, and I honestly can't believe it! I planned to take it slowly so that I could get used to being back in school and getting into the new year, but I was pleasantly surprised by my reading month, so here are the books I read!
Quick List of Books (in order of first read-to last read)... Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake, Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff, Sing by Vivi Greene, P.S. I Like You by Kasie West, This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab, The Romantics by Leah Konen, We Are Still Tornadoes by Michael Kun and Susan Mullen, A Thousand Pieces of You by Claudia Gray, Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo, Between the Lines by Jodi Picoult and Samantha Van Leer, The Queen of Bright and Shiny Things by Ann Aguirre, Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo, and The Mother-Daughter Book Camp by Heather Vogel Fredrick What I Liked and What I Didn't on each book... Three Dark Crowns: 4/5 stars. I loved the whole plot and the main characters! The story was rich and the characters had their flaws but were very relatable! I didn't like that the side characters weren't very well developed. This was simply because I couldn't keep track of what side characters were which, their names, and what roles they played in the story. Illuminae: 4/5 stars. The ship names, the side characters, and the very different events that went on at the same time were hard to follow. Other than that, the book was great, the humor was wonderful, and the concept and setting were awesome! Sing: 3/5 stars. This book was very good! The character was a great narrator and I enjoyed looking in on her life for 300 or so pages. However, the ending wasn't really what I expected, and I didn't really think it was a finish, more just like the end of a chapter. However, overall, I did enjoy this book. P.S. I Like You: 5/5 stars. I love Kasie West! She is a wonderful contemporary author! This book didn't disappoint! I listened to it on audiobook and the narrator was good! I loved the exchange of letters and the characters were great! I also loved our main character's family drama, because it was relatable and I enjoyed that aspect. This Savage Song: 4/5 stars. I really loved how this book showed how there isn't a fine line between good and bad. I loved our character development and how they became friends. I found the lack of romance refreshing and I enjoyed just reading a book about friendship! I thought the world was great and the range of monsters and how they were made fascinating! The Romantics: 4/5 stars. This book was very good! I loved reading from the perspective of Love! Also, it is set in my home state, NC! I loved being able to see the setting in my head and being able to picture where things were going on! I also enjoyed our characters and their struggles. We Are Still Tornadoes: 4/5 stars. Once again, one of our characters was attending college in NC, and I enjoyed that a lot! I loved the friendship that was shown and represented in the letters that tell the story. i thought our characters were very likable and I indentified with them. The humor was spot on as well! A Thousand Pieces of You: 4/5 stars. This book was solid! I loved how, instead of the stererotypical time travel book we experienced dimensional travel. I loved seeing all of the alternate dimensions of our characters. I also loved the major plot twist! This book was very good. Six of Crows: 5/5 stars. This book was incredible! I loved how ruthless and awesome our characters are! I really appreciated how diverse and complicated they were, and how that impacted their lives. I honestly couldn't get enough of this book. Between the Lines: 3/5 stars. This book was pretty good. I set my expectations extremely high for this book. Promise of a book character coming to life had me enthused, but I wasn't completely satisfied with this book. While it was enjoyable, I felt the plot drag on and the characters weren't very relatable. The Queen of Bright and Shiny Things: 5/5 stars. This book was impactful and powerful and wonderful. It delt with abuse and abandonment and love and trust and I loved it all. I'm not into a lot of abuse novels, just because I was raised in a good home and am scared to really experince abuse, but I had no idea this book held what it did, and was extremely surprised and really loved this book. Crooked Kingdom: 5/5 stars. This book was amazing. I loved the characters and the plot and the setting and everything. Love love love. Mother-Daughter Book Camp: 4/5 stars. I was first invested in this series a few years ago, in elementary school. It was so awesome and the characters were different but so wonderfully human, and I fell in love with them because they fell in love with books. Classics, to be exact. I thought the series was over, but thankfully it wasn't! This book was great, and the series is too! Overall, 2016 was a good year for reading for me! Lots of new series and new books that I thoroughly enjoyed! However, there was also the occasional...not-so-good book. This doesn't mean I don't recommend the books to you, it's just they weren't the right read for me. So, if you share/disagree with my opinions, tell me so, just in a nice way! Anywho, lets get onto the list! These are in no particular order, and they weren't all released in 2016. Here we go!
