January Book Haul

A mere six weeks late, but whatever…

I acquired a total of 18 books in January, and I’ve read 11 of them so far. Not a terrible start to the year!

THE STUFF I’VE READ

The Meg by Steve Alten
I was hoping that I’d love this as much as I love the movie. Unfortunately, while there were definitely moments about it that I loved, there was a lot of this that was just “giant shark eats whales and swims around and eats whales and swims around and eats whales”, which was a little disappointing. That said, I’m still kind of interested to read the next book in the series, so……..

The Ruins by Scott B. Smith
Oh man. I had such high hopes for this book. I mean, a horror story set on an archaeological dig in Mexico? Uh, YES. But this dragged on for way too long, was far more repetitive than I would have liked, and I gave zero fucks about any of the characters. I’ve heard how the movie version ends and that sounds MUCH creepier than the ending of the book.

99 Percent Mine by Sally Thorne
This has been a pretty unpopular one in the bookish community, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was fun and funny and Tom was an adorable cinnamon roll. Was it as good as The Hating Game? No. But it was still delightful.

Rough Terrain by Annabeth Albert
Definitely not my favourite in the Out of Uniform series, but this was still a sweet romance story with some delightful secondary characters.

The Stranger Beside Me by Anne Rule
I managed to read this the same week that the Ted Bundy show dropped on Netflix AND that we got the trailer for that awful looking Zac Efron movie. It’s a fascinating and horrifying story that gives a very unique perspective to Bundy.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston
An American classic that I’d never even heard of before last year. I think it’s one that would make for an easier reading experience on audio simply because of the way the dialogue is written, but on the whole this was a really great read and I’m so glad I picked it up.

A Thousand Sisters by Elizabeth Wein
This was an amazing nonfiction read about female fighter pilots in Russia during the Second World War. There were a lot of names thrown about and I definitely struggled to keep all the different girls straight in my head, but it was such an engaging and compelling story that I flew through it.

Famous in a Small Town by Emma Mills
My thoughts on this one will be in my next wrap up, but for now I’ll say that this was pretty stinking cute.

Scythe by Neal Shusterman
This kind of feels like cheating because I read it last year, but I bought this in hard copy during January because I loved it so much I wanted to have my own copy.

The Disasters by M.K. England
My first five star read of 2019 was one that I definitely needed to buy a hard copy of even though I already owned it on Kindle.

What If It’s Us by Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera
A lot of people didn’t like this book, but I think I read it just at the right time (plus it’s full of Hamilton references), so I was more than willing to fork out for a hard copy as well.

THE STUFF I HAVE YET TO READ

Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
I really liked Signal to Noise by the same author when I read it a few years ago and given that this is a vampire story that involved Aztec elements and is set in Mexico City, I was sold almost instantly.

The Child Finder by Rene Denfeld
I’ve seen this one around a lot over the past year or so and I finally caved when I saw that it wasn’t very expensive on Kindle. I’m hoping it lives up to the hype!

No Exit by Taylor Adams
This was on a lot of people’s most anticipated lists for this year, which I find slightly baffling because it came out in Australia in 2017… Still, it was less than $2 so obviously I bought it. And the plot sounds intriguing, so…we’ll see.

Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman
Given that I loved the first book in the series enough to buy it in hard copy, it’s probably not surprising that I also bought the sequel in hard copy. I haven’t read it yet because I want to reread Scythe first.

Are We All Lemmings and Snowflakes? by Holly Bourne
I bought this intending to read it during Feminist Lit February but then I overloaded on Holly Bourne rereading the Spinster Club trilogy so…whoops? Hopefully I’ll get to it soon though!

Two Can Keep a Secret by Karen M. McManus
I’m really looking forward to this one because One of Us Is Lying was such a compelling mystery last year. But somehow I haven’t quite been able to bring myself to start this one yet. Sophomore book nerves, perhaps…

Lethal White by Robert Galbraith
I literally only bought this because I had a gift card and therefore didn’t have to pay the exorbitant sticker price. Otherwise I would have happily waited until it became available at the library.

What books have you acquired recently?

 

2019 Reading – Books #36-40

I’ve read another five books since writing my last post, so I continue to be behind on these posts. But at least I’m not five weeks behind like I was with my weekly wrap ups last year??

#36: The Meg by Steve Alten

Audience: Adult
Genre: Adventure

Plot summary: A Megalodon somehow makes its way out of the Mariana Trench and starts nomming people. It’s basically Jaws, but the shark is bigger.

Thoughts: So here’s the thing, friends. I absolutely LOVE the movie version of The Meg. Because it’s absolutely ridiculous and it knows it, so it leans into the ridiculous REALLY hard and it’s great. This, in contrast, was generally trying to take itself quite seriously. The last…25%-ish was pretty exciting, but the rest was mostly just a lot of stuff about submersibles and the Meg swimming around eating whales and honestly? I didn’t give a shit.

Rating: 3 stars

#37: The Exact Opposite of Okay by Laura Steven

Audience: YA
Genre: Contemporary

Plot summary: A teenage girl has sex with a politician’s son and the whole thing blows up when someone leaks a photo of it online.

