Hey everyone! It's Mia, I'm back with a monthly Wrap Up. July Wrap Up, I know it's pretty late. My schedule got hectic in July, the challenges screwed with my romance TBR hard (if you don't know I was doing a romance themed book reading month in July), and I ended up reading so many comics instead. Everything got so messy with me. I ended up reading 9 novels and 9 webcomics, total of 18 books in a month. Besides that, I started reading one more novel and a webcomic, which I just kinda fell in a temporary slump, and put on hold for sometime later, so I won't be talking about them.
So, there's a lot going on in this blog. I would divide it into two parts, first I would talk about the novels, then the webcomics. I know it was supposed to be only romance reads, but at this point, no, it's not. But I hope you still enjoy!
Letters To The Lost by Brigid Kemmerer
(It's not the first book I read this month. Honestly speaking, I am trying to organize myself! These blogs are all over the place.)
I re-read the book! Letters to the Lost duology are my favorite books so far this year! I read the book in April for the first time and I have read it second time already!
This book is a YA contemporary romance, which is my favourite genere, written in both MC'S pov. Juliet Young always writes letters to her mother, who is/was a world-travelling photographer. She has always looked up to her. After her mother's recent death in a car accident, she's devastated and she continues to write letters, and leave them at her grave. Declan Murphy is someone you don't want to cross paths with. He is struggling with his traumatizing life while doing his court-appointed community service. One day, when Declan is at work, he finds a haunting, like not a ghost letter, that's how it's written in synopsis, but a deep, dark letter… beside a grave which grabs at his heart. He can't resist it, and he writes back one single word on the letter “Me too”, that's technically two words. Soon they start writing each other back and forth but these two are somehow connected, and that truth could destroy very well what they develop between this letter back and forth.
I would recommend this book to everyone out there! Even if you don't like the genre, this could make an exception. The writing is beautiful, the characters are relatable, the plot is breathtaking… I love everything about this book and it's companion novel, please give it a try!
5 stars. ❤️ Heart.
Kulti by Mariana Zapata
This book is about Sal Casillas, a professional soccer player, who's always dreamt in her teens, of marrying the young soccer prodigy, Reiner Kulti. She had always worshipped the international icon untill he deceived her to marry someone else. Now, in her 30's when she has forgotten about him, she has moved on in her life, and focusing on her career, Kulti shows up himself to coach her soccer team and 11 year old Sal starts squealing again. But soon she realises, Reiner Kulti is not the same person as was in her dreams. He is closed off. Like for a while this would cross your mind if he's mute, but he's not. And it's their romance.
I wasn't a born enemies-to-lovers fan! If you aren't either, Mariana Zapata can change that for you! One of my bookish pet peeves is, I hate when two people completely hate each other in a book, and then suddenly one night they are opening up to each other. Or there are also books where the main characters absolutely loathe each other and for more than half of the book we don't see any chemistry between them. First one is unrealistic, latter is boring. And MZ writes these fat books where neither happens and you see the best build-up between these two characters, enemies to friends to lovers! Chef's kiss. I gave it a 4.5 stars. 💜 Heart.
Looking For Alaska by John Green
This book is about Alaska Young (as the title suggests), but the main character in whose pov we are reading... is Miles Halter, her lover/friend. Miles wants to leave his home and attend the same boarding school his father once attended. He's a nerdy boy who wants to see the "great perhaps". Miles makes some friends at his new school, one of them is Alaska, this hot sexy mess, described as "hottest girl in all of human history" by Miles after the first time he sees her. Her life is tragic, she has heavy depression. This wasn't exactly romance, there wasn't a happy ending, neither for Miles and Alaska, or for Alaska alone herself.
This book was about mental illness. Maybe I am spoiling the book for you if you haven't already read it, but I don't like mental health rep if they involve the person dying at the end. (Yeah, so now you know the big climax of the book). I don't think that spreads a positive message. In my opinion such deaths don't make me feel motivated to live my life to the fullest, rather they make me depressed. I didn't like Miles, I didn't like the friendship he and his bunch shared, on top of that, the writing style was too boring... I am pretty disappointed, this might be your thing like it was for many others, but I personally wouldn't recommend this to anyone. 0.5 stars. No hearts.
Let It Snow by John Green, Maureen Johnson and Lauren Myracle
Let It Snow is a three author collaborative work. It includes three holiday romances which are pretty different from one another but somehow intertwined. “A huge blizzard hits Gracetown and everything's covered in snow, and in the midst of it all some romance stories are blooming.”
Folks, if you have watched the movie, don't expect this book to be the same thing, because it's not. There's one strangers to lovers cute romance, one friends to lovers romance (without a love triangle as in the movies!) and a second chance romance.
Since there are three writers with pretty different writing style from each other, the pace was a total mess. The first one was too fast, the second too slow, the third was all over the place and pretty annoying. I didn't like the book much but it was just okay.. I gave it a 2.5 stars. 💛 forgettable Heart.
