Sorry for the super late post! I’ve been super busy and exhausted. August was a pretty good reading month. Lots of books I really enjoyed again, surprisingly lots of middle grade and YA that I absolutely loved, that hasn’t been happening much lately. I read 13 books in total (though 2 were audiobooks) and out of those 6 were library books (I finally decided to join my local library after living here for 2 years and not doing it, really glad I did!). I participated in 3 different reading challenges this month: the booktubeathon (you can check out my instagram and youtube accounts to see more), the classicsathon (for which I read Jane Eyre) and the big book weekender (for which I read A Little Life). As usual reviews are sorted in order of preference from most liked to least. A few of the reviews aren’t very good because I took a really long time to write them so my opinion and memory of them was already fading away, sorry about that.
The Astonishing Colour of After by Emily XR Pan (5 stars)
I absolutely loved this book, definitely going on my all time favourites list! The book kicks off with Leigh being convinced her mother, who committed suicide, is a bird. Not long after she saw the bird she gets a package full of old things including a letter from her grandparents (who she knows nothing about) and the bird tells her to take it with her to Taiwan. Leigh has no clue what to make out of it all and all she has is the box and a crossed out note telling her to remember. The book reminded me a lot about Fablehaven which I loved as a child as well as Riordan books and The Storm Keeper’s Island. I think it does a great job at conveying what depression is like, both from the perspective of the person experiencing it and the people around that person. The way it’s written is also very clever and I felt like I was taking a voyage through time, being inside the memories rather than reading about them and Taiwanesse culture and a quest for belonging and forming an identity are as central to the story as Leigh’s quest to understand what happened to her mother is. I don’t think I’ve ever read any other YA book that tackles so many important themes so well without them falling to the background and I can’t stop thinking about the book.
The Storm Keeper’s Island by Catherine Doyle (5 stars)
This is the first of the two middle grade books that I really enjoyed. At the start of the book Fionn and Tara get sent to the island of Arranmore to live with their grandfather, as their mother’s depression has gotten so bad that she can no longer care for them. The island is full of mysteries, among them a dangerous cave that can grant wishes and Fionn’s grandfather’s role as the storm keeper. The book reminded me a lot of the Percy Jackson series and the Fablehaven series, both of which were my absolute favourites growing up (and hence, this feeling like both of them in one would top them both if Fablehaven wasn’t so full of childhood nostalgia for me). In addition to the plot and mythology components I thought it was great that it addressed both parental depression and dementia really well so I’d definitely recommend it and I can’t wait for book two.
Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend (5 stars)
This book came to my attention since a lot of booktubers whose reading taste is similar to mine were talking about it, but more surprisingly, lots of them being people who don’t generally read/like middle grade. I didn’t know much about it going in so I’ll keep this short. Morrigan is a cursed child, she is blamed for everything bad that happens to anyone in her hometown, sometimes even including the weather. Additionally, she’s destined to die young – when eventide arrives. Unexpectedly someone takes her away to a magical land to escape her fate but she has to prove herself in order to be able to stay there. I’m not sure exactly what it is about this book that makes me love it so much but it’s charming, sweet and I couldn’t stop reading. I think the world building was done really well and the characters are more complex than you usually see in middle grade, but I can’t really explain the sense of joy and happiness reading this book gave me.
Six of Crows & Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo (4 and 5 stars respectively)
I knew nothing about this series going into it other than the fact that it has LGBTQ representation and that apparently everyone other than me seems to have read it or know about it regardless of whether or not they’re in the LGBTQ community themselves, which can’t be said about many books. Six of Crows is basically about a pack of 6 thieves (and outcasts) given an impossible job and the book follows them trying to carry it out. I found it really hard to read at first, I think the first 30% or so was mainly world and plot building and I thought it was slow and confusing and I didn’t really care, so much that I was considering DNFing it. But from then on both books swap to being very character focused, you get everyone’s backgrounds and perspectives and by the end of the series you feel like you understand them better than anyone else. I love character focused books and it’s not something I often see in YA, especially not in a fantasy world, so if that’s your cup of tea I definitely recommend it.
Disobedience by Naomi Alderman (4 stars)
I first heard of Naomi Alderman when The Power won the women’s prize for fiction last year, since then it’s been sitting on my TBR but I haven’t really felt like picking it up. When browsing through the library I ran into Disobedience and found the premise to be more appealing so I decided to start off with that one. The majority of the book is set in London, in an orthodox Jewish community. The rabbi has just passed away, so his nephew (and likely successor) calls his very un-traditional daughter, who then goes back from New York to gather some things from her childhood. The rest of the novel discusses sexuality, sin and provides the religious background to illustrate both how the community and the characters themselves felt about their lives, and how their actions have made their community fall apart now that the rabbi isn’t around to pull it together. I liked the characters and was intrigued to know what happened to make things the way they were, plus coming from a heavily religious family and country and having done a lot of things that would be looked down upon by that religion I could relate to the characters a lot.
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (4 stars)
I Capture the Castle is 17 year old Cassandra’s journal, spanning 6 months of her life. Her family lives in a castle in Suffolk and are relatively poor, her father is a semi-well known author that hasn’t written anything in a while. Around the start of the book two strangers walk into the castle and change the family’s life radically, which is really what the bulk of the novel is about. I really like coming of age stories written for adults so this book was on my five star predictions and it wasn’t too far off. I like how believable the book is, it does seem like a 17 year old’s journal (albeit, a very well written one) and how even though the novel doesn’t span very long you do see believable character growth, both for Cassandra and some of the other characters.