Thoughts: This book sounded amazing when I read the blurb online. Unfortunately, while I loved the premise and the way it dealt with slut shaming, double standards, and the bullshit that is the friend zone, it took a really long time to get going, and I had some issues with the writing. Namely that it’s by a British author but it’s set in the US and a lot of the word choices are VERY British, which pulled me out of the story constantly. That said, the main character has a dachshund named Dumbledore, so………

Rating: 3.5 stars

#38: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Audience: Adult
Genre: Classic

Plot summary: The story of a young African-American woman’s quest for independence and love.

Thoughts: I read this for work, and I can honestly say that I don’t think I’ve read anything quite like this before. It was originally published in 1937, and a lot of the prose is stunning. I did struggle with some of the dialogue, but the characters are wonderful and the need to find out what happened to them pushed me through. (Plus, if I could get through Trainspotting in university, I can get through basically anything…)

Rating: 4 stars

#39: Let’s Talk About Love by Claire Kann (Reread)

Audience: YA/NA
Genre: Contemporary

Plot summary: The story of a 19 year old asexual black girl falling for a coworker.

Thoughts: I adore this book. Sure, the writing is a little clunky at times, but it’s a debut novel so I’ll give it a free pass. The characters of Alice and Takumi are delightful from start to finish, and it makes my heart very happy that this book exists.

Rating: 5 stars

#40: Am I Normal Yet? by Holly Bourne (Reread)

Audience: YA
Genre: Contemporary

Plot summary: Evie has decided to go off her anxiety and OCD meds because she just wants to be normal. Obviously, things don’t quite go to plan.

Thoughts: I absolutely adore Holly Bourne’s books. This is the first one of hers that I read, and it’s fantastic from start to finish. It’s very feminist, the friendships are wonderful, and the depiction of anxiety in it is both heartbreaking and relatable. All the characters are wonderful, and I love basically everything about it.

Rating: 4.5 stars

What have you been reading recently?

Weekly Wrap Up #62

I have already finished 5 books in 2019. Which means I need to write my first 5 book wrap up. BUT I STILL HAVE TWO (and a bit) FREAKING WEEKLY WRAP UPS LEFT AAAAAAAARGH.

Anyway. Here’s what I read between 16th and 22nd of December.

Books read: 10
Pages read: 3.182 pages

#1: One Good Earl Deserves a Lover by Sarah MacLean

Audience: Adult
Genre: Romance

Plot summary: There’s two weeks left before Pippa’s wedding and she’s determined to find out what’s expected of her on her wedding night before it happens. But instead of turning to her fiance, she’s turned to one of London’s most notorious men.

Thoughts: I’ve been loving Sarah MacLean’s books recently, and this one was no exception. The characters were fun, the premise was pretty delightful, and the whole thing was a MASSIVE slow burn, which I loved. There was plenty of humour in the story, and a decent number of appearances by the characters from the first book in the series. Basically? It did everything I wanted it to do.

Rating: 4 stars

#2: Nevernight by Jay Kristoff (Reread)

Audience: Adult
Genre: Fantasy

Plot summary: As a child, Mia Corvere’s family was imprisoned/killed by the powers that be. She managed to survive and now she’s out for revenge.

Thoughts: I’d honestly been meaning to reread this book ALL FREAKING YEAR so that I could finally read Godsgrave, and yet the knowledge that it was high fantasy – even a high fantasy book that I’d read before – put me off. Which is utterly ridiculous. I did find that even on reread, it took me a little while to get into it simply because the writing is often so flowery but I flew through this and absolutely loved it. The writing is stunning, the characters are amazing, the world is brutal and gripping, and there are sassy footnotes. What more could you ask for?!

Rating: 4.5 stars

#3: Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison

Audience: YA
Genre: Contemporary

Plot summary: A year in the life of teenager Georgia Nicolson and the trials and tribulations she suffers at the hands of her family, friends, and heart.

Thoughts: I laughed out loud multiple times while reading this book. But there were also multiple times where I cringed for extended periods because HOLY WOW IS THIS DATED. There are endless judgey statements about other female characters and mentions of how being a lesbian would basically be the worst thing in the world and 14 year old Georgia’s love interest is 18 which is just…no. Noooooo.

That said, Rennison definitely nailed the teenage voice – even 20 years after publication, it feels utterly authentic – and like I said, I laughed out loud multiple times.

Rating: 3.5 stars

#4: All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

Audience: Adult
Genre: Classic

Plot summary: In 1914, a group of German schoolboys are goaded by their teacher into joining up. Now, in 1917, those that are left are struggling for survival in the trenches.

Thoughts: This book has low-key on my radar for years but it’s never really been something I was especially interested in reading. But when I found myself lagging slightly behind my translated reading goal, I picked this one up because it’s barely 200 pages so I figured it would be a quick read.

Instead, I got a book that was brutal and honest and gut-wrenching. It deals with universal experiences of the First World War – of most wars, with the exception of the trenches part – and though it’s from the German perspective, it could equally be from the English, French, Russian, Australian or Belgian perspectives simply because the experiences of gas and going over the top and terrible food and mateship and struggling with returning to the real world were so universally applicable. I’m really REALLY glad that I finally read this.

Rating: 5 stars

#5: Fish Out of Water by Natalie Whipple

Audience: YA
Genre: Contemporary

Plot summary: Mika’s summer plans are turned upside down when her father’s estranged mother moves in with them.

Thoughts: I’ve read Natalie Whipple’s other books, both of which are sci-fi, so I was curious to see what she could do with a contemporary. I was doubly intrigued when I started it and realised that it had a biracial protagonist and that part of her story revolved around her (white) grandmother being pretty effing racist because of events in her past and having Alzheimer’s.

