Weekly Wrap Up #50

Another day, another weekly wrap up post. But it’s progress towards catching up at least??

Here’s what I read between September 23rd and 29th.

Books read: 7
Pages read: 2,990 pages

#1: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (Reread)

Audience: Adult
Genre: Classic

Plot summary: A doctor in training decides to build a man out of body parts and is shocked when it comes to life and starts murdering his family when he’s a neglectful parent.

Thoughts: So here’s the thing about Frankenstein: the movie versions are generally very lurching monster-y. Very “Vincent Frankenstein is the hero”-y. And Y’ALL. Did the people who made them even read the book?? Because let’s be real here, Vincent Frankenstein is a hot mess of stupidity. He literally creates a life and then immediately runs away when things don’t turn out as he expects them to. It’s a very philosophical book a lot of the time, and while I do enjoy it, it also makes me want to throw things because Frankenstein is such an infuriating character. So.

Rating: 3 stars

#2: Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant

Audience: Adult
Genre: Horror

Plot summary: An expedition to search for mermaids in the Marianas Trench goes horribly wrong.

Thoughts: Oh man. I put off reading this book for ages because I’d heard it was ridiculously scary and I am a wuss. But I finally jumped in and I really really enjoyed this one. It’s full of diversity, full of twists and turns. Definitely don’t get attached to any of the characters. It was hella creepy and full of gore. But I didn’t find it ridiculously scary. There were a couple of scary moments, for sure. But on the whole, I mostly found this ridiculously gripping and just a hell of an enjoyable read.

Rating: 4 stars

#3: Stallo by Stefan Spjut

Audience: Adult
Genre: Horror-ish?

Plot summary: When a child goes missing, a young woman who’s spent her life hunting for mythical trolls in Sweden decides that the trolls might be responsible for the disappearance.

Thoughts: Oof. This book is ENORMOUS – it’s over 600 pages – and honestly? There wasn’t that much story here. It dragged from start to finish. It was probably a good 200 pages longer than it needed to be. There were a lot of irrelevant details in the story (I literally never needed to know anything about snus and now I know a lot about snus…). And there were very few explanations offered for the reasons behind the abductions, and I just…yeah. I didn’t care. I feel like maybe things got lost in translation with this one, and that if you have some background in Swedish folklore, it’ll be a more engaging read? Maybe?? IDK.

Rating: 3 stars

#4: Wicked and the Wallflower by Sarah MacLean

Audience: Adult
Genre: Romance

Plot summary: A young woman attempting to attract an aristocratic husband to regain her place in society finds herself falling for a devilish rake with a bad reputation.

Thoughts: I bought this while suffering from Tessa Dare withdrawal symptoms, and it was a hell of a lot of fun. The characters were delightful, the writing was light and fluffy and funny, there was plenty of swoon and plenty of plot besides the romance. I’m definitely looking forward to reading the next book in this series!

Rating: 4 stars

#5: Devil’s Advocate by Jonathan Maberry

Audience: YA
Genre: Paranormal

Plot summary: 15 year old Dana Scully has moved to a new town and finds herself dealing with paranormal weirdness that makes her increasingly sceptical.

Thoughts: I think the best way to describe this is “great idea, average execution”. It’s an X-Files origin story, telling us how 15 year old Dana Scully became a sceptic about the paranormal. Which sounds AWESOME. Except that at no point did this feel like Dana Scully. And I definitely don’t buy the idea of Teenage!Scully having a bunch of psychic hallucinations and then just forgetting all about it?? And I definitely don’t remember her having any martial arts skills… So yeah. If this hadn’t been an X-Files origin story, I wouldn’t have read it. I kind of wish I hadn’t bothered, to be honest…

Rating: 2.5 stars

#6: Dracula by Bram Stoker (Reread)

Audience: Adult
Genre: Classic

Plot summary: A real estate agent heads to Romania on the request of Count Dracula, who’s looking for a house in England. Weirdness occurs.

Thoughts: I think I enjoyed this more on this particular reread than I have in the past. It’s a surprisingly action-packed story, and I kind of love that the big bad of the piece, Count Dracula, spends so little time actually on the page. The changing narratives work very effectively, and it was far, far creepier than I remembered.

Rating: 3.5 stars.

