Hey everyone! It's Mia and I am back with my monthly wrap up, for August. I didn't had a TBR for August, because last month it got pretty messy with me due to challenges I was taking part in. July was supposed to be a romance reads month but what it actually became… It was a mess. I still haven't posted the July Wrap Up because I kept putting it off, I had read quite a lot, and I still was processing it, but it would come.
For now, in August, I read 8 books. I was a feeling lazy and mopey, so it wasn't what I usually read but it's still not too bad. It wasn't exactly a great reading month. I had not a single read which I gave more than 4 stars. The highest was 3.5, and hearts were only 💛,💚 and 💙. But anyway, here's what I read.
Rating System :
🌠Stars -
⭐ : Either dnf'd or wondering why bother finishing
⭐⭐ : Okay.. but whatever, do something about the plot holes
⭐⭐⭐ : Hm.. but I don't feel it
⭐⭐⭐⭐ : You gave me something good which could've been better
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ : Talk about my favorite
❣️ Hearts -
💛 : Oh.. I read it? Yesterday? No impact.
💚 : Confused if I should lower the ratings
💙 : Happy got to read it.
💜: I looooved it but boy where did you miss??
❤️ : Giddy, Crying, Screaming. Don't talk to me rn pls
✨No hearts, No stars : HATED
✨ ❤️ heart, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ stars : ALL TIME FAVOURITE
IOU by Kristy Marie
I had to read this book in July, as a part of romance books, but that month just got all messy so I started this in July and finished in August. Actually, not finished but dnf'd.
This book is about Ainsley who finds her boyfriend fucking her roommate on her couch. The girl looses it, yells at him and throws a candle at him which missed him and the apartment is set on fire. The fire brigade comes over and the apartment owner throws her out of the house. Ainsley has no friends to stay over their house at, and there's this guy Bostic, from the fire department who wants to help her but she can't stay at the fire station, so she really needs a place to stay. Her scandal at previous apartment gets famous and no one really wants to lend her a place anymore, so she ends up meeting this guy, Maverick, who's a mystery person known at her campus for giving people favours in return of them returning it to him on his conditions. The book is both person's pov. So like, he's having a hard time finding her a place, so he lets her stay at him apartment, seperate rooms obviously, but the sexual tension between them is chef's kiss! He's such a sweetie to her, he let's her boss around the house although with everyone else he's just cold. He has this amazing relationship with his brother and father well which is really sweet.
Everything's amazing about it. The writing's fun, but what happened with me was I lost interest in it so soon. There came this point where I suddenly stopped and asked myself do I even care, and I was like, nope. So I closed the book right then and dnf'd it. It was really comical. I don't know what happened to me out of nowhere, but I just don't want to look at this book again.
I gave it a 2.5 stars. 💛 Heart. Dnf @72%.
House of Heart Glass by Leila Siddiqui
I read an ARC of this book provided by NetGalley. I asked for this book just because of it's cover and thought this is a mystery. It ended up being a children's book.
It's about Meera, whose brother Asad vanished when they were kids at her naana's house in Karachi, Pakistan. Meera is a Pakistani-American, she lives with her mother and they really don't talk about their past, and about Asad. In recent years, when she's sixteen, her grandfather passes away, and out of nowhere this greenhouse appears in her garden, which used to be at naana's house. Meera freaks out but her mother acts like nothing's happened. Meera also discovers her naana's diary under her pillow which also is just magically there. Through them, Meera, her cousin, her best friend, and her brother's past best friend learn about her naana's old days during the time when there were wars, british rule in India, and India-Pakistan partition. So there are two stories going side-by-side, of her naana's and her own, which all comes together at the end.
I thought the pace was really slow for most of the book, and in the last 20% it just went from 0 to 100. It was all jaw dropping, I didn't know what was happening. It was unexpected, it blew me off completely. This book had many genres, historical, ya-romance, mystery, mythology, fantasy. There were parts I liked, there were others I didn't. It was an ok read for me. 3.5 stars. 💙 Heart.
Instructions For Dancing by Nicola Yoon
This book was one of my most anticipated reads of the year. I had expected so much from it, it hit me back right in the face.
Evie, the main character doesn't believe in true love. She thinks it's a waste of time because at the end everyone's gonna breakup and it will end in heartbreak. This tragic reasoning happened because her parents are divorced, they said they fell out of love but she hates her father because he was cheating on her mother. She has lost interest in the rom-coms she used to read, so one day she goes to donate those books, and she meets a lady who insists upon taking a book in return and she comes back with ‘Instructions on Dancing’ and a special ability. Whenever she looks at a couple who are kissing, she can see all the important timelines in their relationship, from their start to end, which convinced her even more that every relationship comes to an end. In the book she recieved, she finds an address to a dance studio which she naturally goes to and she meets X there, charming and good-looking. She ends signing up for not only the lessons but also dance competitions, with X being her partner. Through the dance lessons, they come close, she starts falling for him, but could she?
