Back to the books books books! This past month I let myself completely delve into whatever book I wanted and it was great! During the Holidays, I was gifted an Amazon Kindle (for all those future trips I hope….) and fell in love with it surprisingly, as I LOVE the feeling of a real book. I also tried my best to get through a giant stack that I had spontaneously checked out from my local library.
I am still aiming to complete my Bucket list item!
Related: Thanks for the Bucketlist #2
HUNGER GAMES TRIOLOGY by Suzanne Collins
5 Stars
I had a blast rereading these. I read them on my Kindle as they were free in the Kindle Unlimited Library. After each book, I watched the corresponding movie. I loved these books when they first came out and I loved them again. The writing, the suspense, the characters were just what I wanted out of a consuming, fun, YA read.
Are you Team Gale or Team Peeta? Back in the day, I was Team Gale all the way. I couldn’t help but sympathize with him and I loved the idea of a long-time friend turning into a long-time love. (Well let’s be real…I still love and believe in that idea.) This time around, Team Peeta. More realistic. The better person in the long run. I mean the end of Mockingjay….c’mon Gale…
Fun Fact: I read the first book merely months after it was first published, thanks to the recommendation by Stephenie Meyer on her website. Which I followed and read religiously at that time. I simply grabbed it off the shelf of the library, as no one knew about it. I had to wait a year and a half for Catching Fire, and by that point, it literally caught fire amongst my age group.
“Better to not give in to it. It takes ten times as long to pull yourself back together as it does to fall apart.”
“I’ll tell them how I survive it. I’ll tell them that on bad mornings, it feels impossible to take pleasure in anything because I’m afraid it could be taken away. That’s when I make a list in my head of every act of goodness I’ve seen someone do. It’s like a game. Repetitive. even a little tedious after more than twenty years. But there are much worse games to play.” -Suzanne Collins in Mockingjay
ELEANOR AND PARK by Rainbow Rowell
4 Stars
This was another sweet, fast, endearing read. I picked it up on a day I was feeling extremely anxious and needed something to pull me away from my problems quickly. This was absolutely perfect. Within an hour I was 70 pages in and hooked. I fell in love with the characters. The emotions were real and extremely relatable. First love is no joke and this novel nailed it right on the head. It touched on deeper topics such as race, poverty, self-esteem, body image and social pressures. It had a sad ending, leading to tears on my end, but there is just enough hope in where I could imagine where I wanted it to go. Which made me feel better overall. Someone recommended to me to read all of Rowell’s books, which I plan on doing.
“There was something about the music on that tape. It felt different. Like, it set her lungs and stomach on edge. There was something exciting about it, and something nervous. It made Eleanor feel like everything, like the word, wasn’t what she’d thought it was. And that was a good thing. That was the greatest thing -Rainbow Rowell in Eleanor and Park
MATCHED by Ally Condie
3 Stars
The premise is interesting and of course, I live for a love triangle/story. Even cheesy and unrealistic YA ones. I gave the third star for Condie’s writing. There were simply beautiful passages that were almost poetic. The descriptions were artistic and enjoyed her overall tone.
That being said, the reason I didn’t love this dystopian YA romance was simply the character development. Especially concerning the main heroine, Cassia. Love her and what she represents but her growth and change didn’t make sense to me. She begins as one of the “citizens,” naive and oblivious to the underlying evils. You sense that events chapter after chapter are an important discovery but they don’t line up with her sudden change to “rebel.” It’s as if the author knew what Cassia would be but not where she came from. I was bothered by that. Her sudden love for Ky also did not make sense. There was no major dilemma or choice that she made to not be with Xander, despite the sweet passages, in the beginning, all the way through halfway in the book. Again, seemingly very sudden. No sense of story arc as well. Overall struggled.
I’m still going to read the other two as I have this incessant need to know what happens. Especially if the answer is sitting on my bookshelf…
“Every minute you spend with someone gives them a part of your life and takes part of theirs.” -Ally Condie in Matched
Related: July in Books
Honorable mentions…Those that I started but didn’t finish because of Library due dates…
MANSFIELD PARK by Jane Austen
THE WOMAN WHO SMASHED CODES: A STORY OF TRUE LOVE, SPIES, AND THE UNLIKELY HEROINE WHO OUTWITTED AMERICA’S ENEMIES by Jason Fagone
I’m excited for my February reads. I am joining a couple of book clubs and I never know what I’ll find in the library.
Thanks for the Adventure Books!
Bucketlist update: 27/52
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