#7: The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzi Lee

Audience: YA
Genre: Historical Fiction

Plot summary: The sequel to The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue features Monty’s sister, Felicity, going on her own European adventure, this time in search of a medical education.

Thoughts: It’s no secret that I adore The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue with every fibre of my being, so it’s perhaps not surprising that I was a little hesitant going into this one. Would it live up to the first one? Would I love Felicity as much as I love Monty? How much would Monty and Percy be present in the story?

Thankfully, I loved this basically from the get go. There’s plenty of Monty and Percy. Felicity is fierce and determined and stubborn and I loved her a lot. There’s plenty of diversity in the story, including Felicity’s asexuality, and it’s all brilliantly done. I loved the writing and the setting and the characters and the discussion of the complexities of female friendship and the examination of how there’s no single way to be a strong woman. Basically? It was everything I wanted it to be.

Rating: 5 stars

What have you been reading recently?

Weekly Wrap Up #42

I had grand plans to catch up at least a little bit this past week. Instead, I developed the cold from Hell and have been quietly (and melodramatically) dying instead. YAY.

So, while I quietly die on the sofa watching Stargate SG-1, here’s what I read between July 29th and August 4th.

Books read: 9
Pages read: 3,194 pages

#1: Broken by Karin Slaughter (reread)

Audience: Adult
Genre: Thriller

Plot summary: The fourth book in the Will Trent series features a return to Grant County when a young woman is found dead in a lake near campus.

Thoughts: This was a really interesting addition to the Will Trent series, because even though it’s very much a Will Trent book, it felt more like Will was stepping into the Grant County series than anything else. Characters from that series return in droves and it was fascinating to see them through Will’s eyes. I loved seeing Sara’s family again, and it reaffirmed for me just how much I would like to never see Lena Adams on the page ever again because she is the actual worst.

The mystery here was decent, if a little rushed towards the end, and it definitely gave the opportunity to wrap up some loose ends in Grant County, but I have to say that I’m not sorry to see the back of it.

Rating: 4 stars

#2: Paper and Fire by Rachel Caine (reread)

Audience: YA
Genre: Dystopian

Plot summary: The sequel to Ink and Bone features Jess and his friends on a rescue mission.

Thoughts: This series is absolutely phenomenal and if you haven’t read it, you really REALLY need to. The world is amazing, the characters are fantastic, the writing is fabulous. Basically? This book raises the stakes in a whole new way, and I loved absolutely everything about this.

Rating: 5 stars

#3: Dr. Strange Beard by Penny Reid

Audience: Adult
Genre: Romance

Plot summary: The fifth book in the Winston Brothers series features an undercover FBI agent, a vet, and a ton of donuts.

Thoughts: This series is super fluffy and adorable and I really love the sibling relationships throughout. I loved that this one jumped forward several years so that the relationships from the previous books have progressed naturally and Rosco is more grown up than he was in the other books in the series.

This was possibly my favourite of the series so far, partly because it’s more crime-centric than the others and partly because the relationship was SO STINKING CUTE. I basically smiled the whole way through it.

Rating: 4 stars

#4: Magic Burns by Ilona Andrews (reread)

Audience: Adult
Genre: Urban fantasy

Plot summary: The second book in the Kate Daniels series features a magic flare and two gods vying for rebirth…

Thoughts: This series is honestly my favourite series of all time ever. Kate is a sassy little shit and a monumental badass. The relationships in this series are phenomenal, whether they be friendships, parent-child relationships, or romantic relationships. It’s action-packed, full of humour and gore, and honestly I just want someone to turn this series into a TV show so that I can see Kate using a vampire’s fangs as a hole punch please and thank you.

Rating: 4 stars

#5: Chain Letter by Christopher Pike (reread)

Audience: YA
Genre: Horror

Plot summary: A group of friends driving home from a party hit someone and bury the body in the desert. A year later, they start getting threatening letters in the mail from someone claiming to know what they did…

Thoughts: So here’s the thing: this book is actually two books in one – Chain Letter and its sequel Chain Letter: The Ancient Evil. Originally published in the 1980s, these have been modernised slightly for a new audience and published in a bind up. And honestly? They shouldn’t have bothered updating it. It just meant that there were awkward mentions of mobile phones or email, but none of it felt authentic because people would still pick up the landline and dial a number to contact someone.