Marriage For One by Ella Maise
This book is in both characters' pov, Rose and Jack (I was swooning earlier, now I can only cringe). First day Rose meets Jack, he wants to talk to her, he takes her to his room and within 10 minutes she agrees to marry him. The story is back and forth, he seems to love her one day, the next day he makes it look like the last night was a dream. That's not all, there's one underlying secret that can completely change things between these two.
Throughout the book, Jack's pov kept hinting that there's a secret he's not telling us, and when it's revealed, it's not worth it. It's ridiculous. It's maddening! Jack's character was too boring. Rose was babbling to herself this whole book. These two didn't even each other out. The writing was a mess. Their relationship was too toxic. Jack was a manipulator. She was so stupid. I would never support a relationship based on lies. I gave it no stars. No Hearts.
Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad
Suleika Jaouad writes in her book that after graduation, she moves to Paris to peruse her dream of becoming a war correspondent, and she falls in love. But soon she realises there's something wrong with her. Itching, exhaustion, sleepiness. She visits her doctor, comes back to her hometown, and upon a diagnosis, she discovers she has leukemia with 35 percent chance of survival. And that completely changes her life. It's a long book in which she describes how much pain she went through physically, mentally and emotionally. Most of the book is about how she took her diagnosis, how her family supported her, her boyfriend came over to help her and her hospital visits. How her life after the chemo was.
I would recommend this book to every patient out there, you guys aren't alone, here's someone who went through the same experiences as you, and although there's nothing slightly romantic about being a cancer patient, it's all depression and loss, still you can have a life, you can live one.
For me however, it was a hard task to read such a long book just about someone's sufferings. I am so proud of Suleika, but this wasn't my cup of tea.
Edit : An year later, I re-read this and realised that a lot of the things I said in my review or this post, about this book, were insensitive to the patients and the author. In my review, I made that apology and I would like to apologise here as well, that I didn't read this book with as much care as I should have and I am taking down my ratings.
Call It What You Want by Brigid Kemmerer
This book is written in two person pov again. When Rob's father is discovered to be frauding half the town's funds, his reputation goes from popular laccrose player to “the thieves”. His father tried to kill himself after that, but he failed and got paralysed. Their house gets raided. Everyone at school thinks Rob knew about his father's fraud because he used to intern, and he was close with his father, but he didn't. He's left with no friends, his life at home is all upside down, and self-guilt is eating him up. And there's Maegan, classic over-achiever, filling up expectations in shadow of her sister. Last year, under pressure she cheats in SATs and gets caught, because of which the whole class had to give the paper again. And then there's her sister, who's back from college in her pregnant glory, and her parents are confused and prodding her about who the father is. For a calculus project, Maegan and Rob are teamed up. They both have flaws and they need each other.
This was an amazing read. It made me question so many times what was right and wrong. The characters are amazing. Writing, top-notch. I just love Brigid's contemporaries! The angst is so good!! ✨ I think you should definitely read this one! I gave it a 4.5 stars. 💜 Heart.
Shadow Kiss (Vampire Academy #3) by Michelle Read
Vampire Academy is about vampires, good and bad, and their lives. The good vampires, ones who don't kill for blood are called Moroi. The bad ones are called Strigoi. And there's a vampire-human hybrid called Dhampir who are stronger than the Moroi's and it's their duty to guard them against the bad ones. At St. Vladmir's every Moroi specialises in one elements, Lissa, the Dramogir princess is found to have the gift of an ancient element, spirit, which is so old that for a long time now, people had forgotten about it. Spirit users can heal and they have strong compulsion. They can not just heal, but if they are really good at it, they can bring people back from dead, and that's exactly what happened with Rose, Lissa's bestfriend. Lissa brought Rose back to life, and now she's shadow-kissed. Rose can see things from Lissa's eyes whenever she wants, and Lissa can talk in Rose's head.
In the third book, Rose starts seeing dark ghostly images and she can't understand what's happening. One of her friends who was killed in earlier books is trying to warn them about something, but what? Also, there's some serious sexual tension between Rose and her teacher, Dimitri and they are fighting their feelings towards each other, but maybe they could let it happen?
I thoroughly enjoyed this book from start to end, especially Dimitri and Rose's relationship ahhhh! It was so heartwarming. The only reason I wanted to take points from its ratings because Rose and Lissa were being so secretive to each other because they wanted to keep the other person safe, which I thought was total bullshit. And that ending broke my heart! It shattered me! I.. oh no! You have to, have to read this series. This might be my favorite book till now. I gave it a 4.99999 stars. ❤️ Heart.
The Last Olympian (PJO #5) by Rick Riordan
The Percy Jackson and The Olympians series is about Percy, a 12 year old, who untill recently (start of the first book) didn't know he was a demigod! Turns out life is full of surprises and he's son of a Greek God from ancient mythology after all! Throughout the series, Percy and his demigod friends go on quests to "save the world", and in the last book, they fight a last battle against Lord Kronos himself.