There were a lot of slurs in the story as a result, but for the most part it was compelling, as Mika slowly comes to understand why her grandmother is the way that she is, sees her attitude change depending on whether she’s having a good day or a bad day. I wasn’t entirely thrilled with the romance side of it, but the friendships were solid and I liked Mika as a protagonist.

Rating: 3.5 stars

#6: The Road to Winter by Mark Smith

Audience: YA
Genre: Dystopian

Plot summary: Two years after a virus wiped out most of the population, Finn’s quiet existence is shattered by the arrival of a young refugee who desperately needs his help.

Thoughts: I’ve been meaning to read this book since it first came out a couple of years ago. This…felt a lot like set up, to be honest. It’s not very long, and there was a lot of world-building type stuff to set up. So while I found this one pretty middle-of-the-road, I do feel like I would read the sequel to see if there’s more actual plot in that now that the set up has been done. I liked the characters and I liked the social justice messages that it contained. I just wanted…more.

Rating: 3 stars

#7: My Favourite Half Night Stand by Christina Lauren

Audience: Adult
Genre: Romance

Plot summary: When Millie and Reid’s friendship group decides they all need to find dates for an upcoming gala and that they should turn to online dating, Millie doesn’t know how to tell Reid that he’s matched with the profile she created under a fake name…

Thoughts: Oof. This is definitely my least favourite Christina Lauren book to date, but in a really complicated way. I mean, I loved the dynamic between the friend group. I liked the examination of online dating culture. I loved Millie and Reid as a couple. There was a lot here that was pretty swoony.

BUT. There’s so much in here that’s built on lies and the whole thing made me pretty fucking uncomfortable. Like, both of them had dozens of opportunities to say something, and neither of them did. And that infuriated the hell out of me. So it could have been worse. But it also could have been a hell of a lot better.

Rating: 3.5 stars

#8: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling (Reread)

Audience: YA
Genre: Fantasy

Plot summary: Harry Potter and the Year Voldemort Didn’t Bother Showing Up.

Thoughts: This is probably the last book in the series where it doesn’t feel like sudden death could hit anyone at any time. So…there’s that. Lupin is a delightful addition to the series, and I will never not love the idea of eating chocolate to get over having been near Dementors. Meanwhile, Snape is not only a garbage teacher but he’s a garbage human in general and he should have been fired into the sun in Philosopher’s Stone. Fight me.

Rating: 5 stars

#9: Godsgrave by Jay Kristoff

Audience: Adult
Genre: Fantasy

Plot summary: The sequel to Nevernight features Mia selling herself into slavery to become a gladiator.

Thoughts: Wowwwwwwwwww. I don’t think I read the blurb at all before buying and (eventually) reading this book, so I had no idea the gladiator thing was going to be such a major part of the story. And I absolutely LOVED it. It gave the world this brilliant combination of medieval Venice and ancient Rome sort of a feeling, which was fan-fucking-tastic. There’s plenty of action, plenty of gore, plenty of smut, and plenty of humour. It’s basically everything I could have wanted and I’m horrified at myself for waiting so damned long to read it.

Rating: 5 stars

#10: Amelia Westlake by Erin Gough

Audience: YA
Genre: Contemporary

Plot summary: Two girls at an elite private school team up to carry out a series of pranks aimed at highlighting problems that the school is determined to sweep under the rug.

Thoughts: So here’s the thing: I really wanted to like this book. I mean, two lesbian teenagers teaming up to fight for social justice at their elite school? It sounds AMAZING. However. I found that I didn’t like either of the protagonists – Harriet was a total doormat and Will spent all her time hating on the privilege that surrounded her without acknowledging that she was benefiting from that privilege.

Add in the fact that it’s literally illegal for a school to react the way that this one did and I had a really fucking hard time buying this. If it was set in the 80s? Definitely. In the 90s? Maybe. But in 2018? There’s no way a school would sweep claims of sexual harassment and abuse by a staff member under the rug. So ultimately, I really liked the idea of this. But the execution? That was kind of a mess.

Rating: 3 stars

What have you been reading recently?

Weekly Wrap Up #60

Hey guess what it is the last two days of the fucking year and I have somehow wound up like 4 weeks behind again with these stupid posts GODDAMMIT ALL.

Ugh. Why do I do this to myself??

Whatever. Here’s what I read between 2nd and 8th of December.

Books read: 6
Pages read: 2,060 pages

#1: The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry

Audience: Adult
Genre: Literature/Historical fiction

Plot summary: The story of a widow and her peculiar young son who move to Essex where she befriends the local minister and hunts for fossils.

Thoughts: I bought this book forever ago and then promptly forgot to read it for, like, ever. I’d heard amazing things about it, and while the middle was gripping I mostly felt like this was far too long and I spent the bulk of the book waiting for an interesting plot to happen only to have it never show up. So while there were definitely things in this that I found interesting, on the whole it was aggressively meh and a little too literary for my liking.

Rating: 3 stars

#2: The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey

Audience: Adult
Genre: Dystopian

Plot summary: A young girl wakes every morning and waits to be picked up for school. Her trip to school involves being strapped into a wheelchair while someone aims a gun at her head…

Thoughts: I knew the big twist going into this one, but it was still a pretty incredible read. It’s a very unique world and Melanie is such a fantastic and compelling protagonist. The story had me hooked from the very beginning and while the middle did lag a tad, on the whole it was definitely a gripping story!

