Welcome to my first monthly wrap-up! January was a better reading month than I expected, considering that I was busy with final exams all month long. In total I read 4 books and listened to 1 audio book. Unlike my favourites post, in monthly wrap-ups I will order the books by star rating and preference starting from highest to lowest
The Island at the End of Everything by Kiran Millwood Hargrave (5 stars)
I wasn’t sure whether or not to pick up this book. I’d heard really good things about it but I’d also heard a lot of positive things about the author’s previous book, The Girl of Ink and Stars, which I didn’t love. Based on a real life place, The Island at the End of Everything is the story of Ami, whose mother was sent off to live in a leper colony. Unlike her mother, Ami isn’t “touched”, and thanks to a new government initiative she, alongside the other healthy children, is being sent to an orphanage in a different island and won’t be able to see her mother until she turns 18. The book is very well written, I loved the characters and the plot. It is one of the few books I’ve read that portrays bodily difference in a good light and I couldn’t put it down. I’d definitely recommend this book (so much that I forced both my mother and my girlfriend to read them and they both gave it 5 stars)
Paper Butterflies by Lisa Heathfield (5 stars)
Paper Butterflies spans several years, starting from June’s childhood all the way into adulthood. June is black, as was her mother, but she attends a primarily white school and lives with a white family comprised of her father, her stepmother and stepsister. She is treated as an outsider and bullied in school, she’s abused at home, her father is never around and won’t believe any of her claims against her stepmother. The primary messages of this book are how all authority figures can fail someone that is seeking out their help and desperately in need of it as well as how abuse isn’t always straightforward and what causes someone to abuse another. The book is very dark and twisted, very graphical and horrible and the main thing that kept me going was concern for the main character and a need to know her fate. However, the topics covered are definitely important to talk about, the characters and plot were very well constructed (so much that I cried while reading it even though I’d never cried reading a book before and I was stuck in a crowded airplane the entire time).
Secrets for the Mad by Dodie Clark (4.5 stars)
I am a big dodie fan, I love her music, her videos discussing mental health, sexuality and all sorts of other topics. The audiobook felt as a 4h long video, full of stories from her past, present, in depth discussions about mental health, eating disorders, divorce, childhood, fame, grief, and featuring songs in between chapters. I don’t think I would have enjoyed reading the book but the audiobook was definitely worth it and I’d recommend it if you’re a dodie fan or prefer audiobooks over looking for her youtube videos (if you’ve never heard of her before, check out her youtube channel first, that’ll give you an idea about whether or not this book is for you)
Turtles All the Way Down by John Green (4 stars)
There is very little plot on this book and whatever plot there is would spoil the book to talk about so I’ll be vague while talking about it. Aza Holmes is a high school student who suffers from anxiety. The book is really good at portraying what goes on in the mind of someone with anxiety, things outsiders can’t see or understand, and how anxiety can get in the way of having a “normal” life (going to school, friendships, relationships, etc). I didn’t love the characters, or the plot for that matter, but if you don’t suffer from mental health issues and want to understand how the brains of people who do work and how to be supportive this book is a fairly easy and informative read.
Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter (2.5 stars)
This is a very short read. I don’t have much to say about it, it is divided into 3 different sections, boys, dad and crow. The crow is a personification of grief and death that comes to visit the boys and dad when the mother passes away. It follows their grieving process from the very start until they’re finally able to go on with their lives. It’s fairly poetic and practically plotless, there were some scenes that I really liked but the majority of it I couldn’t get myself to care about.
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