That said, Chain Letter itself wasn’t terrible. It was a pretty decent YA horror story. It’s quite similar to I Know What You Did Last Summer in a lot of ways, and while the characters were pretty forgettable, the final reveal was one I didn’t see coming.

The Ancient Evil, on the other hand, was a big ol’ steaming turd. The things the kids were told to do jumped from, like, saying they cheated on a test or painting over the school mascot to killing animals or setting fire to their siblings. It went from being a creepy-ish horror story to a full on paranormal possession story, and I was 100% not here for it. So really, it was more like a 3 star rating for Chain Letter and a 1 star rating for The Ancient Evil.

Rating: 2 stars

#6: The Undesired by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

Audience: Adult
Genre: Thriller

Plot summary: In the 1970s, two boys at a youth detention centre in Iceland turn up dead. Decades later, a single father is tasked with investigating their deaths. It starts to seem like the deaths might be linked to the death of his ex-wife a few years earlier…

Thoughts: I really REALLY like Yrsa Sigurdardottir’s books. Like, a lot. They’re well written and creepy and compelling. Even this one, where I didn’t love the jumping between two time periods stuff, was pretty freaking readable.

This was definitely full of twists and turns that I didn’t see coming, and the ending completely blew my mind. That said, this did at times feel a little repetitive, purely because things would happen on the page in the 1970s section and then the investigation in the present day would uncover that same information, so it was like having to read it twice… But that’s a pretty minor niggle.

Rating: 3.5 stars

#7: The Strings of Murder by Oscar de Muriel

Audience: Adult
Genre: Mystery

Plot summary: In 1880s Edinburgh, a violin virtuoso is brutally murdered. Fearing a Ripper copycat, Scotland Yard sends one of their best to investigate. But when he gets there, he finds himself unexpectedly working with a wildcard detective who thinks there might be a paranormal cause of death.

Thoughts: I picked up the fourth book in this series when I was in Scotland a few months ago, and was fully ready to buy it until I realised it was book 4. So obviously I picked this up instead. And it was pretty stinking great. The setting was fantastic, the dynamic between the two detectives was often hilarious, and I enjoyed the writing.

That said, it did feel like it took a liiiiiiiittle too long to get going, and I didn’t love the fact that the narrator kept ending the chapters by saying how things were about to get much worse or how he should have enjoyed the quiet while he had it, simply because it got rid of any sense of danger for the character because he was reflecting on past events. That said, I’ll probably continue with this series in the future, simply because the setting and the characters were so great.

Rating: 3.5 stars

#8: Harry Potter: A History of Magic by The British Library

Audience: Adult
Genre: Non-Fiction

Plot summary: The exhibition book from the British Library’s 2017 Harry Potter exhibition.

Thoughts: This book was a Christmas present and I put off reading it for months because I was slightly afraid that it wouldn’t be as magical as I wanted it to be when I wasn’t able to see the exhibition in person. And that was a stupid decision. Because this book? WAS AMAZING.

Each chapter covers a different Hogwarts subject and features that magic in the real world as well as J.K. Rowling’s development of Harry’s world. So for example, the chapter on Divination features Chinese oracle bones, runes, tarot cards as well as Rowling’s planning for the series. The book includes her sketches dating back to 1990, her handwritten notes, her drafts with handwritten edits, and Jim Kay’s stunning images from the illustrated editions.

It is MINDBLOWING how wonderful it is. It’s a beautiful, beautiful book. It adds so much to the magical world and I loved every single second of it from start to finish.

Rating: 5 stars

#9: Magic Strikes by Ilona Andrews (reread)

Audience: Adult
Genre: Urban fantasy

Plot summary: The third book in the Kate Daniels series features Kate discovering that one of her friends has gotten involved in a fighting ring and being forced to investigate it for herself.

Thoughts: This book is so good. So, so good. There’s so much character development here, so much relationship development. The world and the ongoing plot is developed brilliantly in this one, and I love literally everything about it. I will say that the final battle is a liiiiittle more abrupt than I would have liked, but it’s really stinking great. Like, really great.

Rating: 4.25 stars

What have you been reading recently?