Rating: 4 stars

#3: In Bloom by C.J. Skuse

Audience: Adult
Genre: Thriller

Plot summary: The sequel to Sweetpea features Rhiannon getting up to even more shenanigans.

Thoughts: I put off reading this for ages because I was afraid it wouldn’t live up to my love of Sweetpea. And while I didn’t love it AS much, I did still really enjoy this. Rhiannon cracked me up a million times and while I would have liked sliiiiiiiightly more murder than I got, this was still an absolute blast to read. And frankly, I’m concerned about how much I related to Rhiannon as a character…

Rating: 4 stars

#4: My Antonia by Willa Cather

Audience: Adult
Genre: Classic

Plot summary: The story of a young boy sent to live with his grandparents in rural Nebraska in the late 19th century.

Thoughts: This was my VERY LAST U.S. STATE BOOK OMFG. I literally only picked it up because it’s set in Nebraska and it was the only book I could find that was set in Nebraska that wasn’t by Rainbow Rowell (because I’ve already read all of hers). And frankly? I can see why it’s a classic, but it was also indescribably dull. I mean, the examination of the immigrant experience and the American dream was interesting. But on the whole, I didn’t give a shit about Jim and I would have liked this more if it was from Antonia’s perspective.

Rating: 3 stars

#5: A Rogue By Any Other Name by Sarah MacLean

Audience: Adult
Genre: Romance

Plot summary: After being thrown out of polite society a decade earlier, a duke who co-owns London’s most notorious gaming den is determined to get his place in society back. By marrying a feisty woman who craves far more than a loveless marriage.

Thoughts: So here’s the thing: I LOVED that this was both a hate-to-love and a second chance romance. It was a slow burn and I liked both of the characters. But it’s proved to be completely and utterly forgettable – I literally had to go and read my Goodreads review to even have a vague idea of what happened in this book. And maybe that’s partly the nature of historical romance books, maybe it’s partly the fact that I’ve read too many historical romance books this year. But the fact remains: I read this four weeks ago and based on the title and the cover alone, I have zero idea what happened in it…

Rating: 4 stars

#6: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling (Reread)

Audience: MG/YA
Genre: Fantasy

Plot summary: Do I even need to bother with this???

Thoughts: I love this, always and forever. I continue to hate Severus Snape, always and forever. I continue to worry about the wizarding education system, always and forever. Because seriously, yo – that shit is fucked up.

Rating: 5 stars

What have you been reading recently?

Weekly Wrap Up #59

In news that will absolutely shock you all, it turns out that if you don’t write a blog post for 20 days, you end up REALLY FAR BEHIND WITH YOUR WEEKLY WRAP UPS AGAIN.

*shakes fist at self*

Anyway. Here’s what I  read between 25th November and 1st December.

Books read: 8
Pages read: 2,481 pages

#1: The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Audience: Adult
Genre: Literature/Crime/???

Plot summary: The second book in the Cemetery of Lost Books series (which started with The Shadow of the Wind), this tells the story of a young author in 1920s Barcelona who realises there’s a connection between his slightly mysterious house and the book he’s being paid to write.

Thoughts: I’ve been meaning to read this book for literally years now. I absolutely ADORE The Shadow of the Wind, and I was super excited to read more by the same author. This one is set years earlier, but has a very similar feeling of devotion to Barcelona and a slightly eerie sensation to the absolutely stunning writing.

There was something about this one that I can’t put my finger on that stopped me from loving it as much as I did the first book, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it and I’m excited to continue with the series!

Rating: 4 stars

#2: Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage

Audience: Adult
Genre: Thriller

Plot summary: The story of a woman who slowly comes to realise that the actions of her seven year old daughter are less about intelligence and more about something utterly nefarious…

Thoughts: I thought for SURE I was going to love this book, because I really love stories about creepy children. And Hanna is 100% a creepy child. HOWEVER. For the majority of this book, the story felt more like a domestic drama than a thriller, which was a little disappointing.

I flew through the story, but I was left feeling that if we hadn’t had alternating perspectives between Suzette and Hanna, the story could have been a lot more tense and gripping than it was – less about Hanna giggling to herself as she planned creepy things and more about Suzette not being able to work out if she’s imagining things or if her daughter is genuinely doing what she thinks she’s doing. You know?

Still, the creep factor was definitely there, so that’s something!

Rating: 3.5 stars

#3: Hogfather by Terry Pratchett (Reread)

Audience: Adult
Genre: Fantasy

Plot summary: Terry Pratchett does Christmas, basically. The Hogfather (i.e. Santa) has disappeared mysteriously, so Death decides to step in and fill the void.

Thoughts: I love this book. Like, a LOT. It’s definitely one of my favourite Terry Pratchett books, because it’s absolutely hilarious but it also heavily pokes fun at the commercialisation of Christmas and the way that people refuse to recognise that it’s a pagan holiday that’s been converted into a Christian holiday.

Everything about it is magnificent. EVERYTHING. I honestly reread this book every December because that’s how good it is.

Rating: 5 stars

#4: Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Audience: Adult
Genre: Contemporary

Plot summary: A single mother and her teenage daughter move to an idyllic planned community in 1990s Ohio, only to find themselves heavily involved when a couple in the community try to adopt a Chinese-American baby and a custody battle breaks out.