The concept of this book is that one should allow themselves loving someone even though it might not end in a happy ending. That was the ultimate end, but I just couldn't get over with how whiny Evie was throughout the journey. She didn't believe in love herself and she didn't want anyone else to fall in the trap either. Maybe it was just me thing, because others have really enjoyed it, but there was one point, the climax of the book where she finds out what's going to happen in future in their relationship and she starts avoiding him at all costs without giving him a reason, and she says her reason is she doesn't want to hurt herself so much in the future… I amjust like, damn girl. And there was also poor writing. I gave it 2 stars. 💚 Heart.
Needing Normal by Emme Grange
This is another ARC I received from NetGalley. I don't know what I even think before asking for ARCs because this was just something I would never like in a thousand years, and if I had any clue what this book was about, I wouldn't have asked for it.
This book is about Jett Harper, who's in her freshman year of high-school. She's a born over-achiever. Writing theisis and doing researches are at the tips of her fingers. At first day of school, social teacher returns them their assignments, Jett is pretty confident that she would get an A, but instead her teacher gave her a F. She tells Jett that the assignment was to write a personalised essay on how you experience love and what she'd done was incorrect. Jett argues which earns her a meeting with the school counselor. Also, her teacher gives them one more assignment on that same topic to be done in a group of 5. Throughout the book, Jett questions what's normal. The kind of confusion she faces because she doesn't understand what everyone's expecting of her.
I dnf'd this book halfway. I just couldn't get used to being in Jett's head. I couldn't understand her at all and it get frustrating. She doesn't understand “love” at all, like it's a foreign concept. There was this time her classmate had given another person a nickname and she thought he was mentally challenged and when he called her his sister she starts looking around for the so called sister, like she's genuinely confused. She doesn't understand when someone is uncomfortable, she's the kind of person who everyone's annoyed with because her “why's” never end. I thought she really had a problem, because if she was supposed to be relatable as a teenager, she wasn't. Overall, this book really wasn't my thing. I gave it no stars. No hearts.
Vampire Academy (#4, #5, #6) by Richelle Mead
I have been reading Vampire Academy series since May this year, but this month I decided to finish it. I can't really talk about these three books without spoiling each other so I would keep this short and centred towards the main plot of the whole series.
The Vampire Academy series is written Rose Hathway's pov. She's a Dhampir, name given to a vampire-human or vampire-dhampir hybrid. Her best friend Lissa Dramogir is the last princess in her bloodline. She's a royal Moroi (Moroi are the pure vampires), so she's special to the vampire world. Dhampirs are supposed to protect the Moroi from the evil vampires, Strigoi, who hunt down humans and good vampires and live off killing. St. Valdmir is an academy of vampires. Evergy Moroi is supposed to specialise in one element, among which, spirit is a rare one. It's so rare that when Lissa discovers that's her element, she has no one but herself to find out how it works. Lissa and Rose have this special bond where Rose is shadow-kissed, i.e. forever bound with Lissa. Rose can go and see things from Lissa's eyes and see she's safe whenever she wants and Lissa can speak to Rose whenever she wants to in her mind.
There was no major ending the books were leading upto. There was politics in this world about Dhampirs being the "guardians" and the Moroi not being able to fight on their own despite their powers. I thought it could be a good way to continue and revolve the world as the books continue but unfortunately the plot takes a complete different turn, and the ending had no real connection with what the first three books had. The first three books were top-tier but after it keeps getting worse. It had amazing potential, though it completely failed at the closure.
If you want my specific reviews, you can find them down below. This series was a 3 star read. 💜 Heart.
The Guest List by Lucey Foley
My last read of August was a thriller, The Guest List by Lucy Foley. I thought I might be falling in a slump, so it was important to get me out of that fast, so I buddy read it with my friend.
The book is written in multiple povs. It's about this wedding taking place in a in-the-middle-of-nowhere island. The bride, Jules, is publisher of a famous magazine and the groom is rising television star. These people are filthy rich, but there are dark sides of every single character and they are hiding something. The tone of this book is really eerie and mysterious. There's a body found dead in the start of the book, and later the povs tell the story of what happened a day before and on the wedding morning.
I thought the book was a perfect thriller. It had the perfect vibes, amazing characterisation, the mysteries. I guessed many of them, but some caught me off guard and they were shocking. And I guess everyone got what they wanted at the end of the book. I gave this one a 3.5 stars. 💙 Heart. It was a good read.
So with that, I end this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I would love to know what you guys read. What were your thoughts on any of these books if you have read them? Do you have any suggestions to get out of a reading slump? Till then, I will see you in the next post! Ta-ta!
No comments:
Post a Comment