Thursday, July 19, 2018

May and June Wrap-Ups

Hello Everyone!
Once again I apologize for long absences on here, work and life is crazy. But here's the promised wrap-up for both May and June. We'll do May first and then June. This is going to be a long post so please bear with me on this one. Without further ado here's the wrap-up for MAY!

May Wrap-Up
So in May I did better with reading than I had in previous months, staying pretty on-schedule with where I wanted to be. I read five books and I rather enjoyed all of them. It was all very science fiction and fantasy heavy. 

First book I read was Caraval by Stephanie Garber which I finished on May 2, 2018 and rated a 4/5 stars on Goodreads. 

Caraval is a fantasy about a girl named Scarlett who is betrothed to marry a man she's never met. She and her sister Tella are abused by their father and while Tella openly rebels, Scarlett stays quiet and passive hoping to protect her sister from their father's temper. Upon meeting a young sailor (who's name is currently escaping me), he and Tella shanghai Scarlett to the magical isle where the magical performance of Caraval is being done. Once there Tella disappears and becomes the main focus of the year's performance, the one who finds and retrieves her gets a single wish. So Scarlett, with the help from her sailor are on a quest to be the first to find Tella and save her from Caraval, where not everything is as it seems. I enjoyed the book immensely despite the fact that I didn't really like the main protagonist, Scarlett. She ended up having decent character development and I enjoyed seeing how her character grew through the story to the surprise twist ending (which actually caught me by surprise). Upon finishing Caraval I immediately ordered the second book which was released on May 31, 2018. 

The second book I read in May was A Court of Frost and Starlight by Sarah J Maas. I finished t in about 24 hours on May 3, 2018 and like all the other ACOTAR books I gave it a 5/5 on Goodreads. 

This is the fourth book released in the ACOTAR series, a novella about the characters in their first Winter solstice after the war with Hybern. Mostly this was a fluffy book with the characters learning how to live again in peace after the horrors of war. I loved it, but I also adore these characters and the world that Maas has built. Most importantly there's a sneak peak of the next book, a new novel in the same world surrounding new characters. Based on the sneak peak in this book, the next one will center more around Cassian and Nesta and I am very, very excited for this to happen. 

The third book I read in May was Cinder by Marissa Meyer. I finished it on May 6, 2018  and gave it a 4/5 stars on Goodreads. 
This is the first book in The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer a sci-fi series retelling classic fairy tales. This one is a retelling of Cinderella where the main character, Cinder, is a cyborg mechanic. The big villains are a group of people on the moon called Lunars, ruled by an evil queen named Levana who wants to take over Earth as well. The world is plagued by a plague, leaving the handsome Prince Kai Emperor when his father dies of it. It sets up the series and main conflicts well and I really enjoyed the sci-fi setting and especially the genre mixed with fairy tales. I ordered the rest of the series when I finished the first one. 

The fourth of five books I read in May was Ace of Shades by Amanda Foody. I finished it on May 26, 2018 and gave it a 3/5 stars on Goodreads. 
This book was the April OwlCrate book and I thought it sounded AMAZING, especially with the tagline on the cover "Take a card and stake your soul". But sadly, while this book was good, it fell flat. I really rather enjoyed Levi, the male protagonist in the book, but I rather disliked the female protagonist, Enne, who is unfortunately who you spend more time following. That being said she did exhibit some decent character growth and ended up tolerable at least. That being said I did enjoy it all right and I will read further books in the series when they're released but I'm not possessed with the urge to go out and buy all the books this second. 

The final book I read in May was Scarlet by Marissa Meyer. I finished it on May 31, 2018 and I gave it a 4/5 stars on Goodreads. 
Scarlet is the second book in The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer and it follows a girl named Scarlet whose grandmother is missing. When her father shows up making wild claims and then is murdered, Scarlet teams up with a street fighter who calls himself Wolf (this is a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood) to find her grandmother. While that storyline is going on you are also following a continuation of Cinder and Kai's stories from the first book, leading to Cinder and her new companion Thorne running into Scarlet and Wolf and banding together as they prepare to eventually take on Levana. I enjoyed this book just as much as the first one and it definitely leaves me ready to take on the rest of the series. 

