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Welcome to the Monthly Wrap Up hosted by Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction to share our monthly wrap-up posts that summarizes our month in books, our favorite books of the month, what we did on our blogs, and anything noteworthy we want to share.
April 2025 Wrap Up
I’m posting April’s wrap up a little late, it turned into quite a hectic month for me and I have so much to catch up on with the blog! I didn’t finish as many books as I wanted either; I overcommitted to too many buddy reads in the last few months and I have learned my lesson! I’m making good progress in finishing the ones I’ve committed to though, and I’m a lot more careful about signing up for more. I’m also missing a lot of books I want to read that aren’t buddy reads, so I’m excited to make space for them as well. Still, I love buddy reads and I can’t give them up completely. If only everyone else wanted to read the books I want to read at the same time I want to read them! 😂
My April 2025 TBR Intentions
Five out of six of my TBR intentions aren’t bad. And the only reason I didn’t get to Stoner is because the library hold is still 3 weeks out at the time of this writing. I’m probably going to defer it to later since I already missed the deadline for the buddy read, but I’m still very much interested in reading it eventually.
Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett
The Terror was weird and a little trippy, but I was surprised by how invested I got into the characters and what happens to them. It’s a fictionalized account of real events, but I’m not very familiar with the history of the expedition so it was interesting trying to figure out what was real and what was made up.
I watched the adaptation of Little Fires Everywhere with Keri Washington and Reese Witherspoon and loved it, and it was nice to read the book and see that the show stayed quite true to the story. I got a lot out of the book, some of the nuances of the rich and privileged’s thinking processes were quite jarring to see on the page, but so incredibly well-written.
Sunshine was a reread. This is the third time I’m reading it and I’m still loving it! There were definitely some things I didn’t notice the first couple of times that I noticed now. The relationship stuff were… questionable, in that I’m curious as to the kind of relationship Rae actually has with the people in her life, but the story was amazing nevertheless.
May 2025 TBR Intentions
These are some of the books I’m planning to read in May. I read fewer books in April than usual and I’m definitely hoping to read more than five in May, but these are the priorities and after that, I’ll see where my mood takes me!
The Galaxy, and the Ground Within (The Wayfarers #4) by Becky Chambers
Children of Ruin (Children of Time #2) by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Every Tool’s a Hammer by Adam Savage
The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo
Rose Madder by Stephen King
How was your month in April? What were your most memorable bookish moments? I hope you have a wonderful May with lots of great books!
Welcome to Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly bookish meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl that features a different bookish topic every week.
Today’s topic is Authors (or books by authors) Who Live In My State/Country (submitted by Jennifer @ Funk-N-Fiction)
I currently live in Canada but I am from Malaysia and I absolutely love today’s topic because I am able to promote a couple of my favorite authors and also discover some Malaysian authors I haven’t read! I didn’t love all the ones I’ve read, but I hope that sharing them here anyway will help the right audience find them. Clicking the link on their names will bring you to their author page on Goodreads.
Top Ten Tuesday Malaysian Authors
Yangsze Choo – My absolute favorite Malaysian author, she has written The Ghost Bride, The Night Tiger, and The Fox Wife, all of which I’ve read and loved! Her first two books are steeped in Malaysian Chinese folklore and have wonderful fantastical elements. The Fox Wife is not set in Malaysia, but has the same beautiful storytelling. I recommend these books to as many people as I can. In fact, The Ghost Bride is my in-person bookclub’s current book of the month!
Zen Cho – My next favorite Malaysian author, although I have only read The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water. She writes sci-fi and fantasy and has a good number of successful books. I loved The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water and I keep meaning to pick up more of her books.
Tash Aw – He grew up in Malaysia but has since moved to England. There was a lot of hype around The Harmony Silk Factory when it came out, and I’ve read it but don’t remember very much about it except that I was underwhelmed, unfortunately. I haven’t read any of his other books.
Vanessa Chan – The most recent Malaysian author whose work I read. I really wanted to like The Storm We Made but unfortunately couldn’t because I’m a character-driven reader and some of the characters’ behaviors in the book was just not believable for me. I was quite disappointed with the book but others have liked it and regardless of my own feelings about the book, I always wish success for my fellow Malaysians and hope they find the right audience.
