During the month of March, life got in the way, and I only ended up reading a measly four books. Me from previous years would be ecstatic at this number, but my January and February totals proved that, when I put my mind to it, I am able to read much more than I could ever imagine.
I will still able to read (and reread) some great books. However, I’m pretty sure I spent more time buying books than reading them (I think I bought somewhere around 10 books this month).
Nonetheless, I still worked toward my goal. Here are my reviews.
Pretty Reckless by L.J. Shen • 2/5 stars
This romance was by an author I had heard of in the past, but I was sorely disappointed with this book.
The book follows Daria, the daughter of a rich ballet teacher, and Penn, the son of a drug addict. Penn’s sister is a student at Daria’s ballet school, but Daria ruins her chances of going to a famous ballet company, and his sister ends up going missing. Years later, Penn returns to Daria’s life when her parents take him in after his mom’s death. They must work through their history, which leads to both hatred and attraction.
By the synopsis, this books sounds great, especially if you enjoy the enemies-to-lovers trope, but I found to many issues to thoroughly enjoy this one. In fact, I often considered quitting this book, but forced myself to push through.
The characters in this book are primarily rich kids preoccupied with drama and back-stabbing. They were immature, unoriginal, and annoying to read about. They also lacked moral compasses, which I struggle to understand. Daria is an ungrateful and self-centered brat.
In the end, I thought Daria and Penn were a cute couple, but there wasn’t enough redeeming qualities for me to give this more than two stars.
Vicious by V.E. Schwab • 5/5 stars
I went into this book pretty blind, but was quite surprised by how much I enjoyed the story.
Vicious tells the story of Eli and Victor, two brilliant college roommates who are experimenting with EOs––ExtraOrdinaries––in hopes of making superheroes. Eli and Victor decide to make themselves the subjects of their experiments, but things start to go horribly wrong. Ten years later, both Eli’s and Victor’s lives are transformed by EOs, but they both have different ideas about how they should be treated.
The story is written from two different time periods: one while they’re in college, and the other in present day. This is really effective and kept me locked into the story the entire time. From the moment I started the book, I was thrown into both narratives and was obsessed with both of them.
The concept of this book is so imaginative, especially the way EOs are formed and receive their unique powers. I have hardly any complaints about this book, and need to pick up book two soon to finish this amazing duology.
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas • 5/5 stars
The last time I read this book was in 2017, and I figured with it’s popularity on BookTok it was time for me to reread this beloved series.
ACOTAR follows Feyre, the youngest of three daughters and the daughter of a failing and crippled merchant. Feyre protects her family and provides for them by hunting and handling all of the money. At the beginning of the story, Feyre is hunting when she sees a ginormous wolf preying on a deer; she shoots the wolf as he kills the deer and is able to take both home for meat and pelts. Little did Feyre know that the wolf was a High Fae, and she is taken by Tamlin, the High Lord of the Spring Court, in a life-for-a-life bargain.
I love this story and the concept of it. The story is so imaginative, and all of the characters are so lovable. Feyre is quite strong and independent, and to see her clash with Tamlin, who is quite similar in that way, is breathtaking.
I don’t want to give much away, so I won’t go into much detail, but if you love romance and fantasy, you need to read A Court of Thorns and Roses.
A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas • 5/5 stars
Once again, this book is a reread, the second in the ACOTAR series. To prevent spoilers, I won’t include a synopsis here.
If you’ve read the first book and are hesitant to continue reading, please let me urge you to pick up ACOMAF. This is my personal favorite in the series. The first book mostly sets up the plot for the next two, and it keeps getting better and better.
This is one of my favorite books of all-time, and I still stand by that after reading it once again in 2022.
Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid • 3/5 stars
Over winter break, I read The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and really enjoyed it. I was hoping to have just as much fun with this Taylor Jenkins Reid book, but finished it feeling quite unfulfilled.
Malibu Rising follows the four Riva siblings on the night of the annual Riva party. The story goes back and forth between present day and the past, in which we learn about their parents’ love story and also the aftermath of it in which Nina, the oldest Riva child, had to give up her childhood to raise her siblings following her mother’s death.
I thought the premise of the book was really interesting, but fell short of it’s potential. The book is primarily focalized through the four siblings, but also focalizes through many other characters at the party. I found these other storylines to be insignificant and not effective in the overall telling of the story.
On the night of this Riva party, Mick Riva, the kid’s famous father, decides to make an appearance to reconcile the past, but I didn’t understand why he chose this day after being absent for 20 years. The logic of it didn’t make sense, and left me more curious than anything else.
Overall, there were just a few aspects of the story that I couldn’t overlook, which left me distracted from the story as a whole. Although the story was enjoyable, it was just a sub-par novel in my opinion.
And those are the four books I read during March. I also almost finished Wait For It by Jenn McKinlay, but accidentally left the book at my grandparents house with just 30 pages left to go. Hopefully I’ll be able to finish it in April and give you my thoughts then.
Page, I’m reading The Song of Achilles right now and it’ll be the first thing I review in the month of April.
Until then, happy reading!