May Reading Wrap Up
I read books this month!! I know!! I’m just as impressed as you are because there were a couple of weeks there where I didn’t even touch a book but MOVING RIGHT ALONG.
Hidden Bodies – Caroline Kepnes
What a way to start the month… This is hands down one of the WORST books I have ever read. There was absolutely nothing I liked about this book and it got to the point where I was just hate-reading it to see how much worse it could get. Which was apparently a lot. This is the sequel to ‘You’ – which I thought was an interesting take on a thriller and while it wasn’t my favourite, I still enjoyed reading and found myself sucked in to the events that go down. ‘You’ was told in second person making it unique and putting things in a perspective that made you actually root for the main character, even though he was stalking and killing and generally just being a bad person. ‘Hidden Bodies’ was in my opinion nowhere near the same league as its predecessor and I just can’t understand how it has such high ratings from some people. The writing was horrible, the characters were annoying and unrealistic and just generally idiots and there was very little plot. Especially for such a long book. I’m still blown away by how BAD this book actually was. So disappointing.
1 star (for the sake of Goodreads as that is the lowest rating – actual rating is about a -10 stars).
Saga Vol. 5 by Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Fiona Staples
As this is the fifth volume I obviously can’t say anything about the plot but this comic series is about a war going on between planets and two people from opposing sides end up falling in love. The story follows their epic journey through space on the run from pretty much everyone trying to hunt them down/kill them/capture them/steal their baby. While this particular volume wasn’t my favourite, the series overall is a lot of fun. At times wildly inappropriate and somehow still hard hitting, but a lot of fun.
3 stars
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling
Nothing (new) to see here... moving on.
5 stars
A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas
THERE IT IS.
YEP.
We made it fam. The end of the trilogy. It’s over. Well at least until the other books (novellas? Do we know what they’re going to be yet?) come out from the same world. This was… good? But not great. Like it was really good as a conclusion to the trilogy. We got some great moments from some of my favourites (Azriel and Cassian are my everything), HOWEVER... I have questions/problems. I still want more. I’m not happy with how some things (cough Mor) were resolved/dealt with. Rhysand wasn’t AS awesome as he was in ACOMAF. For a whole 700 long-ass pages, I think I just expected more? So while I’m ultimately happy with this book, ACOMAF will always be my favourite. In fact, I would happily just re-read it and ignore the other two. I actually refuse to acknowledge the existence of the first one. Although it does look extremely pretty sitting with the others on my shelf.
4ish stars.
Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire
Well isn’t this just a precious little book! For such a short book (seriously the physical copy is only about 170 pages I think…I read the e-book) this book does a lot. It’s mostly character focused (which I love) and the characters are just so interesting and diverse and wonderful and kind of creepy and I just want to take them all in and tell them everything is going to be ok. Well. Most of them. There is some plot (there’s a mystery going on throughout) but that totally takes a backseat to the stories of each character and what they’ve each been through. I really want to get a physical copy of this (I borrowed an e-book from my library) and then get the next 2(?) when they come out because I believe they follow some of the same characters.
This follows the story of children who have gone through ‘doors’ – ie portals/doors/gateways to other worlds/fairylands/etc and then come back. Which is such an amazing concept! There are plenty of books and movies about kids going through these doors and their adventures on the other side, but this shows what happens to them once they come back and have to continue on with life as normal. This book is about so many things I just can’t even really fully explain it and I will DEFINITELY be re-reading it one day to revisit these characters!
4 stars.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling
Oh look. Another Harry Potter book. Are we really surprised by this point?
5 stars.
Into the Water by Paula Hawkins
I was soooooo excited for this to be released! I was a massive fan of The Girl on the Train (although all the claims of it being ‘the next Gone Girl’ make me mad because it’s nothing like Gone Girl, but in my opinion still bloody great. I also read it before Gone Girl which meant I didn’t have it to compare to so that also helped). ANYWAY. The new book. This was actually really great. It was definitely a lot more of a slow paced read than GotT, but this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. The story didn’t have that same hectic intensity that GotT had, so I actually enjoyed the slow unraveling of the story. This book also features some really horrible characters doing horrible things and I loved that. I think I’ve worked out that I seriously just enjoy reading stories about small towns full of bad people being not nice. I don’t know why. But I’m into that. I also thought the ending was awesome (which I think I might be in the minority by saying). I literally read the last couple of sentences… put the book down… then turned to my boyfriend and sort of half-yelled at him about how dare she end the book like that but omg I love it and then went back and re-read pages to make sure it ended how I thought I’d read it the first time. WHICH IS HOW I WANT ALL BOOKS TO END. Not really. That would be bad for my stress levels.
I realize now I’ve said nothing about what the plot but it’s a thriller. You go into a thriller knowing nothing otherwise WHAT EVEN IS THE POINT DO YOU NOT EVEN WANT TO BE THRILLED? GO FORTH AND BE THRILLED AND THEN YOU WILL KNOW WHAT IT IS ABOUT.
4 stars. Solid read. I will read anything by Paula Hawkins ever.
Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett
I listened to this on audiobook and for some reason it took me months to get through. This is probably one of the only Discworld novels I’ve listened to on audiobook that I think I would have actually preferred to read a physical copy of. Usually I love Terry Pratchett’s audiobooks but unfortunately I found myself losing interest in listening to this one. When I actually kept my focus on the story and all the characters I loved what I was listening to. Especially towards the end (the last third or so) I was really invested in everything that was going on so I definitely want to re-read this at some point.
I don’t even know how to describe the plot of this... It’s book number 26 in the Discworld series, and number 5 in the Death ‘mini-series’ from within that so not much that I can say about it will make sense unless you’ve read other books before this one. But basically my takeaway points from this are:
Death is still one of my favourite characters in a book EVER
I still struggle to pronounce anthropomorphic because I try to add extra syllables
Susan is another one of my favourite characters of all time.
The auditors are hilarious. Especially towards the end of the book. I love them.
I don’t know how else to sum up this story. Basically – ‘people’ try and end the world by building a clock. Hilarity ensues.
I gave this 3 stars but honestly I think if I re-read a physical copy of this I’d probably up my rating to 4 stars. We shall see.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling
Aka Harry Potter and the Goblet of Raging Teenage Hormones.
5 stars. Yep.
That’s everything I read this month! May was hectic for about a thousand reasons and my reading habits were so inconsistent (surprise surprise) so I’m hoping next month I will be more on my book reading game and generally better at managing my time. Or something…