So those are the five books I read in the month of May. I acquired ten books in the month of May. Two came from OwlCrate:
Sky in the Deep was the main OwlCrate book in May, a Viking based fantasy novel that I'm particularly excited about. Catching Stars was a bonus fantasy book included in the box. I'm a little less enthused about it but I'm still looking forward to it. 

I purchased eight books, mostly the other books in The Lunar Chronicles with a couple others. 


So that's May's wrap-up. I read a lot, got more books, and had a good (but busy) month. 

JUNE WRAP-UP
So now we're moving onto June. Like in May I actually read five books although it seems like it took me forever to read one of the books (it was really just a week but I just really disliked the book). Starting in June I started a new thing where I have all the books on my to-be-read (TBR) pile in a jar and pick about five of them at random and choose one of those books to read. Which bit me in the butt almost immediately with my first pick. 

 So the first book I finished in June was The Finest Hours by Michael Tougias and Casey Sherman. I finished it on June 7, 2018 and gave it a 2/5 stars on Goodreads.
I hated this book. It was very short but it some ways it was a book that should've been an article or essay instead. It's about a Coast Guard rescue of stranded crews on two oil tankers that broke apart off Cape Cod in the 1950s. The bits about the rescue itself was pretty good and I enjoyed the follow up as to what the crew of the Coast Guard ship and the rescued oil men did afterward but then there's huge diatribes about fishing in Cape Cod and the history of the Coast Guard. So not one of my favorites and would not recommend it to anyone (the movie's great though so watch it instead).

The second book I read in June was Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli. I finished it on June 9, 2018 and gave it a 5/5 on Goodreads.

 I loved this book so, so, so much. Before I finished it (knowing I had a trip coming up), I went to Barnes and Noble to pick up the second book. It is a super sweet love story about a boy named Simon who is a gay teenager in the closet and is talking to a mysterious boy named Blue via email. But then Simon accidentally leaves his email up and another boy reads the emails and blackmails him. It was a great story and I loved it so very much. It was funny and sweet and the movie (Love, Simon) is just as great. I recommend it to everyone.

The third book I read in June is the sequel to the aforementioned book, Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli. I finished this book on June 10, 2018 and also gave it a 5/5 stars on Goodreads.
Leah is Simon's best friend who, even after the coming out drama with Simon the previous year, is a closeted bisexual girl. The book follows her adventures as a drummer in a band, preparing for college and realizing that she's falling for her (seemingly straight) friend. This book was just as sweet and amazing as the first one and I just can''t wait for more books in this series.

The Fourth book I read in June was Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. I finished it on June 23, 2018 and rated it a 4/5 on Goodreads.
Fangirl is a book about Cath who is starting college and is the biggest Simon Snow fan and a famous writer of Simon Snow fanfiction. Her twin sister is trying to get some distance from her and Cath is trying to find her own voice in her writing classes without Fanfiction. This book hit home a lot for me because in a lot of ways I am very similar to Cath and I really liked it.

Finally, the last book I read was Let's Talk About Love by Claire Kann. I rated it 5/5 on Goodreads and finished it on June 25, 2018.
This is about a girl named Alice who is in college and was recently dumped by her girlfriend for her lack of an interest in sex. It explores the realm of asexual people and the relationships they do form, without sex. She's biromantic and asexual and she meets a man at her job at the library who tests what she thinks she knows about herself and what she wants. I really enjoyed this book and the subject and I definitely would read more by this author.

So I went a little crazy in June with the book buying and got thirteen new books over the course of the month and only one came out of the June OwlCrate box. So here's a list of them:

This was a mixture of fantasy and contemporary YA with a poetry book thrown in. As seen in June I really got further into contemporary YA fiction and I like the fluff of a good love story. I've always read a lot of serious stuff so fluff is nice for a change. 


So that's the huge combined wrap-up for May and June (more than halfway through July). I'll try to do better in the future. Next up I'm going to do the unboxing of June's OwlCrate since they're getting ready to ship July's and then I'll try to finish up my reviews of the other books I read so maybe I'll be caught up by the end of July. 

Happy Reading,
Richelle and Emma



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