A Wrap Up: February 2019 Part One

Hi, and thanks for stopping by.

In today's post, I'll be wrapping up the first half of this month's reading, letting you know my rating and miniature review for each book that I read in February so far. It's been a pretty successful month!!

Renee Watson’s Piecing Me Together

5 stars

I absolutely loved this book. It was quite a subtle, understated read, but I enjoyed every page of it. There was great discussion of race, size, gender and politics as well as having a really strong perspective/narrative voice from Jade. I loved how female-oriented the book was, with a strong mother-daughter relationship and two great, contrasting female friendships, where both parties felt able to call each other out when things got difficult. There's no dominant romance in here either, by the way, so if you're sick of reading YA that revolves around that, definitely give this a try! 

Black Enough – An Anthology

4 stars

Obviously this rating is an average, based on the culminated ratings I gave to each individual short story within. This entire collection was so enjoyable, at times hilarious, at times emotive; a great mixture. My favourite stories would have to be Hackathon Summers by Coe Booth (5 stars) and Into The Starlight by Nic Stone (5 stars also). 

Laura Bates’s The Burning

3.5 stars

I always love reading UKYA, I suppose because it feels that bit more real and relatable to me. This was a great, broad look at so many issues young women are facing; slut-shaming, revenge porn, sexism, sexual harassment and more. I loved the witchy undertones/parallels drawn, but I wish even more had been done with that, honestly.

Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere

4 stars

I really enjoyed Celeste Ng's writing style; the topical, thought-provoking subject matter combined with the dense, retrospective prose reminded me a lot of Jodi Picoult's writing, which I also really like reading. I loved spotting all of the seeds of the tension as Celeste sowed them and then feeling that dawning dread of them coming to fruition. I can't wait to read more from her in the future.

Sara Barnard’s Fierce Fragile Hearts

3.5 stars

This is definitely the book I found hardest to rate so far in February. The last 30% or so was really great; difficult and moving and hopeful and brave. I absolutely loved the brave, bittersweet ending that turned its back on all tropes and fairytale cliches. The first 50-60% in particular felt a little messy  to me, though, repetitive with lots of nightclub and house party scenes that didn't seem to be moving the plot anywhere at all.

Emma Mills’s This Adventure Ends

5 stars

Can I give this five HUNDRED stars instead?! I've been wanting to read Emma Mills's writing for so long now and when my friend Maddie told me just a few weeks ago how much she had loved this book, it was the final push I needed! I literally could not have loved it more. My favourite thing HAS to be the humour; Sloane, our protagonist, is ridiculously funny, painfully sarcastic and just generally one of the best characters I've read in a really, really long time. I could talk about this forever, but I'll write a proper, cohesive blog post instead. Look it for it in early March!!

So those are the first bunch of books I read in February! Roll on the rest of the month...

Till next time

Katie