Bookish: January 2019 Wrap Up & February 2019 TBR

Hello my gorgeous reading buddies!

I can’t even begin to tell you how pleased I am that January is over. This month felt like it was the longest ever and each day seemed to last twelve years.

As I’m a trillion years behind on everything I intended to do, I’m going to dive straight into my post and update you on what I’ve been reading and what I hope to read.

I had every intention of reading To Kill a Kingdom in 2018 but I just never got round to it. I was immensely psyched to read it because…

Yep. I have a deep love for mermaids. Some would say… too deep? No it’s ok, it’s not that bad. I’m not a weirdo or anything.

This is a retelling of The Little Mermaid but instead of mermaids we’re actually dealing with sirens and instead of our protagonist wanting a princes heart in a romantic manner she wants it more in a serial killer manner. Which she is.

I wanted to love this book but I felt that the pacing was off, the villain was on the pantomime side, the action at the end confused me and I only really liked Lira and Elian. That being said, those two are the main characters so it wasn’t all bad.

I did enjoy the book though as a fun but nothing special edition to my life and gave it 3 stars.

This was an ARC that I requested and I’m glad I did as I adored it so very much.

I gave it 4 stars and my review is here.

Another ARC that didn’t tickle my fancy as much as the previous one did. There’s something strangely compelling about it though and I do feel that I would read the second book even though I only gave this 2 stars.

My review can be found here.

Yes another ARC! (I left them all to the last minute if you hadn’t noticed).

This one wasn’t my cup of tea unfortunately but I’m glad I gave it a go as I don’t normally do crime thrillers and I think its good to branch out.

My review where I gave it 2 stars can be found here.

Nope.

My guilty pleasure is anything with Rose Calloway and Connor Cobalt from the Addicted series by the Ritchie sisters and this is based on their eldest daughter Jane who has a crush on her hot bodyguard Thatcher.

I was sort of hoping this would become another guilty pleasure but instead it was the opposite like an… innocent pain? No, that doesn’t sound right.

Not to sound harsh but I just didn’t like it. The majority of the characters annoyed me, the plot was non-existent when it wasn’t a) being repetitive (everyone falling for their hot bodyguard?? Everyone??!!) or b) being eerily familiar to previous stories with characters having traits that belonged to the original characters – probably because there’s a lack of originality in the well now. The writing also seemed to be low effort. I was sad that this just didn’t feel ‘fun’ and gave this 1 star.

I’m going to stick with Rose and Connor. Who were mysteriously absent and dare I say…. Rose was cold AF and honestly, that’s not Rose.

I know, I know. I come across as picky.

I only come across as picky because I am picky. 

Another ARC for you my friends with another 3 star review which can be found here.

Guess what? Another ARC! Whoop!

I’m massively late in writing the review up but I read the book in time and for that I want to give myself a medal. I wont say much here because I’ll have nothing to say in my review but I gave this 3 stars.

I’m quite pleased with how many books I managed to read! Seven! That’s seven books, mwah ha ha ha.

• I gave 1 book a 1 star rating
• I gave 2 books a 2 star rating
• I gave 3 books a 3 star rating

(I swear I didn’t plan this ^^)

• I gave 1 book a 4 star rating

Overall, this means January’s average is 2.5. 

That makes me feel a little sad as that’s lower than what I would like BUT…. the 4 star book of Once Upon a River was a delightful gem that I didn’t anticipate. I still remain a solid 3 rater and I think it was the 2 two star reviews and the one star review that pulled it down.

I’ve decided not to set any specific books as I realised that’s the fastest way to put myself off any of books I’ve chosen.

I’m currently reading The Beasts Heart by Leife Shallcross and I have a few more ARCs that I need to get to before their release date so for February I guess my aim is The Beauty of the Wolf by Wray Delaney, The Binding by Bridget Collins and Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid.

Anything else is an added bonus.

Not much. It’s January. I hate January.

The most exciting thing I guess is that I entered the NYC Short Story Challenge.

There were 4,500 entrants all put into separate heats where we were given a genre, a subject and a character and had to pack it into a 2,500 word story in 8 days.

I was in the group that were given comedy, incompetence and an astronomer. Oh boy.

I struggled. Really struggled and I doubt I’m getting to the second round. My story was called “Stars” and the first couple of sentences (because this is all I’ll share) are:-

When she was a child, Reginald Herbert Hughes, realised three truths. 

The first was that her father was the type of man who would refuse to back down from his predetermined course of action in naming his child after himself. 

The second and third truths were realised when she was eleven. Reginald, as a precocious child, often pondered the world around her. This pondering led to wandering down the garden at night where she would lay down on the wet grass to stare at the stars. 

This wandering led to wondering.  

I hate it. Honest to betsy. Yeuch. BUT…. it was pretty fun to do and I do relish the challenge of being put outside my comfort levels!

How did your January stack up? Any plans for February?

Look forward to hearing from you!