Weekly Wrap Up #41

Why am I so bad at this? Why? Whyyyyyyyyyyy??

Obviously, I’m still over a month behind in writing wrap up posts. WOMP. Here’s what I read between July 22nd and 28th.

Books read: 8
Pages read: 2,614 pages

#1: Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews (reread)

Audience: Adult
Genre: Urban fantasy

Plot summary: Kate Daniels, mercenary, finds herself investigating the murder of her guardian. Her investigation finds her caught in the middle between Atlanta’s two factions – the necromancers of The People and the shapeshifters of The Pack.

Thoughts: I love this series so, so much and you’re going to see me gushing about it A LOT in the next six-ish weekly wrap ups because I’m working my way through the series in preparation for the last book coming out TOMORROW. It’s such an incredible world and the characters are an absolute delight. It’s full of badassery and gore and sassiness, and it’s pretty much like Buffy all grown up with more magic, but the Buffy from The Wish in season 3, you know?

Basically, if you like urban fantasy and you haven’t read this series? Read this series.

Rating: 4 stars

#2: Off Leash by Annabeth Albert

Audience: Adult
Genre: Romance

Plot summary: An 11,000 word short story in which Pike and Zach go to Pride.

Thoughts: This is another ficlet sequel, and even though it’s tiny, I liked this a lot. It’s super cute and while it doesn’t add a whole lot of anything to their story, it’s basically a nice little vignette to tack on the end. And sometimes, that’s all you need.

Rating: 3.25 stars

#3: The Door in the Tree by William Corlett (reread)

Audience: Children
Genre: Fantasy

Plot summary: Siblings William, Mary, and Alice return to Golden House for the spring holidays and discover a door in a tree, and unexpected dangers lurking in the forest.

Thoughts: I read and loved this series as a kid, so when we got copies of the first couple of books at work, I figured it was time for a reread. This one is a lot more action-packed than the first, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Although I have to say, there was a surprising amount of violence and animal abuse for a children’s book – it features the kids discovering that someone is capturing badgers in the woods and having them fight to the death against dogs…

Rating: 3.5 stars

#4: Dangerous by Shannon Hale

Audience: YA
Genre: Sci-Fi

Plot summary: When Maisie Brown wins a trip to astronaut boot camp from a competition on a cereal box, she gets a lot more than she bargained for…

Thoughts: Oof. This book had so much promise based on the blurb and the opening chapter. But the further I got into the story, the more completely and utterly ridiculous the story became, to the point where I just wanted the whole thing to be over. It somehow went from a story about astronaut boot camp to a superhero story thanks to alien powers. And then the kids are all killing each other and there’s a hefty dose of romance shoved in for good measure, and it was basically trying to be too many things at once and it did none of them well.

Rating: 2 stars

#5: The Evolution of Claire by Tess Sharpe

Audience: YA
Genre: Sci-Fi?? Contemporary?! Both????

Plot summary: A prequel origin story featuring Jurassic World‘s Claire Dearing getting a summer internship to work at the yet-to-be-opened park.

Thoughts: I’m trash for all things Jurassic Park related, so obviously I read this hoping for dino-mayhem. But here’s the thing: I think this steered far too much into the whole “this is an origin story for teenagers” thing and away from what any teenager actually reading this book would want: action and dinosaurs killing people.

The story took FAR too long to get started – it was pretty unnecessary to have nearly a hundred pages of Claire being picked up from her first year at university and trying to decide which internship to accept and hanging out with her dog. The pacing didn’t get much better when she was on the island, to be honest. There was never really any sense of danger, despite a lot of “Don’t go near the carnivores” spiels from the adults in the story. The romance felt largely unnecessary, the mystery element was resolved in a way that was honestly pretty boring, and by the time dinosaur mayhem was finally included in the story, I just sort of wanted it to be over. So.

Rating: 3 stars

#6: Ink and Bone by Rachel Caine (reread)

Audience: YA
Genre: Dystopian

Plot summary: In a world where the Great Library of Alexandria was never destroyed and now controls all access to information, 17-year-old Jess’s book smuggler father wants him to get an internship at the Library so he has a man on the inside…

Thoughts: This is honestly one of my very favourite young adult series. It’s such a FANTASTIC world – it feels equal parts dystopian, sci-fi, fantasy, steampunk, and historical fiction, despite being set ten years in the future. There’s plenty of diversity, a stack of characters you genuinely care about, and some seriously shady shit going on.