Thoughts: Lianne very sweetly sent this to me right at the start of the year and I’d always planned on using it as my pick for Ohio in my read-all-the-US-states challenge. But it wasn’t until the very end of November that I actually got around to picking it up. Whoops??

Anyway. I thoroughly enjoyed this book – the characters are wonderful, and the writing is fantastic. But at the same time, I struggled to get through more than two or three chapters in a sitting. Eventually, I forced myself to prioritise it over anything else, and once I pushed through those couple of chapters I sped through the rest of the book. Go figure…

Essentially, this was a beautifully told story and I was incredibly invested in the lives of the characters. But it’s definitely not an easy book to read, given some of the subject matter.

Rating: 4 stars

#5: How the Dukes Stole Christmas by Tessa Dare, Sarah MacLean, Sophie Jordan and Joanna Shupe

Audience: Adult
Genre: Romance

Plot summary: Four novellas featuring dukes and romance and Christmas.

Thoughts: I bought this because I was craving a new Tessa Dare book. And in the absence of a new Tessa Dare book, a Tessa Dare novella would more than suffice! My favourite in this collection was actually Sarah MacLean’s story about two childhood best friends who reunite in their 30s, because apparently I’m trash for a second chance story.

If you’re looking for historical accuracy or even historical plausibility, you definitely won’t get it here. But if you’re looking for fun romances that feature Christmas and dukes? Yeah, check this collection out because it was pretty stinking great.

Rating: 4.25 stars

#6: Loving vs Virginia by Patricia Hruby Powell

Audience: YA
Genre: Historical fiction

Plot summary: Told in verse and historical documents, this book tells the story of the Lovings, an interracial married couple who wanted to live in Virginia, where interracial marriage was against the law.

Thoughts: I have been meaning to read this book for years because it sounded FASCINATING and it was based on true events. What I didn’t know going in was that their struggle to live in Virginia after their marriage went on for NEARLY A DECADE, from the 1950s through until the late 1960s. Which is…utterly ridiculous and yet not at all surprising.

I read it cover to cover in under an hour, and while it’s a very sparsely told story (seeing as it’s in verse), it was also a very compelling and important story and I’m incredibly glad that I finally read it.

Rating: 4 stars

#7: A Notorious Vow by Joanna Shupe

Audience: Adult
Genre: Romance

Plot summary: A young woman doomed to marry for money to save her parents from disgrace meets the deaf inventor who lives next door to her cousin. He agrees to marry her to save her from a much worse fate, but didn’t bargain on falling in love with her.

Thoughts: I bought this one solely because there was an excerpt for it in How the Dukes Stole Christmas and I was really intrigued to see how Shupe would handle the male lead’s deafness, given that it’s set in the 1880s. And from that perspective, this was definitely solid! There’s sign language and lip reading and the female lead goes out of her way to learn to sign (unlike some female leads *cough* COLLEEN HOOVER *cough*). So all of that was really fantastic, especially given that the author’s note at the end talks about how her mother-in-law is fluent in ASL, having been raised by two Deaf parents.

However. I was utterly icked out by the fact that he’s 29 and she’s 19. Like…I get that she has to be under her parents’ thumb and her finding her independence is a big part of the story. But noooooooooooo. I don’t care if it’s authentic to the time period. I don’t want to read about romanticised sexual relationships between teenage girls and grown ass men. Just… Just have her be 21. Or 24. She could come into her majority at 25, for God’s sake. The story would work just as effectively but it would have grossed me out a whole lot less!

Rating: 3 stars

#8: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (Reread)

Audience: Adult
Genre: Classic

Plot summary: On Christmas Eve, a capitalist pig is visited by four ghosts to teach him the error of his capitalist pig ways.

Thoughts: Okay, look. That plot summary may be SLIGHTLY over the top, but it’s not dramatically far from the truth. I make no secret of the fact that I’m absolute trash for Charles Dickens’ stories, and this is one I’ve been reading and loving since I was nine or ten.

The characters are fantastic. The writing is brilliant. The use of staves instead of chapters? Utterly inspired. It’s short and snappy without any of Dickens’ tendency to pad out his stories because he was being paid by the word, and I love absolutely everything about it. Also, Muppet’s Christmas Carol is the best adaptation, hands down. Fight me.

Rating: 5 stars

What have you been reading recently?

Unexpected 5 star reads

There are some books that you go into knowing that you’re going to give them five stars (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, for example). There are others where you know basically from page 1 that it’s going to be a five star read (Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda). And there are others that sneak up on you. That you didn’t see coming at all. And that steal your heart or blow your mind when you’re not expecting it. So let’s talk about some of THOSE books, shall we?

Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan
Based on the cover of this, I was expecting a typical YA book about two boys falling in love. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. This is the story of seven LGBTQIA+ boys in one small town in middle America and how their lives are changed by two of them attempting to break the Guinness World Record for the longest kiss.

But it’s narration that sets this book apart. It’s narrated by a Greek chorus of the dead of the AIDS generation, and it breaks my heart into a million pieces every time I read it. It’s only 200 pages long and I cried five times reading it. It’s such a beautifully told and beautifully written book and I love it so much that I can barely talk about it without crying. I may have cried a little when I met David Levithan as a result…

Harry Potter: A History of Magic by The British Library
It is honestly one of the biggest heartbreaks of my life thus far that I left London mere weeks before the Harry Potter exhibition opened at The British Library last year. Luckily, my brother bought me this for Christmas, which was almost as good as seeing the exhibition in person. I definitely didn’t expect this to be as incredible as it was, but with its combination of actual history, magical world history and literal Harry Potter history, it blew me away. Honestly, it’s an amazingly beautiful book that does a great job of demonstrating just how much real world history J.K. Rowling poured into her books, and it’s astonishing.