Vanessa Len – She is nationally Australian but has Malaysian Chinese roots. Her Monsters series has been quite successful, but unfortunately I dnf’d the first book of the series. It wasn’t for me but I hope others might find her and love her.
Hanna Alkaf – I just found her through researching for this post and I am very excited about reading her books. It looks like she’s got several books with great ratings; I’m most excited about The Weight of Our Sky because it’s historical fiction set on May 13th, 1969, the day there was a racial war between the Chinese and the Malays in Malaysia. I grew up hearing about it as a cautionary tale but was never given details so I’m very curious to read this book!
Tan Twan Eng – Another Malaysian author I just found out about and whom I’m excited to read. He writes The Gift of Rain and The House of Doors. These books are historical fiction set in the early 1900s in Malaysia. I’m just really starting to appreciate the intricate history of Malaysia/Malaya during the British colonial times, a lot of which we were never taught in school, and I’d love to read more about it!
Sue Lynn Tan – She is the author of Daughter of the Moon Goddess and Heart of the Sun Warrior, two books in the Celestial Kingdom series. I have these books on my TBR but I haven’t gotten around to them yet. I don’t think I knew the author was Malaysian, but now that I do, I’m moving them up the TBR list. These are fantasy books about Chinese mythological figures, something I’m very excited to dive into!
Rani Manicka – She has written four novels, two of which are set in Malaysia. The Rice Mother is her first book and is about a girl who moved to Malaysia for an arranged marriage at the age of fourteen and had several children by the time she was nineteen. She grows up quickly and takes care of her family through WW2 and the Japanese occupation. It sounds absolutely fascinating!
Selina Siak Chin Yoke – The author has written two books in the Malayan series; The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds and When the Future Comes Too Soon. Historical fiction set in British colonial times in Malaysia, which I’ve mentioned I’ve become more appreciative of. These books weave many of the different, rich Malaysian cultures into the story and I love seeing multicultural aspects of Malaysia being represented so I can’t wait to read these books too.
Have you read any of these books and/or authors? What did you think of them? Would you read any of these books?
Welcome to Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly bookish meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl that features a different bookish topic every week.
Today’s topic is Books with the Word “[Insert Word Here]” in the Title
I am unfortunately writing this post after a sleepless night laying in bed tossing and turning until 5am this morning. My brain can’t brain and the only thing I’m thinking about is sleep. So I’m choosing books with the word “sleep” in the title for this prompt.
Top Ten Books with the Word “Sleep” in the Title
While My Pretty One Sleeps by Mary Higgins Clark – I read this book in 2012 and gave it 3/5 stars but for the life of me I can’t remember anything about it, and the fact that I rated it 3 stars gives me so much indecision about whether it’s worth a reread. I do enjoy mysteries and thrillers so I might just read other books by the author that I haven’t already tried.
Beauty Sleep by Cameron Dokey – I remember binging on a whole bunch of fairytale retellings years ago and coming across this book, but I don’t remember if I ended up reading this one. I still love fairytale retellings so I might binge a whole bunch of them again!
Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel – This was one of the first books I listened to on audio and I remember being blown away by the production. It’s the first book in a series and I loved the first two books but was unfortunately disappointed with the last one.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving – This is one of those stories that we see so much in pop culture that I feel like I know the story already even if I haven’t read the book. It’s still on my TBR though and I do intend to read it one day.
Before I Go To Sleep by S.J. Watson – I read this book back in 2012 and remember enjoying it. I gave it 4/5 stars but wrote nothing else about it. I’m a bit mad with my 2012 self, tbh, lazy ass not writing reviews, or at least some notes, for me to refer to, especially knowing how forgetful I am.
Doctor Sleep by Stephen King – This is the sequel to The Shining, which is probably the more popular book but I personally think it’s a strong book in itself and it holds it own. I loved both, and I loved Danny in both.
The Places We Sleep by Caroline Brooks DuBois – I have not read this but it looks interesting and I want to try to get my hands on a copy. It’s middle grade, poetry, historical fiction (it’s crazy to me that 9/11 events is now classified as historical – it doesn’t seem that long ago), and that’s a combination that I hardly ever read but I’m sure I would enjoy.
While the World Is Still Asleep by Petra Durst-Benning – This book intrigues me. The cover intrigues me. The subject matter intrigues me. It’s historical fiction based in Germany in the 1890s and it’s illegal for a woman to ride a bike. I am so intrigued.