Jess is a fantastic protagonist, and even on my umpteenth reread, I love this story and there are little twists and turns that I don’t remember from my previous reading. It’s an absolute blast.

Rating: 5 stars

#7: The Diabolical Miss Hyde by Viola Carr

Audience: Adult
Genre: Steampunk

Plot summary: Dr Eliza Jekyll is a police surgeon, examining crime scenes and corpses, and helping put killers away. But she has a dark secret – she takes after her father and has her own alter ego in the form of Lizzie Hyde…

Thoughts: I picked this up on a whim from my library’s Overdrive site and I’m so glad I did. It was totally bonkers from start to finish, but in the best possible way. It’s essentially a steampunk murder mystery featuring a Jack the Ripper type character, and I had one hell of a good time reading it.

There’s a romance I didn’t see coming (but which somehow works), there are nonstop twists and turns, there’s plenty of humour, and a hefty dose of steampunk weirdness and gore. In short: it was pretty stinking great.

Rating: 4 stars

#8: Mallee Boys by Charlie Archbold

Audience: YA
Genre: Contemporary

Plot summary: Brothers Sandy and Red live on a farm in the Mallee with their father. Both boys blame themselves for their mother’s death a year before…

Thoughts: Honestly, if this book hadn’t been on the CBCA Shortlist for Older Readers, I would never have read it. The cover is boring, the blurb is boring, the first page is boring. And personally, it didn’t get much better from there.

For a book that covers a year in the lives of two different protagonists, it’s TINY – just over 200 pages – and managed to feel like not enough and too much all at the same time, probably because I didn’t really give a shit about either of the boys. The way it examines male grief is great, but I just…didn’t care about this at all. Also, someone told me that the protagonists were Aboriginal, buuuuuuuut I saw zero signs of that anywhere in the story, so either I missed it or they lied to me. Either way, I’d have been far more interested in THAT story than the one I got.

Rating: 3 stars

What have you been reading recently?

Weekly Wrap Up #29

This past week was…a shitshow, to be honest. Work was super stressful, I got home after 7pm three days in a row, aaaaaand a full third of the reading I did this week happened in a single day, courtesy of Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon.

But moving rapidly along. Let’s wrap up April 29th to May 5th, yes?

Books read: 9
Pages read: 3,054 pages

#1: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Audience: Adult
Genre: Contemporary/Historical fiction??

Plot summary: Evelyn Hugo, old Hollywood royalty, wants to tell her life story and the story of her seven husbands to a largely unknown journalist.

Thoughts: I’ve heard nothing but amazing things about this book, so obviously I picked it up for Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon. And it was SUCH a compelling read. To have a story about a bisexual Latina woman who was Hollywood royalty was AMAZING. I loved the writing, I loved the way the story unfolded, I loved the characters.

I…was slightly uncomfortable by the way Evelyn apologises for the domestic violence of one of her husbands, but at the same time it’s probably meant to be indicative of the time, so…..???? On the whole, I thoroughly enjoyed this and I sped through it.

Rating: 4.5 stars

#2: The Steps up the Chimney by William Corlett

Audience: Children/MG
Genre: Fantasy

Plot summary: Three siblings go to stay with their uncle and his girlfriend at an Elizabethan house in Wales. And there’s more to the house than meets the eye…

Thoughts: I LOVED this series as a kid. Loved it. A lot. So I was both excited and a little nervous to reread it because what if it didn’t live up to my memories of the series?? Thankfully, it did. I really enjoyed rereading this! Yes, it does a LOT of the heavy lifting in terms of set up for the series and is therefore a little light on in terms of action. But it’s such a fun and timeless children’s series and I’m really looking forward to rereading the rest of the series!

Rating: 4 stars

#3: At Attention by Annabeth Albert

Audience: Adult
Genre: Romance

Plot summary: Apollo is bringing up two little girls on his own, after his husband’s sudden death several years earlier. When he needs help with the girls over the summer, Dylan – his best friend’s younger brother – just happens to show up…

Thoughts: This was a fun romance novel. I really liked the emphasis on family in the story, and the fact that Apollo is still dealing with his grief long after the fact. The relationship between Apollo and Dylan is a delight and I loved the way things developed slowly between them. Will it prove to be memorable? Probably not. But I enjoyed the hell out of it.

