Hello there. I'm here today with my very late November Wrap-Up. As always, the weeks are just flying past and I'm trying to keep up. I can't believe it's already December but I'm also super excited because it means that Christmas is right around the corner. I should probably start my Christmas shopping at some point.. But of course I'm here to talk about books, namely the ones I read in the past month.
What I Read
- Dash and Lily's Book of Dares by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn, 3/5 ★ Overall, this just wasn't really my kind of book. While I enjoyed the story itself, the writing seemed pretentious and simply did not work for me. I feel like I couldn't connect to the characters or the story because of that. I'm going with three stars because it was an okay book but nothing more for me.
- Magiona by Maria Dahvana Headley, 3/5 ★ I really loved the first part of this book, before all the fantasy elements came into the story. The characters were great and I felt so excited about the whole thing. But after the 'big thing' happened, I completely lost interest in the story. Aza, our main character, started to annoy me and I got so confused by the plot. This book is written in a very unique way and while I appreciated that at the beginning, it felt too jumpy in the second part of the book. Aza's actions were often not explained or anticipated in any way, so everything simply happened and I didn't understand why she did the things she did. By the end, I was honestly just waiting for the book to finally come to a close.
- Scarlet by Marissa Meyer, 5/5 ★ I absolutely adored the second installment in the Lunar Chronicles series. Scarlet and Wolf were both very interesting characters and I loved how everyone's stories intertwined and worked together. As with Cinder, I found the plot to be rather predictable, but I wasn't bothered by it at all.
- Cress by Marissa Meyer, 5/5 ★ Another 5/5 – I just can't get enough of this series. Cress was, again, pure awesomeness. It's perfectly paced in my opinion. Something is always going on but it doesn't get too much. Another thing that I love is how Marissa Meyer makes you anticipate certain things but then resolves them at the perfect moment. There are no stupid and annoying mishaps and misunderstanding. She just gets everything right.
- Fairest by Marissa Meyer, 5/5 ★ I just had to give this one 5/5 as well. It was so much better than I had thought it would be. The only reason I even picked it up before reading Winter was that I had still been waiting for that last book to arrive. I wasn't really interested in Levana and I thought Fairest was going to be an unnecessary side story that I might as well leave out. But I have to say I'm really glad that I read it. It made me understand where Levana came from and why she might have turned into who she is, but it doesn't try to justify her actions. She's still evil and her actions are wrong – that's made clear again and again throughout the book. I think knowing what her life has been like gave me some valuable background information, not only about Levana but also the rest of the Lunar people that appear in the books. I can't wait to see how all of this is going to play into the story of Winter.
What I Bought
I bought seven books in November, three of which I already read. Two I bought with a gift card that I received for my birthday, so that's okay as well. And for the last two, well, I visited my sister in Brighton and couldn't resist buying some books in the beautiful bookstore there. So I guess I can somewhat justify adding four more books to my TBR when I actually want it to get smaller. Oh, well. So here's what I bought:
- Scarlet by Marissa Meyer
- Cress by Marissa Meyer
- Fairest by Marissa Meyer
- Uninvited by Sophie Jordan
- Made You Up by Francesca Zappia
- Uprooted by Naomi Novak
- Saga, Volume 5 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples
December TBR
As always, I don't have a specific TBR for December. I will definitely read Winter this month, but I'm trying to make myself wait until the end of my uni semester to start it. At the moment, I'm actually reading A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, which I bought on a whim the other day when I didn't have a book with me to read on the train ride home. I went to the book store and just decided to pick the smallest book in the non-fiction section because I never read non-fiction and thought now was as good a time as any to start. Well, it turned out to be Stephen Hawking's book. It's super interesting but all the physics stuff is definitely very hard to follow. I don't know if I'll ever actually finish it but I'll keep reading it for now. Then I also want to read Made You Up and Uninvited for my 2015 Authors A-Z Reading Challenge.
On the Blog
Well, this was one of those months (again) when I just didn't really blog at all. I did talk about the portrayal of Unhealty Relationships in New Adult, but that's already it.
Life
As I already mentioned, I went to Brighton to visit my sister who stayed there for three months (she actually just arrived back home today, finally!). I was really happy to see my sister and especially to see where she's been hiding all these months. Mostly though, I'm just glad I didn't get blown away by the wind.
So that's it for my November Wrap-Up. I hope you all had a good month and happy holidays to you!
What was your favorite read of the month?
Do you have any weird ways of picking out books at the book store?
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