Sleeping with the Fishes by Mary Janice Davidson – A paranormal romance about a mermaid. I had this book on my radar some years ago but never got around to it. Now that it’s crossed my path again I’m adding it back to my TBR.
Where Children Sleep by James Mollison – This is an art photography book of children’s bedrooms all around the world with stories about the children and how they live. I would really love to take a look but my library doesn’t have a copy. I’ll keep looking.
Have you read any of these books? What did you think of them? Would you read any of these books?
Welcome to Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly bookish meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl that features a different bookish topic every week.
Today’s topic is Books that Surprised Me
Books are constantly surprising me all the time in so many different ways. Today I’m choosing to go with books that surprised me in a good way and these are some of the more recent ones.
Top Ten Recent Books That Surprised Me
All The Living and the Dead by Hayley Campbell – I have a morbid curiosity about death and dying and I thought this would be interesting. It’s nonfiction and I expected an impersonal book filled with facts, but it ended up feeling more like a memoir of the author’s experience while researching the book. It got emotional and personal, and in a couple of instances maybe a little judgemental, but I was surprised by how deeply invested I got into the book.
The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon – I had no idea this was historical fiction and based on real people and events at first, and I also didn’t expect to love it so much. It was so well-written and I found myself googling the actual people.
Shark Heart by Emily Habeck – It was waayyy more profound and heartwrenching than I expected. I thought it was going to be something fun and campy because of the subject matter, and I’ve even joked about it with friends who had read it, but it turned out so surprisingly emotional.
The Measure by Nikki Erlick – This book literally surprised me by appearing on my Shelf in my Libby app out of nowhere. I do not remember borrowing it or putting it on hold, nor even hearing about the book before! It just turned up on my shelf! However, the narrator is Julia Whelan and I love her, so I decided to read it anyway.
Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan – This one definitely caught me by surprise! It was supposed to be a light-hearted YA read for me, like a snack that you read and enjoy in the moment and never think about again, but I love it so much and now I’m obsessed with it! I need the next books!
The Terror by Dan Simmons – I don’t really know what I was expecting with this one. Maybe something more like The Indifferent Stars Above for the Donner Party, but for Franklin’s expedition. I didn’t realize it was fiction and was often confused by what was real and what was not. I was surprised by how invested I got in the characters in the end and how much it affected me!
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong – I didn’t expect to like this book, much less love it. It was a bookclub BOTM that I don’t think I voted for, and I ended up being blown away by how beautiful it was.
Heartstopper the series by Alice Oseman – This is one of the best things that ever existed and we must protect it at all cost! I was not interested in this series at all because it’s about high school boys and I didn’t think it’d have anything I could relate to, but I ended up loving it so much and loving the boys too! The best surprise!
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus – So I was lucky to not be exposed to the hype around this book. I had no idea it was even popular at all and fully expected it was going to be another snack-like book I would forget after reading. I ended up enjoying it so much and I was surprised to find out that most people thought it was overhyped.
Sooley by John Grisham – I love legal thrillers so of course I’ve read several of John Grisham’s books and that’s how I came across this one. However, this book turned out to be about sports and sportsmen, which I’m usually not interested in but it was so good and I loved it and I guess I love reading about sports after all.
Have you read any of these books? What did you think of them? Would you read any of these books?
Rae Seddon, nicknamed Sunshine, lived a quiet life working at her stepfather’s bakery. There are places in the world where darkness rules, where it’s unwise to walk. Sunshine knew that. One night, she went out to the lake for some peace and quiet. There hadn’t been any trouble out at the lake for years, and Sunshine just needed a spot where she could be alone with her thoughts.
Big mistake.
Vampires never entered her mind. Until they found her. And set upon her, and took her to an old abandoned mansion. They took her clothes and sneakers. They dressed her in a long red gown. And they shackled her to a wall-within easy reach of a figure stirring in the moonlight, who is also chained. She knows that it is a vampire. She knows that she’s to be his dinner, and that when he is finished with her, she will be dead. Yet, when light breaks, she finds that he has not attempted to harm her. And now it is the vampire, Constantin, who needs her to help him survive the day, to protect him from the sun with her magic…
This is a reread. I’ve read this book twice before and it’s one of my favorite vampire stories. I also really love the author’s works.