Rating: 4 stars

#4: I Do by Annabeth Albert

Audience: Adult
Genre: Romance

Plot summary: A 51 page novella that follows on from At Attention.

Thoughts: Well, this basically tells you how At Attention ends, doesn’t it… This basically follows on with their wedding and a little bit of drama, and it was fun but nothing special. Again, it’s really too short to do anything in terms of character development or depth, and while it was cute, there wasn’t a huge amount of reason to read it.

Rating: 3 stars

#5: Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli

Audience: YA
Genre: Contemporary

Plot summary: The sequel/companion novel to Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda, this one follows Leah during the course of senior year, dealing with drama and heartbreak.

Thoughts: You guys know that this was my most anticipated book of 2018. So you’ll know that no one is more disappointed than me that I didn’t love this book. I don’t want to go into too much detail about my thoughts, because spoilers. Buuuuut I had two main problems with this.

One was the relationship. I…kind of hated it. And it’s not because it’s a F/F romance. I would have been totally on board with any number of other F/F romances! Or even with the one we got but at a later point in time. But as it was? Eeeeeeeh. No thank you.

The other issue I had was that this felt a lot like wish fulfilment fan fiction. It felt to me like someone had perfectly captured Becky Albertalli’s voice and the way her characters feel and had taken it in a different direction. It…yeah. It wasn’t what I wanted. I mean, I still loved seeing these characters again! I loved Leah as a character. The fat representation was great. The bisexual representation was great. I just…I didn’t like the romance. At all. And it kind of breaks my heart…

Rating: 4 stars

#6: Circe by Madeline Miller

Audience: Adult
Genre: Historical fiction/Fantasy

Plot summary: Remember Circe, the witch in The Odyssey who turned Odysseus’ men into pigs? Yeah, this is a retelling of her life.

Thoughts: I was RIDICULOUSLY excited to read this one after loving The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller last year. And while I did enjoy this story and being immersed in the world of ancient Greece again, I…didn’t like this nearly as much. Like…there’s a lot of the story that is just Circe, hanging out on her island, waiting for people to show up.

I honestly expected Odysseus to be present more in the story than he was, and there was a lot of this that I found VERY slow paced. But I did like Circe as a character, and I did like the writing. So.

Rating: 3.5 stars

#7: On Point by Annabeth Albert

Audience: Adult
Genre: Romance

Plot summary: Ben and Maddox are best friends and SEAL teammates. Who have feelings for each other. Not that they know the other has feelings for them. Until they’re both injured on a mission and they’re forced to think about what they’ll do to pass the time during recovery…

Thoughts: This was my least favourite of the series so far. I actually really liked the stuff where they were on the mission, because there was a lot of tension in the story with them not knowing if they were going to be found by the enemy at any moment. And I thought it used flashbacks effectively.

However. There’s a lot about Ben and Maddox’s relationship that could easily be fixed if the two of them just sat down and USED THEIR FUCKING WORDS. But no. Instead, we have to sit through 300-odd pages of angst and drama. Sigh.

Rating: 3 stars

#8: More by Hakan Günday 

Audience: Adult
Genre: Literature

Plot summary: A bildungsroman about a young Turkish boy whose father is a people smuggler and who finds himself joining the family business.

Thoughts: Oof. I picked this one up because it’s set in Turkey and it’s translated from Turkish and gotta tick those yearly goal boxes, amIrite? The early stages of the story were definitely compelling, but this turned out to be SO FREAKING DARK that I could barely get through it at times.

If you can think of a trigger warning, it’s probably in this book. It doesn’t pull any punches about the way refugees and illegal immigrants are treated by people smugglers. It doesn’t pull any punches about the psychological effect this has on a child growing up in the midst of it all. There were a lot of things that made me very uncomfortable and that had me needing to put the book down and step away for a little while. And ultimately, I don’t know that I’m even glad I read it because it was so dark and so depressing. But…I finished it. So??