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
I’ve always said that I’m not a big fan of 20th century classics, that I far prefer the 19th century. And this remains fairly true – I don’t like Gatsby or Catcher in the Rye. I’m meh about Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway. So when I got to this one on my Classics Club TBR, I must admit that I was left wondering why I’d bothered to include it.

But this book freaking blew me away. The writing was incredible, the characters were wonderful, and I was hooked from start to finish. Add in a shocking ending and I LOVED this book.

Refugee by Alan Gratz
This is a low YA/upper middle grade book that I talked about a few days ago in a weekly wrap up post. It’s the story of three generations of refugee kids – one Jewish in WWII, one Cuban in the 90s, and one Syrian in the present day. When I first started reading, I thought it would be a pretty standard story about children in wartime. But it blew me away. Yes, the writing is very simplistic. But it’s effective as hell.

Sweetpea by C.J. Skuse
This has to be one of my favourite books of this year. And yet when I first started reading it, I thought it was going to be a pretty generic thriller. But no. It shocked me time and time again and I loved basically everything about it. As I said the other day, I still haven’t braved the sequel, but I’ll get there soon.

Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
This is a non-fiction book that I picked up on a whim at the end of last year after seeing it on the Goodreads Choice Awards list. The blurb was intriguing, but I didn’t expect it to be anything particularly special. AND YET. This is a compelling, horrifying, and heartbreaking story, while also providing me with a lot of new information about a time and place I knew very little about prior to reading this. Highly recommended. (Also, I saw this week that apparently it’s being turned into a movie starring Leonardo Dicaprio???)

Uncle’s Story by Witi Ihimaera
I’d read The Whale Rider prior to reading this book and ugly cried my way through it, so I was really looking forward to picking up another of Ihimaera’s works. And this one killed me, time and time again. It’s the story of a young Maori man, who’s having a difficult time with his family since coming out. He finds out that he had an uncle he never knew about, who fought in Vietnam and fell for an American soldier. It says so much about the relationships that soldiers forge in wartime, while also delving deep into the way LGBTQIA+ members of Indigenous groups are treated by their communities and it broke me into a million pieces.

Because of You by Pip Harry
This book was on the CBCA Book of the Year for Older Readers shortlist this year, and I remember looking at the cover and thinking that it looked like the most boring book in the world. The blurb did nothing to change that opinion. But within a handful of chapters, I was completely hooked and I desperately wanted to know how Tiny ended up homeless and whether Nola would come to accept/embrace her family situation. I loved every single second of it, and I see it being one that I reread over and over.

What are some of your unexpected 5 star reads?

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 #40

Every week I tell myself I’m going to catch up on Weekly Wrap Up posts, and every week I fail miserably. Womp.

Still. Let’s plod onwards and wrap up what I read between July 15th and 21st.

Books read: 8
Pages read: 2,148 pages

#1: The Summer of Jordi Perez by Amy Spalding

Audience: YA
Genre: Contemporary

Plot summary: A teenage girl gets a summer internship at a fashion boutique and falls for her fellow intern.

Thoughts: This was super freaking cute. It was pretty much exactly what I needed while recovering from jetlag – it was quick and easy to read, the characters were fun, and the story was generally delightful and really made me want a hamburger.

There WAS a little more angst in it than I’d bargained for, but on the whole I really liked it. Like, a lot.

Rating: 4 stars

#2: The King of Bourbon Street by Thea de Salle

Audience: Adult
Genre: Romance

Plot summary: A hotel owner in New Orleans falls for an in-disgrace heiress who checks into his hotel.

Thoughts: I’d heard a lot of good things about this book from Goodreads and BookTube, and I was in the mood for a romance book so this seemed like a logical place to start. Except that I hated basically everything about this. I hated the characters. I hated the writing. I hated that there wasn’t any kind of conversation about limits or trust before getting into a sub/dom relationship. I hated how much the word “hole” was used. I hated the fact that the female lead is plus sized but that’s not represented on the cover. I hated E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G. Just…no. No thank you.

Rating: 1 stars

#3: Hangman by Jack Heath

Audience: Adult
Genre: Thriller

Plot summary: A very unusual FBI contractor investigates the abduction of a teenage boy on his way home from school.

Thoughts: This book was LITERALLY EVERYWHERE when it came out at the beginning of the year. And I fell for the hype. But then I wasn’t in the right mood to read it, so it sat on my shelf for literally six months before I finally got around to it. And…this was DARK. Like, ridiculously dark.

There were definitely elements of the story that I enjoyed. And having a very morally grey protagonist was pretty fabulous. But this book went to some VERY strange places and I have to say that I didn’t really enjoy many of them. So this one kind of balanced out to middle of the road territory.