The Quotes
“What we can do, we must do: we must use what we are given, and we must use it the best we can, however much or little help we have for the task. What you have been given is a hard thing–a very hard thing… But my darling, what if there were no one who could do the difficult things?”
“It is halfway true that if you are involved in a family coffeehouse you don’t have a life.”
“You can be a really nasty, selfish little jerk when you’re scared enough. I was scared enough.”
“He was a vampire. I was a human. We weren’t supposed to have any bonds between us, except straightforward generic ones of murderous antagonism and so on.”
The Narrator(s)
Laural Merlington. I had a really hard time with the low vampire voices. I could barely hear them and couldn’t make out what they were saying. I had to get a copy of the ebook and refer to it periodically.
My Thoughts
I love this book. I have loved this book, and I still love this book. Listening on audio was not the best experience, unfortunately, because I couldn’t make out what some of the low voices was saying, but I still love the story. I read it for the first time maybe 20 years ago and I thought it was one of the more interesting vampire stories, and 20 years later it’s still true for me.
The relationship between Rae and Constantin is a constant push/pull, and I love that vampires aren’t seen as dashing, romantic bad boys in this world but rather dangerous, animalistic creatures of prey. I mean, to an extent, Constantin is romanticized a little bit but to a reasonable degree in comparison to so many other vampire stories.
There are so many reasons why I love this book; the interesting world-building, the vampire lore, the rich character backgrounds. When the book first came out years ago, I hoped there might be more books set in this world, but unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be any so far, and the author hasn’t published any new books in the last decade. Still, there are plenty of books in her catalog I haven’t read and I love rereading the ones I’ve read. I never get tired of them.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett
Emily Wilde has spent her life studying faeries. A renowned dryadologist, she has documented hundreds of species of Folk in her Encyclopaedia of Faeries. Now she is about to embark on her most dangerous academic project studying the inner workings of a faerie realm-as its queen.
Along with her former academic rival-now fiancé-the dashing and mercurial Wendell Bambleby, Emily is immediately thrust into the deadly intrigues of Faerie as the two of them seize the throne of Wendell’s long-lost kingdom, which Emily finds a beautiful nightmare, filled with scholarly treasures.
Emily has been obsessed with faerie stories her entire life, but at first she feels as ill-suited to Faerie as she did to the mortal world-how could an unassuming scholar like herself pass for a queen? Yet there is little time to settle in-Wendell’s murderous stepmother has placed a deadly curse upon the land before vanishing without a trace. It will take all of Wendell’s magic-and Emily’s knowledge of stories-to unravel the mystery before they lose everything they hold dear.
I enjoyed the first two books and I love the characters.
The Quotes
“I have learned there is one thing a person never tires of, no matter how long they live. And that is being in love. All else is ash and ember.”
“Shadow’s world was one in which all and sundry either fawned over him or kept a respectful distance from his intimidating bulk. Each time Orga hissed at him, Shadow seemed to assume it a misunderstanding, which grew increasingly improbable as these incidents accumulated, but still less improbable, in his view, than being disliked.”
“Stories are the architecture of Faerie, more powerful than magic, more powerful than kings.”
“Such is the way with librarians, who are almost as unpredictable as the Folk, some minatory and persnickety, others overflowing with warmth towards humanity at large.”
My Thoughts
I loved the first book but I thought the second wasn’t as strong as the first. Many people have expressed that they thought this book might be the weakest of the three, and in terms of stories, I agree. The story felt weak and unnecessarily drawn out, especially towards the end, but I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt and assuming that it might be a possible set up for the next books. Still unnecessary though, and it could’ve been done better if so.
However, my expectations for this book was lower this time and I ended up enjoying it very much. I especially love the little bits of comedy and relationship scenes. I love the banter between Emily and Wendell, and I love the little things he did to show how much he loved and respected her. I also loved Orga and Shadow, and I loved how interesting the other characters are as well. I think the best thing about this book is the characters, and I always want to know more about them.
It’s funny because it feels like it’s the side stories and backstories of these characters that keep me coming back. I’m not sure I love the overarching stories at this point, but I would absolutely read the next book(s) just because I can’t get enough of the characters. To be fair, the main story of this book wasn’t bad, I just feel like it wasn’t enough. I hope the main stories in future books get better.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
Everyone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer: how Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down.
In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is meticulously planned – from the layout of the winding roads, to the colours of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.