Rating: 2 stars

#9: A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

Audience: Adult
Genre: Paranormal

Plot summary: A witch studying in the Bodleian Library discovers a mysterious book full of magic that attracts the attention of countless magical creatures, including a vampire that she ends up falling for.

Thoughts: I honestly think the best way to describe this book is “Twilight for adults” because that’s basically what it is. Well. Twilight crossed with Practical Magic. But, like, just the witches part of Practical Magic, not the fact that it’s actually good… This, on the other hand, was SO SLOW AND BORING that I think watching paint dry would have been quicker.

There’s absolutely no need for this book to be nearly 700 pages long. It’s like wading through quicksand, and while the ending kiiiind of made up for the rest of the story, by then it was too little too late. I definitely won’t be continuing with this series, because zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Rating: 2 stars

What have you been reading recently?

Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon TBR

As you probably know if you spend any time on the bookish internet, Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon is kiiiiiiiiiiiind of a big deal. And it’s happening again this Saturday. Well. For most people, it’s this Saturday. For me, it’s running from 10pm Saturday to 9.59pm Sunday, which actually works out MUCH better for me because Saturday is the day when I sleep until 11am and then sit around in my pyjamas until 3pm playing video games, and as a general rule, not a lot of reading gets done. But on SUNDAYS? That’s when I get shit done. So this is pretty much perfect for me.

Anyway. I’ve never participated in Dewey’s before, usually because it’s fallen on a weekend when I’ve had stuff on. But this time around, I’m free as a bird and I figured I may as well take advantage of the situation to actually participate! I’m definitely not planning on reading for the entire 24 hours because that would kill me, but I’m going to try and clock a decent chunk of time…

At the moment, my TBR is…less of a TBR and more a giant stack of books that are options for me to pick up, but let’s run through that giant stack, shall we?

Wires and Nerves Vol. 1 by Marissa Meyer
I’ve been meaning to read this graphic novel sort-of-sequel to The Lunar Chronicles for a while now, and having a graphic novel on hand for a readathon is always a good idea! Based on the quick flipthrough I did, I’m not a big fan of the art style in this one, but I’m still interested to read it and see which of my favourite characters from the series turn up here…

The Steps Up the Chimney by William Corlett
I ADORED this series as a kid – it’s kind of a pre-Harry Potter mixed with Narnia sort of a deal where these three kids are sent to spend their summer holidays at a really old, boring house and while they’re there, they discover steps up the chimney and find themselves in…Elizabethan??…England where a magician gives them magical abilities. I remember it being absolutely AMAZING and I’ve wanted to reread it for years and see if it lives up to my memories of it, and having a children’s book on hand that I can fly through seems like a good plan.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
I’ve heard nothing but AMAZING things about this book, so when I pulled it out of my TBR jar as my next pick to read on my Kindle, it seemed like fate. I know nothing about the story other than that it’s about a Hollywood leading lady spilling the beans on her life to a young reporter. I’m super excited to read it.

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
This one is kind of an odd one to put on a readathon TBR because it’s a bajillion pages long. But I’ve been meaning to get to it for a while, and it’s too heavy to cart back and forth on my commute, so I’m hoping that I can pick it up and get a decent slab of it read during Dewey’s…

At Attention by Annabeth Albert
This is the second book in a M/M romance series about Navy SEALs and the men they fall for. The first one (and the 1.5 novella) was super cute and feelsy, and it’s always good to have a trashy romance book on hand for a readathon because you can fly through them in less than 2 hours and feel super accomplished at the end of it.

Boundary by Andrée A. Michaud
Not gonna lie, this is literally only on the list because I have a bunch of stuff out from my local library at the moment and I know that if I don’t keep working my way through them, they won’t get read. So this one is a thriller set in Canada and translated from French. It might prove to be a hard slog, but I think I can cope with that given that there’s a ton of other things on this list that I can pick up instead if I start to feel like this one is dragging!

Circe by Madeline Miller
This one just landed on my Kindle a few days ago, and given how much I enjoyed The Song of Achilles, I’d like to get to this one sooner rather than later. But it’ll depend a little bit on what I’m in the mood for on Sunday as to whether or not I pick this one up… Still, it sounds utterly fascinating and I can’t wait to read it!

So. That’s what I’m tossing up between for Saturday/Sunday. Are you Dewey’s-ing? What are you planning on reading?