Rating: 3 stars

#4: Sweetpea by C.J. Skuse

Audience: Adult
Genre: Thriller

Plot summary: As a child, Rhiannon was involved in an infamous crime. Now, she’s your typical girl next door. Well. Typical, except for her ability to get away with murder…

Thoughts: This book was FANTASTIC. It’s kind of like Bridget Jones meets Silence of the Lambs – Rhiannon is clearly a sociopath, but she’s funny as hell and a lot of the time her thoughts are more relatable than I would have liked. I laughed out loud multiple times while reading this book and inevitably gasped in horror a page or so later.

I sped through this book and highlighted a bunch of passages and a sequel has just come out and I NEED TO READ IT IMMEDIATELY because how can you pass up on the sequel to a book with lines like “Work was a turd on a turtle’s back and went twice as slow.”?? (Also, just a heads up – the tag line on the cover of the sequel contains spoilers for Sweetpea, so stay away from that until you’ve read this!)

Rating: 5 stars

#5: Things A Bright Girl Can Do by Sally Nicholls

Audience: YA
Genre: Historical Fiction

Plot summary: Follows the lives of three teenage Suffragettes from 1914 to 1918.

Thoughts: I think the best way to describe this book is “a pleasant surprise”. I didn’t expect that it would cover what life was like for young women during the First World War in as much detail as it did. I think Nicholls did a fantastic job at representing different social classes and how their experiences differed, and I really liked that she included a romantic relationship between two of the girls.

All of that said, the second half of the story dragged quite a bit and I wasn’t mad keen on the ending. But I’m glad I read it.

Rating: 4 stars

#6: The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (Reread)

Audience: Adult
Genre: Classic

Plot summary: A young woman inherits a large diamond on her eighteenth birthday, but that same night, the diamond is stolen…

Thoughts: I love The Moonstone a lot. It’s often described as the first detective novel, and it’s a hell of a lot of fun. It basically features a string of key players each recounting their version of events from the theft of the diamond through to the discovery of who committed the crime and why a year later. Collins pokes fun at his characters time and time again – the reader knows that they’re utterly ridiculous, the other characters know that they’re utterly ridiculous, but the narrator remains oblivious.

The mystery itself is pure sensation fiction – bonkers and over the top and dependent on a very specific set of circumstances that would probably never happen in reality. But it’s a hell of a lot of fun and I’m really glad I reread this yet again.

Rating: 4 stars

#7: Homebodies by Annabeth Albert

Audience: Adult
Genre: Romance

Plot summary: A 6,000 word sequel story to Wheels Up, the fourth book in the Out of Uniform series.

Thoughts: This book isn’t really a book at all. The author describes it as a “ficlet” but when I found out it existed, I still felt like I had to read it because I’ve enjoyed this series so damn much. It features my least favourite couple in the series, but it also features a kitten adoption and a marriage proposal, so………what more can you want from 6,000 words?

Rating: 3 stars

What have you been reading recently?

Weekly Wrap Up #36

Hahahahahahahaha ohgod guess who just realised that she’s now SIX WEEKS BEHIND on weekly wrap ups? *cries quietly to self in corner*

This is fine. I’ll catch up sometime around the middle of 2019, if past performance is anything to go by! (Apologies in advance if some of these are a little vague. I swear some of these books have gone completely out of my brain already…)

Without further ado, let’s talk about June 17th to 23rd.

Books read: 7
Pages read: 2,194 pages

#1: How to Break a Boy by Laurie Devore

Audience: YA
Genre: Contemporary

Plot summary: Olivia is a Mean Girl, living in a small town in South Carolina. After her brother dies in a car accident and she catches her boyfriend in bed with her best friend, her life goes off the rails.

Thoughts: I honestly would have never picked this book up if it hadn’t been my Book Club’s pick for June. And I’m really really sad that I actually bothered to read this because I hated literally everything about this book. I hated the characters. I hated the writing. I hated the cover, which everyone else seems to love. I hated the way that the most manipulative and bitchy and rude and AWFUL person in the book is also the most popular girl in school. I hated the protagonist more than I think I’ve ever hated any protagonist EVER.

Basically, no one at Book Club had an experience even remotely like this in high school, and so none of us could relate to it. Maybe it’s an Australian thing???

Rating: 1 star

#2: A Land of Permanent Goodbyes by Atia Abawi

Audience: YA
Genre: Contemporary

Plot summary: After the death of several family members in a bombing, a teenage boy flees Syria for Europe.

Thoughts: OW, MY FEELINGS is probably the best way to sum up this book. It’s definitely written for white teenage audiences, and it definitely oversimplifies the plight of Syrian refugees. It’s very black and white throughout – people are either good or evil, there’s no grey zone at all.

But at the same time, white teenagers need books like this. They need to see the motivations and the struggles behind the news articles, they need to follow the story of a kid who’s just like them.

So yes, this was overly simplistic at times. But it also kicked me in the gut a bunch of times.

Rating: 4 stars

#3: The Hanging Girl by Eileen Cook

Audience: YA
Genre: Crime

Plot summary: A girl known for her (faked) tarot readings claims to have had a vision when a girl in her class at school is kidnapped. Obviously, there’s a lot more going on than first appears.

Thoughts: This was…….just sort of aggressively average for me. I was meh about the characters, I was meh about the concept, I was thoroughly confused about why the cops would be all “Oh, a teenage psychic has all the answers in our kidnapping case? COOL, LET’S TRUST HER IMPLICITLY!”.

There were plenty of twists and turns, and I did appreciate how much the protagonist operates in a moral grey zone. But the big reveal here was just…bizarre. And on the whole, it’s proven to be pretty forgettable.