First off, I would like to confirm that I haven't seen this movie, so this review is not based on the quality differences between the movie vs. the book. However, I didn't enjoy this book. I flew through it, considering the size. Basically, it's about a boy who is an alcoholic, and he is in denial about this addiction. He has a girlfriend, who breaks up with him in around the middle of the book because he doesn't take the relationship seriously. Then, he meets a new girl, who supposedly changes him. While I so wanted to love this book, I could just not get over our main male character. It seemed, almost, that he never wanted to change his ways! The ending was not satisfying. Of course, I respect everyone's opinion, but I really did not enjoy this book. 2. Cruel Beauty, by Rosamund Hodge Cruel Beauty was another book I really wanted to enjoy! The cover and the plot seemed so amazing! This was my first Beauty and the Beast retelling. While I am glad I read this book, I didn't really enjoy it. I think that the reason for this was because of the world. The world was quite confusing, in my opinion. It was almost based on something similar to Greek mythology? I put a question mark because it's quite hard to explain. The characters, I felt, weren't very relatable. I really, really, really wanted to enjoy this novel, I just didn't. I will most likely read Cruel Beauty again, just so I can confirm my beliefs, or disprove them (hopefully the latter). 3. The Lifeboat Clique, by Kathy Parks The Lifeboat Clique was a novel that I hadn't heard much about when I picked it up. I had just went into my library to pick up a few books, when I saw it on the New Arrivals shelf. I had previously heard about it the Epic Reads BookTube channel, and wanted to check it out. I had no expectations, honestly. I enjoyed the overall message of the book. While I live in the eastern US, and have never experienced an earthquake or tsunami of any sorts, it was hard for me to imagine the setting of the novel. I am in no way criticizing the setting, I'm simply stating that while I've never experienced something this extreme, it was hard for me to imagine if what happened in this book (a tsunami hits a home where teenagers are partying; most die, and our main character is stuck on a raft of sorts with her ex-best friend and her popular friends) is actually possible. I couldn't imagine it, honestly. I did, however, appreciate the flashbacks we receive in the book to figure out how our main character lost her best friend. 4. Heir of Fire, by Sarah J Maas I know I will likely get quite a lot of disagreement or hate for this, but I didn't enjoy Heir of Fire as I'd hoped I would. It was slow for me to get through. I really enjoyed Throne of Glass and Crown of Midnight, I just wasn't a huge fan of Heir of Fire, and I still haven't picked Queen of Shadows up. I'm going to be honest though--I know what I don't like: When books, and even TV shows, take on a new "plot" than was first advertised, I don't tend to enjoy it. If I think the book is meant to be lighthearted, I don't want a big, terrible event happening. And, though I won't spoil anything, the Throne of Glass series did this, in my opinion. I want so badly to love Throne of Glass, I just don't enjoy book that take a different, more complicated turn. That's completely a bookish character flaw that I have. I will try to resume Throne of Glass, because I love Sarah's other series, and want to love this one. 5. If I Stay, by Gayle Forman If I Stay is another book that I couldn't completely invest myself in and relate to, primarily becasue I've never been in this situation. I've never had an out-of-body experience or been in a wreck or had brain damage, so I can't completely relate to the events in this story. But to me, I just didn't really enjoy this book. It seemed almost repetitive, I guess? I don't really know how to explain...One thing I did enjoy, though, were the flashbacks that we experienced. I'm sorry I can't elaborate more, I just don't exactly know how to describe how I felt while and after reading this. 6. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, by Jesse Andrews I read Me and Earl and the Dying Girl toward the beginning of the year, so there won't be as much detail in this mini-review thing as there had been in the past ones. One thing that really made me not love this book was the language. I know that this is not a good reason (Belive me, I know), but I am a religious person, so I don't curse. And while I appreciated the message (be thankful for the time and things you have), I just cringed at the language. But this isn't the sole reason I disliked the book. I just felt the characters were just not really relatable. I also aprreciated that our main character, or his best friend, were not really falling in love with the "Dying Girl," because, in this type of book, there is always a romance element, and I appreciated that nothing like that occured in this one. Thank you all so much for reading all of my thoughts! If you have any agreements or disagreements, please let me know in the comments or privately by my Contact tab above! *Please be nice! :)* If you like blogs like this, let me know, and I'll do more content similar to it! |
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