Hello readers! I had a really good reading month and I hope everyone else did too! I was falling back into a slump at the end of 2022, but I bounced back. It’s finally time to wrap up everything I read in January, which was 13 books. I had some really good reads and some really bad ones, but I think my month was very good.
This is the first 4 books and 3 novellas in the Night Huntress Universe. All but two of them are rereads. I decided to try to reread and continue this series. I read most of it about 10 years ago now, but I never finished it. It consists of over 20 books and novellas across 4 series.
The Night Huntress series is about a half-vampire named Cat who hunts vampires. She gets captured by this vampire named Bones, who thinks she is working for another vampire, and things quickly become smutty from there.
I am having so much fun reading this series again and I cannot wait to continue whenever I get back to it. I want to read this series, but I also want to read other things, so I’m struggling to do both atm.
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On a completely different note, I also read this middle-grade graphic novel. It follows the author, at it is mostly autobiographical, trying out a ton of different sports. He has to be more active due to medical reasons and keeps trying so many sports, but keeps getting hurt. The main character is also Mexican and Jewish, which is a combination I haven’t seen before.
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14 Ways to Die follows the daughter of the first victim of a serial killer. She, along with 4 others, gets this show where they are followed around by cameras for 24 hours one day a week. She wants to use this show to solve the murder of her mother and the other 12 victims.
My biggest issue with this book is the title. It is misleading to me. There aren’t 14 ways to die. The killer is about to kill their 14th victim. We don’t even get to know all the stories of how every single victim died, but we can gather that they were killed similarly.
It’s just that titles or synopses that are purposefully wrong lead readers to believe a book will be one way when it isn’t. When it doesn’t come out the way it’s marketed, more readers will be unsatisfied with the book. Why do companies want their books to be marketed wrong?
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Spare is a non-fiction by and about Prince Harry of the UK. This one is divided into three parts. Part one is about him as a kid. Mostly about his mother’s death and how it affected him. Part two follows his life from early adulthood until his early 30s, and part three is all about Meghan Markle.
Mostly we get to see all of Harry’s scandals and we get his own side of it, along with hearing about his hatred for the media, and how awful his family is (they need some real therapy).
The one thing most people fail to mention when they review this book is the amount of abuse this family puts one another through. Harry and William lost their mother and no one really helped them to cope with that. The family will get angry if another one outshines them (especially Charles and William). Out of all the things that were leaked on Twitter, I didn’t see anyone mention the time William physically assaulted Harry. The Windsors are a horrible family who is horrible to each other. All they care about is being the most beloved and not about the people of their country.
Of course, read this to get your own opinions, but I felt as though Harry was being very honest, some might say too honest at times. We get to learn more about him and his family than I would ever need to know, including that he is circumcised.
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This one follows Nicholas. He gets this scholarship to a boarding school, but can only keep it if he makes it onto the fencing team. The other boys at this school are not like him. He isn’t rich and doesn’t have a ton of training or experience with fencing.
So far, I am really loving this series. I didn’t know anything about fencing before reading these and it does a good job of teaching it to the reader. It is hard to remember all the characters at first because there are so many, but once I caught on, I was having fun in all the drama.
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The last one I have is Sweet and Sour, a middle-grade contemporary following Mai. Mai’s family vacations at the same spot every summer. Two summers ago, she overheard some guys saying some racist things to her and her best friend Zach didn’t defend her. This caused her to hate him. Right after, he moved to Japan and has just moved back. He is wanting to go on like normal and she wants revenge.
This entire book was one big miscommunication trope. If she had just told him the issue, the book would’ve been over in one chapter. He genuinely didn’t even know there was an issue and she was determined to be mad at him no matter what. She ruins the entire summer because she can’t just say what’s wrong.
The worst part is this flashback where almost the same thing happens, but the roles are reversed, and the problem is solved almost instantly. That just showed me they were capable of resolving the issue, but wouldn’t.
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