In my full review, I explained what I liked and what I thought could've been better, but since I am not going to go into details, I would say I really enjoyed it! It was a fun to read series for me, but nothing as phenomenal as others told me it would be. But, I am satisfied with what I read. In the next couple of months, I would be picking up another series to read, one book per month! You can always recommend something good!! I gave the last book 3.5 stars. 💙 Heart.
That's all the novels I have read in July. Now, talking about the webtoons… I won't go in much details about them, but I have done some ratings, and there are some good ones that I would love to recommend you!
Aerial Magic by Ari North (season #1)
This webtoon was about a young witch who's just trying to learn magic. There's no such thing as plot. It's a contemporary. She meets people at the broomstick shop where she's learning magic, and she makes connections. That's the whole thing. It was boring and immemorable. I gave it a 2 stars. 💛 Heart. Would recommend a child to read before he goes to bed.
Dragnarok by KPJ and Magmi
Dragnarok is a fantasy book, about this place called Aradel, where once dragons and humans lived together in peace untill recently when some of the dragons turned bad and now everything's in chaos. This was fun in the beginning when there was so much blood, and creator had done good work on the creatures. They looked nasty. But then things kept happening and the season ended without any reasoning. There was a short history provided in the start, but it was so forgetful, so yeah that annoyed me a bit. I gave it a 2.5 stars. 💛 Heart.
Dragnarok Decendents by KPJ and Magmi
It's the second season of Dragnarok. And it had a lot of explanation for the things that happened in first season. This book takes place in another time, about the history of Aradel, and when the Dragons used to rule the world. I don't really care about the characters but the setting and the world really got me. The world-building was really something. I gave it a 3 stars. 💙 Heart.
Your Letter by Hyeon A Cho
Freaking Romance (season #1, #2) by Snailords
I don't understand why these famous webtoons and even Wattpad books are always so cliche. I re-read this book although I hated it the first time. Second time again, it gave me nausea.
Zylith's psycho dad kicked her out of the house because she denies him doing medical. She's on her own, and the “luxury apartment” she could afford was haunted. In spite of knowing it was haunted, she takes it because “paranormal activity, exciting!”. Next thing, there's this super hot dude of a ghost is living with her and she loves all of it! Both seasons were over dramatic, creepy and badly written. I didn't had it in me to read the third as well because it was the worst part. I gave it 1 star (because at times, it was hilarious). No hearts.
Eggnoid by Archie The RedCat (season #1)
Equally creepy as Freaking Romance because a naked guy in my bedroom and it came out of a fucking egg, and he also calls me, a 17-year-old, his mom? Then, the character names had no creativity at all. The naked guy was named “Eggy”, a constant reminder that he came out of an egg! The main character's best friend's name is Olfie? That's a guy! Not a snowman! This again had no plot. I don't understand if the relationship between Eggy and Ran (mc) was supposed to be romantic? Because I don't want to think about that please. There were issues between Ran and Olfie because of Ran's clingy behaviour. I really hope this comic is about her mental problems, because she needs a therepist. I gave it 2 stars. 💚 Heart.
Annarasumanara by Ha Il Kwon
It was so unique and absolutely adorable! This book was of Magical realism genre, I haven't read anything in this genere before but I loved the vibes so much! The art is amazing, almost all of it is black and white, but it somehow works amazingly! Yoon Ah-ee has a hard life. She lives in poverty, takes care of her sister and struggles to fill their stomachs everyday. Her mother had ran away when her father's business collapsed, and her father never returned running from the loan sharks. There are rumors of a magician, that spreads in her school, who disappeared from the nearby abandoned amusement park for good. But one day she meets him and magic happens.
It is not a romance read, don't start thinking so. It's about poverty, expectations, defying the rules of society, losing of the innocence of childhood, about finding happiness, about prejudice, jealousy, abandonment, mental disorder, the pressures of the schooling system, abuse .... and ... IF YOU BELIEVE IN IT .... MAGIC. It's so so amazing and hits your heart hard. I would definitely recommend every manga reader to read it at least once! 5 stars. ❤️ Heart.
The House Of Stars by Saltacuentos
The last one. This was a fairy tale inspired webtoon, fantasy genre. Quick read, easy to follow.
Lily wants adventure which she never gets in her perfect little town. Everything is normal, in a routine, there's no action. She wants it, she gets it. She gets absorbed into this other world where she has to save some girls from her town and save the people of this world from the queen. There's nothing critical or too serious about this book. I would recommend it to kids, who just buy into anything, and love to watch a 10 year old save the world! 3 stars. 💙 Heart.
And that's the end (saying with a heavy sigh) of my July Wrap Up. I didn't had a TBR in August because I was honestly thinking of not having them anymore. What happened in July was completely off-track. I was disappointed in myself for skipping so much of my original TBR, but anyway, I would still do them in future and work harder.
Thank you so much for reading this blog. I hope you liked it! Let me know in the comments what you thought about it. Have you read any of the books I mentioned in here? I will see you in the next post!
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