Rating: 3 stars

#4: As Red As Blood by Salla Simukka 

Audience: YA
Genre: Thriller

Plot summary: A teenage girl in Finland finds herself caught up in the crime-filled underbelly of the town she lives in after she walks into the dark room at school to find it filled with recently washed Euro notes.

Thoughts: This story was gripping from start to finish. Also? It’s a young adult book that’s been translated from Finnish, which is pretty exciting because young adult books rarely seem to get translated into English. So obviously I read it, especially when the opening scene is creepy and disturbing and great.

The story gave me a lot more unanswered questions about the characters and their backstories than I would have liked – it almost felt like it was a YA spin off of an existing adult series?? – but on the whole, it was fast paced and action packed and I sped through it way faster than I anticipated.

Rating: 3.5 stars

#5: The Escape Room by Megan Goldin

Audience: Adult
Genre: Thriller

Plot summary: A group of high powered Wall Street executives are called to an office building on a Friday night for a team building activity. None of them are happy about it. When the elevator stops half way up, they realise that the elevator is an escape room challenge. But slowly, they come to realise that this particular escape room hits a little closer to home than most…

Thoughts: Well then. This was pretty damned fabulous. It was compelling from start to finish, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The characters and their relationships are complex, and it’s told partially from the perspective of those in the elevator and partially from the perspective of one of their colleagues, several years earlier.

I had no idea how the two halves of the story were going to marry up, and when the big plot twist finally happened, it was one that I hadn’t anticipated at ALL. I honestly wasn’t expecting this to be as tense and psychological as it was, and I really, really enjoyed it.

Rating: 4 stars

#6: The Mystery of a Hansom Cab by Fergus Hume (reread)

Audience: Adult
Genre: Classic/Crime

Plot summary: When a man is found dead in a hansom cab in 1880s Melbourne, the hunt for the killer takes investigators to both the highs and lows of Melbourne society…

Thoughts: I absolutely love this book. It’s often referred to as the first murder mystery, and it was certainly a revolutionary book – it was the first Australian book to achieve huge success overseas, and it’s never been out of print since it was first published in 1886.

The character descriptions are amazing, it still captures Melbourne perfectly 130+ years later, and I thoroughly enjoyed the way the mystery plays out. I love the way that Hume includes not only the glittering riches of nineteenth-century Melbourne society, but the city’s seedy underbelly, taking a trip through the slums and opium dens of Little Lon. I would absolutely love to see the stage version of this, but for the moment I’ll settle for rewatching the ABC miniseries version.

Rating: 4 stars

#7: The Brightsiders by Jen Wilde

Audience: YA
Genre: Contemporary

Plot summary: A 17 year old rock star has shitty parents and a shitty girlfriend, and her life falls apart when the paparazzi find out. Luckily, she has her bandmates to help her pick up the pieces.

Thoughts: I adored Jen Wilde’s book Queens of Geek last year, and I was hoping to love this one just as much. Unfortunately, I…didn’t. I mean, I still enjoyed it a lot! But there was something lacking for me here.

While the diversity was A+ from start to finish (including genderfluid characters, and characters who use they/them pronouns), the story itself wasn’t my favourite. A lot of the plot progression depends heavily on the paparazzi finding out things about Emmy’s life to push the plot forwards, without a huge amount of character development on Emmy’s part, and up until the second half of the book, it was looking like it would be a 3 star book.

Thankfully the romance that develops was adorable enough to push it over the line to a 4 star read, but I don’t know that I’ll reread it the way I constantly feel the need to reread Queens of Geek.

Rating: 4 stars

What have you been reading recently?

Classics Club Wrap Up

As you guys may or may not remember, back in December (who are we kidding, *I* barely remember December, and it’s my life we’re talking about!) I finished my Classics Club project. This has been something that I’ve been working on since the beginning of 2014 – working my way through reading or rereading 60 classic books. The intention of Classics Club is to read 50 books over the course of 5 years, so I definitely went…a little over the top to get through 60 books in 3 years.

It was definitely a rewarding experience for me. I read a bunch of books that I would never have otherwise picked up, that I’d written off for some reason or another. I reread a bunch of things I loved, and some that I changed my mind about. And I read a bunch of books that I would happily send off into the sun never to be read by anyone ever again.

Course, I also read a bunch of books that were decidedly mediocre, but you can’t win them all…

I’m really glad I decided to attempt this as a project, and here are the new to me books that I really enjoyed:
– Lysistrata by Aristophanes
– For the Term of His Natural Life by Marcus Clarke
– Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
– My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin
– Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
– Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
– The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
– The Chrysalids by John Wyndham

Aaaaaand here are the ones that I REALLY didn’t enjoy:
– Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
– Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
– One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
– The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
– The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

On the whole, I think I ended up liking way more than I hated, so…I guess that’s a pretty good outcome?

If I do this again in the future, I’ll definitely be looking to diversify the list a lot more. Because, like, I had 60 books on there. 43 were by men. And a whopping 1 out of 60 was by a person of colour. So…yeah. My 2014 self did…not do so great on that front. I mean, the nature of classics often means that you end up with a lot of dead white guys on the list. But at the same time, there are plenty of non-European classics out there that I could have picked from. And I didn’t.

I think I’m talking myself into doing a Non-White Classics Club project……………

Should I do that?? Feel free to suggest titles below!