Enter Mia Warren – an enigmatic artist and single mother – who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenage daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than just tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother–daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past, and a disregard for the rules that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.
When old family friends attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town – and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at an unexpected and devastating cost . . .
I watched the tv adaptation a few years ago and loved it and always meant to read the book eventually.
The Quotes
“Sometimes you need to scorch everything to the ground, and start over. After the burning the soil is richer, and new things can grow. People are like that, too. They start over. They find a way.”
“She had learned that when people were bent on doing something they believed was a good deed, it was usually impossible to dissuade them.”
“I’ll tell you a secret. A lot of times, parents are not the best at seeing their children clearly.”
“Where do we follow the rules, and where do we justify breaking them? Do our pasts determine what we deserve in the future? And is it ever possible to leave your past behind?”
The Narrator(s)
Jennifer Lim. It was absolutely perfect.
My Thoughts
I feel like a lot of my love for this book might have been carried over from my love for the tv adaptation. I remember a lot of key moments in the show and the vibrancy of the actors who play the characters and pictured some of the scenes as I was reading the book. This rarely happens with me but in this instance I think the show was just so good that it stayed with me, and dare I say, I think the show was better than the book. But not by much because the book was really good too.
Reading the book served to make the differences in class and privilege among the characters a lot more jarring to me. Their internal thought processes and justifications, their reasons for doing the things they did, made such a stark contrast when put into words in the book.
There have been some criticisms about the book trying to bias us towards certain characters that may or may not necessarily be right in their own actions, but I personally feel like that’s missing the point. It’s not about who’s right or wrong, all the characters did/have done questionable things, but rather, it’s about privilege. The ones who have money and privilege have more options, more connections, more ways to get themselves out of trouble, and more grace from public opinion. The poor don’t have the luxury of better options, nor grace from public opinion. They are maligned for “making bad choices” when “good choices” are just not available to them.
I love that this story highlights that, but I also think that people who have privilege may not recognize this aspect of the story because they don’t always recognize their own privilege. It’s written so subtly and masterfully, the characters are so complex and their thought processes feel so true to life, it’s just an amazing book and I loved it.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
The men on board HMS Terror have every expectation of triumph. As part of the 1845 Franklin Expedition, the first steam-powered vessels ever to search for the legendary Northwest Passage, they are as scientifically supported an enterprise as has ever set forth. As they enter a second summer in the Arctic Circle without a thaw, though, they are stranded in a nightmarish landscape of encroaching ice and darkness. Endlessly cold, with diminishing rations, 126 men fight to survive with poisonous food, a dwindling supply of coal, and ships buckling in the grip of crushing ice. But their real enemy is far more terrifying. There is something out there in the frigid darkness: an unseen predator stalking their ship, a monstrous terror constantly clawing to get in.
When the expedition’s leader, Sir John Franklin, meets a terrible death, Captain Francis Crozier takes command and leads his surviving crewmen on a last, desperate attempt to flee south across the ice. With them travels an Inuit woman who cannot speak and who may be the key to survival, or the harbinger of their deaths. But as another winter approaches, as scurvy and starvation grow more terrible, and as the terror on the ice stalks them southward, Crozier and his men begin to fear that there is no escape.
I love big books, and I love horror, and I love historical fiction, and I love books about exploration. This book seemed like a culmination of many things I love.
The Quotes
“The beauty of being dead, he knows now, is that there is no pain and no sense of self.”
“Life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. It has no plan, no point, no hidden mysteries that make up for the oh-so-obvious miseries and banalities.”
“Every time I believe I know one of these men or officers, I find that I am wrong. A million years of Man’s Medicinal progress will never reveal the secret condition and sealed compartments of the Human soul.”
“Why does our species always have to take our full measure of God-given misery and terror and mortality and then make it worse?”
The Narrator(s)
Tom Sellwood. Loved his narration!
My Thoughts
Although this story is based on a real lost expedition that happened, I wasn’t sure how much of it would stay true to life and what would be embellished. I was also unfamiliar with the true events so I wouldn’t have realized where the story diverged, which maybe added to my enjoyment of the book as I was taking everything at face value. I loved a few of the characters, hated a couple of others, and found myself rooting for the ones I loved and wishing horrible things on the bad guys.