Hagseed by Margaret Atwood (4 stars)
I went into Hagseed not knowing anything about it, including the fact that it is a retelling of the tempest (not that that would have helped much anyway since I hadn’t heard of the tempest until I read this book). We start off with Felix being fired from his role as artistic director, shortly after his 3 year old daughter’s death. He leaves and hides to plot his revenge, until he gets a job teaching literature at a prison. I’m not sure I’d call this book a retelling, it was more a novel about making the play itself with a lot of clever ways to transmit the story simply through songs and the like, though Felix’s life outside of his role in the play mirrors the play itself. A lot of the book I spent wishing I’d read the tempest first and wondering if I would be getting more out of it if I had, though I definitely think it’s not a requirement to enjoy the book. I read it quite recently so I’m still not fully sure what my opinion of the book is beyond the fact that I enjoyed reading it but I do know I loved the writing style and I will definitely be picking up more Margaret Atwood books.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (4 stars)
I’ve been curious about reading classics for a while but I find them very intimidating so the classicsathon was the final push I needed to finally give it a go. Overall it was way easier to read than I was expecting – I’m pretty sure I’ve read literary fiction that was harder to read than Jane Eyre, but despite really enjoying it I think my expectations were set a bit too high. At the start I thought it was well on its way to becoming a favourite, but when the book shifted away from Jane’s childhood my enjoyment of it went down quite a bit. Overall I’m glad I read it and it will definitely make me less scared to pick up another classic but it was by no means an exceptional read.
The Dark Circle by Linda Grant (3 stars)
The Dark Circle kicks off shortly after the second world war, siblings Lenny and Miriam are diagnosed with tuberculosis and sent to a sanatorium. The rest of the book follows them along with the other patients, their day to day life at the sanatorium, the lives they left behind and their struggle to survive long enough to get access to the new miracle cure. I enjoyed it, getting to know the characters and seeing the tension building up, but I felt like the book was way stronger at the start, by the last quarter or so I felt my interest quickly fading away and by the end I didn’t care anymore, I just wanted it to be over.
The Surface Breaks by Louise O’Neill (3 stars)
The Surface Breaks is a retelling of the little mermaid. I’m not a huge fan of retellings but I was curious about this one because I enjoyed Almost Love and it fit well for the beautiful spine booktubeathon reading challenge so I gave it a go. It definitely didn’t stand up to my expectations but it was an okay read, I think people who liked To Kill A Kingdom would probably enjoy it. It has some feminist themes and it also features sexual assault which I thought was a good thing to include in a YA retelling but I’m not sure I’d recommend it.
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (3 stars)
This book has been on my TBR for a while but I couldn’t get myself to get to it because of its size, which made it a perfect pick for the big book weekender. A Little Life follows 4 friends from their late teens until their fifties (if my memory serves me right), focusing both on how the relationships between them change over time as well as their individual lives. But most of all it focuses on Jude, his traumatic past and the effect it has on him over time. I enjoyed a fair amount of the book, I found a fair amount of the emotions and situations people around Jude were going through quite relatable due to things I’ve been going through quite recently, but I think it was executed badly. I’ve read a lot of dark novels with quite bad and graphic physical and sexual abuse so it wasn’t that that was an issue, it was the fact that it was too extreme, it stopped being believable, for example, it’s very unlikely that every single person Jude ever encountered treated him the same way. The actions of his friends and doctor are also not believable past a certain point, why would you not tell the people around him about an abusive relationship when it was relevant? Why would you consistently let him get away with not getting proper treatment when things are clearly at a point where that’s the only option? Sure, the person might not trust you anymore but I think any person who cares about someone would rather have them be alive and well but lose the friendship forever than face the alternative. And as the book goes on even when Jude stops being actively abused it seems like everything that could possibly have happened and ruined his life happened. It got so bad that I started hoping they’d just kill of Jude. So yeah, I have a lot of conflicting opinions about this book, I might revise my review and star rating when I’ve had more time to think about it.
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer (2.5 stars)
Over the years there’s been several expeditions to area X, some that never returned, some where people came back not quite themselves, and there is very little information about area X. I read this for the book to movie adaptation booktubeathon challenge and I was left quite disappointed. Some of the setting descriptions were quite captivating and I thought I’d love it but I just felt like I never really connected to any of the characters, the plot or the setting, I felt like I was watching something from really far away and I couldn’t quite make out what it was and hence I couldn’t care. If I hadn’t read it for the booktubeathon I would have definitely DNFd it.
The Summer of Impossible Things by Rowan Coleman (2 stars)
The Summer of Impossible Things opens with Luna and Pia’s mother having commited suicide and leaving behind some tapes, where she reveals that Luna’s biological father isn’t actually the man who raised them. They travel back to where their mother grew up to get to know the area and try to make sense of what the tape said. Up until then I was absolutely loving the book and thought it might even have the potential of becoming a favourite but after that Luna meets her mother as a teen (it’s in the blurb so not a spoiler) and the book spends basically the rest of the book going on and on about how impossible it is and how magical and trying to explain both it and the consequences and I was incredibly annoyed and the only reason I didn’t DNF it is that I had nothing better to do during my commute.
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