I loved the whole experience of reading this book. It started really slow-paced, but it kept building and building and building on the tension and in the end the slow burn was so worth it. I read it as a buddy read with my online bookclub and one of the things I said is that this is one of the best books I’ve read and I loved the writing, but I don’t think I’ll ever want to read it again because of how intense it is.
Give me enough time to forget the experience and I may read it again, but right now I’m still reeling from all the feelings.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson
Everyone in my family has killed someone. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once. I’m not trying to be dramatic, but it is the truth. Some of us are good, others are bad, and some just unfortunate.
I’m Ernest Cunningham. Call me Ern or Ernie. I wish I’d killed whoever decided our family reunion should be at a ski resort, but it’s a little more complicated than that.
Have I killed someone? Yes. I have. Who was it? Let’s get started.
There’d been a lot of hype for this book and I’ve been hearing about this book for a while. I thought it sounded really interesting.
The Quotes
“Family is not whose blood runs in your veins, it’s who you’d spill it for.”
“You can tell a lot about someone from whether they can handle an uncomfortable silence. If they ride it out or snap it off.”
“Anger is as much an heirloom as any Rolex.”
“Every basic task starts to feel like a decision, and that becomes so draining that you end up unable to make any of them.”
The Narrator(s)
Barton Welch. He was very pleasant to listen to.
My Thoughts
I must admit I didn’t love this book. I had high expectations coming into it and had been anticipating reading it and the other books in the series, but I’m not sure that I’ll continue with it. It’s not horrible, but I didn’t enjoy the writing style. It felt gimmicky, and the constant breaking of the fourth wall annoyed me and took me out of the story.
The story itself wasn’t incredible either and I didn’t connect very much with the characters. In fact, I would say that the book as a whole was quite forgettable to me. Perhaps the most memorable thing about it for me is the title of the book. I just finished it and I couldn’t tell you anything about the characters or significant things that happened because nothing and no one really stood out to me.
However, it is well-written and -crafted despite my dislike of the writing style, and there are some great quotes I really liked in the book. I can understand why people would enjoy this book, but it just didn’t connect for me unfortunately.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
Welcome to Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly bookish meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl that features a different bookish topic every week.
Today’s topic is My Unpopular Bookish Opinions
I’ve had so many opinions I thought were unpopular that turned out to be quite common and I felt a bit pressured to think of more, so I’m just going to cop-out with an easy alphabetical prompt. Here are some books I’ve read beginning with C.
Top Ten Books Beginning with C
Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood – I’ve talked about this book several times because it’s one of my favorite books; it focuses on the friendships between women and the way we are pitted against each other and taught to see each other as rivals. It’s been a while since I read it and I desperately need to reread.
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas – Another favorite that I’ve read many times but never get tired of. If you’re daunted by its size, I promise it’s really fast paced and easy to read once you get into it!
The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black – One of my favorite vampire stories although I can’t remember why! I guess I need to reread this too!
Carrie by Stephen King – I’ve read this before and I mean to read this again soon for my Stephen King Reading Challenge. It has been on my mind lately because of the buzz about Mike Flanagan adapting it. It’s very exciting!
Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein – It’s a WW2 spy story and I remember feeling all the feelings when I read it more than ten years ago. In my Goodreads review I mention that this is a book I need to reread. I think I need a separate TBR list for rereads!
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky – This book is on this list purely for bragging purposes. 😂 I read it, it was okay, it mostly felt like a fever dream, but I read it relatively recently and I wanted to make sure everyone knew how much of an intellectual I am. 🤓
Circe by Madeline Miller – I would read anything by the author, and yes, I loved The Song of Achilles too, but I loved this one more. I love how relatable Circe is as a woman, goddess, witch, person. Another book I really want to reread!
Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid – I also would read anything by TJR, every book she’s written is gold! But I have a few favorites and this book is one of them.
Cinder by Marissa Meyer – I love the whole series! I love fairytale retellings in general and I always seek them out, but this one was special and different when it came out and I just loved how creative it was and how the overarching story brought everything together.
The Curiosity by Stephen P. Kiernan – This is one of my most favorite, most underrated authors I have ever read. I love every single one of his books but his most popular book only has about 20K ratings. It’s a shame because they are all so good. This book was my first and it’s about a man who has been frozen in ice for a century and wakes up in current times. All his books have been 5 stars for me, and I would reread them over and over again.
Have you read any of these books? What did you think of them? Would you read any of these books?
